The Last Witness (62 page)

  The tears streamed down her face as she cut through the bed-sheet with the scissors, trying to make sure she kept the strip even as she went.

  And now young Lorena as well. Mikaya kicked herself that maybe she should have been bolder earlier and said he was molesting her, then try and fill in the gaps later. But each time she ran it all over in her mind, there were always too many questions she wouldn’t be able to answer: Which nights? Where did he touch you? What did he say? Why didn’t you say anything, try and stop him? She shook her head. Even now with the answer to why her and Lorena weren’t able to respond and fight back, they still weren’t able to do anything concrete. They were still trying to get her and Lorena to recall something from being awake, from real life rather than dreams
. ‘Sorry, I just can’t help you. I wish I could.’
Nothing was going to stop him now.

  She wiped at her tears with the back of one hand and started cutting the second strip.

  Even if she could remember anything, it was too late.
Too late.
She would never be the same again. She wanted children, loved children. But what would she do? Lay there with teeth gritted, her whole body trembling until the boy had finished? And if she wanted more children, a proper marriage – night after night of the same? It was unthinkable, a living hell.

  And now she’d let Lorena down too by not speaking out. She was suffering the same. Probably it would be too late for Lorena as well – she’d go the same way as her. All Lorena had left to cling to was the hope that one day the dreams would fade. Maybe she’d be luckier; for Mikaya they hadn’t, and she knew now with certainty that they never would.

  Her vision blurred with tears, she looked up thoughtfully to the handle of the high latch window, wondering if it would hold her weight. She’d have to be quick. Her dorm friends had gone to the Student Union bar to give her time alone with the policemen, but they’d be back soon.

Patrick Mundy regularly had eight to nine hours a week to himself that were sacrosanct, off-limits to any contact from his department, no matter how urgent: his regular card-game, golf round, and going to watch the
Senators
play. But the last two months, he’d added another few weekly off-limit hours since he started dating Suzie Harrigan.

  Twelve years his junior and class all the way. Long auburn hair and large hazel eyes with sweeping lashes that could melt Greenland. Audrey Hepburn and then some. Mundy was in love. But this would be the third time up to bat for him, he wanted to put in the time to make sure that she was the right one; he didn’t want to spend his early retirement in lawyers’ offices sorting out yet more alimony.

  So when he was with her, his mobile and pager were switched off; she had his undivided attention. Not that it would have made much difference where they’d gone tonight:
Clair de Lune
. Popular with high-flyers and government ministers, mobiles and pagers were strictly off-limits. Otherwise the restaurant would have been a cacophony of endless bleeps and rings. What few were brought along and left switched on, bleeped and rung without anyone paying them attention behind the closed door of a back cloakroom.

  As they left the restaurant, the air was brisk. Mundy wrapped Suzie’s coat around her. In his own coat pocket his bleeper light flashed, but he hadn’t yet looked at it nor had any intention of doing so. Mundy was strict with his time alone with her: nothing like being dragged away on emergencies every other date to give a taste of things to come and kill all hopes for a future relationship.

  ‘Where do you fancy tonight?’ he asked. ‘The Glue Pot or the Laurier?’ They usually went to one or the other after dinner: short night-cap at the Hotel Laurier piano lounge or a longer session listening to live blues.

She mulled it over for only a second. ‘Mmmm, The Glue Pot.’ She pecked him on the cheek.

Melanie Fuller was still on switchboard, so most of the calls to track down Mundy had fallen to her S-18 colleague, Brian Cole. He called
Clair de Lune
twenty-five minutes into his roster, fourteenth on his list.

‘Yes, he was here earlier. But I’m sorry – you’ve just missed him.’ An effete, faintly French accent that sounded faked.

‘When did he leave?’ Cole pressed.

‘About ten minutes ago.’

‘Do you know where he might have gone?’

‘I’m sorry. We make a habit of not chasing our clients from the restaurant to ask where they might be going.’ Mocking tone, the accent more exaggerated. The phone was put down abruptly.

Cole turned and passed the news to Melanie.

She sighed heavily and ran one hand through her hair. ‘Keep trying. Keep trying.’ She checked her watch. ‘It could take him fifteen or twenty minutes to get home, so it’d be worth another try there soon. If not, start working through bars and clubs.’

* * * *

‘If Roman’s going to make a move, it’ll probably be tonight. Once all of this has gone down, he knows he’d have you to face. Do you want me to send someone over?’

‘No, it’s okay. I doubt there’d be time anyway.’

‘True. But take my advice, Jean-Paul. Either get some protection over there fast, or leave the house. Don’t just sit there like a sitting duck.’

Jean-Paul said ‘Okay’ to put Giacomelli’s mind at rest, but hanging up he couldn’t think of anyone he could call in fast – Roman always took care of that side of things – and the last thing he felt like doing was running scared from his own house. It would feel too much like defeat, like waving the white flag at Roman. Admittance that when it came to the crunch the old ways held sway, all of his new aspirations amounted to nothing.

But then he started to became uneasy, agitated. Was that the pool filtration system, some pigeons alighting from the roof, or something else? Raphael’s footsteps upstairs, or were they coming from another part of the house? He suddenly started to feel the isolation of the big house, feel vulnerable.

He went into his study and took out the SIG-Sauer 9mm from the top drawer. He was aware of his own breathing falling heavy, but kept his listening honed beyond it for out of place sounds. Some faint music now he could pick up drifting from Raphael’s room. Looking out across the dining room and through the windows, a light was on in his mother Lillian’s apartment at the end of the courtyard.

