Lost (20 page)

Garetta grabbed hold of his sweatshirt at the neck. Karim could feel how the weed had taken the edge off his reflexes. He looked back into Garetta’s eyes while all his nerves hummed uselessly.

Suddenly Garetta let go of him. Karim turned round and saw Denis sitting up in his sleeping bag, watching them.

‘Denis,’ Karim said. ‘Okay. Now we can all have a talk.’

‘You can talk,’ Garetta told them, walking off into the hut. ‘I’m going to sleep.’

Karim watched him go, aware that he had lost.

‘It’s this place,’ he said, turning to Denis. ‘What the fuck are we doing here, anyway? What was Coco thinking of when he hired this lunatic?’ He smoothed out his sweatshirt. It was white, with the word ‘Thermocooler’ printed in black sci-fi letters across the front. He had not seen the point of it when Nadia had given it to him and he had been angry. Now he stroked it lovingly. ‘I mean what is this shit about the oppressed?’ He looked at Denis’s patient face and made a decision. ‘I’m calling Santini.’ He clicked his fingers at Denis for the phone that was in Denis’s jacket.

‘You can’t.’

Denis was still sitting up, his legs trapped in his sleeping bag. Karim strode towards him and punched him hard on the upper arm, right on the nerve. It took a few seconds for the pain to show on Denis’s face.

‘Give me the phone.’

Denis clutched his shoulder and with his free hand found the phone. Karim leaned down and snatched it from him.

‘I’m a professional,’ he said. ‘I haven’t kept clear of those nutcases in the FNL all this time just to end up in some
headbanger
’s
fantasy.’ He punched out the number of Evelyne’s mobile. ‘The mother offered to give him nine million straight up,’ he told Denis. ‘He should have taken it then seen about the rest. We’d still have the kid, but at least we’d have some cash.’

‘It’d be a risk collecting the money,’ Denis said.

Karim ignored him.

‘Pick it up, pick it up, Evelyne.’

‘It’s the middle of the night,’ Denis said.

‘Shut up, Denis.’

Karim called the main number for the villa and waited. It rang seven times, then Evelyne answered.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s me.’

There was a pause, then Santini’s voice.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s me.’

‘Don’t call here.’

‘Wait!’ Karim shouted. He was still there. ‘Call me from a clean phone. It’s important.’

Karim heard Santini’s breath in the mouthpiece. Then a kind of grunt, which Karim knew was acquiescence. He hung up and began to pace while he waited. Santini was being watched but he’d think of something. Karim smiled at Denis triumphantly then went over to his own bedroll to make up his bed. How could Garetta sleep in that stinking hut? Karim climbed into his sleeping bag and lay back clutching the phone. It was good to know that Santini’s voice could reach him up here in this shithole.

The bathwater had begun to cool and tiny air bubbles had settled on Alice’s skin. Here in the water she could get through the night. Her sternum was red from trying to rub away the pain in her chest. In the water, she could feel her heart, the poor beating thing, for the hanging sac of blood that it was. The tap, dripping slowly on to her left foot, was a more soothing pulse on which she could focus.

She sank beneath the water, tilting back her head. When she was beneath the surface she believed Sam was alive. Underwater she found a preternatural logic. Their bond was inviolable. She was his mother. So long as she was here, so was he.

She came up and gasped for air. The bubbles on her skin had gone. She added more hot water. She recalled the kidnapper’s voice, the calm brutality in it. He had not let her speak to Sam and she had not been afraid then, only very angry. Now she was afraid and she began to sob. She reached forward, turned off the tap and sat clutching her knees, weeping. She sobbed deeply, begging it not to happen. ‘Mummy,’ she said. ‘Please help me.’

She lay back and let her tears subside underwater. She was the mother. No one could rescue her. She was the one.

When she came up again she was calm. She looked down at her body in the water. She had always felt towards it a detached appreciation, as though it did not belong to her but was on loan. Mathieu had made love to her as though he too believed that her body was beside the point. She closed her eyes and ran her fingers up the middle of her abdomen and between her breasts. She opened her eyes and looked at her hands on her breasts, the long fingers not quite able to
contain them. She thought of Stuart, downstairs in the kitchen. His love for her filled the house. She saw his head resting on her breasts, kissing away her fingers. She saw his hair, wet from the bath.

Downstairs Stuart opened his eyes and reached for the alarm clock on the floor beside the bed. It was 5 a.m. He had been asleep for less than two hours. Accustomed as he was to a hollow, dreamless sleep, the sensation of the dream now slipping through his mind was a little unpleasant. He got up, put on his underpants and opened the shutters, then the French windows, and stepped on to the wet grass. There seemed to be no light in the sky and yet the garden was so sharply defined, the pine trees on the lawn looked like cut-outs. All was too still and too luminous and Stuart felt as though he had burst in on the natural world while it was undergoing some secret mutation. He went back in to dress, leaving footprints of dew
on Constance Colonna’s parquet floor.

