The Last Witness

before.’

‘Right.’ Roman was still thinking about the tight time schedule and the flight. Particularly the flight: that could give them problems tracking and following. It took him a moment to detach to what was happening on tape. He smirked almost as slyly as when he first heard Chenouda had given her the green light. ‘Sounds like she’s a bit of a player herself.’ Some scam with the young girl and the British police, and she’d told Chenouda it was her daughter. But he didn’t have the mind space to throw it around much, his thoughts were quickly back with his own problems. Maybe Roubilliard would be able to help with this flight dilemma. In half of Roubilliard’s distribution territory in the northern reaches of Quebec, light aircraft were one of the main modes of transport.

Roman raised Roubilliard on the phone. He knew at least half a dozen guys with small planes. ‘But probably the best bet is a guy I know with a farm up near Chibougamau — mainly because right now he’s here in Montreal for a couple of days. Flew down yesterday.’

‘Is he someone you’d trust? Some heavy stuff could go down.’

‘Yeah. He’s run more than a few kilos for me in with the seed packets and farm supplies.’

‘Okay. Get back to you.’ Roman was on the phone almost constantly the next hour: Jean-Paul, Frank Massenat, and twice more to Roubilliard, who by then had in turn confirmed arrangements with their pilot for that night, Mel Desmarais.

Only ninety-four minutes from Chenouda’s call to the hotel and they’d worked out every last detail. Two and a half hours left until she was picked up at the hotel. Roman met up with Massenat forty minutes later and they grabbed some kebabs and falafels from a takeaway on St Laurent and sat eating them in a side street in Roman’s BMW, waiting. Funicelli had gone to hire a car for them to follow her — no familiar registrations in sight — and would join them again at 9.15 pm.

Roman made one last call just before Massenat arrived, to Gianni Cacchione. It was a call that he knew one day he’d have to make, but events had brought things forward. Once Georges was hit, the Genie was out of the bottle. He felt strangely empty, morose, after putting down the phone. He’d weighed this from every side so many times that he thought he’d worked the guilt through long ago. Jean-Paul had cast him aside, showed little thought for him while pursuing his foolhardy plans; he’d brought this on himself. Maybe it was just that with Jean-Paul gone, there would be no more challenge, nothing more to strive for; he’d miss the banter and confrontation, playing in the shadows which he did so well. From now on, he’d be in the spotlight.

‘You think everything’s going to go okay?’ Massenat asked.

‘Yeah, it’s not that.’ Heavy rain slanted against the windscreen, and Roman broke off from the repeated tapping of one finger against the steering wheel as he peered up at the night sky. ‘Just not the best night to be flying. So go easy on the falafel and the hot salsa, I ain’t brought a change of suit.’

‘Art. It’s Jean-Paul. I need a favour.’

Art Giacomelli in Chicago listened thoughtfully as Jean-Paul explained his dilemma. ‘Things got that bad between you, huh?’

‘Well — it’s just I don’t know whether I can trust him with this or not. There’s always been some bad feeling between him and Georges, and I’m afraid that in the heat of the moment he might do something rash. It’s important to me that this is done right.’ Jean-Paul could hear the slow draw and exhalation of a cigar or cigarette being smoked Giacomelli’s end.

Faint smacking of the lips as Giacomelli chewed it over a second longer. ‘I can help, Jean-Paul, no problem there. But it’s very short notice — three and a half hours. I’m not going to be able to send one of my own guys. The closest that could make it is a guy I know works out of Toronto — Dave Santagata — ‘Santa Dave’ as he’s known.’

‘Is he good? Can he handle something like this?’

‘Yeah, one of the best. I’ve used him a lot. Young, keen, but not hot-headed. Cool professional all the way — he ain’t earned the catch-phrase ‘Santa always delivers’ for nothing. Don’t worry, he’ll keep Roman in check.’

They made the arrangements. ‘Santa Dave’ would catch the next shuttle flight from Toronto and should arrive with half an hour to spare. He’d call Jean-Paul directly from the airport, by which time Jean-Paul said he’d have phoned Roman and told him he had one more along for the ride.

