Death on the Rive Nord

CHAPTER FOUR

Oran, Algeria

Where is she?’

The voice was cool, just a hair’s breadth from turning cold, like the evening winds off the Hauts Plateaux of the Atlas Mountains. The man asking the question stared out of the window of a room on the third floor of a small office block in the commercial district of Es Senia, a few kilometres from the centre of Oran on Algeria’s coastline. Nearby was the international airport, from where a steady roar could be heard as a cargo plane prepared for take-off. In the background came the tinny sound of a radio playing the lilting, stringed sound of kamanjah music.

The speaker was dressed in expensive trousers and a white silk shirt, at odds with the plain, even rough interior of the room, which had once been an office but was no longer used. His name was Samir Farek, known to a few friends and close associates as Sami. He was of medium height, heavy across the shoulders, with muscular arms and powerful hands. He had dark eyes in a fleshy face, a thick moustache and dark hair swept back and falling to touch his shirt collar, in the modern manner. Far from looking like a local, Farek could have passed almost unnoticed anywhere in Europe and especially in France — as he had done on many occasions.

Two other men stood by the door. Also heavily built, but with shaven heads and coarse features, their faces held identical expressions of careful boredom.

In the centre of the room, a man was eating, chewing hungrily at a simple meal of cheese, olives and leavened bread laid out on a small table before him. A dumpy glass of beer stood by his hand, from which he gulped regularly and noisily. He paused and looked up, a flake of bread falling from his lips. He had not shaved in two days and the stubble of his chin had trapped a faint scattering of crumbs and a tiny piece of cheese. His name was Abdou and he was the owner-driver of a battered Renault taxi in the city of Oran.

‘Huh?’ He wiped his face with the back of a grubby hand and flicked a wary glance towards the two men by the door. They ignored him. He had been brought here for a meeting, so he had been told, to discuss a position as a regular driver for Farek’s business activities, although so far, there had been no such discussion. He had, though, been encouraged to eat by Farek, by way of an apology for causing him to miss his lunch break. Poorly paid and in a competitive market, he had needed no second invitation, and even wondered if he would be permitted to take away what he didn’t consume, for eating later.

‘The woman you took from the house on Al Hamri Street,’ said Farek casually, as if the matter were of no great consequence. ‘The woman and the boy.’

Abdou blinked, and turned slightly pale. ‘Al Hamri? I don’t know that place.’ He gave a weak smile and shrugged. He was a very poor liar. He was also very stupid. It had not occurred to him to question why he, a lowly cab driver on the border of destitution, was being treated with such courtesy by a man known widely throughout Algeria to be the head of a large and very ruthless criminal empire.

He was about to find out.

Farek turned and snapped his fingers. Like a well-rehearsed team, the two men by the door moved across the room and dragged the table away to one wall. It left Abdou sitting alone, arms suspended and mouth open, confused by the sudden change in the atmosphere. And frightened.

‘Wait! I don’t follow…’ he murmured. But it was evident by his reaction to the mention of Al Hamri that he followed all too well what Farek was talking about. And with it seemed to come the realisation that agreeing to come here had been a serious mistake; a trap for the unwary. And he’d walked right into it.

Farek clapped his hands, and the door to the room opened. Another man stepped inside. ‘You two — out,’ Farek continued, and his two guards left the room.

The newcomer was large, in the way very fat men are large, and moved with difficulty, feet forced apart by the girth of his thighs. He was dressed in a long, white djellaba and wore industrial glasses with wrap-around lenses flipped up on top of his head, which was shaven and shiny with sweat. In his hand he carried an ugly, black handgun fitted with a long, slim silencer.