He heard a clicking noise from behind, and the soft scrape of a footfall. Godard’s men, also approaching the bridge.
Five minutes later, they were crossing the field below the Clos, heading for the doorway to the pool house.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
‘They’re coming.’ Delombre took out his gun and checked the magazine. He was standing in the kitchen with Inès Dion and the guard known as Jean-Pierre, and listening to the night sounds beyond the window. They had been ready to leave, to scatter, having made sure there was nothing incriminating left behind. Now every instinct told him that they’d left it too late.
‘They wouldn’t dare,’ murmured Jean-Pierre. ‘They can’t know for sure if she’s here or not. Anyway, we’re ready for them.’
Delombre looked at him with contempt. ‘If you really believe that, you’re an idiot. They’ll come because they know. It’s all they need. They’re not administrators, grey-suited fonctionnaires more accustomed to meetings and filling in forms; they’re no different to you or me. Especially Rocco. Christ, I should have dealt with him earlier, like I wanted to.’ He swore under his breath and stared out of the kitchen window into the darkness. It wasn’t the only thing he wished he’d done differently. But it was too late now, all in the past. Regrets were for old men.
He slipped the gun into its holster and said to Dion, ‘What was the plan to deal with the woman?’
‘There’s a flagstone in the pump room behind the pool.’ Her voice was ugly and matter-of-fact, almost disinterested, as if playing at being tough. It made him want to slap her. ‘It’s been hollowed out. She’ll go in there. Nobody will find her without demolishing the building.’
Delombre winced at her lack of emotion, and wondered where these people got their ideas. If the police thought Véronique Bessine was in here, they’d bulldoze the place in order to find her, dead or alive. And that bloody Rocco would probably be at the controls.
Ever since getting the woman ready to speak to her husband nearly an hour ago, things had been going from bad to worse. First it had taken a lot longer to bring her round, the combined results, Dion had insisted, of the sedatives she’d been given and her deteriorating mental and physical condition. Whatever fight she may have had in her to begin with had faded.
‘Can’t we give her a tablet or something?’ The agreed time for the phone call impressed on him by Levignier and Girovsky was coming up fast. He was aware of the extensive use of Benzedrine and other stimulants in military circles, to keep troops and pilots going for long stretches, and could see no reason why they didn’t use something similar to get Bessine awake and ready to talk.
‘It would probably kill her,’ Dion had said firmly. ‘Then where would you be?’
Eventually, by a series of cold compresses and bursts of oxygen, Bessine had begun to show signs of coming to, first by asking where she was, then by struggling with surprising strength when she saw their faces.
Delombre recognised the desperate realisation in the way she fought: she was no fool and knew that now she had seen them, she wouldn’t be allowed to go free.
‘Quiet!’ Delombre had hissed fiercely, his face so close to hers that he could smell the sourness on her breath. He shrugged off Dion’s warning hand. There really wasn’t time for niceties. ‘Be still! Can you understand me? If so, say yes.’
Bessine’s eyes flickered and grew wide as she struggled to think. Then she nodded weakly. ‘Y-yes. I hear you.’
‘Good.’ He almost purred. ‘Now, listen carefully. In a minute, you’re going to speak to your husband, Robert. Do you understand?’
‘What? He’s here …?’ She tried to sit up and Delombre held her arms in a vice-like grip until she subsided.
‘No, he’s not here. But you will talk to him on the telephone, understood? But only if you promise to behave.’
‘Yes … of course.’ She stared at Dion, standing nearby, then up at Delombre. ‘I’ll do it. Please let me speak to him.’
‘There. It’s very simple, isn’t it? You do as I tell you, and we’ll get on fine.’
‘What do you want me to say?’ Her voice was becoming firmer, more assured, Delombre thought, probably due to the promise of speaking to her husband, and an eventual happy outcome.
‘Say anything you like. Preferably that you’re well and looking forward to coming home.’
She looked as if she didn’t believe him. ‘Is that all?’
‘Well, there is a little more. Tell him … tell him that the people holding you are allied to an extremist Chinese group and that he must cut off discussions with Taiwan. Immediately.’
