The Game (13 page)

The restaurant was a chaotic place to work but Lucille Defraine enjoyed that chaos. She had been a sous chef there for three years; no longer terrified of the giant Turkish chef who ran the kitchen, she now found his explosive outbursts bordering on the hilarious. All the junior kitchen and waiting staff cowered before him and Lucille remembered what it had been like to be frightened of coming to work. It was a stressful environment where the chef demanded perfection and the staff either learned to cope with the verbal assaults or quit. When they did, the chef put another red X on his scoreboard.

‘You’ll be on there one day,’ he’d promised her during her first week.

She went about her job with a quiet efficiency that kept her off his radar for the most part, but if she let the risotto stick or a length of asparagus bend in the middle he would unload abuse on her that was a mix of French and Turkish. She had spoken French and German fluently since her childhood, and now could claim to be tri-lingual – but her Turkish was limited to expletives and insults, though she did know dozens of them.

One of the juniors dropped a pan and boiling water flooded across the floor. Green parcels of ravioli slid along on the flow.

The Turkish chef launched a tirade of insults at the junior, who scalded his fingers picking up the ravioli. Lucille tried not to smile, but failed.

This did not escape the attention of the chef, who turned his abuse her way.

Lucille laughed. She couldn’t help herself. The chef’s face went so red she thought he was going to burst.

She pointed at the scoreboard and said, ‘You’ll have to do better than that.’

Her shift ended at midnight and she walked home stifling yawns and looking forward to kissing Peter’s forehead as he slept soundly in his bed. The night was cool and the stars above bright and beautiful. She lit a cigarette and tried not to hear Peter’s voice in her head, regurgitating what he’d learnt at school about the dangers of smoking. She promised herself she would quit before he was old enough to be influenced by her behaviour, as she had been by her parents who smoked strong French cigarettes every day from breakfast until bed. Neither had made it past sixty-five.

The babysitter was prostrate on the couch, eyes shut, mouth open, a light snoring rumbling in the air, but she snapped upright when Lucille flicked on the light. ‘I wasn’t asleep,’ she was quick to say.

‘Don’t worry about it.’

The sitter smiled and yawned. ‘He’s been a good boy. We watched a show about Romans. Did you know that they—’

‘That’s great. What time are you getting picked up?’

The sitter shrugged. ‘I’m not. Marcel’s car won’t start so I’ve got to take the bus. I hate the bus.’

Lucille frowned as she handed the sitter her fee and said, ‘It’s far too late for you to be standing alone outside. I’ll just go and check on him then I’ll walk you to the bus stop, okay?’

The stop was at the end of the street. A one-minute walk there. A one-minute walk back. Hopefully no more than three minutes to wait. Peter would be alone for five minutes. Lucille didn’t like it, but she didn’t have the heart to let a seventeen-year-old girl go by herself. The town was very safe, but most crime was opportunism. She would never forgive herself if something happened.

There were a group of three young men at the stop. They had the buzz cuts of soldiers and the builds to match. It was not uncommon to see soldiers here. There was a French military base to the north and its young male residents would often come south to blow off steam in Andorra. They looked harmless enough beyond being drunk, but Lucille was glad the babysitter wasn’t alone. She felt the three soldiers watching her and the sitter, but men were never subtle, especially young men, and least of all young men who had been drinking.

The bus arrived and Lucille waved the sitter goodbye as it left.

The young men were still at the stop. They had spread out. They must be waiting for the next one. She didn’t look at them as she turned to head home to Peter.

‘Hey,’ one called.

She didn’t respond. She went to walk around another one, but he held out his arms and stepped into her path.

‘Excuse me, please,’ she said, her heart racing.

‘Hey,’ the one behind her called again.

‘I want to go home.’

‘I just want to talk to you.’

She turned around. ‘My little boy is waiting for me.’

‘You left him alone?’

The speaker was the eldest of the three men, but no older than twenty-five himself. He had a smooth face and acne at his temples.

‘I need to go,’ Lucille said. ‘Please.’

He approached her and she backed away until she bumped into the one behind her.

