Dead Line

by Chris Ewan

‘It’s OK,’ Alain said. He rested a hand on her shoulder. ‘They can speak with me instead.’

  ‘No. That won’t work.’ Trent locked onto Stephanie. ‘Listen, we have to give them what they expect. Then we turn it to our advantage. If Alain speaks to them, they’ll be on their guard. They may become more aggressive. But if you answer, they’ll believe they’re applying pressure in just the way they anticipated. It’s good if you sound distressed. It’s good if you demand to know that your husband is alive. And most importantly, you can tell them that you can’t raise the sort of sums they’re demanding. You can tell them that only Jérôme has access to his assets and bank accounts. Forgive me, but you’re much younger than Jérôme and it’s likely they’ll believe you. That’s a good thing. They’ll begin to understand that you can only pay a reasonable sum.’

  Stephanie was silent. She was turning over his explanation. Trent was pleased to see it. Even under duress, she was thinking things through. When the gang contacted them, there’d be times when she’d have to react to new information very rapidly. It was important that her responses were as considered as possible.

  ‘Why don’t you talk to them?’ she asked.

  ‘At this stage, it’s best if they don’t know that I’m involved. But don’t worry. I’ll prepare a script for you. Just a few simple points you should try to get across.’

  ‘You forget that they saw you,’ Alain said.

  ‘They saw a guy involved in a car crash on a dark road. That’s all.’

  ‘You shot at them.’

  Trent shook his head. ‘They were fleeing at speed. Even supposing they saw that it was me, they might think I was some kind of back-up security.’

  Alain’s face was knotted up. He wasn’t convinced. Neither was Trent. But he wasn’t about to dwell on something he couldn’t control.

  He braced his hands against the edge of the desk and rolled backwards in Jérôme’s chair, then grappled with the central drawer just above his knees. It was locked. There were more drawers on the right and some on the left. They were locked, too.

  ‘I need paper and a pen,’ he said. ‘Is there some in this desk? Do you have a key?’

  ‘Alain has a key,’ Stephanie replied.

  Trent turned to Alain but the bodyguard didn’t reach for the set of keys he’d used earlier. He simply gathered his jacket from the back of the chair, delved a hand into a front pocket and fetched a small notepad and pencil.

  He opened the pad to the first page and passed it to Trent. The page wasn’t blank. It was half-filled with a rushed, uneven scrawl. Trent read over the information – a physical description of a man, plus a vehicle number plate. He recognised the description as his own. It was brief but accurate. Alain had recorded his height to within a centimetre and his weight to within a few pounds. The summary of his hair colour and his clothes was faultless. The sequence of numbers and letters printed below the description matched the fake plates he’d attached to the Peugeot exactly.

  ‘I noted it down after we left the Opéra,’ Alain told him. ‘The number plate I added when you followed us into the tunnel.’

  Trent was impressed. He supposed that was the point.

  He turned to a fresh page, clutched the pencil tight and began to write.

  1. Proof of Life

  Is my husband alive? Is he safe? Can I speak to him? Can you prove it? (Think of a question only Jérôme could answer.)

  2. Money

  I don’t have any funds. I don’t have access to my husband’s bank accounts. I can’t raise the amount you’re asking for.

  3. Insurance Policy

  I don’t know what you’re talking about. My husband doesn’t tell me anything. Is he safe? Is he alive? Etc.

  ‘Here.’ Trent tore the page free and slid it across the surface of the desk towards Stephanie. ‘Don’t worry, there’s a strong likelihood they won’t give you much chance to speak. The call won’t last long. Thirty, maybe forty-five seconds. They’ll be concerned about the possibility of a trace. They’ll tell you not to contact the authorities and they’ll mention a ransom. They may specify a figure. They may not. If they do, you can’t possibly pay it. Understand?’

  The paper shook in her hand. She was nervous but he sensed a resolve in her, too. He’d witnessed the reaction many times. Give someone a responsibility. Make them believe they’re the right individual to fulfil an important role. Focus their attention on that one particular task. Then sit back and watch them adapt to it. Marvel at the way they’re able to concentrate on their mission to the exclusion of whatever emotions might be swirling through their mind.

