By morning, they were in a large shed awaiting the next stage of their journey. Outside there were vineyards, said one man, and open countryside. He had been excited yet fearful, and when Slimane told him to shut up, he had sat down quickly, afraid.
That night they climbed onto another truck, this one filled with boxes and the smell of plastic. One of the men had told her in a whisper that the boxes were full of car parts.
That night, Slimane had tried to rape her.
CHAPTER SIXTY
She smelt him first. He’d been in the far corner of the truck, having secured himself some extra space away from the others. Nobody had tried to encroach on it, fearful of the knife and unable to see in the dark. He had remained apart, a brooding presence.
Then he began moving towards her.
Massi was fast asleep, exhausted by the journey and the lack of good food. But at least it prevented him from seeing what happened next. She became aware of movement and heard the man’s coarse breathing as he slid closer.
Nobody tried to stop him.
A rough hand closed around her ankle, the grip like a clamp. Then it slid upwards, forcing its way beneath her coat and dress, like a large, obscene spider. She struggled, kicking out, felt a spray of spit touch her cheek as he moved closer, his sour breath engulfing her along with the body smell of one who had not showered or bathed in days.
She fought back in silent, furious desperation, trying to push him off, to stop the hands moving over her, to stop the hot face pushing down towards hers.
In the background, one of the men protested.
Slimane turned, swore that he’d cut the throat of the boy if anyone tried to stop him. The protest ceased.
‘ Why are you doing this?’ she hissed, aware of Massi’s sleeping body nearby. Whatever was about to follow, he must not witness it, should not hear it; there could not possibly be worse things for a child to know of his mother than that she had been defiled.
‘I know who you are, whore!’ Slimane whispered, grunting as he tried to move above her. ‘You belong to Farek. Farek the gangster.’ He chuckled knowingly, the sound full of menace and meaning, and devoid of humanity. ‘And we all know what kind of women gangsters bed down with, eh? Whores and bitches.’ He pushed against her, but she managed to get one leg between them, a slim barrier but a strong one. For now. ‘So which one are you, huh? Madame Farek.’ He made the title sound at once insulting and obscene, and she knew with utter certainty that she was not going to survive this night. If Slimane didn’t kill her, Farek eventually would.
Then she felt a sharp pain in her arm, and the warm trickle of blood on her skin.
She knew instinctively what it was: Slimane’s knife. The point was sticking through the material of his jacket and had pricked her arm.
She stopped struggling, trying desperately to think. How to stop him? She had to distract him, to focus his mind on one thing and one thing only. She would have only one chance. After that… she couldn’t even contemplate what came after that.
He grunted in surprise as her body went limp and soft, then chuckled, sensing compliance. He reached down to open his clothing, grunting like a pig at a trough. As he did so, Nicole slipped a hand inside his jacket, searching the rough fabric, feeling for the weight of the knife’s handle, desperately hoping that Massi would continue sleeping.
Then another hand touched her, this time from one side, out of the darkness. She cried out in horror at the idea that another man was joining in. But this wasn’t like Slimane’s repulsive groping, wasn’t invasive and probing and threatening; this hand patted her arm, then moved off her. She felt Slimane give a start as he also became aware of the other man, and a threatening snarl burst from his lips, his head turning away from her.
Then the other hand touched her arm, and the knife was pressed into her hand.
Closing her eyes against the horror, Nicole took the weapon. She clasped her hand around the wooden handle, still warm from Slimane’s heat. He muttered and stopped pushing, sensing something wrong.
She had to do it. To make him stop!
She placed the point against Slimane’s body where it hovered above her, and pushed as hard as she could. One thrust, going deep. That was all it took. She felt him go stiff, felt the breath burst from his mouth and a questioning noise, like the cry of a small child.
Then he fell to one side.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Rocco got Claude to take him back to the station, leaving Jean-Michel to move on immediately to another location. As he walked into the main office he found Desmoulins waiting with a large mug of coffee. He was surprised to find it was nearly noon.
‘Get this down you. Don’t stand too close to Massin, though — I put something in it to help you dry out after your swim.’ He shrugged at Rocco’s look. ‘I spoke to Rizzotti; he told me what happened. You were one lucky bastard, you know that? Next time I buy a loto ticket, give it a kiss for me, would you?’
Rocco took the mug and swallowed a mouthful of coffee laced with cognac. After what he’d just heard from Nicole, he could have done with the cognac alone, but it still tasted like nectar. ‘Right, what’s come in so far? Any sign of Farek or Tourrain?’
‘Tourrain’s downstairs, wishing he’d taken up another line of employment and talking like an old lady. Says he’ll do anything to get a lesser charge. I think he’s terrified of finding himself in the general prison population and wants isolation.’
‘No chance,’ said Rocco. ‘A security guard called Metz did the killing but Tourrain was right there, watching it happen. He’ll have to take his chances.’
‘Serves him right, then, the weasel. We can do without his sort. He must have made a fortune out of the supply line of illegals, and being paid to keep the factories fed with information.’
‘What’s the news on the Gondrand killings?’
‘Well, we spoke to another lawyer who did some recent work for Michel. He reckons Michel and Tourrain were full partners, both in the motor business and one or two other ventures. Because of Tourrain’s position in the police force, he kept a low profile and took a smaller percentage, but that was a small cut of quite a lot of cash coming from the illegals, the leases on the factories and the car sales. I think if we keep looking, we’ll find a whole lot more on both the Gondrands and Tourrain going back quite a while.’
‘Do it. And while you’re at it, check any land deals he might have made while he was working for the planning department. He’d have had advance notice of parcels coming up for sale or development, and I’m pretty sure those factory plots were part of it.’
‘Will do.’
‘What about Lambert?’
‘Gone. Wiegheim was in here having a rant earlier — mostly about you. When he went back to his office, Lambert had cleared out his things and disappeared. Ecoboras is now closed, probably for good. Massin reckons they were probably underpaying the illegal workforce while recording inflated costs and a phantom local staff, which is against the terms of government contracts. Wiegheim claims he knew nothing about it but I think Lambert had him scared to death. They must have been raking it in. Their head office is about to get a nasty visit from the government auditors.’ He looked Rocco in the eye without expression. ‘And there’s one other thing. The security guard you mentioned: Metz.’
‘What about him?’
‘He was found in the canal a couple of hours ago. They just identified his body.’
‘I’ll try to hide my disappointment.’ Rocco couldn’t summon any guilt or sympathy for the dead man; Metz had tried to kill him. Fortunately, he hadn’t been up to the job. ‘Anything else?’
‘Maybe. One of the illegals brought in last night claims he was on the truck with the dead man you fished out of the canal near Poissons. He’s offering to tell what he knows if we go easy on his legal status.’