The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe by Romain Puértolas Read Free Book Online

first two scenarios, he thought, there is nothing I can do until tomorrow. But for the third, I could go and see if there’s a hotel near the store. I’m in the area anyway, and it’ll only take me ten or fifteen minutes.
    The car noisily skidded through a sudden U-turn while St. Sarah pressed herself for several seconds against the body of the smiling St. Fiacre.
    When Gustave arrived outside Ikea, a large freight truck was leaving. He pulled to the side and let it pass, blissfully unaware that inside it was a huge wooden crate which, like a Russian doll, itself contained a metal wardrobe which, in turn, contained the Indian he was looking for.
    He started up again and drove around, but saw nothing suspicious. A very large and closed furniture store, a Starbucks which was open butempty … you could find almost anything here. Anything except a hotel. Anything except a tall, thin Indian, gnarled like a tree, in a suit, tie and turban, who conned honest French gypsy taxi drivers.
    There was a residential estate on the other side of the road, but unless he knew someone who lived there, the thief could not be there.
    Then again … thought Gustave. You could never be sure, with this kind of person. With his slick charm and his magic tricks, he might have taken refuge with one of the residents for the night.
    Just in case, he drove his Mercedes through streets lined with pretty houses, losing at least five minutes in that labyrinth of homes, and came back out on the main road on which he had begun.
    He had to sort this problem out as quickly as possible, because the next day he was leaving for a family holiday in Spain. So he saw only one solution: he would have to call in the professionals.
    *
Author’s note:
Spanish insult a tiny bit ruder than “naughty boy.”

The national police’s new charter for welcoming the public stated that, from now on, every French citizen had the right to file a complaint about any kind of infraction whatsoever, no matter how futile it might be, at the police station of their choice. It was the duty of the policeman, who had no rights, to register the complaint, no matter how futile he might consider it, and, in particular, not to send the plaintiff to another police station in order to get rid of him, which had been standard practice before the charter. So, for the past several months, there had been an unpleasant tension between the irate victims, fed up of waiting in lines that moved no more quickly than those at the post office or the local butcher’s, and police officers embittered by the fact that they were mere humans rather than octopuses, because at least if they had eight tentacles they would have been able to type several statements at once. This tension grew even worse after nightfall, when the number of policestations open to the public diminished as quickly as an ice cube melting in Kim Basinger’s navel, funneling all the victims of crime in Paris into one single point—something the new charter was expressly intended to avoid.
    No less than three hours passed between the moment when Gustave made the decision to notify the police and the moment he triumphantly signed his statement in the presence of the officer on duty.
    Very concerned not to damage the harmonious relationship established by local police with the gypsy community located on the other side of the ring road, the policeman had immediately dispatched the night officer and a colleague to Ikea, accompanied by the victim, in order to inspect the video recorded by the store’s security cameras during the day. They were going to find him—that damn Indian fakir who’d come here stirring up trouble with their minorities—and they were going to make him pay back what he had stolen from the taxi driver, right down to the last centime.
    That was how Gustave Palourde, Police Commander Alexandra Fouliche and Police Officer Stéphane Placide came to be crammed into the store’s cupboard-like control room in the