Detonator (13 page)

He didn’t ask if he could come too. I knew he wanted to, but he already knew the answer. He was in mini-Frank mode now. Before, he’d been spending some time as an ordinary, vulnerable seven-year-old.

I sorted my shit out and pointed the Polo towards the nearest Géant, one of those megastores that flogs everything from condoms to brake fluid. I was going to hang on to the baseball cap to cover the head wound, but I wanted to ditch the jacket. I didn’t fancy spending the next few days looking like I was on my way to a job interview.

I gathered up a sweatshirt with a hood, a pair of Levi’s, a pack of dark-coloured T-shirts, and a dark brown combat jacket that had more pouches than a fisherman’s waistcoat but didn’t make too much of a statement. I added a box of energy bars and six half-litre bottles of water to my basket before paying cash at the till.

I spotted a phone store on the way out and bought three more bog-standard pay-as-you-go Nokias. Back in the Polo, one went into my new jacket, along with the UZI and a fistful of euros.

I arrived at the approach road forty-five minutes before last light, but there were still enough parked wagons to give me cover. When I was sure no one was taking any interest in me, I took the Pentax binos out of the glovebox and scanned the area, starting with the gatehouse. There was only one lad manning the barrier. Maybe that meant his mate had gone home. Or maybe he’d just gone for a piss. I wouldn’t move in until I was sure.

Two of the warehouses were shut and the third had wound right down. A couple of forklifts were loading the final pallets on to the one remaining flatbed. The rest had obviously been signed off.

The arc lamps that surrounded the yard sparked up before the sun had dropped below the mountains. I wasn’t surprised: dusk didn’t drag on in this neck of the woods. They faced inwards rather than outwards, like in the old PoW movies, which meant I’d have some shadow to work with, but they weren’t going to make my job a whole lot easier.

On the other hand, if they’d come on ten minutes later I might not have immediately IDed the larger of the two figures now making their way down the flight of metal steps that ran from the top floor of the office building on the right-hand side of the complex.

Fuck the database. I didn’t need to track down the truck driver now. I’d found what I was looking for.

The dreads and the sheer size of Mr Lover Man were never going to allow him to merge completely into the background, but he’d left his red and white Puffa jacket and matching trainers in the wardrobe. Today’s combo was quieter.

His companion’s forklift-driving days were long gone, or maybe they’d never been. His sharp suit and tie suggested he’d honed his muscles in the executive suite. He’d taken a lot of care over his facial hair too. Maybe too much. The George Michael look was alive and well in Albertville.

There was a lot of nodding but not much smiling and back-slapping when they reached the bottom of the steps. Then George got behind the wheel of an Audi Q5 with Swiss plates and Mr Lover Man climbed into a Range Rover with French ones. He might have double-tapped his boss, but he’d managed to hang on to his company car. I scribbled both registration numbers in my Moleskine.

The Audi came through the barrier first and steamed past me, its driver staring straight ahead. The Range Rover indicated right. I waited for it to make the turn, then flicked on my dipped beams, eased away from the kerb, pulled a left and followed its receding taillights.

I glanced at the fuel gauge. Unless Mr Lover Man had a hot date north of Dijon, I wasn’t going to have to stop and fill the tank. I held back as far as I could. I didn’t want to lose him, but I didn’t want to follow him too closely either. All I needed to do was keep far enough back to be just another set of annoying headlamps in his rear-view.

After a couple of hundred metres he took the third exit on a roundabout and I let a beat-up Citroën slot itself between us. Half a K further on he suddenly swerved off the road and came to a halt alongside a row of shops, most of which appeared to have stopped trading for the day.

For a nanosecond I thought he might have pinged me, but as I overtook I saw that he wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to his rear-view or wing mirrors: he was too busy waving his arms and having a shouting match with whoever had called his mobile. Something was pissing him off big-time. After what he’d been up to in the last forty-eight hours, he should have been on full alert. And he wasn’t. He was all over the place.

