The Martyr's Curse (18 page)

‘Half Irish,’ Ben said. ‘They involved me when they shot a bunch of my friends. They opened that door. Not me. Now they’ll have to deal with what they find on the other side of it.’

‘You go anywhere near those people, they’ll gut and fillet you like a fish. They’ll nail you upside down to a wall and slice your balls off.’

‘We’ll have to see about that,’ Ben said.

‘These friends of yours, do they have names?’

‘They weren’t exactly the kind of people you’d have in your address book, Rollo. Not in your class.’

Rollo pursed his lips again and returned his attention to the gold bar. He picked it up in his long, thin hands, hefted it and turned it over under the light with a look of adoration.

‘Don’t get too attached,’ Ben said.

‘I don’t know how you think I can help you,’ Rollo said.

‘You’re in the business.’

Rollo put the bar down and looked up sharply. The crocodile expression was back. ‘That’s right, I am. I’m in the getting my fair share of what’s going around business. If I help you, there’s a price to pay. Especially if the Russians are involved.’

‘I told you what’s in it for you if you help me. You can still get around with the help of a stick, and you can still chew solid food.’

‘You’re not such a nice guy, are you?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

Rollo sighed. ‘All right. I can ask around. Give me forty-eight hours.’ He paused, caressed the gold bar as if it was a purring cat. ‘Leave this with me. I might need to show it to a couple of people.’

Ben shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t leave you alone with that for forty-eight seconds, Rollo. You can unglue your eyes from it, because this is the last you’ll see of it.’

‘We trade,’ Rollo said. ‘The information, for the bar.’

‘Don’t push me,’ Ben said. ‘That wasn’t the deal.’

Rollo laid four thin fingers across the top of the gold bar. ‘You put something like this on the table, that’s where it stays. You think you dictate terms around here, smart guy? Who the fuck do you think you are?’

Ben gazed steadily at him. He concentrated hard on putting as much meaning into his gaze as possible.
You’re a hair’s breadth from finding out exactly who I am. I’m the guy who’s going to break you in pieces.
It was a look of final warning. He was down to his last drop of patience. ‘The information. Now.’

‘Here’s some information for you,’ Rollo said. ‘You’re going to die, Hope.’

Chapter Twenty-Six

Rollo banged on the desk. Yelled, ‘Jean-Claude! Bruno!’

The office door burst in and crashed juddering against the wall. Behind it, one big hand splayed out like a battering ram, came the huge square-shouldered guy in the Slayer T-shirt. The bouncer. Behind him came another man who might have been his younger brother, an inch shorter and a foot wider, with a crab-apple face and an arrowhead haircut. Both had to duck for the doorway and turn a little sideways to squeeze their bulk through it. Once inside the room, the tops of their heads were lost in the cigar haze that covered the ceiling, like mountain peaks shrouded in cloud. Between them they carried about four times Ben’s weight in lard and muscle. They must have been standing right outside the door, waiting for the order from their boss. It seemed a little too prearranged for Ben’s liking.

‘Kill this fucker for me,’ Rollo told them, with a wave of his hand.

Ben didn’t much like the look of what they’d brought with them either. Slayer reached into his back pocket and yanked out a length of slim steel chain that he held in both fists and stretched out taut, like a garrotte. Little Brother was clutching a double-barrelled shotgun that had been sawn off at both ends to make a pistol out of it, eighteen inches long. The kind of idiot weapon that could kill everyone in the room with its indiscriminate spray.

Ben would have liked to get the gun off him as a matter of priority, but Slayer was standing in the way, snapping the chain tight in his fists and looking as if he could twist a man’s head off with it. Which, Ben understood, was probably the case. All the more reason for not letting the chain get around his neck. He could worry about the shotgun afterwards. If there was an afterwards.

Ben flexed his legs into a fighting crouch, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He circled his fists like a boxer and threw an upward punch at Slayer’s face. Slayer saw it coming and ducked his head back, and the punch fell short. But it was meant to. Its purpose was just to draw the guy’s attention to what Ben’s upper body was doing. Slayer’s little pig eyes were fixed on Ben’s moving fists, which was where Ben wanted them. He’d see a punch coming, but not what was following it. A certain kind of bar-room brawler always seemed to forget that the strongest limbs of the human body weren’t the arms, no matter how muscle-bound they might be. Ben bounced once, twice, then launched a kick into Slayer’s groin. He rotated all his energy and weight into it. The toe of his boot connected like a baseball bat with soft flesh, and Ben knew it was a good one. Slayer’s big fleshy jaw dropped open and the piggy eyes widened in pain and shock. The chain jangled out of his fists and he fell to his knees. So far the fight had lasted about two seconds.

