The Boy Who Saw: A gripping thriller that will keep you hooked

by Simon Toyne

  ‘But why didn’t you tell us first?’

  Amand wanted to tell Henri to go fuck himself. ‘It was a pretty quick decision. Jacques Laurent suggested my personal history with the Engel family might cloud my judgement and I decided he was probably right.’

  Henri grunted. ‘Not sure I agree, but never mind. They’ve put Parra in charge now.’

  ‘Good for him. Is he there?’

  ‘I’ll find him for you.’

  The phone went silent and Amand looked out of the window as the plane taxied to a standstill beside another black Range Rover with tinted windows.

  ‘Benny!’ Parra said. ‘I hear you’re off the case.’

  ‘You heard right.’

  ‘That’s a shame, where are you now?’

  ‘Still in Albi.’ Amand followed Magellan to the door. ‘Should be back this afternoon, but I’m on my mobile if anyone needs me.’

  The hostess opened the door and the white noise of rain and jet engines flooded into the cabin. ‘Sounds noisy,’ Parra said.

  Amand moved back into the soft, insulated interior of the plane. ‘A street sweeper went past. I’m checking to see if there’s any news about Marie-Claude and Léo? Last I heard, they’d been spotted driving north in a black Audi.’

  ‘Yeah we found it.’

  ‘You found— Are they safe?’

  ‘No, I mean, I don’t know – we didn’t find them, only the car. It got picked up by the barrier cams leaving junction 8 of the A20 with two men inside. One had been badly beaten. He’s on his way to hospital now.’

  Amand gripped his phone so hard it creaked. ‘Where’s the car?’

  ‘Impounded at the toll booth, I think. This is all fresh in.’

  ‘OK. Let me know if you hear anything about Marie-Claude – I may be off the case but that doesn’t mean I’m not worried.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And, Parra – Keep your eye on Henri.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just keep your eye on him. If anything important needs doing, do it yourself.’

  ‘OK, I will. You want to tell me about it?’

  ‘Later.’ Amand hung up and emerged from the plane into the rain and noise of cooling jets and hurried down the steps to the Range Rover where Magellan was waiting, engine running and satnav menu open. ‘Where to?’ he said.

  ‘Junction 8 of the A20,’ Amand said. ‘They found the car. One of the guys driving it had been so badly beaten he was hospitalized. Still think your boy isn’t dangerous?’

  Parra put the phone down and got up from his desk.

  ‘Going somewhere?’ Henri said, peering at him over his glasses.

  ‘For a smoke,’ Parra replied and headed to the back door. He stepped into the passage and pulled a Marlboro Light from a pack and his phone from his pocket. He lit the cigarette, dialled the private number for Café Belloq and listened to it ring.

  ‘You have news?’ Belloq answered.

  Parra blew out a long stream of smoke. ‘Maybe. I just got a call from Amand. I think he might still be a problem.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘He was asking about the case. Casually, but he was definitely interested. He said he was in Albi, but it sounded to me like he was at an airport.’

  ‘OK, try and find out where he is. Good work, Parra.’

  Parra smiled and took another deep drag on his cigarette. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  73

  Marie-Claude stared ahead through the rain and the windscreen wipers, her knuckles glowing white on the wheel of the BMW. Solomon was in the passenger seat, sorting through the bags they’d found in the back of the car, taking deep breaths to combat his nausea while spray blew in through his open window. She felt detached from herself, like she was in a dream, a really bad dream, because none of what was happening could be real and if it was she couldn’t see a safe way out of it. ‘We’re fucked,’ she said.

  ‘We’re not.’

  ‘But that was the police back there.’

  ‘Only one of them, and he wasn’t there on police business.’

  ‘You don’t know that. How do you know that?’

  ‘Police don’t tend to take kids hostage and hold knives to their throats.’

  She stared at him, shocked at the revelation that Léo had had a knife to his throat. Solomon rubbed at his shoulder as pain lanced through it at the memory of the fight.

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re acting like you are.’

  ‘I’m in pain, there’s a difference. Visiting pain upon others doesn’t agree with me.’