Jean-Paul looked up at Simone as he hung up. His mouth skewed slightly. ‘Is that okay? Do you feel better now about things?’

Simone ruffled her hair. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ She thought again of George’s panic that night in the restaurant about Roman, then the abduction; and now it was Roman being sent to get Georges out of the clutches of the RCMP. Perhaps someone else riding shotgun like this would make it okay, but still she felt uneasy. She shook her head. ‘Can’t we use someone else apart from Roman?’

‘Who, who?’ Jean-Paul held out both hands. ‘I can’t go myself. Even when the family was more involved with crime, I never get involved with such things — with security. Let alone now. And Massenat on his own without Roman’s direction would be useless. Like sending in a sheepdog without its owner.’

Simone didn’t answer. She cast her eyes back down, shaking her head again slightly. Jean-Paul could tell that she was distraught, anxious, but he didn’t know what else he could do. She looked better than in the panicky first hours after Georges’ disappearance, but not much. Her hair was tidier but still lank, her mascara smudged where she’d rubbed at her left eye, and her face was tight with tension.

He wished he could just reach out to her as he used to when she was a young girl, gently stroke her hair and say, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’ And she’d look up at him with big eyes and immediately trust, and that would be the end of it. But she was older now, time had moved on and past him without him hardly noticing — or had he just been too busy taking care of business — it seemed only yesterday she was a little girl. Still he might have been able to get away with reaching out to her, but these problems with Roman and Georges seemed to have put an extra barrier between them that was difficult to reach across.

He felt a sudden pang of fear again, a tight constriction in his chest, that he might lose her over this. In a way he had as much to lose as her if it all went wrong.

Before the call to Art Giacomelli, he’d laid out clearly how he saw everything. They both desperately needed Georges back to talk with him: Jean-Paul felt sure that Georges going into the WPP was purely as a result of the abduction. Jean-Paul wanted to reassure that he’d had nothing to do with that, and hopefully then go ahead with his original plans of getting Georges away to Cuba for a while. And Simone no doubt wanted to let Georges know her feelings, whether their relationship had any future — which Jean-Paul sensed Simone hadn’t even got clear yet in her own mind. One area he’d batted on Georges’ behalf: she felt stung at receiving no call, felt that it was a clear indication of how Georges felt — and he’d defended that it was probably more to do with the rigors of the programme. ‘They wouldn’t allow him to call — no matter the excuse.’

Jean-Paul shook his head in sympathy with her. ‘I don’t think Roman would dare play renegade on this one. He wouldn’t be able to face me if he did. He swears blind that he had nothing to do with the abduction, that it was down to Gianni Cacchione. But even if it was Roman, he was playing under the table where nobody would know and he could get away with blaming Cacchione. Now he’s out in the open with nobody else to blame: he wouldn’t dare take the risk. And with Giacomelli’s man looking over his shoulder, he won’t even get the chance.’

Simone looked up slowly. ‘I hope so. I hope you’re right.’

And for a moment with her eyes fixed on his, it was easy to believe she was a child again, blindly trusting. Things hadn’t really changed that much, Jean-Paul reflected: just with each passing year everything became more complex, the explanations longer in order to gain that same trust.

Elena looked down at the street-lamp light-bars playing across her lap as the squad car made its way through the city, and she recalled Uncle Christos in the taxi the day before she flew out. Streetlight and shadow playing alternately across his face as he’d told her only half the truth about her father. And she’d in turn told everyone else only half the truth. Now you see it, now you don’t.

Shadow games. And now Ryall with Lorena. Close your eyes… trust me. Elena closed her eyes and bit at her lip. She wished she could be as brave as Lorena. She’d left her at the British embassy over two hours ago, and the parting had been emotional, tearful.

At first Lorena had been in shock and very hesitant when Elena told her what had been revealed at Lowndes’ last session, then explained Crowley’s plan. She’d agreed with Lowndes and Crowley to spare Lorena from actually hearing the tape, she just told her that some things in the session pointed to her being right about Ryall molesting her. But very quickly their roles became a reversal of what Elena had expected, and it was Lorena