High-rise apartment blocks were interspersed with long low-rise buildings with boarded-up windows, graffiti tags, and communal gardens that had been left to turn to dust and weeds. The few businesses inside the perimeter functioned behind bars and security grilles. They were skewed heavily toward cut-price liquor stores and money shops that provided high-margin loans and wire-transfer services. There were a couple used goods stores that almost certainly sustained a steady trade in stolen merchandise taken from more residential parts of the city. Gangs of young men and women congregated outside brightly lit kebab and burger joints, smoking weed from pipes.
I didn’t blame the cab driver, a genial but nervous man in his early fifties, for wanting to drop us just inside the perimeter. He told us that lawlessness was rife in the side streets and alleyways that lay to our west.
I paid the man and Sci and I headed along the gloomy street toward Avenue de la Méditerranée, at the next major intersection a couple of blocks away.
The cab driver’s local knowledge was spot on, because within about half a block, the streetlights vanished and many of the lamp posts were snapped in two. There were a couple of burnt-out cars on bricks in the courtyard of the adjacent tower block, and the building was dilapidated, with many broken windows.
“You’re not worried they want to kill you?” Sci asked. He was grinning, but it was a forced smile designed to hide his nerves.
To be fair to the guy, he looked more at home here than me, with his biker boots, jeans, Metallica T-shirt and black leather biker jacket. I was in my blue suit and might have been mistaken for Sci’s parole officer.
“They could have killed me when they took Justine. Or at the hotel,” I replied. “They want to use me. If this was about money, we’d have had a ransom demand by now. They’re planning to force me into something.”
Sci nodded and we walked on.
I sensed we were being watched and caught sight of a group of five men standing outside the next apartment block. They eyed us closely, muttering and whispering.
“You feeling limber?” I asked. “We may need to get physical.”
Sci followed my eyeline and clocked the group.
“Whatever it takes, right?”
We walked on in silence, prepared for attack. We crossed two intersecting alleyways, venturing further into darkness and deprivation.
I dealt routinely with criminals, viewing them as somehow set apart from the rest of us, but part of me wondered how much influence places like this exerted on the course of a life. Would I be the man I am today if it hadn’t been for my early privilege? What would my life be like if I’d been raised on one of these mean streets?
I didn’t have any easy answers, but liked to remind myself every now and again that the kids and young people who caused so much crime and fear didn’t choose to be born into poverty.
We crossed the last intersecting alleyway and turned right onto Avenue de la Méditerranée. The address I’d been given was a little way north, the third house in a row of eight. The short terrace was flanked to either side by tower blocks. The row houses could not have felt any sunshine in the shadow of such giants. They exuded a stale, neglected atmosphere. As we came closer I saw mold and moss sprouting from the outer walls, which were covered in sprayed tags.
Sci watched me nervously as we walked through a yard filled with scrap metal and rusting appliances. I tensed, my senses alert, ready for anything.
The last thing I expected was for the front door of the house to open and for us to be greeted by a shirtless, muscular man in his early twenties. He wore a pair of shorts, had a thick mop of dark brown hair, a broad smile and hazy, unfocused eyes.
“Salut, mecs,” he said. “Oh, I forgot, you are English. That’s what they tell me.”
“American,” I corrected him.
“Of course. Yankee doodle. French fries, which you stole from the true land of liberty.” He laughed at his own joke. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
He leaned into the hallway and, when he stood straight, he held a package. A padded envelope no more than eighteen inches long and eight wide.
“This is for you,” he said. “The man in the suit, they told me.”
“How did they tell you?” Sci asked.
“Just now,” the shirtless man replied. “On the phone. They knew you were coming.”
“They’re watching,” I said, looking around.
“Do you know these people?” Sci asked.
The man shook his head. “They’re not stupid. A friend of a friend of a friend asked if I wanted to make Bitcoin in exchange for giving you a package.”
Sci and I shared a look of exasperation. Bitcoin was almost impossible to trace.
“Most people in this place would kill for less than one Bitcoin. Much less. So it was an easy decision. Now you have your parcel, take it.”
He thrust it at me and the moment I took it, he shut the door in our faces.
“You think he was on the level?” Sci asked. “You think he’s involved?”
I shook my head. “An operation like the one we’re facing isn’t planned somewhere like this. The people of Moulins are all about survival. Whatever we’re up against, it’s about a lot more than that.”
I tore open the package while Sci switched on his phone torch and shone it inside.
“What the heck is that?” he asked.
I didn’t say anything for a moment, my eyes fixed by what I was holding.
“It’s a gun,” I replied at last. “It’s a 3-D printed resin pistol and a dozen matching bullets. It’s designed to circumvent metal detection.”
I hesitated, finally understanding why they’d taken Justine.
“They want me to kill someone.”
Chapter 20
Sci and I sat in stunned silence for the first part of the taxi ride back to Monaco. The package lay on the back seat between us, infusing the air with evil. My every breath was heavy and filled with sorrow for the choice that lay ahead of me.
“You can’t know that’s what they want,” Sci said beneath the racket from the cab’s radio, which played a lively pop tune completely out of keeping with our mood.
“Three-D printed, small caliber,” I replied, taking care to talk quietly. “Justine as leverage. They will tell me it’s a trade, but they will probably kill her after I’ve done whatever they ask.”
Sci nodded slowly, conceding the truth of my words. What else could it be?
“I’ll tell you something else,” I said. “That guy knew we were coming because someone phoned him, which has to mean they were watching. And if they were, they might have been taking pictures.”
“Setting you up?” Sci suggested.
“Yeah. The thought crossed my mind,” I said. “Why not deliver the package to the hotel like they did with the phone? Why make me come out here? Could it be to get surveillance photos of me collecting an untraceable weapon from a cutout? Frame me as an assassin?”
Sci pondered what I’d said, but my own thoughts were disturbed by my phone, which displayed an unfamiliar number.
“Hello?” I said.
“Jack Morgan,” Eli Carver responded. “You didn’t make good.”
My mind was so attuned to the kidnapping, I was momentarily confused and thought he was referring to the package and that he might somehow be involved.