Snow Rush

by James Easton

  After they hung up, Jean sat on the sofa and thought about what Max had told him. It took about thirty seconds to see it. The Spanish woman had been in the restaurant too. She’d recognised one of them, probably Rafa, called it in and been tracking them. He hadn’t even asked himself how she’d come to be on the road last night, and that was after Rafa told him she might be a cop. He rubbed his jaw where she’d kneed him. He smelled Robin on his hand.

  She had dulled him.

  He didn’t regret having her here, he just hadn’t been aware that it might take down his defences to this extent. He felt that ether drop away now. Jean stood up. Max’s Rédoine deal was in trouble. GIGN were bad news. They had to split from Morzine, and there was no question now that they were going to do the job on Anders Berg’s place. Last night it had been a nice idea. Now it was a necessity. The only concrete way he could access serious money.

  He was in the kitchen now and could see the door to the spare room was open. His eyes flicked to the coat rack. Robin’s coat and boots were gone. She’d seen the hole he’d made in the floor of the spare room. Jean pulled his boots on and grabbed his car keys, his Glock, and a wallet from the drawer by the cooker. He wound a scarf around the lower part of his face and put on a pair of big ski shades. He eased his SUV down the drive and turned right, toward town.

  “Yeah, I was at a party at some guy’s chalet last night up toward Avoriaz.”

  Robin looked over at him, smiled. “Was it a good one?”

  He nodded. “Too good. What do you do in London?”

  “I’m a filmmaker, documentaries.”

  “Yeah? What kind of stuff?”

  “Current affairs. This is the first holiday I’ve had in a long time.”

  They went around a bend, and the American guy commented on the grit and how well they maintained the roads here. Robin let her head sink back on the seat and let out a breath slowly.

  She’d left her phones and a lot more behind. But she’d go straight to Julian’s room in the hotel, and that was all that mattered. They could get out today, go back to London.

  The engine came out of nowhere behind them. A black SUV flashed past on their left and cut right, in front of them, then its brake lights came on. Robin cried out, and the American guy jerked the wheel so they swerved across the other side of the road, heading for the low trees behind the verge. He growled as he steered them into a metal gate. It flew off its posts as if it were made of wire, and they bounced and shuddered to a halt in the frozen meadow, fine powdery snow flying up like a spray.

  The driver’s airbag had activated, and he yelled into it. “What the..?!”

  Robin said, “We’ve got to get out, he’s…”

  Her door flew open, and Jean reached inside, undid her seat belt, and grabbed her arm. Robin wasn’t a small person. And he just plucked her out.

  “Jean, I’m sorry.” It faded to a whimper when she saw he’d covered his face. They were knee-deep in high dead grasses laden with thick snow. Jean started to pull her away from the car, and she sat down in response. Snow went inside her jacket over her chest, and up her wrists, the grass or reeds or whatever the hell they were scraping on her clothes with high-pitched swiping sounds.

  “Leave me alone. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  “Robin, shit. This isn’t something bad. I can explain.”

  “No. No. You tied me up and you…no.”

  Jean stepped toward her and tripped. He grabbed the car door to hold himself up. He held his hands up, “OK, relax. We have to clean this.”

  What did that mean? Clean this? “NOOOOO!” she screamed. “He hasn’t done anything. He just helped me.”

  “Robin, you are being mad. Cool, OK? Relax.”

  She felt a rush of energy and was back on her feet. “NO, you bastard. I will NOT relax.” She would run to the road now with the American guy. She had a sense of him moving around the car. He wasn’t abandoning her. “I can go where I bloody want.”

  “Robin, that hole is for putting things. OK? It’s not what you thought.” His voice was calm. “It’s for something the owner of the house we are using is expecting. A pneumatique.”

  “Pneumatic?” she said blankly.

  “Yes, a machine for raising ceilings.”

  “A jack? A pneumatic jack?”

  “Yes, it is advanced, a prototype. We are hiding it for him. It is like rent for the house.”

