Death on the Rive Nord

by Adrian Magson

  He felt a touch on his arm. It was Demai, beckoning him on. The man seemed confident of where he was going, or maybe he was simply eager to get this over with.

  Rocco followed, making sure Desmoulins was close behind, and found the Algerian walking close to the canal. So close he could feel the cold touch of spray on his face. Then they reached the next set of gates and Demai was scrambling across with almost carefree agility, pausing momentarily before jumping down the other side.

  The path this side was smooth and well worn for a hundred metres or so, testifying to regular use by pedestrians strolling by the canal and watching the barges passing through. Then it turned to grass, with a lumpy feeling underfoot. The water was black and still, sitting now on their right like a cold ribbon. Rocco had completely lost his bearings now, but knew they must be close to the factory area.

  Demai stopped.

  Rocco stayed close, wondering if he had finally lost his nerve and was about to take off. If they lost him now, he’d be impossible to find again. He patted his arm, hoping the reassurance of contact would work where words would not. After a second or two Demai seemed to gather himself and continued walking. Seconds later, they rounded a curve in the canal and Rocco knew instantly where they were.

  They were standing at the corner of the Ecoboras factory, the metal fence rearing up against a distant glow of lights like prison bars, the mist moving around the sharpened, curved points in a slow caress. They were below ground level here, and out of sight of anyone patrolling the grounds. Even so, he motioned to Demai to squat down, making sure Desmoulins did the same.

  Bending down seemed to accentuate the cold from the water, and Rocco felt his stomach grow chilled. He tapped Demai on the arm and pointed at the nearest building. ‘In there? You work in there?’ As he spoke, he heard a distant clatter of metal from inside the building and the whine of hydraulic machinery. Whatever was going on in there, it sounded very busy for this time of night.

  Demai nodded, squatting with his haunches resting on his heels and hugging himself against the cold. He made a motion of going over the fence, followed by a gathering and then a twisting motion with his hands.

  Screwdriver, thought Rocco. Assembly work.

  ‘Where did you sleep?’ he asked. Demai looked blank until Desmoulins moved forward and placed both hands under one cheek.

  The Algerian pointed to the canal and first mimed a boat moving away, then a walking motion. They left the factory by boat and walked to wherever they lived.

  ‘That’s good.’ Rocco said. They could get him to show them where the living quarters were located later. He turned to study the fence, trying to figure out how the workers got through. If it was all conducted in secret, they surely didn’t use the front gates.

  Demai seemed to read his mind. He scurried back a short way and carefully slid up the bank towards the fence, keeping his head and body close to the ground. When he was within arm’s reach of the metal uprights, he pointed to one of the main support posts and flapped his hand. Rocco followed him, smelling his body odour as he slid past. Then he saw what Demai was pointing at.

  The fence was hinged. It was a gate, located conveniently between two clusters of security lights so that a shadow fell across this section of fencing. He moved closer. The next support post had a simple bolt attachment top and bottom, both of which could be slipped out to allow the gate to swing back. The bolts had simple locks inserted through them, but placed in a way that made them invisible to a casual observer.

  He risked a quick look over the top of the bank, peering between the uprights. But the building blocked any view of the front, and all he could make out was a loading bay and a number of skips and wooden pallets half-hidden in the shadows.

  And a light-coloured Citroën DS 19.

  Rocco slid back and tugged at Demai’s sleeve. ‘You’ve done well. Let’s go.’ He didn’t know whether the man understood, but he followed quickly as if relieved to be on the move away from this place.

  As they regained the police car waiting for them, Desmoulins touched Rocco’s arm. ‘I meant to tell you earlier, I got some information on that place, Ecoboras. I spoke to a friend who keeps an eye on the business pages. They’ve been going about five years, a subsidiary of a larger multinational business. They make electrical components for radio equipment.’

  ‘Military?’ If so, it would account for the contract and the protective shield from the Ministry.

  ‘Not so far. Ordinary household stuff. But they got a reputation for delivering on time and six months ago won a tender for assembling components on a new piece of kit for the army. There’s a whisper of friends in high places, but that’s nothing new, is it? It sounds pretty genuine to me.’

  ‘What about Wiegheim and Lambert?’

  ‘Well, that’s where it gets interesting. Marcel Wiegheim’s what he says: a plant manager. He makes things happen in production processes. But Fabien Lambert’s got some history …’

  Fabien. Hell. The man was about as far from Rocco’s idea of a Fabien as he could get.

  ‘He doesn’t use the name, apparently. He’s known as Lambert, plain and simple. He’s down on paper as a director of the company, but less than five years ago he was kicked out of the army for “undisclosed activities not compatible with the French military”. He was with a specialist counterterrorist group at the time, but I couldn’t find anything more than that. Since then he’s been working in the security industry.’

  Rocco nodded. That terminology had a number of meanings, ranging from watching building sites to ensure nobody ran off with the bricks, to working as a mercenary in Africa and other troubled hot spots. And ‘activities not compatible’ was usually a military euphemism for anything ranging from corruption or brutality through to selling military hardware. He was willing to lay good money that Algeria might have figured in Lambert’s service record.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Marc Casparon stood in a narrow doorway and watched the darkened street before him for signs of movement. He was in a narrow, cobbled cut-through just a short walk from the Rue de Rivoli near the Isle St-Louis, and the smell coming from the alcove behind him was pungent enough to choke a donkey. But he’d experienced worse – as had the working girl who was here when he first arrived. A few notes had persuaded her that she was better off elsewhere.

