Elmo answered, ‘These boys tried to hold up the store. And this fella here, he stopped it. Took ’em down in one second flat. You shoulda seen it, Waylon. Ol’ Billy Bob had a gun right in his face. I never saw anyone move so fast.’
‘They dead?’
‘They’re alive,’ Ben said. ‘Just sleeping. But they’re going to need those ambulances PDQ. That one has a badly dislocated wrist. The other’s got probable concussion, and he’s losing a lot of blood from a gunshot wound.’
‘Meatwagons are on their way,’ the sheriff replied. Still in the same loud, slow drawl, strong and authoritative. He aimed a thick, gnarly finger towards Ben. ‘Who shot’m, you?’
Elmo answered for Ben. ‘He shot himself, Waylon. Damn fool blew off his own pecker.’
Apparently quite unmoved, the sheriff gestured to his deputies. One drew a pistol and kept it trained on the two robbers, as though they were in any state to resist arrest, while the other slapped on cuffs. A few late-night passersby had gathered in the street, drawn by the police sirens and rubbernecking through the store window at what was going on.
Keeping his back to the window the sheriff said, ‘Elijah, would you move those folks on?’ The deputy called Elijah hastened outside to carry out the command. The sheriff said to the other, ‘Mason, get on the radio and find out where those meatwagons are at, before this asshole goes and bleeds to death right here in front of us.’
Mason was the deputy with the drawn pistol. He was hatless, with brown hair spiky on top and shaved up the sides like a Marine. His face was fleshy and pasty and burned by the sun and his eyes were somewhat dull. He glanced nervously at Roque. ‘What about these boys?’
The sheriff replied calmly, ‘They’re unconscious, Mason. I think I can handle it. Now scoot and get on that darn radio.’
Mason holstered his weapon and ran out to the car. The sheriff watched him go, and shook his head with a sigh. ‘’Bout as sharp as a bowlin’ ball, that one.’ Then he turned his flinty eyes back on Ben. ‘I’m Waylon Roque, Sheriff of Clovis Parish. I don’t believe I know you, Mister—?’
‘Hope. Ben Hope.’
‘You ain’t from around heah.’
‘So everyone keeps telling me,’ Ben said. ‘I’m just a tourist, that’s all. Arrived here in Villeneuve this afternoon and I’m staying at the Bayou Inn. I’m only in town for the Woody McCoy gig the night after next, then I’ll be heading back home.’ He slipped his passport from his pocket and held it out.
The sheriff took the passport and gave it a quick once-over, then seemed satisfied and tossed it back. ‘A Brit.’
‘Half Irish, for what it’s worth. But I live in France.’
Roque pulled a face, as if he thought even less of the Irish than the Brits. ‘Jazz fan too, huh? I’m more of a Jimmie Davis man, myself.’
Ben smiled. ‘You are my sunshine.’
But Roque wasn’t one for chitchat. ‘What’s your occupation, Mister Hope from France?’
‘I work in education,’ Ben replied. Technically correct although economical with the truth. He didn’t think it necessary to reveal to Roque what kind of education the training facility at Le Val offered, or to whom. Information like that tended to invite too many questions.
‘Teacher, huh?’ If Ben had said he was a smack dealer, Roque wouldn’t have looked any less impressed.
‘Near enough,’ Ben said.
Roque reflected for a moment, eyeing him suspiciously. ‘Well, Teach, seems to me you must either be the luckiest sumbitch alive, or you’re some kinda trained ninja assassin in your spare time.’ He jerked his chin in the direction of Billy Bob Lafleur. ‘Sleepin’ beauty here is a local white-trash scumbag well known to Clovis Parish PD for his violent and intemperate ways. Put many a man in the hospital, and keeps all manner of unsavoury company out there on Garrett Island. His buddy looks kinda rough, too. I’m just wonderin’ how in hell an ordinary tourist, a schoolteacher, could manage to take these bad boys both down in one second flat like Elmo said, bust ’em up real good and walk away without taking so much as a scratch hisself.’
‘I never said I was a schoolteacher,’ Ben replied. ‘And actually it was more like two seconds. Maybe even longer. I must be getting slow in my old age. And they’re not as good as they think they are.’
