The Rift

by Rachel Lynch

  Should he have run then? Should he have shouted at the mother for help?

  He’d overheard the two drivers arguing as he was told to relieve himself in a bush, they had no change for a cubicle. A loan car drove past at high speed on the AutoRoute. Hakim, for a second, considered running after it but knew it would be suicidal to do so. The men who were bickering about whether or not to transfer Hakim to the other car, looked as though they wouldn’t hesitate to use lethal force.

  That’s when he’d been told to get into the boot of the blue Peugeot.

  The dark, tiny space made Hakim’s terror more acute and he remembered it now. But at least his hands were free and he wasn’t hooded for a second time. He’d ridden like that, rubbing his wrists, listening to the noise of the car, trying to overhear the conversations of the driver on his phone, and see daylight. He knew they’d hit another metropolis by the way the car stopped and started. Also, the driver’s annoyance with other motorists made him confident they’d arrived in another city. There were several options as to which city that could be: Grenoble, Lyon, Marseilles or even Nice. He knew they’d continued to drive south or even south-east, because he could see the sun’s rays filter into the boot through cracks. He was pretty confident that they were still in France.

  The car had stopped and the boot had opened. He’d realised they were in a garage, and he’d been helped out of the car, stiff, thirsty and hot. The Range Rover wasn’t there and neither was its driver. He’d tried to keep his eyes from looking too hard at the driver of the Peugeot, but he couldn’t help staring at the gun pointing at him. It was a pistol and the man holding it looked as though he wasn’t afraid of using it. Hakim had seen plenty of amateurs holding guns, only for their hands to shake. This man’s hand was steady.

  On his first morning, the door had opened and an old man came in carrying a tray. On it was a bottle of water and some pitta bread with a bowl of brown mush. The man didn’t speak, and he didn’t look at Hakim as he retreated from the room. He shut the door and Hakim grabbed the bottle, rushing to open it and gulp the contents. He sank it down in one go and the ecstasy was like nothing he’d ever come close to. He smelled the brown mush and recognised it as aubergine. He ate and felt revived and alert after as he lay on the bed. Sometime later, the man came back with a chamber pot covered with a towel, and some tissues. He also brought more water and took away the tray. He still didn’t speak or make eye contact. Hakim found it curious that this old man never once seemed to give the impression that he was wary of his position. At any moment, Hakim could have overpowered him, knocked him out and escaped.

  And that’s when Hakim knew that there were others, probably armed. They’d been quiet, but Hakim had been obsessing about water too much to pay attention. Now, whenever he strained his ears against the door, he heard them. He closed his eyes to get used to their voices. As well as the old man, he believed there to be two others. The old man who never spoke came in twice a day, to bring food and water and replace his chamber pot. Hakim concentrated on remembering every detail he’d absorbed. As he grew used to his surroundings, his senses had sharpened, and he heard snatched noises from outside, as well as the voices of the guards, what they spoke about, and routine traffic outside. He still hadn’t worked out where he was, but it was urban and busy. He visualised the map of France and all the towns and cities that lay to the south of Paris. He could be anywhere. The men talked about food a lot and he knew they played cards and smoked. They argued about winning and cheating, and even sometimes threatened one another with violence. Hakim willed them to begin a fight, then perhaps he could get out of here.

  The door opened, and the old man came in bearing the same tray as yesterday. Hakim sat up on his bed and tried to look beyond the door, but it was on a spring and it closed. The man set the tray down and on it was a jug of juice and a bowl of some kind of stew.

  ‘Merci,’ Hakim said in perfect French. The man didn’t look at him but nodded. It was something; it was a form of human acknowledgement and a reason to be positive.

  ‘Do you know why I’m here?’ Hakim continued in the language familiar to him since early childhood.

  The man stopped. He turned back to Hakim and looked at him in the eye. There was kindness there, and Hakim tried to read him, but it was impossible. He shrugged.

  ‘Is it to get money from my father?’

  ‘We don’t need money,’ the man said. He was French.

  ‘What is your name?’