  “But the lime… “

  “Yes, it preserves metal. You don’t preserve the body if you kill someone. This is not the movies.”

  Robin felt her mouth gaping again. It made sense. The sudden, acute embarrassment was nearly as strong as her terror just after she’d left the house.

  The American guy came around the front of the car, lifting his knees high to clear the brambles. He had a look of intense focus that absorbed Robin’s gaze for a moment before he shoved the door into Jean so he fell against the car. The American followed through with a heavy punch. Jean fell into the snow. Robin watched him push away with his legs and get clear of the car. The American followed, kicking and stamping at him. He was a big guy.

  “You could have killed us, asshole.” He kicked Jean in the ribs.

  Jean rolled onto his side, “It’s OK, sorry. We’re OK.”

  “No, we’re not asshole.” His foot landed in Jean’s ribs again.

  Jean moved with the kick, taking most of the force out of the blow, letting this idiot expel his road rage. He moved his hand up to his ear and deflected a punch onto his shoulder, noticed the guy’s pupils were dilated as he came in close, rolled away again, groaning in time with the blows glancing off him, holding his shades in place the whole time. “Sorry, man, let’s work this out,” he said.

  “People like you make me sick.”

  Jean bent around the kick coming into his guts. “Please man, no more. You’ll regret this.”

  There was a ringing, metallic thud. A high-pitched note combining with a little base drum in the mix. Over in a heartbeat.

  The guy grabbed the back of his head and staggered back. Jean saw Robin was holding a heavy flashlight in both hands.

  The guy was staring at his palm and, eyes wide in shock, he turned it around to show Jean it was solid red with blood. He fell to his knees. Then rolled over into the snow.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Eric grimaced.

  “Are you losing enthusiasm for seeing an operation?” Henri said, not taking his eyes off Max’s ear.

  “I think the examinations are more fun. Doesn’t this spoil it for you?”

  “Spoil it? Eric, this is it.”

  “No. For me, it is the examination.”

  “Whatever you say. Pass me the syringe.”

  Eric sighed, looking at Henri’s calm features. “This work, though. You are good. And you are different when you work. Your hands are steady, all your moves so efficient. We must restore you, you know? I like this.”

  “We’ll see. I’m improvising, so I’m quite pleased.”

  He stood back. Eric went to make a phone call, and Henri stretched his back, leaving Max spaced out in the chair they had levered him into. Henri was hungry again, which meant his brain had been switched on as he worked, consuming calories. Like a chess player.

  How could this simple task be so satisfying while his problems weren’t resolved? Maybe because it took all of you for the time you did it, and you genuinely forgot everything else. He watched the kettle boil and ate yogurt. Maybe he should do some reconstructive work in the public system.

  The light was coming up. He’d got lucky with his wife, no question. This place was a small piece of it. He’d thought of it as a side benefit. They could bolt here with their kids, and that was wonderful. But he’d had the affair after they had the kids. Burning money that would help them, then going into debt. He’d never know why he’d done it. Except that he’d wanted to at the time.

  He poured scalding water into the cafetiere, went to get the sugar he’d bought the day b
efore from his backpack in the hallway, and heard Eric arranging to meet someone in town later over the phone.

  Eric said, “I have it with me.” He was speaking quietly.

  Henri felt like he was intruding and felt for his bag in the dark hallway among the snow boots and ski poles.

  Back in the kitchen, he put the backpack on the counter and pushed the coffee plunger down, glancing over at Max who was a little restless but still out of it. Really, they needed some codeine for that ear. He opened the backpack. Max said something. Just rumbles from his mind. Henri grabbed the sugar. Except it wasn’t the sugar.

  It wasn’t his backpack.

  It was Eric’s backpack. And Henri was looking at something a bit like what his wife put the kids’ lunches in sometimes. A black, soft, zip-up thermos case. This one was covered in dirt, and the old sweatshirt under it was wet with melted snow.

