Traitor - Victor Series 10 (2022), page 18
Inside, he found himself drawn to a particular reception room. It had been there the first time they had met and conversed. She had found him playing the grand piano, albeit with a clunking lack of practice. All such rooms had ceilings that rose over three times his height. The floors were polished parquet. The fireplace was so huge he would have no trouble incinerating a body within it.
She had portraits on the walls of old movie stars from the era when they would have attended the film festival in nearby Cannes and enjoyed after-parties of wild decadence at the chateau held by the previous owner – before he fell into spiralling debt and eventual bankruptcy. Phoenix said she had been born three generations too late and bemoaned the fact that she never had the chance to enjoy the roaring twenties, beyond the old movies she played most nights in the chateau’s cinema room. She longed to wear low-waisted dresses, cloche hats and ‘all the pearls’. When Victor once suggested there was nothing stopping her, she had shrugged the comment away.
This area of the coast was known as the English quarter, for the original aristocrats that had once summered here. Then, for the influx of expatriates after the Second World War. She told him that the war had changed Europe so much it had altered its very soul. After so much bloodshed, there was no way back. The consciousness of the continent would be forever marred. No such conflict would ever be repeated and yet Europe would never escape its legacy. No one had really won that war because generations later, people were still affected. A Royal Navy serviceman who had seen unspeakable things would return home never to speak of them, instead drinking whatever it took to drown out the voices of those who had drowned and, in that inebriation, inflicting pain on his children who he would otherwise cherish. In turn, those children would grow up scarred by such experiences and, like their father, they would hurt their own sons and daughters, although in different ways. And those children would grow up with different scars, perhaps scars so raw they had no sons and daughters of their own. So the war that ended long ago was still stealing away lives decades later.
Of course, he knew Phoenix was talking about herself. She didn’t need to admit it. He never asked her why she lived alone in a chateau that could house dozens. He wasn’t sure of the exact measurements but there had to be a kilometre squared of space in just the chateau itself. It had eight bedrooms, two of which were suites the size of family condos. Both of the latter had been renovated back to their original glory. Phoenix alternated between them, spending the summer in the south-facing master bedroom overlooking the coast, and the winter on the opposite side of the chateau, where she could retract the drapes in the morning to see the snow-capped Alps dominating the horizon.
In their interludes, she had been content enough to tell him about herself. At first, he had found this perplexing and assumed any insight she provided was merely manipulation or distraction. Victor generally only told anyone any specifics about himself if he was about to kill them and it wouldn’t matter what they heard. Eventually, he had come to understand that Phoenix was honest with him in a way he could never be with her. He found this reckless. He felt honour bound at times to remind her of the inevitable conclusion to their business relationship and so she was putting herself at an eventual disadvantage by being so candid with him. He had not, of course. While it felt unfair in the purest sense – like cheating at a game with strict rules – Victor welcomed the additions to his mental dossier on her. When the time came, there would be no rules, he had always known. That particular game was one in which Victor would gladly cheat in order to win.
Now, he wondered if she understood this too and simply didn’t care. He had found her once before, after all. He knew where she lived and she wasn’t prepared to move. I only run on a treadmill, she had once told him, and only then if the gym has a bottle of champagne on ice next to the machine. So, when he already knew all he needed to know about her from a professionally minded perspective, what did it matter what else he knew? Knowing where she went to school made no difference in that context. Such insight did not make her any easier to kill.
He found no sign of her anywhere in the building. There was almost nothing to say it was her home. He had hoped to get here before she learned of the massacre in Nice’s Old Town. Not unexpected to arrive too late, however. She was a smart woman. She may have had misplaced faith in the kill team’s abilities – nine gunmen sounded a lot on paper – but she knew the risk of going after him. While not quite at his own level of prudence, she was a careful woman. No one became such a prolific broker of contract killings by for-going caution. He imagined her far away by now. Perhaps she’d been far away long before he saw the open shutter in a building that should have none.
He couldn’t blame her. He had always considered theirs to be a temporary arrangement. Betrayal was inevitable given enough time. His mistake was not killing her in that hotel suite when he had had the chance. When he had merely been pondering the merits of such an action, she must have already decided on his fate.
