by Chris Ewan
Trent knew it was just a fancy way of saying don’t get too close or too far away, but he had to admit the image was a hard one to forget. He could picture the elastic now. One end looped around Jérôme Moreau’s neck, spooling out through the tinted rear window of the Mercedes, flapping and twirling in the humid night air. The other end tied to Trent’s left wrist, tugging at him as he dropped back a short way.
Traffic was light and the road familiar to him. He knew the route they would follow. It wasn’t long before he fell into a kind of trance, and as he visualised the straining length of elastic that linked him to the man who’d occupied his every waking thought for the past nine days – the individual responsible for the terror that had taken hold of him like a fever for close to two months now – a queer sense of calm washed over him.
Perhaps it was the perfumed breeze through the churning vents – the scent of baked earth and cooling tarmac and auto exhausts. Perhaps it was the lull of the engine, the flat droning of the Peugeot’s tyres. Perhaps it was his own gnawing fatigue, barely assuaged by the two espressos he’d sipped back at the café. But he preferred to think of it as the sense of a resolution drawing close. A reckoning of one variety or another.
He recalled other nights, in surer times, when he’d driven away from Marseilles with Aimée beside him, for no other reason than he needed something to occupy his mind and she’d understood and indulged his restlessness. They’d rarely talked or listened to the radio on these spontaneous trips of his. Mostly, it had been enough for them to be simply moving together, to be hurtling through the black together, cocooned in drowsy warmth and easy silence. Until, after an hour, maybe two, Aimée would squeeze his hand and smile in a weary daze, her eyes crinkling just so, and he’d know that it was time to turn and head home again. Back to the city. Back to whatever work stress or emotional funk he’d felt the desire to escape for a spell.
Tonight, though, he was alone, and the road ahead was wide and flat and dusty. It crested and dipped beneath a cloudless night sky, spattered with stars and a waning moon. The tarmac was bleached and austere in the glare of his headlamps. Broken white lines tapped out a furious Morse code he couldn’t hope to decipher.
He passed grubby high-rise apartment buildings pocked with satellite dishes, shambling houses with sagging roofs and austere motorist hotels with glowing signs advertising low nightly rates; passed graveyards with raised stone tombs and concrete overpasses blighted with graffiti and outdoor sports pitches laid with dense red clay; passed industrial warehouses and car dealerships and a swimming-pool concession with a giant, empty piscine propped up outside; passed floodlit petrol stations and disorderly road maintenance works.
He pursued the Mercedes. Matching its speed. Tracking its movements. Rapt by those cherry-red light clusters and the fluttering elastic snare that bound him to his prey.
* * *
The Mercedes left the autoroute some distance before Aix-en-Provence. Trent followed it through a collection of junctions and turns, then along a little-travelled back road that climbed steeply up the side of the broad valley, clinging to a buff stone escarpment that looked out over fields of wheat and rapeseed and terraced grape vines, and long ribbons of streaking red and white vehicle lights.
Trent had been up here in the day. He’d seen the barren, gnarly rocks, the tufts of wild grass and weeds, the bow-kneed umbrella pines and the straggly young saplings thirsty for water. He’d listened to the chirrup of cicadas. The scrabble of lizards. The creak and sputter of swinging irrigation booms in the fields down below.
Now the scene had been reduced to monochrome. The vast black sky and the parchment moon. The salt-grain bugs spinning in the whispery light of his headlamps. The faint luminescence of the instrument panel bathing his hands.
His palms were sweating, his knuckles bunched and aching. The lonely road had made it impossible for him to pursue the Mercedes without being spotted. The bodyguard had allowed a slip in security back at the opera house but it was hard to believe he’d forget to look in his mirrors. And Trent’s headlamps were strafing the interior of the Mercedes along with the road ahead. He was as good as tapping the guy on the shoulder.
But he’d always known the time would come for him to show his hand. The Moreau family mansion was less than two kilometres away. For the next few hundred metres, the road widened out and Trent downshifted, ready to overtake exactly where he’d planned.
He was just swooping out when everything changed.
First the dazzle of headlamps on full beam. Then the squeal of rubber and the red flare of brake lights.
