by Estelle Ryan
“I don’t just know who these men are, I also know where all of them live.” Colin didn’t look at Manny. “So I broke into their homes once they were asleep and I took the things they illegally bought. Mayer, Riner and Picon were average break-ins. I’d been there before, so I knew where to look and found the artefacts very quickly.”
Francine narrowed her eyes. “What was the other guy’s name? Damian?”
“Yes. Damian Leveaux.” Colin’s triumphant smile returned. “He had the jackpot.”
“You found something more than only the Oxus artefacts.” I could see it clearly on his face.
“The bastard had three different statues and seventeen coins. Seventeen.” His lips thinned. “Good thing I’d been in Leveaux’s house before. He might have a state-of-the-art safe, but the idiot was never smart. He didn’t change the code since the last time I reappropriated art from him.”
“And, of course, he will never report it.” Pink put a large plate of sandwiches on the table and sat down. He waved at the plate. “Help yourselves.”
We didn’t.
“And?” Francine gestured impatiently.
“I found his black book.” This time Colin’s smile had a hint of malice in it.
“Did you take it?” Francine asked.
“No. That would give him grounds to report or find me. That really is his property.” He smiled at Francine and took his phone from his trouser pocket. “But I took photos. Many, many photos.” He looked at Manny. “There’s enough evidence for you to close your case on him.”
“Frey.” Manny glared at Colin’s phone. “How do you know we’re investigating him?”
“Who is this ‘we’?” I knew Manny frequently visited the Interpol offices, but I didn’t know he worked cases separately from the ones we did.
“Millard here runs an elite task force over at Interpol as well.” Colin raised both eyebrows, his posture challenging.
“Handsome?” Francine took a step away from Manny. “Is that true?”
The tension around Manny’s mouth and eyes increased, his face turning red. “It’s not related to anything we do here.”
“Like hell it isn’t.” Colin stared at Manny. “Are you going to tell them or must I?”
“Frey.” Manny pressed his fists against his eyes. When he lowered his hands, he looked exhausted. “Later. Let’s deal with that crap later. Tell me what else you found.”
Colin looked at Manny through narrowed eyes for a few seconds before nodding once. “Okay. I found entries in his black book about his dealings with Élodie.”
“Adèle’s criminal pseudonym.” Francine was still looking at Manny, a frown pulling her eyebrows together. She turned to Colin. “What did you see?”
Colin swiped the screen of his phone and turned it so I could see. The handwriting was too small on the screen to read. I looked at Colin and he smiled. “He detailed the whole deal he did with Élodie. Adèle. The payment, the shipment, everything.”
“Let me guess.” Francine tapped her chin in fake contemplation. “He paid her using some hawala broker.”
Colin nodded. “He glued the hawala slip in the book as well.”
“The courier?” I asked.
Colin’s smile was wide. “Easy Post.”
“Them again,” Manny said.
“Oh, yeah. Again. And again.” Colin put his phone back in his trouser pocket. “When I saw the name, I remembered that Johan told me Adèle had insisted he used Easy Post to send the Roubaud he’d painted for her.”
Manny turned to Francine. “I want everything on Easy Post.”
“And I want a unicorn.” She lowered her chin and stared at him. “And I want to know about this super-secret task force.”
“You might get that unicorn first, Franny.” Vinnie walked to the table, more relaxed than before. He was wearing sweatpants and a sleeveless t-shirt. His pyjamas. “But I would also like to know about this task force.”
“Later.” Manny rubbed one eye, which drew my attention to the dark rings surrounding his eyes.
“Let’s do this tomorrow.” I surprised myself by suggesting a break.
“It is tomorrow, love.” Colin smiled. “But I agree. We can all do with a few hours’ rest.” He looked at Manny. “To get our heads a bit more level.”
“Bugger off.” Manny turned towards the door. “Eight o’clock tomorrow morning in the team room. I want everything on Easy Post.”
