by Chris Ewan
K & R was an industry they’d found themselves operating in via separate routes and one that had brought them together when Trent had first been assigned to Paris. Aimée was the local insurance specialist, Trent the trained negotiator. They’d been colleagues for almost a year without acknowledging the attraction between them. It was a small office with a close-knit team. The work was highly stressful. Added complications, no matter how tempting, were to be avoided at all costs.
Then Athens happened. The wife of the CEO of a metal trading conglomerate was abducted. The scenario became a long-drawn-out affair. The client was a flake who kept flip-flopping on Trent’s advice. Eventually, Trent’s boss took the unprecedented step of flying Aimée over to assist. It became her job to encourage the CEO to view Trent’s advice with twenty–twenty vision, rather than through the prism of his own fear and paranoia. Aimée’s involvement didn’t sit comfortably with Trent. He’d never required anyone’s help before. But he had to admit that her input turned things around. The client began to listen to him. After a seven-week marathon of high-wire negotiation, Trent and Aimée secured the wife’s release. They returned to Paris as lovers.
From the first moment, Trent prepared himself for the worst. He was a guy who’d built his career by doing precisely that. But to his surprise and consternation, their relationship deepened. The foundations were strong. They had a shared bond. A mutual understanding of the darkness that lurked behind everyday life. An awareness of how easily the facade of safety and security could be punctured by a group of people with the means and the motivation to cause devastating harm.
People not unlike the man who Girard claimed had wrenched his fiancée from him.
Girard said, ‘Aimée listed the locations for her first two meetings with Moreau in her diary. But for the third, she had only a time and Moreau’s name.’
‘Then perhaps the name and the time was enough for her. Or perhaps the location hadn’t been fixed.’
‘Perhaps.’ Girard brushed the rice free from his beard. He smoothed his hair back from his eyes with the hand holding the fork. ‘The meeting was at four o’clock on the day before you called me from Naples.’
‘We’ve been through this already. She had other appointments that day.’
Girard nodded. ‘And it took time for me to clear them. I couldn’t just call these people up, you understand.’
‘But you did clear them?’
‘All except Jérôme Moreau. Tell me, how much do you know about him?’
The Trent in the room lay inert on the couch. He was sinking down into the cushions. His nerves seemed to be growing more numb with every passing second, like he’d been injected with a dose of anaesthetic and now his entire body was shutting down, fibre by fibre, cell by cell.
‘Aimée researches all our clients,’ he said. ‘But some of it we knew already.’ Trent summoned all his concentration and managed to roll out his bottom lip. He guessed it’d look good up there on the silver screen. ‘He’s very wealthy. Operates a yachting concern.’
Girard swallowed more paella, nodding for Trent to go on.
‘At least,’ Trent said, ‘the yacht trading is the public side of his business.’
‘So then you do know.’ Girard lifted an oily shrimp from the rice. He sucked the juices from it. Slipped it into his mouth and licked his fingers clean.
Trent would have shrugged if he could, but his body felt heavy as lead. ‘A lot of our wealthier clients want the protection we can offer them because they have income streams that aren’t entirely legitimate. They mix with different levels of society.’
‘Criminal levels.’ Girard dropped the tub of paella onto the counter and nudged it aside. He mopped his lips with one of the napkins. Picked up his cigarette and plugged it back into his mouth. ‘Moreau is a smuggler. Mostly it’s drugs from North Africa. Sometimes firearms.’ He drew hard on the cigarette. ‘Sometimes it’s women. Or children.’
‘We don’t judge our clients. We can’t afford to.’
Girard smoked some more. He tapped ash into the paella. His gaze didn’t shift from Trent’s face.
‘So you’re an idealist now,’ Trent said.
‘His operation is sophisticated,’ Girard replied, as if there’d been no interruption to his explanation. ‘And his approach is sophisticated, too. He never touches the merchandise. He simply puts his yachts at the disposal of others. This is all.’
‘So he’s a facilitator.’
Girard nodded.
