Before settling on this spot, Gastal had made a couple of circuits around the Cabrille estate and along roads that might overlook it. But the three-metre stone wall that surrounded the property and the line of lime and pine that branched above it made any kind of surveillance a tricky proposition. Rue Cornille was the only real vantage point he’d been able to find. For the first hour he’d been forced to double-park but now he was more discreetly slotted into a line of cars, just two between him and Chemin de Roucas.
From where he sat he may not have been able to see anything over the wall or through the trees or beyond the rising slope, but Gastal was not unfamiliar with the Cabrille estate. According to DGSE files in Lyons, Arsène Cabrille had bought the property in the late-sixties and paid in excess of five million francs for it. Big money then. Big money still. Gastal knew the price because he had the agent’s sale brochure from that time, a fold-out prospectus with faded colour pictures of a grand nineteenth-century villa with sea-view terraces and sloping lawns. According to the brochure some renovation had been recommended to bring the property into suitable order – the inference being that the previous owners had done nothing for some years and the place was in a deplorable state – but it wouldn’t have taken the new owner long to turn it around. As well as the brochure illustrations, Gastal also had a number of hazy long-distance shots of the house taken by a DGSE operative from a boat offshore, and from a Department helicopter flying overhead.
After bringing the villa itself into suitable order, Cabrille had also, over the years, implemented a number of changes in the grounds – seeking planning permits for a two-bedroomed stone lodge, a double garage complex with accommodation above, a swimming pool and tennis court. For a man like Cabrille, a rising figure in Marseilles’ underworld, such permis would have been easy to acquire, almost as easy as it had been for the DGSE to get their hands on copies of those same plans and architect’s drawings.
Whatever now lay behind those walls, Gastal was in no doubt that the original purchase price would be but a very small fraction of the property’s current value. He also knew it wasn’t the family’s only residence. In addition to the house in Roucas Blanc there was a winter home in Courmayeur, a holiday home in Martinique and several properties in French Polynesia where Cabrille’s trading fleet enjoyed tax-efficient registry in the Futuna and Willis Islands. There was also the cottage in Endoume that Cabrille had bought for Mademoiselle Cousteaux, a small private jet hangared at Marignane, and a fifty-metre yacht berthed in L’Estaque. And now it all belonged to his daughter, Virginie. The sheer scale of her inheritance made Gastal hiss with envy. And squirm with an impossible lust. Just seeing her standing at the graveside had done it for Gastal. He’d seen her pictures, too, in Point de Vue and Sud – the openings, the exhibitions, the parties. Rich and tasty. Just a scratch over thirty. And still single.
And Gastal was going to bring her down. For the smuggling, for the Lafour girl, for the money-laundering Druot Clinics, for whatever piece of Cabrille chicanery he could get her for – however he could manage it.
If Gastal had had to put money on it – now that Carinthe Cousteaux was unable to supply the name of the freighter with its illegal cargo – he’d say the Lafour girl was his best bet. But it wasn’t by any means a sure thing. What he couldn’t figure out was why the family should bother with a kidnap and ransom. It wasn’t their usual fare and it wasn’t like they needed the money, or the risk of possible exposure. Certainly the girl was here, in Marseilles, if only because Madame Bonnefoy had brought in Jacquot to track her down. But did the Cabrilles actually have her?
Watching the house, occasionally checking behind him in the wing and rear-view mirrors, Gastal wondered just how far Jacquot might have got, but felt a rising confidence that the man was nowhere near as close to springing the Lafour girl as he was. Because Gastal knew, he just knew, that he was in the right place. And the time was right. And something was going to happen. In the next couple of days that ponytailed chancer would be discredited, Madame Bonnefoy would be forced to admit his own superior policing, and he, Gastal, would be calling Bocuse to book the first of many tables – his future assured.
