Dead Line (15 page)

‘So your advice didn’t work,’ Alain said. ‘Xavier won.’

‘Some victory.’ Trent mashed the heel of his palm into his eye. It was dry and aching. ‘There was a note with the finger. A concession. The gang agreed to halve their ransom demand if the Roux family paid them within thirty-six hours.’

‘So you had a breakthrough.’

‘A costly one. But yes, it was the progress we’d been waiting for. My advice was that we should push once more. Offer only half of the new amount. The gang would be as tired of the situation as we were. I sensed that they were looking for a speedy way out. Perhaps factions had developed among them. I believed we could turn this to our advantage.’

‘The family disagreed?’

‘They felt it was a risk too far. They’d suffered for eleven months. The prospect of ending their anguish, not to mention the suffering of their son, was too tempting.’

‘Understandable.’

‘Perhaps.’ Trent shrugged. ‘But by sending Viktor’s finger to his parents, the gang set in motion an unexpected consequence. Viktor’s mother lost all perspective. She couldn’t believe that the gang would release him without further harm. So she contacted the police without my knowledge. Without speaking to her husband.’ Trent reached out and gripped the colour photograph by its bottom edge. He turned it until the image was facing towards Alain. Pointed at Girard. ‘This man headed up a specialist anti-kidnap unit in the serious crime squad based in Nice. He came to the house with his team. He met with Viktor’s parents and he convinced them that it was possible for him to apprehend the gang during the ransom drop.’ Trent rolled his eyes. ‘He promised them justice.’

‘You didn’t believe him?’

‘I didn’t care. Catching the gang was irrelevant. A sideshow. I explained that the risk was too great. That they were in danger of undoing all our hard work. But Girard is a skilled detective. He’s good at offering reassurance. Once he begins to talk, it becomes difficult to doubt anything he says. And he had the Roux’s confidence. He was telling them everything they wanted to hear.’

‘What did you do?’

‘There wasn’t much I could do. It was out of my hands. I’m a consultant. An adviser. Like I told you, my clients make their own decisions. The Roux family made theirs. They went with Girard. The following morning, the gang sent instructions for the ransom drop. It was scheduled to take place at a disused warehouse on the outskirts of the city. Viktor’s father took a holdall with the necessary cash inside. That was my final victory. Girard had suggested a bag filled with dummy notes. I argued against it. If anything went wrong, the most dangerous thing would be for the gang to find that they’d been betrayed twice. Viktor’s father agreed with me.’

‘And since the man who called us yesterday was this Xavier character, I’m assuming something
did
go wrong.’

‘Very. Viktor’s father left the holdall exactly as he’d been instructed to. Ten minutes later, a van sped into the warehouse. There were two masked men inside. They went for the bag and Girard’s team moved in. But they bungled the takedown. They underestimated the people they were up against. The gang were heavily armed. Assault rifles. Shotguns. They got away. But not without consequences. Girard’s second-in-command was shot. Twice. She died at the scene.’  

‘They screwed up.’

‘Worse than you know. The dead officer was Girard’s lover. He was a mess. He blamed himself. A full investigation might have found him culpable, but he had a distinguished career behind him. A lot of good will. He quit within a week. No disciplinary charges.’

‘And the Roux kid?’

‘We heard nothing for three days. The situation could have gone either way. It was always a possibility that the gang might take revenge and kill him. That was what I feared would happen. But they chose a different outcome. On the third afternoon, Viktor walked in through the front door of the Roux’s home. He’d been released a few streets away. He was dishevelled and dehydrated and he’d lost a good deal of weight, but he was alive, at least.’

‘Because his father paid the gang. He followed your advice.’

Trent raised his eyebrows. ‘I think it helped. Certainly Viktor’s father credited me with the success. But the gang took their revenge for the police involvement all the same. Before they released Viktor, they hacked off his thumb. They returned him to his parents with the thumb in his pocket. No ice this time. Just a dirty rag. There was no hope of it being reattached.’

‘They left him mutilated.’

‘Physically, yes. But the real damage was psychological. His incarceration had been prolonged and the conditions he’d been held in had been vile. Like many victims, he blamed his family for not securing his release sooner. For almost a year, he’d heard only the gang’s version of events. They’d told him he would have been released much faster if his parents had complied with their demands.’

‘Stockholm Syndrome.’

