Billionaire

27

Rocq drove out of the Avis compound at Geneva in a Volkswagen Golf, following the signs for Montreux and the St Bernard Tunnel. It was a stunning summer’s day, and a slight heat-mist hung over the lake; he looked across, through the front passenger window, down at the lake and at Geneva, which was fast disappearing over his right shoulder.

Although there was little breeze, the air that buffeted in through his window was just cool enough to lift the edge off the heat. Rocq felt good; he felt free and relaxed, momentarily unshackled from the chains of London and, although he was extremely fond of Amanda, it felt good to be completely on his own, even though it was just for a few hours.

He checked his speedometer: he was doing 120 kilometres per hour. Some way back, there was a beige Range Rover; he had noticed it in his wing mirror for several kilometres. It almost seemed to be pacing him. He thought it might be a police car, but doubted the Swiss Police would use Range Rovers; then it seemed to be dropping back and he forgot about it. He passed Lausanne, then Montreux, where the road cut through the mountains, then the motorway descended down into the Rhone valley and became a three lane road. At Martigny, he turned right, and began the climb up towards Verbier.

The air ticket and the car were on the Globalex account at Thomas Cook, although it wasn’t purely for Globalex that Rocq was making this journey. He was, indeed, going on behalf of Elleck’s syndicate, to open an account at the Verbier branch of the Credit Suisse bank and to sign the papers authorizing the formation of a Swiss Company by the name of Three Bears Ag. Among the nominee directors of this company would be a lawyer friend of Theo Barbiero-Ruche, who had very kindly agreed to relinquish a part of his precious weekend in order to see Rocq. But Rocq’s private reason for the trip was to sign the papers for the formation of another company, Rocksolid Investments Ag, which would also be banking at the Credit Suisse.

He drove into the centre of Verbier, thinking how strange the famous ski resort looked in the middle of summer, with no snow except for the Montfort Glacier and the peak of Mont Gelé. The town was very busy, with a stream of cars and hordes of people, many carrying rucksacks, and wearing stout walking shoes and long socks. To Rocq, it lacked the elegance of the winter months, when the snow came down and brought the rich people with it. The town gave the appearance of tolerating these hordes, but all the while waiting patiently for the winter, the first blanket of snow, and a pace and calibre of life to which it was altogether more accustomed.

M. Jean-Luis Vençeon, avocat, lived in a chalet just below the Savoleyeres lift, according to Rocq’s instructions. The signpost to the Savoleyeres pointed up to the left, and he drove the car around the tiny traffic island and up the hill, past a short parade of smart shops on the right, then a modern Catholic church on the left, with a spire that looked like a sawn-off boomerang. He read the names on the chalets and then saw the one he was looking for, Rossignol.

Rocq’s image of a Swiss lawyer had not been a six-foot-three-inch-tall man in a pink Lacoste tee-shirt, white running shorts and Adidas tennis shoes. Jean-Luis Vençeon was polite, precise and formal. He spent one minute on introductions, five minutes explaining the documents, seven minutes pointing out to Rocq the places where he needed his signature, one minute explaining where and how Rocq should get in touch with him if he needed to, and a further thirty seconds gathering up his tennis racquet and balls and saying goodbye to Rocq. No drink, no food; no small talk.

As Rocq walked down the steps towards his car, the Swiss avocat, jogging at full tilt, was already halfway to the village. Where else, reflected Rocq, could one form two companies, open two bank accounts and be finished inside fourteen minutes? It seemed a hell of a long way to have had to come for so little, but then, he knew, the Swiss didn’t hang about when it came to business.

He stepped out into the road, walked around, and opened the door of his car. A roaring made him look up, and he saw a beige Range Rover bearing down on him, coming straight at the door. Instinct made him leap clear, and a fraction of a second later, the door was torn off its hinges. Rocq stood looking, in shock. ‘Fucking maniac!’ he shouted, as it screeched to a halt. Oddly, he thought, instead of reversing, the Range Rover began to turn around; there were two men in it. Rocq stood by the Golf and waited. The driver put the Range Rover into first gear, and began to drive back up the hill. Rocq continued to stand by the Golf. Suddenly, to his horror, it dawned on him that the Range Rover was accelerating fiercely and had no intention of stopping. He did not know how he managed to do so but he vaulted up onto the bonnet of the Golf, just at the moment the Range Rover hit it with full force.

