by James Easton
“OK, I can speak.”
“So this came back from the French quickly. What martial arts did this guy deploy? I know it was dark, but can you say anything on that?”
“It was mixed. I can remember his feet sliding on the ground when he came in. Some kickboxing styles employ a lot of side slipping, when you lead with one leg and change the angle with the back leg so the next move is unexpected. He was doing that.”
“OK. Anything else?”
“Russian Sambo, maybe. The way he held my right shoulder and used his left knee. That’s it.”
She hung up and picked up her English book in the dark. Feeling like she should try to do something. But she started thinking about Berg.
He fought like he was trying to play rugby, starting the whole unnecessary thing by trying to bring the guy down instead of letting him leave, and wasn’t any use when it came to it. But she found it endearing, not annoying. They were in one piece. It was over too fast to be rattled, maybe. It had given them some interesting information. But mainly it was Berg. Home-made vodka, home-grown grass, bad at business, bad at fighting, buns of steel and magic hands.
There was a knock on the door. Berg, with pilsners. “I thought I could watch TV if you want another bath.”
Berg’s tone was nervous. She switched the lights off at the wall, stood back and let him in, taking the beers as he passed. The uplighters outside gave enough to make out the bruise over his eye. She nodded at the armchair, still where he’d left it, and felt him watching her as she opened the beers. She gave one to him and sat on the corner of the bed.
“Like I said, Morzine’s full of bad guys.”
“You’re telling me,” he said.
She looked at the snow softly falling and catching the lights outside, listing in patterns you’d never quite see again.
“But it’s just us here.”
Berg nodded.
“I don’t want another bath,” she said.
Berg seemed to be receiving the message. “Oh.”
“And there’s nothing we’d watch on TV.”
“No.”
“So, we can jump over that part.”
She stood up and slipped her leggings off, the way she had been before. Berg looking at her legs, the way he had before.
“Take your shirt off.”
She watched him do it. Held his gaze and let her black cotton basics slide down her legs. Leant over him. Kissed him. Berg slipped his hands under her shirt.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Four a.m. the next morning. Max moved the site from the lake up to the first bend he’d looked at in the hills. When his men were in position, Max took the interface and rifles and buried them separately in the deep snow by the side of the road. Over three million dollars’ worth of kit in the ground.
The sky was still bright with stars, and you could see the mountains that had been hidden by the clouds up here yesterday, with their great drifts of snow and patches of black rock in between. He didn’t know why the snow didn’t cover all the rock.
He was still wondering about it when Rédoine called. Max told him where to go then told everyone to get ready. He moved his own car to the layby on the corner of the main eastern slope of the mountain. Rédoine would park on the opposite side.
Max got out of his car and moved down the big, open slope, hurrying to where he wanted to be, a clump of conifers where he would watch things. He was going to come up when Rédoine was there and his guys had said it was clear. There was the part of the bank he was on, the road, and his four men up on the next part of the slope. They all had night vision sights or telescopes. He wasn’t being caught alone as he had the day before.
Max heard Rédoine’s car pull up opposite his and called him, starting to move up to where he’d left the goods. His car formed a screen for him anyway, but he was still below the level of the road.
“I’ll be there in two minutes.”
“OK. We’ll wait.”
“We?”
“My man, my protection.”
“Not you?”
“Max, I’m not letting you see me.”
“What the hell, Rédoine?”
He heard a helicopter. Max turned and looked at the pale mountains, thought he heard it from there but couldn’t see it. What the hell? It was close, suddenly. Like nothing he’d ever heard, to be on them so quickly. Then the voices came over a broadcast system.
“Drop your weapons and raise your hands!”
They were coming from the north over the ground as well. It was GIGN. They’d hidden where the plateau gave way and the road moved down, invisible to his guys.
A car door slammed, and a man came over the lip of the road toward him. He was armed and fluidly knelt and fired two rounds. Max could see him almost like an apparition under the moon. He’d seen him two nights ago by the door in that restaurant. He’d been looking at Max. This was Rédoine’s guy. Had to be. The man came at him now, raised his weapon. Thinking Max was GIGN. Max drew, said, “No, Sylvestre, no!
They both fired. Sylvestre dropped to his knees. Max fired again, to finish him, turned and ran.
It was like the day before, only downhill and without any idea where it was heading. The helicopter was overhead, the sound all he could hear. Max ran so his lungs were bursting, cutting left, knowing Avoriaz was over there somewhere. His best chance lay there. He’d been going maybe two hundred metres when he heard a battle erupt behind him. Fuck. Rafa’s guys shooting at GIGN. Christ. That was suicide. He looked over his shoulder and stumbled, went into a tree, and felt something go into his ear. Piercing it. His feet slipped out, and the branch ripped the top of his ear as he went down.
It was agony. Max grabbed snow and held it to his ear and kept rolling away from the noises, feeling blood flowing down his sleeve. The snow was in the neck of his jacket, the cold like a burn. He moved faster, fear and second wind and the agony in his ear keeping him upright and motoring. He saw lights in the distance. He got into some trees. He had a signal. He called Eric.
