Elena got the first hint of antipathy between Crowley and Ryall; or maybe it was just the tape she’d played. But, everything else filed and sorted, the problem was back before them: whether a ten-year-old girl could help them succeed where the system had failed.
Ryall had probably been molesting her for years, dragging her down into a deep hypnotic sleep so that he could do what he liked with her. His eager hands travelling all over as her small body lay inert; her steady breathing suddenly fractured, more hesitant, but only part of her subconscious registering what he was doing. And he’d probably done the same with Mikaya for years before that. Elena shuddered with revulsion at the thought. And now as they finally revealed to Lorena what her subconscious had kept trapped for so long, they wanted her to lay inert for Ryall one more night so that they could get the proof to nail him.
Elena rubbed her forehead and glanced towards her hotel room door. Lorena was downstairs, no doubt still swapping stories over the bar with Alphonse. In the end only Lorena could decide if she could possibly face that. Throw the decision back to a ten-year old girl. The rest of them were hopeless: the system, Crowley, and most of all herself — strung out from pills, stress and lack of sleep — she was the last one balanced enough to decide. ‘I’ll talk to Lorena and see what she thinks.’
Elena was still in the same position minutes later, hands clasped anxiously together, chewing lightly at the back of her knuckles, wondering how on earth she was even going to begin to broach this topic with Lorena — I’ve got some good news and some bad — when the phone rang again. It was Staff-Sergeant Michel Chenouda.
‘Mrs Waldren. I’ve got some good news.’
‘…I was planning this all for tonight. If we’re going to do this, we should move quick. One thing I argued in your favour is that you’ve just arrived — nobody knows about you. As time goes on, that advantage could be lost. I was thinking, say… ten o’clock tonight. Is that okay?’
‘Yes, yes… I think so.’
‘You’ll have to come on your own… So can you make arrangements for your daughter by then? You won’t be returning till tomorrow morning.’
‘Yes, uh… I have a friend she can stay with.’
‘Fine. Now it’s a few hours run. A two-hour flight by small plane, and the car drive each end. And as soon as you start heading out of the city, you’ll have to wear a blacked-out headset. Secrecy is absolute on this — nobody’s to know where he is.’
Funicelli listened to them go through the last of the arrangements, then phoned Roman. Fourteen minutes later Roman was alongside him in his car as he replayed the tape. They were five blocks away from the Montclaire on Rue Berri. No point in keeping up the look-out: the police might run a sweep before coming by to pick her up. They’d return later and start following.
Roman checked his watch as the tape ran to an end. ‘Just over four hours, huh. We’re going to have to move fast.’
Funicelli nodded thoughtfully. He hit stop and rewound. ‘You should listen to the conversation she had just before.’
‘Right.’ Roman was still thinking about the tight time schedule and the flight. Particularly the flight: that could give them problems tracking and following. It took him a moment to detach to what was happening on tape. He smirked almost as slyly as when he first heard Chenouda had given her the green light. ‘Sounds like she’s a bit of a player herself.’ Some scam with the young girl and the British police, and she’d told Chenouda it was her daughter. But he didn’t have the mind space to throw it around much, his thoughts were quickly back with his own problems. Maybe Roubilliard would be able to help with this flight dilemma. In half of Roubilliard’s distribution territory in the northern reaches of Quebec, light aircraft were one of the main modes of transport.
Roman raised Roubilliard on the phone. He knew at least half a dozen guys with small planes. ‘But probably the best bet is a guy I know with a farm up near Chibougamau — mainly because right now he’s here in Montreal for a couple of days. Flew down yesterday.’
‘Is he someone you’d trust? Some heavy stuff could go down.’
‘Yeah. He’s run more than a few kilos for me in with the seed packets and farm supplies.’
‘Okay. Get back to you.’ Roman was on the phone almost constantly the next hour: Jean-Paul, Frank Massenat, and twice more to Roubilliard, who by then had in turn confirmed arrangements with their pilot for that night, Mel Desmarais.
Only ninety-four minutes from Chenouda’s call to the hotel and they’d worked out every last detail. Two and a half hours left until she was picked up at the hotel. Roman met up with Massenat forty minutes later and they grabbed some kebabs and falafels from a takeaway on St Laurent and sat eating them in a side street in Roman’s BMW, waiting. Funicelli had gone to hire a car for them to follow her — no familiar registrations in sight — and would join them again at 9.15 pm.
Roman made one last call just before Massenat arrived, to Gianni Cacchione. It was a call that he knew one day he’d have to make, but events had brought things forward. Once Georges was hit, the Genie was out of the bottle. He felt strangely empty, morose, after putting down the phone. He’d weighed this from every side so many times that he thought he’d worked the guilt through long ago. Jean-Paul had cast him aside, showed little thought for him while pursuing his foolhardy plans; he’d brought this on himself. Maybe it was just that with Jean-Paul gone, there would be no more challenge, nothing more to strive for; he’d miss the banter and confrontation, playing in the shadows which he did so well. From now on, he’d be in the spotlight.
‘You think everything’s going to go okay?’ Massenat asked.
‘Yeah, it’s not that.’ Heavy rain slanted against the windscreen, and Roman broke off from the repeated tapping of one finger against the steering wheel as he peered up at the night sky. ‘Just not the best night to be flying. So go easy on the falafel and the hot salsa, I ain’t brought a change of suit.’
‘Art. It’s Jean-Paul. I need a favour.’
Art Giacomelli in Chicago listened thoughtfully as Jean-Paul explained his dilemma. ‘Things got that bad between you, huh?’
‘Well — it’s just I don’t know whether I can trust him with this or not. There’s always been some bad feeling between him and Georges, and I’m afraid that in the heat of the moment he might do something rash. It’s important to me that this is done right.’ Jean-Paul could hear the slow draw and exhalation of a cigar or cigarette being smoked Giacomelli’s end.
Faint smacking of the lips as Giacomelli chewed it over a second longer. ‘I can help, Jean-Paul, no problem there. But it’s very short notice — three and a half hours. I’m not going to be able to send one of my own guys. The closest that could make it is a guy I know works out of Toronto — Dave Santagata — ‘Santa Dave’ as he’s known.’
‘Is he good? Can he handle something like this?’
‘Yeah, one of the best. I’ve used him a lot. Young, keen, but not hot-headed. Cool professional all the way — he ain’t earned the catch-phrase ‘Santa always delivers’ for nothing. Don’t worry, he’ll keep Roman in check.’
They made the arrangements. ‘Santa Dave’ would catch the next shuttle flight from Toronto and should arrive with half an hour to spare. He’d call Jean-Paul directly from the airport, by which time Jean-Paul said he’d have phoned Roman and told him he had one more along for the ride.
Jean-Paul looked up at Simone as he hung up. His mouth skewed slightly. ‘Is that okay? Do you feel better now about things?’