He plucked a piece of ceiling plaster from his jacket and flicked it away, then stepped over to the centre of the floor. Biggs and Jarvis stayed to cover the door and watch for anyone foolhardy enough to try anything heroic. Pointing his gun at an older man with grizzled grey hair and a hangdog expression, Tasker shouted, ‘Where’s the money, you French git?’ He fired another shot over the man’s head, breaking and reloading the gun in seconds, his hands a blur. It was a make of weapon he’d never seen before, stripped bare and filed clean, but it worked well enough and that was all he needed.
It galvanised the man into action. He muttered something at one of his colleagues, who walked over to a large metal door set in the rear wall. He swung the door back a fraction, revealing a glimpse over the counter of a small room lined with shelves.
‘Tasty,’ said Jarvis, and made to leap the counter.
‘Wait.’ Tasker stopped him. It was all too easy. Something about this set-up wasn’t right. Forget the fact that it was French; a bank was a bank was a bank. But this one didn’t feel good. The manager showing them the bank vault so readily was also odd; it stank of a distraction.
He looked around. No customers. Maybe it was too early in the day — and he hadn’t thought to ask about opening times. And most banks he’d ever seen had at least a couple of women workers. But not here.
Then he saw a coat stand in one corner. It held two coats, one red and the other a dull mauve colour, a man’s mackintosh and a couple of colourful scarves. Women’s stuff.
He pointed at the manager who was glaring at him. ‘You. Come here.’ He stabbed at a spot in front of him, making sure the man was looking down the twin snouts of the sawn-off.
The man complied. It was only when he was standing before him that Tasker realised something else was missing: that tangible element he was so accustomed to on a bank job, the inevitable reaction of a worker ant being faced by a man with a gun who was not afraid to use it.
Fear.
Something made him lift onto his toes so he could see over the counter into the safe room. A woman was lying on the floor, eyes bulging over a gag around her face, her legs wrapped in rope. Nice legs, too. He could just see a man’s shoulder next to her, and beyond that, another stocking-covered leg and a woman’s shoe.
‘Tasker!’ It was Jarvis, shouting a warning.
Tasker turned back to the man in front of him, saw him flicking back his suit jacket and reaching inside. Saw the butt of a revolver stuffed down his waistband.
‘It’s a set-up!’ he shouted. He pulled the trigger, realising in the instant that he did so that this was no police trap. The man in front of him, in spite of being armed, was too old for this kind of job in the name of the state. Too old and, up close, not smart or quick enough. The shot was deafening in the enclosed space, and caught the man in the centre of his chest, hurling him backwards across the floor. At the same moment Biggs began firing at the other two, who had dived for cover behind the counter, drawing weapons of their own.
The small room reverberated to the sounds of gunshots, and for a fleeting second, Tasker felt his blood stir at the noise, the smell of gunpowder and the pounding of conflict. Then survival kicked in and brought him back to reality. This was a dead end; they’d been fooled, suckered into colliding with someone else’s job. It was a total lash-up. He fired at the two men behind the counter, seeing one man’s hand dissolve under the hail of shot. There was a scream, then the other man stood up and blazed away like a maniac. A yelp came from alongside Tasker and Jarvis was flipped onto his back, his face a bloody mess. Dead.
‘Out!’ Tasker shouted at Biggs, and stooped to pick up Jarvis’s revolver. This was beyond going wrong; it couldn’t get any worse. If they stayed here they were dead meat. Running was their only option. He could already hear the first sounds of a siren… or was it his imagination? Surely the local cops couldn’t have got themselves together already.
He felt a shiver go through him, and the first tremors of panic in his legs.
Until that moment, George Tasker had always been lucky. He’d found himself in situations before where things had not run in his favour due to surprise, superior firepower or better tactics by the opposition. You couldn’t get it right every time. But he’d always coped and brazened it out; stood up and blasted his way through. But this was different; it was like some kind of horror film unfolding. In the space of two minutes or less, he was a man down and facing gunmen who were on home soil and mad enough to fight back like crazies. And the police sirens were real — and getting louder.
