Dead Line (8 page)

Alain fumbled with his keys as he led Trent in through the front door of the villa. He found the one he was looking for, then inserted it into the deadlock on a door immediately to Trent’s left. The tumblers tumbled and Alain passed inside and hit a light switch on the wall but Trent didn’t follow straight away. He was staring at the ring of keys left hanging from the lock.

Most of them were standard house keys. But one was different. It was small and stubby, fashioned from aged brass. Trent was pretty sure it would fit the locks on Jérôme’s desk. And it was right there in front of him.

He reached out a tentative hand but Alain chose that very moment to stick his head back into the foyer.

‘What are you waiting for?’

Trent closed his fingers into a fist. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Go ahead.’

The room was very cramped. Little more than a cupboard. It was only just big enough for the two men to squeeze inside. It was windowless. The air was stale and the only light source was a twitching fluorescent tube fitted to the low ceiling above. There was a desk, a stool, a microphone and a bank of security monitors.

Trent counted twelve monitors, laid out in three rows of four screens. The screens were small. A different image was flickering on each one. Most were colour. The rest had the green-grey wash of night-vision technology. They were fewer in number, located in areas where there were no security lights.

After ten seconds or so, the screens blanked out for an instant before new footage appeared. Another ten seconds and the screens cycled back to the images Trent had first seen. That gave a total of twenty-four cameras.

The images were all exterior shots. On a quick glance, Trent could see the lighted perimeter of the villa, the swimming pool, the driveway and the view from the fence. A digital clock located in the bottom right-hand corner of each monitor read 03.40.

There’d been far more security cameras than Trent had realised. Those inside the gate were well hidden and he guessed that made sense. The cameras on the fence were there as a deterrent. The rest were designed to capture the movements of anyone who managed to sneak inside.

He leaned towards the monitors, studying the buildings that came up on screen. He could see the main villa, the pool house, the garage and what he took to be the cottage where the housekeeper lived. They were all in colour. But there was another structure, too. A squat and slanted timber building with a bowed roof. Rendered in the ghoulish green of night vision, it was surrounded by a thin copse of blurred trees.

The view Trent was looking at showed a rickety door with shuttered windows on either side. Then the screen went blank, replaced by another angle of the shack, this time from the rear. Two windows this time. One of them was shuttered. The other was boarded up with planks of wood that had been roughly tacked across it. It looked like a cabin from a fairy tale, or maybe a horror movie.

There was no way of telling where the cabin might be found. The tree cover didn’t jibe with anything Trent had seen so far.

Alain tapped the microphone bud. ‘This is how I talked to you at the gate. And from here,’ he said, passing his hand over a control panel that was positioned beneath the bottom rank of monitors, ‘I can review everything from the last seven days.’

The controls looked relatively straightforward. There was a grid of numbered buttons, a digital display, a series of switches and several plastic dials.

‘Do you move the cameras by remote?’ Trent asked. He was thinking of the way his progress along the perimeter fence had been tracked.

‘It’s possible.’ Alain’s skin was bleached in the fluorescence from the ceiling light. Trent could see his scalp through his cropped hair. ‘But they’re also fitted with sensors that can capture movement. I prefer to have them work automatically. I’m not always in this room.’

Trent gazed up at the corners of the confined space and at the wall that pressed in on him from behind. He didn’t blame the guy. If it was up to him, he’d spend as little time in this room as he could.

‘OK,’ Trent said. ‘Let’s see what you have.’

Alain leaned towards the control panel and flicked a couple of switches. He reached for a dial and twisted it to the left.

The footage on the screens began to rewind. The digital clocks counted backwards. Alain went slowly to begin with and Trent concentrated on the monitors showing the swimming pool and the pool house. He watched footage of himself and Alain walking backwards around the pool to enter the timber hut. Their movements had a clockwork jerkiness, like stop-motion animation. A few seconds of stillness and the two of them emerged from the pool house and jolted backwards through the garden towards the house. Trent’s eyes switched to an adjoining monitor. He watched their arms and legs twitch as they reversed along the gravel pathway.

The screens rewound further, a flurry of static and broken horizontal lines. Alain increased the speed. The clocks whizzed backwards in unison.

03.22.

03.10.

Trent caught movement in a screen on the top row. A vehicle had driven by the external gate, its there-and-gone movement repeated in a further three screens.

02.50.

02.20.