Francine followed him to the door and waved at us before she also put on her outerwear and left with Manny. Vinnie sat down at the table and took one of Pink’s sandwiches. “That old man better deal with his shit.”
“Be patient, Vin.” Something in Colin’s tone caught my attention.
I turned to him, but stopped when he shook his head at me. “Let’s go to sleep, love. We’ll deal with everything tomorrow.”
It was clear that he wasn’t going to tell me what he knew, but I could see that he’d discovered something about Manny that worried him.
I didn’t know if I was going to get any sleep tonight. My mind was obsessed with those photos of the labels. And my concern for Manny had deepened even more.
Chapter FOURTEEN
“SPEAK.” MANNY KNOCKED on the round table in the team room. We’d sat down a few minutes ago and Francine was telling yet another joke, Daniel and Vinnie already laughing as she came close to the punchline. Manny knocked on the table again. “Bloody hell! Tell me about Easy Post.”
“Pharmacy!” Francine burst out laughing as Vinnie and Daniel joined her.
Colin was also smiling. I didn’t understand the joke. And I didn’t care.
Manny’s lips thinned and colour moved from his collar into his face. He inhaled deeply, but stopped when Francine turned to him, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes evidence of her genuine smile. “I found quite a lot of intel for you, handsome.”
“Don’t make me ask again.” Manny took the mug of milky tea he had made for himself this morning.
Francine picked her tablet up from the table. “Easy Post was established nine years ago. There are only two branches—one in Paris and one here in Strasbourg. First impressions are that it is a small business and the info on their website confirms it. Their website also claims that they act as couriers for a high-end clientele and ensure full confidentiality and complete safety of each and every parcel entrusted to them. But guess what?”
Manny just glared at her.
“Spoilsport. I found out who established Easy Post and has been the sole owner ever since.” She pointed dramatically at me. When I didn’t respond, she shook her hand even more.
I sighed. “Gilles Mahout founded Easy Post.”
“Gilles Mahout?” Manny sat up. “The manager from Adèle’s self-storage place?”
“The one and only. I have no idea why he managed Self-Storage Solutions when he owned Easy Post.” Francine leaned back in her chair as if she’d completed her briefing.
There was more. “Francine and I looked at his phone records. He made a lot of calls to a number that wasn’t registered to any account.”
“Of course we couldn’t get a name from a burner phone.” Francine smiled. “But then I worked my cell phone tower kung fu. Almost all those calls bounced off a tower three hundred and seventy metres from Adèle’s house.”
“How many phone calls?” Manny asked.
“Two or three a week.”
“They were in this together. Hellfire.” Manny turned to Daniel who joined our meeting this morning at Vinnie’s request. “Have you found that little weasel yet?”
“No.” Daniel reached into his top pocket and took out his phone. “I’ll send Pink word that finding Gilles is now a priority.”
“Top priority.” Manny turned back to Francine. “Has he been using Easy Post for smuggling all along?”
“I can’t say for sure.” She winked at me. I had helped her for an hour and a half this morning finding information on Easy Post. I had also refused to allow her t
o speculate on anything we couldn’t confirm. She pointed at her tablet. “Everything Genevieve and I found seemed to be on the up and up. All their business dealings. I had a look at their finances and that also looked clean.” She paused. “Just like Adèle’s.”
“What are you saying?” Manny frowned.
Francine touched her sculpted eyebrow and once again I noticed the fatigue pulling at the muscles around her eyes. She might have mastered the art of using make-up to its fullest advantage, but she couldn’t hide the micro-expressions revealing that she hadn’t slept much last night. If she’d slept at all. She flicked her hair over her shoulder and smiled. “Yup, just like Adèle. According to Easy Post’s finances and their tax records, they are the most profitable courier since the first caveman ran to the neighbouring tribe with a gift for a girl.”
I frowned at the irrelevance of her analogy. “If we work on the assumption that Gilles used Easy Post to smuggle drugs and art, he was smart to keep his business dealings subtle.”
