The Last Witness

by John Matthews

  Cole turned and passed the news to Melanie.

  She sighed heavily and ran one hand through her hair. ‘Keep trying. Keep trying.’ She checked her watch. ‘It could take him fifteen or twenty minutes to get home, so it’d be worth another try there soon. If not, start working through bars and clubs.’

  * * * *

  ‘If Roman’s going to make a move, it’ll probably be tonight. Once all of this has gone down, he knows he’d have you to face. Do you want me to send someone over?’

  ‘No, it’s okay. I doubt there’d be time anyway.’

  ‘True. But take my advice, Jean-Paul. Either get some protection over there fast, or leave the house. Don’t just sit there like a sitting duck.’

  Jean-Paul said ‘Okay’ to put Giacomelli’s mind at rest, but hanging up he couldn’t think of anyone he could call in fast – Roman always took care of that side of things – and the last thing he felt like doing was running scared from his own house. It would feel too much like defeat, like waving the white flag at Roman. Admittance that when it came to the crunch the old ways held sway, all of his new aspirations amounted to nothing.

  But then he started to became uneasy, agitated. Was that the pool filtration system, some pigeons alighting from the roof, or something else? Raphael’s footsteps upstairs, or were they coming from another part of the house? He suddenly started to feel the isolation of the big house, feel vulnerable.

  He went into his study and took out the SIG-Sauer 9mm from the top drawer. He was aware of his own breathing falling heavy, but kept his listening honed beyond it for out of place sounds. Some faint music now he could pick up drifting from Raphael’s room. Looking out across the dining room and through the windows, a light was on in his mother Lillian’s apartment at the end of the courtyard.

  He closed his eyes and gripped the gun tight. His hands were shaking, his pulse racing hard. Some flight away from crime this was. A hitman probably moving in, and he hoped to brave it out when he hadn’t fired a gun in years. And he wasn’t alone in the house. A fine epitaph that would be to all his noble hopes and aspirations: Raphael walking in to see his father or his adversary in a pool of blood, the other with their gun freshly smoking. Maybe his father had been right all along: ‘As much as you might wish to escape the past, the past will never allow you that escape.’

  Maybe that’s how it was meant to end, his punishment for being so naïve, blindly foolish. Roman had probably been playing him all along, and now he’d won the game. With Roman already closing in, nothing he could do to save Georges. Probably Georges could have been trusted all along, and Georges had in turn looked up to and trusted him – and he’d repaid by turning his back. He might as well have fed Georges to Roman with his own hands. He’d lose Simone without question: she’d never forgive him. And if he tried now to stand this last bit of feeble ground, at the same time he turned his back on everything he’d aimed for. He lost either way. Game, set, match.

  He snapped himself quickly out. The thought of Raphael and his mother being there when anything happened overrode all else. He raced up the stairs and rapped sharply on Raphael’s door, swinging it open. Loud wave of techno with a faint beep-beep backdrop.

  ‘Raphael! We’ve got to go – leave the house!’

  ‘What? I’ll just finish this game, and–’

  ‘Now, Raphael! This second!’

  Raphael saw a look of panic on his father’s face he hadn’t seen before, then he noticed the gun. He swiftly turned off the game and the music, grabbed his coat and fell in step behind his father back down the corridor. By the time they hit the stairs, they were at a run.

  ‘We’ll just pick up your grandma, and head off.’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Long story. Long story.’ Jean-Paul said it almost in time with his laboured breathing. ‘We’ll grab a cappuccino somewhere and then I can explain.’

  Lillian was slower, more reluctant to leave without explanation, and Jean-Paul had to blurt out that their lives could be in danger to finally light a fire under her. He gestured with his gun as if to say ‘why in hell do you think I’m carrying this.’ ‘We must leave this second!’

  He grabbed keys to the Cadillac on the way out – more space, more protection than his new sports Jag – and seconds later they were swinging out of the driveway. Brief pause to open the electronic gates, and then Jean-Paul turned right on Boulevard Gouin, heading for the city.