The sheriff eyed him for the longest moment. ‘Just who exactly are you, boah?’
Ben didn’t like being called ‘boy’. In fact there was little he was liking much about Sheriff Waylon Roque in general. Which came as no great surprise to him. ‘Would you care to rephrase that question, Officer?’
A knowing kind of look crinkled the sheriff’s pale eyes. He nodded to himself, as though savouring an idea. ‘I have a pretty good notion who you are. Tell me. What’s your unit?’
Ben said nothing.
The corners of Roque’s lips stretched into a humourless smile. ‘I knew right off you weren’t no teacher. You got the soldier look, for sure. Maybe you think you can hide it, but I can see it as sure as if you was still wearin’ the uniform. I can see it in your eyes, and from the way you’re standin’ there lookin’ back at me. I saw it before I even walked in here.’
Roque paused. Enjoying the moment. ‘Am I right, Mister Hope? You a military man?’
‘I’m not a soldier,’ Ben said. Which was another technically truthful answer, as he had quit that life a long time ago. ‘But even if I were, Sheriff, I can’t see how it would be any business of yours.’
The deputy called Mason had got off the radio and now returned from the car to say the ambulances were en route and would be with them ‘momentarily’. Ben always wondered at the way Americans used that particular word. In the Queen’s English it meant the ambulances would appear one instant, and then vanish again the next like a disappearing mirage.
In the event, when they did turn up a couple of minutes later and parked behind the police cars, the paramedic units hung around long enough to strap the wounded robbers onto a pair of gurneys and prepare to ship them to hospital, from where they’d be going straight to jail.
Billy Bob Lafleur had woken up by then and had to be sedated to prevent him from trying to escape. He had his Miranda rights read to him before he fell back unconscious. The sheriff directed the police deputy called Elijah to ride with him in the back of the ambulance. Meanwhile, Billy Bob’s friend was still passed out and looking very pale. The medics wheeled him hurriedly aboard and took off with the lights and siren going full pelt.
‘Now what?’ Ben said to Sheriff Roque.
‘Say you’re gonna be in town until the night after tomorrow?’
Ben shrugged. ‘Or the morning after that. I’m not in a rush.’
‘Good. I’ll need you to come down to the station to make a formal statement and fill in a few blanks for me.’
‘What kind of blanks?’ Ben asked.
‘Call it satisfyin’ my curiosity. I like to keep tabs on what’s happenin’ in my parish, just like I like to know who comes and goes. See you around, Mister Hope. Don’t you leave without payin’ me a visit, now, you heah?’
‘Something for me to look forward to,’ Ben said.
The sheriff pulled another half-smile. He tipped his hat to Elmo. ‘Y’all have a peaceful rest of the night.’
After the police were gone, the liquor store and the street fell back into tranquil silence. Only the mess and the blood remained to bear witness to what had happened there that night. Ben felt bad about leaving the old man to clear it all up himself, and spent an hour helping him. When Elmo asked ‘Say, you really a soldier?’ Ben replied, ‘Your sheriff has a heck of an imagination.’
Finally, well after 1.30 a.m., Ben returned to the Bayou Inn with an intact bottle of twelve-year-old Glenmorangie tucked under his arm. He encountered no more armed robbers on the way back. The night was fresh and fragrant, and all seemed well with the world.
And that was the end of all the trouble.
Or, it should have been.
Because t
rouble would waste little time in finding him again. Sooner than he might have thought.
Chapter 6
By the time Ben got back to his room at the Bayou Inn, the urge to spend a couple of the wee small hours enjoying the Glenmorangie had left him and all he wanted to do was go to bed. He rose early the next morning, as the dawn was breaking over the town and painting the white houses vermilion and gold.
Feeling that last night’s meal had been a little overindulgent, he spent longer than usual on his morning exercise routine, clicking off set after set of press-ups and sit-ups on the floor. He showered and dressed, then used his new burner phone to fire off that text message to Jeff asking how things were going at Le Val, and one to Sandrine to say nothing much in particular except that he’d arrived safe and sound in Louisiana.
Nobody needed to know about last night’s spot of bother. It was already a fading memory, soon to be forgotten altogether.
