Chapter 25 Fahrenheit 451 #2
Mitch grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair.
One sleeve was turned inside out, and he struggled to force his arm through it.
He was on edge – not because of Anna’s disturbing speculations but because, ever since leaving the clerk’s office, he was becoming increasingly obsessed with the idea of finding out who he’d given Fahrenheit 451 to.
“You might be annoyed with me right now,” Anna said, “but we’re still checking out that room of yours after I finish this recipe. Let’s say six o’clock. Oh – and I assume you don’t have any news about your ex?”
Mitch shoved his jacket on inside out and stalked toward the door.
“Nothing to do with us,” he threw over his shoulder. “She was being charged for marijuana possession. No intent to sell.”
“‘Was being charged’?” Anna asked, all innocence, her eyes fixed on the row of ramekins lined up in front of her.
There was no reply. Looking out the window, Anna saw Mitch on the sidewalk outside, trying to shove his hands into his pockets, which, of course, were on the inside of his jacket.
As she watched him walk away, she was smiling mischievously. An idea had just come to her – carried on the steam of the sabayon.
* * *
On the other side of town, the inspector was pacing in his office, his patience beginning to fray at the seams. He had the grey skin and the shadowed eyes of a man chronically sleep-deprived.
And no wonder. The chief of police, that interfering old bastard, had called him twice yesterday and again this morning to remind him that the murder of a public prosecutor could not, under any circumstances, remain unsolved for much longer.
The pressure was mounting. Not from the public at large, who couldn’t have cared less, but over at the Ministry of Justice.
People were getting nervous. They wanted reassurance, fast, that this was a one-off, something personal, a vendetta tied only to Salinas.
Rumours were flying. Whispers about some kind of vigilante out to punish corrupt high-level government officials. If there was any truth to that, it was crucial that they catch the culprit and fast. The death toll could be astronomical.
But the inspector had only one lead – and it was wearing thinner by the day.
He had to bulk it up, to give it some weight again, as a chef might’ve said about a sauce.
The bookseller he’d arrested looked more like a harmless eccentric than a serial killer, and his behaviour during the interrogation had left the inspector with doubts.
Yes, the man had done time, and that made him look less innocent, even if he actually was.
And he’d haunted the victim like a vengeful ghost. But he’d tailed him so clumsily it was pathetic.
The prison time and the stalking would have been enough to build a viable case against him if it hadn’t been for the unexpected appearance of the woman who’d given him an alibi.
That alibi, the inspector thought, had put a stop to the entire investigation. He had to prove that she was lying.
And the inspector was all but certain that she was.
Mostly because he desperately wanted her to be.
But also because he’d seen her peering out her window at four in the morning.
And let’s be honest – unless you were a cop stuck in your car all night to satisfy the whims of your interfering idiot of a boss, the only people awake at that hour were guilty of something.
A junior officer knocked on the door and handed over a file the inspector had been asking for (for far too long, in his opinion).
He dove right in. An hour later, his eyebrows shot up.
His expression rose from dejection to delight.
He threw on his coat and jumped in his car, heading straight for the brasserie Aux Trois Cousins.
* * *
Anna walked to the bookshop so fast that she might as well have been heading for the magical lair of a genie who could free both her and Mitch from all their troubles.
As soon as she was inside the shop, Mitch pulled down the metal shutter over the window and dimmed the lights.
Moments later they were standing side by side, contemplating the old Persian rug on the floor as if a sacred tomb lay beneath it, Mitch recalling everything that had happened in the cellar before he went to prison.
Anna, on the other hand, was thinking about buying a stand mixer.
“I don’t want to do this,” Mitch muttered at last.
“I know. But sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do.”
“Deep breath in… Deep breath out.” She breathed along with him. “It’s just a dusty old rug, and all we have to do is lift it. Unless you’ve buried bodies down there… and if that’s the case, don’t worry. I’ll still love you.”
Anna had let the word slip out without realizing it. Her cheeks flushed crimson. She hadn’t meant to say it, but the effect it had was immediate.
Mitch yanked the rug aside in a single swift motion, opened the trapdoor and started down the staircase to the forbidden bookshop.
“It’s going to be fine,” Anna muttered, praying no skeletons would be waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs.
* * *
The room was much larger than she’d imagined. She explored it in silence, pausing at the bookshelves lining the back wall and ogling the Freddie Mercury poster hanging above a bar that looked like it came straight out of an old English pub.
“So?” she asked Mitch timidly, eyeing the two worn chesterfield sofas facing the small stage.
“So… nothing,” Mitch replied. “Other than the dust, everything’s exactly the same.”
“No one’s been in here in five years?”
“Not a soul,” Mitch confirmed, his gaze lingering on the chipped glass he’d left on the bar the last time he’d been down here.
The memories came flooding back in waves.
It had been close to midnight, and the gathering had gone on for longer than usual.
Verner and Madame Ateltow had left together, and Mathilde, declaring herself exhausted after leading that evening’s talk, had slipped away soon after, leaving Mitch alone to clean up.
That was the last time they’d seen each other. Mitch had been arrested the next day.
Reading through Mathilde’s case file in the clerk’s office, he’d been surprised to learn that she was still living in that same tiny apartment.
Apparently, she had a job as a compounder in a pharmacy in the northern part of town – a job that gave her access to everything she’d need to mix up a dose of poison.
And yet the idea that she might’ve ratted him out to the police never crossed his mind.
“We’re not going to find the key down here,” he said suddenly, his voice low.
“What key?” Anna asked, glancing at the open safe.
“How did I not see it before?” he went on, muttering to himself.
“Mitch? What key?” she pressed again.
“What?”
“You okay? Back among the living?”
“We need to go back upstairs,” he said feverishly, seizing her hand.
She followed him up the stairs to the storeroom, almost regretting pushing him to go down there in the first place. Before moving that damned carpet aside, he’d seemed more or less normal, but now…
Mitch pointed at a pile of books stacked on top of a cardboard box, his eyes as wild as if he’d just unearthed the tip of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
“Mitch, say something!” Anna pleaded.
“I thought it was a rat,” he whispered.
“Something that makes sense! Please!”
“It wasn’t The Handmaid’s Tale!”
“What are you talking about?”
Suddenly animated, Mitch took Anna in his arms and kissed her – which failed to reassure her.
“Someone had been in the back room, I was almost sure of it,” he explained.
“But I couldn’t figure out why. There was nothing valuable back there – at least, nothing any thief would want – and nothing seemed to be missing.
It was just that The Red and the Black wasn’t how I’d left it – it was like the intruder had picked it up and put it back down, but not exactly where he’d found it.
It bugged me, because I thought I’d left The Handmaid’s Tale on the top of the pile.
But I was wrong – it was Fahrenheit 451! ”
“The book Salinas had in court?”
“One and the same,” Mitch confirmed, his voice shaking. “The locks on the doors were intact, the rug hadn’t been moved, the alarm hadn’t been set off. I figured it had been a rat. But it wasn’t that. Someone took it.”
“Okay. Let’s try to calm down – you especially – and start over,” Anna said. “If someone robbed you, how do you explain the door not being forced and the alarm not going off? Did anyone have a key?”
Mitch sank heavily onto a box and buried his face in his hands.