  Cacchione’s men, Lorenzo and Nunzio Petrilli – ‘Lorry’ and ‘High Noon’ – weren’t Cacchione’s first choice, but they were all he could get at short notice. They’d been competent enough on a couple of past jobs, and there were two of them. If one fucked up, hopefully the other would cover.

  The Petrillis had arrived outside the Boulevard Gouin mansion just eight minutes ago, and were still checking out the perimeter railings and the house beyond to finalise their plan when the double gates opened and Jean-Paul’s Cadillac swung out.

  They were startled, and it took a second for them to kick into action. Lorenzo fumbled before finally firing up the car, then swung around and started to close some of the long gap that had opened up.

  Two hundred yards along, Jean-Paul turned left into Avenue Christophe Colomb. He was oblivious to the car lights trailing a steady fifty yards behind as he took out his mobile. Suddenly he’d thought of how he might be able to help Georges. The most unlikely of calls, but it was all he could think of.

  He tapped out the number and a woman’s voice answered. ‘Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Dorchester Boulevard.’

  ‘Staff-Sergeant Michel Chenouda, please.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Lorena held her breath for a moment, listening.

  The faint, muffled voices she’d heard downstairs had stopped. Her stepparents had stopped talking. Sound of footsteps on the stairs now. Mr Ryall or Mrs Ryall? After a second she could pick out that the step was lighter: Mrs Ryall.

  She settled back again and eased out her breath. Probably Mr Ryall wouldn’t come to her room this first night, he’d wait a few days. But the waiting would be almost as bad as the fear that he might come in at any minute.

  She was tired, very tired. She’d slept on the flight, but only a couple of hours. And now it was three or four in the morning. She’d lost track. But she felt almost too afraid to fall asleep in case Mr Ryall did come to her room.

  Maybe once she’d heard his footsteps come up the stairs and head for his room, she could relax a little. But then several times he’d come out of his room without warning an hour or two later to see her. It was almost like he knew instinctively the best time to visit, when she was at her most drowsy, her defences weak.

  But what would she do? She couldn’t stay awake every night, waiting. She remembered in the sewers when Patrika died, for several nights after they’d laid awake for hours listening out if the waters might be rising again. But after a few nights they were exhausted and would have slept through anything.

  What had Dr Lowndes said? When he starts counting down, put other numbers and thoughts in your head. Act as if you’re succumbing, falling under, but all the time keep your mind alert, resist. If she didn’t get sleep, then her mind simply wouldn’t be alert enough to be able to resist.

  She held her breath again for a second, listening. Footsteps starting up the stairs, heavier this time. Mr Ryall!

  She swallowed hard, looking over at the large Mountie bear. She’d positioned it where they told her, looking straight at her and the bed. Perhaps it would have been better if they hadn’t told her anything about it all. They’d tried to put her mind at rest: ‘Don’t worry, as soon as he starts touching you, we’ll be there. That’s the whole idea: to stop him touching you once and for all.’

  She said she could do it. But now as the moment was upon her, her nerves were racing out of control. Her whole body had broken out in a sweat. Mr Ryall was bound to notice her fear, her body’s trembling.

  Footsteps moving closer, creaking some boards
among the top steps.

  She closed her eyes, feigning sleep. The darkness felt welcoming, her tiredness threatening to suck her under. Maybe she should just sleep through it all, wake up when it was over. If he came in and started counting down, just let herself sink under. Let it all stay in the darkness and shadows, like every other night. Where it belonged! She just didn’t think she could bare being awake for a second while his hands moved over her body.

  Her breath froze, suspended, as the footsteps reached the top of the stairs; then released again as she heard them start moving away towards his bedroom. But after a few paces they paused, turned, and started heading towards her.

  Derek Bell watched the blue-grey images on a monitor less than a mile from the Ryall’s.

  He adjusted the dials for a second. With the directional mike, he had to work hard to cut down the background hiss. Finally it was clear: the fall of Lorena’s breathing, the faint rustle of bedsheets.

