Etcheverry’s eyes lit up, impressed at the idea of official recognition. He described how he had spent a very pleasant evening playing cards with ‘friends’, and on his way home saw a truck at the side of the road. He remembered the number and recited it carefully.
‘Amazing,’ Rocco complimented him, playing on his ego. He wrote down the number. ‘Is that what they call a photographic memory?’
‘Well, perhaps not that, exactly,’ Etcheverry smirked modestly. ‘I can’t recall vast passages of text like some, but it helped me get through veterinary college and allows me to play poker without losing my trousers.’ He sniggered at the idea. ‘Um… is there any kind of reward for information leading to an arrest?’
‘Maybe. Did you see anyone with or near the truck?’
‘A driver, you mean?’
‘Anyone. Inside or out. Taking a leak, checking the tyres.’
‘No. Sorry. To be honest, it was just a flash.’ He leant forward to explain, breathing a gust of peppermint over Rocco’s face. ‘I was in a hurry to get home to my little dog — an Italian greyhound. She gets a little anxious when I’m out, you see. Very highly strung, as a breed.’
Rocco crossed off the word ‘wife’, which he’d scribbled down as a question for later. Perhaps he’d lost her in a game of cards.
‘Go on.’
‘Well, I was lighting a cigarette at the time and… I was driving carefully, though.’ He looked suddenly less pleased with himself, as if he had said too much. ‘I’d only drunk modestly all evening.’
‘Of course. And?’
‘It was enough, though, for me to see the number. That was it. Oh, and it looked like a Berliet.’
Rocco lifted an eyebrow. ‘You know trucks?’
Etcheverry shrugged. ‘My father dealt in them.’ He sniffed and tapped nervously on the table. ‘You said there might be a reward.’
‘So I did. If it leads to an arrest.’ He allowed a few seconds to go by while he made random jottings on his pad. Etcheverry sat waiting, and the silence built in the room, save for the scratching of Rocco’s pen.
‘Did you win much?’ Rocco asked suddenly. ‘At the game?’
‘Actually, a nice pot-’ The retired vet stopped, blushing furiously. He’d said too much, lulled by Rocco’s tactics. He looked away, eyes flickering.
Rocco looked at him. ‘You’ve performed a valuable service, for which I thank you.’
Etcheverry sat up, face brightening. ‘Ah. Good. Glad to hear it.’
‘Now I’m going to perform one for you. Actually, two. I won’t pass your name to the tax authorities, nor am I going to report you to that department of the police which deals with gambling in public places. You were playing in a cafe the other night, I take it?’
‘Yes, but-’
‘Fair enough. You know it’s illegal to gamble in a public place unless sanctioned specifically by law?’
Etcheverry said nothing, his eyes rolling in shock. Greed had overtaken any natural caution he might have had. He nodded and stood up, then turned and left the room without a word. Rocco figured when he got outside and thought about it, he’d consider himself very lucky indeed.
Rocco handed his notes with the registration number to Desmoulins and asked him to put an immediate trace on the truck.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Nicole Glavin put down the telephone handset in the post office and sat back, feeling as though every fibre of her body was being slowly shredded. She had just heard the worst possible news — yet news she had known all along would one day surely come.
The clerk behind the counter signalled for her to vacate the booth for another customer. She stood up and went to pay for the call. It had not been cheap, calling her friend, Mina, but a necessity, and one she was half- wishing she hadn’t had to make. Now everything had changed.
Samir Farek was coming after her.
She made her way outside and back to the car, left under the cover of a tree on the edge of a small municipal park. A few children played nearby and a group of mothers watched them with eager eyes. She checked the street around her for new faces and familiar ones. New was OK. New was everywhere. But familiar, once something to be cherished with outstretched arms, was now to be feared. Familiar meant recognition and recognition meant a fate she didn’t care to contemplate.
‘Sorry, my sweet,’ she said softly, seeing the fearful look on the face in the back seat as she opened the car door. Her son, Massi, five years old with eyes that would surely one day tug at a lucky girl’s heartstrings. He smiled up at her, full of trust and love, and she thanked her stars that he looked nothing like his father. God at least had spared her that.
She closed the door and handed him a paper bag with some grapes and a banana. All she had to do now was decide her next course of action.
She sat back and let her thoughts drift. Rather than focus hard on a problem, she found it easier to let it make its own way, to tease out a solution in its own time.
She checked her wallet. She had built up sufficient funds to get them along the illegal pipeline through Marseilles — a hideously dangerous undertaking but her only way of getting out of the country and into France unseen — and to keep them on the road for a good while. She tried not to think about the other travellers along the way, young men from Tunisia, Morocco, Somalia and Libya. Most had observed her and Massi with curiosity, yet treated them with the region’s traditional respect shown to women and children. The journey had been appalling and dangerous, having to sit for hours cramped together in conditions she wouldn’t have applied to a dog. Massi, luckily, had seen it as a great adventure, and had remained remarkably upbeat and stoic, complaining very little.
She looked at a bangle on her wrist. Like her other jewellery and cash, which she had concealed in a body belt beneath her clothing during the journey, it was a commodity, if that became a necessity, to be sold for their continued survival. It would pain her to see it gone, but short-term pain was preferable to the long-term agony that would be inflicted on her if Farek ever caught up with them. Nearly all of the jewellery had been handed down from her grandmother, whose name had been Glavin, the one she was now using as an alias. It wasn’t the most secure one to use, because Farek would know it. But it would do for now; it felt familiar, comforting. And right now she needed all the comfort she could get.
She couldn’t believe it had come to this. Twelve years ago, her husband, Samir, had been a different man. Or had she been so simple, so naive, that she hadn’t seen — maybe hadn’t wanted to see — the truth of what he was already? Was it his subtle aura of danger that had turned her head? A chance, maybe, for her to find a more exciting life than any other on offer?
Whatever it was, he had changed gradually; had become first unthinking, then unkind, treating her more and more like a chattel and less like the lover of their early days. He began to stay out more and more, coming home reeking of cheap women and flaunting it in her face as if daring her to object. When she had done so, asking him where he’d been, the first time he had been merely angry, defensive. The second time he had gone into a violent rage, hurling abuse at her and slapping her. He had apologised later, but it was no longer the same between them. It was as if a hidden line had been crossed, separating them for ever. He had begun to bring his ‘associates’ home, banishing her to her room while they were there, occasionally snapping his fingers when he needed something and telling her to cover her face.
Then had come the deals, openly criminal in nature; hearing the threats made to those who stood up to him, enduring the screaming fits on the telephone against those who dared oppose him. Then came the death threats, as if he were taunting everyone, trying to find out how far he, Samir Farek, gangster, could go.
The answer was, very far indeed. And when the monstrous Bouhassa joined him, and the first bodies began to turn up, Nicole knew that she could stay no longer, no matter what. When she asked if she could travel to France with him next time he went on one of his business trips, a vague plan was forming in her mind. He refused point-