The last brought a disturbing realisation.
They had been sold out.
While Tasker and his men were finding themselves on the brink of disaster, Jack Fletcher was a very happy man. He was sitting alone in the cab of a small Renault truck identical to the previous one he’d driven, with no Tasker watching over him and no smart-Alec Calloway making snide remarks about his driving. And he was doing a job solo. It didn’t get much better than this.
He was humming as he followed on the heels of a white Peugeot as it negotiated a series of narrow, snow-dusted country lanes, working the pedals of the Renault with care to avoid the truck going into a terminal skid on the slippery surface. Weighed down by the addition of a railway sleeper across the front bumper, covered by a piece of tarpaulin to avoid raising suspicions, the steering was jittery but manageable. But Fletcher wasn’t bothered; he’d driven in far more challenging weather and in worse vehicles than this, and even though he was in a left-hooker, he was beginning to get a feel for the way the vehicle handled. All he had to do was follow the Frenchman in front of him, a sour-looking grump in his fifties who had nodded once on introduction, then gestured for Fletcher to stick to his tail before driving off.
Tasker and the others had stood and watched him go, and he’d waved cheerfully and called out, ‘Bump into you later, boys!’
He’d enjoyed knowing that they could have no idea of just how prophetic his words were going to be.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Moments after Tasker and Biggs had thrown themselves back in the DS, Calloway was revving the car and hurtling away from the bank, the engine screaming in protest. Tasker let him get on with it and reloaded the sawn-off, leaning out of the window to fire two parting shots at the front door of the bank to keep the third man’s head down. Then he sat back and swore repeatedly. He’d be glad to see the back of this shit town and shit country, and get back home to where he felt able to breathe.
‘What,’ said Calloway quietly, ‘the fuck happened back there?’ It was the first time Tasker had ever heard him swear. ‘And where’s the cash — and Jarvis?’
‘There ain’t no cash and Jarvis is dead. We were sold a pup.’ Tasker was breathing hard, the rush of adrenalin making his nerve ends jangle. He was trying to work out what had just happened, how such a simple job had gone belly up. ‘There wasn’t the money we were told about, and another mob was already there.’
‘Mob?’
‘Firm… crew… you know what I bloody mean. Frenchies.’
‘How?’
‘Because we were sent on a sucker job. Somebody’s going to pay dearly for this if it’s the last bloody thing I ever do!’ He dug in his pocket and took out two more cartridges, and sniffed at them as if they were a source of comfort.
Calloway seemed happy with that. ‘Fair enough. So, where are we headed — back to Calais?’
‘Not yet.’ Tasker had been toying with an idea for some time. It had taken root days ago, but had grown fast over the past few hours, fermenting in his mind and now tugging so urgently at his consciousness that he couldn’t let it go. ‘Soon, though.’
Rocco was the cause of all this. Had been from the very beginning, ever since he’d walked into that cell, revealing that he spoke English and even understood cockney slang, treating Tasker like a nobody, a gofer, and questioning Calloway first. That was right out of order.
He breathed deeply, his blood pressure rising the mo
re he thought about it. Even dropping the suspicion of corruption on the big French cop hadn’t given Tasker the satisfaction he’d expected, not long-term. He knew his thinking was irrational, that he was on foreign soil and way out of his depth. But he didn’t care.
Because right now he had nothing to go back to. It was over. Ketch had seen to that. Ketch and his smooth-talking, number-crunching weasel, Brayne. They’d talked him and the others into a dead-end job — he didn’t need a degree in accountancy to know it, either. Not now. There were only so many ways the game could be played, and after years of using the distraction thing for their purposes, Tasker knew and recognised when he himself had become the distraction. It was the way things were. But he didn’t have to like it.
Before anything else, though, he had a score to settle over here. After that, well, he’d get back to the Smoke and make a couple of visits. He stroked the shortened barrels of the shotgun. He’d have to lose this one, but he’d soon get another just like it or better. No sweat.
Then they’d learn what it meant to have crossed George Tasker.