  He left and closed the door. Hakim sighed and sat on his bed. If they didn’t want or need money, then what did they want?

  Chapter 15

  They gave Helen a desk near to Sylvia’s and she settled in to her new environment. The Irish woman didn’t seem at all put out at the intrusion. Helen knew that with her years of experience, Sylvia was more than capable of running a missing-person case herself, but her interest in Helen’s expertise was genuine and welcome. It made her feel at ease. She’d unpacked her things, which were sparse: a pencil case, her personal laptop for notes, the files she’d been given in Paris and her own coffee cup. She stared at the computer screen, from which she could gain access to live updates on any current case investigated by the giant operation that made up Interpol. The first time she’d been here was terror related, and she’d been part of a vast incident team tracking CCTV across France. She’d soon made herself at home. Sylvia was a quiet work companion until she fancied a chat, which she did now.

  ‘Family with you?’ asked Sylvia.

  It caught Helen unprepared. ‘No, just me. I’m not married. You?’ she replied.

  ‘Hubby has been a stay-at-home dad for the past twenty years, following me around my postings. Now the kids are grown up, and he’s likely off sipping coffee and planning his next bridge contest.’

  Helen smiled. The vision of domesticity was comforting. That’s what normal people do, she thought.

  ‘Where have you been posted?’ Helen asked.

  ‘It’s easier if you ask where we haven’t. Here is our favourite though. I’ll show you around when we get a chance. There’s a great little strip of cafes and bars along the river close to here. But you’ve been here before though, right?’

  ‘Yes. It’s nice to be back. I finished an assignment in Paris, so they sent me to lend a hand, not that you need me, of course,’ Helen added.

  ‘If we didn’t need you, you wouldn’t be here. I’ve got thousands of cases like this ongoing. It’s a help to me for you to take the lead on this one. It’s a hot potato, right?’

  Helen found the metaphor endearing; the Irish always brought stuff back to food or drink.

  ‘That’s what I’m here to find out. Fawaz Nabil’s increased interest in mainland Europe is odd timing given the abduction of Hakim Dalmani and the forthcoming summit. The UK ambassador wants watertight assurance that it’s not going to affect security.’

  ‘Watertight is a bit ambitious,’ Sylvia said.

  Helen laughed. ‘Yeah, I agree, but as close as I can get it. I was wondering if any red notices stuck in your head flagging Moroccan nationals? Nabil is Moroccan, and I thought I’d start there.’

  ‘There are hundreds, and some with historical connections to Nabil Tradings. I’ll pull up a list,’ Sylvia said.

  ‘Thanks,’ Helen smiled.

  ‘So where were you before Paris?’ Sylvia asked.

  Helen wanted to get on with her work but she also appreciated that the woman was trying to figure her out and size her up, which was only fair, given that she’d been given a slice of her office space. Helen turned away from her screen and swivelled her chair towards Sylvia. She gave her a precis of her life, and as she did so, felt the familiar tug of surprise and doubt. Her life was punctuated with job after job, rising through the ranks of the RMP, gaining qualifications enabling her to be loaned out to battalions fighting all over the world, most notably in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the odd desk job, which she skirted over.

  ‘You like the action, don�
�t you?’ Sylvia commented.

  Helen shrugged. ‘You got me there.’ She couldn’t help feeling that the synopsis of her career sounded like an incessant thrusting charge towards promotion, which she admitted it was.

  Sylvia seemed satisfied for now and offered to make her a coffee.

  Helen turned back to her computer and looked at the intelligence gathered so far on Jean-Luc Bisset. His mother had been put under surveillance and had also been interviewed, and Helen read the transcript. Marie Bisset swore she hadn’t seen her son, but the local authorities had obtained a warrant to search her apartment anyway. Interpol, no matter where their operation was based, tried to use the local police where possible, and the French gendarmerie was up there with the best. Helen read the report of the search and noticed that DNA samples had been taken from the apartment and matched to Jean-Luc. They had his profile from an overnight bag found on the private jet on which he’d flown with Hakim. Curiously, the bag was packed with toiletries and a few T-shirts but contained no ID, documents, phone or sentimental items one might take away for a trip.

