Rough Cut (16 page)

   “If I’m right,” said Carter, “this will convince you.”

   Slowly he took an envelope from his jacket pocket and removed the printout of Rob’s email from it. Eloise’s eyes widened as he unfolded it.

   Carter spread the document out on the table. “Conrad, the book please.” Conrad went to the bookcase and extracted the copy of
Robin Hood
and passed it to him.

   Carter looked at the first group of numbers on Rob’s email, it read 161893. He turned to page sixteen. They all watched Carter as he ran his finger down the page counting the lines as he went.

   “Line eighteen,” he said to himself as he got to it, “and word number nine, and the third letter. That’s a C.” He looked at Conrad. “Well go on, write it down.”

   Conrad reached into his pocket for the ball point pen and small note pad which he always carried with him. “C,” he said as he wrote it down on a fresh page.

   Carter leafed quickly through the book to find the next few letters. “O … N … F … I … R … M … Confirm. That’s the first word of the message,” he said. “Looks like maybe I was right!”

   As Carter read out each letter, Conrad repeated it and wrote it down. When, ten minutes later, Carter got to the end, he looked up.

   “OK, that’s it. Read it back to me,” he said.

   Conrad looked at his pad and began to read the decoded message. “Confirm transfer of merchandise at three pm Friday eighth July on board Hedonist in Nice.”

   Carter looked at Eloise. “That do it for you?” he asked.

   Eloise knew Carter was right but she didn’t want to admit it, at least not to him. She searched for a flaw in his argument.

   “The message doesn’t say anything about diamonds,” she said. “The ‘merchandise’ could be anything.”

   Carter looked at her. He raised his eyebrows and cocked his head to one side as if to challenge her to admit what she knew to be the truth. She looked away from him through the window into the distance, hating to believe him but knowing that he was right. She reached into the pocket of her shorts to see if the sheet of paper she had taken from the book the previous day was still there. It was. Slowly, she extracted it and held it out to Carter.

   “I suppose you’d better see what this one says too.”

   As Eloise got up to leave the saloon, Carter looked at her with compassion in his eyes. She noticed and knew for sure then that he did not wish her any harm but she still found it difficult to accept that her grandfather was involved in anything illegal. Especially if, as Carter had suggested, Rob had been killed because of it. It was hard for her to believe that Philippe would be a party to the murder of his own grandson. She went out onto the aft deck again.

   When Eloise had left the saloon, Carter opened up the sheet of paper she had given him. He looked at it for a few seconds and then compared it with the printout of the message Rob had received.

   “It’s the same as the other one,” he said. “Except handwritten.”

   Carter got up and went out to join Eloise at the stern of the boat where she was standing quietly and looking out to sea.

   “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “But surely you must believe me now?”

   Eloise looked round at him, resigned to the truth but still trying to pick holes in his argument.

   “There’s still nothing there to connect my grandfather to all of this,” she said.

   “I’m afraid there is,” replied Carter. “Apart from the mine in Guinea, this used to be one of his boats.”

   Carter looked round and saw that Jacques had come out onto the deck and was standing watching them. He motioned to Jacques to come closer and they passed each other as Carter returned to the saloon. Jacques came up behind Eloise. He didn’t say anything, he just put his arm round her.

   “You’re not involved in any of this are you, Jacques?” she said, turning and looking into his eyes as she spoke.

   “Of course not. This boat used to belong to Monsieur Lacoste and now it’s mine, that’s all.”

   Jacques pulled her closer to him and kissed her on the forehead as Carter came back out onto the deck.

   “We can go back to Port Grimaud now,” he said as he approached Eloise and Jacques. “We have what we came for.”

   Jacques nodded his acknowledgement to Carter but waited until Eloise was ready to let go of him before leaving her to go to the helm station and get the Esprit under way.

   “I’m sorry you had to find out about all this, Eloise,” said Carter as the Esprit made her way back to Port Grimaud, “I promised your mother that I would try to keep you out of it and I would have liked to have kept my promise to her.” Eloise gave a brief nod of her head, accepting what Carter had said, before he continued. “But, now that you do know about it, is there anything you can tell me that you think might help?”

