Two shaven-headed men, hands in the pockets of their bomber jackets, appeared out of the shadows and entered Pepine’s. The volume of the music increased for a few seconds. A relentless, sexual, pounding beat. A glimpse of a red-lit bar. Jowly men.
Then the door shut.
She waited for five minutes, but Nicu didn’t come.
Ten minutes after they were due to meet, Grace tried his mobile. It went to voicemail in English and Dutch, so she went up to his hotel room. No answer.
‘Have you seen mon ami?’ she asked back down in reception, touching her chin. ‘Avec les cheveux.’
He pointed out back to the alleyway. ‘Alarme de la voiture. Car alarm.’
‘Our car alarm went off?’
Shit. She hoped they’d left nothing valuable in the Jeep.
Deciding to take the front way in case she met him halfway, she set off down Rue Dacoin to the entrance to the alleyway. It looked forbidding. A narrow strip of darkness lined with bins and parked cars.
Squinting, she saw the Jeep, still parked halfway down. No alarm rang out. Nicu must have turned it off.
‘Nicu?’ She entered the alley, cautious, wishing she’d left her camera in her room. Something glinted beside the Jeep under the dim light from a window.
As she neared, she saw the Jeep door was open. The glinting came from a reflective sticker inside it.
‘Nicu?’ she said more quietly.
There was a scuffling sound to the right, like footsteps on gravel. Her eyes tried to make out the source.
‘Nicu? Please.’ She said it with new insistence.
As she reached the Jeep, she saw a smeared dark stain on the ground.
It looked like oil. A leak maybe? She bent down to see if he was under the engine.
As she did, she touched the stain, and sniffed it.
Blood.
‘Nicu!’
A balcony door flew open on the other side of the alleyway. An African woman, wearing a yellow headscarf, appeared, a plump baby on her hip, and glared into the gloom.
‘Nicu?’ Grace shouted, louder.
The woman’s eyes widened. She pointed. ‘Là-bas, madame, là-bas!’
But Grace had already heard a low groan. It was coming from a doorway covered with a fixed porch awning. She raced over. He was on the ground inside it, legs folded in at right angles, his head jammed against the trade-entrance door to the hotel, one arm limp. He was trying to sit up and failing.
‘Oh God. Nicu.’ She bent down and touched his face. It was warm. Then his arm. Her fingers came away wet.
A faint groan. ‘Shit and fuck.’
‘What happened? Can you get up?’
He tried to move his foot an inch and his head fell back. ‘Shit.’
‘That’s it. I’m getting an ambulance.’ Furious with herself, she realized she didn’t know the emergency number in France. She should know it. She shouted up to the balcony, ‘Madame. Ambulance? S’il vous plaît?’
The woman called out in her own language. A man in a silver suit appeared with a mobile and started dialling.
Grace turned on the Jeep lights to see better.
Nicu’s face was tight with pain. There were bloody grazes across his forehead and cheek, and his eye was red and puffy. Blood dripped down his right arm, soaking his T-shirt. Too scared to look further, she took off her scarf and pressed it hard against his arm. The man from the balcony appeared, and in broken English told her the ambulance was coming.
‘Monsieur, s’il vous plaît.’ She motioned him to take over the scarf, and squeezed in beside Nicu, taking his face in her hands. His lip was split. He was shivering.
‘What happened? Where’s the blood from?’
‘Fucker stabbed me,’ he whispered.
‘No! Where? Nicu, where?’
He moved his shoulder an inch.
Grace squeezed in and put her arms around him to keep him warm. ‘The ambulance is coming. Keep talking to me.’ The blood was dripping across the ground, and the man in the silver suit pushed harder, shaking his head, talking in French.
‘Merci, monsieur, merci,’ Grace said, wishing she could speak better French. ‘Did you see him, Nicu?’
‘No.’
She listened for the sirens, scanning the dark alleyway.