‘I don’t understand.’ She frowned and looked around. ‘What has this got to do with China?’
‘You don’t have to understand,’ he said coolly. ‘Just do it. Now repeat back to me what I just said.’
She hesitated and licked her lips, and Dion stepped forward to give her a sip of water. It took three goes before she was able to parrot with any degree of clarity what Delombre had said, but eventually he was satisfied.
‘By the way,’ he warned her, ‘if you deviate from this, if you try to describe our faces in any way, if you don’t do exactly as we’ve asked, I will make one phone call.’
She looked at him but said nothing, waiting.
‘That call will send a two-man team to your husband, and he will be dead before the hour is up. Are we understood?’
Véronique Bessine nodded. ‘I understand.’
But the phone call had never taken place.
First he’d called Levignier as arranged, using the extension in the kitchen, to signal that everything was ready and that the culmination of their plans was finally upon them.
There was no reply.
He rang Levignier’s private number. No answer.
He tried the duty officer at the ISD headquarters. The duty desk knew of everybody’s whereabouts – apart from his own, at least – and would surely be able to find Levignier.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said the man, ‘but the commander hasn’t been in this afternoon. Would you like me to take a message?’
‘Wha—? No.’ He slammed down the phone and stared at the floor, sensing a rising feeling of panic. This couldn’t be happening. Everything was in place – he was in place – so where the fuck was Levignier? He was supposed to be in his office, coordinating the supposed call from the kidnappers! He took out a slim notebook and checked through the pages. Found the number for Girovsky. It went against all his instincts to even consider talking to the obnoxious Pole, but this was an emergency.
He dialled the number, found he was holding his breath.
‘Hello?’ A woman’s voice. Elderly. Cultured.
‘Is Girovsky there?’
‘No, I’m afraid he isn’t. He’s gone to a meeting at the Foreign Ministry. Shall I take a message?’
‘No, thank you.’ He was about to put the phone down when a thought occurred. ‘Why is he at the Foreign Ministry? My apologies, but I’m a work colleague. We were supposed to meet somewhere else.’
‘Ah, I see. Well, it’s all the latest news, I suppose. It’s taken everyone by surprise, Josef says.’
‘News?’ He hadn’t listened to a news broadcast since this morning.
‘Yes. About the Chinese. They’ve changed their minds, apparently, about trade talks. The Foreign Minister’s apparently in a dreadful huff about it – he’s already flying home. I’m surprised you didn’t know, being a colleague of Josef.’
She continued rattling on but Delombre was no longer listening. He dropped the handset on its rest and reached out and switched on a radio on the side, waiting impatiently for a news broadcast. When it came on, he felt the floor open up beneath him.
‘Chinese officials at the Foreign Ministry in Peking have called off trade talks with the French Trade Delegation with immediate effect, amid rumours that they have signalled a preference to rethink their strategy on international relations. This follows unconfirmed rumours of a split
in the Chinese government on who should become a preferred trading partner during the coming decade. Early reports from French industrial leaders and officials is that this puts any talks firmly back with Taiwan, China’s main competitor for foreign and export trade in the region, and returns to centre stage the aircraft manufacturer, Robert Bessine, whose group has already been in discussions with them for some weeks. There are doubts in some quarters, however, that Bessine, whose wife is at the centre of a kidnap rumour, will be able to deal with this development, which observers say will have a detrimental effect on French manufacturing if moves are not made immediately to—’
Delombre switched off the radio.
It was over. Done. Levignier was gone. Girovsky was doing what Girovsky did best: looking after his interests.
He took out his gun. He felt better holding it, now things were this close. He said to Dion and her friendly gorilla, ‘Bring the woman to the pool house – now!’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Claude was a dark bulk to one side of the pool door, calmly watching and listening. He was sitting with his back against the building, the Darne slung across his arms. Rocco squatted next to him. ‘Anything?’
‘Sure is. Any second now we’re going to be in the shit.’ He gestured behind him. ‘Just heard someone shouting about the pool house. I think they know we’re here.’