  It was none of Henri’s business. Though looking at the thing now, it crossed his mind that there had been a lot of trouble. And that something had been dug up and put in this bag. He was still thinking about it when Eric’s hand, small and almost feminine, slid over his mouth.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Robin said, “I’ve killed him.”

  She bolted for the gate. Jean bounded after her and caught hold of her waist.

  “He wouldn’t be making any noise if you’d done that. Stay here.” She put her hands over her face as she went over to where the guy lay moaning in the snow a few metres away.

  “Let me look, man.” He said, prising the guy’s hand away from the back of his head. He had a shallow cut of about one centimetre in length. His heart was pumping with the aggression he’d shown Jean, and it had forced a lot of blood through the cut already. But it wasn’t serious.

  “Ah, shit,” Jean said, thinking of the guy’s pupils. “It’s a big cut. I can even see the bone. You have a first aid box?”

  “In the glove box.”

  Jean pointed, and Robin went to get it.

  “That cut needs sutures. We will take you to hospital.”

  “I’m sorry I hit you.” The American said, breathing hard. “It’s because I’m full of coke. Cocaine. I can’t go to hospital yet. I can’t have that on my record, if I got into trouble. I don’t know how it works here, in France.”

  Jean puffed his cheeks out and widened his eyes in the manner he had with Julian Farquar the night before. “OK. I’m not showing you this.” He reached into his jeans, took out a slim leather wallet and flashed a white plastic card with POLICE written near the tip and red and blue stripes over one corner.

  The guy moaned. “Oh God. I’m sorry I kicked you.”

  “Just the coke speaking, hmm? Don’t worry. I don’t care what you put in your nose. You’re not the reason I am here. You have a story to tell in a few years’ time, but you forget seeing me and this woman. She is a protection subject.” He tapped his temple. “Gone in the head. Maybe too much coke. I don’t know.”

  “She’s English.”

  “We coordinate with the UK police on this. All I can say.”

  “Have I lost more blood?”

  “Keep your hand on it. OK.” He took the first aid box from Robin, placed several Elastoplasts on the guy’s head, and taped a gauze pad over them all. “So in six hours, you will have half the coke in your blood you do now. It will probably not show up on a blood test at the clinic in Morzine. They are busy this time of year.”

  The American sat in the passenger seat while Jean reversed his Volvo onto the road. He climbed hastily into the driver’s seat and drove away.

  Robin was looking sheepish. “Jean, I’m sorry. He didn’t hurt you?”

  “No, I’m OK. What do you want to do?”

  He took his shades off and looked into her eyes.

  Robin looked all around before she answered. “Let’s go back.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Berg was spooning Carolina, whispering about what he wanted to do with her. If she hadn’t been pretending to be asleep, she might have pointed out that he was doing most of it as he told her.

  She groaned when her phone buzzed.

  “This had better be good.”

  “Fine, I won’t bother,” said Pablo.

  “Hang on.”

  She rolled out of bed and picked her shirt up. Berg rolled over to watch her so quickly that she dropped her shirt and walked to the bathroom for him. She shrugged a robe on in there.

  “Go on.”

  “Do you want the news or the big news?”

  “Warm me up,” she said. “The news.”

  “The French authorities took a few guys at one of the sites you identified, this morning. Diverse crew, but Georgian and Romanian guys for certain. That’s through Nieto. One of those guys was shot. Rédoine Luce’s bodyguard got it too.”

  “Sylvestre?”

  “Yep. Dead. The only thing with him is the slug they dug out half an hour ago. It wasn’t GIGN.”

  Carolina imagined the chaos. Sighed because more men were dead.

  “So what’s the really big news?”

  “Your martial arts expert is probably Jean Haim. He’s an armed robber who escaped three days ago from a prison at the other end of the country. Almost a paramilitary when he works. He had a long client list of guys needing looking after inside, including a cousin of guess who.”

  “Rafa Nieto?”