He closed his eyes and gripped the gun tight. His hands were shaking, his pulse racing hard. Some flight away from crime this was. A hitman probably moving in, and he hoped to brave it out when he hadn’t fired a gun in years. And he wasn’t alone in the house. A fine epitaph that would be to all his noble hopes and aspirations: Raphael walking in to see his father or his adversary in a pool of blood, the other with their gun freshly smoking. Maybe his father had been right all along:
‘As much as you might wish to escape the past, the past will never allow you that escape.’

Maybe that’s how it was meant to end, his punishment for being so naïve, blindly foolish. Roman had probably been playing him all along, and now he’d won the game. With Roman already closing in, nothing he could do to save Georges. Probably Georges could have been trusted all along, and Georges had in turn looked up to and trusted him – and he’d repaid by turning his back. He might as well have fed Georges to Roman with his own hands. He’d lose Simone without question: she’d
never
forgive him. And if he tried now to stand this last bit of feeble ground, at the same time he turned his back on everything he’d aimed for. He lost either way. Game, set, match.

He snapped himself quickly out. The thought of Raphael and his mother being there when anything happened overrode all else. He raced up the stairs and rapped sharply on Raphael’s door, swinging it open. Loud wave of techno with a faint beep-beep backdrop.

‘Raphael! We’ve got to go – leave the house!’

‘What? I’ll just finish this game, and–’

‘Now, Raphael! This
second!’

Raphael saw a look of panic on his father’s face he hadn’t seen before, then he noticed the gun. He swiftly turned off the game and the music, grabbed his coat and fell in step behind his father back down the corridor. By the time they hit the stairs, they were at a run.

‘We’ll just pick up your grandma, and head off.’

‘What’s happening?’

‘Long story. Long story.’ Jean-Paul said it almost in time with his laboured breathing. ‘We’ll grab a cappuccino somewhere and then I can explain.’

Lillian was slower, more reluctant to leave without explanation, and Jean-Paul had to blurt out that their lives could be in danger to finally light a fire under her. He gestured with his gun as if to say
‘why in hell do you think I’m carrying this.’
‘We must leave this second!’

He grabbed keys to the Cadillac on the way out – more space, more protection than his new sports Jag – and seconds later they were swinging out of the driveway. Brief pause to open the electronic gates, and then Jean-Paul turned right on Boulevard Gouin, heading for the city.

Cacchione’s men, Lorenzo and Nunzio Petrilli – ‘Lorry’ and ‘High Noon’ – weren’t Cacchione’s first choice, but they were all he could get at short notice. They’d been competent enough on a couple of past jobs, and there were two of them. If one fucked up, hopefully the other would cover.

 The Petrillis had arrived outside the Boulevard Gouin mansion just eight minutes ago, and were still checking out the perimeter railings and the house beyond to finalise their plan when the double gates opened and Jean-Paul’s Cadillac swung out.

They were startled, and it took a second for them to kick into action. Lorenzo fumbled before finally firing up the car, then swung around and started to close some of the long gap that had opened up.

Two hundred yards along, Jean-Paul turned left into Avenue Christophe Colomb. He was oblivious to the car lights trailing a steady fifty yards behind as he took out his mobile. Suddenly he’d thought of how he might be able to help Georges. The most unlikely of calls, but it was all he could think of.

He tapped out the number and a woman’s voice answered. ‘Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Dorchester Boulevard.’

‘Staff-Sergeant Michel Chenouda, please.’

THIRTY-FOUR

  Lorena held her breath for a moment, listening.

The faint, muffled voices she’d heard downstairs had stopped. Her stepparents had stopped talking. Sound of footsteps on the stairs now. Mr Ryall or Mrs Ryall? After a second she could pick out that the step was lighter: Mrs Ryall.

She settled back again and eased out her breath. Probably Mr Ryall wouldn’t come to her room this first night, he’d wait a few days. But the waiting would be almost as bad as the fear that he might come in at any minute.

She was tired, very tired. She’d slept on the flight, but only a couple of hours. And now it was three or four in the morning. She’d lost track. But she felt almost too afraid to fall asleep in case Mr Ryall
did
come to her room.

Maybe once she’d heard his footsteps come up the stairs and head for his room, she could relax a little. But then several times he’d come out of his room without warning an hour or two later to see her. It was almost like he knew instinctively the best time to visit, when she was at her most drowsy, her defences weak.

But what would she do? She couldn’t stay awake every night, waiting. She remembered in the sewers when Patrika died, for several nights after they’d laid awake for hours listening out if the waters might be rising again. But after a few nights they were exhausted and would have slept through anything.

What had Dr Lowndes said?
When he starts counting down, put other numbers and thoughts in your head. Act as if you’re succumbing, falling under, but all the time keep your mind alert, resist.
If she didn’t get sleep, then her mind simply wouldn’t be alert enough to be able to resist.

She held her breath again for a second, listening. Footsteps starting up the stairs, heavier this time. Mr Ryall!

She swallowed hard, looking over at the large Mountie bear. She’d positioned it where they told her, looking straight at her and the bed. Perhaps it would have been better if they hadn’t told her anything about it all. They’d tried to put her mind at rest:
‘Don’t worry, as soon as he starts touching you, we’ll be there. That’s the whole idea: to stop him touching you once and for all.’

She said she could do it. But now as the moment was upon her, her nerves were racing out of control. Her whole body had broken out in a sweat. Mr Ryall was bound to notice her fear, her body’s trembling.

Footsteps moving closer, creaking some boards among the top steps.