Death on the Rive Nord

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The road out of Chalon-sur-Saone was low on traffic, which suited Farek well. After dealing with Tappa, he and Bouhassa had got back in their car and headed north, leaving the wretched people-smuggler as a vivid message for any of his friends or colleagues who came by. Now they were onto the next stop in the pipeline.

Farek grunted as they passed a stretch of woodland on the right-hand side of the road. In there would have been a good place. He liked trees; they had a certain aura, absorbing sounds and emotions, yet reminding those who were about to face punishment that life was a fragile but short-lived moment in time.

‘Is this it?’ Bouhassa nodded to the front. A village was coming up. Le Villard. But before that, a metal-and-brick building stood out by the side of the road, surrounded by a high wire fence housing a jumble of farm machinery and equipment, including pallets of sacks, fencing and blue gas canisters.

As they pulled in off the road, Farek lowered the window. He could hear the screech of metal and saw the flare of sparks coming from inside the open doorway. He parked the car so that it was shielded from the road behind a stack of wooden fence posts. A battered Renault was parked nearby.

The man inside the depot had seen them arrive. The metal noise ceased and he appeared in the doorway, lifting a pair of safety goggles from his face and dropping them to his chest. He was wearing grubby, dark-blue overalls and heavy work boots, and scratching at a three-day beard with a gloved hand, squinting against the daylight. Work-hardened but not street-hard, Farek decided. Strong, probably, and capable of violence. But it wouldn’t be enough. Even so, there was plenty here that the man could use as a weapon if they let him.

The man lifted his chin. ‘Help you?’

‘Yes. Is your name Pichard?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is that your car?’ Farek pointed at the Renault.

Pichard didn’t even bother looking. He nodded. ‘Yes. You want to buy it?’ The way he grinned showed it would be a lousy deal. Then he looked past Farek… and did a double take as he saw Bouhassa levering himself from the car, grunting with the effort. It was a standard reaction, and one Farek had long grown accustomed to. Maybe, he thought, fat men in djellabas and safety glasses weren’t common out here in the fields of the Burgundy region.

Or maybe it was the gun Bouhassa was clasping in his fist.

‘Hey — what the hell-?’ The man put out a hand as if to ward them off. ‘What’s going on? I don’t keep cash on the premises…!’

Farek stepped right up to him and straight-armed him hard in the chest, sending him stumbling back inside the building. The air smelt of burnt metal, of dust and oil and rubber and diesel. A set of harrows sat on wooden blocks of wood in the centre of the floor, the metal showing where a grinder had been in use when they arrived.

‘You processed — I think that’s the word for it — seven men, a woman and a child through here recently,’ said Farek conversationally. He picked up a hoe with a broken handle and ran his fingers across the blade. ‘Did you not?’

Pichard shook his head. ‘That’s crap,’ he muttered. ‘Who are you? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now take your fat friend and his little gun and fuck off out of here!’ He reached behind him and grabbed a length of metal angle iron, and swung it experimentally, slapping it into his gloved hands with a solid smack.

‘Tough guy.’ Farek dropped the hoe. ‘You want to reconsider?’

‘No. Do you?’

But he’d talked too much and taken his eye off the main danger. Suddenly Bouhassa was by his side, moving with deceptive speed for one so big. Before Pichard could react, the gun was touching his forehead.

‘Stand very still.’ Farek stepped in close and relieved him of the angle iron. Then he swung it hard and low in a vicious scything movement. Pichard screamed as the rigid metal cut him across the shins with a sickening crack, and fell to the floor.

Farek squatted down next to him and waited for the groans and swearing to quieten down, patting him almost paternally on the shoulder.

‘Sorry — shouldn’t have done that. I have a few anger problems. They stem from someone not being honest with me!’ The last few words were directed in a scream into Pichard’s face. Then he smiled calmly and jerked a thumb at Bouhassa. ‘Mind you, nowhere near as bad as his problems. He likes to shoot people.’

Pichard was struggling to ignore the pain, rubbing gently at his legs where blood was seeping through his overalls. ‘OK. OK,’ he muttered, forcing the words through gritted teeth. ‘No need for that. There were eight people — but I didn’t see any kid, I promise. The woman, though, she had trouble walking, like she might have been pregnant. Or maybe carrying something heavy. I didn’t look because it wasn’t my problem.’ He scowled. ‘Who told you about this, anyway?’

‘Maurice Tappa,’ said Farek. ‘Now he’s a little chatterbox, isn’t he?’ He thought it unlikely that the man would have heard about Tappa yet. If he had, he wouldn’t have been hanging around here playing with his tools. First rule of a network being bust was for everyone to scatter until the heat died down.

‘ Putain! I’ll kill him!’ The man spat on the ground and tried to sit up, but Farek stopped him.

‘Before we let you do that, where did they go?’

‘Somewhere north… I don’t recall where.’

Farek said nothing, but stared at the man, blinking patiently. The silence lengthened, interrupted only by a bird flitting among the steel rafters above them and a faint tick of cooling metal coming from the harrows. A car approached along the road outside, and for a brief second, the man’s face showed a grain of hope. But it didn’t stop.

Farek stood up and nodded.

Bouhassa moved in, flipping the safety glasses down over his eyes. He grabbed Pichard by his hair, forcing his head back and pushing the silencer into his mouth. The man gurgled, waving his hands for him to stop, and Farek nodded. Bouhassa withdrew the gun barrel.

‘Amiens,’ the man gabbled. ‘Amiens — but that’s all I know. They were picked up by a driver named Maurat… works out of Saint-Quentin. His details are over there.’ He pointed towards a desk and bulletin board in the corner of the building. ‘That’s all I know.’

Farek nodded and walked away. ‘Good. That’s all you ever will.’

As he reached the car he heard a brief scuffle, then the muffled spat of the gun.

But only just.