Trent saw the blur of a cat or a fox passing the fountain out front. The sightless dazzle of the creature’s eyes as it turned its head. Then the stillness of the swimming pool. The mysterious green-lit shack, unmoving, undisturbed, alone among the tangled pines.

01.30.

01.00.

00.27. A number of monitors displayed Philippe’s low-slung sports car appearing to reverse from outside the house and along the driveway in a cloud of dust before sweeping out of the gate.

00.00

23.57

A middle screen showed Trent and Alain circling the fountain and following the same route. They bolted back along the moonlit drive. Trent walked out through the gate.

Alain glanced at him. Trent didn’t say a word.

He was focused on the uppermost screens, watching himself marching backwards along the fence, eyes bright and lidless in the night-vision glow, finally disappearing from view at 23.29.

A fast scan through another twenty minutes and Trent saw the battered Mercedes reverse along the driveway and out through the gate, its single headlamp twinkling in the dark.

Then stillness. Calm. A flickering, blurred repeat of shot after shot, camera switch after camera switch. The time counted down. The footage shifted even faster.

‘Wait,’ Trent said. ‘There.’

Alain punched a switch. The monitors froze.

21.47.

Trent pointed at the second screen from the left, top row. It showed a colour still of the lighted entrance gate. The gate was swung back a short way. A young black guy was passing through. He was staring up at the camera lens. Eyes fearful and wide, mouth gaping and jammed full of stark white teeth.

‘That’s him,’ Alain said. ‘That’s Serge.’

He hit
PLAY
on the control panel. The screens buzzed, then advanced in real time, the counters clicking upwards, second by second.

The chauffeur had sleek, very dark skin. He was slim and boyish, with long limbs and a compact torso, as if he hadn’t fully grown into his body just yet. His head looked too big for his trim shoulders, perched on a lean neck, and his jet-black hair was tightly curled. He had on a chequered shirt over faded jeans. A blue holdall was slung over his shoulder.

Trent watched the gate swing closed behind Serge and then the cameras picked him up on the other side, flattening himself against the bars. The holdall was down by his feet and his face was angled to one side, eyes downcast. He looked nervous. His whole body was tensed. Every muscle. Every tendon.

He held the pose for a long time. It seemed to take a lot out of him. Pretty soon he was trembling.

Two minutes elapsed before Alain started to fast-forward. He scrolled through almost eight minutes in total, then hit
PLAY
again the moment the cameras picked up something else.

A green Toyota Land Cruiser with a plastic bull bar on the front, its headlamps switched off.

A door was flung open from the back and an interior light blinked on. A gloved hand reached out and took Serge’s holdall. The kid climbed inside.

‘What do you think?’ Trent asked. ‘Do you picture him as one of the guys with the rifles?’

Alain considered it. He uttered a low, guttural grunt. ‘Maybe.’

Trent closed his eyes and visualised the three masked figures who’d leapt out of the jeep. No way was Serge the one who’d advanced on the Mercedes and fired at the windscreen. That guy had been too bulky. Too assured in his movements.

And Trent didn’t see him as the man who’d hauled Jérôme out of the rear window. That job required muscle. It required boldness and composure. Those were two qualities Serge seemed to lack.

He could have been the one holding the rifle on Trent. That was possible, for sure. He’d seen anxiety in the guy’s eyes. Jitters.

But it was nothing conclusive. He could tell himself that Serge had been on the other end of that rifle, but he didn’t know it for sure.

‘Maybe he was the driver,’ Alain said.

Trent made a humming noise. It was a definite possibility. Serge was a driver by trade. And he knew the Mercedes well. Perhaps he’d figured out the best way to take it down.

But someone else had been driving the Toyota when they picked Serge up. So maybe that guy had been behind the wheel. Maybe Serge had fulfilled a different role entirely.

‘One thing’s for sure,’ Trent said. ‘He is involved.’

Alain nodded, distractedly. He was pressing his face close to the monitors. Peering at the screens.

‘What is it?’ Trent asked.

‘Number plate,’ Alain said, placing the pad of his forefinger beside the rear of the Land Cruiser. ‘I can’t read it.’

‘Looks like they smeared it with something. Mud or grease.’

‘And the front is no good, either.’ Alain let the footage spool out, watching as the Toyota passed silently along the fence before moving out of range of the final camera.

