Death at the Clos du Lac

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The woman lifted her head. She needed water. She had been lying motionless for what now seemed a lifetime, too scared to move, unable to see. And hearing anything above the drumming noise of the van in motion was impossible. Even the noise of other traffic, just metres away, might as well have been on another planet, it meant as little to her. The constant juddering motion and the smell of exhaust fumes filtering through the hood over her head had made her nauseous at first, but she had fought hard to overcome it.

Now the van had stopped moving and the man in the leather jacket had climbed out. There was silence at first after the door slammed shut, then she heard voices nearby and a grunt of laughter. Beyond that, however, there was nothing. Wherever they had stopped was devoid of the normal life sounds such as cars, children, machinery — even birdsong.

She tried to work up some spittle by holding her mouth open, but nothing came. Sucking her teeth merely highlighted just how dry and thirsty she was. So she rolled onto her back and lifted both feet in the air, then brought her heels down as hard as she could. Maybe that would bring the man on the run.

But the noise was muffled by the mattress. She shimmied down by dragging herself along with her heels, aware that her skirt was being hiked up around her thighs, but she was beyond caring. She was close to choking; if she didn’t get some moisture in her throat soon, she was going to suffocate.

She stretched out her legs and heard the rasp of leather on the metal floor. At last. With that she lifted her feet again and slammed them down hard. It made a satisfying booming sound. She did it again and heard an exclamation from outside. Quickly she moved back to her original position before the man came in and saw her.

The van rocked and a door opened, letting in a gust of cooler air. She heard breathing nearby, and a faint squeak of leather as the man moved. She could smell cigarette smoke on him, overlaid with male sweat and unwashed clothing.

‘I need some water,’ she said, keeping her voice under control. ‘Please — I’m choking in here.’

The man didn’t reply, but she heard him moving around close by, then the clink of a spring stopper being loosened on a bottle.

‘Sit up,’ he told her. ‘But don’t try anything silly or I’ll slap you.’

‘No. I promise.’ She felt herself shrink. It was the first distinct threat that he’d made.

She felt his hand beneath her shoulder, then she was sitting upright and her back began aching at the unaccustomed position. She couldn’t feel where her skirt was positioned, and hoped her legs weren’t bare.

‘I’m going to loosen the hood,’ he said, ‘to put the bottle underneath. But I’m not taking it off. You’ll have to drink as best you can.’

‘Please,’ she said softly. ‘Take it off, just for a moment. I need to see daylight.’

There was a short silence, then he said, ‘Fine. Don’t drink. Your choice.’

‘No, wait!’ Panic took hold of her. The thought of not drinking was horrifying. Her throat was as dry as paper, and scratchy from having to breathe forcibly under the hood. If it closed up altogether … she didn’t want to even think about it. ‘Please.’

She felt the hood loosened, and a subdued flood of light came in and made her wince. Then she felt a rough hand touch her throat and the cool touch of glass against her chin. Almost sobbing with relief, she waited patiently while the man lifted the bottle and a rush of water filled her mouth. She choked instantly, and coughed, half the water falling across her chest and soaking the inside of the hood. But it was like the best nectar in the world, even though it had a slightly metallic taste.

‘More,’ she gasped.

‘Slowly,’ the man said. ‘Ready?’

She nodded with almost shameful gratitude, and the man repeated the process, carefully dribbling water into her mouth until she turned her head aside and coughed. As she did so, she caught a glimpse of a western-style boot. It looked new, with burnished, stitched leather and a silver tooled point on the toe.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘Thank you.’

He helped her lie down again and made sure the hood was tight, then moved away. ‘Remain still,’ he told her, ‘and you’ll have food later. But don’t bother trying that trick again to attract attention. Where we are, nobody but God can hear you.’

Then he was gone and the door slammed shut behind him, leaving her alone once more with her thoughts and fears.

Several kilometres away, a team of undercover police officers was quietly scouring the area around Avenue de Friedland and the Salon Elizabeth, trying to pick up a trace of how a woman could disappear off a main Paris thoroughfare so easily without anyone noticing. They were under strict orders not to disclose who they were looking for, the instruction having come from high in government circles. It had been judged best not to alert the press in order to avoid panicking the kidnappers — if indeed the woman had been taken against her will.

‘Let’s not fool ourselves,’ Divisional Inspector Leon Drueault, given overall charge of the task, had told his three hand-picked men, ‘this isn’t going to end well.’ He had wide experience of such crimes and knew that women of certain years did not simply disappear from a comfortable life of luxury imagined by many but enjoyed by few, and run off into the hills with a wandering shepherd or their favourite plumber. And this woman had even less reason to go anywhere, for she was loved by her husband above all things. Well, a cynic might argue with that, but if press publicity was to be believed, she certainly seemed to come higher on his list of values than his many businesses, which took up most of his waking life.

Until now.

‘Her husband,’ Drueault had continued, ‘could reach for a phone and have the president himself join a search team if he so wishes. He’s that important. He could take on his own private army — and probably already has — to track her down if he thinks we’re not doing enough. But we’ve managed to hold him back by convincing him that rash action will only get her killed. So don’t screw this up and don’t get noticed. Get out there and find what happened, when and how. Somebody must have seen something. Anything.’

‘So what’s wrong with using the press this time?’ asked Captain Paul Detric, the team leader. He had worked on many such cases and knew that there had been times when a press campaign had resulted in the early release of a kidnap victim. He was also aware that it had failed on more than one occasion, with tragic results.

‘This is not like other cases,’ Drueault had replied calmly. ‘If someone’s taken this particular woman, it’s not simply for money. They could have done that at any time. She uses Avenue de Friedland like you and I use the Métro.’

‘So why now?’ asked Sebastien, one of the other men. ‘It might help us to know.’

It was a fair question. But not one Drueault was prepared — or even allowed by his superiors — to answer. He shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you. Just know this: if we balls this up, she will most likely die. The kidnappers aren’t going for cash or diamonds or any of the usual stuff. If they took her, it’s got to be for something far more important.’

‘You know what that is?’ asked Detric, probably the only one of the three who could.

‘No. And I haven’t asked. Some things we don’t need to know. We just do our jobs, right?’ He looked at them each in turn, Detric, Sebastien and Ivrey, the third man, until they nodded agreement, confident that if any three officers could find a single trace of the woman, these three would. Then he nodded towards the outside world. ‘Go find her.’