Dead Letter Drop

by Peter James

  It was seven months since the British army had decided it could get along without me, a decision it had taken a shade under three years to reach. If it could have tolerated me for just a few months longer I could at least have left with a decent lump sum in my pocket. My parents had divorced early in my childhood and then, in rapid succession, got themselves killed in separate accidents in different parts of the world, leaving me in the charge of a not particularly interested, retired brigadier, who resided in Paris. He had one standing rule: that all male nephews, god-children, and any others, such as me, who came under what he considered to be his domain, who could successfully pass out of the British army officer’s training school, Sandhurst, his old stomping ground, would receive a cheque for £100,000 on passing-out day. He had also agreed to support me financially whilst I was at Sandhurst, which support had now been angrily withdrawn.

  The army had taught me how to look after myself and how to kill people. Practical, perhaps, but not the best grounding for a business career, although some pundits might say otherwise. I decided to toss myself out to fate and see where she flung me. I had started advertising myself in the personal column of The Times in the following manner: ‘Young man. Ex-army. Willing to undertake any jobs of a personal bodyguard, investigative or security nature. Own car. Pilot licence. To be found weekday mornings between 11.00 and 1.00 at the Lido Cafe, Champs Elysées, Paris.’

  The ad was starting into its second month and the response so far had been encouraging. I had escorted a couple on their skiing holiday; I had delivered some paintings to Dallas; I had for several days followed a woman suspected of having an affair who turned out to be doing nothing more than visiting a shrink in secret; I had delivered a couple’s Doberman Pinschers to their villa in the south; and there was one nervous British businessman, resident in Paris, whom once a week I had to escort to the doorway of a cheap prostitute in Rue St Denis – I then had to wait outside the door until they had finished as he was scared of being robbed by her pimp.

  I sat back, holding up The Times conspicuously, and took another drag on my cigarette. Business had been slack for the last couple of days but I wasn’t worried. I had a fancy that a slender, tanned, gorgeous divorcee, loaded with money and in need of a no-strings-attached playmate to accompany her to her villa in Sardinia for a couple of weeks of fun, might take my bait.

  The character who pulled up the other chair at the table and sat down didn’t exactly fit that bill: he was wearing an old fawn mac fraying at the edges, a heavy bottle-green wool-worsted suit, with a thick woollen Vyella shirt and a club tie I didn’t recognise, in a particularly nasty shade of green.

  His first action was to pull a filthy handkerchief from his trouser pocket and mop beads of perspiration from his brow. He was breathing heavily, not as a result of having done a sudden sprint for a bus, or anything like that, but in the manner of someone who regards his body as a handicap rather than a useful machine, of someone so unfit and overweight that the mere act of transporting it across a sidewalk on its own legs requires a special effort, of someone who has to strain to heave a forkful of food into his mouth or to raise a glass to his lips. His flesh was sallow, hung limply around his face, gave him a flabby treble chin. His eyes were dark and piggish in their fattened sockets; his hair, thinning and greasy, was plastered unevenly about his head. He obviously didn’t enjoy the heat.

  I put him in his early fifties. He certainly wasn’t anyone’s idea of a fairy godmother. The act of getting to this table and sitting down at it had rendered him temporarily speechless. The way he looked, no self-respecting doctor could ever advise him to go out and buy a long-playing record.

  ‘Read your ad,’ he said after a long pause. ‘Name’s Wetherby.’ He proffered a hand and gave a surprisingly strong handshake. With the other hand he summoned the waiter and ordered a white coffee and a cognac.

  He had an amiable voice: crisp, educated, old-school English. ‘Do you want to earn £500 for a morning’s work? Cash. No questions asked.’

  ‘What do I have to do?’ Quite frankly I didn’t care what I had to do. For that kind of money it would have taken a lot to deter me – even more than what he had to say next.