“Eric, we’re in the shit.”
“Again?! My God, Max, putain! Why do you keep screwing up?”
“Listen you little bastard, I’m on a hill with my ear ripped off, and I just shot Rédoine’s bodyguard in a meet I engineered. I need you. The kit’s back there, I buried it.”
There was a pause. “Where?”
Max told him. Eric was responding now, said he’d come. He sounded confident. “Eric Scandella is not known to the cops, my friend. I’ll try and drive through there.”
They agreed on a place to meet in Avoriaz. Max suppressed his fear and moved into the trees. He dumped his weapon under a rock. If GIGN saw him carrying it, they would take his head off. He spat, the calm returning now. How far had he come? He checked his phone battery. The torch took a lot of power, but he needed it in these trees. It was OK, over half left. But it was a long day ahead, and he didn’t know how long he’d be out here. He braced himself. Turned the torch off, then with one arm across his eyes, he started to push to where he remembered the lights of Avoriaz were.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Henri Lange dreamed his wife was calling to tell him she was outside the door. But when he flailed, half-asleep still, for his phone, it was just Eric.
“Ciao Henri.”
“Yeah, where are you?”
“Driving from Avoriaz.”
“It’s five-forty.”
“We have a problem. Have you got your doctor bag?”
“I don’t have one of those, Eric. What is it?”
“Max.”
“What’s happened?”
“His ear.”
“What’s the problem?”
“It is not good.”
“I gathered that. Describe it to me.”
“I sent you a photo.”
Henri’s phone buzzed. He looked.
“Shit.”
“Shit? What does that mean, ‘shit’?”
“It’s, hmm. I’ve got some st
uff for if the kids were hurt ever. Let me see. Just come.”
Henri got up and fetched two plastic storage boxes from the utility room. He took some things from the bathroom cabinet, then went to one of the cupboards in the kitchen and took down a first aid kit, and laid out the dressings. Then he went and showered, cleaned his teeth, and made a four-egg omelette with a little Comté cheese. As it finished, the pan off the heat to avoid overcooking, Henri prepared an eight-cup cafetiere of coffee. He had breakfast thinking of the lobe, what was left of the cartilage, how to disguise the repair, whether there would be any tissue loss and, from what he’d seen, if he could do it without a general anaesthetic. He wondered also whether Eric had got himself involved in any rough stuff, feeling some level of concern for the guy. Which was odd, because if Eric died up some mountain here, Henri’s debt problems would be at an end. But he’d developed a weird kind of liking for him even if it was based on debt relief in exchange for stories about non-existent women’s breasts.
Henri put on a clean shirt, then scrubbed the kitchen table and set an anglepoise lamp on it.
Max walked in carefully. He had caked blood down his neck and on his wrist.
“OK, so I know it hurts like a bitch. Sit down, leave it to me,” said Henri, projecting as much calm as he could at the injured hood. Max had pressed a scarf into the wound and the torn structure of the ear was clogged with blue wool and almost black areas of drying blood.
“Max, I have to operate if you want me to do it. Or we take you to a hospital, with some excuse, I guess.”
“Operate how?”
“I clean it to see everything, then put it back together. I might need a plug of skin from somewhere else. And, even if we are lucky, it will look a little untidy. I’ve got something to make you sleepy, can give it a big local. Maybe it won’t hurt.”
“Can I get a drink?”
“The opiate will do that for you.”
He nodded. “OK. I call Jean.”
“Sure. Eric, would you like to assist? After your croissant, of course.”
Robin woke up and realised she was in bed alone. She heard Jean’s voice. It was the video playing on a laptop. She got dressed and went through to see him. He’d fallen asleep with his head resting on the back of the sofa. She sat next to him and watched the footage.
“All of France is like this,” he said, his eyes full of pain. “Everywhere are children with no parents, no home, no money. Well, one of them has struck back, and taken back.”
“Are you Robin Hood then? Trying to even the score?” Her voice still sounded good, slightly removed, and cynical, not in the least captured by his spell. She had to avoid giving the world that impression, at all costs.
“I am trying to live. Only that. Taste life. I call that striking back. Do you think some stupid office then a pensioners’ home is life? They hate me because I would not take it. I chose freedom. Not what the system expects. If everyone thought like me, there would be no problems.”
Robin paused the film, trying not to laugh. She felt there would probably be an awful lot of problems if everyone thought like Jean. His mouth had fallen open slightly. She resisted the urge to wake him up and just looked at him. She found she was wondering how on earth they could be together and it hurt suddenly and she moved away from him.
She’d really hit him last night, and he hadn’t flinched. There was nothing violent in him at all. He’d merely made a joke in response. What had happened to him to be able to take full-on slaps, almost punches, full in the face and just look at her, trying to understand her anger. It was crazy, but Jean was gentle.
She leant against the corridor wall, out of sight should he wake up. She closed her eyes, trying to understand her feelings.
She thought, I’m Robin King, and I am sleeping with an armed robber who tied me up while he went out for a few hours. It’s the flip side of the other thing, how I’ve always been bored shitless with everything and push it because it’s all nothing. And Jean found me in Cannes, and I’m in love with him. I can’t be in love with him, but I am.
