According to the car’s satnav, I was about a mile north of the Gare du Nord train station in one of the less salubrious areas of the city. Pulling up in a back street, I parked in the shadow of a graffiti-strewn train viaduct and removed the satnav, but kept the keys in the ignition to make it more attractive for any passing thief, then got out and started walking south.
I used to love walking. It was my means of relaxation, a chance to clear the head or to mull through a case while breathing in fresh air and exploring the world. Walking represented freedom. It was why I’d missed it so much in prison. And it was why it felt so good walking now. It was dark, and it was a shitty area, and those few people who were about stared menacingly, but I didn’t care about any of that. I’d faced enough in my life to know not to be scared by street thugs, and because they couldn’t sense fear, they left me alone.
The last time I’d been in Paris was seven years ago, with a woman called Jo for a long weekend in May.
Paris in the spring. It fulfilled all the clichés. The sun was shining, the food was superb, Edith Piaf played in the jazz cafés on the Left Bank close to Notre-Dame, and I recall it being one of the best weekends of my life, although to be fair there haven’t been a huge number to choose from. Jo was the only other woman I’ve ever loved aside from Tina. We’d met after she’d come into our offices to demonstrate a new facial recognition software package, and I’d fallen for her pretty much on sight. We’d moved in together, along with her twin seven-year-old daughters Chloe and Louise, got engaged, then married. Everything had been great. We really were one big happy family and I’d genuinely thought we’d be together for ever.
In the end it had been two years, and it had finished abruptly when Jo found out that I’d taken the law into my own hands and broken into the home of a criminal whom I’d then beaten unconscious. It had been a stupid, insane thing to do, and once again my deep-seated anger at the perceived injustices of the world had got the better of me. The criminal in question, a violent thug called Kevin Wallcott, had definitely deserved what I’d done to him. He’d crippled a child for life while chasing someone else in his Range Rover during a road rage incident, and had somehow got off with a sentence of barely a year. He’d then carried on offending, even ramming another car in a similar road rage incident. The guy had needed to be taught a lesson. I’d done that.
But Jo hadn’t seen it that way. She’d told me she didn’t trust me round the children if I was capable of that degree of violence and had asked me to move out immediately. That was what had hurt the most. The fact that she thought I’d ever lay a finger on her daughters whom I’d doted on like they were my own.
And that had been that. The healthiest relationship of my life, my one chance of redemption and a life of peace, and I’d thrown it all away.
If I could go back in time, would I change things? Would I shake my head and curse Kevin Wallcott but then simply let it go, ignoring the fact that he hadn’t paid enough for his crimes?
Jesus, yes. I’d never have touched him. I’d have done anything to get my old life back.
But it was way too late for that now. Because now here I was, a wanted man. I’d almost been killed twice in the last four days, almost been captured the same number of times. I’d shot four men, one in cold blood, and involved other people in my escape, and potentially put them right in the firing line as well. Some men crack under the pressure of being constantly on their guard while being flung from one violent and dangerous situation to another, while others become harder and stronger. They get used to this lifestyle, and begin to act on instinct, and without fear. Soldiers fighting on front lines in wars are typical examples; they develop a fatalistic cloak of protection. For the first time, I was conscious that this was happening to me. I was exhausted. I was certain I was headed towards my doom. But I was no longer scared.
The Boulevard de Magenta, which runs south of the Gare du Nord towards the River Seine and the tourist district, is a street of cheap fast-food takeaways, dodgy-looking phone shops, and not a tourist in sight. Even at this late hour quite a few of the places were still open, and I stopped at one of the phone shops and bought a relatively cheap Huawei with a pre-loaded sim card from a man who was clearly only interested in my money, which suited me fine. I also stopped at a tabac shop where I was able to buy pepper spray and two knives, one spring-loaded, the other small with a three-inch blade to hang on a chain round my neck.
Now I needed somewhere to stay. Clearly I’d have preferred a hotel in a more upmarket area, but for those kinds of places you need credit cards, so on an adjoining street I found a suitably scabrous guesthouse, with peeling paintwork and the O missing on the illuminated sign. There were even a couple of shifty-looking kids hanging about outside smoking skunk so powerful-smelling that the next stop for them was probably the psychiatric ward. They watched me vaguely through the cloud of toxic smoke as if I was some strange apparition
