Dead Line (6 page)

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?

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?’

‘You ask the wrong question,’ Philippe said.

‘Oh?’

‘You should ask how long the gang can resist my father. You should ask how they will cope with
his
threats.’

Stephanie muttered something sour.

‘It’s true.’ Philippe wriggled into a hollow on the couch. He seemed relaxed and composed, as if he was settling in to watch a favourite movie. ‘My father is a formidable man. He has formidable friends. He will make these men see that they’ve made a mistake.’

‘Forgive me,’ Trent said, ‘but he didn’t seem so formidable when they pulled him from his car. He looked terrified. He was helpless. And you have to understand, this gang may beat your father. They may deprive him of food and water. They could treat him very badly.’

‘Then they would be fools. They would be dead men.’

‘
Dead men
?
 ’ Trent’s pulse quickened. He had to stop himself from leaning forwards in his chair. He was edging closer to something. Closer than he’d been so far.

‘That’s enough,’ Stephanie said, with venom.

But Philippe wasn’t inclined to stop just yet.

‘Do you know how my father makes his money,
monsieur
?’

Trent had a reasonable idea. He knew something about the legitimate sources of Jérôme’s income. And he knew something about the illegitimate sources, too.

‘Tell me,’ he said.

‘He brokers yachts,’ Stephanie cut in. ‘He imports them and he sells them. This is all.’

‘It’s not all. He imports many things
inside
these yachts, too. Hidden things. From North Africa. The Middle East.’

‘Liar.’

‘You deceive yourself. You believe what you wish to believe.’

‘And you talk too much.’ Alain exhaled hard and unbuttoned his shirtsleeves, yanking them up his muscular forearms. He adjusted the strap of his gun holster and eased his neck from side to side, as if freeing a kink. ‘Your terrible father,’ Alain said flatly, like he’d heard Philippe riff off the theme too many times. ‘The monster who pays for your apartment, your business, the fast car that you drive like a fool when you drink.’

Philippe flashed his teeth. ‘You defend him? Why?’

Alain didn’t respond.

‘Perhaps it’s because you’d like us to see how loyal you are? Perhaps you wish us to believe that you don’t envy him?’ Philippe winked salaciously at Stephanie. Twirled a finger in the air. ‘That you don’t covet all that he has?’ He chuckled to himself. ‘Maybe you don’t want us to start asking ourselves if one day you might decide to take it all from him?’

Alain grunted. ‘This is your big idea? That I helped these men to kidnap your father?’

‘I do not say it happened. Only that it’s possible. Your job was to protect him. And yet now look where he is. And look where
you
are. Sitting in his home. Making decisions that could set him free. Or not.’

Alain rocked his head back against the curtain behind him. He gazed up at the ceiling and cursed in frustration.

‘Easy,’ Trent said. ‘We’re getting sidetracked.’ He cocked his thumb and pointed his finger at Philippe. ‘The important thing is that you’re telling me your father can handle the situation he finds himself in?’

Philippe pursed his lips. He hummed. Then he nodded. He seemed absolutely convinced of it.

‘And you’re also telling me he’s not the most law-abiding of citizens.’

‘My father is a crook. I do not say that he’s a gangster, but he keeps company with dangerous men. He trades with them. Obtains things for them.’

‘Then tell me about his enemies.’

‘Enemies?’ Stephanie asked, as though appalled.

‘If he helps
some
dangerous men, it stands to reason there are others he creates problems for. The underworld in Marseilles is competitive. It’s brutal. Everyone knows that. Hell, that’s why a guy like Jérôme employs a bodyguard like Alain. It’s why he lives his life behind a high steel fence. Why he has security cameras and vapour lights all around his home. So tell me who might want to abduct him. And why.’

Stephanie blinked very fast. She seemed unaware that she was shaking her head.

Philippe grinned inanely, as if Trent were a fool.

Alain scowled and rubbed his palm across his close-cropped hair. His head was tilted over to one side. He met Trent’s gaze with a baleful look.

‘None of you?’ Trent persisted.

Alain’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because it could help us. I’m trying to form an idea of who we might be up against here.’

‘But you told us an investigation could endanger M. Moreau. You said we have to negotiate. This is all.’

‘I’m not suggesting that the information leaves this room,’ Trent told him. ‘I’m not suggesting we try to find the gang.’

He wasn’t suggesting it, but he was thinking it. He wanted to know almost more than he could stand.

If Aimée were here, listening to him now, she’d be giving him one of her knowing looks, the kind where she pushed her mouth to one side and arched an eyebrow. She always delighted in reminding him that he was hopeless at leaving anything unresolved. He couldn’t walk away from a minor disagreement or a half-finished crossword puzzle. He hated any kind of logic flaw in a movie. So she’d know that this entire situation was killing him, and for a precious second, recognising that made him feel as if she were near.

‘No, you advise us when these men call,’ Alain told him. ‘This is all you do. You don’t ask questions about M. Moreau’s business. You don’t intrude on his life.’

‘I’m trying to
save
his life.’

And in that moment, the weight and the absurdity of what he was saying suddenly hit Trent like he’d stepped in front of a freight train. He shook his head. Scrubbed his face with his hands. He needed a break. Needed space to think. And if the others planned to stay inside the study, then maybe this was his opportunity to take a look around the house. He wasn’t sure what he might find. But even the slimmest chance was better than nothing.

‘I’d like a glass of water.’ He nodded at Stephanie. ‘Maybe something to eat. Which way is your kitchen?’

‘No.’ Alain pushed up from the floor. He readjusted the fit of his holster and his gun. ‘You don’t go alone. I’ll show you.’