Death at the Clos du Lac

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

He’d been waiting an hour before he heard the sound of a car at the end of the street. Engine off, two doors closed, dull thuds in the night. Then, much closer, footsteps.

They’d moved faster than he’d expected, already coming in the front door and up the stairs together, noisy and obviously drunk. The landing light went on. It was gone eleven, and the area had fallen silent. Even before the two men arrived at the top of the stairs, he heard one saying how glad he was to have finally got rid of ‘that bitch’.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. First leaving the kidnap vehicle out on the street, with enough evidence to put them on the guillotine; now prattling aloud about how clever they were.

Delombre picked up his gun and rested it on his thigh, facing the door. He was relaxed, sitting back in the armchair, but ready to move at a moment’s notice.

The first man through the door wore a leather jacket and cowboy boots, and was sucking on a cigarette, backlit by the overhead bulb. He frowned at the open door, but drink had made him slow and careless.

Delombre flicked on the standard lamp.

‘What the fuck—?’ The man stopped, his boots making a loud rat-tat on the bare boards.

Delombre gestured with the gun for the man to move sideways. With his other hand, he held a finger to his lips.

The man did as he was told, blinking hard and swallowing, trying to work out what was happening. If he’d possessed any degree of courage, the sight of the gun had frozen his instincts solid. The cigarette fell and bounced off the bare boards in a shower of sparks.

The second man blundered past him, laughing at some shared joke, and was halfway across the room before he noticed Delombre sitting there in the half shadow cast by the standard lamp.

‘Hey, putain — who’re you?’ he squawked, drunkenly aggressive. ‘Get out of my chair!’

‘Please don’t call me names. We haven’t been introduced.’ Delombre’s voice was soft, but carried a tone of menace that pierced the atmosphere in the room like an arrow. Unfortunately, the man failed to heed it.

‘I said, get the fuck out of my fuck—’

Delombre shot him in the chest. The force of the bullet flipped him round sideways, the report no bigger than a loud slap. He landed in a heap on one of the army cots, and subsided with a sigh.

‘Jesus!’ said the man in the leather jacket, ‘you didn’t have to do that!’ He stared at his colleague’s body and swallowed hard, then turned and threw up noisily in the corner with a horrible hacking sound.

Delombre waited until he was done, then said, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Danny. It’s Danny.’ The man spat on the floor, trying to clear his throat. ‘What’s it to you, anyway?’

‘You’ll find out. Sit down on the other bed, Danny, and wipe your face. You’ve got sick all over your chin.’

Danny sat and dabbed at his mouth with his sleeve, merely managing to smear the vomit across his cheeks. He rubbed his eyes, his breathing coming heavy and fast, and stared once more at his friend as if he couldn’t believe what he’d seen.

‘So, how did it go, with your important guest?’ Delombre queried casually, huffing on the side of the suppressor and rubbing at it with his sleeve to remove a speck of gunshot residue. He also noticed a stray strand of wool-like substance that the armourer had used to pack the baffles inside, and gently teased it out. It happened to these things, but not usually after a single shot. He’d have to speak to the rogue armourer about that. ‘Did she behave herself?’

‘What? You just shot my mate dead and you want to know whether she—’

‘Yes, I want to know,’ Delombre interrupted him. ‘And if you argue with me one more time, you’ll join your foul-mouthed friend in whatever version of hell you’re both bound for.’

Danny nodded quickly and held up a hand. ‘OK, OK. Sorry. We, uh … we did as we were told. To the letter. We kept on the move, kept her fed and watered, then delivered her as arranged to the farm near Clermont.’

‘Go on.’

‘She was fine. We made sure there was nobody else about, then took her out of the van and handed her over to the ambulance driver and his mate. She was still asleep … well, unconscious, really. But that was it. Job done.’ He frowned. ‘Are you saying she wasn’t all right after that? Because if so, that’s not down to us. She was good when we handed her over.’

Delombre ignored him. ‘Did she see your face?’

‘No, not once. I made sure of it. Not a glimpse. I kept the hood thing in place all the time.’ He gave a sickly smile. ‘I mean, it’s not like I haven’t done stuff like this before, right?’

‘So how did she eat and drink?’

Danny explained how he had done it, lifting the hood just enough for the woman to take in food and liquid, but no more. ‘There’s no way she saw my face, honest.’

‘Good. That’s good.’ Delombre looked down at the man’s cowboy boots. ‘Nice boots. You wear them all the time?’

‘Yes, sure. Why not — I paid enough for them. I had them imported specially from Fort Worth in Texas.’

‘Great. So they’re — what, unique, then?’

‘I’d say so. I mean, why pay top money to wear the same as every other mug?’

‘How very wise. But — sorry, but I have to be sure — this woman you were holding, she never saw your face, not once? Or that of your deceased partner over there?’

‘That’s right. He stayed out of sight, mostly in the cab.’

‘Yet each time you lifted the hood to feed her … she’d have had only a clear view downwards, right?’

‘Uh … I guess. Yes.’ Danny frowned, not making the connection.

‘Downwards at your fancy imported and uniquely identifiable footwear. Isn’t that correct?’

The question was met by a heavy silence, and Danny stared at Delombre, his mouth open as the implications of what he’d said sank in fully. He went very pale and stared at the gun, any remnants of drunkenness now instantly dissolved.

‘I said, correct?’

‘Hey … no, wait!’

‘No, thanks. You’re dismissed.’

The leather jacket jumped as the first shot hit home, then jumped again with the second. Danny groaned once and fell back on the bed.

As Delombre stood up, he heard the downstairs door creak, and a scuff of footsteps on the stairs. A whisper of voices fed upward as if through a funnel, and he felt the movement of air in the room. Somebody was trying to be quiet, but not because they were frightened of waking the neighbours.

Then came a sound he knew all too well: the rattle of a round being chambered.