  ‘It’s in the boot of your car. Everything. Including the money.’ His coffee and his cognac arrived and he took a gulp of each, swilling the mixture in his mouth with about as much delicacy as if he were gargling. He swallowed, smacked his lips and looked up around him. ‘Weather’s nice.’ He made the remark in such a way that it appeared to be directed at no one in particular. ‘Very nice. Paris is good this time of year.’

  I was surprised he had noticed.

  ‘Yes,’ he carried on, ‘Paris is very good this time of year.’ He took another swig of his mixture. I stared at him curiously. I tried to figure out who he was, what he was. I couldn’t think of anything at all to say to him. I felt like a helpless little schoolboy seated in the headmaster’s study. ‘Like Paris?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I felt he was about to say something of enormous importance; a monumental revelation of some kind; something that would make me gasp in sheer wonder, that would slot everything into place. I waited expectantly.

  ‘Good. Glad about that. Paris is a nice place. Jolly nice. Well, must be going.’ He finished off his brew and stood up. Gave me another firm handshake. ‘Nice car. Open roof. Good weather for an open roof.’

  I tried to read something in his face, in his eyes. There was nothing. Whatever might have been there a few moments ago had gone, snapped shut like a book and sealed in a plain brown wrapper. He melted away among the beautiful girls, the straggling tourists, the smart young men, the limping war-veterans, the chic middle-aged women, and the whirring of 2CVs and the hooting of horns.

  The bastard hadn’t even left anything for the bill.

  I paid the waiter and drove off into the traffic, heading out in the general direction of Versailles and the forests beyond, where I wanted to find a quiet spot and take a look at Santa’s stocking.

  I’d gone about a quarter of a mile when I was flagged down by a police motorcyclist – an unusual occurrence in a city where speed, and a general wholesale disregard for traffic regulations, are the law of the motorist’s jungle.

  The cop was elegantly turned out with immaculately blancoed webbing – and halitosis that would drop a skunk in its tracks at 50 feet.

  I was scared stiff. I had no idea what that maniac Wetherby had put in the boot and I had an uncomfortable feeling it might be something of more than cursory interest to Monsieur Spick-et-Span here.

  ‘Licence. Carte verte. Passeport.’

  ‘Je n’ai pas le passeport avec moi.’

  ‘Vous restez à Paris?’

  ‘Oui, monsieur.’

  ‘Où?’

  ‘Seize. Rue de la Reine, Passy.’

  ‘Depuis combien des jours?’

  ‘Cinq jours, monsieur.’ I lied. I didn’t want them to know I was living here and have to go through the hassle of having French plates put on the car.

  His bulging revolver holster and bulging baton holster swung from the belt. ‘Licence et carte.’

  I rummaged through my wallet and through the glove locker and produced my English driving licence, international driving licence and green card insurance docket. He read through them, then walked around the car, studying it closely. He didn’t seem to take much notice of the fact that I was sheet-white and trembling. He was probably used to people going sheet-white and trembling when stopped.

  He handed me back the documents. ‘C’est une belle voiture. Ça va. Merci, monsieur. Allez.’ He ushered me off, and walked back to his motorbike.

  I drove off, gently changing through the gears, letting the revs climb very slowly. I scrabbled in my pocket for my cigarettes. I was shaking like a leaf. I half-lit the cigarette, and smoke and bits of flaring paper whipped away into the slipstream. Maybe it was just a routine stolen car check. Coincidence. And yet . . . The cop hadn’t looked the sort that would miss a sin
gle point but he hadn’t made any comment at all about my papers. I took a drag on my cigarette. Both my insurance and my international driving licence had expired five weeks ago. I wanted to find out what was in that boot. Fast.

  I accelerated to a reckless speed, snaking in and out of the traffic. I had a feeling I might be being tailed. I shot a red light, missing the front wheels of a truck by inches, but nothing came over the lights after me and I relaxed a little.

  Half an hour later I was thundering down a narrow, twisting country road, the tyres protesting on the warm tarmac. I passed through a couple of sleepy villages, both containing restaurants well praised by the Michelin, and out into the country again. I turned off onto a track into the woods, drove a good distance in from the road, stopped and switched the engine off.

