‘Where are you going? We’ll be late!’ The two men were employed as casual cleaners in a restaurant near the cathedral, and the owner was ruthless when it came to replacing staff who showed up late.
‘I have to make a phone call,’ Malik threw back. ‘Two minutes.’ He hurried inside and made for the telephone at the rear. He felt excited, and was biting his lip in expectation and not a little fear. He wasn’t sure which affected him the most – the prospect of a reward for reporting what he had just seen … or the likely outcome if he’d made a mistake. But he knew deep down that he couldn’t be wrong. He dialled a number from memory.
‘Yes.’ It was the voice of his cousin, who lived in northeastern Paris. He was a man of few words, and not one to cross with foolishness or wasting his time. His cousin worked for Lakhdar Farek, also not a man to cross. It was Lakhdar who had announced that anyone who knew her must look out for his brother Samir’s disloyal whore of a wife and that
a reward would be paid for the person reporting such a fact if it led to her capture.
‘I have seen Farek’s bitch!’ Malik blurted out, a little louder than intended, fired by excitement at being able to give up his lowly cleaning job. He hunched his shoulders and turned to the wall, his voice dropping. ‘I have seen her just now.’
‘Where?’ No surprise in the voice, only a calm acceptance that it was so. Malik had known Nicole Farek as a young girl.
‘Here in the street – in Amiens. Just now, moments ago!’
‘You are sure?’
‘As I am of my own father’s honour. I swear.’ For a brief second Malik wavered, his mind flicking across what might happen if he was wrong. Better not to think about it. ‘It was her, I swear.’
‘Good. Where was she going?’ His cousin’s voice remained calm, controlling. His cousin had an important job and wore the mantle of authority like a gown.
Malik told him, but added that she had got into a car. ‘I saw the number and I know the make of this vehicle. It was a Peugeot four-O-three.’ He recited the registration number carefully.
‘You have done well,’ his cousin told him. ‘If she is found you will be paid.’
‘What do I do now?’ Malik wondered if he might be paid even more if he went in search of the woman and even captured her himself. Then he realised how foolish that was. Laying a hand on Samir Farek’s wife, disloyal or not, would be to risk everything he held dear.
‘Go about your business,’ came the soft reply. ‘And do not mention any of this to your friends.’
***
Just a short distance away, the janitor at the police station put down his mop and slipped into an empty office where he knew the telephone line was always connected. There, the man, whose name was Yekhlef, took a slip of paper from his pocket and dialled a number. He waited anxiously, listening for the sound of footsteps approaching down the corridor. Lowly cleaners were not allowed to use the telephones, although he knew the policemen often used them for private calls.
When the call was answered, he recited what he had seen and heard earlier; how the Farek woman he had recognised from when he lived in Oran until just a year ago had come in asking for a very tall policeman who always dressed in black. The inspector he knew as Lucas Rocco.
At the end of the call, he hung up and went quietly back to his duties.
The net was beginning to close.
Caspar came round to find himself bound tightly by ropes to a hard-backed chair. He had a ferocious headache sending stabs of pain down through his cheekbones into his neck and shoulders, and he felt inexplicably cold. He couldn’t recall much beyond being taken out of the old theatre by two men and bundled roughly into a waiting car. His mouth tasted bad and he wondered if a drug had been administered. Then he became aware of a more concentrated throbbing behind his left ear and realised he’d been knocked out by more direct means.
He shivered and forced his eyes open, the lids ungluing with reluctance, listening for noises of anyone in the building. He squinted against the yellow glare of an overhead light. The air smelt dead and musty, as if the place he was in had not been used in a long time. The decor reinforced the smell: the wallpaper was brown with age and bubbled by damp, the floorboards bare and unpolished with large cracks showing
where the wood had warped over the years. There was no furniture that he could see other than the chair he was on, and the single window had the shutter closed against the outside light. He estimated that it was sometime in the morning, but not yet noon, in an old house somewhere near the theatre where he’d been lifted. At least, he told himself, he wasn’t so damaged that he couldn’t think straight. So far, anyway.
He heard a rustle of paper behind him.
