The scorpions head, p.11
The Scorpion's Head, page 11
“What now?” he asked. “We’re out of pills that might bring his fever down, and the antiseptic alcohol in the first-aid kit is all gone.”
“I’m heading to the supermarket in town in a few minutes. I’ll stop off at the chemist’s.”
Fabienne stood up and took her wallet from the counter.
“Be careful,” said Claude.
“I always am,” Fabienne replied.
“That was what the man was trying to say to me,” said Claude. “But I couldn’t make sense of it. He said we had to be careful with our car.”
“I won’t drive through red,” Fabienne laughed. “And I’m not about to start bumper-pecking or hassling old ladies who can’t park in reverse. I promise.” She gave Claude a kiss and disappeared.
Inside the van, there had been a development.
“We’ve got the address,” Jorge said to Ludka. “The owner of the car was fined last year for being present at an illegal party in the Catacombs.”
“What are we waiting for?” said Zoltan.
“Hang on,” said Ludka. “Just to be sure, enter that registration number into our system. If no one’s home, we’ll be able to use traffic cameras to track the car’s current location.”
Jorge followed her instructions. Then Zoltan pressed the button so that the wall closed behind them to show nothing but innocent pipes and other plumbing equipment that wouldn’t lead anyone to suspect three contract killers were on their way to their targets.
30
Gaelle awoke in a white room that immediately made her think of a cell. There were no windows and the door could only be opened from outside. There was a steel unit with a toilet and a washbasin with a tap, and everything was made in such a way that no parts could be broken off. She lay in the middle of the room on a bed that was anchored to the floor, wearing a long sleeveless shirt made of a tough, white, tear-resistant cotton fabric. It was the sort of clothing they gave to people who might want to rip it into strips and use them to make a noose.
Slowly, she sat up. In the top-left corner of the room, there was a camera and she assumed that someone, maybe Hanssen himself, was watching all her movements right now.
“I’m not crazy,” she whispered. “I didn’t try to kill Lukas.”
She knew she’d better stop thinking out loud or they’d think she was hearing voices again. She felt an urge to yell at the camera, to shout that she hadn’t done anything.
Or had she?
Maybe she really wasn’t able to make a clear assessment of herself. What if she really were in a state of extreme confusion? Hanssen would probably pick some psychiatric label out of a hat for it: schizophrenia, psychosis, paranoid delusions… And Gaelle would be trapped within her own thoughts and she could yell out a thousand times that she was innocent, never realising that she was in a no-man’s-land and had long since crossed the line of normality.
She lay down again, closed her eyes and thought about Ebba and Bernd, who at first weren’t allowed to come and visit her, and now probably didn’t want to. What Ebba had told the police about that time she’d stood with a pillow in her hands felt like a betrayal. She wondered if she’d have done the same if their positions had been reversed. But that was pointless thinking. Ebba didn’t have any children – and now she didn’t have a husband either.
She opened her eyes and stared at the white ceiling. It acted as a screen onto which she could project her new memories. First she saw the image of Ebba, completely distraught, mascara running, sobbing as she told her that Rolf had left her that morning. The whole scene unfolded before her eyes as if it were taking place here and now. She had comforted Ebba and pushed her own marital problems, with the rainy weekend in Altensteig as the low point, into the background. The conversation with Ebba must have taken place on Monday at around midday, because that was when Ebba had her lunchbreak. Then Ebba had left and the rest of the day had been like any other Monday. She’d done a couple of loads of laundry, gone shopping and cooked dinner in the evening: sausage, fried potatoes and beans. She’d put Bernd’s portion in the fridge because his meeting had run over again. And then? What had happened the next day? The day when her life had been blown to pieces.
She blinked, frantically searching for new images, lost puzzle pieces that would tell her that she hadn’t tried to kill her son, how the box of Seroxat had come to be in her house, why the anaesthetic was in Lukas’s blood, and what the explanation was for her fingerprints being found on the supposed suicide note and the syringe.
There also had to be a plausible explanation for the carving knife that had been found on the floor – it was, after all, the biggest knife in the block, the one that was normally used to carve the Christmas turkey or a roast. Her fingerprints were the only ones that had been found on that too. What on earth was she doing with a carving knife on a weekday lunchtime when she and Lukas usually ate sandwiches or leftovers from the day before?
She stared at the ceiling.
Danger.
There was someone in the house who didn’t belong there.
Silently, she spoke to herself. Focus. Focus even harder.
In her mind, she saw the terrifying image of two men suddenly appearing in the kitchen.
Gaelle looked straight into the lens of camera. The memories were spinning like a whirlwind through her head.
The knife wasn’t meant for killing Lukas.
She had grabbed the knife to protect herself and her son from the two intruders. And there was something else she couldn’t quite place, a feeling of guilt, an inner voice that accused her of having done something wrong, of misjudging the situation and making everything worse.
She started breathing so quickly that she was almost hyperventilating.
