‘I have to make a phone call,’ Malik threw back. ‘Two minutes.’ He hurried inside and made for the telephone at the rear. He felt excited, and was biting his lip in expectation and not a little fear. He wasn’t sure which affected him the most – the prospect of a reward for reporting what he had just seen … or the likely outcome if he’d made a mistake. But he knew deep down that he couldn’t be wrong. He dialled a number from memory.

‘Yes.’ It was the voice of his cousin, who lived in northeastern Paris. He was a man of few words, and not one to cross with foolishness or wasting his time. His cousin worked for Lakhdar Farek, also not a man to cross. It was Lakhdar who had announced that anyone who knew her must look out for his brother Samir’s disloyal whore of a wife and that a reward would be paid for the person reporting such a fact if it led to her capture.

‘I have seen Farek’s bitch!’ Malik blurted out, a little louder than intended, fired by excitement at being able to give up his lowly cleaning job. He hunched his shoulders and turned to the wall, his voice dropping. ‘I have seen her just now.’

‘Where?’ No surprise in the voice, only a calm acceptance that it was so. Malik had known Nicole Farek as a young girl.

‘Here in the street – in Amiens. Just now, moments ago!’

‘You are sure?’

‘As I am of my own father’s honour. I swear.’ For a brief second Malik wavered, his mind flicking across what might happen if he was wrong. Better not to think about it. ‘It was her, I swear.’

‘Good. Where was she going?’ His cousin’s voice remained calm, controlling. His cousin had an important job and wore the mantle of authority like a gown.

Malik told him, but added that she had got into a car. ‘I saw the number and I know the make of this vehicle. It was a Peugeot four-O-three.’ He recited the registration number carefully.

‘You have done well,’ his cousin told him. ‘If she is found you will be paid.’

‘What do I do now?’ Malik wondered if he might be paid even more if he went in search of the woman and even captured her himself. Then he realised how foolish that was. Laying a hand on Samir Farek’s wife, disloyal or not, would be to risk everything he held dear.

‘Go about your business,’ came the soft reply. ‘And do not mention any of this to your friends.’

***

Just a short distance away, the janitor at the police station put down his mop and slipped into an empty office where he knew the telephone line was always connected. There, the man, whose name was Yekhlef, took a slip of paper from his pocket and dialled a number. He waited anxiously, listening for the sound of footsteps approaching down the corridor. Lowly cleaners were not allowed to use the telephones, although he knew the policemen often used them for private calls.

When the call was answered, he recited what he had seen and heard earlier; how the Farek woman he had recognised from when he lived in Oran until just a year ago had come in asking for a very tall policeman who always dressed in black. The inspector he knew as Lucas Rocco.

At the end of the call, he hung up and went quietly back to his duties.

The net was beginning to close.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Caspar came round to find himself bound tightly by ropes to a hard-backed chair. He had a ferocious headache sending stabs of pain down through his cheekbones into his neck and shoulders, and he felt inexplicably cold. He couldn’t recall much beyond being taken out of the old theatre by two men and bundled roughly into a waiting car. His mouth tasted bad and he wondered if a drug had been administered. Then he became aware of a more concentrated throbbing behind his left ear and realised he’d been knocked out by more direct means.

He shivered and forced his eyes open, the lids ungluing with reluctance, listening for noises of anyone in the building. He squinted against the yellow glare of an overhead light. The air smelt dead and musty, as if the place he was in had not been used in a long time. The decor reinforced the smell: the wallpaper was brown with age and bubbled by damp, the floorboards bare and unpolished with large cracks showing where the wood had warped over the years. There was no furniture that he could see other than the chair he was on, and the single window had the shutter closed against the outside light. He estimated that it was sometime in the morning, but not yet noon, in an old house somewhere near the theatre where he’d been lifted. At least, he told himself, he wasn’t so damaged that he couldn’t think straight. So far, anyway.

He heard a rustle of paper behind him.

He turned his head slowly to the right, his whole body rebelling at the movement, a nasty cracking sound coming from his shoulder. He wished he hadn’t bothered.

Bouhassa was sitting close by, absorbed in a kids’ comic. Superheroes in masks saving the world. Few words, big pictures. The gunman’s tongue was poking out of his mouth, a small pink dart of flesh like the nose of a lizard. He was grinning inanely at the pictures, chuckling silently. Had to be the pictures, Caspar told himself. Bastard couldn’t read words, that was for sure. He wore his habitual white djellaba, the front stained with sauce. Or was it blood? His feet were strapped into heavy sandals, the tooled leather surprisingly intricate in design for such a thug.

Caspar turned back to the front, trying to blot out the man’s presence and focus on getting out of here. The way things looked, he was in the deepest shit ever. And he’d been in some sticky situations before now. But being here at this time, and with this man in particular sitting within arm’s reach, was about as bad as he could imagine. If Bouhassa was here, there was going to be only one outcome.

He wondered how he’d been singled out, and by whom. He shook that thought away; he’d got careless, that was the truth of it. Careless and cocky and … stupid, thinking he could carry on for ever in this job. He’d walked right into the beast’s lair without a second thought as if he was bulletproof or invisible. Like the fantasy figures Bouhassa was reading about.

Just like the brass had hinted, maybe he really wasn’t fit for this work anymore. Time to give up.

Like he had a choice.

Then Caspar realised that the sensation of cold was concentrated in his hips and thighs. He dropped his chin.

He was naked from the waist down.

Jesus … what was this for?

Before he could analyse the information, the door opened and Samir Farek walked in. He was dressed in a smart suit and polished shoes, his hair glossy and full. Behind him was Youcef, his stupid brother – or half-brother, Caspar couldn’t recall which – lumbering along on his heels like a giant puppy, only half as bright. Farek motioned for Bouhassa to give up his chair and sat down facing Caspar, so close the former cop could smell his breath and a whiff of fancy aftershave.

‘So. Mr Casparon.’ Farek shot the cuffs of his shirt and flicked a piece of fluff off his knee. He seemed unabashed by the fact that his prisoner was semi-naked. ‘We have been a long time meeting. I’ve heard much about you.’

‘Lucky you,’ said Caspar, and instantly felt the world tip upside down as Youcef Farek reached forward and backhanded him sideways with no more effort than he’d have taken swatting a fly.

‘Don’t speak,’ the giant ordered. ‘Listen.’

Farek waited patiently while Bouhassa and Youcef struggled to right Caspar and his chair, then looked at his brother and said calmly, ‘You do that again and I’ll have Bouhassa shoot you.’ He turned his eyes back on Caspar. ‘My apologies. Let us keep this civilised. You know of an Inspector Rocco, yes? From Amiens?’

Caspar shook his head, the side of his face smarting like hell. But the action was more an attempt to retain a sense of focus and win some time than a denial. How the hell had this man come to know about Rocco? He debated saying that he’d never heard of him, but guessed Farek probably knew the answer anyway. Waste of time.