Petit sighed. “Yes, they are both under arrest here in Paris.”
“Where are they now?” Ruiz asked. “We must arrange transportation of them back to Spain at once.”
“Naturally,” Petit said. “They are at my station for now but they will be moved to various prisons across the city soon. As soon as the formal process of extradition has been completed, we will arrange transportation. This is now over to our superiors.”
“Of course” Ruiz said.
When the call ended the Spanish CNI officer slumped in his seat for a few moments and thanked heaven for small mercies, and then he picked up the phone. His superiors would need to know about this at once.
In keeping with the rest of the station, the cell bock was small and mostly empty. Harry counted half a dozen cells on either side of a small room, and only two of them occupied — the two nearest the door. The cells were three walls of bricks and plaster with the front wall made only of bars. It was a low-grade, small-time jail in a Parisian police station and Petit wasn’t bluffing when he’d told them they would be farmed out to bigger prisons while the extradition process was underway.
As Barbier walked them into the cell block, Harry saw the cell on the right was occupied by a man in a torn raincoat. He was sleeping with a battered fedora over his face and there were holes in his shoes.
Barbier put Lucia in the cell beside the man, and Harry in the cell opposite her. Beside it in the next cell he caught a glimpse of a young woman sitting on the bed. She was slim, with high cheekbones, straight, dark-brown hair and sharp, green eyes. As he looked at her she looked right back with a visible degree of suspicion.
“Welcome,” she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “My house is your house.”
“Thanks,” Harry said. “And what a lovely home it is.”
The burly sergeant locked him in the cell and casually sauntered back to the door which he slammed shut behind him.
“Name’s Zoey Conway,” the woman said.
“You sound American,” said Harry.
She nodded once. “Vegas.”
“From Vegas, eh?” he said.
“No one’s ever from Vegas, Jimbo — they only ever go to Vegas. I’m a New Yorker originally.”
His eyes darted down to the trident tattoo on her shoulder, and she caught the glance. “Sagittarius. The stars know everything about our destiny, don’t you think?”
“Can’t say I’ve ever thought about it… What are you in here for?” he asked. “And it’s Harry, not Jimbo.”
In the cell opposite, Lucia stood close to the bars as she listened to the conversation between her former lover and the American.
“They say I was trying to break into an apartment on the Avenue Bosquet.”
“Don’t tell me — you’re innocent?”
She shook head. “Hell no, I’m as guilty as the devil himself. I was trying to get to a safe owned by some rich guy with a lot of gold and jewels. I’m what the nineteen-fifties used to lovingly call a cat burglar.”
“But not a very good one or you wouldn’t be in here.”
“As it happens, I’m the best,” she said with a theatrical bow. “Always lucky is my mantra.”
“And are you?”
“Sure, but no one’s perfect. Perfection is impossible.”
“You think so?”
She nodded, stared at the bars and sighed. “The way I see it is, if you want one hundred percent of anything you’re just going to spend your whole damn life disappointed. Better to go for eighty, if you ask me, Chief.”
“Eighty?”
“Uh-huh. The other twenty percent is for someone else, you know? That twenty percent is part of someone else’s eighty.”
“But you’re still in here.”
Another sigh. “Apparently my lookout isn’t as sharp as I thought he was. Boy, am I gonna kick his ass when I get out of here.” She took a step back and gave Harry and Lucia another look. “So what about you two — why are you here?”
“Quadruple Murder,” Harry said bluntly.
Zoey took a further step back from the bars and receded into the shadows of her cell. “Woah, leave me out of that shit.”
“We didn’t kill anyone!” Lucia said from further down the cell block.
“It’s true,” Harry said, unsure why he was justifying himself to a total stranger. “We’re being framed and we’re trying to find out what’s going on.”
The door opened and two policemen walked in either side of a subdued-looking and handcuffed Andrej Liška. They placed him in the cell beside Lucia and left the room.
“Andrej — what happened?”
“Petit doesn’t believe me. He says I am a suspect because I knew Pablo and I was liaising with his killers.”
“We’re not his killers!” Lucia said.
“I know that!” snapped the Czech. “But they don’t, and they’re serious about deporting us all to Madrid. They say we are involved in some kind of international conspiracy. It’s total fiction!”
“We’re being framed, Andrej,” Harry said with a sigh. “Of course it’s fiction.”
“This is like a nightmare,” Andrej said.
“The thing about nightmares,” Harry said as he pulled something from the lining of his silk tie, “is that sooner or later you’re going to wake up.” He began fiddling with the tiny object, and after biting it gently with his teeth he put it back into his tie.
“What’s that?” Lucia said with a nod from the opposite cell.
“Just thinking ahead of time,” he said. “Always thinking ahead of time. It’s an army thing.”
A few long hours passed as they waited for the machinery of government to decide their fate, and then finally Petit strolled in, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other. “So — I have some great news. Earlier I spoke with the authorities in Madrid and told them of your arrest. They are very happy with my work. The trucks are coming to take you to prison where you will stay until the details of your extradition to Spain are organized. You’re going to three different locations, so say your goodbyes.”
“How very kind of you.”
Petit offered a sarcastic smile. “Tell me — why did you kill those people in Madrid, and what does it have to do with Paris?”
“We never killed anyone!” Lucia said from behind Petit.
Without turning to face her, the Frenchman addressed Harry one more time. “If you tell me, perhaps I can make this process easier for you.”
“Lucia’s right,” Harry said. “We’re innocent.”
“Oui, je vois…”
Barbier leaned his head inside the door at the far end. “Le transport est ici.”
“Eh, bien,” Petit said. “Then it is time for your transfer to the prisons.”
“Good luck!” Zoey said.
“Save the luck for yourself,” Petit said. “You’re going too.”
TWENTY-TWO
As they walked towards the trucks, Petit went ahead of them, lit his cigarette with a sigh of relief, and began to talk with the driver. They were standing in what looked like a loading bay, but was in fact a covered area used specifically to move prisoners into vans in order to transfer them to other facilities.
Harry scanned the area for any escape routes, but it had been designed with one thing in mind, and that was keeping prisoners in custody until they were someone else’s responsibility. Up ahead, Petit’s conversation with the driver was getting a little heated.
Zoey moved in closer to him and lowered her voice. “Do you speak French?”
“A little,” he said. “I think they’re having a disagreement.”
“Well, duh,” Zoey said. “An Alapaha Blue Blood Bulldog could work that out just by sniffing the air.”