‘You can’t possibly prove any of this.’
‘Yes, I can.’
‘How?’
‘I won’t say another word until you agree to help me.’
‘Help you do what?’
‘We’ve got to end this.’
‘
‘Please. Like I said, I didn’t know who else to turn to.’
Darcey was about to reply, but the words died on her lips as a movement in the rear-view mirror caught her eye. She twisted round in her seat, and Buitoni did the same.
The Laguna had turned away from Place de la Concorde and was heading parallel with the River Seine down the Voie Georges Pompidou. The Louvre was passing by to their left, but Darcey was more interested in the two high-performance sports motorcycles that were weaving through the traffic after them. Their riders were hunkered down low over the bars, passengers perched behind and above them. All four were wearing black leathers, their faces hidden behind opaque visors.
In seconds, the bikes had caught up with the Laguna, peeling apart and drawing up level on either side of the car. The growl of their pipes was throaty and loud. The machine on Darcey’s side was so close that she could clearly make out the Kawasaki logo on its tank.
‘It’s them!’ Lister cried out.
As if in slow motion, Darcey saw the Kawasaki’s pillion passenger reach a gloved hand up to his chest. He tugged at the zipper on his leather jacket. His hand disappeared inside and came out holding a tiny black micro-Uzi submachine pistol on a sling.
Buitoni saw it too and was reaching for his pistol. But Darcey acted faster. Knocking Lister’s hands out of the way, she grabbed the steering wheel and yanked it a hard quarter-turn clockwise. With a screech of tyres, the Laguna swerved to the right and slammed into the bike. The impact sent the car gyrating wildly all over the road. The Kawasaki went down and hit the tarmac with a shower of sparks, then flipped and slammed down on top of the tumbling rider. The pillion passenger somersaulted into a parked Volkswagen with a bone-shattering crunch that Darcey heard even over the roar of the car’s engine.
‘Please,’ Lister moaned. ‘Don’t let them kill me.’
‘Shut up and drive.’ Darcey aimed her Beretta at the weaving second bike. Before she could get off a shot, the machine’s passenger aimed an identical micro-Uzi over the rider’s shoulder and opened fire. Bullets thunked through the body-work, shattering the windows on Lister’s side. The dashboard and inside of the windscreen misted red.
Lister let out a high-pitched cry. He fell forward against the steering wheel. His foot pressed down on the gas.
They were right down by the river now, just metres from the water’s edge. The car began to veer towards it. Buitoni yelled something in Italian that Darcey didn’t try to catch as she tossed down her pistol and wrestled with the steering wheel, fighting the weight of Lister’s body to keep the car on the road and trying desperately to kick his foot away from the accelerator.
They flashed under a bridge, almost colliding with a slow-moving three-wheel delivery vehicle. The motorcycle came at them again, its pillion passenger letting off another stream of bullets from his Uzi. Buitoni cracked off three shots, but they all went wide as the Laguna veered wildly from side to side.
The road curved away to the left, and suddenly there were trees flashing by between them and the river’s edge. Lister’s body slumped hard to the right as Darcey took the corner, pushing her back and tearing the wheel out of her hand. The Laguna was doing a hundred kilometres an hour as it hit a grassy verge, went into a violent skid, crashed into the trees, flipped and rolled. It came to a rest on its caved-in roof and lay still by the water’s edge.
Darcey opened her eyes. She was suspended by her seatbelt in the upside-down car and covered in blood. The shock of it numbed her for an instant, until she realised the blood was all Lister’s. He was dangling from the driver’s seat, blood bubbling from his lips as he gasped and tried to speak. The inside of the car was littered with spilled debris. Fragments of glass lay everywhere. Lister’s phone charger dangled from its wire, and loose change had showered from his pocket.
‘Paolo,’ Darcey coughed, trying to twist round towards the back seat to face Buitoni. ‘You OK?’ She released the clasp of her seatbelt, fell onto the padding of the car’s ceiling, and crawled across to him. ‘Paolo!’
Buitoni didn’t reply.
He couldn’t. His neck had been broken in the crash. Through the shattered car window, Darcey saw the motorcycle pull over at the side of the road just thirty metres away. The pillion stepped off first, still holding the Uzi. Then the rider dismounted, let the bike down onto its side-stand and they both calmly started walking across the road towards the river’s edge.
Darcey remembered her Beretta. After a few frantic seconds of searching, she realised with an icy jolt that it must have fallen out of the smashed window as the car rolled. She tried to get to get to Buitoni’s, but it was trapped under the weight of his body and she couldn’t budge him.
‘We need to get out of here,’ she said to Lister. ‘
Lister tumbled from the tangle of his seatbelt and sprawled beside her on the upturned ceiling of the car. He tried to speak, but all that came out of his mouth was a gout of blood. She could see it was too late for him. He’d be dead in minutes, and that knowledge was in his eyes. He reached out with a trembling hand. Extended his bloody index finger.
Darcey realised he was pointing at one of the spilled coins, a mixture of UK currency and euros, that littered the upside-down ceiling of the car. His fingertip prodded weakly at a pound coin. He was fading fast. As his hand fell away, she stared at the bloody fingerprint he’d left on the Queen’s head on the back of the coin. Lister raised his hand again, holding up his index finger. His eyes implored her.
Lister splayed out his hand, thumb and fingers together. Then folded the little finger and ring finger in.
He was making a number.
One. Five. Three.
‘What’s one-five-three?’ she asked him urgently. She glanced back at the bloodied pound coin. Did he mean money? A hundred and fifty-three what? Million? ‘I don’t understand!’
The motorcyclists were now just twenty metres away. The rider had opened his jacket to reveal a shoulder holster. As he walked, he nonchalantly drew a pistol. The pillion passenger held his Uzi at the hip and let off a rasping blast of gunfire. Darcey ducked as bullets punched through the bodywork and ricocheted around the inside of the car.
When she looked up again, Lister was dead. A round had blown out his temple.
She scrambled out of the car. Gunfire ripped up the ground around her as she sprinted away through the trees at the river’s edge.
There was only one place to go.
She ran straight for the concrete bank and dived into the waters of the Seine. In mid-air, she filled her lungs and prepared herself for the imminent shock of the cold water. She gasped as her body knifed into the surface, then began swimming ferociously, driving deep underwater with strong strokes. The water roared in her ears. Bullets stabbed past her, leaving little spiralling trails. She swam harder, thrashing through the water until her heart was pounding and her lungs felt ready to burst.
When Darcey surfaced with a gasp, she was a hundred metres downriver, hidden by the arched support of a bridge. She huddled against the side and watched as the two motor-cyclists returned to the crashed Laguna. One of them tossed a small black object in through its broken window.
Almost instantly, flames engulfed the car. The motor-cyclists turned and started running back towards the bike. A police siren began to wail in the distance. Then a second.
As the motorcycle roared off, the burning Laguna blew apart.
