‘What’d he do, default on his taxes?’ the waiter asked with a grin.
‘Terrorist bomber,’ Ben said.
‘No shit.’ The waiter studied the pictures for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Can’t say they look familiar to me.’
‘Think I might show these to a couple of your other staff here?’
‘Sure, no problem. See Valérie over there? Go ask her.’
But Ben drew a blank with Valérie and the other three members of staff he quizzed. He downed a quick espresso at the bar, then walked back out into the sunshine and gave a sigh.
‘Fine,’ he murmured aloud. ‘Then we do this the hard way.’
The hard way was to go hoofing it door-to-door, and just keep trying until, with any luck, someone recognised either Carl or Drew from the photos. It was gruelling and time-consuming work, but Ben didn’t have a lot of choice. The only question was where to start. He glanced left, glanced right, and began making his way back down the busy street towards the apartment buildings near the crash site.
He walked briskly, deep in thought. He passed a boutique. Then a little charcuterie. Next door was a bakery, emanating the wonderful odour of fresh baguette still warm from the oven. A man stepped out of the bakery, dressed in Bermuda shorts and a white polo shirt. He was slim and clean-shaven, with dark glasses and a Panama hat. He had a shopping basket in one hand and a couple of baguettes wrapped in brown paper tucked under his arm. His son followed him out of the bakery, a pre-teenage boy who looked like any other Mediterranean kid: tanned, black hair.
They were Drew and Carl Hunter.
12
Ben barely paused in his stride, even though every nerve in his body was jangling like an alarm bell at the sight of them. Covering his reaction perfectly without a flicker of emotion showing on his face, he walked on a few steps and then paused and gazed in the bakery window, ostensibly to admire hungrily a rack of ornate chocolate-laced delicacies on display.
Drew and Carl passed within just a couple of feet of him and then went walking on up the street. Ben waited a few tantalising seconds, watching them from the corner of his eye as he allowed a little distance to come between himself and the pair, then moved away from the window and began to follow them.
They didn’t seem to be in a hurry, just ambling along at a pace that allowed Ben to merge into the slow-moving crowds about twenty yards behind. Watching them, they could have been any father and son on earth. Nothing whatsoever in Carl’s body language suggested any of the unease or distress Ben would have expected to see in a kidnap victim. What was going on?
But he didn’t have long to dwell over the matter. Because without warning, Carl turned, picked Ben out of the crowd of people and looked right at him.
Ben’s heart skipped a beat. Again, he managed to cover up his reaction, avoiding eye contact and pretending to be gazing at something across the street. For two seconds that felt like minutes, he could feel the boy’s eyes on him.
Finally, Carl turned away and kept walking alongside his father, who didn’t seem to have noticed anything.
It must be a fluke, Ben thought. Okay, so maybe he didn’t quite fit the Monaco image and looked a little rougher, a little less manicured, than the typical good citizen of the place. But surely he didn’t stand out that much. There was no way anyone, let alone a twelve-year-old kid totally untrained in the art of counter-surveillance, could jump to the conclusion or have any inkling that they were being trailed.
He went on following them. Now father and son were in conversation about something. Ben relaxed, certain that he hadn’t been spotted after all.
And then Carl turned again. This time, he whirled around very quickly, too suddenly for Ben to look away until it was too late.
Carl stared right at him. He seemed to know. But how? Had the boy phoned Jessica again that morning? Had she let slip about Ben?
Carl started nudging his father and tugging at his sleeve, pointing back in Ben’s direction. ‘Oh, shit,’ Ben said, and turned to peer in another window. But it was pointless. He was blown.
Drew turned and looked in the direction Carl was pointing, right at Ben. He frowned questioningly down at the boy. The boy nodded up to him, as if to say ‘I’m sure’. Now they were both staring at Ben. The game was up. Fear was in the air. Drew Hunter dropped his shopping basket and his baguettes where he stood. He grabbed his son by the arm, and they took off.
‘Shit,’ Ben said again, and broke through the slow-moving pedestrians to give chase. Drew and Carl dashed across the street, weaving between honking traffic. Ben went after them. Too late, he saw a motorcycle bearing down on him, tried to dive out of its way and lost his footing, falling and grazing his knee. The rider braked hard. Too hard. With a screech, the front wheel locked and washed out from under the machine as it toppled over with a scraping clatter. The rider tumbled to the road, but sprang up again almost instantly, and Ben could see he wasn’t hurt. No time to hang around and help the guy straighten his bent handlebar. Drew and Carl were getting away.
Cursing and ignoring the pain from his scraped knee, Ben ran on after them. People stared and pointed. The motorcyclist yelled after him. Ben lost sight of the father and son among a crowd of shoppers, then saw them again, fifty yards further up the street, battling against the tide of pedestrians. Drew had lost his hat, revealing the black-dyed hair beneath. There was nowhere they could run. Ben sprinted up the road, avoiding the pavement. He could catch them.
A guy in a florid shirt was getting into a white open-top Ferrari that was parked at the kerbside. Drew grabbed him by the collar, spun him away from the car, snatched the key from his hand and leapt behind the wheel, dragging Carl in with him. The car roared into life and took off with a squeal, leaving snakes of rubber on the road and its owner standing bellowing and shaking his fist.
The Ferrari came belting down the street towards Ben, and he bounded onto the kerb to get out of its way. He caught a glimpse of the boy gaping at him from the passenger seat as the car streaked past, heading back the way they’d come, towards the straight and past the scene of yesterday’s crash.
Ben stood in the gutter, helplessly staring at the disappearing car. People were looking and pointing in alarm. The Ferrari’s owner was screaming murder. It wouldn’t be long before the police turned up, bristling with weaponry.
Ben had little chance of catching Drew now, but went sprinting down the street after the Ferrari anyway, yelling at frightened pedestrians to get out of his way and making them scatter. Ahead, a little old woman emerged from a fashion boutique laden with boxes, and he almost ran right into her. ‘Watch where you’re going, asshole!’ she shrieked at him. Across the pavement, a chauffeur in uniform and cap was opening the back door of a stately Rolls Royce to let her in. Its engine was purring softly.
‘Thanks for the ride,’ Ben said to her, and before the chauffeur could stop him, he jumped into the Rolls and floored the accelerator. The car was ungainly but powerful, and Ben was pressed into the red leather of the driver’s seat under the acceleration. The swinging open back door scraped a lamppost and crashed shut. Glancing in the mirror, he could see the little old woman and the chauffeur standing speechless on the pavement.
The Ferrari had long since vanished around the hairpin bend at the bottom, past the café. Ben gunned the Rolls down the straight at full throttle, overtaking everything in sight as if he was trying to re-enact the Grand Prix. But it was no racing car. As soon as Ben entered the bend and felt the heavy bodywork begin to pitch on its soft suspension, he knew it was about to go into a slide. He eased off the gas and changed course, clipping the corner and mounting the kerb. There was no avoiding the empty café tables in his path. The Rolls trampled several of them down. Another flew up onto the bonnet, smacked off the windscreen and went tumbling in his wake.