“Oh, the man was low-key, all right.” Francine winked at me. “He only had the two outlets—the one in Paris and the one here in Strasbourg—and never lived it up. He didn’t buy sporty cars or crazy houses. I still have to get into his finances and I’m really curious about it. I would love to know what he did with all his money.”
“Most likely put it somewhere abroad where it’s not traceable and is waiting for the perfect moment to retire.” Vinnie grunted. “Huh. Now is the perfect time for him to go to some island and access his offshore accounts.”
“We’ve had all airports on full alert the moment we discovered he went missing,” Daniel said.
“Oh, my dear law-abiding Danny.” Francine fluttered her eyes at him. “All he has to do is drive across one of France’s many borders, get to a small airport and start his onward journey from there. Or get to a port and take a nice cruise to a Caribbean island with friendly bankers.”
She was right. I had considered these possibilities the moment we’d discovered Gilles had been deeply entrenched in Adèle’s drug-dealing business. His business accounts had revealed thousands of parcels, packages and letters being shipped between Paris and Strasbourg, but seldom outside of Europe. A lot of shipments were received from abroad at both outlets, but we couldn’t find much detail on the content of the shipments. I had posited that since Gilles had been in the shipping business—presumably the illegal shipping business as well—for over a decade, he would have expert knowledge on how to enter and exit a country unnoticed.
“I want Gilles.” Manny was looking at Daniel, his eyebrows drawn low.
Daniel nodded, but paused when my phone started ringing. I stared at it where it was lying on the table in front of me. I very seldom received phone calls. Only the people in this room called me and occasionally the president’s wife. I lifted the phone. It wasn’t Isabelle.
I swiped the screen. “Caelan, why are you phoning me?”
“Mongolia is the least densely populated country on Earth! Over eight hundred and twenty languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea!” His voice had reached a keening tone and I moved the phone away from my ear. I thought about it and then put him on speakerphone.
I was about to respond by telling him to calm down, but then thought about Caelan’s coping mechanisms. “Which country produces more of the world’s oxygen than any other?”
“Russia.” He inhaled and exhaled loudly. “Siberia is home to approximately twenty-five percent of the world’s forests.”
“What is the densest substance on Earth?”
“Osmium.” He sounded more in control, his voice not quivering as much. We listened to him breathe three times.
“Caelan, bud.” Colin leaned closer to my phone. “Where are you?”
“Chanceux Café. The cops following me are drinking coffee by the window. They think I’m crazy. I’m sitting at my own table. Alone. The others are sitting at the back table. The Atlantic Ocean is the saltiest of them all.”
Colin glanced at me. “Do you want us to come to you?”
“Yes. Every part of the yew tree is poisonous, except its berries.”
“Bloody hell.” Manny leaned away from my phone and shook his head.
Vinnie gave Manny an extremely hostile glance before moving closer to my phone. “Okay, superman. We’ll be there in seven minutes.”
“Lightning strikes the earth over eight point six million times per day.” Caelan gave another three facts before Colin swiped the screen on my phone to end the call.
“What on earth set him off?” Francine’s concern made her look even more tired.
I didn’t answer. Depending on the day, it could be the smallest change in a routine or even just a thought that could trigger a shutdown. I knew. I fought this daily.
Four minutes later, I was in the passenger seat of Vinnie’s SUV, Vinnie in the backseat. Colin had organised for his SUV to be repaired and Vinnie had happily given Colin his keys. We had barely left the parking space when Vinnie leaned in between the two front seats. I moved closer to the door.
“I’m gonna kill the old man.” Even though his expression confirmed his anger, I knew his words were not to be taken literally. He was frustrated with Manny’s behaviour.
“He’s hurting, Vin.” Colin glanced at me, then winced. He knew I’d seen his micro-expressions. He knew the reason for Manny’s emotional pain. “Like I said last night, it’s not my place to say anything, love.”
Colin sped down the street towards the café I’d been to only twice. Both times with Francine.
