Jean-Paul picked sparsely at his breakfast: the body-blow of the photos and the news on Georges had suddenly taken his appetite. Their meeting ended soon after with him begging a few hours in which to make his final decision; though he could see from the keenness in Roman’s eyes that only one decision was expected now: there was little room to manoeuvre. He would have taken his swim then – immerse and hopefully swill away all his problems, ease some of the sudden aching burden from his shoulders. But his meeting with Simone was only twenty-five minutes away, and he needed every second of that time, if not more, to get clear in his mind how on earth he would present all of this to her.
He paced agitatedly fuelled by two more fresh coffees for most of that time, spinning possible scenarios around. But when she arrived, most of it went straight out the window: he’d planned to broach the subject immediately, but she’d clearly arrived on some sort of mission with something pressing to get off her chest, so he let her speak first and meanwhile continued gathering his thoughts.
He hadn’t intended to actually show her the photos, his initial plan was just to say that he had strong, reliable information that Georges was seeing another girl; and combined with their problem with him over questioning by the RCMP that he’d very obviously lied about, she should steer clear of him until they decided what to do.
But as Simone ran through Georges’ fresh account of events that fateful night with Roman and Leduc, and why supposedly he’d said nothing then or since, his anger began to grow uncontrollably. Very obviously Georges somehow realized they were on to him about the club girl, so he’d primed Simone to throw in this ridiculous story at the last hour to try and save his neck. Georges didn’t even have the courage of conviction to face him personally, he’d chosen to hide behind his daughter’s skirt! He cut in halfway through and voiced his thoughts in a fierce volley, and within minutes they were arguing.
No, she didn’t accept it. Georges wouldn’t do that. ‘It’s just something made up by Roman because he knew Georges was going to come clean.’
‘I don’t think so. I had my doubts too initially when Roman claimed something was going on with this girl – but now he’s brought me proof.’
‘Proof, proof? What proof?’ And as he hesitated, realizing he didn’t want to cause her the pain of actually seeing the photos, she sensed the advantage, sneering: ‘And what girl is this supposed to be?’
‘One of the girls from the Sherbrooke club.’
‘Oh, right. Right! One of Roman’s pet harem slipped some money to say she’s got a thing going with Georges – and you’re ready to just accept it.’
‘No, no… of course not.’
‘Georges always feared that when it came to the crunch, you’d take Roman’s side… and he was right. That’s why he was so nervous about telling you this all along.’
He recalled then just closing his eyes and holding up one hand, willing her to stop as his anger bubbled over. Though it wasn’t directed at her, more at the way Georges had her wrapped so much in his control. But she was on automatic, unable to stop now that Georges had wound her up and sent her in.
‘Roman’s playing both you and Georges for mugs, has been for a while… but you’re just to blind to–’
He flung the photos across the table in that moment. Flipped open the envelope and just emptied them out from a foot up, a half-dozen of the twenty falling face-down, then scrunched his eyes tight shut again and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. So sorry.’
Jean-Paul rested one elbow against the pool edge as he came to the end of his third lap, his laboured breath showing in the humid air. Across the courtyard through the glass, the breath and body heat of the stable horses rose in the cold morning air, as if competing with the vapours drifting from the pool’s heat-exchange vents.
He remembered his father crossing the courtyard the year before he died, one cold February morning. His father and Lillian had moved into the separate wing at the end of the courtyard – which Jean-Paul’s growing family had previously occupied – when Raphael was born and Simone was just seven, seeing his need for space as greater than his own. Security became more of an issue with the advent of their battle with the Cacchione’s, and so the pool block and gymnasium were added: the house they felt was too vulnerable with the courtyard open to their rear gardens, in turn open to the St Lawrence only two hundred yards away. The pool block squared it off, made it more of a compound. Not that any of that made a difference, Pascal was picked off leaving a Rue St Gabriel restaurant before the pool block was even finished.