‘Irrelevant,’ Trent told him. ‘It’s probably stolen anyway.’ Then, realising he’d said more than he should have – he didn’t want to plant ideas in Alain’s mind – he tapped the monitor screening footage of the shack. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘It’s nothing.’

‘Looks like a summer house.’

‘It’s a wreck. It’s falling down.’

And yet it was under surveillance. Two cameras. First the front view, then the rear.

Alain punched a button, jarring the camera feed back to real time, 03.52. All appeared to be still. All calm.

Trent was fixated on the shack. The discreet location. The loose cluster of trees. Those shutters and planks across the windows.

Abruptly, he became conscious that Alain was watching him again. Assessing him. Gauging him. The fearsome Ruger holstered at his side.

Silence between them. The surveillance monitors whirred and hummed and twitched. The fluorescent light buzzed and flickered. He could hear Alain’s breathing. Feel the heat coming off his body. Waited for him to speak. To accuse him of something. Maybe make reference to the photograph in his wallet.

The silence went on. Eventually, Trent broke it.

‘We should speak to the housekeeper,’ he said. ‘Ask her if she knows anything.’

‘She won’t. There’s no chance of that at all.’

‘Maybe Serge confided in her.’

‘He wouldn’t have.’

‘Why so sure? Only a short while ago you were certain that Serge was ill in bed.’

Alain muttered something under his breath. He shook his head, exasperated, as though he couldn’t quite understand how he hadn’t swung for Trent yet.

Then a telephone started to ring.

The noise was distant and muffled but unmistakable.

It was coming from the far side of the house. From Jérôme’s study.

Trent burst into the room and circled behind the desk. He wheeled Jérôme’s chair out of the way and snatched up Alain’s pad and pencil. He locked eyes with Stephanie.

The telephone was ringing between them.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

She swallowed, then nodded. Perspiration had broken out across the bridge of her nose. The skin around her eyes was shaded purple.

The telephone kept ringing.

Trent pointed with the tip of the pencil towards the scrap of paper Stephanie had placed on the desk immediately in front of her.

‘Follow the script,’ he said.

The telephone rang some more.

Philippe had positioned himself to the right of Stephanie. He’d turned the spare chair round backwards and was resting his knee on it. His hands gripped the wooden backrest where Alain’s jacket was draped. Alain stood by the side of the desk next to the phone, his bunched fists propped on his waist just below his holstered revolver, his feet spread shoulder width apart.

Trent held the pencil above the notepad. He reached out with his spare hand and hit the tiny rubber button with the loudspeaker icon on it.

A click. A burr. The fuzz of static on the line.

A long moment of silence. Enough for Trent to begin to wonder if he’d cut the caller off.

He checked on Stephanie. She was frozen. She was speechless.

Then he heard breathing on the end of the line. It was ragged. It was harsh.

Trent rolled his hand at the wrist, like a stagehand prompting an actor.

‘
Allo?
 ’ Stephanie managed, a dry catch in her throat.

More silence. She opened her mouth as if to talk again.

Then there was a voice.

‘We have your husband.’

The voice was male. It was deep and guttural, almost a growl. It sounded constricted somehow. Sluggish. As if the speaker’s jaw had been broken and wired back together again. As if he was drowsy on painkillers.

It was a distinctive voice. It was memorable.

Trent remembered it for sure.

His heart bucked in his chest like he’d just been shocked out of a cardiac arrest. He clutched the pencil so tightly that it flexed between his fingers. The lead pressed down on the pad.

‘My name to you is Xavier.’

The pencil tip gave out. It crumbled. The jagged lead bore down into the thin paper, punching a hole through the top sheet.

‘You speak only with me. Call the police and we kill your husband. Lie to me or try to trick me and we kill your husband. Understand?’

‘Yes,’ Stephanie replied, her voice rising in panic, as if she were framing a question.

Trent gritted his teeth and made a slashing motion with his hand. Jabbed a finger towards the script.

Stephanie gasped. She fumbled the paper.

‘Is Jérôme alive?’ she said. ‘Is he safe?’

‘If you do not pay what we ask, we kill your husband.’

Trent pointed at the prompt sheet again.

‘Is he alive? Please. Is he safe? Can you—’

‘Enough! If you do not pay what we ask, we kill your husband. Disobey me and we kill your husband. Understand? We kill him.’

‘I don’t have any money. I cannot—’

‘Do not lie to me. Xavier knows when you lie. Lie to me and your husband dies. We kill him. Five million euros. Five million! I will call again within two days. Have the money. No police. Have the money.’