Everything was tearing at her. What she wanted. What she’d be leaving behind if she actually got what she wanted, which was him. Wanting things made you real, and she was more real - more alive - with him than anyone or anything she’d ever experienced. She was torn by everything she didn’t know about him, too. The fact she didn’t care about not knowing it.
Even with those feelings raging, she felt her calculating self return. She told herself to play it cool. Let him go, then decide what to do when she’d sorted her mind out. She wondered if he thought of the future. A picture came to her of nights on a beach, maybe writing for a living. She could write. They’d be fine. How much money did you need, anyway? Wasn’t being filled up with someone who could protect you better?
He was a criminal.
It was crazy.
She walked through the bedroom and remembered him tying her wrists. She’d been asleep. But she had heard it. The drawer. She tried the chest of drawers. The second on the right contained more of those plastic ratchet ties he’d used, along with three rolls of duct tape.
For her.
Why would you need that much tape?
She understood why he was doing it. Forget how she felt about it emotionally. He was in an acutely vulnerable position. He’d seemed a bit hurt, genuinely so, before she hit him when she had no appetite for the food he’d brought. But he hadn’t apologised for tying her up. He didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. He wouldn’t say sorry or agree with her for the sake of it.
His jacket was on the door. She checked down the corridor before she went through his pockets. She found his keys and some money and his fake glasses. That was it. There was no side to him.
She looked at the keys. There was an extra front door key. One for the windows. And a third. It had to be for the spare room, next to theirs.
She tried the door. It was locked. She went down the corridor to the kitchen. Jean was as she’d left him. She went back to the spare room and tried the key, turning it slowly. The door opened.
She was looking at a gap in the floor. The carpet had been put over it, but four floorboards were stacked on end in the corner, and the carpet sank a little in the shape of the gap. There was a bag of quicklime next to the boards.
Registering all this, Robin felt totally empty. It was a grave. The warmth she had just been feeling drained out of her. She stared at it, and for several moments wondered who it was for. It hit her like a block of ice.
CHAPTER FORTY
Robin backed through the door, careful not to touch it and risk waking him with any noise, put her socks and sweater on in the bedroom, calmly, quietly. She had this chance. He was asleep. Morzine was close. Just go.
She walked through the kitchen, monitoring him in her peripheral vision, took her jacket from the hook by the door, noiselessly, pinched her snow boots between her thumb and forefinger, and opened the front door. She tugged her boots on and walked down the drive, pulling her jacket on, turning into the road. She thought Morzine was away to the left.
Her body was doing things, moving blood to her limbs, pumping her heart. She used it, walking quickly on the road, just wanting to get around the bend up ahead. Then she would not be visible from the house, and if Jean did follow her, he would have to choose whether to go left or right from his driveway. When she was further away she could think about hiding behind one of these hedges and waiting for a car to come that she could flag down. Maybe she could cut across some of these meadows and shorten the distance to town. The endless white fields and the cold, hard mountains in the distance seemed overwhelming, and she pulled her gaze away.
She was jogging now, and the nerves in her back and her scalp seemed to crackle with the feeling that he was coming. She looked back over her shoulder. It was like a cheap horror film. The trees at the side of the road formed juddering walls, her vision shaking as she ran.
He wasn’t there. She thought she heard the thud of
a car door, maybe, but had no way of telling if it came from the chalet. She looked ahead.
The car was white, and as it braked and heaved on its suspension, Robin realised she’d put her hands out to stop a Volvo four-wheel drive. That was all she had done in reaction. Her eyes met those of the young man behind the wheel, who also had his mouth open. The kind of shock that hit you after something was already over.
His eyes creased into a smile. She saw that she’d been running in the middle of the road and moved to the verge and came around to the passenger seat window.
He seemed more relieved than angry. “Can I help?” He was American, with tightly curly hair cut short and a big smile, perfect white teeth and a square jaw.
“Yes, sorry about that. Look, this is embarrassing. I’ve had a row with my boyfriend, and he drove off and left me. I’m stuck.”
“Jesus. You heading to Morzine?”
“Mmm. Yes. Sorry.”
“It’s OK, don’t say sorry. That’s the way I’m going.”
“I thought…” she looked over the fields behind her.
“No, this way.” He smiled again and pointed, good naturedly. “Get in.”
He opened the door, and Robin climbed in before they moved away. He introduced himself, but she didn’t really hear his name.
“Whereabouts in town?”
“Oh, Chalet Guy Koffmann.”
“Nice,” he said.
Robin clenched everything as they drove past Jean’s chalet. His SUV was there. She thought how quiet and still it was, and how she alone knew about the grave prepared inside.
Jean woke up to the phone ringing.
“It’s Max. GIGN hit the exchange.”
Max talked him through it. He was about to have minor surgery on his ear and would be out for a while. Eric had recovered the rifles but had been forced to run and leave the interface buried at the scene.
“Jean, Rédoine’s guy was shot, the one in that restaurant two nights ago. He was watching me then.”