The Last Witness

by John Matthews

Georges wasn’t so drunk that he needed support, but he definitely needed encouragement from his bar stool. With his morose state and a finger of bourbon still in his glass, he looked reluctant to leave. He finally knocked it back as Landry paid, and they headed out.

  The two men in the Econoline saw them as soon as they were a yard beyond the giant gypsy dancing figures that marked the bar’s entrance.

  ‘Okay. Which way they headed?’

  ‘Looks like towards Donatiens’ car.’ They’d agreed at the outset that a good spot to snatch Donatiens would be the side street where he’d parked. It was quiet, not much activity. The friend was parked further up on the opposite side of St Laurent.

  ‘Shit… looks like the friend’s staying with him.’

  ‘They’re stopping. Maybe they’re going to split up now. Oh, great. Choose now to give the fucking Gettysburg address.’

  The fresh air on St Laurent had cleared Landry’s thoughts a bit. ‘I think you should tell Jean-Paul everything. Bare all to him in the same way that you have to me.’

  ‘Yeah, sure. I’m here to rat on your brother because maybe you’re daughter didn’t put the point across properly. Oh, and whatever happened with that club girl last night, if anything – I don’t remember a thing. I was drugged and out of it.’

  ‘I know. But it’s probably your only chance. And maybe something in your account will strike a chord, throw some doubt on whatever Roman’s spun about it all. Enough at least for Jean-Paul to hold back until he’s checked it out.’

  Georges met Landry’s gaze evenly. He was serious. ‘So when am I meant to spill all of this to Jean-Paul?’

  ‘Come on. Come on. Move it!’

  ‘Not tonight. You’re in no fit shape. And besides, Simone might still call and clear up the whole mess.’ Still trying to sell the hope of her calling. ‘…Or maybe meanwhile you’ll get hold of her. If not, go see him first thing tomorrow morning.’

  A keening wind along St Laurent stung Georges’ face, made his eyes water. Landry was practically the only thing in focus among a blur of café signs, street-lights and the streaming tail-lights of passing cars. He started shaking heavily, though he wasn’t sure if it was with cold, or exhaustion and nerves. Only half a day with Simone’s back perhaps turned to him, and he felt so alone, deserted. At least the drink helped numb the pain a little; he could feel its effect more now with the cold air, and swayed uncertainly in the wind. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

  Landry reached towards him. ‘Look – I don’t think you should be driving. Let me run you home.’

  Georges put one foot back, steadying himself before the hand connected. ‘What, you? You’re almost as bad as me.’

  Landry shrugged as Georges smiled incredulously at him. Not exactly true: Georges had drunk at least three to his two; he’d felt it his duty to keep a clear head so that he could throw an incisive light on Georges’ problem. Not that it had helped. ‘Then at least grab a cab.’

  ‘No, no.’ Georges held one hand up. ‘I leave my Lexus in that side street – by midnight the wheels and the radio will be gone… if not the whole car. Maybe that’d be the best thing: thrown in a cell for the night for drunk driving. Safest place for me.’ He smiled crookedly and swallowed down the tail-end of a belch, holding up his hand again at Landry’s concerned expression. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take it easy. Can’t be more than a dozen blocks.’

  ‘That’s it… come on.’ They watched the friend step back, a few more words spoken between them, then with a parting half salute the friend turned to cross St Laurent. Donatiens continued on the same side towards the turning thirty yards away where he’d parked.

  The driver fired up the engine and looked in his wing mirror. Two cars passing, then a gap – but the next car was approaching fast. He waited for it to pass.

  Donatiens was pacing briskly, only eight yards from the turning as they pulled out.

  Their every move from this point in had been pre-choreographed. The passenger went into the back of the van and picked up a ski-mask and a black cloth hood. He slipped on the ski-mask and crouched expectantly by the van’s back doors, ready for the signal to jump out.

  The driver moved slowly for the first ten yards until Donatiens turned into the side street, then he sped up the last distance. He pulled over to the centre line for the left-turn and waited for a passing car… but just as he started to turn, had edged forward a yard, a parked car five down pulled out. It beeped and they stood uncertainly nose to nose for a moment before it swung lazily around him.