‘For bad men,’ Trent said.
‘Very bad men. Plus, he knows who to pay and he pays very generously.’
‘The police?’ Trent asked.
Girard inhaled from his cigarette, raising his eyebrows in a lazy fashion, as if it went without saying.
‘Who else?’
‘Customs officials.’ His voice was husky with smoke. ‘Port employees. Local government workers. Some judiciary.’
‘Quite a list.’
‘He makes public donations, too. He’s a patron of the Ballet National de Marseille. His wife is a former dancer. Retired early.’
Trent felt his jaw begin to lock. The deadening had reached his neck. His throat. He could barely swallow. ‘Get to the point, Girard.’
Girard scratched his eyebrow, cigarette burning close to his looping fringe. ‘I have a friend. An old colleague. His niece dances with the Ballet National. He arranged it so I could speak with her.’
Trent’s body seemed to pivot and tilt without his say-so. Magazines and newspapers crackled beneath him.
‘I met with her at the Gare St Charles. She was nervous. She made me promise that Moreau would never know that she’d talked with me.’
‘Go on.’
‘She told me that Moreau pays some of the girls to perform for him. In private, at a villa he keeps in Cassis. He has a thing for ballet dancers.’ He gestured with his cigarette, rolling his hand at the wrist, tracing circles with the lit end. ‘This girl, the niece of my friend, she tells me she will never go.’
‘Because he expects the girls to do more than just dance?’
‘For sure. Of course.’
‘So he’s a rich guy who likes to cheat on his wife with young women. That’s not so unusual.’
‘Perhaps.’ Girard bunched his fists on the kitchen counter, smoke rising up from the cigarette wedged between his knuckles. ‘There are just a few girls who dance for him often. They joke about it sometimes. About him. They told my friend’s niece that she should do it. That she could make good money. They told her flatmate, too. A girl from Grenoble. She was new to Marseilles. New to the dance company.’
‘She went along with it?’
Girard leaned forward over the counter, dead-eyed. ‘She danced for him. He complimented her. Told her how well she moved and how fine her body was. He asked to see it. Asked her to dance naked.’
‘She refused?’
Girard barely shook his head, like he didn’t want to break the spell he’d fallen into. ‘She’s a dancer. Her body is her life. What does she have to be ashamed of? So she agreed. But naturally, he wanted her to do more than just dance.’
‘He slept with her.’
‘He tried. She said no.’ Girard blinked. ‘So he hurt her,’ he said, with a sigh of regret. ‘Very badly. To begin with, she would not talk about it when she returned home. But she was crying, upset. And she was bruised. Her torso. Her waist. She could not dance. For a month, at least. Then, when she healed, she went back to Grenoble. She refused to speak with anyone at the ballet.’
‘Because he’s a patron. He threatened her in some way.’
‘Of course. But she talked just a little to my friend’s niece. She warned her never to go. She said he had a terrible temper. Told her that he was dangerous.’ He paused. His voice dropped an octave. ‘She believed he might have killed her.’
Trent’s mouth was dry. His tongue flaccid and limp. He wondered if this was how it felt to suffer a stroke. This drip-drip paralysis. ‘But wha
t does this have to do with Aimée?’ he whispered, hoarsely.
‘Before he was finished attacking her, this girl broke free from him. She locked herself inside a bathroom. She was very scared. He tried to get in. He was in a rage and it terrified her. He made many threats.’ Girard’s mouth drooped at the corners. ‘So she escaped. She climbed out through the window.’
‘OK.’
‘But as she was running away from his villa, a car turned into the entrance. The driver braked hard but still the car hit her a little. The girl fell onto the bonnet. She stumbled but she didn’t stop. She kept running. But she saw the driver. It was a woman. And seeing this is what she cannot forget. Because Moreau had been angry already. And she feared how he would react when he found that she was gone. She was afraid that he would take revenge on this woman in the car.’
Trent’s body was stone now. Immobile.