Victor knew that in most fights whoever threw the first punch tended to emerge victorious.
Hers, however, had missed.
She would try again, he knew.
Whether she had that second punch ready or whether she was now hastily preparing it, he couldn’t know. But it made no difference. He should already be out of the country. Protocol instructed him to get out of Europe altogether. Maybe never come back.
You’ll like Relou, she had told him during their previous time together. He’s quite the mystery man too.
If Phoenix thought he would run, she didn’t know him at all.
Victor was going nowhere.
FORTY-EIGHT
In the early years after he lured her away from politics, Maxim had shielded Zakharova from much of the violence committed by the organisation, keeping her at his side as an assistant, then adviser, until, one by one, he had her running the Brotherhood’s various operations. By the time he could no longer draw a veil between her and the reality of the business, there was no longer any need. Her will was as cast iron as her stomach. She was just as ruthless as he had once been.
And though Maxim was still technically the head of the Bratva, she was a far better boss than he had ever been. It was a source of genuine pain that he could never tell her that. Because, though he knew her well enough to know she had no desire to usurp him, he could not risk inadvertently lighting a new fire of ambition inside Zakharova. She respected him. She valued his opinion. If he told her she was a better boss than he then maybe she would start seeing herself as the true boss with Maxim on a throne that belonged to her.
The thought of Zakharova as an enemy terrified him.
He felt guilty withholding rightful praise, but was comforted by the knowledge she need only wait a few more years to receive what was hers in all but name.
When she entered the drawing room of his dacha, he was pouring her a coffee from a silver pot; it had been freshly brewed by his serving staff the moment security buzzed her through the main gate.
‘How did the president take the news you were no longer coming to Belarus?’
‘He was predictably displeased,’ she answered in her careful tone. ‘But he appreciates this is a personal matter that requires our undivided attention.’
Maxim lowered a sugar cube into the coffee he had poured, and stirred with a tiny silver spoon.
She nodded her gratitude as he presented the coffee to her. ‘Oksana?’
‘Is distraught.’
Zakharova sipped her beverage.
‘I am to blame, she tells me,’ Borisyuk continued with a resigned sigh. ‘I should never have had Kirill go to America in the first place.’
‘What do you want to do?’
Once, Maxim had considered proposing. Despite the lack of any affection between them, he had thought about it for his daughter’s sake. Oksana would have been thrilled for him to have someone, he knew. It was a silly idea, of course. Zakharova would only decline the offer, however beneficial it might be to her in the short term, and she could never respect him again after that.
He told her, ‘I want to hear your thoughts.’
‘Kirill was facing many years in prison. Even with the best lawyers we could get him, there was only so much that could be done.’
‘For all his weaknesses, he was no coward. And he loved my daughter very much, whatever their marital problems.’
‘He was always indulgent,’ she said, ever tactful.
‘I could believe an accidental overdose of heroin, but not painkillers prescribed by a doctor.’
‘I feel as though you’ve already made up your mind.’
He thought about this for a moment, then shook his head. ‘That mind you mention would like assurances, one way or the other.’
Zakharova said, ‘Tell me what you need.’
‘I’m going to be busy for the rest of the week,’ he told her without looking her way. ‘So, you will need to take care of the specifics.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I will reach out to our friends in Washington to make sure they know we expect expedient answers, with nothing left to assumptions. Naturally, I will arrange for Kirill’s corpse to be returned just as soon as they have conducted the appropriate examinations and tests.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Maxim said, impatient. ‘I know all of that. I want our people to look into it too.’
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ she replied in a careful tone. Though they could talk with frankness, she had no wish to insult him. ‘The Americans will be doing a thorough job, I’m certain, even without my call. I don’t know what else our own investigators could achieve beyond drawing avoidable attention to Kirill’s activities and –’ she looked towards a framed photograph of his daughter ‘– his associations.’
‘I didn’t say I wanted a team of soldiers on US soil, knocking heads together,’ he explained, losing patience. ‘I don’t want a hammer. I want a scalpel.’
‘I see,’ she said after a moment’s pause.
‘You disagree with my strategy?’