  He shuffled his feet to keep warm. His position was only temporary at best. Sooner or later one of the hardened deadbeats who lived on the street would come looking to occupy this space for the night, and he’d have to move on. Such men had their own codes and weren’t afraid to stand up for themselves if they found a usurper in their place – even if the usurper was a cop. Caspar had no desire to get into a fight with a man looking for a place to doss down for the night.

  He was tired. He’d spent the day trawling through his list of contacts in the Algerian community, both the pieds-noirs of the former, mainly European colonist community, and the recent ethnic-Algerian arrivals, mostly unskilled and poor, some of whom had gang connections here and back in Algeria. Carefully easing into conversation with the ones he trusted most, he’d found them willing enough to talk – but about everything except a man named Samir ‘Sami’ Farek. Distant though he was across the Med, the gang boss evidently commanded enough fear and respect to keep mouths firmly shut and opinions silent, and Caspar had found conversation dwindling fast the moment he mentioned the man’s name.

  Now he was at the end of his list, with only one more contact he could rely on. He had so far heard only one brief mention of Farek’s name, and that was a snatch of conversation between two known gang enforcers. It had been brief, a rumble of gossip. But it was enough to tell him that Farek was on his way – and why. Having a wife run out on you was bad news in most societies. But in the world Farek lived in, he’d be seething with anger and outraged honour, thirsting for a way to demonstrably save face. Reason enough for such a man to risk exposure by coming here.

  What he hadn’t learnt wa
s how imminent was Farek’s arrival. If this final contact didn’t give him anything concrete he wasn’t sure what he could do to get the information Rocco was after. But he had to try. If he got lucky with this, Rocco might put in a good word for him and get him back into his old line of work. He’d have to take a medical and put in a stretch doing simple legwork so the bosses could say they’d done their bit. But better that than the slow death that consumed most former undercover cops who’d lost their jobs.

  He slipped out from the doorway and made his way along the street, skidding on squashed fruit and kicking through scraps of newspaper. A breeze had got up and was cutting along the street, bringing with it the smell of the river and a hint of cooking from the gaggle of restaurants beyond this seedy ditch of a place. He nodded at two girls looking for punters. They were huddled under coats but with a flash of underclothes visible at a flick of the hand. They watched him go without giving the usual come-on.

  They knew. The thought made his gut churn and he wondered how much further he could push this before he lost his nerve altogether.

  He stopped outside a café with a faded curl of script above the window. Maison Louise: it sounded upmarket, but it was a dive where only the most naive of tourists wandering off Rivoli in search of local colour ever stayed longer than a few minutes. They usually ended up cleaned out by the riff-raff inside and could count themselves lucky if money was all they lost.

  It was where his final contact spent much of his time. Karim Saoula was a low-level criminal who ran a few girls, sold a few drugs and traded in information. Most of the chatter was reliable, picked up over a few canons of cheap red or passed on by his girls while working their clients: who was talking to whom; who was moving goods through the ports and haulage depots surrounding Paris; which VIPs in French society were playing away from home or getting into debt through illicit gambling. Some of the information proved useful, some not. Caspar usually passed it on up the chain anyway, leaving his handlers to sift through the intelligence and decide what to do with it. Day-to-day, however, he had come to rely on Saoula over the years for his inside link to the gangs, to tell him who was rising or falling within the ranks of the various criminal factions around the city. It had never ceased to amaze him how much information the man picked up, most of it from loose talk among traditionally tight-lipped criminals. The man was a human sponge.

  He pushed into the café and stepped up to the bar. He couldn’t see Saoula, but that didn’t bother him. He couldn’t very well come in and leave without buying a drink, as that would look suspicious. Better to take his time and see if Saoula came to him.

  The place was crowded, a smoke-filled hovel with yellow lights barely managing to cut through the haze. Groups of men were in huddled conversation at the bar or sat around tables spread with glasses and overflowing ashtrays. A few turned to check him out, sensing the movement of cold air at their backs, then went back to their talk. One or two who knew him nodded, but didn’t rush to invite him over.

  He was used to that.

  The barman slid a glass of pastis and a jug of water towards him, and he poured a generous amount, turning the aniseed-flavoured liquid a milky yellow. He’d have preferred a good malt whisky, but that would have marked him out immediately. In this kind of company only the known players threw that kind of money around without drawing unwanted attention.

  He sipped the drink, swishing it across his gums and watching the reflection of the room in the mirror behind the bar. He’d give it ten minutes. If Saoula hadn’t put in an appearance by then, he’d be able to leave without causing comment.

  One man in the café wasn’t so interested in his drink or his conversation that he could ignore the gaunt, intense individual who had just walked in and now stood at the bar, sipping at a glass of pastis. To the observer, he appeared to be relaxing like any working man at the end of a long day. But it soon became clear that the newcomer was using the mirror to survey the room. No working man, then.

