The Last Witness

Even if she could remember anything, it was too late. Too late. She would never be the same again. She wanted children, loved children. But what would she do? Lay there with teeth gritted, her whole body trembling until the boy had finished? And if she wanted more children, a proper marriage — night after night of the same? It was unthinkable, a living hell.

And now she’d let Lorena down too by not speaking out. She was suffering the same. Probably it would be too late for Lorena as well — she’d go the same way as her. All Lorena had left to cling to was the hope that one day the dreams would fade. Maybe she’d be luckier; for Mikaya they hadn’t, and she knew now with certainty that they never would.

Her vision blurred with tears, she looked up thoughtfully to the handle of the high latch window, wondering if it would hold her weight. She’d have to be quick. Her dorm friends had gone to the Student Union bar to give her time alone with the policemen, but they’d be back soon.

Patrick Mundy regularly had eight to nine hours a week to himself that were sacrosanct, off-limits to any contact from his department, no matter how urgent: his regular card-game, golf round, and going to watch the Senators play. But the last two months, he’d added another few weekly off-limit hours since he started dating Suzie Harrigan.

Twelve years his junior and class all the way. Long auburn hair and large hazel eyes with sweeping lashes that could melt Greenland. Audrey Hepburn and then some. Mundy was in love. But this would be the third time up to bat for him, he wanted to put in the time to make sure that she was the right one; he didn’t want to spend his early retirement in lawyers’ offices sorting out yet more alimony.

So when he was with her, his mobile and pager were switched off; she had his undivided attention. Not that it would have made much difference where they’d gone tonight: Clair de Lune. Popular with high-flyers and government ministers, mobiles and pagers were strictly off-limits. Otherwise the restaurant would have been a cacophony of endless bleeps and rings. What few were brought along and left switched on, bleeped and rung without anyone paying them attention behind the closed door of a back cloakroom.

As they left the restaurant, the air was brisk. Mundy wrapped Suzie’s coat around her. In his own coat pocket his bleeper light flashed, but he hadn’t yet looked at it nor had any intention of doing so. Mundy was strict with his time alone with her: nothing like being dragged away on emergencies every other date to give a taste of things to come and kill all hopes for a future relationship.

‘Where do you fancy tonight?’ he asked. ‘The Glue Pot or the Laurier?’ They usually went to one or the other after dinner: short night-cap at the Hotel Laurier piano lounge or a longer session listening to live blues.

She mulled it over for only a second. ‘Mmmm, The Glue Pot.’ She pecked him on the cheek.

Melanie Fuller was still on switchboard, so most of the calls to track down Mundy had fallen to her S-18 colleague, Brian Cole. He called Clair de Lune twenty-five minutes into his roster, fourteenth on his list.

‘Yes, he was here earlier. But I’m sorry — you’ve just missed him.’ An effete, faintly French accent that sounded faked.

‘When did he leave?’ Cole pressed.

‘About ten minutes ago.’

‘Do you know where he might have gone?’

‘I’m sorry. We make a habit of not chasing our clients from the restaurant to ask where they might be going.’ Mocking tone, the accent more exaggerated. The phone was put down abruptly.

Cole turned and passed the news to Melanie.

She sighed heavily and ran one hand through her hair. ‘Keep trying. Keep trying.’ She checked her watch. ‘It could take him fifteen or twenty minutes to get home, so it’d be worth another try there soon. If not, start working through bars and clubs.’

‘If Roman’s going to make a move, it’ll probably be tonight. Once all of this has gone down, he knows he’d have you to face. Do you want me to send someone over?’

‘No, it’s okay. I doubt there’d be time anyway.’

‘True. But take my advice, Jean-Paul. Either get some protection over there fast, or leave the house. Don’t just sit there like a sitting duck.’

Jean-Paul said ‘Okay’ to put Giacomelli’s mind at rest, but hanging up he couldn’t think of anyone he could call in fast — Roman always took care of that side of things — and the last thing he felt like doing was running scared from his own house. It would feel too much like defeat, like waving the white flag at Roman. Admittance that when it came to the crunch the old ways held sway, all of his new aspirations amounted to nothing.

But then he started to became uneasy, agitated. Was that the pool filtration system, some pigeons alighting from the roof, or something else? Raphael’s footsteps upstairs, or were they coming from another part of the house? He suddenly started to feel the isolation of the big house, feel vulnerable.

He went into his study and took out the SIG-Sauer 9mm from the top drawer. He was aware of his own breathing falling heavy, but kept his listening honed beyond it for out of place sounds. Some faint music now he could pick up drifting from Raphael’s room. Looking out across the dining room and through the windows, a light was on in his mother Lillian’s apartment at the end of the courtyard.

He closed his eyes and gripped the gun tight. His hands were shaking, his pulse racing hard. Some flight away from crime this was. A hitman probably moving in, and he hoped to brave it out when he hadn’t fired a gun in years. And he wasn’t alone in the house. A fine epitaph that would be to all his noble hopes and aspirations: Raphael walking in to see his father or his adversary in a pool of blood, the other with their gun freshly smoking. Maybe his father had been right all along: ‘As much as you might wish to escape the past, the past will never allow you that escape.’

Maybe that’s how it was meant to end, his punishment for being so naive, blindly foolish. Roman had probably been playing him all along, and now he’d won the game. With Roman already closing in, nothing he could do to save Georges. Probably Georges could have been trusted all along, and Georges had in turn looked up to and trusted him — and he’d repaid by turning his back. He might as well have fed Georges to Roman with his own hands. He’d lose Simone without question: she’d never forgive him. And if he tried now to stand this last bit of feeble ground, at the same time he turned his back on everything he’d aimed for. He lost either way. Game, set, match.

He snapped himself quickly out. The thought of Raphael and his mother being there when anything happened overrode all else. He raced up the stairs and rapped sharply on Raphael’s door, swinging it open. Loud wave of techno with a faint beep-beep backdrop.

‘Raphael! We’ve got to go — leave the house!’

‘What? I’ll just finish this game, and-’

‘Now, Raphael! This second!’

Raphael saw a look of panic on his father’s face he hadn’t seen before, then he noticed the gun. He swiftly turned off the game and the music, grabbed his coat and fell in step behind his father back down the corridor. By the time they hit the stairs, they were at a run.

‘We’ll just pick up your grandma, and head off.’

‘What’s happening?’

‘Long story. Long story.’ Jean-Paul said it almost in time with his laboured breathing. ‘We’ll grab a cappuccino somewhere and then I can explain.’

Lillian was slower, more reluctant to leave without explanation, and Jean-Paul had to blurt out that their lives could be in danger to finally light a fire under her. He gestured with his gun as if to say ‘why in hell do you think I’m carrying this.’ ‘We must leave this second!’

He grabbed keys to the Cadillac on the way out — more space, more protection than his new sports Jag — and seconds later they were swinging out of the driveway. Brief pause to open the electronic gates, and then Jean-Paul turned right on Boulevard Gouin, heading for the city.

Cacchione’s men, Lorenzo and Nunzio Petrilli — ‘Lorry’ and ‘High Noon’ — weren’t Cacchione’s first choice, but they were all he could get at short notice. They’d been competent enough on a couple of past jobs, and there were two of them. If one fucked up, hopefully the other would cover.

The Petrillis had arrived outside the Boulevard Gouin mansion just eight minutes ago, and were still checking out the perimeter railings and the house beyond to finalise their plan when the double gates opened and Jean-