‘Of course. And?’
‘It was enough, though, for me to see the number. That was it. Oh, and it looked like a Berliet.’
Rocco lifted an eyebrow. ‘You know trucks?’
Etcheverry shrugged. ‘My father dealt in them.’ He sniffed and tapped nervously on the table. ‘You said there might be a reward.’
‘So I did. If it leads to an arrest.’ He allowed a few seconds to go by while he made random jottings on his pad. Etcheverry
sat waiting, and the silence built in the room, save for the scratching of Rocco’s pen.
‘Did you win much?’ Rocco asked suddenly. ‘At the game?’
‘Actually, a nice pot—’ The retired vet stopped, blushing furiously. He’d said too much, lulled by Rocco’s tactics. He looked away, eyes flickering.
Rocco looked at him. ‘You’ve performed a valuable service, for which I thank you.’
Etcheverry sat up, face brightening. ‘Ah. Good. Glad to hear it.’
‘Now I’m going to perform one for you. Actually, two. I won’t pass your name to the tax authorities, nor am I going to report you to that department of the police which deals with gambling in public places. You were playing in a café the other night, I take it?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Fair enough. You know it’s illegal to gamble in a public place unless sanctioned specifically by law?’
Etcheverry said nothing, his eyes rolling in shock. Greed had overtaken any natural caution he might have had. He nodded and stood up, then turned and left the room without a word. Rocco figured when he got outside and thought about it, he’d consider himself very lucky indeed.
Rocco handed his notes with the registration number to Desmoulins and asked him to put an immediate trace on the truck.
Nicole Glavin put down the telephone handset in the post office and sat back, feeling as though every fibre of her body was being slowly shredded. She had just heard the worst possible news – yet news she had known all along would one day surely come.
The clerk behind the counter signalled for her to vacate the booth for another customer. She stood up and went to pay for the call. It had not been cheap, calling her friend, Mina, but a necessity, and one she was half-wishing she hadn’t had to make. Now everything had changed.
Samir Farek was coming after her.
She made her way outside and back to the car, left under the cover of a tree on the edge of a small municipal park. A few children played nearby and a group of mothers watched them with eager eyes. She checked the street around her for new faces and familiar ones. New was OK. New was everywhere. But familiar, once something to be cherished
with outstretched arms, was now to be feared. Familiar meant recognition and recognition meant a fate she didn’t care to contemplate.
‘Sorry, my sweet,’ she said softly, seeing the fearful look on the face in the back seat as she opened the car door. Her son, Massi, five years old with eyes that would surely one day tug at a lucky girl’s heartstrings. He smiled up at her, full of trust and love, and she thanked her stars that he looked nothing like his father. God at least had spared her that.
She closed the door and handed him a paper bag with some grapes and a banana. All she had to do now was decide her next course of action.
She sat back and let her thoughts drift. Rather than focus hard on a problem, she found it easier to let it make its own way, to tease out a solution in its own time.
She checked her wallet. She had built up sufficient funds to get them along the illegal pipeline through Marseilles – a hideously dangerous undertaking but her only way of getting out of the country and into France unseen – and to keep them on the road for a good while. She tried not to think about the other travellers along the way, young men from Tunisia, Morocco, Somalia and Libya. Most had observed her and Massi with curiosity, yet treated them with the region’s traditional respect shown to women and children. The journey had been appalling and dangerous, having to sit for hours cramped together in conditions she wouldn’t have applied to a dog. Massi, luckily, had seen it as a great adventure, and had remained remarkably upbeat and stoic, complaining very little.
She looked at a bangle on her wrist. Like her other jewellery and cash, which she had concealed in a body belt beneath her
clothing during the journey, it was a commodity, if that became a necessity, to be sold for their continued survival. It would pain her to see it gone, but short-term pain was preferable to the long-term agony that would be inflicted on her if Farek ever caught up with them. Nearly all of the jewellery had been handed down from her grandmother, whose name had been Glavin, the one she was now using as an alias. It wasn’t the most secure one to use, because Farek would know it. But it would do for now; it felt familiar, comforting. And right now she needed all the comfort she could get.