  An outsider. Or a cop.

  The observer stood and went through to the corridor at the rear of the café, and picked up the public telephone. He dialled a number and spoke briefly, one eye on a small mirror on the wall. It was angled in such a way as to give a discreet view of the room and the front door – a necessary caution for many of the men using this establishment. As he watched, another man entered the café and joined the pastis drinker. They got into conversation, shoulders touching, and the observer voiced a name into the phone before replacing it and returning to his seat.

  The pastis drinker had disappeared, leaving the man the observer knew as Saoula alone at the bar.

  Outside, Caspar walked away quickly, his heart pounding. He’d noticed the man who’d stood up and walked through to the back of the café moments before Saoula arrived. At first he’d been unsure; customers were up and down using the phone all the time, placing bets, calling wives or girlfriends – sometimes one immediately after the other – setting up meetings and deals, even this late at night. Hell, especially this late at night. Why should this man be any different? Then Saoula walked in and Caspar caught a flicker of movement from the corridor. He remembered the spy mirror on the wall. He’d used it himself a few times and knew he’d been spotted by a watcher. These were gang members employed to keep an eye on everyone who came and went in their assigned territory. Their skills were confined to identifying known cops, suspicious strangers or dubious friends, and passing on that information.

  Caspar stepped over a battered moped lying across the pavement and tried to recall where he had come across the man before. But the recollection was hazy, like an image swimming up slowly from a dark and murky pond. It didn’t matter. He’d been clumsy, got himself made the moment he walked in. Most likely a face from his past; someone he’d crossed in some way. Whatever. It had been enough. He’d drained Saoula of everything he knew, which wasn’t much, then left, advising his contact to do the same and stay out of sight for a few days. If he had any sense, he’d already be on his way.

  Caspar reached the end of the street and glanced back. A lone figure was standing outside the café, looking his way. Caspar began to breathe easier, then felt a flicker of dread.

  It wasn’t Saoula.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Karim Saoula wasn’t much given to jumping at shadows. In fact he rarely jumped at anything once he’d had a few drinks. After his brief meeting with the cop known as Caspar, and the exchange of folded notes, he’d decided to ignore Caspar’s warning and stay where he was. What the hell did a washed-out flic know, anyway? He’d had a lousy day and needed to get loaded. Not too much, just a little to take the edge off things. One of his best girls – the best girl, in fact – had gone down with something nasty, and a good deal on some hash had fallen through when a rich kid from the other side of the city had developed cold feet at the last minute. As if that wasn’t enough, he was feeling like death after a plateful of bad shellfish.

  Now, helped by a couple of drinks and some money from Caspar, he was feeling mellow and at peace with the world. He was even considering sending his best girl a nice bunch of flowers. That would soon have her back on her feet … or better still, on her back. He giggled at the thought and finished his drink before waving goodnight to the barman and walking out into the cold night air.

  All in all, a good ending to a bad day.

  He was nearing the corner of the street where he had a tiny third-floor apartment, and carefully stepping around a pile of dog turds in the middle of the pavement, when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and felt a hand reach out and grab his shoulder. The drink had wrapped his reactions in treacle. Before he could attempt to fight back or flee, he was being dragged into a doorway and slammed back against the brickwork.

  As he lost consciousness, a black car purred to a stop at the kerb and he was bundled inside.

  ‘Wake up!’ Saoula dimly heard the shouted command, accompanied by a stinging slap to the side of his head. He came round slowly
, aware of a musty, mildewed smell and remembering his hurried meeting with the undercover cop, Caspar, followed by his drinking away the money he’d paid him and staggering up the street much later. The rest was a blur, although he vaguely remembered the dog turd on the ground for some reason. Now he had a bitch of a headache and wanted to be sick.

  A rush of icy cold water snapped him into full consciousness. He sat up choking, his nose filled and his throat going into spasm against the sudden inrush of fluid. Whoever had thrown it had waited for him to open his mouth before hurling it into his face for maximum effect.

  He shook away water droplets, catching a glimpse of a yellowed ceiling light and a wall covered with peeling, bubbled paper showing birds against a cane background. An old restaurant, maybe. Deserted, and therefore a waste of time shouting. Nobody would answer.

  A powerful hand grasped his face, and Saoula winced as he felt his jaw constricted and one of his molars became dislodged. He’d been meaning to have the tooth, which was rotten, pulled out, but had lacked the funds.

  He spat it out and received another slap, this time accompanied by a tirade of abuse about soiled clothing. He opened his eyes wider.

  Three men were in the small room with him, which he guessed was somewhere he was unlikely to ever see from the outside. The man immediately in front of him, who’d probably thrown the water and slapped him, he recognised immediately by his enormous height: Youcef Farek. Overweight and dumb-looking, like a giant soft toy, he was ten years older than his brother Samir and too stupid to bother pleading with. Youcef was a gofer for their half-brother, Lakhdar, at the food distribution warehouse he owned out near Bagnolet. Youcef was the bastard product, it was rumoured, of two dumb cousins with no sense of taste and too much time on their hands. Not that knowing this was going to help him right now.