  ‘But you’re awesome at it!’ Léo said, leaning forward from the back seat. ‘You should have seen him, Mama – he kicked the knife right out of the man’s hand and stuck it in his throat.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Marie-Claude shook her head. ‘You shouldn’t be watching people have knives stuck in their throats.’

  ‘It was a cricothyroidotomy,’ Solomon said, ‘an emergency opening of the airways. His throat had been crushed and he couldn’t breathe. If I hadn’t done it, he would have died. And I made Léo look away when I made the incision.’

  ‘Oh, well that makes it OK. As long as Léo wasn’t looking when you jammed a knife into the windpipe you’d crushed, everything’s fine. Jesus, put that away!’

  Solomon checked the magazine of the gun he’d taken from the big man, put it on safe and dropped it into Marie-Claude’s rucksack, which he started to root through.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing? That’s my stuff.’

  ‘I’m making sure your phone is off.’

  ‘It’s off. I took the battery out, like you said.’

  ‘They still managed to track us. What about your laptop?’ He picked it up and checked it was turned off.

  ‘It’s Wi-Fi enabled, but that won’t tell anyone where we are unless I go online, and we haven’t been anywhere to do that since we stopped for fuel.’

  ‘And you didn’t turn it on?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Léo?’

  ‘I never touched it.’

  Solomon put the rucksack back on the floor and took deep breaths of rain-filled air. ‘It had to be the car. They must have figured out the switch and got the registration number from the airport, which means the legitimate police might be looking for us too.’

  ‘Why don’t we turn ourselves in? We can explain everything that’s happened, show them the ID of that guy so they know we’re telling the truth.’

  ‘And which police do you think we should turn ourselves over to?’ Solomon said. ‘The good police, or the ones who hold knives to children’s throats? If we turn ourselves in they’ll put me in a cell and send you back home, back to where your grandfather was killed. Can you trust the police in Cordes? Your husband was police.’

  She thought back to that morning, sitting in her bedroom with Amand as he’d told her the terrible news about her grandfather. Maybe if she’d gone with him, none of this would have happened. But then she might never have found the note her grandfather had left for her and his killer might have found it instead, putting Otto Adelstein in serious danger. She thought about Amand and whether she trusted him. She wanted to but she couldn’t, not entirely. She found it hard to trust anyone.

  She turned to Solomon. ‘We need to get to Dijon and warn Otto Adelstein.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘He might know who’s doing this and why. Once we know that, we can decide who to tell and what to do next. Either way, we need to warn him, make sure he’s safe. I don’t want anyone else to die. I can’t be responsible for any more pain.’ She shook her head and Solomon saw the shadow of pain darken her face. ‘But what do we do? We’re in a stolen car and the police are looking for us.’

  ‘Pull off at the next junction,’ Solomon said, sorting through the collection of passports they’d found in the boot of the car. ‘Find somewhere to park – somewhere busy where we can hide this car.’ He opened one of the passports and studied th
e photograph of a young woman inside. ‘I have an idea.’

  74

  ‘Over there,’ Amand said, pointing at a fenced-off area beyond the péage barrier. The Audi was parked under a canopy next to a low office building. ‘Park in front of the office and let me do the talking. Once we’re at the car, I want you to distract whoever’s chaperoning us.’

  Magellan parked the Range Rover and they entered the building. Two men and one woman in white shirts and dark-blue trousers were standing behind a counter, talking over each other excitedly and pointing at the Audi. Amand smiled and held up his police ID badge. ‘Who’s in charge here?’

  ‘That would be me,’ the eldest, fattest man replied, squinting at Amand’s ID card.

  ‘What’s your name, sir?’

  ‘André. André Gaudin.’

  ‘Monsieur Gaudin, my name is Benoît Amand. I’m the investigating officer in a murder that took place in the Tarn earlier today and this is Doctor Magellan, a consultant criminal psychologist helping us with the case. That vehicle you have parked outside is wanted in connection with my investigation. Mind if we take a quick look?’