‘I think these things have a tendency to cascade in unpredictable directions,’ was her tactful answer. ‘Any one of those directions can be bad for business.’
‘You’re right,’ Maxim agreed. ‘Of course you’re right.’ He picked up the framed photograph of Oksana smiling. ‘But I need the truth. I won’t lie to my daughter, and I won’t leave her with any questions unanswered. Maybe I am to blame. If so, I need to know. I need someone to get those answers, no matter what.’
‘I understand the position you’re in,’ she said, setting her cup and saucer down. ‘And you’d like me to reach out to him?’
Maxim nodded.
‘There’s really nothing I can say to dissuade you, is there?’
‘If I can take away even a single tear of her pain, I will do so whatever the complications,’ he said. ‘Fetch me my scalpel.’
FORTY-NINE
It was afternoon by the time Victor reached Marseille. He had abandoned the stolen car in one of the small towns along the coast and taken the train the rest of the way. There was something unkempt about the city that set it apart from its neighbours on the Riviera. Many districts were centuries old and now crumbling. It was not as picturesque as Nice, nor as friendly. It was dirty around the harbour and the many open-air markets. Crowded. The crime rate was high. It had a long history of criminal activities, once being the primary route into Europe for the heroin trade. Organised-crime killings were frequent. The city housed many rival gangs in a constant struggle for territory and supremacy. The northern districts were most known for their gang-related crime. Many neighbourhoods were considered no-go areas.
Victor had always liked it regardless. He didn’t trust a city that was too clean. As much crime happened in sparkling skyscrapers as it did in dark alleyways. At least the thieves in the latter operated under no false pretences and without laws not only protecting them but encouraging them too.
The immediate environs of the station were not pleasant. He saw prostitutes and drug dealers without needing to look. Thieves were everywhere, as were signs of homelessness and addiction. Two preachers, both with megaphones, competed to be heard, one offering salvation through Jesus and the other redemption via Mohammed. They were ignored equally by passers-by.
He knew what he wanted to find and yet had no idea how to find it.
Victor thought about what Phoenix had said the last time he had seen her. Relou, the tailor with whom she had offered to arrange a fitting. They were on excellent terms. She knew him some other way beyond his current trade. She called him a mystery man. She said Victor would like him; she seemed unreasonably confident of that fact. Which told him she knew Relou in the same way she knew Victor. Did that mean theirs had been a business relationship or that they too had strayed beyond those professional boundaries? He wasn’t sure. At the time he had filed the information away in his mind for potential use at an interval far into the future. He expected to have followed up on Relou at some point, but way before he had the need.
Phoenix had told him Marseille was no Paris when it came to tailors, which both helped him and made looking for Relou more difficult. Had Marseille had its own Savile Row, or rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, as she had remarked, he would have known exactly where to begin his search. Neither the internet nor the phone directory was going to help him. Relou was a nickname, not a given name. It meant he was irritating, which Victor found odd as she seemed so fond of him. Perhaps, while she had appeared to be forthcoming about Relou, she had still kept her professional distance. Relou might have been a name she made up in the moment so as not to reveal too much to Victor. She might have made the initial offer with sincerity and honesty, and then realised she was saying too much and held back on giving away too many details.
With so many corpses in Nice and a threat still out there, wandering directionless around Marseille was no kind of plan. Victor could fit in almost anywhere and yet he was still an outsider here. If anyone had followed him, or was looking for him here, he was at a considerable disadvantage. He wouldn’t know their faces until they gave themselves away. If they were locals, the difficulty in picking them out of a crowd would significantly increase.
He had no choice. He searched the city for tailor’s shops, for Relou.
Any he found were shut on a Sunday, of course. He would need to come back in the morning. Still, finding them now meant time saved tomorrow. Marseille looked more welcoming in the morning sunshine. Like any city, it had extreme contrasts between its districts and neighbourhoods, rich and poor, but here in the centre the poverty was pushed to one side. Hidden away, almost, so as not to upset the tourists. And like any city, its retail centre was vast. Victor ignored the shopping malls, department stores and the large stores along the main thoroughfares. Instead, he looked along the side streets. In his experience, the best artisans were small outfits who lacked the means to pay the extortionate rents of the prime retail centres and had no need to do so as well. Discerning customers willing to pay premium prices for excellent quality were also willing to walk a little further to make their purchases.
