Not for several more days at least.
Ben didnt know whether she was telling the truth or giving him the brush-off. She sounded as though she wanted to get off the phone, so he pressed a little harder. Is there another number I could reach him on? Its really rather important.
No, Im sorry, I cant help you there. It would be better to call back in a few days.
Ill do that, thanks.
She sniffed and said, I really must go. Everyone here is very upset.
Just one more question, Jeanne. Was Romy expected at work today?
She hesitated, obviously finding the question weird. The information would help Ben piece together Romys movements that morning, which might come in useful as he learned more. But Jeanne wasnt taking the bait. Im sorry, but who exactly are you?
Dont worry about it. Apologies for having called at this difficult time.
Ben ended the call before she could say more. So much for winning them over with charm.
He went back to examining Romys phone. Address book, call records, texts, emails; he was running out of options and didnt have much to show for it so far. All that remained for him to check out was the folder containing image files.
Lots of folks went about snapping anything that moved, subscribed heavily to the selfie craze and had thousands of photos crammed into their phones, but Romy wasnt one of those people. She had only five files stored in the images folder. They were arranged in chronological order. Ben opened the oldest one first, dating back to January.
The image was a self-taken shot of Romy and a young guy about the same age as her, slightly built, who looked like he might be Moroccan or Algerian. Ben wondered if this was Michel, the boyfriend. They were hugging each other and grinning cheesy grins for the camera on a cloudy beach somewhere, maybe the north coast up near Calais. They were dressed for winter, hats and coats and woolly scarves, and the sea breeze was blowing her hair across her face. She looked happy. The young guy, too. It was a sad picture, in retrospect.
The next photo had been taken three months ago, inside what appeared to be a bar. Ben could see tables covered with glassware and bottles, and red vinyl bench seating and other people in the background. Another image taken not long afterwards the same day showed the two of them posing outside the bar, pulling silly faces. Ben could see the faded lettering painted on the bar window that spelled out backwards the words LE GERONIMO.
Ben laid down Romys phone for a moment and tried Michels number again on his burner. Still no reply.
He returned to her phone. The fourth photo was a blurry shot of an older couple, taken in the dining room in a middle-class family home a couple of months ago. It looked like someones birthday, though the older couple didnt seem to be having a great time. They both bore a faint resemblance to Romy: her parents, he assumed. Her father had the pasty complexion of a chronic cardiac sufferer and her mother looked like an uptight sort. They were centred at the end of a table bearing a cake festooned with candles, the smiling, goofy faces of some other people peering in at the edges of the frame. Romy wasnt among them, so Ben assumed shed been behind the camera. Photography hadnt been her greatest talent in life, that was for sure.
When he tried to open the fifth and most recent picture file, just three days old, he discovered two things about it. First, that it wasnt a picture file at all but a much larger video clip. Second, that it was encrypted.
A window popped up requesting a PIN number. Beneath that was a prompt asking him Forget your passcode? When he tapped it, the phone asked him for a security question. Which could be anything in the world, and after a couple of failed attempts the whole phone might lock itself up. He didnt even bother trying.
Now why would Romy have encrypted the video file when she hadnt made any attempt to protect the rest of her phone data? That fact alone singled it out as an item of particular interest, and Bens curiosity was piqued. It could be all kinds of things. Something private, obviously. Possibly something very personal that Romy didnt want anyone to see.
Which left open the possibility that the clip could be something more pertinent to the questions Ben was trying to answer. He needed to get into that video file.
He was no expert on how to access inaccessible digital data. But he knew someone who was.
Chapter 11
Thierry Chevrolet wasnt named after a famous American automobile marque. His surname was derived from an old French word meaning a goat farmer. But goat farming wasnt how Thierry made his living, either.
Back when Ben had operated as a freelance kidnap and hostage rescue specialist, his work had taken him to many different countries and necessitated a number of false identities. Passports, driving licences, ID cards and other official papers all had to be perfect to avoid unnecessary entanglements with the authorities and allow him to slip about under the radar. Hed gone to a couple of dodgy characters in the forgery trade, one in London, one in Amsterdam, before hed found the then twenty-nine-year-old Thierry working out of a tiny apartment in Paris. He was a nervous, skinny guy with a bush of Afro hair and a reedy moustache, and talked in a whispery voice owing to the fact that he only had one lung. Hardly the archetype of the master criminal. But after seeing a sample of his work Ben had hired him on the spot to produce a variety of false papers. Hed been more than pleased with the results.