Rocq was catapulted backwards into the long grass at the side of the road. Fear ripped through the shock: one of the men was getting out of the Range Rover. Rocq scrambled to his feet and began to sprint back down the hill, for all he was worth. He looked over his shoulder; the man had stopped after a few yards and the Range Rover was turning again, to come after him. Rocq saw a grey Renault 30 pull up outside a supermarket. The driver, leaving the engine running, dashed into the supermarket. The Range Rover had stopped to pick up the second man. Rocq jumped into the driver’s seat of the Renault, slammed the automatic gear into drive, and floored the accelerator. The bonnet rose up and snaked about for a moment, the tyres fired off gravel from the road in all directions, then the wheels gripped, and the Renault accelerated fiercely up the road. The driver of the Range Rover swung his steering wheel, slewing the car over to try and block Rocq’s path, but Rocq swung over onto the grass verge and just passed the nose of the Range Rover. In his mirror, he saw the reversing lights come on and the vehicle began, once more, to turn around.

After a quarter of a mile, he came to a junction. To the left, which Rocq guessed led back down into the town centre, the road was blocked by a massive road surfacing machine and a large yellow diversion sign pointing traffic back down the road he had just come up. Right, he guessed, would lead further up the mountain-side. He tried desperately to think what the men in the Range Rover were up to, who they were, and whether they had mistaken him for someone else. He remembered, suddenly, having noticed the Range Rover behind him on the road out of Geneva, and on the way to Montreux; but surely that one, he thought, had dropped way back? He realized now that they must have followed him all the way from the airport. But who knew he was going to Geneva? He racked his brains. Elleck and Theo were the only ones. He was convinced Theo was straight. It had to be Elleck. Elleck wanted him to get the account opened and the company formed, then he was going to get him out of the way. But Rocq hadn’t done any of the buying yet. Surely, he reasoned, if Elleck had been planning to kill him so that he could not talk, he would have waited until Rocq had finished the job? In the mirror he could see the menacing nose of the Range Rover coming up the hill.

He accelerated hard again, turning right, and drove past a cafe with a sunny terrace, full of men and women with their shirts off, the men with bare chests, the women in their bras and occasional bikini tops, sitting out, roasting in their sun tan lotions, as they sucked up the early afternoon sun. Rocq came to another intersection, with a choice of straight on, which appeared to go into woods, or a sharp left. Either way, the metalled road ended and it was cart-track. He didn’t want to get trapped in the woods, so he turned hard left, the tyres spraying out dust and pebbles.

The road was only fractionally wider than the car, and climbed steeply up above the cafe, before hairpinning round sharply to the right and traversing the side of the mountain. He slammed the gear shift into low and the car surged upwards, the rev counter racing around towards the red mark, the nose occasionally snaking as the ground beneath the tyres gave out, the engine howling. He took his eyes off the narrow road for a fraction of a second to look at the fuel gauge, and noticed with horror that it was on the empty mark. In his mirror he could see the Range Rover starting to turn up past the cafe. He wasn’t at all happy about this terrain; he had no idea where the track went nor when it might become unpassable in this car. Right now, the Range Rover had every conceivable advantage over him, including, he had no doubt, a full tank of petrol.

He came around the next corner, in a rallying power-slide with his nose dug in and tail hanging so far out he was concerned he was going to put a wheel over the edge, and found himself heading straight into the midst of a family of six in hiking gear, spread across the road walking downwards. He stamped on the brakes and they jumped angrily out of the way, shouting and gesticulating: he accelerated off, and immediately came across another family around the next corner. He climbed up through some trees, and then the road turned back on itself in the sharpest hairpin he had yet come across. As he climbed the next stretch, the road dropped almost vertically away to his right; if he drove off the road now, he knew the car would drop several thousand feet and land right among the rooftops of Verbier. He concentrated fiercely on the road, half wondering whether he should stop at the next group of hikers he came to, but fearful that they would be powerless to do anything against the men in the Range Rover, particularly if, as he suspected, they were armed.