He had been sitting there for two hours, listening to the rain on the roof of his Renault, watching the main gate and the impasse garage, when his patience was finally rewarded at a little after four o’clock. With thunder crackling overhead, a black VW came down Chemin de Roucas, passed Gastal on the corner of rue Cornille and turned up into the dead-end street with no name. Staying low behind the wheel, Gastal saw the garage doors slide open as the car approached. Thirty seconds later it had disappeared inside and the garage doors had closed. Despite the distance, the VW’s speed, and his own rain-smeared windscreen, Gastal had managed to make out two men inside the VW, big fellows both of them, real vrais durs, as likely as not the pair that Haggar had told him about who had gone to Valentine’s workshop and done for the garagiste.
He was trying to place them, work them into the picture, when the garage doors slid open again and the VW reappeared. There was just the driver this time, no passenger, and he reversed out of the garage at speed, swinging the car round in a tight turn and then swooping down to Chemin de Roucas. Sidelights on, right indicator flashing, off he went, the car jerking as he changed untidily into second. Wherever he was going, he was in a hurry to get there.
Gastal counted twenty, then started up his Renault and set out after him. By the time he’d turned into the road, the VW was passing out of sight beyond the bend. Gastal increased his speed so as not to fall too far behind, and prayed he wouldn’t lose it. Coming round the bend, he was in time to see it swing right through a set of lights and head off down rue Fabres. As soon as it was out of sight, Gastal put his foot down and made the lights as they changed to red.
Rue Fabres was another long bend to the right, a tight squeeze for two passing cars, with no kerbs and a gentle slope that would have led them down to the Corniche if the VW hadn’t taken an abrupt, unsignalled left into rue Seneca. If Gastal had been in a squad car, he’d have lit the lamp and hit the horns. Instead, he braked hard to make the same turn and hoped the VW’s driver wouldn’t notice he was being followed. Dropping his speed, he watched the VW race on ahead until it swooped around another bend and out of sight. This time he kept his speed steady, wondering where the VW was headed. He found out when he came round the bend and saw it pulled up outside a tabac. Keeping his eyes on the road, as though the parked VW and its driver, now going into the tabac, were of no interest, Gastal dropped down to the next intersection and realised where he was, back on Chemin de Roucas.
A cigarette run.
That’s all it had been.
He could have sat tight on Cornille and not missed anything. In the meantime Maison Cabrille had been left unattended. Anyone could have come in or gone out, and he was none the wiser. Cursing lightly, Gastal swung back down into Cornille, went to the bottom of the street, turned in someone’s driveway and came back up to his original parking space just as the VW’s brake lights glared again and dropped down out of sight into the Cabrille garage.
Switching off the engine, Gastal settled down to continue his surveillance. It didn’t take long for him to start thinking that maybe it hadn’t been a cigarette run. Did they know he was there? Had they made him? Lured him away while something more interesting went down?
He soon found out. Minutes later the garage door opened and the VW’s driver appeared, holding an umbrella over his head. Gastal watched him walk down to the main road, cross over, and head straight for him. Without breaking stride he came down rue Cornille, stopped by the Renault, and bent down to look through the passenger window. There was a nasty little smile on the man’s face as he tapped the glass.
Gastal knew immediately it hadn’t been a cigarette run.
But he still tried to brazen it out. Buzzing down the window, he leaned across the passenger seat and asked, ‘Can I help?’
‘Please get out of the car, monsieur
,’ the man said. The accent was unmistakable. Just as Alam Haggar had described it – a rough, clipped sound. An islander, certainly not local.
‘You what?’ tried Gastal.
‘I said, please get out of the car. Mademoiselle Cabrille would like a word.’
Before he had a chance to compute that particular piece of information, Gastal heard another tap on the driver’s window behind him. He turned to see the muzzle of a 9-mm automatic resting against the glass. The second man from the VW had appeared from nowhere. Just come up behind him like a shadow. He motioned with the gun that Gastal should do as he was told.
‘You’d better lock it,’ said the first man, as Gastal stepped out into the rain.
‘Even round here,’ said his companion.
Despite the gun, now slipped away in the man’s pocket, Gastal felt a swoop of relief. You weren’t told to lock your car if you weren’t coming back to it. One of the men even put an umbrella over his head so he wouldn’t get wet.
