‘Coucou!’ The sound of Nicole’s voice crashed into his thoughts and dispersed them in random chaos to the four corners of his mind. Damn her! Just as he was coming close to some kind of epiphany.
‘I’m busy, Nicole,’ he called back, keen that she should hear the irritation in his tone.
But either she was oblivious, or chose to ignore it. She breezed cheerfully into the séjour. ‘You’re back.’ As if he didn’t know. ‘I saw your car downstairs. It’s got a parking ticket on it.’
Enzo closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, resisting the temptation, born of a Glasgow upbringing, to curse loudly.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Nicole’s tone was chiding now. ‘You’ve been moving things around in here. It took me ages to get this place set up.’ And she started pulling chairs and tables back to where they had been, trapping Enzo at his whiteboard.
‘Nicole, I’m trying to work.’ Each word was enunciated slowly, through clenched teeth.
‘And so am I. Your birthday’s tomorrow, remember. I’ve been organising the food and drink. The traiteurs will be here in the morning.’
‘Nicole, we really don’t need caterers to celebrate an unremarkable birthday. We could just go downstairs and have pizza.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly, Monsieur Macleod. You’re only fifty-seven once.’
‘Fifty-six.’
‘Whatever. A lot of people are coming.’ And, for the first time, she noticed his scribblings on the whiteboard, and stopped in her tracks. ‘You’ve started on it.’
‘I have.’ And immediately he saw a way of deflecting her from party mode. ‘And I could do with some help.’
Her eyes gleamed. ‘Oh, what? Anything.’
‘I need a detailed dossier on Régis Blanc. Personal history. Criminal record. Friends, family, known associates. Anything and everything you can get on him, Nicole.’
‘When for?’
‘As soon as you possibly can.’
‘You got it!’ And he could see that, straight away, she was just itching to sit down at a computer.
He said, ‘When is Sophie due back?’
Nicole was already distracted. ‘Tomorrow morning, I think. Just in time for the party.’
Enzo sighed fondly. ‘Ye-es — just in time for everyone else to have done all the hard work.’
Chapter seventeen
The tracks of Sophie’s tears stained her face. The light was starting to fade on their third full day of incarceration and her sense of hopelessness was absolute. Both she and Bertrand had lost any and all control of their lives. Already the days were beginning to blur, losing shape and reason.
Bertrand looked terrible. She had done her best to clean the blood from his face, but smears of it had dried brown on his stubbled cheek and around his mouth. His shirt was covered in it. Yet more of it had dried solid in his nasal passages, making it hard for him to talk, and he was convinced that his nose was broken. His pain had morphed to a dull ache and then to numbness, and he had spent much of today sleeping.
He lay with his head in her lap, as she sat with her back to the wall, listening to him slow-steady breathing through his mouth.
At least their captors had relented and started bringing them food once more. Yoghurt, bread, coffee. Sophie had already decided that if she ever got out of here she would never consume any of these three things ever again.
While Bertrand dozed, and in between spells of self-pity and tears, Sophie had thought a lot about their situation. Bertrand had acted impulsively and alone in attacking the bringer of the food yesterday, driven by anger and frustration. Sophie had been taken as much by surprise as the man he attacked. Frozen by shock and fear and unable to help. If only they had discussed it in advance, thought it through, had a plan, the outcome might have been different.
And now, it seemed to her, it was no longer possible for them simply to sit and await the unfolding of events which appeared less and less likely to end well. It was time to become proactive. To do something before they both lost the will to resist.
She looked down into her lap and saw that Bertrand was looking up at her. She had no idea how long he had been awake.
‘What time is it?’ he said.
She shrugged. How could she know? They had taken their watches. ‘Late,’ she said. ‘It’ll be dark soon.’ She paused, and lowered her voice. ‘We’ve got to try and get out of here.’
He nodded. ‘I know.’ Stiffly, he pulled himself up into a sitting position. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘What for?’
‘For not doing a better job of protecting you.’
She felt the temptation to weep again, but instead wrapped her arms around him and held him close. ‘We’ll do it together this time,’ she whispered. ‘I feel like doing these fucking people some damage.’
‘Me, too.’ He untangled himself from Sophie and got to his feet, stretching sore muscles and aching joints. It was important that he was both physically and mentally alert. ‘I can take either of them, one on one,’ he said. ‘But not both at the same time.’
‘What about your face?’
He grimaced painfully in a grotesque parody of a smile. ‘They can’t do much more damage to it than they already have.’
‘No, I mean... are you fit for it?’
He flexed his fingers and balled them into fists at his side. ‘Oh, yes.’
‘And what are we going to do if we get out? We’ve no idea where we are.’
‘Well, let’s get a look at the lie of the land, then.’
Sophie pulled herself to her feet, frowning. ‘How?’
‘If I lace my fingers together into a stirrup, you can step into it and I’ll hoist you up to take a look out of the window. But we’d better do it quick, before it gets dark.’ He crouched, making his stirrup, and she put one foot carefully into it, pushing up as he straightened his legs, and sliding up the wall to clutch the window frame and peer outside.
The glass was very nearly opaque with dirt and mud spatter, but Sophie could see enough through the external bars to realise that the window was only just above ground level. There was a gravel path beyond it, then an overgrown grassy bank rising into deciduous woods that seemed to stretch away into darkness. She could see a very tall pine tree on the edge of the woods, reaching high above the other trees, almost opposite the window.
When Bertrand lowered her to the floor she told him what she had seen, but in truth it gave them very little idea of where they actually were, and how far beyond the trees they might have to go to reach safety. If they got out.
‘This is some kind of big house,’ Bertrand said. ‘Did you notice how cold it was when we arrived? Didn’t feel like anyone lived here.’
Sophie nodded. ‘And we’re in the basement.’ Then she lowered her head, shaking it, and felt tears welling up again. ‘But what’s the point? We know all this. We’ve been through it a hundred times. None of it means anything if we can’t get past those two men at the door.’
‘We can do that,’ Bertrand said, his voice gently insistent. ‘If we work together. But we have to be fast. I can grab the first guy. But I can only hold him for a moment. You’ll have to disable him and free me up to go for the second guy. They won’t be expecting it, so we should have surprise on our side.’
Sophie took a deep breath and lifted her head. ‘You’re right. My papa always says you’ll never achieve anything if you can’t visualise it.’ She forced a laugh. Then, with her strongest Scottish accent, in parody of her papa, she said, ‘If you can’t see yourself sitting at the head of the table in the boardroom you’ll never be chairman of the company.’