A twenty-euro bill on the pillow spoke to a decent character, but also suggested Kendrick Stamp had checked out.
I picked up the housephone and made a call.
“Reception,” a man said.
“This is Marc from housekeeping,” I replied. “I just want to confirm Mr. Stamp from room four-oh-eight checked out early.”
There was a brief pause.
“Yes. He settled his bill a couple of hours ago. It’s marked on the turndown rota.”
“I see it now. Thank you.” I hung up and turned to Justine. “He’s skipped. They must have moved him after the shooting.”
Chapter 72
I was seething by the time we returned to the apartment, and I suspected Justine shared my mood, because she said nothing on the journey back. Our friends were lying somewhere between life and death while the men who’d put them there roamed free, able to inflict further evil on the world.
The apartment seemed lifeless without Mo-bot and Sci. Everywhere I looked I saw reminders of them. Sci’s spare boots, Mo-bot’s reading glasses. I felt angry at the men who’d hurt them, but also furious at myself for having failed to protect them.
“You want something to eat?” Justine asked.
I shook my head. “I’m not hungry.”
I sat down at Mo-bot’s workstation and used the emergency password she’d given me in case anything ever happened to her. The screens came to life and I saw she’d received a message from Weaver. He’d provided a full breakdown of who was behind the Chalmont Casino, and his network analysis concluded the business wasn’t entirely legitimate.
I printed off two copies of the analysis and handed one to Justine. She sat next to me as we went through the document. We also reviewed the information Mo-bot and Sci had pulled on Kendrick Stamp.
We spent hours poring over everything, occasionally rising to make each other coffee and grab chips and snacks as the rage-fueled adrenalin wore off and was replaced by hunger.
“Listen to this,” Justine said, as I returned with a fresh cup of steaming java. “Kendrick Stamp received a Bureau commendation for international cooperation. Intelligence he provided was used by French police to bust a drugs gang. The bust resulted in multiple arrests.”
“Where was this?” I asked. “You don’t think it was the Marseilles bust involving Roman?”
I sat down at Mo-bot’s machine and messaged Weaver to ask if he could provide details of the investigation that had led to Kendrick’s commendation.
“That would give the Dark Fates a personal grudge against him,” Justine remarked. “Like they have against us.”
I nodded and continued reviewing the Chalmont network analysis while I waited for a reply from Weaver. As I looked at the document, I realized I’d missed something that had been staring me in the face since the intelligence analyst had emailed across the information.
“There’s a small shareholder in Chalmont called Entreprises du Soleil,” I said, showing Justine the corporate records.
“So?” she asked.
“Look at the address for Entreprises du Soleil,” I suggested.
I used Mo-bot’s computer to search the address and it displayed a mountainside in southern France.
The Utelle Valley.
The pin dropped on the high farmhouse, the one where Justine had been held hostage.
She looked at me in disbelief.
“So, we’ve got proof Raymond Chalmont is tied to these people.”
An alert sounded, notifying us of a new message from Weaver.
“Easy question,” he wrote. “Kendrick Stamp was on a joint DEA — FBI taskforce that picked up intelligence of a major heroin deal going down in Marseilles. He advised the Marseilles Police who arrested a gangland kingpin called Baba Saidi. Stamp received a commendation for his work. It was his last big investigation before he was signed off sick.”
“We know the Dark Fates have connections in the French police,” I said to Justine. “Which means Roman could probably have identified the source of the intelligence that led to his arrest and the disruption of the deal, giving him a personal motive for revenge.”
“Putting Stamp in the firing line,” Justine remarked.
I nodded. “You got the energy for a drive?” I asked. “I want to check something out.”
Chapter 73
We didn’t speak as I followed the road up the Utelle Valley. The Ford Kuga’s engine strained against the steep inclines and its tires churned up gravel from the surface. The clatter of loose stones against the chassis and the growl of the engine were the only sounds as we climbed higher up the mountainside.
The headlamps sliced a wedge of light into the nothingness of night. I stuck to the center of the road, avoiding the sheer drops and hairpin turns, the deep ravines spanned by narrow bridges.