The road began getting worse, and the car pitched violently through two potholes; he prayed the suspension would hold. Luckily, the car he was in was strongly built and, being French, had a suspension system that could cope with these types of road; even so, he had to hold on with all his strength to the four-pronged steering wheel as it bucked and tried to tear itself out of his hands. There was a long straight incline now, and as the rev counter surged over the red line, he pushed the gear shift into second, and kept the accelerator hard on the floor. The speedometer raced up to the 100 kilometre mark. There was a fearsome bang and the car bounced violently up in the air, over the root of a tree and snaked wildly to the edge of the road; one wheel went over the edge, and Rocq was certain, as he held the accelerator resolutely to the floorboard and the steering wheel on full left lock, that the car was going over the edge. But somehow, the wheel came back onto the top, and he managed to steer the Renault back into the centre of the track.

There were two loud blasts, and around the corner ahead came a truck, travelling fairly fast for its size and the incline. Miraculously the road widened for a few yards and, so close to the edge that it was a matter of luck whether or not the offside wheels left the road or stayed on, he managed to scrape through; then he smiled. The truck must surely, he thought, block the Range Rover’s path. The hard angry blasts of hooting behind, the sound of grinding metal, then to his horror, only a hundred yards back, he could see in his mirror, the Range Rover surging down the road after him. It was catching him now. The track had become so rough his speed had dropped to 40 kilometres, and even so he was hard pushed to tell when it was the wheels or when it was the sump that was hitting the ground. The Renault bucked and crashed, and he knew something must break very soon.

He flung the Renault into the next bend: there was a hair-pin turn on a steep incline. The front wheels refused to grip and he began sliding backwards. He stamped on the foot-brake, shoved the gear into reverse, reversed the car a few yards down; then he slammed the gear lever into low and tried again, as gently as he could with his whole body trembling in fear. The Range Rover was almost on top of him. The tyres gripped this time, and he began to accelerate again. There was thick woodland on either side now, and the track was not improving. He had to slow down to take the next bend, and again the Range Rover loomed menacingly in his rear mirrors. There was a bang, and the Renault lurched forward, followed by another bang, which broke Rocq’s grip on the steering wheel, and flung him upwards, cracking his head on the roof, then forward so that he cracked it again on the windscreen.

Somehow, Rocq managed to round the corner. The track suddenly improved, and the Renault was able to out-accelerate the Range Rover up it. They approached another hairpin: he changed down into second, then, at the last moment, stamped hard on the brakes, pulled the gear lever back to low, wound the steering wheel tightly over and yanked the handbrake on as hard as he could. The back of the car slid round and, accelerating fiercely again, he released the brake. The car came out of the bend accelerating hard, and the Range Rover dropped even further back; then the road deteriorated back into rutted cart-track, and he had to slow right down.

There was another jarring crash, and the Renault started snaking, right, then left, then right; the steering wheel did not respond and he realized to his horror that he was being pushed. There was another hairpin coming up ahead, and he could see the end of the tree line just beyond it; down to the left was an awesome drop. He had less than a hundred yards to get the car steering again, or he was going to be pushed over for sure. He accelerated furiously, and suddenly the Renault started to pull away. Bouncing and lurching ferociously, he somehow got around the corner.

There was a closed gate ahead of him; he aimed at the centre and carried on accelerating hard. There was a loud cracking, barbed wire whipped at the windscreen and then he was through and as he rounded a gentle curve, he saw they were at the top of the mountain and in what was clearly a local beauty spot, judging by the fifteen or so cars that were parked there. One couple stuffing their faces with sandwiches, in a Mercedes saloon, waved brightly at him; he wondered whether to stop and scream for help, but the menacing nose of the Range Rover on his tail decided him against that. He began the descent down the other side of the mountain. He accelerated hard, then slammed on the brakes; the terrain was now loose gravel, and the car slid wildly down it; for a moment he was terrified they were going to slide straight over the side, but then they slowed down. At that moment, the Renault was hurled forward several feet by the Range Rover, which then rammed it again; somehow, he managed to accelerate away from it again.