‘I asked for the date when this happened. My friend’s niece remembered very clearly. It was a Thursday, a little over six weeks ago. It was the day before you first called me from Naples.’ Ribbons of smoke coiled up from his cigarette, waving and writhing in front of his sunken eyes. ‘The car was a blue Clio,’ he said. ‘The same as Aimée’s.’
Chapter Eighteen
Trent found himself standing alone with Alain, out by the damaged Mercedes and the dusty red Japanese sports car Philippe had beached beside the fountain. The security lights blazed around them but the sky was beginning to lighten from indigo black to shades of grey. Fifteen minutes more and the sun would be up. Maybe the lamps would finally be turned off.
‘You backed me in there,’ Trent said. He couldn’t quite disguise his puzzlement.
Alain shrugged. He was wearing his tailored grey jacket again. ‘You were right about Serge.’ He exhaled wearily, mouth curled into a tired and sheepish half-smile. ‘Should I tell them about him?’
‘Maybe later. Let them sleep first.’
‘I’m going to check the pool house again. He must have been communicating with them in some way.’
‘He’d be a fool to have left anything behind.’
‘He is a fool. He betrayed M. Moreau.’
‘We should speak with the housekeeper. We should do it now.’
‘I’ll do it. But not right away. When she wakes up. It’s better if I’m alone. She’s worked with M. Moreau for too long to talk with a stranger in the room.’
Trent made a low humming noise. He gazed off along the driveway, as if he almost expected the chauffeur to be walking back towards them through the hazy grey.
‘I can drive you,’ Alain said. ‘There are more vehicles inside the garage. You were right about that, too.’
‘Better you stay here. Get some rest.’
‘And if your car doesn’t start?’
‘Return my mobile and I’ll call you. My Beretta, too.’
Alain cocked his head to one side and held Trent’s eye for a beat. Then he grunted and smiled his wan, fatigued smile again, like a guy reluctantly facing up to paying out on a losing bet. He fished inside his trouser pocket for a plastic key fob that he jabbed towards the Mercedes. The car squawked and its shattered indicators blinked. Alain opened the driver’s door, the hinge straining and scraping against the distorted front wing. He reached across to the passenger side, released a catch on the glove box and retrieved Trent’s pistol.
‘Somewhere safe,’ Trent muttered.
Alain backed out of the car and weighed the Beretta in his hand. He assessed Trent with one last, lingering look. Then he extended his arm.
Trent took the pistol. He stripped it and counted the rounds. Thirteen left. He palmed the magazine back in, lifted up his shirt and slipped the pistol into the waistband of his jeans.
Alain delved a hand into his rear pocket and lifted Trent’s mobile between his finger and thumb. ‘You have a number for this? In case we need to talk?’
Trent took the mobile and flipped it open. He entered his numerical security code.
‘It has a number but I don’t know it. Tell me yours. I’ll call you.’
Alain recited the sequence and Trent typed it in, then hit CALL. A few seconds later, Trent heard a muted chirp coming from the chest pocket of Alain’s jacket. A faint blue light pulsed through the charcoal fabric.
‘I took the card from your wallet, too,’ Alain said. ‘It lists a number in Marseilles?’
‘My home phone,’ Trent told him. ‘But try this mobile first. And don’t call me from the phone in Jérôme’s study. The gang could be trying to get through to you at the same time.’
He nodded to the bodyguard, just once, an abrupt and businesslike farewell between two professionals, and then he pocketed his mobile and turned and marched off along the driveway, his feet pounding the gravel. He didn’t look back over his shoulder but he could sense Alain’s eyes on him. He made a conscious effort to relax his shoulders and swing his arms and glance from side to side as he walked. Like an average guy out for a stroll. Like a typical visitor with a perfectly reasonable degree of curiosity about his surroundings.
But his prying was far from ordinary. He was searching very hard. He hadn’t timed it exactly right. A thin band of hazy pink was just visible beyond the hills on the opposite side of the valley. Another ten minutes and it would have been perfect. But for now the light was still a little murky. He could see a tangle of treetops off to his far right, but it was hard to say if it was the location he was looking for. The ramshackle cabin might be somewhere else altogether.