‘Why don’t you come with us?’ the young man with the acne said. ‘We can have some fun.’

‘I’ll scream.’

There was malevolence in his young eyes. ‘Do you think that will do any good?’

She slapped him.

She didn’t think about it. She just did it.

Shocked, he glared at her for a moment. His cheek was red.

His return slap knocked her to the pavement. She didn’t feel the pain of the slap because she hit her head on the pavement and darkness encroached at the edge of her vision. Images became blurry and sounds somehow distant, but she detected footsteps nearing.

She lay on her back and found standing impossible, so she rolled her head to the side to see a man crossing the road.

‘There was no need for that.’ His voice was a low growl.

He was tall and broad and blond. He seemed vaguely familiar but she couldn’t make his face come into focus.

‘She slapped me,’ the soldier with acne answered, ‘so I slapped her back. An eye for an eye.’

‘Yet the result was not the same,’ the blond man replied.

The young soldier opened his mouth to retort but the tall man slapped him. The sound was thunderous. He seemed to fly backwards into the bus stop, then collapsed into a heap.

The blond man said, ‘Now there is parity.’

Lucille, still dazed, watched as the young man sprang to his feet, the blade of a knife protruding from his clenched fist. He lunged at the blond man, who moved on the side as he grabbed the thrusting hand and drove the knife up to the hilt in the young man’s chest while his own hand still gripped it.

He shrieked and fell to his knees.

The blond man looked to the other two soldiers, who stood dumbfounded. ‘You should have already started running by now.’

He moved, fast and without hesitation, wrapping an arm around the neck of one of the soldiers. He placed his free palm on the young man’s forehead and did something Lucille didn’t see, but she heard a sickly
crack
and the soldier fell straight down as if his limbs had turned to liquid.

The third soldier – the one Lucille had bumped into – ran. She didn’t see him, but she heard his heavy footsteps. She watched with wide eyes as the man with blond hair calmly tugged the knife from the chest of the kneeling man, adjusted his grip, turned and threw it.

She heard it whistle over her, then an instant later the sound of running footsteps ceased, replaced by a thump and a clattering.

The young man with acne on his temples was crying, his hands pressed over the hole in his chest, still on his knees, but swaying back and forth. Blood bubbled out from between his fingers.

The blond man walked over to Lucille and pulled from his hands bloody latex gloves she hadn’t noticed he’d been wearing. He stuffed them into a pocket and helped her to her feet. She could stand, but only just. He kept hold of her to make sure she stayed upright.

‘My son…’ she managed to say.

‘I know,’ the blond man replied. ‘I’ll take you to him.’

The soldier with acne fell forward and lay with his face in the gutter. His skin was white and his eyes didn’t blink.

‘We need to hurry,’ the blond man said.

Lucille hung onto him because her legs had no strength and the world swayed back and forth before her. The street came in and out of focus. Her head began to hurt. She realised her head was wet where she’d hit it on the pavement.

‘You’re okay,’ the blond man said as she reached to touch her head, ‘but you have concussion.’

‘Those men…’ she said. ‘You killed them.’

He didn’t respond. He led her into her building and sat her down at the foot of the stairs. He took her keys from a pocket of her coat.

‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said. ‘Wait there.’

‘Peter…’

‘I’ll bring him to you.’

She heard him walk up the stairs behind her and tried to stand, but she couldn’t get her knees to straighten and slumped back down. Not long after, she heard him descend behind her and then watched him pass her. He carried Peter in his arms. Peter was fast asleep.

The blond man exited the building.

Lucille panicked. She forced herself to stand. She used a hand to brace herself against the wall and followed. The blond man walked with Peter along the pavement to where a white panel van sat against the kerb. She went after him, stumbling and swaying, grabbing hold of a lamp post to stop herself falling. Terror drowned out any pain in her head.

The man put Peter over one shoulder so he could open the doors at the back of the van, and then climbed inside, carrying her son.

‘Peter…’

She pushed herself from the railings to give her the momentum to cross the pavement. She grabbed hold of the van to stop herself tumbling into the road. The blond man reappeared and dropped down.