Globalism spared no one. Once there had been dozens of bespoke tailors of renown stretching across the Riviera. Now, such artisans were rare. International brands had swallowed up almost all of the fine independent establishments.
Relou would have his own store, bought with the proceeds from his previous career, and Victor could not imagine a tailor Phoenix spoke highly of belonging to a soulless corporate brand.
By the time the sun was setting, Victor stopped in front of a tailor’s with no storefront, no well-presented mannequins on display. The simple signage showed the silhouette of a man in a suit above text reading DEPUIS 1907.
The lack of a storefront had obvious privacy and security advantages. The street itself was pedestrianised and narrow. Shadows had nowhere to wait and watch. No road meant no drive-by attacks and no vehicles parked up with a kill team waiting inside.
If this was Relou’s shop, he had chosen well.
Victor intended to tell him so in the morning.
After performing countersurveillance, Victor slept in the worst hotel he could find. A rundown, filthy establishment in one of the most crime-infested areas of the city, where the centuries-old buildings had succumbed to so much subsidence and decay over the years that while there was maybe two metres distance between the buildings at ground level, the guttering of each rooftop almost touched. Drugs were sold openly on the street outside the hotel and escorts waited for the elevator while he took the stairs to his room. In other circumstances he would have stayed up until dawn and slept until noon. Instead, he slept while he could.
Another day, he decied, was all he could risk. Any longer and he might as well hand himself in to the authorities. One more day before leaving the city, then the country and finally the continent. He wouldn’t plan his route so no one could intercept him on the way. He would let randomness decide the specifics later.
If he didn’t find Phoenix soon, he never would.
FIFTY
Marseille looked more welcoming in the morning sunshine. Victor was performing countersurveillance before the stores had opened, continuing to watch out for other kill teams as well as the security services as he bought new clothes and disposed of his old ones. The tailor’s he figured could be Relou’s was along a narrow street shadowed by the tall buildings on either side. A café stood on the corner, followed by several fashion boutiques with large and elaborate signage that blocked any view of the tailor’s sign until Victor was almost in front of it. Each storefront was narrow and yet the tailor’s was narrower, consisting of no more than a door painted in glossy black and a brass intercom panel. He turned side-on to let pedestrians walk past him. The street was only wide enough for two people without having to squeeze or stand aside, or a single person and their shopping bags. He removed his sunglasses and hung them by the arm from his jacket’s breast pocket. Shadowed from the sun, he was cool as waited a moment to ensure no threats appeared at either end of the street.
She had portraits on the walls of old movie stars from the era when they would have attended the film festival in nearby Cannes and enjoyed after-parties of wild decadence at the chateau held by the previous owner – before he fell into spiralling debt and eventual bankruptcy. Phoenix said she had been born three generations too late and bemoaned the fact that she never had the chance to enjoy the roaring twenties, beyond the old movies she played most nights in the chateau’s cinema room. She longed to wear low-waisted dresses, cloche hats and ‘all the pearls’. When Victor once suggested there was nothing stopping her, she had shrugged the comment away.
This area of the coast was known as the English quarter, for the original aristocrats that had once summered here. Then, for the influx of expatriates after the Second World War. She told him that the war had changed Europe so much it had altered its very soul. After so much bloodshed, there was no way back. The consciousness of the continent would be forever marred. No such conflict would ever be repeated and yet Europe would never escape its legacy. No one had really won that war because generations later, people were still affected. A Royal Navy serviceman who had seen unspeakable things would return home never to speak of them, instead drinking whatever it took to drown out the voices of those who had drowned and, in that inebriation, inflicting pain on his children who he would otherwise cherish. In turn, those children would grow up scarred by such experiences and, like their father, they would hurt their own sons and daughters, although in different ways. And those children would grow up with different scars, perhaps scars so raw they had no sons and daughters of their own. So the war that ended long ago was still stealing away lives decades later.