Standing on his balcony afterwards he smoked a Gauloise and watched the sun climb and the streets come to life, as much as they seemed to do in Villeneuve. Most people around here appeared to drive pickup trucks. A skinny African-American kid on a bicycle with a bulging mailbag swinging from his shoulder worked his way down the street lobbing rolled-up morning newspapers into front yards. Clovis Parish was obviously the last place on Earth where folks hadn’t yet gone all digital. Ben liked that.
Ben was a coffee addict and could pick up its scent from any distance the way a German shepherd smells raw steak. His nose began to twitch just after seven, by which time he was dying for his first caffeine fix of the day, and he followed the enticing aroma downstairs to the kitchen where Mary-Lou Mouton was preparing breakfast.
The morning meal at Le Val tended to be a rushed, hectic, on-the-hoof affair that involved slurping down four or five coffees in between cigarettes while organising trainees, feeding guard dogs and prepping a variety of weaponry for the day’s busy class schedule. That wasn’t how things were done here at the Bayou Inn. Mary-Lou directed him to a white pine table covered with an embroidered cloth and set for one, since he was the only guest, and he sat quietly sipping a cup of excellent black coffee as she bustled about the kitchen.
Mary-Lou was a devout believer in the old saying that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. The plate she shoved under Ben’s nose was piled high with eggs, bacon and sausage patties, home fries, grits and toast, and she stood over him like a prison guard to make sure he finished every bite. He’d have to triple his exercise regime to work it off. Maybe go for a twenty-mile run, too.
Mary-Lou finally left him alone to wash down his breakfast with a second cup of coffee. The copy of the Clovis Parish Times that the bicycle kid had delivered lay unread on the kitchen table. Out of curiosity he picked it up and unfolded it in front of him. Then nearly sprayed a mouthful of coffee all down his shirt as he saw the front-page headline.
BRITISH ARMY VETERAN FOILS LIQUOR STORE HOLDUP
‘What the—?’
He had to blink several times before he could bring himself to believe it. Reading on, he almost choked all over again at the reference to the ‘intrepid stranger’, believed to be an English military veteran, who had ‘heroically intervened’ during an armed robbery at Elmo’s Liquor Locker on West Rue Evangeline Street late Thursday night.
Clovis Parish Sheriff’s Dept. sources had released the names of the two men taken into custody: Billy Bob Lafleur, 34, and Kyle Fillios, 32. Lafleur and Fillios had entered the store ‘brandishing’ (that favourite word of the media) lethal firearms (was there any other kind, Ben wondered) and demanded its proprietor, Mr E. Gillis, hand over the contents of the cash register, threatening his life. Whereupon the two thugs had been tackled and disarmed and the police called to the scene.
Fillios had been rushed to the nearby Clovis Parish Medical Center requiring surgery for ‘a self-inflicted injury’ while Lafleur was now locked up in the Clovis Parish jail awaiting a trial date. A quote from Mr Gillis proclaimed, ‘I thought I was dead, for sure’ and praised the unnamed hero for his actions. The Sheriff’s Department was unavailable for further comment.
Ben re-scanned the article three times, more perplexed with every reading. The Times had moved pretty damn fast to get the story out for the next morning’s edition. Some intrepid reporter must have dragged poor old Elmo Gillis out of bed before daybreak to get the quote.
Ben couldn’t blame the local press for being eager to jump on such a sensational story, considering how news-starved their sleepy little town likely was the rest of the time. He also had to be thankful that his name wasn’t mentioned. But the ‘British army veteran’ reference bothered him a lot. He doubted the reporter had got that from Elmo, as the old guy had no reason for spreading such rumours. No. Ben was certain that information had leaked from the mouth of Sheriff Waylon Roque himself. Ben had the impression that once Roque got an idea into his head, he’d let go of it as easily as a starving dog gives up a meaty bone.
Not to mention the fact that Roque’s instinct about Ben was perfectly accurate. An ordinary tourist, a teacher no less, wouldn’t have stood a chance against two desperate trigger-happy imbeciles like Lafleur and Fillios.
If Sheriff Roque had divulged that much to the Times reporter, what else had he told them? That the hero of the liquor store holdup was in town for the Woody McCoy gig tomorrow night? Or that he was staying at the Bayou Inn?