‘Not exactly. He didn’t have any attachment to the men in Xavier’s gang. He hated them for what they’d done to him. But he struggled to forgive his parents, too. His father arranged for me to meet with him in the days following his return. It was supposed to be a debrief. Useful for me. It’s often a difficult time for the victim but usually they’re eager to assist. Not Viktor. He blamed me, too. So far as he was concerned, I’d failed him.’

Alain threw up a hand. ‘You can understand this, maybe.’

‘Of course. I didn’t push him. Just that brief exposure had shown me he was badly messed up. In the months that followed, his parents told me that he had nightmares he couldn’t shake. Traumas he couldn’t forget. He was diagnosed as suffering from acute anxiety disorders and depression. His parents arranged the best treatment money could buy. But if he made any progress, it was slow. He spent each day blaming them, terrified that the gang would come back. It was hard for him to feel he was truly free.’

‘It’s sad,’ Alain said. ‘I’m sorry for the boy. But it still doesn’t explain why you were talking to this man.’

‘I’m getting to that.’ Trent’s tone was sharp. ‘Like I said, Girard is a good detective. And he’s a reassuring figure. He impressed Viktor’s parents. They didn’t blame him for the bungled takedown. In fact, I’m pretty sure they felt that the threat posed to the gang by the police was one reason they let Viktor go.’ He shook his head, clearly mystified. ‘In the aftermath of his ordeal, Viktor’s father began to believe that his son would never truly recover unless the gang were apprehended. He claimed that if they were arrested and convicted, put behind bars, then his son might have a chance of rebuilding his life.’

‘It’s a little simplistic, I think.’

‘I thought so, too. But his parents were prepared to try anything, no matter how slim the chances of success. So they hired Girard, on a private basis. Viktor’s father offered him double his police salary, plus a significant bonus if he identified and apprehended Xavier’s gang. On the face of it, the idea was to bring the gang to justice. In reality, I think both men were seeking vengeance. M. Roux for his son. And Girard for his dead lover.’

Alain exhaled, long and low. He reached out a hand and claimed the photograph for himself. He held it before him, contemplating the craggy face of Luc Girard. The broken detective. The man who was seeking revenge on the killer of the woman he’d loved.

Trent said, ‘The reason I met with him this morning was to ask if he’d made any progress. To see if he had any clue as to where Xavier might be.’

Alain scowled. ‘And did he?’

‘He said no.’

‘He’s still looking?’

‘Every day. It’s not just his only case. It’s his life, now.’

‘But you didn’t tell him about Jérôme?’

Trent kept his voice level. He focused on not glancing away as he responded. ‘Not yet. But he’s not stupid. He wondered if I was involved in something related to the gang.’

‘What did you say?’

‘That I wasn’t in a position to tell him anything. Yet. But that if the situation changed, I’d be in touch.’

Alain dropped the photograph. He wrinkled his nose in a show of disgust. ‘The situation won’t change.’

‘He could help us. He might offer us an alternative way of releasing Jérôme.’

‘You say he’s had more than a year, yes?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And he hasn’t found this man. Plus, he made a mistake once already. He nearly cost the boy his life.’

‘It’s an option,’ Trent told him. ‘It’s something to consider.’

‘Do not meet with this man again.’ Alain stared at him, mouth set, brow furrowed. ‘No police.’

‘I told you, he’s freelance now.’

‘He’s police. That doesn’t change. And neither does my decision. Understand?’

The door to the study opened behind Alain. Stephanie passed through, cocking her head at his words. She was freshly showered and immaculately made up, her hair styled into a glamorous wave. She was wearing a blue silk blouse over beige trousers. The blouse was open at her neck and Trent could see that she had on a looped silver necklace. A solid silver pendant dangled from the chain. It was oval and reminded him of the locket Aimée had worn. Of his picture inside. He’d been a completely different individual when the photograph had been taken. He’d had no idea of the darkness that lay ahead for him. Of the lies he’d tell.

‘What decision?’ Stephanie asked. She sounded breezy and alert. There was no hint of the damaged individual Trent had been speaking to just half an hour before. ‘I thought we were making all our decisions as a group.’ She approached the desk, looking between Trent and Alain, assessing their watchful attitudes and their posturing. Gauging the tension in the room. She plucked the photograph from Alain’s grip. Studied it briefly. ‘What’s this? Who is this man?’

