House of War. Scott Mariani

wasn’t among them, so Ben assumed she’d been behind the camera. Photography hadn’t been her greatest talent in life, that was for sure.

      When he tried to open the fifth and most recent picture file, just three days old, he discovered two things about it. First, that it wasn’t a picture file at all but a much larger video clip. Second, that it was encrypted.

      A window popped up requesting a PIN number. Beneath that was a prompt asking him ‘Forget your passcode?’ When he tapped it, the phone asked him for a security question. Which could be anything in the world, and after a couple of failed attempts the whole phone might lock itself up. He didn’t even bother trying.

      Now why would Romy have encrypted the video file when she hadn’t made any attempt to protect the rest of her phone data? That fact alone singled it out as an item of particular interest, and Ben’s curiosity was piqued. It could be all kinds of things. Something private, obviously. Possibly something very personal that Romy didn’t want anyone to see.

      Which left open the possibility that the clip could be something more pertinent to the questions Ben was trying to answer. He needed to get into that video file.

      He was no expert on how to access inaccessible digital data. But he knew someone who was.

       Chapter 11

      Thierry Chevrolet wasn’t named after a famous American automobile marque. His surname was derived from an old French word meaning a goat farmer. But goat farming wasn’t how Thierry made his living, either.

      Back when Ben had operated as a freelance kidnap and hostage rescue specialist, his work had taken him to many different countries and necessitated a number of false identities. Passports, driving licences, ID cards and other official papers all had to be perfect to avoid unnecessary entanglements with the authorities and allow him to slip about under the radar. He’d gone to a couple of dodgy characters in the forgery trade, one in London, one in Amsterdam, before he’d found the then twenty-nine-year-old Thierry working out of a tiny apartment in Paris. He was a nervous, skinny guy with a bush of Afro hair and a reedy moustache, and talked in a whispery voice owing to the fact that he only had one lung. Hardly the archetype of the master criminal. But after seeing a sample of his work Ben had hired him on the spot to produce a variety of false papers. He’d been more than pleased with the results.

      Now and then things would get hot and one of Ben’s fake identities would have to be ditched and replaced, so he had been able to offer Thierry a steady stream of work. The pair had got to know each other well. Ben had discovered that in addition to being an excellent forger, Thierry was also a wizard with anything techno-orientated. On a few occasions he’d employed him to hack emails, raid computer files and unlock phones ‘confiscated’ from associates of kidnappers. If Thierry couldn’t hack and crack his way into it, you might as well toss it in the bin.

      And now Ben had a new assignment for him.

      Last time they’d had dealings was years ago, before Ben had retired from freelance work, moved to France full-time and joined up with Jeff Dekker to set up the tactical training centre at Le Val. He had no idea whether the guy was still active.

      Ben levered up the loose floorboard in the safehouse’s bedroom, dug around in the cavity below and pulled out a padded envelope sealed with tape. Inside were a couple of examples of Thierry’s artistry, a British passport in the name Paul Harris, and a French one for the fictitious Vincent Fournier. Each had served him well on a few occasions.

      Wrapped up with the fake passports was a dog-eared old notebook in which Ben had kept lists of contacts in those days. Thierry’s number was marked just by the letter T. He dialled it, but there was no answer. Maybe it was a long shot. Thierry could have changed his phone, or emigrated, or gone straight and got a job, or died, or been caught and sent to jail. Any of which possibilities would leave Ben in a tricky situation. The issue wasn’t finding someone else who could unlock the encrypted video file. It was finding someone who wouldn’t ask questions about what Ben was doing with a phone belonging to the victim of an unsolved murder. Petty crooks often greased the wheels of their good fortune by acting as police informants on the side. Thierry, by contrast, was far too honourable a criminal to ever rat on a client.

      Ben ruminated on his problem by brewing up another pot of Lavazza. In his experience, solutions often presented themselves just by virtue of drinking more coffee. There was no such thing as too much.

      And experience proved right when, halfway through his second cup, the phone buzzed with Thierry’s number on the screen.

      Ben answered, expecting to hear the forger’s familiar raspy, whispery tones. But it wasn’t Thierry calling. It was a woman, and she sounded pissed off. Even more so when she heard Ben’s voice.

      She said, ‘Shit. I thought it was him.’

      ‘Thierry?’

      ‘You a friend of his? Because if you are, tell him Abby wants his fucking junk out of her fucking place, or she’s gonna torch the lot of it. Okay?’

      Ben presumed he was talking to Abby. It sounded like Thierry’s life had gone through some changes since Ben had last been in touch. No girlfriend had ever been mentioned before.

      Ben said, ‘You don’t know where he is?’

      ‘No, I fucking don’t know where he is. Who’re you, anyway?’

      ‘My name’s Ben. I need to find him.’

      ‘I get the picture. You’re one of them. Well, if you’re gonna fuck him over, just make sure he clears his junk out of my place first, okay? It’s so jam packed in here you can hardly fart.’

      Abby was evidently a classy sort of gal. Ben asked, ‘Is Thierry in trouble?’

      She paused. ‘Would you be asking me that if you were one of them?’

      ‘I’m not. Cross my heart and hope to die.’

      ‘Thierry is trouble,’ she sighed. ‘Story of my life.’

      ‘What happened?’

      ‘Same old, same old. Except this time he went too far. I told him, “Thierry, you get in debt to those people, you’ll regret it.” Did he listen to me? Did he ever?’

      ‘Who did he borrow from?’

      Abby made a grumphing sound. ‘The kind of people who break your arms and fuck up your knees up with hammers, if you don’t pay them back pronto, with interest.’

      ‘How much does he owe?’

      ‘Enough to piss them off that he hasn’t repaid a cent of it.’

      ‘So now he’s hiding from them.’

      She paused to take a noisy drag on a cigarette, then grumphed again. ‘Skipped out two weeks ago. Not heard from him since. So fucking typical, you know? That’s it this time. We’re finished. You tell him that, if you see him. And I want—’

      ‘His junk out of your place. I get that. Listen, Abby, I really do need to find him. Maybe I can help him.’

      ‘I don’t give a shit if you can help him or not. He’s got it coming.’ She sucked on the cigarette again, and seemed about to hang up the call. Then she blew out an exasperated sigh and said, ‘You could try that slimeball Pierrot. They hang out together. He might be lying low there. I don’t want to call, because Pierrot is such a creep. The way he pervs on me makes me want to fucking puke.’

      She gave Ben an address for the creepy slimeball. He wrote it down, thanked her and promised to remind Thierry about the junk. She said, ‘Whatever,’ and hung up.

      Ben slugged down the last of his coffee, grabbed his car keys, locked up the apartment and was on his way.