  The man looked hesitant. ‘The other police officers said no one was to touch anything.’

  ‘Quite right, and no one will. We only want to take a look. There are certain items that may be in the car and it would be helpful if I could check.’

  The man’s gaze shifted to Magellan then back to him. ‘Just a look?’

  Amand smiled. ‘That’s all.’

  He nodded uncertainly. ‘OK.’

  They stepped outside, the rain thrumming on the canopy like a slow drum roll. Amand peered through the tinted windows of the Audi. ‘Is it unlocked?’

  ‘You said no touching.’

  ‘I’m not going to touch, but these windows are making it hard to see.’

  After a moment’s hesitation, Gaudin dashed back to the office and returned almost instantly with a black key fob in his hand that made all the indicators flash and a solid clunk sound inside the door panels when he pressed it.

  Amand pulled the sleeve of his jacket over his hand and used it to open the driver’s door. There was blood on the dashboard and pooled in the leather of the passenger seat, a couple of torn Marvel comics on the floor in the back.

  ‘Tell me about the men who were in the car,’ Magellan said, stepping in front of Gaudin. ‘What did they look like? The more detail you can give, the better.’

  ‘Well, the driver was huge, like a wrestler or something. The other guy was the injured one …’

  As soon as he saw that Gaudin was distracted, Amand leaned in and switched on the car’s satnav. A map appeared. He selected Recent Destinations and a list filled the screen. Amand read the last entry, deleted it, switched everything off and stood up.

  ‘You can lock it up,’ he said, already walking away. ‘I can’t see anything obvious. Let’s hope the tech guys have more luck. Thanks for your help, Monsieur Gaudin.’ He got into the Range Rover, eager to leave before someone else showed up.

  Magellan climbed into the driver’s seat and closed the door against the rain. ‘Anything?’

  ‘A destination,’ Amand replied. ‘Has this thing got satnav?’

  Magellan pressed a button and a map appeared. Amand typed MULHOUSE into the search field and the map redrew, showing the smudge of a town near a thick blue line marking the German border.

  ‘They were heading here,’ Amand said, pointing at a small icon north of the town that looked like a mini Roman forum.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A museum,’ Amand replied. ‘It’s called Die Schneider Lager.’

  The satnav plotted a route from their current location – a five-and-a-half-hour drive. Magellan tapped the screen to zoom into Mulhouse and looked around for an aeroplane icon but couldn’t see one. ‘Private airfields don’t always show up on regular maps,’ he said, and started the engine. ‘I’m sure we can get close. Close enough to get there before anyone else does, at least.’

  75

  Bull paced around the table in the interview room, keeping his head tilted back to try and stop the blood leaking from his broken nose. He couldn’t believe this had happened. He had vowed he would never see the inside of a cell again and yet here he was.

  He wanted to break something or punch the wall, or even better, batter the skinny white fucker who’d somehow managed to kick him unconscious and break his motherfucking nose. How had that even happened? He was as much embarrassed as he was angry. At least the fucker had done him a favour by taking his gun. If he’d been caught with that it would have been much worse. As it was, they seemed more interested in the Audi and the people who should’ve been in it, but he wasn’t telling them anything and they were giving him shitty looks because of it.

  He knew they had nothing on him, nothing serious. They’d have to let him go sooner or later. And when they did he would go after them because he wanted his car back and he wanted a rematch with the Thin White Duke. He stopped by the mirror and examined his nose. He knew it was a two-way and someone was most likely watching him on the other side but he didn’t care. Let them look. He tilted his head and inspected the damage. It was swollen and red and the bruising was starting to come around his eyes, making him look like a panda. Fucking guy. A lucky shot is all it was.

  He heard a click and turned as the door opened and a uniform stepped inside and placed a plastic cup of water on the table. ‘Compliments of the house,’ he said. ‘You need anything else – coffee, something to eat?’

  ‘Depends how long you’re going to keep me here.’

  ‘A while I think.’ The door closed behind him and he made no move to leave.

  Bull stared at him. ‘What do you want, a tip?’