He knew it could not be long before he ran out of petrol. They came to another closed gate, and again smashed through it. He slid the Renault sideways around another hairpin, to discover a massive lorry crawling up less than 200 yards below him. Right now he no longer cared about anything, nothing except getting away from the Range Rover. He was not going to stop, he did not dare to stop; he knew he was going to have to fit past that truck, and if he didn’t and died, then so be it. The driver flashed his lights and hooted angrily, but Rocq carried on racing down towards it, trying to size up in his mind on which side he had the best chance: to the right was a sheer drop; to the left, shrubbery and the hill slope. He picked the left. For a brief moment, he thought there was going to be enough room, and the side of the lorry began flashing past, inches to the right; then the Renault slipped down the bank and the offside of the car came into contact with the lorry. The noise was fearsome: the windows smashed out, there was a rending, renting, grinding, then suddenly the lorry was past, and there was empty road ahead of him.

He heard, over the noise of the truck’s exhaust, the sound of locked rubber sliding across cart-track, then a tremendous bang followed by a clattering sound, followed by a hollow clanging interspersed with the splintering of wood. He stopped. Through what had been his offside window, he saw a streak of beige drop past. He jumped out of the Renault, and ran to the side of the road. Two thousand feet below him, the Range Rover was rolling and bouncing, pirouetting like a tiny ballet dancer on a trampoline. He saw it hit a rock ledge and bounce upwards; its two doors, bonnet and tailgate flew open together, then it carried on plunging down, and disappeared from his view.

Rocq got back into the Renault. He wasn’t enjoying his day out in Switzerland any more. He wanted to go home, and quickly. He carried on down, and eventually came out into the small village of Riddes. He wondered where he could find a policeman, then decided that, with his limited grasp of the French language, he was not quite sure how he would be able to explain why it was that he had found it necessary to steal a car and race a Range Rover up and down a mountainside. He looked at his Piaget watch; there was a plane back to London at 3.30. If he hurried he might just make it.

He passed a garage, but decided not to risk stopping; with all its dents, the car looked much too conspicuous.

He drove out of Riddes; a number of people, mainly children, shouted to each other and pointed at the smashed-in side of the car. He decided it would not be wise to stay in the car longer than was absolutely necessary and, when he came down into Martigny, he abandoned it in the first empty parking bay he saw, and took a taxi to Geneva Airport.

It was not until the Caravelle was airborne that Rocq began to unwind a little. He was still trembling, and wasn’t sure whether it was fear or rage. He ordered a Bloody Mary from the stewardess and then sat back to try and think clearly.

It was possible that it had been mistaken identity, but he discounted that. Four people knew he was going to Verbier: Elleck, Theo, Amanda and the avocat. Amanda he could discount. Which left three. Had he perhaps been conned into signing his life away to Theo and the avocat? Possibly, but he couldn’t believe his Italian friend was ruthless enough to have anyone murdered. There was only one person that he knew who he believed could be capable of murdering, or of having people murdered: Elleck. And yet, that didn’t make sense. He hadn’t even begun the buying yet for Elleck’s syndicate, and Elleck could hardly think it worthwhile having him bumped off just for his signatures — unless there was some immensely clever stunt Elleck had pulled; but he doubted it. He thought about the syndicate. Elleck had said little to him about his partners, but in Rocq’s view, any syndicate that was capable of setting off a chain of events that could, as Elleck had said, bring the world to the brink of war, was more than capable of ordering the bumping off of one solitary metal broker.

Rocq’s drink arrived; he put it down on the table and stirred it slowly, then took a large sip. There was something going on with this syndicate, he decided, that Elleck hadn’t mentioned. There were three reasons, he decided, why he might not have mentioned it: because he didn’t want Rocq to know; because he had forgotten; or because he himself did not know.

No one had ever tried to kill Rocq before, and he didn’t like the feeling one bit. Warning bells were ringing inside him, based on a cross between a hunch and the influence of many books he had read and films he had seen, that, having tried once and failed, whoever it was would almost certainly be going to try again. The two men in the Range Rover were almost certainly dead. News of their deaths would not filter back to whoever had given them their instructions for several hours, at the very earliest. During that time, it would be presumed that they had succeeded and that Rocq was dead. He decided it would be tomorrow, at the earliest, before they came looking for him again. By then, he intended to have wrung the truth out of Monty Elleck’s fat little neck.