He turned his head slowly to the right, his whole body rebelling at the movement, a nasty cracking sound coming from his shoulder. He wished he hadn’t bothered.
Bouhassa was sitting close by, absorbed in a kids’ comic. Superheroes in masks saving the world. Few words, big pictures. The gunman’s tongue was poking out of his mouth, a small pink dart of flesh like the nose of a lizard. He was grinning inanely at the pictures, chuckling silently. Had to be the pictures, Caspar told himself. Bastard couldn’t read words, that was for sure. He wore his habitual white djellaba, the front stained with sauce. Or was it blood? His feet were strapped into heavy sandals, the tooled leather surprisingly intricate in design for such a thug.
Caspar turned back to the front, trying to blot out the man’s presence and focus on getting out of here. The way things looked, he was in the deepest shit ever. And he’d been in some sticky situations before now. But being here at this time, and with this man in particular sitting within arm’s reach, was about as bad as he could imagine. If Bouhassa was here, there was going to be only one outcome.
He wondered how he’d been singled out, and by whom. He shook that thought away; he’d got careless, that was the truth of it. Careless and cocky and … stupid, thinking he
could carry on for ever in this job. He’d walked right into the beast’s lair without a second thought as if he was bulletproof or invisible. Like the fantasy figures Bouhassa was reading about.
Just like the brass had hinted, maybe he really wasn’t fit for this work anymore. Time to give up.
Like he had a choice.
Then Caspar realised that the sensation of cold was concentrated in his hips and thighs. He dropped his chin.
He was naked from the waist down.
Jesus
…
what was this for
?
Before he could analyse the information, the door opened and Samir Farek walked in. He was dressed in a smart suit and polished shoes, his hair glossy and full. Behind him was Youcef, his stupid brother – or half-brother, Caspar couldn’t recall which – lumbering along on his heels like a giant puppy, only half as bright. Farek motioned for Bouhassa to give up his chair and sat down facing Caspar, so close the former cop could smell his breath and a whiff of fancy aftershave.
‘So. Mr Casparon.’ Farek shot the cuffs of his shirt and flicked a piece of fluff off his knee. He seemed unabashed by the fact that his prisoner was semi-naked. ‘We have been a long time meeting. I’ve heard much about you.’
‘Lucky you,’ said Caspar, and instantly felt the world tip upside down as Youcef Farek reached forward and backhanded him sideways with no more effort than he’d have taken swatting a fly.
‘Don’t speak,’ the giant ordered. ‘Listen.’
Farek waited patiently while Bouhassa and Youcef struggled to right Caspar and his chair, then looked at his brother and said calmly, ‘You do that again and I’ll have
Bouhassa shoot you.’ He turned his eyes back on Caspar. ‘My apologies. Let us keep this civilised. You know of an Inspector Rocco, yes? From Amiens?’
Caspar shook his head, the side of his face smarting like hell. But the action was more an attempt to retain a sense of focus and win some time than a denial. How the hell had this man come to know about Rocco? He debated saying that he’d never heard of him, but guessed Farek probably knew the answer anyway. Waste of time.
‘I know him, but not well.’ He wished he’d got his pants on at least, although loss of dignity in front of this monster was the least of his worries. He recognised it for the psychological tactic that it was. Take away a man’s dignity and he was immediately weakened. Open. Vulnerable.
‘I see. You work with him?’
‘No. I’ve been … retired.’
Farek lifted an eyebrow. ‘Really? That must be difficult to take, for such a young man. What did they offer in its place – desk work? Traffic duty? School patrol?’ Farek’s companions chuckled dutifully. ‘Still, fortunate for us, I suppose. I gather you were very good once. So. What were you doing at our meeting last night? A final visit for old times’ sake?’
Caspar said nothing, although he thought if he got Youcef riled again, he might have the pleasure of seeing Bouhassa shoot the moron dead. At least that would be one less to worry about. He decided on honesty.
‘I thought if I picked up some information, they might take me back.’
‘They?’
‘The department.’
‘Ah. Well, I’m afraid they won’t be doing that.’ Farek
smiled thinly. ‘But let’s not be hasty. Perhaps we can talk about who has replaced you in your undercover role? We might come to an arrangement if the information proves correct.’