He made his bed, his throat burning from the packet of cigarettes he had smoked in the night to keep himself awake. It was good to be smoking again. He picked up his watch from the side-table. He was aware that he was running out of time: Mesguish was filing a report to Central Office about his treatment of the case. The idea of losing his job did not alarm him. Only Gérard’s distress, carefully dissimulated over the phone, had bothered him. He recalled his deputy’s plaintive tenor: ‘Be careful, Stuart. He can do you a lot of damage.’

‘It’s much too late for that.’

He went into the kitchen. The room was quiet and filled with the bizarre grey glow of dawn. He did not turn on the light. He poured a mountain of coffee into the filter and turned on the machine. That night he had sat here, at the table with Alice, waiting for the call. She had drunk whisky and he had smoked. She had talked to him – about her son mostly, about his problems at school and with other children. She had been so careful not to talk about herself and he had still heard
the anguish in her. He had been careful himself – careful not to look at her, because he knew if he did, his eyes would make some impossible request. At 2 a.m. the call had come and she had stood up and walked calmly over to the phone on the wall. When he nodded, she had picked it up. She was composed and determined and he had wondered if it was the whisky. He had feared that the strange energy would subside in the night and leave her with the knowledge that her son was further, much further, from reach.

‘Stuart.’ He spun round. She was standing in the doorway. ‘The water. You forgot the water.’

The coffee machine was spitting and smelled of roasting metal. Alice sat down at the table. Her hair was wet.

‘It’s early,’ he said, filling the machine with water. She was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. Her face looked different in the morning; he thought he could see the child in her. She sat with her bare arms folded on the table.

‘Do you want some coffee?’ he asked.

‘Please.’

He could see that the energy was still there. He felt a sudden urge to smile and he turned his back on her to watch the coffee machine.

‘Did you sleep?’ she asked.

‘A little.’ Stuart’s dream came and went. He turned round. ‘You?’

She nodded.

He touched his forehead: ‘Your head okay?’

She ran her fingers over the bruise.

‘It’s fine.’ She scratched her arm. ‘Do you think they’ll take the money?’

Perhaps this was her making conversation.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do.’

She stared at him, but this time he did not look away. Her face flushed and he saw her swallow. She looked down and he thought she might cry.

He took what coffee there was, found two cups and set them
on the table. She watched him pour, still scratching her arm.

‘Mosquitoes,’ she said.

He sat down beside her. She took a sip of coffee.

‘When the next call comes you tell them you’re finding the rest,’ he said. ‘Keep the tone you had last night. It was good.’

She put the cup down and listened. There again was the child in her. She must have always done everything right in her life; hence the question he sometimes caught in her eyes: What have I done?

‘They’ll only consider negotiating with someone who’s in control,’ he went on. She considered this a moment, then drained her cup. ‘You take your car to Santini’s,’ he said. ‘Like we said. I’ll be waiting outside. You won’t see me, but I’ll be there.’

She nodded.

‘Make him feel you’re depending on him. Maintain whatever thrill he’s getting out of helping you.’

Stuart regretted the tenor of the remark, but her expression did not change. He could see the faint stripe running down the middle of her smooth forehead, a shadow of the vein that marked her distress.

‘You think he’s killed two people in one week. First the kidnapper and then the junkie.’

‘I do.’ He finished his coffee, now cold. He was aware of her watching him.

‘Your colleague, Paul,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t like women very much, does he?’

Stuart looked at the freckle on her lip and then turned away.

‘I’ve never thought about it. You may be right. Yes. You’re right.’

‘They admire you,’ she said.

Stuart realised that she pitied him. He smiled, stood up and took the cups to the sink.

‘I’ll go and get dressed,’ she said.

He nodded, keeping his back to her as she left the room.

At six Gérard came for his shift. As Stuart climbed into his car, Alice appeared just behind him. She was barefoot on the gravel path. She rested her hands on the open window. She was wearing the same blue dress she had worn when they met.

‘Will you call me straight after Santini’s?’ she asked.

‘Of course.’

He turned the ignition key and she stepped back. In his wing mirror he watched her turn and walk towards the house. As he drove out through the iron gates he felt a sense of purpose entirely unfamiliar to him.

On the way down the hill he called Christine Lasserre. He had begun to feel uncomfortable every time he thought of her and was about to hang up when he heard her voice.

‘Madame.’

‘Where have you been?’ Her voice was low and calm. Stuart wound up the window. He still did not know how much he would tell her.

‘Did you get the report from ballistics?’ he asked.

‘Yes. What are you doing, Stuart?’

‘Going into the office.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘The new kidnappers called last night at two a.m. They asked for thirty million.’

Lasserre was silent.

‘This is quite a different case,’ she said at last.

‘Why? Why is it different? It’s the same case.’

‘What’s the matter with you, Stuart?’

‘Nothing.’

There was another pause.

‘Do you have anything on the first group?’

‘The boat was dumped in Rimini. The Italians are looking for two members of the Camora. Brothers.’

‘Do we know them?’

‘No.’