“What are you talking about, dude?” Vinnie looked at Colin’s reflection in the rear-view mirror, inhaled sharply then leaned even closer to look directly at Colin. “You know what’s going on!”
“Vin, give Millard space. He’ll talk when he’s ready.”
“Bastard doesn’t deserve our compassion.” Vinnie threw himself back on his seat. “He’s being a complete asswipe.”
“We’re here.” Colin parked in front of the café in the street. The cars legally parked wouldn’t be able to leave, but I assumed Colin didn’t care about that at the moment. He put on the hazard lights and turned to me. “Ready?”
I nodded and got out, pulling my coat tightly around me. It was colder than yesterday. I hoped this cold spell would end soon. Just as I met Colin on the pavement, Vinnie’s phone rang. He looked at the screen. “Gotta take this. One of my contacts getting back to me.”
“Meet us inside.” Colin took my hand.
We walked to the café and Colin held the door open for me to enter. The smell of coffee immediately surrounded us as well as the typical buzz found in cafés. People were chatting, cutlery clanging against sturdy plates and mugs, the coffee machine’s hissing completing the aural stimulation. At times I enjoyed it, but the second time Francine and I had been here, I’d left after only thirteen minutes. The noise had been too much for me that day.
I took off my coat and looked for Caelan. Colin was also looking, but as always he looked for more than the obvious. At first I had found it disconcerting that he and Vinnie both would scan a venue before deeming it safe to enter. The way Vinnie looked at everything and everyone was an observable search for possible threats to our safety. But Colin’s narrowed gaze was different. I’d once asked him if he was looking for valuables to steal. He’d laughed, but had never answered me.
“There he is.” Caelan was sitting at a small round table, partially hidden behind a large pillar, another pillar on his other side. The pillars as well as all the walls looked like they were in ruins, plaster only covering parts of them and the exposed brickwork damaged. Francine had called it boho-loft-industrial chic. I didn’t know what that meant.
All I cared about was the way Caelan was rocking slightly, clutching his stress balls. We weaved through a few tables, nobody stopping their conversations or work on computers to look at us. Only one more table separated us from Caelan when Colin’s hand tightened around mine. It was so slight that I might no
t have felt it had I worn my gloves.
I glanced at him and immediately all my muscles tensed. He shook his head. “Pretend that everything is okay, love.”
“What isn’t okay?” I gripped his hand tighter and started looking around the café. The two officers who’d been assigned to keep Caelan safe were sitting at a small table closer to the door. I hadn’t seen them when we’d entered. They had empty plates and oversized mugs in front of them, their body language completely relaxed. I wondered if they’d even noticed Caelan’s distress.
“Hey, bud.” Colin pulled me to Caelan’s table and pulled an unused chair closer for me to sit down. He removed Caelan’s coat from the other chair and sat down as well. “We need your help now more than ever.”
He took his phone from his trouser pocket and started texting. We were sitting so close, it was easy to see he was addressing Vinnie. I didn’t care to read the message. I looked at Caelan. “What is triggering you?”
“The men in black. The Earth’s inner core is about the same temperature as the sun.” He put both stress balls on the table and started tapping his thighs. “They’re bad men.”
I studied him. I’d seen Caelan in many phases of his shutdowns. This was just another one. He was not suffering a psychotic break. That meant we had to take what he’d said literally. I turned to look for men dressed in black, but Colin stopped me. “Don’t look around. Just pretend like everything is okay.”
“This is the second time you’ve said this. What do you mean?”
“There are three men sitting close to the door I think leads to the kitchen.”
“The toilets.” Caelan opened and closed his hands, then reached for his stress balls and squeezed them slowly. “That door goes to the toilets.”
“You saw them, right?” Colin leaned towards Caelan. “This is why you’re worried.”
Caelan nodded. Then couldn’t stop. I looked at Colin, finding it impossibly hard not to turn around and search for these men. “Why did you notice them?”