  ‘Information,’ he said, unbuttoning the sleeve of his shirt. ‘Maybe you want to tell me something about the car the woman is now travelling in?’ He rolled his sleeve and Bull saw the tattoo of a wild boar on his wrist. He glanced at the mirror. ‘There’s no one listening,’ the gendarme said, rolling his sleeve back down.

  ‘You’re looking for a black BMW three series. Two years old. Top of the range.’

  ‘Registration?’

  ‘I can do better than that. It’s got a V-Rec unit attached to it. Vehicle Recovery. Download the V-Rec app, put in a user code and GPS will show you exactly where it is on Google Maps. Let me out of here and I’ll go get it for you.’

  The gendarme smiled. ‘Can’t do that, I’m afraid, but the leadership is grateful for your help.’

  ‘I don’t want gratitude, I want a favour.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘When you find my car and the dude who’s driving it, I want you to fuck him up. Fuck him up real bad.’

  76

  The Leader sat in his private office and wrote down the details of the BMW and the user code. Having thanked the gendarme for his good work, he hung up, opened his laptop and downloaded the V-Rec app. Within five minutes a red dot on a map showed that the BMW had doubled back from its previous direction and headed south on a road running almost parallel to the A20 but was now stationary.

  He looked at the towns closest to where the car was, trying to remember what assets and resources he had there. There was a time when he could recall every name and location of his secret army, but it had grown too big and his mind had grown old and forgetful.

  He picked up the laptop, rose slowly from his chair and moved across the polished parquet floor into the empty outer office. He had dismissed his secretary for the day because there was too much going on and she was oblivious to most of it and he wished for it to stay that way, for now. By necessity, he led something of a double life, the private and the public, and it took careful balancing and separation to maintain. He looked forward to a time soon when these two halves could merge and become whole once again. And it would happen. He was not prepared to let some nosy Jewish bitch ruin everything by raking up things he’d spent almost a lifetime keeping secret.


  He moved into the hallway and walked past rows of softly lit display cases containing mannequins dressed in iconic suits and gowns from his company’s long history. He had personally designed each one, even made some of the earlier ones too, every stitch. Some people wrote their lives in words and ink, others in paint or in the stones of buildings, his was made from cloth and cuts and stitches.

  He climbed into the small lift he’d installed when the stairs started proving problematic for his ageing knees and hips, hugging the laptop to his chest as he descended into the basement. When the lift doors opened, he shuffled along a corridor to a solid, featureless door and entered a code into the keypad made up from his real date of birth and his birth name, a name no one knew but him.

  There was a click as the door unlocked and lights blinked on as he entered, illuminating display cases containing more mannequins and other items laid out like exhibits in a museum. The Leader closed the door and walked to the far end of the room where a desk sat in front of a huge map of France with leaflets pinned all around it alongside campaign posters for the PNFL, the party he had built from nothing. The desk was identical to the one upstairs in his public office, a desk for each person he had to be. The upstairs desk brought the money in and the desk in the basement paid most of it out again, routed through a myriad of shell companies that rendered it impossible to trace. This little room was the foundation upon which the party had been built and the work he did here was about making far more than clothes. Down here, he was weaving history.

  He opened the laptop and studied the red dot. The BMW had stopped on the edge of a town called Massay. The name rang no bells. He reached for a large leather-bound book and opened it. Inside were lists of names with locations and occupations next to them, every man, woman and child loyal to the cause of making France free again. He called it the Ledger of the Loyal and kept it locked away along with his other great secrets. Computers could be hacked, but you could not hack a book.

  He flicked through the pages, pondering who he could send to intercept the quarry now his first choice had failed him. The gendarme who had forwarded the information about the BMW was one candidate, but he wasn’t close and the Leader was reluctant to use another police officer after the first had been arrested. Better to keep things isolated. He glanced up at the map of France and the posters of the various smiling candidates poised to seize power and snatch France back at the elections. His eyes found Belloq, hands on hips, apron tied around his waist, his café in soft-focus behind him. He located his number in the ledger and dialled it.