by Rob Jones
Barbier leaned over and looked down at it and then Petit began to study it more carefully, bending it back and forth and holding it up to the light.
Both men looked at one another and spoke at the same time: “Fake.”
“It is no such thing!” Andrej protested without much conviction.
“What is your real identity?” Petit asked, much more seriously this time.
“Anton Zeman!”
“If you are lying to us you should know that giving false details to the police is a serious offence in France.”
Andrej refused to talk, and after a short exchange in French, Barbier yawned and rubbed his eyes. “We’re done here.”
Petit gave a shallow nod and turned to Harry. “You will stay here until we have the necessary transport to take you to more secure facilities awaiting your extradition back to Spain. As you are aware, there is an EU arrest warrant out for both of you regarding the murder of several people, including…” he glanced at the sheet. “A man named Pablo Reyes, a woman named Mariana Vidal, a police officer by the name of Sergeant Carlos Rodríguez Alonso, and also a Chief Inspector Cristina Fernandez.”
“We didn’t kill any of those people,” Harry said.
“I loved Pablo!” Lucia protested. “How could I kill him?”
Petit shrugged. “Crimes de cœur are not so unusual…” The French inspector turned to Andrej. “You will stay here in France while we try and work out what your part in all this is.”
“We’re not going back to Spain,” Harry said, fixing his eyes on Petit.
“Not now, no. Not until the morning. Now you go to the cells. Monsieur Zeman will stay and answer more questions.”
*
Rafael Ruiz was in his office when the telephone rang. Last night had been a disaster, resulting in the murder of two colleagues and the disappearance of the Englishman and Serrano. He swallowed two Norvectans with a gulp of mineral water and lifted the phone to his ear.
“Si?”
“Señor Ruiz?”
“Si.”
“This is Capitaine Arnaud Petit of the Gendarmerie, in Paris.”
Ruiz managed half a smile as he spoke his next words. “Is this about the warrant for the fugitives?”
“It is. We have them both in custody, plus a third man we believe may be a conspirator.”
“His name?”
“He calls himself Anton Zeman, but we believe it’s fake.”
Ruiz breathed a sigh of relief and thanked the gods for the EU Arrest Warrant. The EAW was barely ten years old but it had massively expedited the complicated process of international arrests and prosecutions across the borders of various European countries. There had been a structure in place before, created back in 1957 when the European Convention on Extradition had allowed governments greater ease when moving wanted criminals from one state to another, but the EAW had made the process much simpler. Now it had worked just as it was designed to do and delivered the fugitives back to him after his abysmal failure in Madrid last night. His superiors would be delighted.
But he had to be sure. “Both Henry Bane and Lucia Serrano?”
Petit sighed. “Yes, they are both under arrest here in Paris.”
“Where are they now?” Ruiz asked. “We must arrange transportation of them back to Spain at once.”
“Naturally,” Petit said. “They are at my station for now but they will be moved to various prisons across the city soon. As soon as the formal process of extradition has been completed, we will arrange transportation. This is now over to our superiors.”
“Of course” Ruiz said.
When the call ended the Spanish CNI officer slumped in his seat for a few moments and thanked heaven for small mercies, and then he picked up the phone. His superiors would need to know about this at once.
*
In keeping with the rest of the station, the cell bock was small and mostly empty. Harry counted half a dozen cells on either side of a small room, and only two of them occupied – the two nearest the door. The cells were three walls of bricks and plaster with the front wall made only of bars. It was a low-grade, small-time jail in a Parisian police station and Petit wasn’t bluffing when he’d told them they would be farmed out to bigger prisons while the extradition process was underway.
As Barbier walked them into the cell block, Harry saw the cell on the right was occupied by a man in a torn raincoat. He was sleeping with a battered fedora over his face and there were holes in his shoes.