‘If they did, they’d be shooting. How many guards?’
‘I counted three, all armed, one with a sub-machine gun, the others with rifles and handguns. Didn’t see the woman patient. Saw the nurse – and your friend in the Peugeot. His car’s still out front.’
Rocco absorbed the news with pragmatism. The men inside were ready for war.
Moments later Godard’s two men appeared and slid up to join them.
‘They’d be good to have out behind the house,’ suggested Claude. ‘If anyone makes a break, it could be across the fields.’
Rocco nodded in agreement and the two officers slid away into the darkness.
Moments later they heard voices and a banging noise close by. It was the pool house door.
Rocco pictured the layout of the buildings. If the guards knew they were here and came piling out through the back door right beside them, it would be debatable who’d come off worse. They could avoid that by going in the long way round, but that would bring them up between the two buildings – and right under the noses of the guards. There were too many lights to do it that way without being spotted like dancers on a stage.
‘Have you tried the door?’ He recalled Dion saying that the door was never unlocked.
‘Just done it. You give the nod and we’re in.’
Suddenly all the lights in the pool house went on, flooding over their heads and across the garden. Rocco and Desmoulins ducked instinctively, hugging the building. Claude, revealed dressed in his hunting gear of soft jacket, trousers and high, laced-up boots, and looking like a bandit, pulled a face and lifted his gun.
Then came a piercing scream and the sound of glass shattering.
Mme Bessine. It had to be. Rocco stood up and took out his gun, nodding at Desmoulins and Claude. It had to be now.
‘Go!’
Claude grasped the door handle and pulled it open, while Rocco stepped through into the overheated chemical-ridden atmosphere of the therapy pool. They were in a small lobby with two doors. The one to the right was open, beyond which he caught a brief flash of startling blue from the pool, now brilliantly lit. The door directly ahead was closed, but the voices were coming from behind it, along with sounds of a struggle.
Rocco pointed at Desmoulins, then the door handle, then to Claude, with a motion for him to go through first. He thumbed his own chest and indicated the open door to the pool, then signalled for them to count to five before moving.
They got the message. Desmoulins took hold of the door handle, while Claude clicked his shotgun closed and stood ready to go through.
One. Rocco went through the connecting door and turned left, then left again. Two. He was by the main entrance. Three. A pane in the door had been shattered, with shards lying across the floor. Four. A trail of blood led away down a short passage to a doorway at the end marked Pump Room, where he could hear voices and a woman’s muffled cries.
Five. A bang signalled the inner door being slammed open by Desmoulins, and Claude’s voice telling everybody to stand still. The shotgun boomed and a woman screamed, followed by a thump. Then two figures came running from the pump room.
It was Dion followed by Jean-Pierre.
‘Stand still!’ Rocco shouted, although more as a warning to the others that he was here and not to come out shooting. Dion ran right at him, an animal snarl on her face, knocking his gun arm aside. Jean-Pierre took advantage of the situation to aim a shot at Rocco’s head. It went wide, the explosion deafening in the enclosed space, and took out a large chunk of plaster from the wall behind him.
Rocco ducked and brought round his own gun, trying for a snap shot, but Jean-Pierre was too quick. He dodged out of the short corridor and was gone, his footsteps fading into the night.
But Rocco still had Dion to deal with. She turned on him, trying to claw at his eyes, her face purple with rage. She began kicking out and shouting incoherently, a spray of spittle touching his cheeks.
Then suddenly she was gone, jerked clear by Desmoulins, who took her down to the end of the corridor. She turned and kicked him between the legs, then came the sound of a slap. Silence.
‘Sorry, Lucas,’ Desmoulins grunted. He was clutching himself and breathing quickly. Dion was lying on the floor, groaning. ‘Mother of God, that hurt.’
‘Where’s Bessine?’
‘In the pump room,’ said Claude, producing a length of cord, which he tossed to Desmoulins to tie up Dion. ‘They dropped her and ran.’
‘Watch our backs,’ Rocco told him. ‘I’ll go check on her.’