‘Let me help you,’ he said.

He took hold of her waist and easily hoisted her up so she sat on the cargo deck. Grabbing her calves, he swung her legs up so they were on the cargo deck too.

‘I’m sorry he hit you. I assure you I did not instruct him to do so.’

‘What?’

‘I was merely supposed to scare them off. So you would trust me.’

‘What?’

‘It was never my intention to kill them. But at least now you know I’m not the kind of man you want to anger.’ He examined her head and then her face. ‘You won’t need stitches, fortunately. The concussion will be gone soon. You’ll have a little redness on your face for a few days, but don’t worry, no one will see it.’

‘Why are you – ?’

‘Go to Peter.’

She peered into the darkness of the compartment, seeing Peter lying down on a mattress at the other end. She shuffled closer to him and looked back at the man.

Lucille gasped and he swung the van’s rear doors shut, one at a time. She heard a bolt slide into place.

She crawled to where Peter lay, now in complete darkness, and pulled him into a hug. He didn’t stir, his breathing still deep and regular. She held him tightly until she felt the van rock as the blond man climbed into the cab. She realised the floor was soft and spongy. She checked the walls. They were spongy too. She climbed to her feet and banged a fist on one of the rear doors but made no noise. It was the same as the floor and walls. She pushed her fingers against it. They sank into a thick layer of foam rubber.

The engine started and the van pulled away.

Lucille lay down next to Peter and began to cry.

The last time Victor had been in Italy he had been lying low while he recuperated from a bullet that had torn a groove across his right triceps. That injury had not been severe and had healed well, but it had added another scar to the many hidden beneath his clothes that no surgeon in the world could fully remove. The oldest scars were souvenirs of mistakes not to be made again or considerations never to be forgotten. The newer scars were permanent reminders that no matter the considerations he took he could not control every facet of every situation, but that he still had to try.

A chartered yacht had ferried Francesca and Victor across the Mediterranean through the night and by dawn Francesca was driving a dusty Fiat up the coastal roads from Terrancina, seemingly heading to Rome, but veering east into countryside when they passed Latina.

She spoke as she drove, talking about her experiences, her travels, and especially her husbands, and asking no questions in return. Victor was happy to let her talk – it wasn’t the nervous chatter of someone afraid of silence like the last time they had been in a car together.

‘The only thing I’ve learned for certain over two marriages is that all men are pigs.’

‘All men?’

‘
All
men.’ She gave him a look for emphasis, then a different kind of look. ‘Though I’m always on the hunt for the exception to the rule.’

They drove along winding roads through a rural landscape dotted with medieval villages. Woods of chestnut, hazelnut and oak broke up the vast swathes of vineyards and fields of olive trees. The countryside glowed green under the morning sun.

‘Beautiful scenery,’ Francesca said, glancing across to him.

He nodded. ‘Stunning.’

‘We’re nearly there, by the way.’

She turned off the narrow lane and onto an unlaid track that meandered between fields of olive trees. She drove fast despite the frequent blind corners created by the hedgerows that lined the track. The track’s surface was uneven and rutted. Dust billowed from the vehicle’s tyres.

‘Hope I’m not driving too fast for you?’ she asked, hoping she was.

He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘This is fast?’

She grinned and applied more pressure to the accelerator. She buzzed her window down all the way and rested an elbow on the sill. The draught threw her black hair around and it whipped across her face, but she seemed to like it.

Her carefree attitude to speed told him that the track led only to a place from which no other vehicles would be coming. Their destination. Given the fields of olives it would be an old farmhouse, built on a hill at a time when higher ground was the first and best line of defence.

After another kilometre a small hill in the distance began flashing into view between gaps in the hedgerow and olive trees. Buildings stood on the summit.

Victor pretended not to have seen until it became obvious. The hill was about thirty metres in height and the farmhouse had a sloped roof composed of ochre tiles and walls the colour of sand where the bricks weren’t covered in climbing ivy. He guessed sixteenth century. The barn that stood perpendicular to it was maybe a hundred years old.

‘This is it?’ Victor asked.

Francesca smiled in response.

