The Martyr’s Curse

Chapter Twenty-Five

They didn’t call Rollo le Tordu because he was psychologically twisted or ethically corrupt, even though there was no doubt he was both of those things and a lot more besides. He’d earned the name as a younger man, when some members of a rival gang had shot him eight times with pump shotguns and slung his smashed, bleeding body off the highest bridge in Marseille. The fact that he’d survived gave him a kind of legendary status in the underworld, while his horrific injuries had left him with a permanent severe curvature of the spine and a crippled leg: hence, le Tordu.

Rollo had done okay for himself. He wasn’t rich by crime boss standards, but he wasn’t poor either. He did a lot of seamy business around Marseille, as well as running a few legit bars and clubs. While he was established and respected within the illegal drugs racket, he wasn’t so thick with his competitors that he hadn’t been amenable to selling the occasional tip-off in the past when one of them was dealing in something more than dope. That was how Ben, while searching for the missing teenage daughter of a businessman from Cannes, had come to deal with him. Ben had eventually found the girl before her abductors were able to sell her on to the Moroccan flesh trade, though he’d had to lean a little on Rollo to get the information in a hurry. Rollo had survived with just a few bruises to his pride. The kidnappers hadn’t fared so well.

‘Thought you must be dead,’ Rollo said on the phone. There was no smile in his voice.

‘No such luck,’ Ben said.

‘So you’re back in the game?’

‘This time it’s a personal thing,’ Ben told him. ‘I need to meet.’

‘I’m a very busy man. What do you want?’

‘The usual. To be pointed in the right direction.’

‘I can already tell you, I don’t know shit about shit.’

‘You know everyone, Rollo. There isn’t a rotten little scam going in this town that you don’t hear about.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m not in the information trade any more,’ Rollo said. ‘I’ve got bigger fish to fry these days. And besides, I don’t like the way you do business.’

‘Five minutes,’ Ben said. ‘That’s all I ask. For old times’ sake.’

‘How sweet. What’s in it for me?’

‘Same as last time,’ Ben said. ‘I let you hobble away no more of a fucked-up cripple than you are already.’

‘See, that’s what I’m saying. I’m not feeling the love.’

‘Plus, I’ll let you have Eriq back,’ Ben said.

There was a long pause on the line. ‘What makes you think I want the fucker?’

‘You don’t have to be coy,’ Ben said. ‘I know how things are with you and Eriq. Though it’s hard to tell who’s got the worse taste in partners.’

‘Five minutes.’

‘Not a moment longer.’

‘No funny business?’

‘Not unless you start it,’ Ben said.

‘I’m at Club Paradis. Rue du Vallon Montebello. Know it?’

The time was 11.16. ‘Give me thirty minutes,’ Ben said.

He was there by 11.35. He left the Hummer a hundred metres away, as tucked out of sight among the parked cars as a vehicle of its size could be, shouldered his bag and marched the now-conscious and very unhappy Eriq Sabatier all the way up the street already crowded with nightlife, past the hookers and the brightly lit shopfronts and the two hairy idiots cruising the kerb on chopperised Harley Davidsons with ape-hanger bars and open exhausts that sounded like a bad case of flatulence. None of the ravers in the street seemed to care that the heavens were about to open. The first rumblings were already sounding from up above. Any minute now, big raindrops would start spattering the pavements.

Club Paradis was exactly what Ben expected it to be from the flashing pink neon sign over the door shaped like a naked woman. He supposed it made sense for a gay gangster to run a strip joint. It showed a certain kind of professionalism, like a teetotaller running a pub. The music inside was raucous, the crowd was heaving and swelling, the girls were doing their thing at their poles and attracting howls of enthusiasm from a couple of hundred sweaty punters, while another hundred thronged the bar. Nobody paid any notice as Ben shoved Eriq Sabatier through the middle of the throng, towards the door at the side of the bar marked PRIVÉ. Ben’s progress was unobstructed, until he came to the door and a very large, square-shouldered, shaven-headed guy with a pointed goatee beard and a Slayer T-shirt two sizes too small for him stepped up to block his way. He towered over Ben by about a foot and a half. The bouncer, Ben guessed. Or Rollo’s personal minder. The huge man glared at him and pointed at the sign with a heavily muscled arm.

Ben gave him a wintry smile, nodded his head back at Eriq and said over the noise, ‘Delivering a package to Rollo. He’s expecting me.’

The big man pursed his lips, made a fair show of looking as if he was thinking, then lumbered aside and let Ben through. Behind the door was a dingy passage with three more doors off it. One to each side and one straight ahead. One of Ben’s mottoes from SAS days was if in doubt, bear dead ahead. Still keeping a tight grip on Eriq, he strode up the passage and shoved open the door in front of him without knocking.

‘You truly are moving up in the world, Rollo,’ he said.

