He gives a little mock-curtsy. “Are you surprised? That I got it together enough? A ‘useless hothouse flower’ like me? I even managed to keep it all to myself . . . up till now. Didn’t want my darling brother to try and get in on the action too. Because, as you well know, he is just as much of a—what was the word you used again?—leech as I am. He’s just more hypocritical about it. Hides it better.”
“You don’t need money,” I tell him. “Your father—”
“That’s what you think. But you see, I had an inkling a few weeks ago that Dominique might be about to try and leave. Just as I suspected, she’s trying to fleece me for everything I’ve got. She’s always been a greedy little bitch. And darling Papa is so fucking tight-fisted. So I’ve wanted a little extra cash, you know? To squirrel away.”
“Did Jacques tell you?”
“No, no. I worked it all out on my own. I found the records. Papa keeps very precise notes, did you know that? Of the clients, but also of the girls. I always had my suspicions about you, but I wanted proof. So I went deep into the archives. I found the details of one Sofiya Volkova, who used to “work”—he puts the word in air quotes—“at the club nearly thirty years ago.”
That name. But Sofiya Volkova no longer exists. I left her back there, shut up in that place with the staircase leading deep underground, the velvet walls, the locked room.
“Anyway,” Antoine says. “I’m more switched on than people realize. I see a great deal more than everyone thinks.” That manic grin again. “But then you knew that part already, didn’t you?”
Jess
Theo and I walk to the Metro together. Funny, how after you’ve slept with someone （not that you’d call what we just did up against the sink “sleeping”） you can suddenly feel so shy, so unsure of what to say to each other. I feel stupid, thinking about the time we might have just wasted. Even if, admittedly, neither of us took that much time. It also feels almost like it just happened to someone else. Especially now I’ve changed back into my normal clothes.
Theo turns to face me, his expression solemn. “Jess. You obviously can’t go back to that place. Back into the belly of the beast? You’d be bloody mad.” His tone no longer has that drawling, sardonic edge to it: there’s a softness there. “Don’t take this the wrong way. But you strike me as the kind of person who could be a little . . . reckless. I know you probably think it’s the only way you can help Ben. And it’s really . . . commendable—”
I stare at him. “Commendable? I’m not trying to win some kind of bloody school prize. He’s my brother. He’s literally the only family I have in the entire world.”
“OK,” Theo says, putting his hands up. “That was clearly the wrong word. But it’s way, way too dangerous. Why don’t you come to mine? I have a couch. You’d still be in Paris. You’ll be able to keep looking for Ben. You could speak to the police.”
“What, the same police who supposedly know about that place and haven’t done anything about it? The same police who might well actually be in on it? Yeah, fat lot of good that would do.”
We head down the steps to the Metro together, down onto the platform. It’s almost totally empty, just some drunk guy singing to himself on the opposite side. I hear the deep rumble of a train approaching, feel it behind my breastbone.
Then I have a sudden, definite feeling that something is wrong, though I can’t work out what. A kind of sixth sense, I suppose. Then I hear something else: the sound of running feet. Several pairs of running feet.
“Theo,” I say, “look, I think—”
But before I’ve even got the words out it’s happening. Four big guys are tackling Theo to the ground. I realize that they’re in uniform—police uniforms—and one of them is triumphantly holding a baggie full of something white in the air.
“That’s not mine!” Theo shouts. “You’ve planted that on me—fuck’s s—”
But his next words are muffled, then replaced by a groan of pain as one policeman slams his face into the wall, while another clips cuffs on him. The train is pulling into the platform: I see the people in the nearest carriage staring from the windows.
Then I see that another man is approaching us from the stairs onto the platform: older, wearing a smart suit beneath an equally smart gray coat. That cropped steel-gray hair, that pitbull face. I know him. It’s the guy Nick took me into the police station to meet. Commissaire Blanchot.