This couldn’t be a coincidence; it couldn’t be.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Paris
The footsteps seemed to take forever, approaching down a pristine white corridor, lined with tall windows out onto an inner courtyard.
A doctor with a tight bun and long white coat walked with Henri Taylor towards Grace through the Urgences Générales Department of a hospital in north-west Paris.
The doctor stopped, looked at a chart, then began to speak in French. ‘He’s been stabbed twice, in his shoulder and arm,’ Henri translated.
That sounded better than his kidney or liver. ‘How bad?’ Grace said, hopeful.
Henri translated, ‘Superficial. He won’t need an operation.’
‘That’s a relief.’
The translation continued: ‘He’s also been hit on the side of the head, and attacked with something. A club or piece of wood or something. There’s bruising on his torso, back and face . . .’ He broke off from the translation. ‘Someone’s given him a bit of a going-over, frankly.’
‘So it’s bad but not serious?’ Grace said. ‘Do you think that’s weird?’
‘You mean like a warning?’ Henri said.
‘Maybe.’
The doctor cleared her throat and continued.
Henri translated some more. ‘She says they’ve stitched the stab wounds. Dressings need to be changed in a week, or if they become dirty. Keep them dry, so no showers. If the redness spreads or the wounds become more painful, bring him back in case there’s an infection . . .’
He listened again. ‘He has a mild concussion but no fracture or signs of extradural bleed, so expect him to be a bit woozy and have a headache. Bring him back if he starts vomiting, seeing double or the headache worsens.’
The doctor spoke again, then lowered the chart.
‘She says he’s going to be in pain, so she’s given him painkillers. He’s fine to go home tonight, but, as she says, bring him back if anything changes.’
‘He can leave?’ Grace said, astonished.
The doctor turned serious brown eyes on Grace, gave her a firm nod, and left.
Henri waited a second for her to disappear, then turned to Grace. ‘What the hell happened?’
‘I’ll tell you in a minute. Where is he?’ Grace said.
‘The police are with him. They said you disturbed a mugging?’
She motioned Henri outside into the dark courtyard. A man in a dressing gown attached to a drip stand sat in the dark, smoking a cigarette.
Checking behind her, she held up Nicu’s camera bag. ‘This was beside him, with his camera – if it was a mugging, they need practice. It’s worth thousands.’
He frowned. ‘So, a warning, then?’
‘Not unless I scared them off, but I’m not exactly Rambo, so I doubt it.’
‘The Bouchers. How would they know you’re here?’
The man with the drip looked over. She lowered her voice. ‘Someone attacked Nicu’s boat in Amsterdam before we came – we think to stop us digging deeper and doing this story. We think it’s an associate of François Boucher stroke Lucian Tronescu in Amsterdam.’
‘Why not the Bouchers in Paris?’
‘Nicu thinks François has split from them. If he’s right, François’s associate must have followed us from Amsterdam.’
‘So do you want to tell the police now?’
‘Nicu needs to decide – it’s him they’ve attacked.’
‘Well, a word of caution – the police here’ll tie you in red tape for days, so be sure it’s not just an inept mugging. The place you’re staying has high street crime.’
‘So, don’t tell them?’ Grace asked.
‘Up to you, but unless it hel
ps the story, I wouldn’t. I doubt Nicu will.’
Through the window, a police officer appeared, looking around. She hid behind Henri.
‘Have you seen anyone following you?’ he said. ‘Cars with Dutch plates?’
‘A few, but I’ve seen lots of Spanish and British ones, too.’
The policeman entered the courtyard, and Grace waved over at him.
‘Your call,’ Henri said.
Nicu, it turned out, had done what Henri predicted and told the police Grace had disturbed an attempted mugging. Grace verified it. The police officers took details and left. Henri gave her a taxi number, and arranged an appointment the next day.
Yawning, Grace made her way to the emergency-room door. Through the glass, she saw Nicu perched on the side of a bed, eyes shut, eye and jaw swelling. Two large white adhesive dressings covered the stab wounds. Half his T-shirt had been cut off. Dried blood snaked down his arm and his clothes.