Ben valued privacy above most things, and he disliked being talked about or, worse, written about. It was his nature to be that way, a character trait that had fitted very well with his covert, secretive life in Special Forces. Anonymity was an obsession with SF operatives. While his own SAS background and Jeff Dekker’s history with its sister outfit the Special Boat Service were part of the attraction that drew hundreds of delegates from all over the world to train at Le Val, outside of his work Ben never voluntarily shared that side of his past with anyone. Sandrine knew virtually nothing of it. Even Brooke Marcel, to whom Ben had been engaged for a while before it all went south, had been kept in the dark about a lot of things.
And now he’d allowed himself to become the subject of gossip in a small town where nothing ever happened. Bad move. The word would spread faster than pneumonic plague. He was irritated with himself; and yet what else could he have done but intervene in the robbery? What was he supposed to do, stand by and let an innocent old man get killed just to satisfy his sense of discretion? How could he have predicted that some hick sheriff would turn out to be so wily and perceptive?
As these worrisome thoughts swirled around in Ben’s mind, Mary-Lou reappeared, looking somewhat bemused, to say there were two men at the door looking for a Mr Bob Hope. ‘I think it’s you they want. Said they were reporters for the Villeneuve Courier.’
Bob Hope.
Ben heaved a weary sigh. Someone had been gabbing, all right. Now the press had found him, he couldn’t hide behind the sofa and wait for them to go away. He followed Mary-Lou along the sweet-smelling passage to the door, where a reedy individual wearing a cheap suit hovered on the front step accompanied by an acne-spangled photographer in ripped jeans and an LSU Tigers T-shirt, who aimed his long lens at Ben like a gun.
‘Mister Hope? It’s you, right?’
‘That depends. Who the hell are you and what do you want?’
‘Dickie Thibodeaux, from the Courier. I wondered if I could have a minute of your time?’
As politely as possible, Ben explained to them that he wasn’t interested in giving interviews and had nothing to say. ‘I’m on vacation. Now please leave me alone.’
‘Come on, man, you gotta give us somethin’. This is a hot story. You’re the star of the liquor store holdup! Some kinda superhero, like the British Jack Bauer.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Who told you that?’
Dickie Thibodeaux smirked. ‘Sorry, I never reveal my sources.’
‘Tell your sources to get stuffed.’ Ben turned to glare at the photo
grapher, who was clicking away. ‘And you, get that camera out of my face before I ram it down your bloody throat.’ Amazing how fast politeness could melt away. Reporters had that effect on people, and especially on Ben.
The pair stalked to their car, shooting resentful glances back at him. Dickie Thibodeaux was already getting on the phone, probably drumming up reinforcements.
Ben watched them go. He’d successfully repelled the first wave. But there would be more, and the scrutiny on him would intensify fast as the story gained traction. By lunchtime there might be TV crews for CNN, WNBC and Good Morning America blocking the street and swarming all over the Moutons’ front lawn. Ben was about to become the world’s most reluctant celebrity. And that could mean only one thing.
He muttered aloud, ‘I need to get out of here, right this minute.’
Chapter 7
In fact it was a whole twenty before Ben had packed his things, checked out of the Bayou Inn and was speeding out of Villeneuve, cursing whichever wagging tongue had put him in this predicament. His plan was now to find a discreet new place to stay in a quiet location not too far away, where he was less likely to be recognised.
He had only to lie low for another thirty-six hours or less before sneaking back undetected into Villeneuve in time for the Woody McCoy gig. How hard could that be?
Then, the moment the Great Man’s final performance was over, Ben would hustle back to New Orleans. Before Sheriff Roque or the local press were any the wiser, he’d be flying home to the sanctuary of rural Normandy.
On his map the nearby small town of Chitimacha, forty-five minutes’ drive to the west, looked like a promising place to hole up. He spurred the Tahoe along a meandering two-lane that cut through the cane and sweet potato fields and flat marshlands striped with industrial waterways and oil pipelines. As he got closer to Chitimacha he started looking around for a motel, but passed only a tattered billboard for Dixie beer. Was that the only kind of beer anyone drank around here? Minutes later, he entered the town itself.
The Rebel's Revenge Page 4