  ‘But there is a problem,’ she said.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘This.’ She’d flattened the piece of paper on the desk, turning it so that it was facing Trent. Her fingernail was resting just beneath point two on his list: Money. ‘It’s true. I don’t have access to Jérôme’s accounts. He controls all our funds.’

  ‘All of it?’

  She flinched. ‘I have a small allowance.’

  ‘How small?’

  She glanced at Alain. ‘Maybe twenty thousand euros?’

  Alain nodded. Trent supposed that he oversaw her spending in some way.

  ‘How about you?’ Trent asked Philippe.

  ‘The same,’ he mumbled. ‘An allowance. No bigger.’

  Trent vented air through his lips. It was a hitch he hadn’t anticipated.

  ‘But we’re insured.’ Alain opened his hands. He showed his square palms to the three of them.

  ‘That’s right,’ Trent replied. ‘But normally the policy reimburses a client once a ransom payment has been made.’

  ‘And in a situation like this?’

  Trent sighed. ‘I should be able to authorise a cash advance. But it’s not ideal. It can take as long as a week. And the payment can’t exceed the two-point-five million limit.’

  There were other problems, too. Problems he wasn’t inclined to share. Aimée had always handled the paperwork for any claim. Trent could do it himself – he’d be able to figure out the procedures if he really had to – but both their signatures were necessary to process a payment. He guessed he could forge Aimée’s signature. He’d seen it often enough. But there remained the issue of the extra time the process would take.

  And Trent had no idea how much time he might have.

  He wanted everything resolved as soon as possible. He couldn’t afford for any more complications to arise.

  ‘What about you?’ Trent asked Alain.

  He smirked. ‘You think I’m a millionaire?’

  ‘Maybe not. But I think you’re smart. I think if you applied yourself you could come up with a fast way to get your hands on some cash. You’ve worked alongside Jérôme for some time. You must have a few ideas.’

  Trent watched Alain carefully. He didn’t say anything more. Didn’t elaborate. But he saw a flicker of light deep inside the bodyguard’s eyes. The slightest contraction of his pupils, as if he were reassessing the situation.

  Trent swivelled in his chair. Stephanie was reading back over his prompt sheet. She swallowed hard. Looked from the sheet to the telephone. Stared at it with a mixture of fear and fascination.

  ‘Look, it has a speaker,’ Trent said. He tapped a button towards the bottom of the keypad. ‘We’ll be able to listen to everything they say. We’ll be right here with you.’

  She nodded. Wet her lip with her tongue. Pushed the script alongside the telephone.

  ‘But don’t keep watching it,’ he told her. ‘You’ll drive yourself crazy. Silence is one of the most powerful weapons the gang have at their disposal. Making you anxious is a key move for them. Be aware of that and see it for what it is. A negotiating tactic. Nothing more.’

  She nodded again and summoned a brave smile. It made her appear more scared and more out of her depth than anything he’d seen so far.

  ‘So what happens now?’ Philippe asked, fighting a yawn.

  ‘The hardest part,’ Trent told him. ‘W
e wait.’

  Chapter Ten

  Two months ago

  Trent waited for his mobile to ring. His phone lay in the middle of a sagging bed in a cramped and miserable hotel room in Naples, Italy.

  The room was a corner unit located on the fourth floor of a decrepit building that had seemed, from the outside at least, to be tilting fatally to one side. The fake terrazzo floor was covered in a fine layer of grime and grit. The cast-iron radiator burned hot as a furnace and there seemed no way to adjust it or turn it off. The worm-holed furniture smelled of mothballs, and the en suite bathroom was a weakly lit den of discoloured porcelain, leaking taps and cockroach husks.

  But then, what else did he expect from a two-star place on the fringes of the Forcella quarter, home to shabby open-air markets selling contraband goods, foul-smelling passageways, the best backstreet pizzerias in the whole of Italy, and a major clan in the Camorra crime organisation?