Then the impact.
It was savage. A deafening smack.
The Mercedes had been struck from the side by a large off-road vehicle fitted with bull bars. The impact shunted it towards the loose gravel at the edge of the precipitous drop. The Mercedes fishtailed, then straightened up, then bucked wildly to the left, back towards safety.
Defensive driving. But too late to alter the outcome. The Mercedes had lost momentum. Lost position. The big jeep lurched forwards and turned and battered into it on a diagonal trajectory. Now the bodyguard had a choice. Keep driving and tumble off the side, down the high slope into trees and rocks and gullies. Or stop.
He braked more suddenly than Trent had anticipated. The tyres bore down into sandy tarmac and loose shale, the rubber growling in complaint. They locked and released, locked and released, the ABS working hard to wrench the Mercedes to a stuttering halt.
It was more efficient than the system on Trent’s ageing Peugeot. He felt the steering go light. The front end begin to skate. Too much speed. Fatal momentum. The Peugeot rammed into the back of the Mercedes with a violent jolt. Headlamps popped and shattered, bulbs extinguishing in an instant. The bonnet buckled and creased and Trent was flung forwards. No airbag to cushion the blow. He butted the top of the steering wheel and his ribs embraced the hub, the horn barking in complaint. Knees and elbows whacked plastic. Then his seat belt bit into his shoulder, jerking him back like a tardy friend heaving him away from a drunken bar brawl just as the first blow had slammed into his chest.
A dazed silence. A moment of stillness.
Trent heaved air. He croaked feebly.
His car had stalled. It was steaming.
Doors flew open on the attack vehicle. Trent could see now that it was a green Toyota Land Cruiser. Figures leapt out into the halogen glare and the drifts of tyre smoke. They barked commands. Trent counted three individuals. They were dressed in jeans and green army surplus jackets with black ski masks over their heads.
The men carried assault rifles. Stocks wedged against shoulders. Fingers clutching triggers. The lead guy fired a burst of rounds into the front of the Mercedes, stitching the bonnet, smashing the windscreen. Sparks leapt from the rifle muzzle, accompanied by a tattoo of deafening claps.
A second guy advanced on Trent and tapped hard on his window with his rifle. Trent lifted his hands by his face. He gazed at the eyes behind the mask. They were fidgety and alert. The guy shook his head. Just once. A warning.
The final guy grappled with the rear door on the Mercedes. It wouldn’t budge. He braced his foot against the side of the car and yanked hard. Still the door refused to give. He quit trying. He hefted his rifle above his shoulder and battered the glass with the sculpted polymer buttstock. The glass splintered, then gave out. He raked the fragments clear and leaned into the car.
Trent heard a woman’s scream, high and fractured. Smoke billowed up from the bonnet of the Peugeot or the exhaust of the Mercedes, tinged red by the vivid brake lights.
Now the guy was heaving at something. He kept pulling until Jérôme Moreau’s head and shoulders appeared through the window. Moreau thrashed and scrabbled in his dinner jacket, trying to escape the man’s grip. He didn’t seem so powerful all of a sudden. He looked about as helpless as it’s possible to get.
Trent strained forwards against his seat belt, thinking of the Beretta beneath his shirt. But the guy watching
over him saw it. Another tap at the window. Another shake of the head.
Now Moreau’s waist was clear. He waved his arms frantically. There was a moment of resistance – Trent pictured Stephanie clinging to his ankles – before Moreau was wrenched free amid desperate shrieks and tinkling glass. His legs failed to support him. He stumbled and was dragged backwards towards the Land Cruiser, gloved hands clasped over his gaping mouth and wild eyes.
Meantime, the lead guy fired across the bonnet of the Mercedes, throwing up spurts of rock and debris at the side of the road. The bodyguard had kicked open the passenger door and was struggling to get out, but he was pinned by the gunfire.
The guy holding the rifle on Trent began to retreat into the blue-white glare of the Land Cruiser’s headlamps. His companion did likewise, shooting even after he’d clambered inside a door at the rear.
There was a fourth man inside. The driver.
The jeep backed up fast, then jolted forwards. It turned sharply and slammed against the side of the Mercedes, tearing free the Peugeot’s wing mirror as it sped away down the road.