  Like any organic matter, DNA degrades over time, depending upon the conditions and circumstances under which it’s found. Exposed to oxygen inside Madame Bisset’s flat, any residual DNA would degrade in a matter of weeks, so to find a trace of Jean-Luc in there meant that it was recent.

  From the notes of Khalil’s interview with Interpol Algiers, there was no log of his bodyguard visiting his mother in Lyon in the last few months. Jean-Luc hadn’t been to Paris since Hakim’s final term before the summer break. It was solid evidence that Jean-Luc had been to Lyon without the knowledge of his boss.

  She turned her attention to traffic at Le Bourget Airport. CCTV from the airport, of vehicles leaving Le Bourget between two thirty p.m. and three p.m. flagged up several of interest. One of the pilots of Khalil’s private jet recalled that he’d seen a black four-by-four in the vicinity of their parking allocation as they taxied, but thought it irrelevant at the time. They had seven vehicles matching that description leaving the airport, but only one – a black Range Rover – had blacked-out windows, and they’d traced it to a company registered in Paris. Traffic alerts had caught the same vehicle travelling south towards Lyon and it had entered the city at seven thirty Sunday night. From the entry point, they’d lost it, until it was picked up again, leaving the city and heading back to Paris. However, it had carried on its journey north, heading for Calais, where it had been dumped near the Eurotunnel entry point. It was burned out.

  Their best estimate was that Hakim was here in Lyon, right under their noses.

  Next she searched through Khalil’s security records, checking all of his staff against what intelligence they had internationally. Jean-Luc had a clean record, but two members of his household staff, one responsible for the maintenance of fences and the other a gardener, had family ties to Morocco. Both men had gone AWOL. Fawaz Nabil was Moroccan; it could be important. It was a question for Khalil Dalmani directly. Members of staff didn’t disappear coincidentally during times of family tragedy. It was a red flag, and she made notes of their names. She checked for any discrepancies in the data regarding Khalil’s movements, logged by his security tracking, as well as anomalies in files that noted the assigned weapons, body armour and listening devices to his personal bodyguards.

  On the day that Hakim had disappeared, two weapons and three radios had been marked as in use, but she couldn’t find any evidence of them being logged back in. The information, supplied willingly by Khalil himself, said one of two things: either tracking of weapons and radios under household security was slovenly, or they’d disappeared along with the staff. Helen was impressed that Khalil kept such tight records, and it didn’t indicate a man who was careless. It was in his best interests to be transparent. After all, they were trying to find his son.

  Next, she listened to the cockpit voice recorder from the flight to Paris, also provided by Khalil’s people, and it was without incident. The pilots were relaxed. They followed procedure and switched it off after landing safely and taxiing to their designated spot, when it would be set up for the next flight. She questioned why Hakim had travelled with only one bodyguard and had been told that this was normal, but it was far from regular in her book, and she decided to find out how long this had been going on. The answer Interpol had been given was that Khalil trusted Jean-Luc and Hakim was happy with him, but, to her, it was a massive lapse in security. Which is why she ordered tracing the other vehicles leaving Le Bourget at around the same time as the black Range Rover.

  A forensic arson team had been sent to examine the vehicle dumped at Calais, but it would take time to run tests on the blackened shell. The car had entered Lyon from Mâcon on the E15 and the A6, and had travelled all the way into the city, crossing the Saône into La Croix-Rousse, from where it disappeared into the notorious alleyways, not covered by CCTV. Whoever was driving was either very clever or very stupid. A Range Rover with blacked-out windows should be memorable in that area of the city, but who cared? Who might remember? Their only positive lead was that one other vehicle that left Le Bourget Airport around the same time was also traced to Lyon by the same route. It was a blue Peugeot 206, a larger version of the 205 French classic, and it had entered the city by the A6 and crossed into La Croix-Rousse. It too disappeared into thin air, but they had a trace on the number plate, which led them to an address in La Croix-Rousse, between the rivers, where a team was heading right now.