  “None other. Haim’s something else with his fists, apparently. The prison he bust out of, Lille-Sequedin, has some Italian gang members in the population. He was close to Dino De Luca, who was released a month ago, and we know De Luca knows Nieto. And that means Italian money. Now, this journalist you told me about...”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s in the shit, in more ways than one. First, they’ve got a phone signal from her main number. She’s no longer in Morzine.”

  “Her phone isn’t, you mean. How did they get the number?”

  “London Met, on the basis that she might be with Haim.”

  “What’s second?”

  “If she hasn’t been forced into this situation, the French authorities will want to speak to her about aiding an escape.”

  “That sounds harsh.”

  “French prosecutors are aggressive sometimes.”

  Carolina thought for a few seconds. “OK.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Thanks.”

  “Carolina, what are you doing to do?”

  “I’ll probably go back to what I was doing before you called.”

  Pablo was still wary. “What was that?”

  “Having sex.”

  Silence. Then “Oh, that’s OK, then.” Bless him.

  She lost the robe and put her shirt and leggings on. Berg watched her.

  “Be right back.”

  “Where are your socks?”

  “I’ve got blisters. Shhh.”

  Carolina bought some Elastoplast in the hotel shop.

  A waiter carried a tray at shoulder height to the small service lift next to the main elevators. She saw what was on the tray, then caught which button the man selected in the service lift. She ran up the stairs to the fifth floor and saw the segment of light from an open door cut across the landing, four doors down, left out of the lift. She walked down there silently.

  “Monsieur, a duck egg omelette with Périgord truffle and a little fromage frais on the side. And a bottle of Mouton Rothschild 1982.”

  Carolina walked in as Julian Farquar handed a twenty Euro note to the waiter.

  “Hi Julian,” she said.

  The door closed quietly. Julian looked at her. “Hi.”

  “Red wine for breakfast?”

  He looked at the tray. “Hair of the dog. I’ve got a hangover.”

  “Thanks for your help last night.”

  Julian, wearing a dressing gown, ignored that and sat on the bed with his head in his hands. She saw some minor scratches, a small scrape on his forehead peeping through his fingers, but he see
med OK.

  “Julian.”

  “What?”

  “Please close your legs.”

  “Shit, sorry.”

  He rearranged himself and looked at the wine.

  “If you have to drink, go ahead. I need your attention.”

  “I can wait.”

  “You did not say what Robin is doing here. You just said she went voluntarily. Then we had a fight with a guy who was trying to kill you. I need answers.”

  He shrugged.

  Carolina moved toward him slightly. “His name is Jean Haim. He is a psychopath. If Robin is with him, then she is in danger. And she could be in trouble if the French authorities think she is working with him.”

  “No, no. She isn’t. Well…”

  His eyes moved side to side. He was searching for some bullshit for her. Then he put his hand over his mouth.

  “Oh, God.” He stood up and scuttled into the bathroom and made some retching sounds before locking the door. Carolina heard a tap running hard. She thought he was playing for time, to think. Carolina felt this gave her license and was already moving.

  She pulled a charger from her pocket and switched it for the one he was using with his iPhone by the bed.

  The tap was still running.

  The wardrobe was ajar, and she checked his bags. Some outdoor gear, casual clothes, boxer shorts, and socks in another compartment, used clothes in a hotel laundry bag. A couple of books, heavy current affairs stuff. Shoes in a neat row next to his bags. A ski jacket, a Barbour, a sports jacket, and a suit hanging up.

  There was a small suitcase, empty, and four small carrier bags from women’s clothing stores in Paris and two large ones from shops in Morzine, also empty.

  The tap was still running.

  She checked his pockets. Two burner phones, unwrapped. A black leather belt, a notebook, a pen, in the sports jacket side pocket, and- what the hell Julian? – a couple of sophisticated listening devices that would record conversation from anywhere in a room as if it were happening next to them.

  The tap stopped. Carolina moved away from the wardrobe. Julian emerged, dabbing at his mouth with a flannel.