Of course, he knew Phoenix was talking about herself. She didn’t need to admit it. He never asked her why she lived alone in a chateau that could house dozens. He wasn’t sure of the exact measurements but there had to be a kilometre squared of space in just the chateau itself. It had eight bedrooms, two of which were suites the size of family condos. Both of the latter had been renovated back to their original glory. Phoenix alternated between them, spending the summer in the south-facing master bedroom overlooking the coast, and the winter on the opposite side of the chateau, where she could retract the drapes in the morning to see the snow-capped Alps dominating the horizon.
In their interludes, she had been content enough to tell him about herself. At first, he had found this perplexing and assumed any insight she provided was merely manipulation or distraction. Victor generally only told anyone any specifics about himself if he was about to kill them and it wouldn’t matter what they heard. Eventually, he had come to understand that Phoenix was honest with him in a way he could never be with her. He found this reckless. He felt honour bound at times to remind her of the inevitable conclusion to their business relationship and so she was putting herself at an eventual disadvantage by being so candid with him. He had not, of course. While it felt unfair in the purest sense – like cheating at a game with strict rules – Victor welcomed the additions to his mental dossier on her. When the time came, there would be no rules, he had always known. That particular game was one in which Victor would gladly cheat in order to win.
Now, he wondered if she understood this too and simply didn’t care. He had found her once before, after all. He knew where she lived and she wasn’t prepared to move. I only run on a treadmill, she had once told him, and only then if the gym has a bottle of champagne on ice next to the machine. So, when he already knew all he needed to know about her from a professionally minded perspective, what did it matter what else he knew? Knowing where she went to school made no difference in that context. Such insight did not make her any easier to kill.
He found no sign of her anywhere in the building. There was almost nothing to say it was her home. He had hoped to get here before she learned of the massacre in Nice’s Old Town. Not unexpected to arrive too late, however. She was a smart woman. She may have had misplaced faith in the kill team’s abilities – nine gunmen sounded a lot on paper – but she knew the risk of going after him. While not quite at his own level of prudence, she was a careful woman. No one became such a prolific broker of contract killings by for-going caution. He imagined her far away by now. Perhaps she’d been far away long before he saw the open shutter in a building that should have none.
He couldn’t blame her. He had always considered theirs to be a temporary arrangement. Betrayal was inevitable given enough time. His mistake was not killing her in that hotel suite when he had had the chance. When he had merely been pondering the merits of such an action, she must have already decided on his fate.
Victor knew that in most fights whoever threw the first punch tended to emerge victorious.
Hers, however, had missed.
She would try again, he knew.
Whether she had that second punch ready or whether she was now hastily preparing it, he couldn’t know. But it made no difference. He should already be out of the country. Protocol instructed him to get out of Europe altogether. Maybe never come back.
You’ll like Relou, she had told him during their previous time together. He’s quite the mystery man too.
If Phoenix thought he would run, she didn’t know him at all.
Victor was going nowhere.
FORTY-EIGHT
In the early years after he lured her away from politics, Maxim had shielded Zakharova from much of the violence committed by the organisation, keeping her at his side as an assistant, then adviser, until, one by one, he had her running the Brotherhood’s various operations. By the time he could no longer draw a veil between her and the reality of the business, there was no longer any need. Her will was as cast iron as her stomach. She was just as ruthless as he had once been.
And though Maxim was still technically the head of the Bratva, she was a far better boss than he had ever been. It was a source of genuine pain that he could never tell her that. Because, though he knew her well enough to know she had no desire to usurp him, he could not risk inadvertently lighting a new fire of ambition inside Zakharova. She respected him. She valued his opinion. If he told her she was a better boss than he then maybe she would start seeing herself as the true boss with Maxim on a throne that belonged to her.
The thought of Zakharova as an enemy terrified him.
He felt guilty withholding rightful praise, but was comforted by the knowledge she need only wait a few more years to receive what was hers in all but name.
When she entered the drawing room of his dacha, he was pouring her a coffee from a silver pot; it had been freshly brewed by his serving staff the moment security buzzed her through the main gate.
‘How did the president take the news you were no longer coming to Belarus?’
‘He was predictably displeased,’ she answered in her careful tone. ‘But he appreciates this is a personal matter that requires our undivided attention.’