‘Do you trust the Italians?’

‘Yes. We have a good relationship. It’s one of the things
that’s been held against me, my relationship with the Italians.’

‘Stuart, could you talk to me as if I weren’t your enemy for a moment? It’s very tiring. I’d like to know what you think.’

‘You know what I think.’

‘Tell me again,’ she said.

‘Where’s Mesguish?’

‘At the commissariat. Awaiting your instructions. Like the rest of us.’

‘Did you see his report?’

‘I did.’ She paused but Stuart kept quiet. ‘He wants Central Office to transfer the case to Paris. Zanetecci is seriously considering it.’

‘So what’s stopping them?’

‘I am.’

‘Why?’

‘Stop being childish. Your job is to keep me informed.’

Stuart hesitated. He was too isolated without Lasserre.

He took the short-cut through the industrial zone in the eastern suburbs of Massaccio. Ahead of him was a huge grain silo like a great pink cathedral in the dawn sun.

‘We picked up a conversation between Madame Aron and Santini,’ he told her.

‘What do you mean “picked up”?’

‘On the scanner.’

‘So it can’t be used,’ she said wearily.

‘No.’

‘And?’ she said.

‘He told her not to worry. That he thought he knew who had Sam.’

‘When?’ she asked.

‘Just before we discovered Mickey.’

‘What were his exact words?’

‘He said, “I think we might have them.”’

‘Too ambiguous. You can’t use it anyway,’ she said.

‘Santini’s lent the woman nine million francs.’

‘What did he do that for?’

‘He … He likes her.’

Lasserre let him wait.

‘You think Santini had da Cruz killed, then took over the kidnapping using some of his people.’ Stuart saw her sitting there fingering that pendant of hers. ‘Why?’

‘He’s in trouble. The FNL are all over the place. They’re taking over some of the best clubs.’

Stuart knew how unconvincing he sounded. He looked at the palm trees along the seafront and wound down the window. The air was close and there was no wind.

‘You think he’s behind the new group, don’t you?’

Stuart did not answer.

‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes,’ he said. He hoped she would go on.

‘You opened a new file for the bombing. Why was that? Did you think it was linked?’

‘No.’

‘Do you now?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to link them anyway. It just reduces our options.’

‘What are you hiding, Stuart? I’m bored of guessing.’

It was good to talk to somebody.

‘I had Raymond in custody in connection with the bombing. As soon as I let him out someone went in and administered a rhinoceros’s fix of pure heroin. He was sleeping with Santini’s daughter.’

Lasserre whistled.

‘He’s careful. You’ll never get him for something like that.’

‘We can squeeze him, though.’

‘Probably not. Listen, Stuart. Use Lopez. Get him to do a story on Raymond.’

‘Lopez is scared,’ he said.

‘Send him to me.’

‘All right.’ He opened the compound gates and drove through. ‘I’m here.’

‘Good. Keep me informed, Stuart. I’m on your side.’

He hung up. As he opened the door of his car he heard the phone ringing in his office. He ran across the compound and up the steps. He punched out the door code. The ringing stopped.

The Cesari boy was in the hall, standing beside the coffee machine waiting for it to deliver. He had been on night shift, monitoring calls. The boy plucked the plastic cup from the machine and held it out to Stuart.

‘No. You have it.’ The boy hesitated. ‘How was your night?’ Stuart asked him. ‘Did you manage to get anywhere with that call?’

The boy’s face brightened.

‘It’s a mobile. I got the area. But it’s quite large.’

‘Where is it?’

‘In the hills behind the Palomba Rossa. The relay covers about fifty square kilometres. It’s mountainous, though, so Telecom can eliminate the areas that are unreachable.’

‘Call Fabrice,’ Stuart said. ‘He knows someone straight at Telecom. I’ve forgotten his name.’

‘Commissaire Mesguish called just before you arrived. He’s coming at eight-thirty.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Someone called Santini at two-twenty a.m.’

Stuart stared at Cesari.

‘Where?’

‘At the villa.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Cesari raised his arms and dropped them hopelessly at his sides.

‘Sorry, Commissaire. I didn’t know …’

‘Did you recognise them?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘No one you’ve ever heard before?’

‘No.’ The Cesari boy looked worried.

‘Can I hear it?’

‘Yes, of course.’ The boy led the way, but the phone began
to ring again. ‘Commissaire,’ he said as Stuart turned away. ‘I’m sorry about the other day. I don’t know how we lost him.’

‘Forget it,’ Stuart said, heading towards his office. ‘He’s easy to lose.’

But it was not his number that was ringing: it was not Alice. He picked up the switchboard phone on Annie’s desk and pressed line one. The woman’s voice was familiar.

‘Who is it?’

Cesari was pointing at the ceiling to indicate that he was going back to the recording suite. Stuart nodded at him and watched him disappear through the swing doors. ‘Who is this?’

‘Search his villa,’ the woman was saying. ‘Le Losange.’

‘Is that you, Babette?’

‘There’s a cache there.’