‘Tell her.’ Trent rolled his chair back from the desk and found his feet. He glanced down quickly and saw that the drawer appeared firmly closed. ‘I’m going for a walk,’ he said. ‘I need some air.’ He met Stephanie’s eyes as he circled the desk. They were wide and filled with light. It was almost possible to believe he hadn’t witnessed the dull torpor in them earlier. ‘The recording equipment is all set up,’ he said. ‘It’ll click in automatically. But you should stay by the phone. Better you answer it than the machine.’

Trent paced along the glazed corridor. Ahead of him, the door to Alain’s security room was closed. He slowed and scanned the ceiling for video cameras. Didn’t see any. Plus Alain hadn’t challenged him inside the study. He hadn’t demanded to know why Trent had been snooping through Jérôme’s desk drawers. It didn’t mean there was no internal surveillance. It was always possible that Alain was allowing him just enough rope to hang himself. But Trent was willing to take that chance.

He glanced back over his shoulder. Nobody there. He reached out and tried the handle. It rotated a short way but the door was definitely locked. No way through. He’d left his set of skeleton pass keys inside his satchel in the study but they’d be no good on a modern lock anyway.

Trent backed off and exited through the front door onto baking gravel. He could hear the babble of the fountain and smell the boggy odour of the recycled, aerated water. The plump cherub smiled his inane smile and stared blindly ahead. The sun beat down on the paintwork of Philippe’s sports car and the ruined Mercedes.

Trent was just debating which direction to try first when his thoughts were interrupted by a sudden thwack. He raised his head to see Philippe’s lean body twisted at the hip, golf club whipped forwards. It appeared that he was improving. The ball travelled high and far. Maybe it was the repetition. Maybe it was the booze. Either way, Trent intended to keep his distance.

He set off to his left, passing between the long garage building and the angular study. He didn’t glance inside towards Alain and Stephanie. He kept his eyes dead ahead and walked beyond the pathway that led around back to the swimming pool, emerging onto a small patio terrace. A plastic table and chairs were off to his right, a collapsed parasol poking up through the centre of the table. The cottage that had been built onto the back of the garage was modest and compact. There were two windows on either side of a glazed door and a lean-to conservatory on the far end.

A plump, grey-haired woman in a floral frock was pegging laundry to a clothesline outside. The housekeeper, Trent guessed. She was short and having to use a set of steps to reach the line. Her arms were swollen with fat, the skin bunched loosely at her wrists.

She sensed Trent watching her and her head snapped round. She gave him a wary look, her pudgy hands gripping the clothesline, a peg between her puckered lips.

Trent nodded a greeting, shielding his eyes against the sun flaring off the sheet.

The woman didn’t respond.

Trent asked himself if now would be a good time to walk over and show her the picture of Aimée from his wallet. He could enquire if Aimée’s face looked familiar to her, perhaps ask if she’d spotted anything unusual about Jérôme’s behaviour during the past couple of months.

But before he could make up his mind, it was already too late. The woman left the sheet hanging askew, a corner skimming the ground, and stepped down from her stool to waddle across to the cottage. She took one last searching look at Trent, as though mentally logging his features, then hurried around the far wall.

She’d be on her way to the house, Trent supposed. Reporting to Alain. Nothing he could do about it.

He marched on over the patio and across an expanse of neatly trimmed lawn, the grass scratching drily against his boots. It occurred to him that the estate must require some dedicated landscaping and maintenance. It was the kind of role that would be physically beyond the ageing housekeeper. Was it something Serge had been involved in? Or did somebody come in from outside? Trent made a mental note to raise the point with Alain.

He kept moving and covered something like two hundred metres before the grass became longer and thicker. He could see the perimeter fence up ahead for the first time and a grove of perhaps twenty olive trees just in front of it. The trees were young and green and looked to have been recently planted. The ground beneath them had been scraped back to bare, dusty earth, though it would be many years before the trees offered up any fruit worth cultivating.

Trent swivelled slowly, surveying the fall of the land and the line of the fence from left to right. There was no loose cluster of trees here. No sign of an isolated cabin.

He turned and hurried back the way he’d come, fighting the urge to jog. He circled around via the housekeeper’s conservatory, keeping his eyes down as he marched past the fountain and the cars and across the driveway, then on through the line of cypress trees, traversing the lawn to the right of the house, heading towards the treetops he’d spied early that morning.

The grass here was just as precisely cut, the ground every bit as level. He was starting to understand why Philippe had been tempted to occupy himself with Jérôme’s golfing equipment. Trent had played on eighteen-hole courses that weren’t nearly so manicured.