‘Leeson’s?’

She didn’t answer.

She slowed as the gradient increased. Victor expected to see some kind of gate blocking the road and a wall surrounding the property, but there was none. Francesca drove onto the dusty patch of ground that served as a courtyard and driveway to the farmhouse beyond and stopped the car sharply, causing Victor to jerk forward in his seat and then back again. She laughed. He smiled, because she expected him to and because people who smiled were more trustworthy than people who didn’t.

The Fiat rocked back and forth on its suspension and a cloud of dust drifted around them, obscuring the view through the windshield. Victor heard footsteps crunching on grit and sharp stones. When the dust cloud dissipated he saw Leeson standing on the driveway. There was a dark blue Toyota minivan parked outside. The paintwork shone and reflected the sunlight in glowing white pools.

Francesca looked at Victor and he looked at her.

‘Always best not to keep him waiting,’ she said.

The Fiat’s door creaked as Victor swung it open. He climbed out and let it fall shut behind him. The weather was hot and dry. Thin clouds drifted from west to east in the sky above. The bright sun from behind the farmhouse made him squint. Leeson stood in the building’s shadow.

He wore a suit, this time a two-piece, made from linen. His sunglasses were black as ink. He looked at Victor without expression and made no movement until Victor had crossed the distance. Leeson held out his hand.

Victor shook it.

‘Mr Kooi,’ Leeson said after they’d released hands. ‘Welcome to our humble abode.’

Victor glanced around. ‘Thank you for inviting me here.’

‘That thanks should be shared out between us, for I’m positive we shall both benefit tremendously from our association.’

‘I’m sure I’ll get a great tan at the very least.’

Leeson smiled a little. ‘I hope Francesca kept you from becoming bored on the long journey.’

‘Her company was gratefully received.’

Leeson rotated his head slightly to watch Francesca’s approach. ‘Oh yes, Mr Kooi, she can be most grateful.’

He watched her as she passed them and entered the farmhouse through a wooden door that Victor expected to lead into the kitchen.

‘Let me apologise that I couldn’t meet you in person in Gibraltar,’ Leeson said.

‘I would have been happy to have come straight to Italy.’

The younger man nodded. ‘I’m sure you would have, but I have my little tics that must be satisfied, as I’m sure you understand. Men in our business must never grow complacent, after all. And you will be paid for each and every hour of travel.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t mention it. I appreciate that you have been inconvenienced by all these escapades and this is not how you conduct your other affairs. I assure you it will prove worth your while.’

‘I have no doubt it will. What’s the job?’

‘All in good time.’

‘I’d like to know now.’

‘Of course you would.’

Leeson said nothing more. Francesca reappeared from the farmhouse, the door hinges creaking to announce her. She held her elbows by her ribs and her forearms perpendicular to her torso, parallel to one another, palms turned upwards. A neat pile of folded clothes sat on them. On top of the pile was a pair of hiking boots and a canvas bag.

‘I’m sure you’re tired from the travelling, but before we go inside and I show you to your room, I wonder if you might accommodate me.’

Leeson gestured to Francesca, who stopped nearby.

‘Another tic?’ Victor asked.

‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

‘Not at all,’ Victor said back.

He emptied his pockets of his money, wallet, passport and gum and placed each item inside the canvas bag. He handed it to Leeson, who held it open with both hands.

Victor unbuttoned his shirt and took it off. He stuffed it into the bag. He unlaced his shoes and they too went into the bag. As did his socks. Francesca’s sunglasses were not as dark as Leeson’s and Victor saw her eyes moving as he undressed. Leeson watched Francesca watching him.

Victor unbuckled his belt and removed his trousers. He pushed them down into the bag to make room. His underwear followed.

He redressed in the clothes Francesca held.

She said, ‘I hope they fit okay.’

‘They’ll do.’ He looked at Leeson. ‘I hope these aren’t the only garments I’ll be provided with.’

‘There are more inside.’ He pulled the string to close the bag and handed it to Francesca. ‘If it becomes necessary, she will shop for you. Any questions before we continue?’

‘Just one: are the other members of my team already here?’