  I felt calmer now. A good deep warmth came through the shade of the fir trees and the air smelt good. I listened carefully. All was quiet. I went round and lifted the boot lid, wondering what I was going to find – a chopped-up corpse perhaps; a midget Russian agent – I just didn’t have any idea. It turned out to be a brown Jiffy package, about 18 inches long, I foot wide, and several inches thick. It bore no label and no writing but was very heavy.

  I opened one end and tipped out the contents: first a parcel in silver gift-wrap and a tag which said, ‘To Elaine. Happy birthday. With fondest love’ – there was no signature; then a Webley .38 revolver, loaded, with the safety catch on; and an envelope. The envelope contained £500 in used £10 notes, and a note which read, ‘Deliver birthday gift to Mme Elaine de Vouvrey, Apt 5, 91 Rue Notre Dame de Bonne Nouvelle, Paris 2, Friday 29 May at 11.00 am. Keep the popgun and the change.’

  My first thought was that this was Wetherby’s mistress, and she had a husband he was scared of. But £500 seemed to me to be paying rather more than necessary if it was that simple.

  There was the sound of a vehicle. I whipped the envelope into my pocket and slammed the boot shut. It was just a tractor towing an old trailer; at the helm was a wizened old farmer with blue beret and obligatory yellow Gauloise stump protruding from his mouth. He gave me a wide berth, churning through some bushes, nodded in a courteous but uninterested manner, and rattled along on his way.

  I opened the silver-wrapped box. It contained a soft white powder. I didn’t need a chemistry set to tell me it wasn’t Yves St Laurent talc.

  There must have been about 5 pounds weight of the stuff. Sold in a lump amount in a hurry, it must have been worth about £200,000 – a great deal more if broken down into street deals of 1 gramme, and even more still if broken down into individual fixes.

  The little knowledge I had about the French mafia quickly dispelled any aspirations that leapt into my head about heading for the hills with the booty.

  Instinct told me from the start that this deal stank, stank worse than a Billingsgate garbage can in a heat wave. Instinct told me right now to go find Wetherby and chuck the whole lot back at him; and if I couldn’t find him to go straight to the British Consulate and tell them the story. Sometimes, when I’m cold and lonely, I wish that maybe I’d stuck to that instinct. Luckily it’s only sometimes.

  I turned up early at 91 Rue Notre Dame de Bonne Nouvelle. I’d decided that if there was going to be anything unpleasant lying in wait for me I should try and catch it on the hop. I’d taken a taxi and wasted several valuable minutes arguing with the driver outside the entrance. I wanted him to wait but he didn’t want to wait because it was a no-waiting zone, and in my reasonably competent French I was trying to drum into his stubborn Gallic skull the fact that if he wasn’t prepared to wait in this no-waiting zone he was going to find it was also a no-paying zone.

  The message got through and I got out, leaving the door open; he left his engine running. I felt good about that open door and that running engine because I had a feeling I might be needing them both in a hurry.

  It was the third day of the heatwave and the sun streamed down on me, seemed to be floodlighting me as I paused for a moment on the doorstep, reading the name plates and apartment numbers, feeling very apprehensive and not much comforted by the sagging weight in my jacket pocket of the loaded Colt with its safety catch now off.

  It was a tall old building, a four-storey walk-up; I didn’t bother to ring the bell but marched straight in and began climbing the stone stairs. It was a spooky building, quiet, dusty. From the outside it looked smart; inside it was shabby. Unusual for France, where it is usually the reverse. Apartment 5 was at the end of the third-floor landing. I rang the bell and then, for no particular reason, stepped aside.

  In the event it proved to be a wise move: the door was ripped to shreds by a torrent of sub-machine gun bullets and, with the gun still firing, the lovely Madame de Vouvrey came crashing through it, blazing off in every direction except – fortunately for me, unfortunately for her – mine. I cracked the Webley off twice. Madame de Vouvrey, if it was indeed Madame de Vouvrey who had this engaging manner of answering the doorbell, was 6½ feet of very vicious-looking bloke with oily black hair and a dark, oily complexion. He recoiled against the door post, looking decidedly like he wished he hadn’t got out of bed today; blood shot out of the centre of his forehead and out the top of his chest. The sten gun dropped to the floor and clattered down the stairs, loosing off bursts of fire on its own as it went.