A certain kind of bar-room brawler also liked to shave his head, to prevent an opponent from grabbing a handful of it to their advantage in a fight. Which made good tactical sense to Ben. But what he’d never been able to understand was why those same guys often sported goatee beards. Maybe they thought it made them look wicked and intimidating. To Ben, they just looked like a convenient handle, an alternative way of grabbing someone’s head that defeated the whole object of the shaven head thing. As Slayer fell to his knees, and before the howl of pain had burst from his lips, Ben took hold of the goatee with his left hand. It was rigid with hairspray, like a strange black horn attached to the guy’s chin, forming part of his jawbone. Ben gripped it tightly and jerked it hard towards the floor, plunging Slayer’s head violently downwards straight into Ben’s rising right kneecap. Another hard impact, this time not against soft flesh. Bone on bone, and Ben’s knee was considerably more solid than Slayer’s face. He felt the crunch as the guy’s nose burst all over the place. Ben let him flop to the floor and stamped on the back of his head. A little disincentive to stop him from getting up again too soon.

Four seconds into the fight, one down, one to go.

Little Brother’s red face was contorted with rage. He raised the shotgun, teeth bared. Then realised that his boss was directly behind Ben and right in the field of fire. He hesitated, began to shuffle sideways to get a clear shot at Ben, but he was slow. Much slower than Rollo, who was jumping out of his chair with surprising speed and hustling around the side of the desk towards the open door. Ben would have blocked his exit, but he had to do something about the shotgun before Little Brother realised he had a clear shot. Ben’s hand whipped back behind his right hip and tore out of his belt the nickel-plated Beretta nine-millimetre he’d taken from Eriq. He brought it up faster than Little Brother could get the shotgun aimed. Flicked off the safety as he swung it, and was about to yell at Little Brother to drop the shotgun when Eriq Sabatier saw his chance and launched his wiry frame out of the chair in the corner to try and make a grab for the pistol in Ben’s hand.

Ben clubbed Eriq in the face with it and sent him sprawling into Little Brother. Eriq was no heavyweight, but the force of the impact knocked the shotgun off course just as Little Brother was squeezing the trigger. It went off like a bomb detonating inside the office. Blasted a broad furrow out of the top of the desk and blew apart the leather chair Eriq had been sitting in. Ben felt the heat of the muzzle flash and the pain of the deafening noise lance his eardrums. With no shoulder stock to cushion the gun against the shooter’s body mass, and most of the counterbalancing weight of the steel of the barrels cut away from the front, the sawn-off twelve-bore was virtually uncontrollable in recoil. All brute force and no finesse, like the ape holding it. Even the strongest hands couldn’t stop it from bucking violently upwards with the power of the blast.

Before Little Brother could get back on target for a second shot, Ben was on him, gained control of the weapon and swept his squat, thick legs out from under him with a scything kick.

Gravity did the rest. Little Brother went down faster and harder than his elder sibling had. Ben kicked him again before he could scramble upright, a single brutal blow just behind the ear. Not hard enough to tear his head off and launch it into the far wall, but he wouldn’t be back on his feet for a while either. He heaved once and went slack and inert on the floor.

Eriq was backing away, showing Ben his palms and shaking his head in supplication, as if to say ‘Please, don’t hurt me’.

Ben wasn’t interested in Eriq. Rollo was gone. Ben trampled over the slumped mound of Little Brother to get to the door, hurried out into the passage beyond and saw one of the side doors hanging open. Through it, he could see brick wall. An alleyway running along the back of the strip club. He ran to the exit. No sign of Rollo. He could move fast for a crippled guy, and there were a dozen ways he could have gone. There was no point in going after him. An uncomfortable feeling was growing on Ben that Rollo couldn’t help him anyway.

‘Damn,’ Ben muttered.