   Eloise shook her head.” No,” she said, “I’ve told you everything I know.”

   “OK, but if you think of anything, please call me. I can always be contacted on this number.” Carter held out a card and Eloise took it. “Your mother has the number too. Can I trust you not to speak to anyone else about this?”

   “Yes, but…”

   “No buts, Eloise. You must promise me. I know Philippe is your grandfather but if he
is
involved then he’s also involved in your brother’s death. Please remember that.”

CHAPTER 10

The basement room smelt of years of disuse. Long ago, the stench of rotting vegetation had deserted the place leaving only a slight tell-tale impregnation in the stone walls. Now, the solid floor was covered in a fine film of dust and grime which, in the more remote parts of the room, had remained unmolested for many years so that even the centipedes, en route to more fruitful pastures, left footprints.

   At one end of the room, a collection of old and broken furniture was piled high, reaching the joists of the floor above. At the other end, even the stone steps from the kitchen above looked tired, an indent in each one marking the thousands of footsteps it had withstood.

   The rest of the room was bare except for a sturdy wooden high backed dining chair with arms, which looked much too solid to have been reclaimed from the pile, and which had been placed in the middle of the room under the single light bulb hanging from a hook screwed into the joist above it.

   Sitting on the chair, and tied to it with thin ropes which bit into his wrists and ankles, was Antoine. He looked up pleadingly at Henri, a small but mean looking man, who was standing over him. Behind Antoine stood Albert, a large and muscular man, and to one side, in a corner of the room where he was almost invisible, stood Gilles.

   Henri was not getting the information he wanted but both he and Gilles were determined to find out everything Antoine knew. Henri drew back his hand and, with all the force he could muster, struck the little man. Antoine’s head moved to the right as the blow landed and he felt a searing pain in his cheek.

   “This is not a game, du Bois,” Henri said. “You will tell me what I want to know.”

   Antoine was not a strong man, physically or in any other way. He had already taken all the punishment anyone could expect of him and blood was running down his face into his mouth from the cut left by Henri’s ring.

   “Are you ready to talk yet?” Henri’s voice was menacing.

   “OK, OK,” said Antoine, his voice shaky and faltering. “What do you want to know?”

   “That’s better. Why did you make me hit you?“ Henri smiled insincerely and turned away from Antoine. “Now then, first of all, who were those people you took to see Jacques Armand?” He turned back to Antoine, his face hard again. “What do you know about them?”

   Antoine shrugged. “Not much,” he said.

   “Who are
they?” insisted Henri as Albert struck Antoine from behind on the back of the head.

   “I don’t know anything for sure,” he said. “I got the job through the agency and I was paid in cash.”

   Henri prepared to hit Antoine again, pulling his arm back over his shoulder. As he saw this, Antoine hurriedly added, “But I saw a letter one of them had. I only saw part of it but at the top of the letter I think it said The New York Association… or was it Federation? Yes, it was Federation. The New York Federation.”

   “The New York Federation!” snapped Henri, “What sort of a name is that?”

   “I… I don’t know. That was all I could see. Just The New York Federation.”

   Henri turned away from Antoine and threw his hands in the air in frustration. “OK, Antoine. So they are something to do with an organisation called The New York Federation… maybe The New York Federation
of
something. Have I got that right?”

   Antoine nodded enthusiastically, looking more frightened than ever as Henri turned back to face him, putting his hands on the arms of the chair and leaning forward so that his nose was almost touching Antoine’s.

   “Why did they want to hire Jacques’ boat?”

   Antoine tried to move his head back, away from Henri, but his freedom of movement was limited by the back of the chair.

   “They wouldn’t tell me anything,” he said, closing his eyes and screwing up his face in anticipation of another blow from Henri or Albert. When neither of them struck him, he opened one eye and looked at Henri through it. “All they said was that they wanted to charter the boat today.”