Jean-Paul had been in the main dining room looking out when his father ventured out for the first time after Pascal’s funeral: shoulder’s sagged, breath heavy on the air as he trudged across the courtyard snow, raising only a weak acknowledging hand to the builders finishing off the pool block. Jean-Paul should have known then that his father might not have long to live. He looked to have aged ten years in the past ten days, defeated, all spirit gone.
But he could have done with his father’s sage, years-worn advice now. He felt so alone with the decision he now faced, undoubtedly the toughest call he’d ever had to make.
He regretted immediately showing Simone the photos, even though in the heat of the moment there appeared little other solution. Her eyes darted uncomprehendingly for a long moment before she finally looked back up again. He could see clearly the hatred aimed at him beyond the hurt, anger and her fast welling tears. He reached out a hand to her – there was so much else he wanted to say in that moment – but all that came out was another weak ‘Sorry’ as she flinched back from his touch, turned and stormed from the room.
He knew that he risked losing his daughter over this; not the complete loss his father and the family had suffered with Pascal, but with Simone losing all love for him and its place taken by nothing but recrimination, it would be like a death of sorts. Jean-Paul didn’t think he could face that, but he just couldn’t see any other possible choice.
Crowley leapt across the squad room as one of his team of five, DC Denny Hobbs, raised one hand, frantically waving.
‘More news just in! Cash card used again.’ Hobbs cradled phone tight in by his shoulder as he covered the mouthpiece with one hand.
‘Where?’
‘A small town called Montrichard. Banque National du Paris cash machine this time.’ Hobbs lifted his hand back off the mouthpiece and started scrawling with his pen. ‘Yeah, yeah… okay. Thanks.’ He hung up, tore the top paper from his pad and handed it to Crowley. ‘Fifteen-hundred francs taken out at 21.27, French time. And the street location of the machine.’
The second breakthrough in only fifteen minutes. The first had been that an Elena Waldren and child had been ticketed through to catch the 4.10 pm Euro-Shuttle.
Crowley went back to his desk and leafed again through the Routiers guide that he’d pored over on and off for the past hour trying to work out the likely pace and direction of Elena Waldren’s journey. Montrichard. Population: 15,870. 164 km south-west of Paris. 9.27 pm, dark for over three hours, the next town, Loches, not much larger and almost twenty miles away, and getting late to check into a hotel. It was worth a try, at least: no other leads or sightings of her car as yet.
He went over to Sally, the only one of his team with reasonable French, and asked her to raise the Gendarmerie at Montrichard. ‘Get the number from Interpol or the main National Gendarmerie number in Paris.’
Sally pushed a prim smile and clutched lightly at her hair as she tapped and brought up a fresh screen on her PC, scrolled down and dialled out. She’d been under more pressure and harried than most of his team, had born the brunt of their liaison with Interpol and putting out a French police alert on Waldren. Introductory burst in French, and then a more generous smile from Sally. Oui. Oui. Angleterre. She looked back at Crowley. ‘Okay, I’ve got them. What do you want to know?’
Crowley got her to ask how many hotels there were in town. Five: four in and around the centre, one just a kilometre outside
. Then which hotels were closest to the Banque National du Paris on Rue Petupliers. The Richault was the closest, only thirty yards away on the same road; then the Chateauville, a hundred and fifty metres around the corner. Crowley got Sally to explain their current situation with Elena Waldren: Interpol had already been advised and a French National Police search was out for her. Sally quoted the Interpol reference number she’d been given and the liaising Inspector at Lyon central, if they wished for verification – then Crowley got to what he wanted: two or three gendarmes, or whatever they could spare, to visit both the Richault and the Chateauville to check for Elena Waldren or her car. Crowley had to wait patiently while Sally phonetically spelt out the name and car registration. The other three hotels just a check by phone with their receptions would suffice.
A last flurry of translation tennis, which at one point appeared to over-strain Sally’s vocabulary grasp, and she conveyed to Crowley that Captain Lacombe, Head of Station, assured that he would take personal charge of the situation and do all he could to assist. ‘He’ll dispatch some men straightaway.’