Back inside the office, Eriq Sabatier went down on his knees, pleading for his life. Ben stepped over the unconscious bodies of Bruno and Jean-Claude, whichever was which. He raised the Beretta and pointed it at Eriq’s head. If the blast of a twelve-bore wasn’t raising any alarms thanks to the blare of the music next door, then the comparatively quieter snap of a nine-millimetre wasn’t going to draw attention either.

‘Please,’ Eriq said.

Ben hesitated with his finger on the trigger. Saw the bodies of his dead friends. Saw the look on Roby’s face as he died.

Then he looked at the pitiful crook kneeling in front of him. The guy was guilty of a thousand crimes. But not that one.

Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.

And in any case, Ben wasn’t going to bring down the Marseille crime scene with a single bullet. This wasn’t his war.

So instead he just clubbed Eriq over the head with the pistol, and knocked him out. He slipped the gun back in his belt. Picked the gold bar off the desk and turned to the two unconscious heavies and used the bar edge-on to break all sixteen of their fingers. Just in case of repercussions, and it did the job better than a pistol butt or the heel of his boot. Rollo wasn’t the most forgiving kind of person. Now, whenever he came skulking back thinking the coast was clear, he’d find he had some extra personnel issues to consider. These two would be in plaster for a while.

Ben’s hands were shaking a little and he was breathing hard as he replaced the gold bar in his bag. It had been a long time since he’d been in a real fight. The adrenalin was still rushing through his system. His right trouser knee was wet with blood from Slayer’s mashed nose, and inside his right boot the toes were tingling from the hard kicks and would feel tender later. No other damage, but he’d risked serious hurt for nothing by coming here. He’d wasted time and he was annoyed with himself.

He stepped behind the desk to the big steel safe that Rollo had abandoned in his haste to get away. Opened the door wider. There was a lot of cash in there, bundled bricks of well-worn hundred-euro notes. Fifty to a brick. Five thousand euros. Forty bricks, in four columns of ten each. In total, something approaching the value of the gold bar. Ben lifted out half the cash and crammed it into his bag. Call it expenses money. At least his visit to Club Paradis hadn’t been entirely pointless.

He left the place the way he’d come in, through the crowd and past the girls, with the heavy, bulging bag on his shoulder. Nobody paid any attention. He stepped outside into the night, took a deep breath of the sultry air and raised his face towards the churning clouds. The electricity in the atmosphere was reaching its peak, voltage mounting for the storm. He felt the first splat of warm rain on his face. As he started walking back towards the Hummer, it was followed by another, then another; then the murky sky let go and the deluge came down. It soaked his clothes and trickled through his hair. Within moments the pavements were slick and glistening, neon lights reflected under his feet as he walked. Thunder growled and boomed high above. He didn’t try to hurry out of the rain. He had no idea where to go next.

That was when he felt the buzzing vibration of the phone going off inside his pocket.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

He reached for the phone, thinking at first that it was Rollo calling Eriq to find out what was happening and whether it was safe to come crawling back to Club Paradis. But it wasn’t Eriq’s phone that was ringing. It was the one Ben had taken from the dead man at the monastery.

Ben hit the reply button and pressed the phone to his ear, standing still in the pouring rain. This had to be the call he’d been hoping for from Luc Simon at Interpol. It was nearly midnight, but Luc worked crazy hours. He’d sacrificed his marriage for it.

The caller wasn’t Luc Simon.

Instead Ben heard a woman’s voice, speaking English with the typical transatlantic accent of a bilingual European, as if she’d learned most of the language from watching American movies. She sounded anxious and relieved, both at once. Talking low, like someone afraid of being overheard. ‘Dexter? It’s … it’s Michelle. Are you okay? Thank Christ. I was so scared, then when you called … Dexter? Talk to me.’

Ben hesitated, realising that his mystery caller must be one of the contacts he’d tried on the dead man’s phone before, returning the call. His pulse quickened as his mind flashed through the possibilities. It could be someone trying to find out who’d taken the phone. Alternatively, it could be someone who didn’t know the guy was dead. Or it could just be the guy’s wife or girlfriend calling him. But then, what did she have to sound so nervous about?

He thought hard, knowing he had to make some kind of reply. Seconds counted. The name Dexter could be a first name or a surname. Either way, it wasn’t French. It could be British, or American. He cupped his hand over his mouth. Put on a hoarse voice and an accent that was as neutral as he could make it. It was going to be tricky. One slip, and he’d lose her.