  ‘Ready for the show?’ Sylvia reappeared with coffee and referred to the planned raid that was now displayed on Helen’s screen, courtesy of body-cam technology, and Helen felt a frisson of excitement. Sylvia handed her a steaming mug and Helen thanked her and sat back in her chair to watch.

  This kind of technology was something that was a joy to work with. She’d been attached to countless police departments across the globe and knew first hand that an organisation’s ability to achieve results was based purely on funding, and Interpol had plenty.

  They watched via body cam as a team of French gendarmes approached a garage, deep in the heart of the ancient passages that criss-crossed over the modern roads, cutting the district in two. Helen tapped a pen against her teeth and Sylvia drew up her chair.

  The team parked underneath a balcony, and two men guarded their escape route, should they run into trouble. Helen knew Le Croix-Rousse well. It was a popular tourist destination, but for anyone in authority, it was a detested maze. They were hemmed in by flats, shops, bars and parked cars, and their line of sight was minimal. The radio crackled and Helen’s nerves jangled. She wished she could be there, and her foot tapped in time with her pen. They watched the screen. Their brief was to raid the address, looking for anyone inside to apprehend and arrest under suspicion of being involved in the abduction of Hakim.

  The garage was broken in to first and they heard the splinter of wood as the doors were bashed in. The footage showed a Peugeot 206 parked inside, and Sylvia banged the desk. It was a significant find, and Helen ordered it to be impounded and taken to a secure location for a full forensic test. The residential part of the building was accessed by a small wooden door on a first-floor walkway, with no rear entry point. The roof was accessible, so one man was stationed up there. Another two took the door. It went unanswered, and the order came over the radio to enter.

  Helen and Sylvia watched closely. These were the times that Helen wished she was still operational on the ground. There was nothing like the adrenalin hit of pounding a door in, not knowing what was on the other side.

  ‘You want to be there yourself, don’t you?’ Sylvia noted. Helen nodded.

  ‘It’s driving me nuts, I haven’t got used to sitting behind a desk yet,’ she replied.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s early days, you’ll get out there when it counts,’ Sylvia said.

  Helen turned to her. ‘I hope you’re right,’ she said, appreciative of the fact that some missing people were never found, and that was the case all o
ver the world, no matter your background.

  ‘Come on, get in there,’ Helen said out loud. They watched as, on cue, they bashed in the flimsy wood and entered the small apartment. Helen screwed her face up as she concentrated on each of the bodycam images being sent live back to them in the office. She searched round the rooms as if she were there herself. Reports came back from each officer as rooms were cleared.

  There was no one home, but what they did find was plenty of detritus to suggest recent human occupancy, like scrunched up sheets, cups and saucers, a sink full of water and a wet towel. Helen sat back.

  ‘Alright, not what we wanted but it’s a start. Seal the building,’ she ordered. They’d wait for a forensic team to get down there and bag and tag evidence to be analysed in a lab across the city. Meanwhile, a foot search by the gendarmes would take place among the neighbouring residents to see if anyone knew who lived there.

  Helen watched as an old lady came out of her balcony door and began to scold the team in very loud and colourful French, strewn with expletives a fisherwoman on the banks of the Saône would be proud of. However, when they explained who they were and what information they were looking for, she became demur, helpful and almost flirtatious.

  ‘Jesus, she’s a firecracker,’ said Sylvia. The old woman had knowledge of who stayed in the flat, and she made no mistake about telling of her distaste for them.

  ‘Their drugs smelled,’ she said. She agreed to be accompanied to a police station for an interview and she smiled as they said they’d get her a coffee and make sure she was looked after. Her gums were gappy but her eyes sparkled with mischief. She told them that she had plenty to tell about the two young men who occupied the flat.

  ‘They moved in two weeks ago, caused chaos with my cats and then disappeared just like that.’

  ‘They left their car,’ the body-cam officer said. The woman could be seen peering over the officer’s shoulder into the garage.