The Babylon Idol

Chapter 12

Ben drove hard and fast through the night. Rain and sleet battered his windscreen, turned to snow for a while around Orléans, and then petered out again as he hammered southwards. He chain-smoked his way through the rest of his current pack of Gauloises, then broke into a fresh one. The strong, unfiltered cigarettes did little to settle his tension; the frenetic modern jazz station blasting from the Alpina’s sound system didn’t help much either.

Approaching Bourges, running low on fuel and energy, he pulled off the motorway into an aire de service. The night was chilly and damp. After he’d finished filling the tank, out of habit he parked the car in a corner of the rest area car park where it was shaded under the trees from the lights. He took his pistol from his bag and slipped it into his belt, behind the right hip where it was hidden by his jacket. Then he locked up the car and walked to the nearby all-night café and shop to get something to eat. He felt hollow and weary, yet jumpy and agitated. More conscious than usual of the hard steel lump of the gun nestling against the small of his back, he walked wide of any corners or doorways where an attacker could suddenly leap out. None did, but the edginess remained.

He walked into the café. It was warm inside. Tall windows offered a view of the brightly illuminated fuel station on one side, the darker car park on the other. Piped muzak was playing quietly in the background. There were a few late-night travellers taking a rest, some couples but mostly solitary men, sitting at plastic tables and desultorily sipping coffee while fiddling with phones or tablets. Nobody took any notice of Ben as he went in, but he eyed each one, sizing them up as though they could be a potential threat.

Maybe he was being paranoid, he thought. Or maybe he wasn’t. If the shooter had figured out by now that he’d got the wrong target, he could have hung around Le Val and picked up the trail of the Alpina. Ben was pretty sure nobody had followed him, but you could never be one hundred per cent certain of spotting a skilled tail. Especially when they worked in a team, relaying one another, keeping in contact by phone or radio, maintaining a constantly-shifting net of surveillance around their target. Ben had worked in enough of those teams himself to know exactly how they operated. If somehow Usberti was behind this — despite apparently being dead — then there was no telling how many paid guns he could have brought on board.

Ben bought a pack of sandwiches and a carry-out paper cup of steaming black coffee, paid cash and made his way back to the BMW. Nobody followed him. He locked himself inside the car, took the gun from his belt and laid it on the centre console close by his right hand. He tore open the sandwich pack: Gruyère cheese and pâté de campagne. His body craved food but he had no appetite. As he ate mechanically and slurped the hot coffee, he checked the latest news reports on his smartphone.

One small consolation was that the media were still in the dark about the details of the shooting incident at the obscure training facility in rural Normandy. The as-yet unidentified victim is believed to be a British national residing in France, with unconfirmed reports suggesting an ex-military connection. The British Ministry of Defence were unavailable for comment. Details of the victim’s condition have not yet been released and the exact circumstances of the incident remain uncertain… SDAT anti-terror officers have said they are involved in the investigation but have not revealed whether the shooting may have been carried out by a member or members of an extremist Islamic group. And on, and on.

The other news item he wanted to check was much more forthcoming on detail, but no more conclusive. INTERPOL’s fury in the wake of Luc Simon’s murder was splashed all over the media, along with gruesome images of the shower unit, post-body-removal, that looked as if a butcher had hung up a live pig in there by its hind legs and slit its throat.

It was no way to go for a good guy like Luc Simon.

INTERPOL were lining up suspects on the working theory that the killing was an act of revenge, carried out either by someone Luc had put away or on their behalf. No charges had yet been brought. Inevitably, the media were whipping up their own storm of speculation that the murder of a high-ranking law enforcement officer was yet another terrorist atrocity. Ben wouldn’t have been surprised if, in the next day or two, the cops pinned it on some claimed Muslim fanatic they found on an intelligence watch-list, complete with the ‘discovery’ of maps and photos of Luc Simon and his home in the suspect’s apartment, along with the requisite anti-West hate literature and bomb-making materials under his bed. And maybe they’d be right. But Ben didn’t think so.