90
WITH TWO RETIRED HARBOUR MASTERS to help, it didn’t take long to establish that the motor yacht Léonie was a fifty-metre vessel built in 1968 in Portuguese yards. She weighed a little over three hundred tons, had five guest suites, a crew of ten, and had undergone a major refit in Toulon some four years earlier. What they couldn’t find out was the owner’s name.
‘Not surprising when she’s registered in Mata-Utu,’ said Salette. ‘Futuna and Willis Islands. Tighter than a Swiss bank, they are.’
‘She’ll be a nice-looking boat,’ said Bruno. ‘The people who built her are good. Arsenal do Alfeite. Real naval architects. She’ll have some style, that’s for sure.’
‘Still a pleasure-boat,’ grunted Salette who didn’t rate a vessel unless it had sails.
Thanks to Bruno’s son-in-law they had also established that MY Léonie had left the port of L’Estaque at a little after seven o’clock on Sunday morning after a two-week stay. The time-frame fitted with Elodie being taken from Vassin’s home the night before, and a ship the size of Léonie seemed a reasonable place to keep someone safely and quietly hidden away – no snooping neighbours at sea. As far as Jacquot was concerned, he’d bet a pichet of rouge to a case of Bellet that Solange Bonnefoy’s niece was on board.
But where was the boat now? Where had she gone after leaving L’Estaque?
Monopolising Tant’Anne’s hallway telephone, they found out that MY Léonie had not berthed at any port along the coast and that no boat of that name had been reported anchored off-shore.
‘She could be anywhere,’ said Bruno. ‘She’ll do twelve to fifteen knots easy, and with full tanks, say forty thousand litres, she’s got a cruising range of . . . what? Maybe three thousand kilometres?’
Marie-Ange looked appalled.
But Jacquot wasn’t convinced she was that far from port. ‘She’ll be hiding somewhere, out at sea, out of sight, but not too far,’ he told them. ‘Any ideas?’
‘There’s Maritime Control in Toulon,’ suggested Bruno. ‘They’ve got the best surveillance in terms of radar. They might be able to help.’
‘Or there’s the Gendarmerie Maritime out at Corbière,’ said Salette. ‘They share the same feed, have the same information. And they’re a lot closer than Toulon.’
It was Bruno’s turn to grunt. ‘That means dealing with that know-it-all, Monsieur Gérard “Je-sais-tout” Torne. We’ll be there all night.’
‘Maybe he’s not on duty,’ said Salette.
But Gérard Torne was on duty. When they arrived at the coast-guard facility on the quay at Corbière, they were shown through to the control room – a dark, windowless space crowded with chart tables, consoles and radar screens – and there he was, a tall man in a sleeveless pullover, Sta-prest slacks and squeaking trainers. He had a long, mournful face, heavy-framed spectacles and a thin black moustache that he pulled at as he talked.
‘I wish I could help, monsieur,’ said Torne with a weary smile when Jacquot explained that they needed help finding a boat. ‘But this is not air-traffic control,’ he continued. ‘Ships do not have transponders. They are not like aircraft, you know, coming in to land or taking off. Air France this, Air France that. I can’t just look at the screen and say “oh, there is your ship”. It simply doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid.’
He then frowned, began to nod, and the four of them looked at him expectantly, as though he had suddenly remembered something. He hadn’t. ‘Of course, it’s all set to change,’ he began again. ‘There is a new system being developed to track and monitor vessel movements a great deal more efficiently. Things like vessel identification, position, course and speed. Apparently it works by integrating a standardised VHF transceiver system with an electronic navigation system, such as a LORAN-C or Global Positioning receiver, and other navigational sensors on board ship, which tie in with . . .’
‘But you don’t have this system at the moment,’ interrupted Jacquot. Now he knew what Bruno had meant back at Tant’Anne’s. Once the man got going it was almost impossible to break in.
‘I regret, monsieur, not quite yet. All we have is what you see in front of you, real-time radar surveillance data supplied by Toulon. Here, let me show you.’