Barbier put Lucia in the cell beside the man, and Harry in the cell opposite her. Beside it in the next cell he caught a glimpse of a young woman sitting on the bed. She was slim, with high cheekbones, straight, dark-brown hair and sharp, green eyes. As he looked at her she looked right back with a visible degree of suspicion.
“Welcome,” she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “My house is your house.”
“Thanks,” Harry said. “And what a lovely home it is.”
The burly sergeant locked him in the cell and casually sauntered back to the door which he slammed shut behind him.
“Name’s Zoey Conway,” the woman said.
“You sound American,” said Harry.
She nodded once. “Vegas.”
“From Vegas, eh?” he said.
“No one’s ever from Vegas, Jimbo – they only ever go to Vegas. I’m a New Yorker originally.”
His eyes darted down to the trident tattoo on her shoulder, and she caught the glance. “Sagittarius. The stars know everything about our destiny, don’t you think?”
“Can’t say I’ve ever thought about it… What are you in here for?” he asked. “And it’s Harry, not Jimbo.”
In the cell opposite, Lucia stood close to the bars as she listened to the conversation between her former lover and the American.
“They say I was trying to break into an apartment on the Avenue Bosquet.”
“Don’t tell me – you’re innocent?”
She shook head. “Hell no, I’m as guilty as the devil himself. I was trying to get to a safe owned by some rich guy with a lot of gold and jewels. I’m what the nineteen-fifties used to lovingly call a cat burglar.”
“But not a very good one or you wouldn’t be in here.”
“As it happens, I’m the best,” she said with a theatrical bow. “Always lucky is my mantra.”
“And are you?”
“Sure, but no one’s perfect. Perfection is impossible.”
“You think so?”
She nodded, stared at the bars and sighed. “The way I see it is, if you want one hundred percent of anything you’re just going to spend your whole damn life disappointed. Better to go for eighty, if you ask me, Chief.”
“Eighty?”
“Uh-huh. The other twenty percent is for someone else, you know? That twenty percent is part of someone else’s eighty.”
“But you’re still in here.”
Another sigh. “Apparently my lookout isn’t as sharp as I thought he was. Boy, am I gonna kick his ass when I get out of here.” She took a step back and gave Harry and Lucia another look. “So what about you two – why are you here?”
“Quadruple Murder,” Harry said bluntly.
Zoey took a further step back from the bars and receded into the shadows of her cell. “Woah, leave me out of that shit.”
“We didn’t kill anyone!” Lucia said from further down the cell block.
“It’s true,” Harry said, unsure why he was justifying himself to a total stranger. “We’re being framed and we’re trying to find out what’s going on.”
The door opened and two policemen walked in either side of a subdued-looking and handcuffed Andrej Liška. They placed him in the cell beside Lucia and left the room.
“Andrej – what happened?”
“Petit doesn’t believe me. He says I am a suspect because I knew Pablo and I was liaising with his killers.”
“We’re not his killers!” Lucia said.
“I know that!” snapped the
Czech. “But they don’t, and they’re serious about deporting us all to Madrid. They say we are involved in some kind of international conspiracy. It’s total fiction!”
“We’re being framed, Andrej,” Harry said with a sigh. “Of course it’s fiction.”
“This is like a nightmare,” Andrej said.
“The thing about nightmares,” Harry said as he pulled something from the lining of his silk tie, “is that sooner or later you’re going to wake up.” He began fiddling with the tiny object, and after biting it gently with his teeth he put it back into his tie.
“What’s that?” Lucia said with a nod from the opposite cell.
“Just thinking ahead of time,” he said. “Always thinking ahead of time. It’s an army thing.”
A few long hours passed as they waited for the machinery of government to decide their fate, and then finally Petit strolled in, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other. “So – I have some great news. Earlier I spoke with the authorities in Madrid and told them of your arrest. They are very happy with my work. The trucks are coming to take you to prison where you will stay until the details of your extradition to Spain are organized. You’re going to three different locations, so say your goodbyes.”