Now and then things would get hot and one of Bens fake identities would have to be ditched and replaced, so he had been able to offer Thierry a steady stream of work. The pair had got to know each other well. Ben had discovered that in addition to being an excellent forger, Thierry was also a wizard with anything techno-orientated. On a few occasions hed employed him to hack emails, raid computer files and unlock phones confiscated from associates of kidnappers. If Thierry couldnt hack and crack his way into it, you might as well toss it in the bin.
And now Ben had a new assignment for him.
Last time theyd had dealings was years ago, before Ben had retired from freelance work, moved to France full-time and joined up with Jeff Dekker to set up the tactical training centre at Le Val. He had no idea whether the guy was still active.
Ben levered up the loose floorboard in the safehouses bedroom, dug around in the cavity below and pulled out a padded envelope sealed with tape. Inside were a couple of examples of Thierrys artistry, a British passport in the name Paul Harris, and a French one for the fictitious Vincent Fournier. Each had served him well on a few occasions.
Wrapped up with the fake passports was a dog-eared old notebook in which Ben had kept lists of contacts in those days. Thierrys number was marked just by the letter T. He dialled it, but there was no answer. Maybe it was a long shot. Thierry could have changed his phone, or emigrated, or gone straight and got a job, or died, or been caught and sent to jail. Any of which possibilities would leave Ben in a tricky situation. The issue wasnt finding someone else who could unlock the encrypted video file. It was finding someone who wouldnt ask questions about what Ben was doing with a phone belonging to the victim of an unsolved murder. Petty crooks often greased the wheels of their good fortune by acting as police informants on the side. Thierry, by contrast, was far too honourable a criminal to ever rat on a client.
Ben ruminated on his problem by brewing up another pot of Lavazza. In his experience, solutions often presented themselves just by virtue of drinking more coffee. There was no such thing as too much.
And experience proved right when, halfway through his second cup, the phone buzzed with Thierrys number on the screen.
Ben answered, expecting to hear the forgers familiar raspy, whispery tones. But it wasnt Thierry calling. It was a woman, and she sounded pissed off. Even more so when she heard Bens voice.
She said, Shit. I thought it was him.
Thierry?
You a friend of his? Because if you are, tell him Abby wants his fucking junk out of her fucking place, or shes gonna torch the lot of it. Okay?
Ben presumed he was talking to Abby. It sounded like Thierrys life had gone through some changes since Ben had last been in touch. No girlfriend had ever been mentioned before.
Ben said, You dont know where he is?
No, I fucking dont know where he is. Whore you, anyway?
My names Ben. I need to find him.
I get the picture. Youre one of them. Well, if youre gonna fuck him over, just make sure he clears his junk out of my place first, okay? Its so jam packed in here you can hardly fart.
Abby was evidently a classy sort of gal. Ben asked, Is Thierry in trouble?
She paused. Would you be asking me that if you were one of them?
Im not. Cross my heart and hope to die.
Thierry is trouble, she sighed. Story of my life.
What happened?
Same old, same old. Except this time he went too far. I told him, Thierry, you get in debt to those people, youll regret it. Did he listen to me? Did he ever?
Who did he borrow from?
Abby made a grumphing sound. The kind of people who break your arms and fuck up your knees up with hammers, if you dont pay them back pronto, with interest.
How much does he owe?
Enough to piss them off that he hasnt repaid a cent of it.
So now hes hiding from them.
She paused to take a noisy drag on a cigarette, then grumphed again. Skipped out two weeks ago. Not heard from him since. So fucking typical, you know? Thats it this time. Were finished. You tell him that, if you see him. And I want
His junk out of your place. I get that. Listen, Abby, I really do need to find him. Maybe I can help him.