Maxim lowered a sugar cube into the coffee he had poured, and stirred with a tiny silver spoon.
She nodded her gratitude as he presented the coffee to her. ‘Oksana?’
‘Is distraught.’
Zakharova sipped her beverage.
‘I am to blame, she tells me,’ Borisyuk continued with a resigned sigh. ‘I should never have had Kirill go to America in the first place.’
‘What do you want to do?’
Once, Maxim had considered proposing. Despite the lack of any affection between them, he had thought about it for his daughter’s sake. Oksana would have been thrilled for him to have someone, he knew. It was a silly idea, of course. Zakharova would only decline the offer, however beneficial it might be to her in the short term, and she could never respect him again after that.
He told her, ‘I want to hear your thoughts.’
‘Kirill was facing many years in prison. Even with the best lawyers we could get him, there was only so much that could be done.’
‘For all his weaknesses, he was no coward. And he loved my daughter very much, whatever their marital problems.’
‘He was always indulgent,’ she said, ever tactful.
‘I could believe an accidental overdose of heroin, but not painkillers prescribed by a doctor.’
‘I feel as though you’ve already made up your mind.’
He thought about this for a moment, then shook his head. ‘That mind you mention would like assurances, one way or the other.’
Zakharova said, ‘Tell me what you need.’
‘I’m going to be busy for the rest of the week,’ he told her without looking her way. ‘So, you will need to take care of the specifics.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I will reach out to our friends in Washington to make sure they know we expect expedient answers, with nothing left to assumptions. Naturally, I will arrange for Kirill’s corpse to be returned just as soon as they have conducted the appropriate examinations and tests.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Maxim said, impatient. ‘I know all of that. I want our people to look into it too.’
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ she replied in a careful tone. Though they could talk with frankness, she had no wish to insult him. ‘The Americans will be doing a thorough job, I’m certain, even without my call. I don’t know what else our own investigators could achieve beyond drawing avoidable attention to Kirill’s activities and –’ she looked towards a framed photograph of his daughter ‘– his associations.’
‘I didn’t say I wanted a team of soldiers on US soil, knocking heads together,’ he explained, losing patience. ‘I don’t want a hammer. I want a scalpel.’
‘I see,’ she said after a moment’s pause.
‘You disagree with my strategy?’
‘I think these things have a tendency to cascade in unpredictable directions,’ was her tactful answer. ‘Any one of those directions can be bad for business.’
‘You’re right,’ Maxim agreed. ‘Of course you’re right.’ He picked up the framed photograph of Oksana smiling. ‘But I need the truth. I won’t lie to my daughter, and I won’t leave her with any questions unanswered. Maybe I am to blame. If so, I need to know. I need someone to get those answers, no matter what.’
‘I understand the position you’re in,’ she said, setting her cup and saucer down. ‘And you’d like me to reach out to him?’
Maxim nodded.
‘There’s really nothing I can say to dissuade you, is there?’
‘If I can take away even a single tear of her pain, I will do so whatever the complications,’ he said. ‘Fetch me my scalpel.’
FORTY-NINE
It was afternoon by the time Victor reached Marseille. He had abandoned the stolen car in one of the small towns along the coast and taken the train the rest of the way. There was something unkempt about the city that set it apart from its neighbours on the Riviera. Many districts were centuries old and now crumbling. It was not as picturesque as Nice, nor as friendly. It was dirty around the harbour and the many open-air markets. Crowded. The crime rate was high. It had a long history of criminal activities, once being the primary route into Europe for the heroin trade. Organised-crime killings were frequent. The city housed many rival gangs in a constant struggle for territory and supremacy. The northern districts were most known for their gang-related crime. Many neighbourhoods were considered no-go areas.
Victor had always liked it regardless. He didn’t trust a city that was too clean. As much crime happened in sparkling skyscrapers as it did in dark alleyways. At least the thieves in the latter operated under no false pretences and without laws not only protecting them but encouraging them too.
The immediate environs of the station were not pleasant. He saw prostitutes and drug dealers without needing to look. Thieves were everywhere, as were signs of homelessness and addiction. Two preachers, both with megaphones, competed to be heard, one offering salvation through Jesus and the other redemption via Mohammed. They were ignored equally by passers-by.