“How very kind of you.”
Petit offered a sarcastic smile. “Tell me – why did you kill those people in Madrid, and what does it have to do with Paris?”
“We never killed anyone!” Lucia said from behind Petit.
Without turning to face her, the Frenchman addressed Harry one more time. “If you tell me, perhaps I can make this process easier for you.”
“Lucia’s right,” Harry said. “We’re innocent.”
“Oui, je vois…”
Barbier leaned his head inside the door at the far end. “Le transport est ici.”
“Eh, bien,” Petit said. “Then it is time for your transfer to the prisons.”
“Good luck!” Zoey said.
“Save the luck for yourself,” Petit said. “You’re going too.”
TWENTY-TWO
As they walked towards the trucks, Petit went ahead of them, lit his cigarette with a sigh of relief, and began to talk with the driver. They were standing in what looked like a loading bay, but was in fact a covered area used specifically to move prisoners into vans in order to transfer them to other facilities.
Harry scanned the area for any escape routes, but it had been designed with one thing in mind, and that was keeping prisoners in custody until they were someone else’s responsibility. Up ahead, Petit’s conversation with the driver was getting a little heated.
Zoey moved in closer to him and lowered her voice. “Do you speak French?”
“A little,” he said. “I think they’re having a disagreement.”
“Well, duh,” Zoey said. “An Alapaha Blue Blood Bulldog could work that out just by sniffing the air.”
Harry gave her a weary glance, but before he could reply, Lucia said, “It’s about the paperwork. The driver hasn’t got the correct documents for our transfer.”
“Thanks,” Zoey said, flashing at glance at Harry.
Now Barbier stepped out of the station and trotted down the concrete steps with his hands in his pockets. He was whistling a tune, but the music stopped when he approached the van and joined the conversation with Petit and the driver. At the same time, the rear doors of the van swung open and two men in navy blue boilers suits hopped out and walked around to the front. Harry noticed they were both wearing gun holsters on their belts.
“This is getting interesting,” he said. “Was that something about uniforms?”
Lucia gave a nervous, shallow nod. “Yes, the French police are saying they’re not in the correct uniform for prison officers and he’s going to report them to their superior.”
“I don’t like this at all,” Andrej said.
“All right,” Harry said flatly as he glanced over each of his shoulders. “Get ready.”
“Get ready for what, exactly?” Zoey said, and took a step back from the van.
The answer was rapid and violent, as all of the men in boiler suits drew their pistols and gunned down Petit and Barbier. The two Frenchmen tumbled to the floor, their shirts turning red with blood as the men in the van turned their guns on a young officer standing to the side of the prisoners and shot him down like a dog.
Zoey gasped. “Jesus Christ on ice skates!”
“Down!” Harry yelled, shoulder-barging Lucia to the floor and tumbling down on top of her. With Zoey and Andrej right behind them, they rolled behind a low, chipped wall supporting the concrete steps they had used to enter the van area. As they tucked themselves into the cover of the wall, several armed police officers burst into the transfer area and fired on the men in the boiler suits. The men took cover behind the van and returned fire.
“They’ve got ‘em now!” Zoey said. “Woo-hoo!”
“I don’t think so,” Andrej said, wiping sweat from his forehead.
“That’s a Mercedes Sprinter specially designed for prisoner transport,” Harry said. “It’s bulletproof, so they’re safe for the time being.”
“So what now, Chief?” Zoey asked, gasping for breath and struggling with her cuffs.
“We get out of here.”
“With these on?” Lucia said, holding her cuffed hands up to his face.
“Always think ahead of time,” he said with a grin and a wink. He raised his cuffed hands and reached into the base of his tie, pulling the tiny object he had manipulated earlier from the lining. Lucia glanced over and saw it was a paperclip he had bent into a specific shape, and now she knew why.
Always thinking ahead.