I carried on past the next junction and pulled in too, as soon as I could find a place that looked like I had a good reason for doing so. I killed the Polo’s lights, picked up the binos again and swivelled in my seat to get eyes on him. I could see from his body language that he still wasn’t a happy bunny. The dreads were whipping left and right and the hand movements were going into overdrive. I remembered Hesco waffling into his phone on the mountainside and wondered who was on the other end of this one.

He banged his fist a couple of times on the dash and stabbed the pad in front of him with his index finger. Then he went completely still and stared straight at me.

He didn’t, of course. The Pentax 10x50 magnification just made the whole thing feel up close and personal. Up close and personal enough for me to see that he was vibrating with rage and frustration.

I was starting to think this might be a good time to intercept him. I binned the binos and glanced to my right, looking for a route that would give me enough cover to get within reach of his wagon and slip into the back seat, Sphinx in the aim.

As I reached for my passenger door handle he swung back on to the road without giving the wagons behind him any warning whatsoever. They were still giving him shit with their horns when he flew past me.

I tailed him on to the main, heading south-west. He wasn’t trying to evade or test a potential pursuer; he was just putting his foot down and not giving a fuck about who he pissed off in the process. He wasn’t the only one: he was driving like a Frenchman.

I put mine down too, not that it made much difference. The Polo was built for low-profile escape and evasion, not high-speed pursuit.

I had no idea where he was heading. I just had to point and hope that the traffic ahead would keep him bottled up. A flurry of raindrops belted against the windscreen, blurring the taillights ahead. But it didn’t stop me seeing the Range Rover bear right off the E70, following the signs to Chambéry and Aix-les-Bains. I caught up with him again as we passed a place called Myans.

He continued to push on without a hint of caution. As he slalomed between the lanes, cutting up anyone who was mad enough to get in his way, even the locals were giving him the finger. Something – or someone – was getting to him big-time.

We both slowed for the
péage
at the end of the dual carriageway south of the airport. The Range Rover zipped through an orange-lit Liber-T channel, for wagons with a remote-control beeper and owners who preferred to pay by bank transfer.

I followed him through. The Polo didn’t have a beeper but, fuck it, the fine letter would arrive on one of Frank’s desks at some point, and he wouldn’t care. Neither did I.

Mr Lover Man didn’t do one of his last-minute jinks towards Lyon, so I spent the next few K wondering what I’d do if he was aiming for the next flight out of here from the Flybe departure lounge.

As the fork in the airport slip-road approached, I still didn’t have an answer. He stayed with the main and kept on going up the east shore of what the signage told me was the Lac du Bourget. Apart from anything else, it pretty much confirmed that we were close to the end of this particular journey. Mr Lover Man might have been behaving like even more of a psycho than I was right now, but it made absolutely no sense looping west at the top of the lake to get back on the road to Lyon. And if Annecy, to our north-west, was his target, he’d taken a majorly wrong turning way back.

Judging by the lighting display, Aix-les-Bains was a big old place, stretching from the water into the foothills of the Alps. The Range Rover took a right, through the centre of town. Its mixture of palatial hotels, grand government buildings and tree-lined boulevards reminded me of the millionaires’ playgrounds further south, on the Mediterranean coast. It even had a floodlit casino that looked like a pink and white harem.

Mr Lover Man slowed once or twice on the way through, so I had no difficulty keeping up. His final destination turned out to be a resort hotel right on the lake. He turned through the entrance, past a big glossy hoarding that told anyone who didn’t know already that Aix was a spa town; people had come here for the good of their health since Roman times.

The hotel looked like a less shiny version of MI6’s London HQ at Vauxhall Cross, with a marina behind it instead of the Thames. I could see an assortment of plunge pools and water-jets through the massive expanse of plate glass that ran left of the foyer, but I didn’t think that was why Mr Lover Man was here.

As I made to follow, a minibus pulled out in front of the wagon ahead of me, sideswiped two others on the way through and clipped one in the oncoming lane. I didn’t stop to provide a witness statement, but by the time I reached the car park, Mr Lover Man was only a couple of strides away from the lobby.