‘So where to?’
Tasker leant forward and picked up a road map of the area, found the place he wanted and stabbed it with a thick finger. It was back towards Amiens, but off to the east. ‘Here.’
Calloway glanced across, nodded and began looking for a turn to get them off the main road and double back. ‘Poissons-les-Marais? What’s there, then?’
‘Not what,’ said Tasker, rolling the two shotgun cartridges between his fingers. ‘More like who.’
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Rocco was staring through a veil of tangled, bare branches at the bridge, half a kilometre away, and wondering what the hell he was doing here. He and Claude had found a spot where they could just see the bridge and the road leading over it, but where they were hidden from view by a clump of bushes. It wasn’t great but it was the best they could do at short notice.
He shivered and took a turn back and forth, trying to work some warmth back into his feet and lower legs. The air was bitingly cold and, just for the moment, clear, the earlier snow having turned by degrees to a miserable, grey sleet before dying out. But there was more on the way. The clouds looming overhead were heavy, grey and dough-like, waiting to dump their contents on the land below, and he wondered if a change in the weather might interrupt any attack plans. If there were any.
‘Where does that track lead?’ he said, stepping back alongside the passenger window. ‘The map doesn’t say.’
‘Nowhere. It’s just a track through the fields.’ Claude held up a hand, giving it some thought. ‘Actually, that’s not strictly true. If they drive carefully, they could reach a road at the other end — but that’s ten kilometres over rough ground. And after this weather?’ He pulled a face. ‘Unlikely. Hardly a quick getaway.’
‘So they’d be trapped.’ Rocco tensed as a dark shape approached the bridge, wobbling slightly on the road, bouncing on soft suspension. It was a dark-blue saloon with something strapped on the roof. A cupboard or a box — it was difficult to tell from here. The car trundled across the bridge and continued on down the road towards them, passing the proposed site of the new war monument and rattling past them without stopping.
‘Unless things went right and nobody saw them.’ Claude pursed his lips and eyed the car out of sight. ‘If they were cool-headed enough and had the right vehicle, I suppose they could do it.’ He grinned. ‘Unlikely now, though, huh? With us here.’
Rocco lifted a pair of binoculars off the back seat, focusing on the track beyond the shed. Nothing. No waiting truck, no motorbikes — another favoured form of transport for an attack — and no men. Just the shed, run-down and ready to fall over.
‘There aren’t many of those left,’ Claude told him, following his line of sight. ‘I’m amazed it’s lasted this long.’
‘It was locked tight by rust when I saw it, and full of farm rubbish. I thought it might be something they’d use, but I was wrong.’ Yet he felt sure he’d got the location right. The circumstances, the pointers, the confluence of the ramming idea, de Gaulle’s visit and the similarities of the sites… it had all been so clear. So obvious.
He swung the glasses back to the shed and stared hard, the rubber eyepieces pressed into his skin. It looked the same as it had the other day, so what was he worried about? The roof still stained with bird droppings, the wooden walls peppered with holes and the planking warped by the elements, the whole thing surrounded by a hovering grey mist, like a scene from a ghost film. Yet something was tugging at his mind, gently insistent. Something… different. What the hell was it? Or was he just desperate for something to show up that would prove he’d been right about this?
‘It’s an old cart shed,’ Claude continued chattily, showing his mastery of all things rural. ‘They were just big enough to take a hay cart. Take it in one end, unhitch the horse, fold up the shafts and close the door, take the horse out the other. Saved trying to reverse it in. The logic was impeccable.’
Rocco took his eyes off the road. Tried to follow through what Claude had said. ‘What are you saying?’ Then it hit him. ‘That shed has a back door?’ He hadn’t looked. It hadn’t occurred to him.
‘Yes. Same as the front. In one end, out the other. Why?’
Then Rocco realised what had been bothering him.
The pigeons on the roof. There were none. Why was that? And that mist around the base of the structure: it was moving, billowing gently outwards. Yet there was none anywhere else.
And it was growing.