Torne was clearly used to the limited space in the control room and wove his way expertly between the chart tables and desks to one of the radar consoles. Jacquot, Marie-Ange, Salette and Bruno followed more carefully, gathering around him, all eyes drawn to a green line sweeping clockwise round the screen. ‘From the maritime monitoring station at Toulon, five hundred metres above sea level, our effective radar range is about eighty kilometres,’ said Torne. ‘Line of sight, if you like. But the further you go, the weaker the signal. There, for instance, pretty much at the edge of our range are three tankers,’ he said, pointing a long bony finger at three tiny green blips within an inch of each other at the top of the screen. ‘Approximately south-south-east of us, on a north-easterly heading. MS Konstantin, MS Crude Lavery and the Osten out of Hamburg.’
‘I thought you said you didn’t have names?’ said Jacquot.
Torne smiled patiently, his thin moustache curling slightly. ‘I have these names, monsieur, because their departure details are logged with Toulon Control. This one, in the lead, is probably the Osten, coming up from Gibraltar, and these two further back from the refineries at Puerto Castellón near Valencia, all bound for Genoa as their destination port. Even if I didn’t have their names and details, I would know them just by their heading – where they are coming from, where they are going. It’s the third time this year that they have made the same journey. At sea, as in life, messieurs, mademoiselle, there is always a pattern. Day and night. The same routes, the same ships. Ferries to and from Corsica, oil tankers leaving and arriving at Fos-Martigues, trawler fleets working traditional fishing grounds, even naval patrols on manoeuvre.’
Torne looked happily from face to face, tweaking his moustache, pleased to have such an attentive audience. ‘But then, there are those who sail and cruise for pleasure, these other smaller indices you see, closer to the coast. All I can say with any certainty is that there is a vessel of some description here,’ he said, pointing to a blip. ‘Or there,’ pointing to another. ‘But I can give you no details. Name, tonnage, registration, destination. Nothing.’
‘Unless they contact you . . . a distress call,’ said Salette.
‘Ah, with radio communication established between the vessel and our control facilities, mais bien sûr, everything changes.’
‘Do you get many distress calls?’ asked Marie-Ange.
‘At this time of year, plenty,’ replied Torne. ‘Yachtsmen who think they can handle the kinds of seas we’ve been having recently, people lost in the fog, and just the other day a couple of crazy divers off Cap Canaille. Swept out, they were. At least they had transponders, or we’d never have found them. Which is what is so good about the new technology, you see, because . . .’
‘What about those patterns you mentioned?’ press
ed Jacquot. ‘If you saw something that didn’t look right, but there was no distress call.’
‘If something looked suspicious, of course we would check it out. And it happens more often than you might imagine.’
‘Any examples?’ asked Jacquot.
Torne pushed out his bottom lip. It looked like a long shiny slug, the red of it tinged green from the radar screens. He gave the question a moment’s thought, then started to nod. ‘Last summer we had a ship about forty kilometres out, on the edge of a deep trough called the Maures Escarpment. One of our controllers noticed that it hadn’t moved between his shifts. It was outside recognised anchorage spots and close to shipping lanes, so we had the Gendarmerie Maritime chopper go and take a look. Turned out it was on a treasure hunt, exploring a wreck. Not in trouble at all.’
He smiled at them, each in turn, as though he had done all he could and now he really must be getting back to work.
‘Anything more recently?’ asked Marie-Ange with a smile.
‘Pretty much the same thing this morning,’ Torne replied. ‘Some vessel keeping to station about eighty kilometres south-west of here. We call it “patrolling”.’
‘Patrolling?’ asked Jacquot, his interest piqued.
‘Holding a circular course. Not going anywhere. Something like that could have been a drugs pick-up – which was our first thought – or possibly something wrong with their steering, maybe some kind of mechanical failure. If their radio was down too, they’d have been unable to call for help. And that stretch of water, monsieur, can get pretty busy with traffic in and out of Fos-Martigues, not to mention westerly bound traffic out of Marseilles, and on occasions . . .’
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