I exited the Polo and picked up pace to get into the building before he disappeared, but I had only moved a metre or so when there was a screech of brakes on the main. I had to dive for cover as a shiny black coupé took the corner at warp speed. It screamed past the ranks of parked wagons and came to a halt on the hotel forecourt. A Maserati, with Swiss plates. The driver clearly thought he owned the fucking place.

When he threw open the door and got out, I concentrated hard. Khaki shirt and combats. I’d only seen him from the back, but there was no mistaking Hesco when his blood was up.

Another guy emerged from the passenger seat. Hair so closely cropped his head shone in the lights that circled the entrance. Leather jacket. Or possibly suede. Standard Eastern European issue, but sharper. Not a bomber. With lapels. Black skinny jeans.

I paused long enough to extract my UZI and scribble the Maserati registration number in the Moleskine. Then I sprinted across the parking lot towards the lobby as they both went inside.

I saw the two of them being eaten up by one of the lift doors as I entered the busy reception area. The indicators just told me they were heading upwards, not the floor.

Shit. I didn’t know their names. I didn’t know if any of them were even staying here.

Which left me two options.

Stake out the cars.

Or get help from an insider.

Room service, ideally. Or a maid. They knew pretty much everything that went on behind closed doors. Who the big tippers were. Who would pay big-time for ‘extra pillows’ – hotel code for hookers.

That way I might be able to grip all three and get this shit over with. And if I got nothing I’d wait for one of them to go for a drive.

The kitchen entrance was the place to aim for. Which meant starting with the bar or restaurant. Flickering candles and mood lighting in the windows to the right of the foyer made me think I was on the right track. The clink of glasses, then the sight of a few punters taking an after-dinner drink around the back of the building confirmed it.

I kept scanning the area for Mr Lover Man. Just because the other two had taken the lift, it didn’t mean that he had. Several groups and five or six couples were sitting beneath infrared heaters slung from canvas parasols, enjoying the view of the yacht-filled marina and the moonlight shimmering on the surface of the lake. The hum of conversation and the occasional burst of laughter blended with some distant lift music and, close by, the rhythmic clicking of halyards against the forest of masts.

I skirted the tables, keeping to the shadows but giving the odd nod and smile to anyone who glanced in my direction, as you do when you’re all in the same boat. I was aiming for a set of steps leading to the level below. I didn’t want the first-class lounge, I needed the engine room.

The marina was lit from every available angle, but it was darker at the edge, beneath the patio I’d just come from. I rounded another corner and found what I was looking for: a couple of lads in waiter gear having a quick break by a doorway. Pots and pans clanked in the background, and some poor fucker was getting yelled at inside for overcooking the fillet or underdoing the seasoning. Whatever, it was the back entrance to the kitchen.

One of the lads pinched out the tip of his cigarette, tucked the bit he hadn’t smoked into his trouser pocket, and disappeared inside. The other stayed where he was, one thumb hooked in his not-very-fancy designer belt. He took a final drag, spun the stub into the water, and ruffled the tuft of beard on his chin.

I gave him a conspiratorial grin, fished the half-empty pack of Ukrainian Marlboros out of my pocket and offered him one. He nodded his very curly and youthful head, took one, then another for later, and leant forward to give us both a light. I hated the fucking things, but a drink or a smoke has always been the quickest way of making a complete stranger your new best friend.

‘
Français?
’

He chuckled. ‘
Non. Je suis d’Oman.
’

I chuckled too. ‘Muscat? I love Muscat.’ I’d been there with the Regiment, training the Sultan’s troops, but he didn’t need to know that.

‘Salalah.’

I shoved out my hand and gripped his. ‘Beautiful.’ I took a drag on my Marlboro and did my best not to cough my guts out. ‘Salalah. Beautiful. Even more beautiful than Muscat.’

I didn’t have all night to swap holiday memories, but I was prepared to waste five minutes finding out whether this guy could point me straight to Mr Lover Man’s door.

‘Really? You have been there?’

I nodded. ‘Visiting my brother. He worked for a bank. HSBC …’

I got the impression the word ‘bank’ had suddenly earned me his full attention. ‘He loved Oman too. Took me all over.’ I paused. ‘So what brings you here?’