  A second gorilla appeared in the doorway, brandishing an ugly-looking piece of lead-firing ironmongery. I cracked off a bullet into him, and he slammed over backwards. Then my left arm suddenly felt like it had been hit with a red-hot sledge hammer, and it flew up and cracked against the wall; there was a whining, splitting sound past my right ear, and bits of wall showered out at me. I spun around and saw another man, thin, small with a goatee beard, about to loose another shot off at me from a small automatic. I took the only course of evasion: a headlong dive down onto him, pumping the Webley’s trigger for all I was worth. I heard it crack and crack and crack and then click, and then I head-over-heeled and landed on top of his very fresh corpse.

  I lay there for a few moments, my arm in agony, waiting for the next bullet to come at me. The Colt was empty and I felt around with my right arm for the bearded man’s gun. No bullets did come at me, and after a few moments more my hand closed over the automatic.

  The silence continued but I waited a full couple of minutes before daring to stand up. In agony though my left arm was, I was still clutching the silver parcel. I staggered to my feet and then, bursting in from the street, came France’s answer to Knacker of the Yard with his troupe of boys in blue, and for a glorious moment I’d never been so damn glad to see the fuzz in all my life, until I suddenly realised I was standing among three dead men, holding a smoking automatic in one hand and 5 pounds of heroin in the other. I must have looked pretty damn cute.

  8

  The only courtesy I had from the French police during that entire following week was a choice of bunks in the cell: top bunk or bottom bunk. I’d taken the top and was glad of my decision, for sometime during every night they brought in a drunk who collapsed into the bottom bunk and would spend the night alternating between grunting and throwing up. Every morning they’d take him away again. I never got to see the faces of the drunks clearly; for all I knew, it could have been the same one every night.

  The week had been pure hell and I was nearing the end of my tether. My arm hurt like hell from where the bullet had been removed, but I hadn’t been afforded the luxury of a single night in a hospital bed – they stitched my arm up, bandaged it, and put me straight into the cell. I was sore all over, damn bloody sore.

  It was hot, airless and gloomy in the cell; a few streaks of sunlight occasionally managed to find their way in through the maze of bars in a small grille high up in the wall, but all they did was to heighten the gloom below. The police had not permitted me to make any telephone calls and had firmly indicated I was not going to be allowed to make any: not to the consulate, not to a lawyer, not to anywhere. Monsieur was not going to receive any aid fr
om anyone until he had fully divulged the identity of the entire drugs ring.

  The ad in The Times, the visit from Wetherby did not seem to interest them. They insisted they wanted the truth. For seven days they had dragged me in and out of that cell, into another windowless room but with very bright lighting, where they had interrogated me. Soon I was going to start yelling at them, those mean sods that stank of yesterday’s garlic. There was nothing more I could do. I didn’t know any more, unless they wanted me to start inventing things, which I didn’t think would do me very much good in the long run.

  I cursed every night, through the long nights, at having been so stupid, having landed myself in this for a lousy £500, which I probably no longer even had. If I ever got out of here I knew what I was going to do. I was going to find Wetherby and knock his block off.

  But he saved me the trouble.

  The warder came as usual to take me to the first session of the day and took me into the room that I by now knew only too well. I sat on the wooden chair and waited for my interrogators to show up. Instead, Wetherby came in.

  He didn’t shake my hand this time but lowered himself with considerable effort into a chair near me. He was still wearing the same mac, the same thick suit, the same green tie. His shirt was of a more lightweight nature. The beads of perspiration were in place on his head and he mopped them off with what looked like the same filthy handkerchief. He puffed a couple of times, and then patted his thighs. He looked cheerful.