I remembered how close we’d come to death on this mountain, and how narrowly we’d escaped the bullets sent our way by the men who’d made Sci and Mo-bot targets. Seeing them in hospital had shaken me and reminded me just how vulnerable we all were. Skill and luck had been my allies then, but what would happen if they deserted me?
“What if there’s someone there now?” Justine asked, bringing me out of my maudlin self-reflection.
“Then we’ll turn back,” I replied.
Chevalier had told us the place was deserted by the time the police had arrived.
“I won’t let anything happen to us,” I assured Justine.
She smiled at me. “I don’t need you to protect me, Jack. You know that. I just wanted us to have a plan.”
“I...” I hesitated. I wasn’t sure what she was getting at.
“You don’t have to carry the responsibility for saving me,” she explained. “I’m my own person. I can assess risk for myself and if I make a mistake, it’s on me to fix it.”
“Is this a rage against the patriarchy?” I asked. “Because I’m not your white knight. I don’t view it as me saving you. I see it as us saving each other. We look out for each other because we both care. Equality.”
She looked a little contrite. “I guess. I just wanted to be clear, I don’t want you carrying me as well as everything and everyone else.”
“If you’re carrying me and I’m carrying you, no one’s carrying a burden,” I said.
“Confucius?”
“Jack Morgan,” I replied with a smile.
I got what she was saying, but there was no way I was going to stop protecting her. It was ingrained in me to look after others, but I wasn’t going to press the issue. She looked after me too, so did Sci, and Mo-bot. I’d lost count of the number of times my life had been saved by others. It wasn’t an admission of weakness; it was a recognition of the hazards we faced in our line of work.
We were almost at the farm, so I pulled over at the next turnout and killed the engine.
“We go on foot from here.”
I’d changed into jeans, a T-shirt and a lightweight racer jacket, which I fastened against the cool wind blowing up the valley. Justine was in black trousers and a matching rollneck. We set out through the trees toward the farmhouse.
I stayed alert for any signs of patrols or sentries, but there was nothing except the unpredictable sounds of nature. An owl, something scurrying in the undergrowth, branches creaking, leaves rustling.
We moved quickly toward the cobblestone courtyard, and I saw Justine eye the building where she’d been held hostage. The door was open, but neither of us moved toward it. Instead, we headed for the main house, its roof partially burned by the incendiary drones Sci had rigged and dropped during Justine’s escape. There were no signs of life, no vehicles in the yard and no lights or indications of activity in the building. The front door stood open.
I went first, using a small torch to light our way. It pushed back the shadows to reveal a largely empty property.
There was no art or decoration of any kind. Just plain painted walls and functional furniture. The main living room was full of bunks, which were all unmade, and a couple mattresses had been tossed on the floor.
The kitchen contained a large farmhouse table surrounded by more than a dozen chairs, and I pictured Justine’s abductors in here together, eating, laughing and joking, or perhaps grimly plotting murder, while she was trapped in the small store outside. What pushed men like them to normalize such evil?
We continued through the house, moving upstairs to find more bunks and finally the master bedroom with one king-size bed. I guessed this was where Roman Verde slept, a perk of leadership.
The bed was unmade and the closets were bare, but when we checked the bathroom, we found evidence of a fire that was nothing to do with the burned roof because the ceiling above was still intact.
A small metal trash can stood in the center of the room, its sides blackened. I looked in the can and found the charred remains of papers. Most had burned to ash but a few might be recoverable.
Carefully, I gathered as many fragments as I could, and held them gently in a stack.
“I think this is it,” I said. “The cops must have taken everything else for analysis, or there wasn’t anything here when they were looking. I don’t think we’re going to find anything else.”
Justine nodded.
“We should go.”
“Happy to,” I replied.
She’d masked it well, but I could tell the return to the place where she’d been held prisoner had been hard on her.
“You’re safe,” I assured her, as we left the room.
“I know,” she said, but I didn’t feel the tension leave her until we were in the car, heading down the mountain.