There was a loud clatter and then the phone went dead. A flat tone hummed through the speaker.

Stephanie raised a hand to cover her mouth. She was shaking her head repeatedly.

The telephone continued to hum. Trent ignored it. He scratched a note on the pad with the broken pencil.

5 mil euros
.
No police. No lies. No tricks. Do not disobey.

Beneath it, he wrote:

Xavier
.

He underlined the name twice. The lines were heavy, determined.

Xavier.

A name he knew only too well. A name he’d hoped never to hear again. Especially tonight.

Alain stepped forwards and slapped his hand down onto the speaker. The droning ceased with a fractured bleat. He lifted the receiver and punched in a four-digit code – 3131. He listened for a moment. Frowned. Shook his head.

‘Number withheld,’ he said.

Trent nodded, distractedly. ‘I told you. They’re professionals.’

‘We could install some equipment for next time. Something to trace the call.’

‘I’ll source a digital recorder,’ Trent told him. ‘It can be a useful tool. But there’s no point trying to trace them. These gangs use prepaid mobiles. A new phone for every call. It’s cheap. It’s safe.’

Alain held his gaze for a long beat. His mouth was twisted up in thought.

‘Maybe not this time,’ he said. ‘Maybe they’ll slip up.’

‘They won’t.’

‘But we could try. What does it cost us?’

Trent dropped the pencil. It rolled in a semicircle on the desk.

‘It costs you Jérôme’s life if you make a mistake. How do you get the equipment? Who do you ask? What if they talk? And what do you do with the information even if it works? I told you, this is a negotiation now.’

‘The police would have the equipment,’ Philippe put in. His skin had taken on a greyish tone but his eyes were alert. He was rocking forwards on his chair. ‘We should call them. We need them.’

‘Too dangerous.’

‘You say. But you also told us the maximum they would ask for is four million. And now they ask for five. We can’t pay it.’

‘You won’t have to. I told you: we negotiate. We talk them down.’

‘How?’ Stephanie had lowered her hand. Her mouth was slack, her lips cracked. ‘How do we do this? He does not listen.’

‘It was a first call.’ Trent could feel his composure leaking away, like a breach in a gas main. ‘They can be that way. Remember, it’s about impact for them. It’s about unsettling you. This is what I told you would happen.’

‘You also told us four million, maximum,’ Philippe said again.

Trent bowed his head. He stifled a groan. ‘So they went higher. We can still negotiate a reasonable sum.’

‘Only if they want to.’

‘No. I told you. It’s a business exchange. The money for the commodity. They
need
the money.’

‘We should call the police.’ Philippe was staring at Stephanie forcefully. ‘We should call them right now.’

Stephanie glanced at the telephone. ‘What if they kill him?’ she whispered.

‘If they kill him then they were going to do it anyway,’ Philippe told her. ‘They were going to kill him even if we paid.’

‘You’re wrong,’ Trent said.

‘We should call them,’ Philippe insisted. ‘We should ask for their help.’

Stephanie moistened her lips. She glanced at the phone again, then up at Alain. She was pale and she was trembling. She looked like she was suffering from exposure and Trent supposed that in some ways she was. Exposure to the brutality of the situation they were facing. To the gruelling hours and days that lay ahead.

‘What do you say?’ she asked Alain.

The bodyguard was frowning down at the phone, cupping his chin in his hand, stroking his stubble. He was thinking hard. His forehead was creased, one eye half-closed in a squint, the sticking plaster crinkled and beginning to peel away from his sweat-soaked brow. He grunted to himself, then looked over at Trent.

Trent felt his gut go light. His pulse throbbed in his temple. All of his calm, reasoned thoughts seemed to be thrashing against the inside of his skull. The first signs of panic setting in. This was the moment when everything could unravel. Involve the police and he lost control. Lost the last vague chance he was clinging onto.

This stranger who was wary of him, this man who’d voiced his suspicions right from the very beginning, who’d kept his Ruger close at hand in case his distrust proved well founded, was all that stood between him now and the jarring wrench of failure.

Alain lowered his hand with a sigh. Tapped his knuckles loosely on the edge of the desk.

‘I trust M. Moreau’s judgement,’ he said, voice firm. He nodded at Trent. ‘And he entrusted his life to this man. So for now, we do what he says. We don’t call the police.’