Trent fumbled to release his seat belt. He grappled with the lever on his door and tumbled out onto his knees. He drew his Beretta from his holster and fired two rounds, his shots echoed by a series of percussive booms from somewhere close behind. A trio of yellow flares skittered across the rear of the jeep. Trent heard the dull clank of drilled metal.
But it was no use. The Land Cruiser was speeding away into the encroaching darkness. And he couldn’t risk hitting Moreau.
Trent slumped forwards. He released his Beretta and braced the heels of his palms against the coarse road surface. Something liquid slammed into his throat from his gut. He bowed his head. Fought the rush of fear and outrage that was whirling inside him.
Then, through the warped and tinny silence, he heard distressed cries from inside the Mercedes. The tread of hesitant footsteps.
The bodyguard was crabbing towards him, knees bent, arms straight, elbows locked, a large revolver – a Ruger Redhawk – clenched in his enormous hands. He was bleeding from a wound at the corner of his eye. His shirt was torn at the collar, his suit crumpled and dirtied and glittering with beads of shattered glass.
‘Who the hell are you?’ the bodyguard snarled, in savage French.
Trent gulped air and wiped a slick of drool from his chin.
He spoke French, too. Was fluent, in fact.
‘The guy you need now,’ he replied.
Chapter Three
The bodyguard edged closer. He sighted down his gun at the centre mass of Trent’s chest, stretched out his leg and toed Trent’s Beretta away. He squatted to pocket the weapon, maintaining his careful aim.
Trent could hear muffled shrieks from the rear of the Mercedes.
‘Is she hit?’ he asked.
‘Put your hands up.’
‘Answer my question.’
‘Hands on top of your head. Now!’
It felt strange to Trent, coming face to face with this man he’d been observing for more than a week. He seemed somehow hyper-real, like chancing upon a television actor from one of those moody cop dramas Aimée liked to watch on Canal+. Up close, he struck Trent as way more capable and threatening. There was a bearish physicality about him. He was big. He was tough. He was intense and imposing.
Trent supposed some of that had to do with the long-nosed revolver the guy was aiming at him. The Ruger Redhawk had a barrel length approximating eight inches. Stainless-steel finish. Hardwood grips. Capacity for six rounds. The guy had fired three already. But it would only take one .44 slug to bring Trent’s curiosity to an end.
The bodyguard stepped close and patted Trent down fast, feeling around his waist and torso, lingering on his empty shoulder holster. He checked Trent’s jeans as far as his ankles, then straightened and spun him round by the shoulder. He jammed the Ruger in the hollow behind Trent’s ear, delved a hand inside his front trouser pocket and yanked free his wallet.
‘You’re bleeding,’ Trent told him. ‘Near your eye.’
The bodyguard smeared the cut with the dirtied cuff of his shirt. ‘You were outside the Opéra,’ he said. ‘You were watching us.’
Trent didn’t respond. He studied the guy over the looming muzzle of the Ruger.
‘You followed us,’ he went on. ‘I saw your car as soon as we hit the tunnel.’
Still Trent didn’t speak.
‘You work with those men?’
Trent shook his head. Slow and steady. ‘You saw me shoot at them.’
‘So maybe you were firing blank rounds?’
‘How about you put my Beretta against your temple? Satisfy your curiosity.’
The guy grunted and flipped open Trent’s wallet. He slid out his driver’s licence with his thumb. Squinted at the pixelated image and the details in the sketchy dark.
‘I’d like to put my hands down,’ Trent said.
It was a few degrees cooler up on the rise. A gentle breeze lifted the denim of his shirt. The sweat that had filmed his body was starting to dry and evaporate. Goosebumps were sprouting on the back of his wrists and at the base of his neck.
The Mercedes’s engine was still running. The hum and burble of the large diesel unit disturbed the stillness all around.
‘My hands?’ Trent said again.
The guy backed away and motioned consent with his Ruger. Trent lowered his arms and plucked pellets of grit from his palms. His mind was spinning with a wild centrifugal force.
‘Take a look at my business card,’ he said.