“I know someone can hear this,” she said.
Her voice was trembling. She tried to keep her hands calmly next to her body, next to the shirt that she wouldn’t rip into strips, partly because the fabric was so tough, but mainly because she wasn’t mad.
“I want to speak to the police. Urgently.”
31
Fabienne loaded the shopping into their Volkswagen Polo, slammed the boot and returned the trolley. As she went back to the car, she looked at the receipt, which had worked out quite a bit more expensive than she’d estimated. It must have been because of the bottle of champagne she’d bought to toast their world tour tonight.
She crumpled up the piece of paper and threw it into a litterbin. Then she unlocked the car and climbed in. The supermarket bill wasn’t the only unpleasant financial surprise she’d had lately. There were still some unopened letters on the table back home in their apartment. They were reminders from the water and electricity companies and bills for instalments on the smart TV they couldn’t really afford.
She put the key in the ignition without starting the car. The truth was that their modest salaries as a museum attendant and a shop doorman weren’t sufficient for their living expenses, their adventurous plans and the rent on their apartment in the suburbs of Paris. She thought about the mysterious man they’d found almost unconscious in the Catacombs and the twenty thousand euros he’d promised them. It didn’t really matter to her where the money had come from, as long as they got it. Claude was less convinced. She looked at the lucky mascot attached to the rearview mirror and touched it briefly.
With a smile, she started the car.
The stranger was a gift from the gods.
*
“I’m receiving a signal from where the car is now,” said Jorge.
He was sitting on the right, Zoltan was at the wheel, and Ludka sat in the middle with a laptop on her knees, studying the details on the screen.
“Aren’t we going to check their home first?” asked Zoltan.
“There’s always time for that later,” said Ludka. “It’s better if we track down that car. They could have taken Michael to a different address.”
“Next right,” she instructed Zoltan.
Moments later, the plumbers’ van pulled off the motorway.
Claude paced the kitchen, holding his phone to his ear.
“Answer the phone,” he said impatiently.
He hoped Fabienne hadn’t turned hers off, as she often did when she was in the car, because the ringing disturbed her concentration. As soon as her phone rang, she always thought something bad had happened to someone she loved, and she wanted to pick up straightaway, even if she was on a hairpin bend or overtaking on the motorway. After witnessing at first hand a few situations where she’d risked death by insisting on answering her phone – and then found herself talking to someone selling hair products – Claude had thought it wise for her to turn off her phone when she was driving.
And now he regretted it.
Because something bad had happened. His boss had just phoned him and told him that if he didn’t turn up for work tomorrow, his contract wouldn’t be extended. He’d turn a blind eye to one day’s sick leave, but not two. And Claude shouldn’t start thinking he was indispensable. There were dozens of other young men lining up for a prestigious job like being the doorman at a Louis Vuitton store.
Claude had assured him he’d be there tomorrow.
But that wasn’t what he’d promised Fabienne.
He stood in the middle of the kitchen, looking at the cupboard full of cooking equipment. Fabienne had laughed when he’d shown her. The two guns were hidden under the lid of the pressure cooker and he’d stashed the banknotes – twelve thousand five hundred and twenty-five euros, to be precise – in the metal biscuit tin.
He got her voicemail.
Cursing to himself, he left her a message to call him. There was something else he wanted to tell her in person so that she wouldn’t panic. A few minutes ago, it had started to dawn on him what the injured man had actually meant when he’d said that they had to be careful with the car.
There might be bad guys coming after them. It was possible that the man had stolen from some underworld figure who wanted his money back at all costs – drenched in blood if necessary.
Fabienne should never have got in the car.
But it was too late now.
Claude put the mobile on the table and sat down.
He looked up. Was that a noise in the hallway?
Michael had managed to have a drink of water and put the glass back on the bedside table without spilling any. That was a good sign. His strength was returning. Although he still felt dizzy and weak, he realised he had no time to lose. It was some time now since he’d heard a car pull away while he was half asleep. The sound of the engine was the same as the vehicle that had brought him here.
He’d tried so hard to warn them not to use their car. That would only lead Dolores’s contract killers here. He assumed that one of his two rescuers had remained in the house.
A little later, he had heard a man speaking in the kitchen, and it was loud enough for him to recognise Claude’s voice. As there were gaps in the conversation and there was no other voice involved, Michael imagined that he was on the phone.
It had alarmed him. The male half of the couple seemed less determined to help him than his partner did. So he’d done everything he could not to fall asleep again. He’d taken the rest of the glass of water and splashed it on his face before struggling out of bed and crawling across the floor to the door.
Standing up had taken him three attempts, but he’d got there.
And now he was standing in the hallway, by the kitchen door.
Fabienne stopped at the red light and looked at the phone lying temptingly beside her on the passenger seat. She’d promised Claude she wouldn’t turn the thing on while she was driving.