  ‘Shit!’ The driver clutched the wheel hard as he finally made the turn. Donatiens’ friend further up had looked around briefly but didn’t seem to dwell on them. He was already at his car, had the door half open to get in.

  Donatiens hadn’t looked round, but the problem was that he had gained eight or nine yards meanwhile. They’d agreed that the best time to grab him was just before he got in his car – but now he was only yards from it, bleeping it open.

  The driver accelerated hard down the street, his pulse racing as Donatiens reached out, opening his car door. The driver kept in close to the parked cars, hoping that at the last minute Donatiens might push the door back and stay pinned tight by his car until they’d passed, afraid of getting his door creamed: they’d brake sharp just past, swing the back doors open, and…

  But Donatiens went for the second option of jumping in swiftly and shutting the door before they reached him.

  The driver slowed and finally screeched to a halt ten yards past, his breath falling hard with the adrenalin rush of the near miss.

  ‘What now?’ Ski-mask pressed anxiously. Through the back window, he saw Donatiens starting up.

  But the driver stayed frozen with indecision a second more before suddenly slamming the van into reverse. ‘We block him in! Duck down out of sight!’

  The van sped back and stopped sharp with its back four feet beyond Donatiens’ front bumper.

  The driver watched in his wing mirror Donatiens quickly check if there was enough room behind to reverse and still swing out. There wasn’t: only two or three feet leeway at most. Donatiens’ lips pursed tight as he pressed his horn.

  A curtain pulled back briefly from a window four houses along, but little other attention drawn: nobody out walking on the side-street and the few passing on St Laurent thirty yards behind didn’t look over. A trickle of sweat ran down the driver’s forehead. Hold tight. Hold tight.

  The horn blared again, and Donatiens’ head came out of the window. ‘Come on! Shift it!’

  Ski-mask hissed from behind, ‘Yeah, come on. Let’s get out of here. He’ll wake half the fucking neighbourhood!’

  ‘Just a second more. Just keep out of sight.’ The curtain four along stayed still, and no other movement that the driver could see. But he was sweating profusely, his nerves close to bursting point, and he was ready to accelerate hard away as soon as the next beep sounded. He saw Donatiens’ hand raise again – but this time it was to swing the door open as he came out shouting.

  ‘Come on… move will you? Move! I can’t get…’

  ‘Okay… Now!’

  Ski-mask burst the back doors open and had the hood over Donatiens’ head before he’d finished the sentence, one hand clamping hard over his mouth. The driver leapt out and they bundled him quickly into the back and sped off.

  No other curtains moved in the street and nobody looked over from nearby St Laurent. Seconds later it was as if they’d never been there.

  Elena’s nerves didn’t start settling back until three hours into the flight.

  Dinner had been cleared away an hour and a half ago and most of the cabin shutters were down, the lights subdued. ‘End of Days’ was playing on three pop-down screens above the centre-aisle, with a choice of German, English or Flemish dialogue through her headphones. But she paid the film little attention, her headphones were tucked into the seat-back ahead, her eyes flickering lazily in the semi-dark as she willed on sleep. She felt exhausted, completely
burnt out by the Niagara-rush of nervous energy she’d outpoured over the past hours. But still some residual nervousness, turning over in her mind things that could still go wrong, kept her from slipping completely under.

  Lorena was beside her in the window seat and had decided to watch the movie, only to doze off halfway through. Elena had gently removed her headphones and tucked them into the seat-back. She looked so serene and untroubled sleeping: no hint of concern that she was probably by now on police wires across half of Europe.

  Elena returned the prim smile of a passing stewardess, then leant her head back, trying to let the last of her tension slip away. Gordon’s plan at least seemed to be working so far: dumping the car at Lille so that she wasn’t on the road too long, then the train to Brussels to catch the second leg of a Frankfurt-Brussels-Toronto-Edmonton flight. She’d booked to board at Frankfurt to hopefully foil any early ticket searches at Brussels, and originally they were ticketed to go all the way to Edmonton. But they’d changed at the last second to Toronto and would catch the train up to Montreal. Even if they were finally traced as catching the flight, the police would hopefully start searching in and around Edmonton. Gordon had carefully planned out every move, and revelled in it. Seeing his ‘cat’s got the cream’ grin as he put the final embellishments to her route, she’d ribbed him that he’d missed his vocation: he should have gone into the secret service, not banking.