He stepped into the pump room. Véronique Bessine was slumped next to a square hole in the floor, about a metre deep. A flagstone with its underneath covered in dirt stood on its end nearby. The hole was just big enough to take a body, and once the flagstone was in place, it would have been easily missed.
Bessine was dressed in soiled underwear and a slip, and her body was bathed in sweat, one leg trembling. He knelt quickly by her side and pressed his ear to her mouth. She was breathing, but it was horribly light. He checked her pulse. At least she had one, but that, too, seemed worryingly weak. He took off his coat and wrapped her carefully in it, telling her that she was safe and that he was a policeman. He wasn’t sure if she heard him or not. Then he carried her through to the small lobby, where he lay her down against the wall.
Two shots rang out from somewhere in the main building, and elsewhere a car’s starter motor turned over with an urgent whine.
‘The Peugeot,’ said Claude calmly. ‘Won’t do him any good.’ He took out a jumble of leads and tossed them into the corner. ‘I disabled both cars.’
Rocco smiled and checked that Desmoulins was fit and ready. Dion, he noticed, was gone. ‘Where is she?’
‘I tied her up and put her in the hole,’ said Desmoulins. ‘A small taste of her own medicine.’
‘You sure she won’t get away?’
‘Not unless she’s Houdini’s daughter.’
‘Good. We set?’
They left the pool house, Rocco jogging across the car park, his shoulders twitching uncomfortably as he passed under a flare of light from a security lamp at one corner, the other two running across to the main entrance which was lit inside by a single light.
The Peugeot was empty, the driver’s door hanging open. The same with Dion’s Renault.
Rocco joined Claude and Desmoulins, waiting inside the entrance lobby. The house was silent, the marbled foyer deserted and inviting. Rocco held up a warning hand, remembering the feeling he’d had before of being watched from the landing. It was like a fairground shooting range; the moment they stepped into the open they’d be ea
sy targets for anyone waiting up there.
He turned and looked around. A stout walking stick was leaning against one corner. He lifted it out, and with a signal for both men to stay back under cover, slid it across the foyer floor, before stepping back behind the shelter of the doorway.
A flash of movement came from up on the landing, and a figure dodged into the open and began shooting. The yammering bark of a sub-machine gun was deafening in the confined space, and plaster and brickwork showered around them and across the floor of the foyer, and a cloud of dust rose in the air. The moment it stopped, Claude and Desmoulins stepped forward in unison and fired a volley into the shadows at the top. The sound of the shots seemed puny in comparison – even the shotgun – and brought a shower of plaster, mouldings and wood splinters bouncing down the stairs towards them.
‘Merde,’ Claude muttered in frustration. ‘I thought we’d got him.’
Then a tall plant stand toppled out from the shadows, followed by the figure of a man. Both thumped to the floor, and the man’s sub-machine gun clattered down the stairs, tumbling over and over towards them, the overhead light flashing on the gleaming ugliness of the barrel.
‘Down!’ shouted Rocco.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Delombre was in a mood to kill. At the top of his list was Rocco, the interfering cop he’d underestimated so badly. That realisation alone was like a savage worm eating away inside him, knowing that he should have been better than this. How could he have allowed himself to be beaten so easily? He should have been back in Paris by now, reaping the benefits of a job well done, instead of fleeing like an escaped prisoner into a land of bogs and water, of cow pastures and ploughed fields, where the eyes of every inbred country yokel would be on the lookout, hoping for a reward by bagging him.
He swore bitterly as he stumbled in the darkness, his city shoes useless on the slippery grass, and felt the sticky moisture of God knew what sort of filth seeping over the rims to wet his feet. Right alongside Rocco and sharing in his hate was Levignier, the willing architect of this whole plan, and Girovsky, the scheming money man and whining little Pole who stood to gain most, even though the initial idea had failed. No doubt he would even now be insinuating himself alongside those other industrialists in Bessine’s team, to grab a share of the proceeds from the talks with Taiwan, a born survivor.
Death at the Clos du Lac (2013) Page 27