  He stood by an open window, looking out over a tangled intersection of pedestrian alleyways. It was raining hard outside; had been raining for most of the afternoon into early evening. Water thundered down into the crooked fissures between the close-packed buildings, splattering the cracked stone window ledge in front of him, trickling off electricity cables and telephone lines and laundry racks, sluicing down blown-plaster walls layered in decades of overlaid posters and flyers and graffiti, pounding slickened tarmac, running in countless streams and rivulets and channels and tributaries, carrying dirt and filth and litter towards drains that gurgled like desperate men drowning.

  His phone didn’t ring.

  The vertical red neon sign beside his window blinked disconsolately through the letters H, O, T and E. The L at the bottom wasn’t working. An omen, he supposed. A warning to stay elsewhere.

  He’d had the opportunity to do just that. Somewhere to the north, beyond the knot of crooked rooftops and the rain and the smog of low grey clouds, was the conference centre on the edge of the autostrada where the convention was taking place. Corporate Security in the Modern World. A four-day affair. Most of the talks had been given by squint-eyed tech guys, focusing on IT infrastructures and anti-hacking software. Trent had already presented his paper on the risk of corporate kidnapping.

  He’d left Marseilles three days ago, seeing it as an opportunity to generate new business and a chance to touch base with his contacts in the Naples police force. Information was his greatest ally. The latest abduction trends, the going rate Italian gangs were charging for ransoms, the number of victims who were released safely or killed – he amassed all the data he possibly could, expanding his records so he could make the best judgements when he was faced with the toughest decisions.

  His phone still wouldn’t ring.

  Why hadn’t she called? And why wasn’t she answering her mobile? He’d tried calling her many times but a recorded message kept telling him the device was switched off. He’d sent her texts. Heard nothing back.

  It wasn’t like her. She always talked with him at least once a day whenever he was away. In truth, they tended to speak to one another much more often. Usually they’d chat in the evenings. Sometimes late at night or early in the morning, too. She’d last phoned him at 7 a.m. the day before yesterday. A normal phone call. A perfectly ordinary interaction.

  And nothing since.

  He eyed his mobile. Dared it not to ring. Challenged it to remain silent.

  It didn’t make a sound.

  Something plummeted deep inside him and coiled in his gut. The something was black and slick and greasy. It turned and twisted and writhed its way into his chest, wrapping itself around his heart and lungs, squeezing and contracting. Suffocating him from within.

  He slumped onto the edge of the mattress, dust rising in the stale air.

  His flight home was booked for early the following afternoon. He had two appointments scheduled for the morning. The first was with a guy he was thinking of training up locally, a native speaker to assist him during lengthy Italian negotiations. The second was with a potential new client from the conference. An anxious middle management type who’d approached him with a sweaty brow and a wet handshake after his talk.

  He could cancel both meetings. He could take a cab to the airport right now and book himself onto a late flight home. Or he could hire a car, drive through the night to Marseilles.

  And do what? Confirm his worst fears?

  Aimée had been taken. He felt sure of it now. Felt it, in fact, with the same conviction with which he knew that the rain would continue late into the evening, keeping him company along with his haunted thoughts as he paced the unwashed floor of his crappy hotel room and peered down over the twilit passageways, watching blurred figures scurry by, listening to the bleat of car horns and the whine of scooter engines.

  He’d already contacted someone he could trust. He’d telephoned the man after the first thirty-six hours had elapsed, dispatching him to check his apartment. He couldn’t call the police. Couldn’t risk their involvement.

  His contact had acted right away. He’d reported back within ninety minutes. There was no sign of Aimée at their home. No evidence of a disturbance. But her car wasn’t parked where Trent had said it would be. And she wasn’t in any of the local places he’d suggested.

  Trent had thanked the man, then had him check again this morning and once more in the afternoon. He had him telephone the local hospitals and a few select individuals in the city’s police stations. Same result.

  She was gone. And he was seven hundred miles away.