I dont give a shit if you can help him or not. Hes got it coming. She sucked on the cigarette again, and seemed about to hang up the call. Then she blew out an exasperated sigh and said, You could try that slimeball Pierrot. They hang out together. He might be lying low there. I dont want to call, because Pierrot is such a creep. The way he pervs on me makes me want to fucking puke.
She gave Ben an address for the creepy slimeball. He wrote it down, thanked her and promised to remind Thierry about the junk. She said, Whatever, and hung up.
Ben slugged down the last of his coffee, grabbed his car keys, locked up the apartment and was on his way.
Chapter 12
Paris is divided up into twenty arrondissements or municipal districts each with its own number, which to the casual visitor seem to be scattered randomly about the city but are actually arranged in a rather quirky helix pattern, spiralling out from the centre to form something like a snail shell within the rough circle of the Boulevard Périphérique, Pariss ring road. The address that Thierry Chevrolets ex-girlfriend had given Ben was situated on the border of the tenth and nineteenth districts, where the helix unwound itself towards its outer edge in the north-east of the city, about one oclock on the clock face of the circle.
Ben cut across the city in the Alpina and drank in the many changes since his last visit of any duration to the place. He hacked along Boulevard de la Chapelle, following the path of the raised viaduct Métro line, and reached the Place de la Bataille de Stalingrad, where Abbys directions told him to head further north-east up Avenue de Flandre, parallel with the river. Everywhere beneath the Métro viaduct were migrant camps, spread out like a post-apocalyptic settlement of makeshift tents and shanty dwellings, with garbage choking the pavements, washing lines strung up between trees and signposts, bits of outdoor furniture scattered here and there. Hundreds of Afghans occupied one stretch near the Stalingrad Métro station; further up along the street were the Sudanese and the Somalis, the Eritreans and the Ethiopians, all clustered into their own separate camps. So much for multiculturalism. The scene was about as far from the picture-postcard tourist image of Paris as it was possible to get. The government could send in the troops to clear the place up, as it had done before and no doubt would do again, but the tents would soon return, over and over.
Welcome to the new Europe, Ben thought. These were problems that couldnt easily be fixed, and he was glad that wasnt his job.
Thierry Chevrolet seemed to have landed himself with a problem that wouldnt easily be fixed, either. Ben didnt know who hed borrowed money from, or how much, or why, but it didnt sound good. And if Thierry had been in hiding for two weeks already, there was a decent chance the bone-breakers might catch up with him any time. In which case the job Ben had come here to do might turn suddenly unpleasant, too.
The earlier sunshine had disappeared behind grey clouds. It began to rain as he headed up Avenue de Flandre, passing high-rises and shops, a lot of them with shuttered, grafittid windows. After a couple of blocks he spotted the side street where Thierrys buddy Pierrot lived. He found a parking space for the Alpina and walked the rest of the way to Pierrots building, which made Romy Juneaus place look like the Luxembourg Palace by comparison.
On his way Ben noticed the chunky black Audi SUV parked in front of the building, which looked much newer and shinier than most of the other cars along the kerbside, including his own. He didnt think it belonged to Pierrot. This could be a bad sign.
He pushed inside the building, checked his notebook for Pierrots apartment number and climbed the dirty staircase checking doors as he went. Pierrots door was third on the right along a hallway on the second floor. Standing outside it was a definite confirmation of the bad sign parked in the street below.
The two very large men were leaning against the wall either side of the doorway, like two bouncers flanking a nightclub entrance. The one closest to Ben probably tipped the scales at about seventeen stones, which was three stones heavier than he was. From the guys shape, it looked like most of that bulk was lean muscle, cultivated through countless hours in the weights room. The one on the right was larger still, but hed invested his time differently and was as fat and round as a baby orca. Both of them were standing to attention with their thick arms folded across their swollen chests. Both staring at Ben as he walked towards Pierrots door. Neither showing any degree of friendliness. They were white, with some kind of Mediterranean ethnicity like Greek or Armenian. Black hair razed to a stubble, dark trench coats, leather gloves, shiny shoes. They looked like a couple of extras auditioning for parts in a new Godfather movie. And their presence outside Pierrots door left Ben in little doubt that Thierrys creditors had indeed already managed to track him down.