  She’d planned to tell Lorena the other reason why they were travelling so far as soon as they were airborne – but the first good opportunity had been when dinner was cleared away. ‘…I’m also hoping to see someone I haven’t seen for quite some time.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘My son… we got split up some time ago, so I haven’t seen him much you see.’ She swallowed back the lump in her throat; she was unable to bring herself to say that she hadn’t seen him at all. Lorena’s expression was quizzical. ‘Why did you get split up? What happened?’

  ‘Well, it’s a long story… it goes all the way back to when my father was alive and…’ Elena suddenly stopped herself. She couldn’t go into the horrors of the story with Lorena; and, regardless of the reasons, this girl whose life had been so scarred by abandonment since infancy would never understand how anyone could possibly abandon their own child. Especially not someone like her who Lorena no doubt looked up to as a saviour of abandoned children. One light of hope amongst the gloom and confusion: Lorena had seen enough dreams and illusions torn down by Ryall to have to shoulder any more. She smiled with that indulging re-assurance grown-ups often give children when they suddenly realize they’re not old enough to know something. ‘As I say… it’s a long story. Maybe if I do finally catch up with him, I can tell you it all then.’

  Now, she couldn’t resist another smile to herself at the irony. She should be as excited as Lorena by this adventure: she might soon meet the son she hadn’t seen since birth! It wasn’t enough that she probably by now had an army of police tracking her down to take the edge off of that – now she’d also be playing shell-games with her constant companion. But having lied to Gordon and everyone else for half her life, that part at least should be easy: now all she had to do was deceive a ten-year old child.

  She shut her eyes fully, shut out the last remnants of faint flickering light from the changing screen images, and willed on welcome sleep to envelope her nervous exhaustion. But her mind kept churning: what if they did track their tickets while they were in flight? What would they do: radio ahead to the pilot, or simply have a police welcoming committee with handcuffs for when she alighted?

  Her eyes flicked suddenly open again, watching keenly the movements of the stewardesses, trying to judge if they were glancing her way at all anxiously or guardedly. She might as well forget it: sleep was impossible.

  Georges was still gasping for breath minutes after the cloth had been put on; not just because it was tight around his head and face, but from the exertion of the struggle as he was bundled in and tied up. And his breath was hot: it felt as if his head was boiling, his pulse pounding like a jackhammer at his temples.

  ‘What the fffuck… isss this?…’ Two tremulous, breathless bursts. ‘What’s this about?’ Though in his rapidly sinking heart, he knew exactly what it was about; he’d worried about little else for days.

  No answer.

  As he regained more breath, he ventured: ‘This is about Roman, isn’t it?’

  Still no answer. Only the drone of the van and its vibrations against his side as it sped through the city. He was laid flat in a half coiled position, found it difficult to sit up with his hands tied behind his back and his legs also tied.

  Georges honed in closer on the city sounds beyond the fall of his own breathing, trying to work out where they were headed. Two turns already, a left then a right. Or had it been a right then a left? He was so filled with panic that he’d hardly paid attention. He felt them slowing and finally halting: a junction or traffic lights. Indicator ticking for ten or twelve seconds, then they swung left.

  A long stretch this time: their speed picked up more than before and seemed to be staying constant. The rush of other traffic close by was also stronger, as if on occasion they were being passed. After a few moments, a voice finally from the front.

  ‘So, what did you tell the RCs when you were in with them?’

  ‘Nothing… I didn’t tell them anything.’

  ‘You were in there quite some time. Whadya do? Talk about the weather, conditions on the ski slopes?’