She couldn’t believe it had come to this. Twelve years ago, her husband, Samir, had been a different man. Or had she been so simple, so naive, that she hadn’t seen – maybe hadn’t wanted to see – the truth of what he was already? Was it his subtle aura of danger that had turned her head? A chance, maybe, for her to find a more exciting life than any other on offer?
Whatever it was, he had changed gradually; had become first unthinking, then unkind, treating her more and more like a chattel and less like the lover of their early days. He began to stay out more and more, coming home reeking of cheap women and flaunting it in her face as if daring her to object. When she had done so, asking him where he’d been, the first time he had been merely angry, defensive. The second time he had gone into a violent rage, hurling abuse at her and slapping her. He had apologised later, but it was no longer the same between them. It was as if a hidden line had been crossed, separating them for ever. He had begun to bring his ‘associates’ home, banishing her to her room while they were there, occasionally snapping his fingers when he needed something and telling her to cover her face.
Then had come the deals, openly criminal in nature; hearing the threats made to those who stood up to him, enduring the screaming fits on the telephone against those who dared oppose him. Then came the death threats, as if he were taunting everyone, trying to find out how far he, Samir Farek, gangster, could go.
The answer was, very far indeed. And when the monstrous Bouhassa joined him, and the first bodies began to turn up, Nicole knew that she could stay no longer, no matter what. When she asked if she could travel to France with him next time he went on one of his business trips, a vague plan was forming in her mind. He refused point-blank. Out of the question.
‘But my grandmother was born there,’ she had reminded him, stifling a feeling of panic. ‘Surely I can see where a part of my family came from?’
He wouldn’t hear of it, resorting to a vitriolic tirade against all things French – especially the people who, he said, had placed the people of Algeria under their boots for far too long. It seemed he was able to forget that he had served in that very same army. Now, he had declared, the French yoke was there no longer; everything had changed.
Part of that change seemed to be relegating her to the position of a mute slave in a dead marriage.
She sat up. The children had stopped playing, their shrill voices stilled. The small park was deserted. She knew enough to realise that sitting here now made her noticeable – a target.
She started the car and checked Massi was comfortable, then took a deep breath. She had one clear option, but one which filled her with unease. From being around Samir Farek,
she had learnt as if by osmosis that the police were not to be trusted. For every good policeman there was a bad one, one who had his price. And Samir Farek had the means to pay.
She was remembering with clarity the tall policeman she had encountered in the village of Poissons-les-Marais, up at the strange religious grotto on the hill. He had said he worked here in Amiens. That meant at the main police station which she had seen earlier. But was he trustworthy? Did he have a price, like many others? Or was she about to put her faith in a false image? He had seemed pleasant enough, his own man rather than someone’s lackey. But only time would tell.
Time. She checked her watch.
She had to leave Massi somewhere safe while she spoke to Rocco. Just in case. There was a woman who had already looked after him twice, when she’d had to go out. Amina was Somali, a cleaning lady with three children of her own, who wanted more. She was instantly friendly, openly welcoming. But discreet. You learnt that quickly when you were part of an unwelcome community.
Nicole put the car in gear and drove away.
Nearly eight hundred kilometres to the south, Samir Farek had already moved with extraordinary speed. With the name and address of the handler in the port of Marseilles forced from the agent, Selim, in Oran – now relieved permanently of his lucrative post and his life – Farek and Bouhassa were waiting for their man to appear. A telephone call to his flat in a six-storey apartment building off Rue du Génie, behind the bustling Saint-Charles Station, had established that he was in. He had sounded groggy, recuperating no doubt after a night of heavy drinking.
‘He’ll come,’ said Farek confidently. He didn’t know the man, but he knew the kind of person he was dealing with: a low-level criminal named Maurice Tappa, trading in drugs, prostitution and now people. A bottom-feeder, moderately successful if you looked at his address, which wasn’t bad but not great, either. He would be sensitive to threats from the police because he wasn’t rich enough to pay for high-level
protection and knew there was probably plenty they could be calling about. The call had been brief and anonymous, informing Tappa that the official hammer was about to drop. It had been enough to dispel his grogginess and set him running. All they had to do now was wait for him to come scuttling out.
