Fear.
Something made him lift onto his toes so he could see over the counter into the safe room. A woman was lying on the floor, eyes bulging over a gag around her face, her legs wrapped in rope. Nice legs, too. He could just see a man’s shoulder next to her, and beyond that, another stocking-covered leg and a woman’s shoe.
‘Tasker!’ It was Jarvis, shouting a warning.
Tasker turned back to the man in front of him, saw him flicking back his suit jacket and reaching inside. Saw the butt of a revolver stuffed down his waistband.
‘It’s a set-up!’ he shouted. He pulled the trigger, realising in the instant that he did so that this was no police trap. The man in front of him, in spite of being armed, was too old for this kind of job in the name of the state. Too old and, up close, not smart or quick enough. The shot was deafening in the enclosed space, and caught the man in the centre of his chest, hurling him backwards across the floor. At the same moment Biggs began firing at the other two, who had dived for cover behind the counter, drawing weapons of their own.
The small room reverberated to the sounds of gunshots, and for a fleeting second, Tasker felt his blood stir at the noise, the smell of gunpowder and the pounding of conflict. Then survival kicked in and brought him back to reality. This was a dead end; they’d been fooled, suckered into colliding with someone else’s job. It was a total lash-up. He fired at the two men behind the counter, seeing one man’s hand dissolve under the hail of shot. There was a scream, then the other man stood up and blazed away like a maniac. A yelp came from alongside Tasker and Jarvis was flipped onto his back, his face a bloody mess. Dead.
‘Out!’ Tasker shouted at Biggs, and stooped to pick up Jarvis’s revolver. This was beyond going wrong; it couldn’t get any worse. If they stayed here they were dead meat. Running was their only option. He could already hear the first sounds of a siren… or was it his imagination? Surely the local cops couldn’t have got themselves together already.
He felt a shiver go through him, and the first tremors of panic in his legs.
Until that moment, George Tasker had always been lucky. He’d found himself in situations before where things had not run in his favour due to surprise, superior firepower or better tactics by the opposition. You couldn’t get it right every time. But he’d always coped and brazened it out; stood up and blasted his way through. But this was different; it was like some kind of horror film unfolding. In the space of two minutes or less, he was a man down and facing gunmen who were on home soil and mad enough to fight back like crazies. And the police sirens were real — and getting louder.
The last brought a disturbing realisation.
They had been sold out.
While Tasker and his men were finding themselves on the brink of disaster, Jack Fletcher was a very happy man. He was sitting alone in the cab of a small Renault truck identical to the previous one he’d driven, with no Tasker watching over him and no smart-Alec Calloway making snide remarks about his driving. And he was doing a job solo. It didn’t get much better than this.
He was humming as he followed on the heels of a white Peugeot as it negotiated a series of narrow, snow- dusted country lanes, working the pedals of the Renault with care to avoid the truck going into a terminal skid on the slippery surface. Weighed down by the addition of a railway sleeper across the front bumper, covered by a piece of tarpaulin to avoid raising suspicions, the steering was jittery but manageable. But Fletcher wasn’t bothered; he’d driven in far more challenging weather and in worse vehicles than this, and even though he was in a left-hooker, he was beginning to get a feel for the way the vehicle handled. All he had to do was follow the Frenchman in front of him, a sour-looking grump in his fifties who had nodded once on introduction, then gestured for Fletcher to stick to his tail before driving off.
Tasker and the others had stood and watched him go, and he’d waved cheerfully and called out, ‘Bump into you later, boys!’
He’d enjoyed knowing that they could have no idea of just how prophetic his words were going to be.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Moments after Tasker and Biggs had thrown themselves back in the DS, Calloway was revving the car and hurtling away from the bank, the engine screaming in protest. Tasker let him get on with it and reloaded the sawn- off, leaning out of the window to fire two parting shots at the front door of the bank to keep the third man’s head down. Then he sat back and swore repeatedly. He’d be glad to see the back of this shit town and shit country, and get back home to where he felt able to breathe.
‘What,’ said Calloway quietly, ‘the fuck happened back there?’ It was the first time Tasker had ever heard him swear. ‘And where’s the cash — and Jarvis?’
‘There ain’t no cash and Jarvis is dead. We were sold a pup.’ Tasker was breathing hard, the rush of adrenalin making his nerve ends jangle. He was trying to work out what had just happened, how such a simple job had gone belly up. ‘There wasn’t the money we were told about, and another mob was already there.’
‘Mob?’
‘Firm… crew… you know what I bloody mean. Frenchies.’
‘How?’
‘Because we were sent on a sucker job. Somebody’s going to pay dearly for this if it’s the last bloody thing I ever do!’ He dug in his pocket and took out two more cartridges, and sniffed at them as if they were a source of comfort.
Calloway seemed happy with that. ‘Fair enough. So, where are we headed — back to Calais?’
‘Not yet.’ Tasker had been toying with an idea for some time. It had taken root days ago, but had grown fast over the past few hours, fermenting in his mind and now tugging so urgently at his consciousness that he couldn’t let it go. ‘Soon, though.’
Rocco was the cause of all this. Had been from the very beginning, ever since he’d walked into that cell, revealing that he spoke English and even understood cockney slang, treating Tasker like a nobody, a gofer, and questioning Calloway first. That was right out of order.
He breathed deeply, his blood pressure rising the more he thought about it. Even dropping the suspicion of corruption on the big French cop hadn’t given Tasker the satisfaction he’d expected, not long-term. He knew his thinking was irrational, that he was on foreign soil and way out of his depth. But he didn’t care.
Because right now he had nothing to go back to. It was over. Ketch had seen to that. Ketch and his smooth- talking, number-crunching weasel, Brayne. They’d talked him and the others into a dead-end job — he didn’t need a degree in accountancy to know it, either. Not now. There were only so many ways the game could be played, and after years of using the distraction thing for their purposes, Tasker knew and recognised when he himself had become the distraction. It was the way things were. But he didn’t have to like it.
Before anything else, though, he had a score to settle over here. After that, well, he’d get back to the Smoke and make a couple of visits. He stroked the shortened barrels of the shotgun. He’d have to lose this one, but he’d soon get another just like it or better. No sweat.
Then they’d learn what it meant to have crossed George Tasker.
‘So where to?’
Tasker leant forward and picked up a road map of the area, found the place he wanted and stabbed it with a thick finger. It was back towards Amiens, but off to the east. ‘Here.’
Calloway glanced across, nodded and began looking for a turn to get them off the main road and double back. ‘Poissons-les-Marais? What’s there, then?’
‘Not what,’ said Tasker, rolling the two shotgun cartridges between his fingers. ‘More like who.’
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Rocco was staring through a veil of tangled, bare branches at the bridge, half a kilometre away, and