  Rush job, but that was often how he liked them. More of a challenge. He’d only had forty minutes turn-around to get everything planted and the bear sewn back up again. The lens was in the cap band, the mike in the belt.

  He noticed Lorena look over directly for a moment, and silently prompted: Get used to not looking. Act as if I’m not here.

  Her eyes shifted towards the door after a second, then finally flickered shut. Faint sound of footsteps from the corridor. They receded for a moment before turning and becoming more prominent again. Bell watched Lorena’s eyes flicker open again fleetingly, then shut again.

  The footsteps were now in the room, moving closer, closer… and Bell clearly saw Ryall – his back at first, then more of his profile. Bell adjusted the focus slightly, his hand staying expectantly by the dials.

  Ryall leant over and touched Lorena’s hair, starting to lightly stroke. Bell’s pulse was suddenly in his throat. He thought he’d been in for a long few nights, but now he began to wonder.

  ‘You poor girl,’ Ryall mumbled under his breath. ‘You’ve been through so much.’

  Bell tweaked the volume up a bit.

  ‘…So much. Such an ordeal.’ The hand continued stroking, now gently tracing across Lorena’s brow as Ryall sat on the side of the bed.

  Lorena’s eyes stayed closed, though Bell knew that she was feigning sleep. Only as Ryall’s hands traced down and started gently stroking one cheek and her neck, did she finally flicker her eyes slowly open, probably sensing that it was too much for her to sleep through.

  Good girl, good girl, Bell thought. Keep this up and we’ll get the bastard. Bell was leant forward, intently following each small movement, beads of sweat shiny on his forehead in the glow from the screen.

  But as Lorena’s eyes looked up, Ryall’s hand suddenly paused, hovering an inch above her cheek. Had he sensed something was wrong, seen something in her eyes to alert him? Or was he just deciding: count her down into a deep sleep so that his hand could continue its journey, or return another night?

  The heavy rotor blades cut through the night sky.

  Michel felt its rhythm driving him on, pumping his adrenalin. The energy of the motion and the five men sat expectantly with him, rifles and automatics at the ready, was the only thing to make him feel positive.

  He found it hard to escape the feeling that they were heading there after the event, it would all be for nothing. The cavalry turning up after the last Indian arrow had hit Custer. They must be at least an hour behind Roman and his men. Roman might spend some time checking the lay of the land and finalising a plan, but an hour?

  Michel slowly closed his eyes, the dull thud of the rotor pumping almost in time with his pulse. And there was no doubt now that Roman was on his way. He’d had Maury on the radio-phone only minutes ago: phone bugs at both the Donatiens’ and at a switching box outside the Montclaire. Roman knew every last detail!

  ‘Ontario border ten miles ahead!’ the pilot announced.

  ‘Okay.’ Michel opened his eyes, nodding. He’d purposely asked for the alert: they’d hit sector 14 only twenty-five minutes after the border. And if there was still nothing still from Mundy, they’d have to start circling. More time lost to Roman.

  Michel asked to be patched through again to Melanie Fuller – he’d already spoken to her twice in the last eighty minutes they’d been airborne.

  No, she confirmed, she still hadn’t heard anything from Mundy. ‘…We just missed him at a restaurant by minutes, but he didn’t head home – so now it’s down to bars and clubs. But it’s more difficult: no check-in reservations. We’ve either got to eyeball him or find his car. So there’s a team out there checking every possible dive, and every patrol car’s alerted.’

  ‘We’ll be crossing the border any minute, so time’s tight now.’ Michel had to raise his voice to be heard above the rotor.

  ‘I know. I know. Don’t worry, the second I’ve located Mundy, I’ll be back to you.’

  Michel’s gloom, his sense of despondency, settled like a fast descending cloak in the silence following.

  ‘Four miles now to the border,’ the pilot announced. ‘We’ll be crossing any second.’