   Gilles came out of the shadows and motioned to Henri to join him by the steps.

   “He’s no use to us,” he said. “He doesn’t know anything.” Gilles looked at Antoine and lowered his voice. “Get rid of him.”

   Henri nodded as Gilles climbed the steep steps to the door at the top and left the basement of the old farmhouse.

_________________________

   Once the Esprit had returned to Port Grimaud and berthed, Carter and Conrad disembarked and set out to walk from the Capitainerie to the café where they were to meet Antoine and his driver. As they did, Carter turned to Conrad.

   “I want you to watch them. Eloise isn’t involved, I’m sure of that. But I’m not so sure about Jacques. Hire a car in case you need it; I’ll get another one for myself when I get back to the hotel. And don’t let them out of your sight; I want to know every move they make, as soon as they make it. OK?”

   “Yeah, sure. No problem,” replied Conrad and turned to go back to the Capitainerie.

   When Carter reached the café in the Place du Marché where he had agreed to meet Antoine and the driver, he found only the driver there. Sitting at a table in the shade of a parasol, he was gently stirring his coffee and watching the pretty girls walking to and fro in front of him. When he saw Carter he stood up immediately and bowed slightly.

   “Where is Antoine?” asked Carter.

   “Je ne sais pas. He has not been here. I have been here since I park the car but Monsieur du Bois…” he shrugged, “Je ne sais pas.”

   Carter looked around but there was no sign of Antoine in the immediate vicinity. “You’d better take me back to Sainte Maxime and then come back here and wait for him,” he said to the driver.

_________________________

   In the living room of his house, Philippe was pacing up and down as usual while Gilles sat in an armchair.

   “Beyond this partial name,” said Gilles. “The New York Federation. Beyond that Antoine doesn’t know anything.”

   Philippe stopped pacing and turned to face him.

   “You are sure?” he challenged.

   “He said he was just asked to book Jacques’ boat for Jefferson,” said Gilles as he nodded his confirmation.

   “And you believe him?”

   “Yes. Yes, I do.”     

   Philippe walked over to the drinks cabinet at one end of the room and poured himself a large cognac before sitting in the armchair close to the French windows so that he could look out over Le Lac. Still sitting in the other armchair, Gilles watched him.

   After a few minutes deep in thought, an idea occurred to Philippe. He got up from the chair and fetched his address book from the drawer of his bureau. He flicked through it until he found what he was looking for and then picked up the phone and dialled the international code for the USA followed by the number in the book.

   “Hello, Randolph,” he said cheerily when he heard a man’s voice at the other end of the line, “This is Philippe here, Philippe Lacoste in France.”

   “Hi there Philippe, how
are
you? How’s business?”

   “Good, thank you, very good… How about you?”

   “Can’t complain. Managing to make a buck or two. What can I do for you, old friend?”

   “It is a small thing. I don’t really like to trouble you with it.”

   “Just name it Philippe. You know I’d do anything for you.”

   “Well,” said Philippe, choosing his words carefully, “I have been asked to rent a boat to some people from an organisation called The New York Federation but I prefer not to charter my boats to people I do not know and I have never heard of them. I wondered if you knew anything about them?”

   “Not off hand, Philippe. But I’ll check and call you back as soon as I find out anything.”

   “Thank you Randolph. I owe you one.”

   “You don’t owe me a damn thing! I haven’t begun to repay you for what you did for me.”

   “You are very kind,” said Philippe and rang off.

   An hour later, Philippe and Gilles were sitting quietly, waiting for the phone to ring. When it did, Philippe answered it.

   “Lacoste,” he said.

   “Philippe, it’s Randy here. I think I’ve found out what you wanted to know.”

   “Good, good.”

   “There isn’t an organisation called The New York Federation but there are a few whose names start with those words.”

   “I see,” said Philippe, his voice conveying his disappointment.

   “But most of them are associations of teachers and nurses, that sort of thing. In terms of hiring one of your motor yachts, I think there’s only one that would be likely to be doing anything like that.”