She switched on her camera, opened the door quietly and fired off four shots.
Nicu lifted a swollen eye. She shot again.
‘Always take the shot,’ she said.
‘Bloody journalists.’
She rubbed his good arm. ‘How are you?’
‘How do I look?’
‘Like shit. What did you tell the police?’
He moved his injured arm and winced. ‘The truth. That they hit me from behind. Didn’t see it coming. No idea who.’
‘Was it our guy?’
‘Could be. Which means he followed us from Amsterdam – fucker. Must have swapped cars. It was definitely planned. He set off the Jeep alarm and was waiting.’ He tried to focus with his swollen eye. ‘Thanks for getting me here.’
‘What do you want to do now?’
He tried to stand, and stumbled. She took his hand and he tried again. ‘Let’s decide tomorrow.’
‘You want to keep going?’ Grace said, offering her shoulder.
He put his arm around her and stood up. ‘Someone’s trying to stop us and I want to know why, don’t you?’
‘Yes. But you can hardly move.’
‘I just need some sleep. Henri will find most of what we need tomorrow. Then we go back to Boucher’s apartment, back to Pepine’s, then back to Amsterdam.’ They reached the emergency-room door. ‘There’s a number somewhere on my phone for a taxi.’
‘I’ve got one waiting outside,’ she said.
Nicu started to smile, then looked like he was going to throw up.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Paris
They arrived back at Rue Dacoin after 2 a.m. She asked the driver to stop in the alleyway and keep guard till she locked the Jeep and helped Nicu through the back entrance.
In his hotel room, he sat in the bathroom, and she cut off the rest of his T-shirt, and soaked a face towel with hot water and soap.
‘Bet you’re glad you came now?’ he said, as she wiped blood and mud from his arms and face.
‘I bet you’re glad I came now,’ she teased.
She left him to change into fresh clothes, grunting, then helped him to the bed. By the time she’d cleaned up the bathroom and thrown away his clothes, he was asleep.
She bent to turn off the light. Dark lashes lay across his cheek. There was a faint two-inch scar across his forehead. An old piercing in his ear. For some reason, she wanted to ask him about all of it. About his life. About everything.
Leaving painkillers on the side, she took his keys to check him in the morning and went to her own room.
It was impossible to sleep.
Too many images flared up as she tossed and turned in the lumpy bed. She checked her phone and saw three new messages from Mac. Without listening, she deleted them.
Giving up, she turned on the television and lay in the dark, watching a bad American movie dubbed in French. At 3 a.m., she jerked upright, the film just finishing, not sure if she’d been asleep or not. French rap music was playing outside, the bass turned up. A car door slammed and voices drifted up. Grace crawled over to the grubby windowsill, blinking through swollen eyes.
A white four-by-four was parked outside Pepine’s.
The rear doors lay open. A man’s leg extended from it. Long, skinny and wearing black suit trousers.
As she watched, he emerged.
He was very striking. Well over six foot tall, model-thin, in an expensive slim-cut suit, with a black shirt and tie. His dark hair was cut into a quiff over sharp, angled cheekbones. The only detail that wasn’t black was a green and red tattoo on his neck, reaching out of his collar and winding up to his face.
There was a menace about him she couldn’t place.
Then, from the passenger door, came someone else.
She blinked. It looked like the same man. Every single thing about him from the tattoo to the suit was the same.
Twins?
Which meant they were . . . brothers?
Luc and Marc Boucher?
Tripping over her shoes in the dark, she grabbed her camera. By the time she returned, a third person was with them.
He was young, and a foot shorter. A teenager, about fourteen years old.
Even from here, she could see the boy was terrified. His shoulders were hunched in defence; sweat soaked his hair and face. One twin put a finger on the boy’s chin, and pushed him backwards into a wall. He held him there, like a pinned insect. The other stuck his hand inside the boy’s T-shirt. The boy cried out, and tried to pull away. One twin slapped him twice across the face, and replaced his hand. All the while, his brother spoke intently into the boy’s ear. His face crumpled.