  But the cloak was heavy, difficult to shake off this time. Six men on a hell-bent mission – to nowhere. Probably he’d known all along they’d be too late, but he needed all of this activity so that he could reassure himself later that he’d done everything he could. Because unlike the men with him, he knew that he was mostly to blame. The set-up so that he could push Donatiens into the Witness Protection programme. Making sure that Donatiens’ birth mother could see him and take a message to Simone to keep him there. If you tell a lie…

  At every stage he’d pushed the envelope, and now this was the payback! They’d get there and there’d be nothing left to do but pick through the bodies, see first hand the result of–

  Michel visibly jolted as the radio-phone went again, thinking it was news on Mundy – but it was Phil Reeves at Dorchester Boulevard.

  ‘Strangest call just come in, Michel.’

  ‘Why? What is it?’

  ‘Jean-Paul Lacaille has just phoned. He’s on the other line right now – wants to speak to you.’

  Michel was stunned into silence, and after a second Reeves prompted: ‘Do you want me to tell him you’re too busy to talk right now.’

  Michel snapped himself back. ‘No, no, it’s okay. I’ll take it.’

  Darkness. Constant, all-enveloping darkness.

  Elena tried to think of it like the solitude she’d sought in the chine, an escape from all the madness outside – God knows she’d seen more than her fair share these past days – and for a while that worked. She could retreat into her own thoughts, continue spinning around what she might say to Georges. But the bumpy flight did little to help her already jaded nerves. And as the darkness continued, the long minutes stretching into hours – the journey seemed to be taking forever – her unease returned. This was different! This was a forced darkness, an imposed solitude. In the chine she was always free to make her way back up to the light.

  In that moment it suddenly struck her why Lorena had run in panic from the chine – she’d spent half her life in forced darkness with the sewers and the orphanages, and now Ryall. Eyes clenched tight shut behind the visor, Elena said a silent prayer that it all went well with Crowley. And she was suddenly piqued at her own rising paranoia: all she risked was rejection, non-acceptance if she said the wrong thing. Probably all she deserved having blanked Georges from her mind for a lifetime. It paled in comparison to what Lorena faced.

  She should be rejoicing, not chewing her fingernails – she’d finally got what she wanted. Isn’t that what the whole nightmare had been about? Perhaps her anxiety was as much because of that passage than what was to come. A sense of a lifetime’s odyssey coming to a close. She’d get her few hours in the spotlight with Georges to try and make good, and then that was it. And she wasn’t just performing for herself: she couldn’t help sense her father riding along with her. He’d been unabl
e to track Georges down, make amends before he died: now it was down to her to make amends for both of them.

  Forced darkness. But as they hit the last stage of their journey driving from the plane, Michel Chenouda’s chilling account from their last conversation was suddenly back with her: how Georges had been blindfolded in the back of a van and would have been killed if they hadn’t intervened.

  Probably that journey wouldn’t have felt far different from this, Elena thought, settling back for a moment into the darkness and the thrum of the wheels on the road. She shuddered at what that must have been like: going through this same forced solitude thinking that at any second you were about to die?

  But as it struck her that in part she was grappling for an empathy link – a reminder of the chasm she faced with little idea of how to even start crossing it – she pushed the contemplation away.

  Brian Cole weaved through the tables of the busy jazz club.

  On the small stage, a trio were running through a passable instrumental rendition of Jobim’s ‘Girl from Ipanema’. He thought for a moment he could see Mundy in the far corner, but as he got closer and could get a clearer view, it wasn’t him.

  Only nine clubs they thought Mundy could get away with visiting at his age, but each one took time to search. They’d split the list between two of them: this was now the third on Cole’s list. Bars and cocktail lounges presented more of a problem: they’d made a list of twenty, but there were probably a dozen more they could have added. The other two in their team were busy working through them: the only advantage was that they could rush in, a quick scan, and rush out again.

  It wasn’t until Cole started down the steps of his next club that his mobile rang. His colleague Tim had found Mundy at The Glue Pot.

  ‘…He’s here with me now. I’ll pass you over.’ Tim was almost shouting to be heard above the noise of the club.