  ‘No, they put me in a holding cell for a while to cool my heels because meanwhile they were tracking some guy called Venegas, and they…’ Georges found it hard to talk with the hood tight on his face. He spoke in bursts between fractured breaths, raising his voice because of its muffling effect, and could instantly feel the strain to his throat. It made it sound all the more like a desperate plea. ‘…They were worried that if they let me out straight away I might warn Roman and spoil their operation.’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ Heavy doubt in the voice. ‘And nothing else?’

  ‘No… that was it.’ The tape! He’d mentioned Chenouda playing the tape to Jean-Paul. If Jean-Paul hadn’t in turn told Roman, no point in mentioning it now. If he had, then it put an extra dark edge on what was happening now: they’d know that he was aware he was about to die.

  The thought made him feel suddenly queazy. He wished now he hadn’t drunk so much: his thoughts were spinning frantically with fear-induced adrenalin, but he couldn’t focus clearly on what to say that might save his neck. It felt as if two sets of nerves were at play in his stomach: one clutching so tight he could feel the ache, the other set skittering wildly around the edges – and with the van’s swaying and bobbling, he started to feel sick.

  ‘I don’t think he’s going to say anything.’

  ‘Nah. Doesn’t look like it.’ The driver speaking for the first time.

  ‘So… where are we going to do this?’

  ‘There’s a multi-storey a few blocks beyond the bus terminal. I thought there’d be good.’

  ‘What’s the drop?’

  ‘Six floors… but it’ll be enough. He won’t survive it.’

  George nerves hit fever pitch. His whole body was racked by cold-sweat trembling, his pulse a pounding ache at his temples as he felt himself spinning close to black-out. Raw bile swirled up without warning and he let out a couple of weak liquid belches before swallowing back, tasting the sourness as he fought for even breaths and some control. Almost surreal, as if it wasn’t actually happening to him, their conversation now mirroring the tape – but he was sure now from the tease in their voices that it was purposeful: they knew he’d listened to the tape. It was just the sort of sick move that would appeal to Roman.

  Was that why Simone hadn’t phoned? But even if she did know about whatever happened in the two hours he’d lost at Viana’s place, he could imagine her angry and beating his chest with her fists or not wanting to speak to him for weeks, maybe months or
never – but what he couldn’t picture was her just simply turning away while her father said that he’d have to ‘take care of it now’, or whatever tame euphemisms he used when he had to order someone’s death.

  The van bobbed and swayed. He felt it turning, but more of a veering off than a sharp turn this time. He remembered meeting Simone that first time: her warm, open smile with its sly teasing challenge. Fired at him so often when he’d catch her eye after meetings with her father at the house – yet it took him almost a year to get up the courage to ask her for a date. Maybe her beauty, maybe who she was and how it might affect his relationship with her father. And now, finally, that smile was turned from him, she was walking from the room.

  He lunged after her, desperate to explain that the girl last night was a set-up, it had probably all been Roman’s doing… but as he touched her shoulder, he felt the stiffening in it, the power and muscle – the same raw tensing he’d felt in Roman’s thigh beside him the night he pulled the gun on Leduc… and as she turned it was her familiar sly, challenging smile, but Roman’s face. ‘Yeah, fooled you, didn’t we… foooo’

  He snapped to with a jolt as he felt the van hit a bump and rise up sharply. He realized that he’d blacked out for a while, lost some seconds, maybe minutes. He had no idea where they were, how far they’d gone. The van was winding, circling – then came another bump and rise. Ramps! They were at the multi-storey the driver had mentioned – or maybe like Venegas, out in some field with snow-pack ramps. Roman was no doubt enjoying this part too: after hearing the tape, him not knowing, not being sure.

  His eyes were stinging: part tears at Simone’s betrayal for letting him die like this, part sweat from fear and the pressure-cooker heat inside the hood. Another ramp, more winding round. He was tilted back, had to press himself forward to compensate. How many floors now: four, five?

  He listened hard, tried to pick out the background sound of city traffic or the van’s engine reverberating off of concrete, or was it just the silence of an open field? But the engine revs were high, whining, and his own pounding heartbeat now filled his head, drowned out anything else.