Next he tried Roberta’s number, but her phone was switched off. Then he tried Pascal’s landline number once more for luck, and gnashed his teeth in frustration until the dial tone went dead. So much for the communication age.

But at least someone was answering their phone. The third number he tried, he got a reply after three rings.

‘Dr Lacombe? It’s Ben Hope.’

‘This is why I don’t generally give out my personal number,’ complained the sleepy voice on the other end of the line. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

‘How is he? Any change?’

‘There hadn’t been, when I came home to get some sleep. They haven’t called. So, no, none.’

‘I’m sorry if I woke you, Doctor.’

‘It’s okay. And you can call me Sandrine.’

‘Are you alone, Sandrine?’

‘What kind of question is that?’ she said sharply. ‘Yes, I do happen to live alone, for your information. Did you call to ask me on a date or something?’

‘Not exactly,’ Ben said. ‘The reason I asked is because I need a favour.’

‘What kind of favour?’

‘The sensitive kind that needs to be strictly between you and me. One that concerns Section Forty-Five of the French Code of Medical Ethics.’

‘I see. Regarding patient confidentiality?’

‘Specifically, the matter of releasing a victim’s identity to the media. Or not releasing it, more to the point.’

‘And you have some reason for having it kept quiet, I suppose.’

‘I have reason to think the shooter got the wrong guy, but doesn’t know it yet. I’d like that knowledge to be kept from him for as long as possible. Now you understand what I meant by sensitive.’

A rustling sound as she sat up in bed, fully awake now and unlikely to get any more sleep that night. ‘What are you telling me here? If he was the wrong guy, then who was the intended target?’

‘Let’s just say if they’d succeeded, it would have been a little hard for me to call you.’

‘Someone tried to kill you? But who?’

‘A dead man,’ Ben said. ‘Or so people believe. If he isn’t one already, he soon will be.’

‘Do the police know this?’

‘They’re fixated on their own ideas of what this is about. If I told them I thought I was the target, I’d spend the next week sitting in an interrogation room being hammered with all the questions they can’t ask Jeff.’

‘Where you’d at least be safe.’

‘But other people wouldn’t be. And I can’t have that. So no, I have no intention of telling the cops what I know.’

‘This is just plain crazy. Things like this don’t happen in my world.’

‘Things are a little different in mine,’ Ben said.

‘I can’t be drawn into this intrigue,’ she said. ‘Have you seen the news? The story’s getting bigger by the hour. I’m a doctor, not a spy. There are rules, you know?’

‘I understand. Forget I mentioned it.’ He was about to end the call when she said, ‘Hold on, don’t go.’

‘I’m still here.’

There was a pause on the line, followed by a sigh of resignation; then she said, ‘To reply to your question, the answer is no, I haven’t signed off on that disclosure, and can’t, without the consent of the victim or their next of kin, which I haven’t got at this point. If this was an instance of, say, rape or child abuse, where there’s a clear case for withholding the victim’s identity, that’s one thing. But where a violent crime has been committed involving firearms, especially in this day and age—’

‘The media are hungry for all they can get and the police can release the details themselves, I know. They haven’t yet, but it could all change by morning. I was hoping you could exert some professional influence.’

‘When you said you wanted a favour, you weren’t kidding.’ She heaved another sigh. ‘All right. I can try to delay things from my end, but probably not for more than a day, maybe two. And I know someone who knows someone in the police media liaison department. It’s possible that I can pull a few strings there, too, assuming I can come up with a plausible-sounding reason to persuade them. It won’t be easy.’

‘Whatever you can do, it’s appreciated.’

‘I can’t promise anything,’ she warned him. ‘I don’t even know why I’m agreeing to this.’

‘I’ll bring you a big bunch of flowers.’

‘Your friend needs them more than I do.’

‘He’s not really that into them.’

‘You take care,’ she said. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’

‘Why change the habit of a lifetime? I’ll be in touch.’