Henri was annoyed, too, but for a different reason. He’d not long returned from Saint-Malo, where he’d spent the weekend putting out feelers and working on potential agents, posing as a smuggler looking to prevent a Portuguese gang from muscling in on his patch. He used the story of Benoît, the slaughtered forger, to gain sympathy. Not that the underworld of Saint-Malo cared what happened in Toulouse, per se, but the unnecessary slaughter of a native French crook by foreigners was an affront to anyone’s national pride. Henri didn’t want to use the T word, not yet, in case it brought the wrong kind of attention. But he made it clear that the men he was looking for were more than just regular criminal smugglers, and bad for business if they could be traced back here to Saint-Malo.
Eventually, two people came out of the woodwork and ventured into the bar where he made it known he could be found. It was a sailor’s bar, the type of hard-drinking establishment that had been dying out in France for decades, and was now an endangered species everywhere but places like this.
On Sunday he got his first bite when a local fence came to offer his services. Henri could tell immediately this man would screw over anyone for a payday, but in his experience that was a double-edged sword. Such a man wouldn’t hesitate to feed you intel, even if it meant dropping his own mother in it, but he was also prone to telling you what you wanted to hear, regardless of the truth. Nevertheless, Henri encouraged the fence, and dropped hints about the unusual nature of the package the Portuguese men would be looking to move. He’d hoped to return to Paris that evening, but one source wasn’t enough, especially one so potentially unreliable. So he stayed an extra day, gambling that a working day like Monday would help to spread the word further.
It did, and Henri was rewarded Monday afternoon when a tall, wide woman in a high-vis jacket lowered herself onto the bar stool next to his and introduced herself as ‘GL’. She was a dockside supervisor, and claimed to have ‘green routes’ into the UK via the Channel Islands. If GL was to be believed, not much departed Saint-Malo without her knowing about it. She was surprisingly forthright, and no less direct about what she expected to be paid for her services, although she did offer Henri a “Tunis discount” on account of their shared skin colour. He wasn’t about to correct her; thinking he was a fellow countryman could only increase the chances she might tell him something useful, despite it costing him an arm and a leg. Maybe just an arm, after the discount.
Henri had caught the next TGV back to Paris, hoping his weekday absence hadn’t ruffled too many feathers. Not for the first time he thought about the days before budget cuts, when he could have stationed a junior officer in Saint-Malo to focus on the task, rather than splitting his own time and attention. He was just old enough to remember those days, when he’d been a junior officer in Marseille. Nowadays they didn’t even have a permanent office in Marseille, or Toulouse, or anywhere else besides Paris. The Service maintained apartments in all the major cities, but they remained empty and unmanned, waiting for the occasions a visiting officer needed somewhere secure and pre-swept to stay.
His iPhone vibrated as the TGV pulled into Gare Montparnasse, and Emily had opened a conference call with Giles. She explained that Giles had lost a target in London (Henri could easily picture her satisfied expression at that part) and the man was now expected in Paris, arriving on the last Eurostar of the day. Giles forwarded a photograph of the target’s passport, the photo showing a thickset Croatian man, and explained they simply wanted Henri to follow the man from Gare du Nord and report where he went. Henri sighed inwardly, knowing it could mean an all-nighter, maybe even a trip back out of Paris. But it was easy enough.
Or it would have been, if the man was anywhere to be seen at Gare du Nord.
Henri swore under his breath. Monsieur Closet Racist had been one of the last passengers off the Eurostar, and from a distance he fit the target’s description. But it hadn’t been him, and Henri was confident he hadn’t missed anyone else. He watched the rest of the passengers leave the platform, then showed his ID to the guard and walked the length of the train, hoping Novak was dallying. But the target’s reserved seat was empty. Perhaps he’d expected them to be waiting in Paris, and so had disembarked at an earlier station. Or perhaps he’d got off at Calais and caught a night ferry straight back to England on a new passport. Either way, he wasn’t here.
The train guard nodded at the seat. “The cleaners haven’t been through yet. You could swab the table for DNA.”
Henri scowled in frustration. “You should lay off the Tatort,” he said. “We’d be lucky to get a fingerprint off that, let alone DNA. No, he’s given us the slip. And we have no idea where he’ll turn up next.”
43
“Morning, Ms Short. I completely missed you yesterday. Did you have a good weekend?” Montgomery closed the door behind him and lowered the blind without being asked.
Bridge looked up from her screen, smiled, and gestured for him to take a seat. “Yes, thank you, James. Oh, and thanks for recommending the Fortalbis vineyard, too.”
“You visited?”
“I did, and