The guy grunted again but he removed a small ivory card from a sleeve cut into the wallet. He read over the information he found there. Raised an eyebrow.
‘I can help you,’ Trent told him.
The bodyguard sniffed, then flipped Trent’s wallet closed. He stashed it inside his ruined jacket.
He said, ‘Maybe you already helped your friends in the ski masks.’
‘You don’t believe that.’
‘No?’
‘It would be a really dumb thing to believe.’
The sound of a door opening interrupted them. They looked over towards the Mercedes. It was canted to the right, the front wing crumpled and deformed. The nearside headlamp was out. The remaining lamp probed blindly at the stones and shrubs by the edge of the road.
Stephanie Moreau staggered towards the rear of the luxury car, leaning on the bodywork for support like a drunk teetering along a bar, ephemeral in the fog of exhaust fumes. For just an instant, something about her silhouette or the way she moved reminded Trent of Aimée, and it felt as if a trap door had opened in the ground beneath him. Then the vaporous gases cleared from around her, the apparition faltered, and Stephanie peered at Trent’s Peugeot with bleary, tear-stained eyes. Her silver dress was rucked up on one side, exposing a pale, lean thigh and a grazed knee.
‘Alain?’ Her voice was shrill. ‘What happened? Where’s Jérôme?’
‘He’s been taken,’ the bodyguard replied, gravel in his throat. His attention remained fixed on Trent. ‘This man says he can assist us.’
‘Who is he?’
The question hung in the air. Insects buzzed Trent’s face. He could smell something leaking from one of the cars. Coolant, maybe.
‘Tell her,’ Alain said.
‘I’m a consultant.’ Trent spoke loud enough for them both to hear. ‘I advise people in kidnap and ransom situations. A colleague at my firm sold your husband a K & R insurance policy two months ago. He was concerned about a threat. Perhaps he mentioned it to you?’
She shook her head, just barely, the kink in her side-swept hair bouncing a little. Her features looked slackened, smudged. She had a face out of time. Square jaw, high cheekbones, budded lips, like a Hollywood starlet from the 1940s.
‘Why are you here now?’ she whispered. ‘Tonight?’
‘Coincidence,’ Trent told her, gauging the doubt in Alain’s eyes. ‘I was due to arrange a follow-up meeting with your husband
to go over some anti-kidnap measures he could put in place. I thought I’d assess his security first. It’s simple luck I was here tonight.’
‘Luck?’
Trent nodded. ‘The first days of a kidnap situation set the tone for how the whole thing will play out. It’s fortunate that I can be involved here from the start. And I’ve seen the people you’re up against. They’re a professional outfit. That’s good. Much better than trying to reason with amateurs. More predictable.’
Stephanie tipped her head to one side, intrigued now, a loose spring of hair falling across her face. She moved as if to approach. Alain motioned her back with his free hand, his arm stiff, palm raised, like a traffic cop.
‘We don’t know this is a kidnapping.’
‘I know,’ Trent said.
‘Because you were involved?’
‘Because I recognise the signs. This was an aggressive takedown, no question. But those men weren’t looking to harm anyone else.’
Trent glanced off to his side. Stephanie had ignored Alain’s instructions and was stumbling closer in her heels. She hugged herself with slender arms and Trent had to fight a sudden urge to go to her. There was something hard to fathom about her appeal. She was almost too perfect, brittle in some complex way, as if she might come apart and unravel at any moment.
‘They could have shot you both,’ Trent said, catching his breath. ‘But they didn’t. They need you alive so they have someone to negotiate with.’
Stephanie absorbed his words, her swollen lips moving soundlessly. The summer wind ruffled her hair and pressed the material of her dress against her slim body. She was trembling.
It was becoming difficult to understand how this woman had made him think of Aimée. If she were here, if she’d found herself in Stephanie’s predicament, she wouldn’t be standing by, shaking and waiting to hear more. She’d have clambered behind the wheel of the Mercedes, hauled it around and sped off in dogged pursuit of the Land Cruiser, no matter how doomed her chances of catching Jérôme’s abductors might be. Her impulsiveness and her hot-headed streak were qualities that had often frustrated Trent. Strange how much he missed them.