Caspar looked at him and thought, more likely you’ll kill me now, then kill the poor bastard who took my place. He wondered how long they had known about his role and decided it was probably longer than he’d ever thought. ‘I don’t know who took over. Anyway, I’m the last person they would trust with that kind of information, wouldn’t you think?’
Farek smiled, appreciating the logic. ‘Of course. Silly of me.’ He brushed again at his knee, a gold bracelet jangling on his wrist. He had fingers, Caspar noted, like sausages. Clean, but powerful-looking. Brutal. He could imagine those fingers digging into his flesh, probing for the nerve endings.
‘It’s true.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it is. Another question: do you know of a woman calling herself Nicole Glavin?’
‘No.’
‘Very well.’ Farek stood up and stared at Caspar dispassionately, like a butcher inspecting a side of beef and wondering what to do with it. ‘Kill him,’ he said at last, and walked out of the room, followed by Youcef.
‘
Wait
!’ Caspar shouted. Anything to buy time, to delay what he knew the fat thug, Bouhassa, was going to do to him.
Just then, hurrying footsteps sounded and a man called Farek’s name, followed by a mumbled conversation. The effect was instantaneous.
‘Out,’ called Farek. ‘Both of you. We’ll deal with him later. Get the car.’
And suddenly, inexplicably, Caspar was alone. And frightened.
By two in the afternoon, Samir Farek was in a run-down place called
Café
Emile
on the outskirts of Amiens. It was frequented by Algerian workers and, as if reflecting the isolation they felt from the community around them, stood on a patch of waste ground between a crumbling grain warehouse on one side and a deserted sawmill on the other. It had long been marked down for demolition, but perhaps because of its insignificance, its date with the wrecking ball had been postponed.
Farek had left his brother Lakhdar to keep an eye on things in Paris following his takeover, and was accompanied by Youcef and Bouhassa, with three men from Lakhdar’s Paris organisation acting as guides and outriders. They had driven fast, brushing aside other cars by sheer intimidation, paying scant heed to road signs and playing the odds when encountering turnings on the right, where the traditional – and legal – French habit was to exit without looking.
The front door of the café was locked and the curtains closed. The few customers present had needed no urging to leave, and the proprietor had been advised that his loss of business would be amply compensated. Two men who were sitting together at a table looked anxiously at the assembled company as if wondering why they had come forward.
The police station janitor, Yekhlef, was the first to be asked to tell his story again, this time directly to Farek, about the woman he had seen in the police station earlier that morning
asking after Inspector Rocco. He said he had seen her there once before, in the early evening when he was just starting a shift, but he hadn’t seen her with enough clarity to recognise her. Then Farek turned to Malik, who gave the janitor a resentful look before telling them what he had witnessed outside in the street, saying how he had seen her walk out of the police station and climb into a car.
‘A Peugeot four hundred and three,’ he said eagerly. ‘As clearly as you and I see each other now.’
Farek stood up and walked around the café interior, lower lip pushed out in thought. He finally came to a stop in front of both men. He looked at Yekhlef, who was the older man, and said in a whisper, ‘Does she lie with this policeman? Has she become his whore?’
The janitor looked shocked by the question. He licked his lips nervously, then looked Farek in the eye and said with careful dignity, ‘That in all honesty I cannot say, sir. But she used his first given name. As if they were friends.’ He shrugged carefully. ‘Beyond that, I would not care to comment.’
It was enough for Farek. ‘Can you find out where this man Rocco lives?’
Yekhlef considered it for a moment, then nodded with absolute certainty. ‘This evening I will go in, and when everyone has gone, I will look through the emergency calls list. It has the telephone number of all officers. I will also find his address, and call you.’
Farek nodded. He ordered Youcef to give money to both men, with a larger sum to Yekhlef to reflect his greater contribution and age. Then he told the two men to leave and never speak of this with anyone. Ever.
Once they had gone he sat down at a table and poured a
cup of thick, black coffee from a percolator made earlier by the proprietor. He added several sugar cubes and stirred the drink slowly, thinking about how to resolve this situation.