Harry took the paperclip in between his third and fourth fingers and gently pushed the head of the clip into the keyhole of the double-locking handcuffs. They were hinged, which made it harder because this allowed less flexibility than a regular chain-cuff, and they were double-locked to stop them getting too tight and causing the prisoners nerve-damage. This meant he had to turn the clip clockwise first until he heard a shallow click. Then he turned the clip anticlockwise for the main event as he pushed the ratchets down and a heartbeat later the first cuff popped open. With this done, he opened the second cuff which was always easier as his other hand was now free and that was it – out of both cuffs in less than ten seconds.
“Stay here,” he said, and got up to his feet to scan the firefight unfolding in front of them.
Lucia looked up at him, her eyes widening with fear. “Where are you going?”
“We need a weapon.”
Before she could respond, he scrambled out of the cover of the steps and darted across the asphalt toward the dead officer who had been standing beside them. At first the men were too occupied with each other to notice him as he ripped the keys from the dead man’s belt, but as he wrenched the SIG Sauer SP 2022 from the holster one of the police officers saw him. After screaming a warning to raise his hands he opened fire on him.
The bullets went low, smashing into the asphalt and spitting up shards of bituminous pitch and gravel dust as he sprinted back to the cover of the steps. As he slid into safety he checked the magazine and seeing it was full he smacked it back into the grip and took aim of the men taking cover behind the Sprinter.
He also fired low, beneath the vehicle, and his first shot struck one of the men in the ankle. The man howled and crashed to the floor, curling into a ball as he reached down to grip the smashed bone, which was probably the tibia by Harry’s estimation.
“Woah,” Zoey said. “I guess you’re not a librarian.”
“He’s not a librarian,” Lucia said.
“I worked for the government,” he said. “And before that I was in the army.”
“As what?”
“In the Catering Corp.”
“No shit?”
Harry’s response was to toss Lucia the keys he’d taken from the officer’s belt. “Free yourself,” he said. “And then unlock A
ndrej.”
“What about me?!” Zoey said.
Before he could reply, one of the police officers crashed down on top of him and wrestled him to the ground. Screams of French commands burst from a huddle of men just inside the double doors a few yards above them as the chaos spilled out everywhere.
Lucia screamed, and Andrej covered his mouth in horror as the Englishman rolled out into the transfer area with the French policeman, each pummelling the other with all they had to gain some advantage.
Harry dodged the first blow, and the officer’s fist smashed into the asphalt an inch from his right ear, but he didn’t flinch. Pumped with adrenalin and devoted to his duty he simple pulled his bloodied fist back ready for a second shot.
Harry saw it coming, and brought the pistol up, striking him in the jaw with the grip and knocking him backwards. Harry had zero inclination to kill this man. He was no killer, and he wasn’t about to add a genuine murder charge to the long list of false accusations now following him like a dusk shadow.
The man crashed onto the steps, smashing his spine into one of the concrete risers and causing him to grunt in agony as the pain shot through his body. Harry knew this man thought he was a cop killer, responsible for the murder of the police officers in Madrid, and that meant he wanted him dead but would settle for life imprisonment. Either way he was going to fight tooth and claw to bring him and the others to what he saw was justice, and Harry was not surprised when the wounded man staggered to his feet and pulled his gun on him.
Harry reacted in a heartbeat, leaping forward before the man had a chance to bring the weapon into the aim. He rammed into him with his shoulder, smashing him into the wall and then brought his fist up into the man’s face, knocking him out. He collapsed onto the yard’s asphalt with a smack, out cold.
Harry dusted his hands off and turned to Lucia. “That’s sorted th…”
Another officer launched himself at the Englishman. “Fils de pute!”
Harry ran into the fight as the man pulled a baton and swung it at him. He sidestepped and dodged his head back to miss the blow, grabbing hold of the man’s other wrist and twisting it around hard. The young man was made of sterner stuff than he thought and his resistance was impressive, but the wrist snapped all the same and then his opponent howled in pain.