Crowley passed on descriptions of Elena and the girl, in case Elena had registered under a false name, and they waited.
The return call came through seventy-eight minutes later.
Lacombe’s men descended on Montichard’s hotels as if they were searching for one of France’s most wanted criminals. Montrichard rarely got foreign or Interpol enquiries, six years since the last if Lacombe remembered right, and he was eager to prove that the Montrichard Gendarmerie was nothing if not efficient.
He visited the Richault himself assisted by two gendarmes, sent a team of two simultaneously to the Chateauville, and one man to each of the other three hotels, emptying all but two men from the Gendarmerie. Lacombe personally saw and, via the receptionist, questioned the only two British residents at the Richault – a single man and a family of four. His other men ran through the same exercise at the remaining four hotels: seven British registrations, but only one close to the description passed on of a forty-something mother and a child of ten. But the interviewing gendarme who had sight of them said that the mother was blonde, no more than 1 metre 55, and was quite plump, probably close to 70 kilos.
Crowley did some quick mental arithmetic: four inches shorter and twenty-pounds heavier than Elena Waldren, even if she had dyed her hair.
Lacombe had liaised with all his other men while still at the Richault and as a precaution had asked for the passports of all British guests to be photocopied.
Almost as an afterthought, Crowley asked where the two British registrations at the Richault were from. ‘A clue is the last page of their passports, emergency contact addresses.’
‘It’s okay, I know from my interview notes where they’re from,’ Lacombe proudly announced back through Sally. ‘The family of four are from Maidstone in Kent and the man on his own is from Poole, Dorset.’
Poole. A tingle ran through Crowley. Practically on the Waldren’s doorstep. ‘What age is the man on his own?’
‘Forty-five, maybe fifty.’
Crowley was pretty sure he knew what had happened: the Waldrens had got a friend to run decoy with her cash card. He thought of sending Lacombe back to question him, but there was little point: he probably wouldn’t admit it or give any clue to where she’d gone, even if they had been stupid enough to tell him, and using someone else’s cash card with consent was no crime. But at least Crowley had a clearer view now on where she’d probably headed: three or four main options, as far as he could see.
He made use of Lacombe’s eagerness to ensure that Elena Waldren hadn’t continued on to the next town, Loches, by having him check by phone with their hotels also. And when Lacombe phoned back twenty-five minutes later with a blank there also, he asked Sally to re-contact Interpol to urge them to concentrate their focus on border posts with Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, and Paris airports: Orly and Charles de Gaulle.
Elena was frantic within half an hour of waiting at the airport.
Gordon’s elaborate plans might have worked – the train journey for the last stretch so that her car wasn’t visible on the road for too long, the decoy run with her cash-card – if it wasn’t for their flight being delayed by almost two hours. More than enough time for the police to work out possible alternatives and start circling in on her.
She heard the news first at the check-in desk and it made her head spin. Walking away, she felt nauseous, faint, as if her legs could hardly carry her. The blaring airport tannoy echoed and reverberated inside her head, made it all the worse. She feared she was going to black-out at any second and eased herself down at the first bank of seats only twenty paces from the check-in. Lorena asked if she was okay.
‘Yes, I’m fine. Just tired from driving and all the rush.’ Elena didn’t want to let on how frightened she was, her nerves at breaking point. Each police car they’d passed, the ticket guard on the train, another man not far behind who looked from side to side, seemed to be observing everyone as he walked down the aisle… each incident had raised her nerves another notch. ‘And now I’ve just heard that we’ve got a bit of a wait for our flight. Let’s grab a coffee.’
She smiled and went to take Lorena’s hand, then realized that her own shaking hand would give away her panic – so in the end she just draped her arm over Lorena’s shoulder.