But Claude wasn’t here. He was now in her grandfather’s secluded house with a man who had more money in his backpack than they’d ever had in their savings account.
She thought about the guns in the pressure cooker.
They were loaded, Claude had said.
Maybe something bad really had happened this time. Fabienne picked up her phone, turned it on, and, as the light turned green, she listened to the message Claude had left on her voicemail. She could hear the worry in his voice. At the junction, she drove straight on, before parking up at the side of the road and calling him back.
“Finally,” she heard him say.
“You know I normally turn off my phone when I’m driving.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yes, why do you ask?”
“Where are you now?”
“About fifteen minutes from Yèvre-le-Châtel.”
“Come back as quickly as you can, Fabienne. Don’t stop on the way, not for anyone whose car has broken down or anything else like that. Lock the doors and make sure you’re not being followed.”
Fabienne looked back. Nothing to see.
Then she turned on the automatic locking. She was on a road in a wooded area where there was hardly any other traffic.
“You’re scaring the hell out of me, Claude.”
“Be careful, Fabienne. That was what he was trying to tell me. I should have listened.”
“What do you mean?”
Fabienne heard the sound of a chair falling over. And then nothing.
She threw her mobile onto the passenger seat and headed full throttle towards Yèvre-le-Châtel.
32
The occupants of the van were preparing to go into action at any minute. They’d checked that their guns, knives and stun guns were in the right places in the side pockets of their overalls and pulled their caps down further over their faces, so that any witnesses would remember only the striking logo of the fake plumbing company and not the plumbers themselves.
They’d managed to track down the car via traffic cameras and now they were so close that they had the vehicle in their sight.
They’d been following the car at a safe distance for a few minutes. As far as they could see, there were no passengers. When the driver turned down a one-way street, the van waited around the corner for a moment, so as not to arouse their future victim’s suspicions.
“We can force the car off the road and throw the driver into the back of the van,” said Zoltan in his deep, growling voice.
“Be patient,” said Ludka. “It makes much more sense to work out where exactly that car is driving to and who we’re going to find there.”
“Too bad it’s a surprise visit,” said Jorge. “Or we could have taken flowers.”
No one laughed.
Ludka cracked her fingers – it had become a habit when she was preparing for hard work. Last month, in the Kruger National Park in South Africa, she’d ripped open the belly of an interfering environmentalist with one slash of her hunting knife and left his body behind as food for the lions.
She gave Zoltan a quick nod and the van started driving again. Turning the corner, they were just in time to see the car they were following take a left.
Fabienne left the ruins of Château d’Yèvre-le-Châtel behind, driving along a narrow road with high green verges planted with trees. It felt as if they were enclosing her. In a few minutes’ time, she’d be back at her grandfather’s house. Her hands gripped the steering wheel and she looked at the phone on the passenger seat, which had been silent since her last contact with Claude. She’d tried to call him a few times as she was driving, but he didn’t answer.
This isn’t good, she thought, her heart racing. This isn’t good at all.
Yet again, she checked that the doors were still locked. Driving through the centre of Yèvre-le-Châtel, with its rows of houses, flower boxes and old ivy-covered walls, she thought about her options. This village wasn’t just lacking a baker’s shop – it didn’t have a police station either. The only person she could turn to for help was their eighty-five-year-old neighbour, who lived down the road. There was one other possibility. She could park the car at the side of the road and call the police. She slowed down. What could she tell them? That there was a wounded bank robber in the holiday house, who was armed and dangerous? How could she explain to the police that she and Claude had voluntarily taken care of the man all that time? And the most important question of all: what would happen to the promised twenty thousand euros?
As she drove into the street, she saw her grandfather’s house up ahead, partially hidden behind the bushes in the front garden.
Maybe the battery in Claude’s phone had run out. It had been almost dead yesterday and they didn’t have a charger.
She decided not to call the police until she was sure that Claude was actually in danger. She would play it smart. Her presence had to go unnoticed. She wouldn’t park the car in the driveway, but along the street. Then she’d sneak into the house by the back door, which opened directly into the kitchen. She’d have to be really careful because the door squeaked. She’d be able to see at a glance if Claude was okay. If he wasn’t, she would run outside and call the police.
She parked the car far enough along the street that it was impossible to see from the house and got out. As she crossed the road, she couldn’t shake off the feeling that someone was watching her movements.
Claude sat motionless on the kitchen chair and did as he was told by the wounded guest, who was pointing a gun at him. Claude hadn’t answered his mobile when it had rung a few times, although he felt like bawling Fabienne out for the miserable situation they were in. It was her fault. She’d thought only about the money and not about the risks involved.
Carefully, without turning his head, he took in the man who was holding him at gunpoint. He still looked pale. He was wearing only a pair of black boxer shorts and the bandage around his head. Standing motionlessly beside the antique kitchen cabinet, the man had positioned himself so that he wouldn’t be seen by anyone coming into the kitchen through the hallway or the back door.