Farek was a realistic man. He knew his disappearance from Oran would have been noted with interest, by the authorities as much as his enemies. The latter, especially, would be looking for a vacuum, a gap to fill. It was the way of things in his business. And maybe they would fill it before he got back.
But right now he was facing a crisis that had to be dealt with. His wife had left him, taking their young son, and soon everyone would know; every crook, pimp, cop and politician. He no longer cared for his wife; her French ancestry had been a help when they first married and he was looking to impress people, especially in the military. But he no longer needed that dubious cachet; he had forged his own future and the old colonial power had gone. As for the child, only a nod to convention made him spare the boy a thought. But his anger was reserved for his wife. She had caused him to lose face among his peers and his family, and that could not go unpunished. He felt a simmering rage at the thought of her doing this to him, and wondered if another man was involved. If that were the case, his pleasure would be short-lived and very, very painful.
When people heard that he, Samir Farek, had gone after his wife, and of the penalty she paid – as she surely would – he would win back the respect he had lost. No doubt about that. A question of honour.
The light moved as the glass-panelled rear door to the apartment block swung open. A short, squat figure hurried out into the shadowy courtyard and headed for a Mercedes parked nearby. The man was wearing a crumpled suit and carrying a small holdall and looked as if he had dressed in a hurry. His face was unshaven and pallid.
As the man reached the car, Bouhassa stepped out from the doorway to a small maintenance building. He looked like a ghost in his white djellaba, his head a shiny dome beneath the wrap-around industrial glasses. But his presence was real enough.
As was the gun in his hand.
‘Dear God,’ Tappa muttered, and swallowed hard. He dropped his car keys. They clinked to the ground, but he didn’t bother trying to retrieve them. He had recognised the fat man immediately and knew of his reputation. He also knew that Farek couldn’t be far away.
He was right.
‘Monsieur Tappa,’ said Farek politely, and appeared as if out of nowhere, stepping in close so that the Frenchman couldn’t escape, even had his legs been able to carry him. ‘How delightful to catch up with you.’
‘What do you want?’ Tappa gabbled, and tried to melt into the coachwork of the Mercedes, desperately looking for a way out. The holdall fell with a soft thud.
For an answer, Farek bent and picked up the car keys. When he straightened again, he had them clasped with the main key protruding between his first and second fingers. ‘I believe you may have assisted a woman to come to France,’ he said softly. ‘From Oran.’ He lifted his hand and teased
the point of the key gently across Tappa’s face, stopping just beneath his left eye. ‘Am I wrong?’
‘It wasn’t me,’ said Tappa automatically, eyes flicking between Farek and the fat man in the white robe. ‘I don’t move women – they’re too much trouble. Who told you it was me?’
‘Let’s say we have information from an impeccable source … in Oran. Well?’
‘Oh.’ Tappa appeared to relent. ‘Well, in that case, maybe I did, once.’
‘Is that a yes?’
‘Yes. Why do you want to know?’ Tappa was regaining his nerves. ‘You want to buy her back or something? She didn’t look that special to me. Just a sheep on the move.’
Farek lifted an eyebrow. Only those who knew him well would have noticed the sudden danger sign of a pulse beating in his neck. ‘A sheep? Is that all they are to you, these people?’
Tappa gave a feeble laugh. ‘Sure. Why not? They’re hardly high value, are they? Cheap labour, that’s all. They don’t smell too good, either.’
Farek tapped the key against the other man’s cheek. ‘Mr Tappa,’ he said very softly, ‘you’ve just been talking about my wife.’
What little colour remained drained from Tappa’s face. ‘What? I mean, I didn’t know who she was – how could I? She was just a sh—’ He stopped; he’d already said too much, then gabbled, ‘
They don’t tell us their names …
!’