As he opened his mouth to speak, to voice what he was seeing, the shed moved. It trembled, then seemed to shake itself like a living beast, and lifted, before exploding in a great shower of wood fragments and smoke, the latter billowing out in a great cloud to join the mist around the base.
Not mist. Exhaust smoke.
‘My God! Lucas!’ Claude grabbed his arm and pointed beyond the shed to the road leading to the bridge. Another car had appeared in the distance. Only this one was shiny and sleek, and rode the tarmac with undoubted elegance, at sharp odds with the sleety brown of the surrounding fields and the grubby snow clouds gathered overhead.
A gleaming black Citroen DS.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Jack Fletcher stared hard at a point in the front left corner of the shed, his foot poised on the accelerator, keeping the engine of the Renault at a smooth pitch. He’d judged the distances carefully with the help of the man who’d brought him here. He had spoken passable English, and between them they had worked out at what point Fletcher had to hit the gas in order to hit the car broadside on. From the three test runs he’d made, he knew precisely what the timing was and how fast the truck had to be going. And that was Fletcher’s speciality. There would be no messing this time, no holding back, even just a little. He’d had his orders. This one was for real.
He felt his heart tripping fast, reverberating through his chest even above the roar of the truck engine in the confined space of the shed. For the first time in years, he felt proud of what he was about to do. ‘Ruby’ Ketch, passing on orders from a higher authority, had selected him for this job, and him alone. No George bloody Tasker sticking his oar in this time, telling him how he’d screwed up and gone in too heavy. This time, Tasker was going to see and feel what heavy was all about. And Calloway. They wouldn’t know what had hit them.
He laughed out loud at the absurd beauty of it. Because they bloody would know, of course they would; in the few seconds it would take them to suss it out, by which time it would be too late, they’d go mental as the realisation of what Ketch had planned for them actually sank in.
‘We got a big job for you, Jack.’ Ketch had said two days ago. He’d treated Fletcher to a few drinks before telling him what he’d wanted. ‘Seems we’ve got a couple of bleedin’ twicers in the camp.’
‘What?’ Fletcher wasn’t sure he’d heard right. Twicers. Cheats. Traitors. ‘Who?’
Ketch had told him,
lighting up a big cigar while Fletcher absorbed the information.
Tasker and Calloway? He could hardly believe it. On the other hand, he’d never liked Tasker, and Calloway was too smooth for his own bleedin’ good. Smarmy young git. He found he’d been ready to believe anything of them.
‘We need someone we can rely on, Jack, to sort this out,’ Ketch had continued, flicking away the match. ‘Someone with the balls to do it right.’ He’d looked Fletcher in the eye from close up, the smell of the cigar mixing with cologne and filling Fletcher’s nose. ‘We need ’em to go away, Jack. Gone for good — know what I mean?’
He’d accompanied the words by taking out his trademark pen and writing a number on a paper napkin. It was a big number, so big it had almost made Fletcher’s eyes water. And preceded by a pound sign. It was more than Fletcher had earned in years, and he swore the number sat there looking up at him with a devilish grin on its face, calling out to him to pick it up.
Ketch had leant closer, a reassuring hand on Fletcher’s shoulder. ‘Money like this, you could retire, Jack.’
‘Eh?’ That had come as a surprise. But not an unwelcome one.
‘Call it your signing-off fee, eh? Bloody good sign-off, too. You’d be in clover. And the job you’d be doing, you’d be a legend.’ The final four words were said in a hushed whisper, and Jack Fletcher felt his chest would explode.
He’d picked up the napkin and thought, a job like this, I’d do it for bloody nothing.
Now, watching through the gap he’d made between the planks in the wall, he waited for the black Citroen to appear. They’d be driving at a steady pace, he’d been assured, unsuspecting because Tasker and Calloway had been told the crash would take place a good mile further down the road, on a bend. They’d probably be gassing, telling themselves how clever they were to be cheating on Ketch and the rest, and wouldn’t even give the shed a passing glance. To them, it would be a shitty structure in the middle of a vast brown rolling sea of muddy fields.
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