Grace turned off her flash, and placed her lens between the curtains. The red light from Pepine’s, the car headlights and the street light might give her something they could manipulate.
She rested the lens on the ledge to keep it still and zoomed in. The boy was shaking now, openly crying. They were humiliating him. Terrorizing him.
Grace chose the rapid-fire mode and pressed the button.
White light exploded in her room, as five shots fired off.
‘No!’ She ducked down. She’d fumbled it, not turned off the flash.
Fuck.
Amazingly, scrolling back, she saw one decent image. The twins had looked up at the window at the flash, the boy still pinned to the wall. The quality was poor, but the image was menacing.
The rap music below stopped. Then the car engine.
Did they see which room she was in?
The hotel had five floors overlooking the street. She reassured herself it had happened too quickly.
Giving it a minute, she squinted back through the tiny gap.
The car headlights were off, the pavement empty.
They must have gone into Pepine’s.
Maybe it scared them into letting the boy go.
Wishing Nicu was awake, she climbed back into bed, eyes wide open, mind racing.
She was just starting to fall into an exhausted, restless sleep when voices made her jerk upright again, her heart pounding.
The clock said 3.24 a.m.
A creak came from the corridor outside.
Another whisper now.
Standing up, Grace tiptoed to peer into the eyehole. Night-shift workers coming home, she told herself.
Her eye focused in the hole into the lit corridor outside. And in that moment, her heart tried to bolt out of her ribcage.
The twins were in the hotel corridor, trotting along like skinny wolves, pointing at numbers.
Counting.
Her heart thumped so loudly in her chest she could hear it in the room.
Tiptoeing backwards, Grace tripped on her shoe and fell onto the bed.
Her eyes scanned the dark room. There was no phone to reception. Even if there were, what would she say?
A cold layer of sweat coated her skin.
What if the man at reception had told them?
Anyone staying here with a camera?
She recalled the flimsy lock on the door. A
child could kick it in.
Floorboards creaked right outside her door.
Grace covered her face with her hands, willing it to stop.
A soft knock. ‘Chérie?’ a call came.
‘Go away,’ she mouthed. What was the emergency number in France?
Idiot. She still didn’t know. She should have found that out this evening.
Expecting the door to burst open at any minute, she picked up her mobile, tiptoed to the bathroom, and locked herself in, shaking.
She fumbled through her contacts. If she called Nicu, his phone might be heard ringing in the room right beside them.
She found Henri’s number instead – he could ring the police for her, if he answered.
Her finger hovered over it, waiting.
One minute. Then four. Nothing happened.
When ten minutes had passed, her breathing began to return to normal.
Tiptoeing back, she checked the spyhole again. The corridor was empty.
They’d gone.
But it was only 3.36 a.m. Still three or four hours till it was light and the staff appeared. Till she felt safe.
Returning to the window, she checked the gap. Below, the twins were crossing the street to the car.
One was on the phone, the other smoking, as if nothing had happened.
At the door of Pepine’s, the bouncer flung it wide, standing back with deference.
For a second, she thought she’d got away with it.
But then they stopped.
The twins swung round.
Before she could move, one pointed to his watch at her, and held up a finger.
The other blew her a kiss.
It landed on her skin like snake venom. Gasping, she gathered her camera and valuables, and ran out of her room and let herself into Nicu’s.
It was filled with the sound of his laboured breathing.
She put a chair under the door handle, and jammed it tight.
‘Nicu?’ she whispered.
A rustle. ‘What’s happening?’
She knelt beside him. ‘I’ve done something stupid.’
She explained and he whistled. ‘Shit. You OK?’
‘No. They’re fucking terrifying. Can I sleep on your floor?’
Nicu moved his body to the left. ‘Sleep there.’
‘No, I don’t mean that—’
City of Strangers Page 17