He walked on, upping his pace and covering some considerable distance before he turned and found that he could only just glimpse the pitch of the terracotta roof of the house behind him. He realised, with some surprise, that there was a gradual curve to the lawn, minor enough to fool the eye, then increasing to a recognisable slant. The grass became longer as it sloped downwards, mimicking the fringed rough on the golf course Trent had pictured in his mind. Long strands knotted round his toes and ankles so that he could feel the snag and tear as he moved. There were weeds here, and thorns and meadow flowers. Insects drifted up from below, dizzily circling his legs and waist, clouding around his clenched fists.

He was breathing hard. His face was flushed, his body filmed with sweat, his heart beating rapidly. Anxiety, he supposed. Adrenalin. He really didn’t want to be stopped before he’d found what he was searching for.

A scattering of trees lay ahead and he sensed he was close. He weaved through almond trees and lotus trees. Then the earth became drier and it wasn’t long before he found himself in a stand of aged pines, the soles of his feet sinking through drifts of dead needles, his toes punting hollow-sounding cones. The fence was perhaps thirty feet away. The chirrup of the cicadas in the undergrowth on the other side was loud and insistent, like a maddening samba beat.

There was a sort of clearing in front of him. A break in the trees. And in the centre of the space was the dilapidated shack he’d seen on the surveillance footage.

His first instinct was to search for the cameras. He’d come at the cottage from the side but the images he’d seen on the monitors had been taken from the front and rear. The trees were sparse and it didn’t take him long to spot the two devices. They were high up in some tall maritime pines. The trunks had been stripped of all possible hand and footholds until well above the height he might jump to. There was no way of reaching the cameras or of avoiding their gaze. And if the housekeeper had alerted Alain already, there was every chance he might be watching.

But Trent wasn’t prepared to quit. He wanted to get inside the cabin. There was a pale green stable door at the front and he approached it at speed, visualising himself hurrying through the first camera’s field of vision, then yanking down on the handle once he was in the middle of the shot.

The door was locked. He leaned his weight on it. Pulled the other way. There was some give. The frame looked old and wormholed. It was possible he could kick it through, but it would be difficult to explain why he’d felt the need to if he failed to find anything connected to Aimée.

Slatted wooden shutters guarded the low windows on either side of the door. The timber looked to be as warped as the doorframe and some of the boards were split. Trent approached the shutters to the left of the door, unfastened the rusted iron latch and eased them back against squealing hinges. He cleared away the clotted husk of a spider’s web and pressed his face to the blackened glass. The interior was concealed in darkness. He could just glimpse the ghostly outline of some furniture hidden beneath a few old dustsheets. Looked like a rickety table and chairs. Possibly a wardrobe or dresser.

The sash fitting was secured with some variety of internal clasp. It would be easier to force open than the door. It was a possibility, for sure.

‘There’s nothing in there, you know.’

Trent jumped and spun round in the direction of the voice to find Philippe standing in front of him.

He still had on his blue swimming shorts but he’d covered his torso with a white V-neck T-shirt. He was holding a golf club in his fist, the shaft propped on his shoulder. A sand wedge. Plenty of weight in the head. One solid swing would do a lot of damage.

Philippe adjusted his fingers on the rubber handle, setting them down one after the other, like a musician running through a scale on a flute.  

‘Why are you here?’ He lifted his chin and peered down his nose at Trent. ‘What are you looking for?’

‘There’s a possibility the gang might be watching the main house,’ Trent replied. ‘I thought it best to make sure nobody was inside.’

Philippe didn’t appear convinced. ‘It’s empty, apart from the rats and the spiders. Has been since my father bought this land. Originally it was going to be knocked down for a stable. Then
maman
decided she didn’t like horses any more.’

Trent nodded, wet his lips. He glanced at the golf club, then turned and pressed his face to the window once more. Cupped his hands round his eyes.

‘Who has the key?’ he asked.

‘Nobody. It’s only fit for knocking down. If you’re worried about intruders, you needn’t be. The fence is very secure. And besides,’ Philippe said, tapping Trent’s shoulder with the golf club, then pointing towards one of the cameras in the trees, ‘if anyone was out here, Alain would see.’

Trent sensed the double warning in his words. It was difficult to miss.

‘You seem very confident about that.’

‘My father is paranoid. The cameras see
everything
that happens here.’

Trent stared up into the unblinking lens. Felt himself shrink.

‘Why did you follow me?’

‘I didn’t,’ Philippe replied, as though insulted. ‘I was sent to fetch you. There’s been another call. They’re waiting to play you the recording.’