The Stranger in the Seine by Guillaume Musso

Author:Guillaume Musso [Musso, Guillaume]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781399605694
Published: 2023-07-05T16:00:00+00:00

The icy outside air gave me the jolt I needed. I turned up my coat collar and took the left-hand pavement down Rue d’Assas. The effects of the painkillers were wearing off, reviving the pain in my neck and my migraine. The cops had interrogated me for over four hours. They were so out of their depth, I hadn’t even been obliged to lie. I’d answered obliquely, ducking their questions and asking further questions by way of reply. I’d willingly consented to the DNA sample they requested. In their inability to make head or tail of the situation, they seemed to be throwing everything at technology: CCTV footage, mobile phone data, DNA, GPS tracking. The only one who was slightly more switched on than the rest was Roxane Montchrestien, but contrary to what she’d told me, she didn’t have any direct involvement in the investigation.

Things couldn’t carry on like this. I had to face up to my responsibilities and get a handle on the situation myself. Only I held part of the truth that the cops would take some time yet to fathom. To find the missing part, I needed to go back to the start. The moment when Milena Bergman had been ‘duplicated’. The moment when a double, a malevolent doppelgänger, had swept in, by my doing, to claim her.

I kept replaying the torturer’s blows. His vindictiveness, his brutality… Who was the man? Why that costume? That ruthless determination? Everything was a blur. I had to get things clear in my head. But where to begin? I was still missing too many links to grasp the logic of the chain.

I snuck across between a gap in the traffic, heading for the underground car park by the Jardin du Luxembourg where I’d left the car. As I glanced behind me, I noticed a figure who’d been following me since I’d left home. A cop? It wasn’t inconceivable that those chumps wanted to keep tabs on me. I drew level with the heated terrace of the Liberty Bar, on the corner of Rue d’Assas and Rue Vavin. I paused there, and the guy stopped behind me. To make certain, I headed inside the café. After a moment’s hesitation, he came in after me. That’s the point at which I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and bundled him onto the pavement.

‘Who the hell are you?’

He didn’t look like a cop. Scrawny build, hipster goatee, anti-capitalist T-shirt proclaiming #EatTheRich. He was swamped by his biker jacket, and wore a stripy woolly hat over his thinning pate.

‘Get your hands off me! I’m a journalist.’

‘I don’t give a fuck. Beat it.’

The guy was nervy, obsessively fiddling with his goatee as if he were intent on yanking it off. In a defensive move, he took out his phone and started filming me. I finally twigged. This must be Corentin Lelièvre, the hack who’d been skulking around me for days. He was a pathetic sight, wielding his iPhone at me as if it were a shield and a semi-automatic rolled into one.

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