The office was square and dark, lit by a single desk lamp. The walls seemed to throb with the muted beat of the loud music from the club. Cigar smoke swirled in the light and clung to the ceiling like a thick layer of fog. Rollo le Tordu apparently existed on carbon monoxide. He was the only person in the room, lounging in a huge reclining leather chair at the desk, facing the door. Behind him stood a big black steel safe, hanging ajar far enough that Ben could glimpse stacked bricks of banknotes inside. Business must be good.

‘You haven’t changed much, Hope,’ said Rollo with the kind of smile a crocodile gives a baby wildebeest before dragging it into the river. His skin was like parchment. He wore small round glasses and nearly all his hair was gone. He was dressed in a silk Armani suit, but he didn’t wear it well. Even sitting, his spine looked more twisted than ever.

Ben shut the door. ‘Wish I could say the same about you, Rollo. Did your friends come back and throw you off another bridge?’

‘Charming as ever,’ Rollo said. He took a draw on his cigar and reclined further in the chair.

‘Here’s your errand boy back.’ There was another leather-covered chair in the corner. Ben flung Eriq into it.

‘He just walked in and—’ Eriq began explaining.

Rollo turned the crocodile look on him. ‘You’re a fucking imbecile, you know that?’

‘What was I supposed to do? Said he was gonna burn the building down.’

‘Still standing,’ Ben said. ‘That’s my side of the deal honoured.’

‘Except for the part where you don’t try any funny stuff,’ Rollo said warily.

‘That part’s up to you,’ Ben said.

‘So what do you want?’

Ben stepped up to the desk. It was broad, dark wood like the rest of the office, topped with green leather. He dumped his bag down in the middle of it. The thump of something solid and heavy inside wasn’t lost on Rollo.

‘I don’t deal in guns,’ Rollo said.

‘Different kind of hardware, Rollo.’ Ben unstrapped the bag, reached inside and took out the gold bar. He held it up for Rollo to see, letting the light glitter along its surface, then allowed it to fall to the desktop. It hit the wood with a crash. Rollo didn’t seem concerned about his dented desk. He was too spellbound by the gold bar. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

‘A lot more where that came from,’ Ben said. ‘At least, there was. And that’s why I’m here. I need to know if anyone’s brought a shipment into town in the last twelve hours or so. Handlers, fences, middlemen. You know them all. I want names and addresses.’

‘How big a shipment we talking about?’ Rollo said, staring at the gold, eyes bulging, not blinking, behind the little round glasses.

‘Considerable. I’m thinking Russians.’

Rollo nodded pensively, anxiety flashing in his expression. ‘The Russians are into some big deals, all right. But what makes you think it’s them?’

‘Somebody left a calling card behind when they took the gold. Someone with a liking for black Sobranies.’

Rollo finally tore his gaze from the gold bar and looked long and hard at Ben, his glasses glimmering in the light. He stubbed the cigar out on the onyx ashtray at his elbow. ‘Have you any idea what you’re getting into, if the Russians have anything to do with this? How’d you get involved, you crazy English bastard?’

‘Half Irish,’ Ben said. ‘They involved me when they shot a bunch of my friends. They opened that door. Not me. Now they’ll have to deal with what they find on the other side of it.’

‘You go anywhere near those people, they’ll gut and fillet you like a fish. They’ll nail you upside down to a wall and slice your balls off.’

‘We’ll have to see about that,’ Ben said.

‘These friends of yours, do they have names?’

‘They weren’t exactly the kind of people you’d have in your address book, Rollo. Not in your class.’

Rollo pursed his lips again and returned his attention to the gold bar. He picked it up in his long, thin hands, hefted it and turned it over under the light with a look of adoration.

‘Don’t get too attached,’ Ben said.

‘I don’t know how you think I can help you,’ Rollo said.

‘You’re in the business.’

Rollo put the bar down and looked up sharply. The crocodile expression was back. ‘That’s right, I am. I’m in the getting my fair share of what’s going around business. If I help you, there’s a price to pay. Especially if the Russians are involved.’

‘I told you what’s in it for you if you help me. You can still get around with the help of a stick, and you can still chew solid food.’

‘You’re not such a nice guy, are you?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

Rollo sighed. ‘All right. I can ask around. Give me forty-eight hours.’ He paused, caressed the gold bar as if it was a purring cat. ‘Leave this with me. I might need to show it to a couple of people.’

Ben shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t leave you alone with that for forty-eight seconds, Rollo. You can unglue your eyes from it, because this is the last you’ll see of it.’

‘We trade,’ Rollo said. ‘The information, for the bar.’

‘Don’t push me,’ Ben said. ‘That wasn’t the deal.’

Rollo laid four thin fingers across the top of the gold bar. ‘You put something like this on the table, that’s where it stays. You think you dictate terms around here, smart guy? Who the fuck do you think you are?’

Ben gazed steadily at him. He concentrated hard on putting as much meaning into his gaze as possible. You’re a hair’s breadth from finding out exactly who I am. I’m the guy who’s going to break you in pieces. It was a look of final warning. He was down to his last drop of patience. ‘The information. Now.’

‘Here’s some information for you,’ Rollo said. ‘You’re going to die, Hope.’