He logged the possibility all the same, then strode on through the cool morning air. Dust drifted up around his ankles and hands. His Beretta tapped a regular percussive beat against the flesh of his back.
He fixed his attention on the neat rows of cypress trees he was passing. The trunks were lean and straight and protected by dry, toughened bark. And somewhere up above, in amongst the greenery, surveillance cameras were recording his every movement.
He listened keenly for the buzz and whirr of servos or the hum of an electric feed. He searched the ground for raised troughs where cables could have been buried. It took a long time for him to spot what he was looking for. He was close to giving up. But finally he glimpsed a grey plastic junction box screwed to a trunk he was approaching, just above the lowest branches. He traced upwards from the box, following some black electrical wiring. But the camera evaded him and finally he averted his eyes.
The fence was up ahead, at the base of the slope. He could see the cameras fitted to the gate. And as he got close, he could hear them swivel in the stillness. They turned and pivoted and zeroed in on his location.
He walked on, not breaking his stride. The gate buzzed and clunked and dropped on its hinges, then began to swing inwards. He veered right and passed through the gap and out into the middle of the road. The gate shuddered to a halt, then jerked backwards and arced smoothly towards him until it closed with a thunk and a long droning buzz.
The cameras spun and dipped and focused down at him. He paused and glanced up and stared into a single lens. He didn’t wave. Didn’t smile. He simply looked up through the little disc of manufactured glass, picturing his image shuttling through apertures and circuit boards and wires, buzzing back along the driveway, back inside the villa to the cramped and airless security room, materialising on the flickering colour monitor that Alain was sure to be studying. How much do you know, big guy? he was thinking. Are you afraid of me now?
Chapter Nineteen
Nine days ago
Trent stared at the lens of a security camera mounted on the steel post just inside the solid green gate. It was pointing towards him across the wet night-time street.
He was sitting in the front passenger seat of Girard’s Saab. Girard was smoking beside him, slumped low in the olive rain mac he had on. Trent had cracked his window to release the drifting fumes.
‘You’re certain the cameras are disabled?’ Trent asked, not for the first time.
Girard said nothing. Trent turned to find
him staring, impassive, the collar of his mackintosh high around his neck. The pouches of leathery skin beneath his sunken eyes appeared more swollen than ever. Perhaps he was getting some way towards feeling as weary as Trent.
‘I don’t like that we’re relying on somebody else.’
Girard took a contemplative puff. ‘Tell me,’ he said, his voice pinched, ‘if a pipe burst inside your home, what would you do?’
Trent blinked at him, the smoke getting in his eyes, making them sting.
‘Or if your electricity failed? What then?’
‘I’d fix it.’
‘And if you couldn’t?’
‘I’d call someone.’
Girard drew on his cigarette some more, allowing the silence to linger.
‘No.’ He released a plume of smoke from the side of his mouth. ‘You’d call an expert.’
‘But your expert is a criminal.’
‘The best I know.’
‘Can we trust him?’
Smoke writhed before Girard’s face. Darkness swelled in his moist eyes. ‘It’s not a profession that offers guarantees.’
‘But you believe him?’
‘He told me it was done.’ He shrugged. ‘You paid him very well.’
Trent looked back across the drenched street. Only an hour ago, during their drive along the coast from Marseilles, they’d watched the storm rage over Cassis. They’d seen the flicker and flash of sheet lightning, the low, bundled mass of raging clouds. But as they’d sped closer, it had felt as if they were chasing the storm away. The lightning and the thunder had stalked on along the coast. The rain that had lashed the windscreen in desperate bursts was now little more than a faint, moist haze, like coastal fog.
Trent opened his door and stepped out into a shallow puddle. He smelled soaked tarmac and saturated foliage and damp earth. Water dripped off the chicken-wire fence behind him. Misted wetness clung to his face and hands.