  If there was one consolation, it was that they’d talked about this many times; had spoken of it, more than once, as if it was simply inevitable, a circumstance they’d long been destined to face.

  At first, Trent had been little more than an irritant to some of the European kidnap gangs. And the astute operators, he suspected, had mostly been pleased with his approach. He was a professional they could work with. A guy who was willing to negotiate without any apparent interest in giving the authorities their scent. But as time wore on, as his business expanded and he became involved in more cases, then it was only logical that he might offend someone who held a different view. Or maybe the gangs might begin to feel he was threatening their livelihood. Reducing their payouts. Frustrating them, at the very least.

  And these were tough men. Hard men. Revenge was in their nature. It was something they’d been conditioned to pursue. They couldn’t show weakness. They couldn’t afford for others to identify it in them. He’d always known that somewhere, some time, there’d be someone who wouldn’t hesitate to strike back.

  But Aimée had known what to expect. That was something, for sure. He’d schooled her on how she was likely to be treated, where she might be taken and how she would be held. She was a determined character. She was steely. It was one of the traits that had first attracted him to her and he knew that it would take a lot for her to begin to panic. She wasn’t someone who’d easily break.

  And they had their secret codes, prepared responses she’d provide to the proof of life questions he could ask her captors. Her answers would tell him a great deal about what they were up against. How many men. Whether they were violent. If they were experts or amateurs. How they were treating her. If they were likely to accept a lower ransom sum.

  They had everything in place.

  He was ready for the call.

  But still his mobile didn’t ring.

  And what good was all their preparation, what use a skilled negotiator, without another voice on the end of the line?

  Chapter Eleven

  The phone was still and silent on the magnificent desk. It was a perfectly ordinary business phone. Unremarkable in every conceivable way. And yet it was preoccupying everyone inside the study. All eyes were fixed on it. Watching it. Waiting for it to do something that it stubbornly refused to do.

  The device was toxic. Trent knew that better than anyone. Better than he could ever have cared to know.

  ‘You should
get some rest,’ he said. ‘All of you.’

  It was closing in on three in the morning and Trent’s eyes burned with fatigue. Sure, he had a comfortable chair, but Jérôme’s study wasn’t a room to relax in. It had a sterile, unlived-in feel. There was no clutter. No personality. The uniform ranks of green leather-bound books gave no hint of Jérôme’s interests or passions. There were no framed photographs on his desk. No paintings on the wall. The room felt like a display in a furniture shop.

  ‘No.’ Stephanie shook her head. ‘They may call.’

  She looked every bit as weary as Trent. Maybe more so. Her face was ashen.

  ‘It could be days until they contact you,’ Trent told her. ‘We can take it in shifts. Some kind of rota. I’ll start.’

  She raised her chin on her long neck. Smoothed the fabric of her dress across her lap. ‘You said that I should answer the call. That it should be me.’

  He was silent. She was right. He had said it. And he’d meant it, too.

  But the locked drawers in Jérôme’s desk intrigued him. He wanted very much to see if he could access them. And he’d need some time alone to do that.

  ‘You pair, then.’ Trent parted his hands, gesturing to Alain and Philippe.

  Alain grunted dismissively, as if reacting to some variety of insult. He moved over to the side of the room and dropped to his backside on the floor. He leaned his head against a curtain and rested his forearms on raised knees. The curtain moulded itself around his shoulders, coming away from the edge of the glass and exposing a glint of blazing light.

  Philippe followed Alain’s cue and reclined lengthways on the leather chesterfield. He placed his hands behind his head.

  ‘Fine,’ Trent said. ‘If none of you intends to sleep, then we should make use of the time available to us. Tell me about Jérôme.’ He fixed on Stephanie. Raised an eyebrow. ‘What kind of a man is he? What type of character?’

  Philippe scoffed. ‘You ask her?’

  ‘I’m asking all of you. It’s a simple question. Anything you tell me could help. How will he bear up against the gang? How will he cope with their threats and intimidation tactics?’