But her hands were shaking openly on her coffee cup, and seeing the concern in Lorena’s eyes she felt she had to explain. ‘I’m worried that the people who’ll have been looking for you – probably now for the past few hours – might be able to catch up and find us because of this delay now with our flight.’ Elena kept her voice low in case anyone nearby might overhear, but as an extra caution said ‘people’ instead of police.
‘But we left that tape to tell them that there was nothing to worry about. I was okay.’
Elena shook her head and smiled. The naivete of children. If only she could take the same simplistic view to dampen the combined-harvester of nerves churning her stomach. ‘I know. But I think they’ll still come looking for you – for us.’
Lorena’s eyebrows knitted. ‘But even if they find us – nothing will happen to you, will it?’
‘Well, I’m not so…’ Elena’s eyes flickered past Lorena’s shoulder, to a uniformed policeman shifting into view at the back of the room, going over to talk to a man in a grey suit with a walkie-talkie in hand. They seemed to be paying little attention to anyone in the coffee area, but still Elena felt uncomfortable with them so close. ‘I’m more concerned though about you.’ She reached over and gently patted Lorena’s hand. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
They spent the next twenty minutes browsing in airport shops, picking up a walkman and two tapes and a Harry Potter from a section with English books to keep Lorena occupied during the flight. Or was it equally for herself so that she didn’t have to brave out any more awkward questions from Lorena: Where are we going? How long will it take? How long will we stay there? Two or three days… it seems a long way to go just for that. Lorena was animated, excited; to her, this trip was an adventure. Whereas Elena felt like a condemned prisoner, too occupied with her impending doom to take up her last moments with idle chat.
At least she felt less conspicuous rummaging in the back of airport shops, away from open concourses and the view of everybody. But still the occasional policeman or airport security guard would pass and make Elena’s heart leap. And as they finally came back out into the main throng of activity, Elena’s nerves were back to hammering intensity: more policemen, security men with walkie-talkies, customs officials, anti-terrorist guards with sub-machine guns. Just passing the occasional policeman every forty minutes or so on the way to the airport had put her nerves on edge – now she was surrounded by them! Having to pass two whole hours trapped here was Elena’s worst nightmare come true.
She glanced at her watch: still one hour and eighteen minutes to go. The question was whether to go through customs now and wait out the re
maining time airside, or only go through at the last moment? If any alert had come through, that’s where the main check would be. The more she waited, the more the chances of something coming through. But if she went through early and the alert came through afterwards, would her name then be down so that she was just a sitting duck trapped airside for them stop upon boarding?
‘It’s okay, don’t worry. I’m sure everything will be alright.’ Lorena reached out and slipped her hand into hers, lightly clasping.
‘Thanks. You’re probably right.’ Oh God. She bit at her lip, suddenly guilty: she should be the one consoling, re-assuring. But it suddenly struck her that this ten-year old girl had practically seen it all: abandonment at only three, shuffled from orphanage to hell-hole orphanage where the mad and infirm were strapped to cots and simply left to cry and scream the nights away, with often only death finally bringing silence; her nightmare sewer days and seeing more of her friends die; and now trying to unscramble the nightmare images in her mind to know if her stepfather was molesting her or not. She was old beyond her years, probably far tougher, far better equipped to deal with this than Elena would ever be.
Elena dragged Lorena into a gift shop to grab a moment’s more clear thought away from the hustle-bustle – before finally deciding to go through customs straightaway. Not just because she felt she should be putting on a braver face for Lorena, but that with her growing panic if she waited any longer she might not be able to face going through at all.
‘Okay. Let’s go.’ She gave Lorena’s hand a re-assuring squeeze, though it was more for herself.
But within minutes in the customs queue, she was having second thoughts. She was shaking heavily and her legs were weak again, the airport announcements back echoing dizzily – she could hardly understand a word, for all she knew it could be rallying all guards to immediately apprehend her. And at that moment she noticed the plain-clothed guard with earpiece and walkie-talkie a few yards behind the three customs desks ahead, watching hawkishly each person that went through.
The Last Witness Page 30