He knew what he wanted to find and yet had no idea how to find it.
Victor thought about what Phoenix had said the last time he had seen her. Relou, the tailor with whom she had offered to arrange a fitting. They were on excellent terms. She knew him some other way beyond his current trade. She called him a mystery man. She said Victor would like him; she seemed unreasonably confident of that fact. Which told him she knew Relou in the same way she knew Victor. Did that mean theirs had been a business relationship or that they too had strayed beyond those professional boundaries? He wasn’t sure. At the time he had filed the information away in his mind for potential use at an interval far into the future. He expected to have followed up on Relou at some point, but way before he had the need.
Phoenix had told him Marseille was no Paris when it came to tailors, which both helped him and made looking for Relou more difficult. Had Marseille had its own Savile Row, or rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, as she had remarked, he would have known exactly where to begin his search. Neither the internet nor the phone directory was going to help him. Relou was a nickname, not a given name. It meant he was irritating, which Victor found odd as she seemed so fond of him. Perhaps, while she had appeared to be forthcoming about Relou, she had still kept her professional distance. Relou might have been a name she made up in the moment so as not to reveal too much to Victor. She might have made the initial offer with sincerity and honesty, and then realised she was saying too much and held back on giving away too many details.
With so many corpses in Nice and a threat still out there, wandering directionless around Marseille was no kind of plan. Victor could fit in almost anywhere and yet he was still an outsider here. If anyone had followed him, or was looking for him here, he was at a considerable disadvantage. He wouldn’t know their faces until they gave themselves away. If they were locals, the difficulty in picking them out of a crowd would significantly increase.
He had no choice. He searched the city for tailor’s shops, for Relou.
Any he found were shut on a Sunday, of course. He would need to come back in the morning. Still, finding them now meant time saved tomorrow. Marseille looked more welcoming in the morning sunshine. Like any city, it had extreme contrasts between its districts and neighbourhoods, rich and poor, but here in the centre the poverty was pushed to one side. Hidden away, almost, so as not to upset the tourists. And like any city, its retail centre was vast. Victor ignored the shopping malls, department stores and the large stores along the main thoroughfares. Instead, he looked along the side streets. In his experience, the best artisans were small outfits who lacked the means to pay the extortionate rents of the prime retail centres and had no need to do so as well. Discerning customers willing to pay premium prices for excellent quality were also willing to walk a little further to make their purchases.
Globalism spared no one. Once there had been dozens of bespoke tailors of renown stretching across the Riviera. Now, such artisans were rare. International brands had swallowed up almost all of the fine independent establishments.
Relou would have his own store, bought with the proceeds from his previous career, and Victor could not imagine a tailor Phoenix spoke highly of belonging to a soulless corporate brand.
By the time the sun was setting, Victor stopped in front of a tailor’s with no storefront, no well-presented mannequins on display. The simple signage showed the silhouette of a man in a suit above text reading DEPUIS 1907.
The lack of a storefront had obvious privacy and security advantages. The street itself was pedestrianised and narrow. Shadows had nowhere to wait and watch. No road meant no drive-by attacks and no vehicles parked up with a kill team waiting inside.
If this was Relou’s shop, he had chosen well.
Victor intended to tell him so in the morning.
After performing countersurveillance, Victor slept in the worst hotel he could find. A rundown, filthy establishment in one of the most crime-infested areas of the city, where the centuries-old buildings had succumbed to so much subsidence and decay over the years that while there was maybe two metres distance between the buildings at ground level, the guttering of each rooftop almost touched. Drugs were sold openly on the street outside the hotel and escorts waited for the elevator while he took the stairs to his room. In other circumstances he would have stayed up until dawn and slept until noon. Instead, he slept while he could.
Another day, he decied, was all he could risk. Any longer and he might as well hand himself in to the authorities. One more day before leaving the city, then the country and finally the continent. He wouldn’t plan his route so no one could intercept him on the way. He would let randomness decide the specifics later.
If he didn’t find Phoenix soon, he never would.
FIFTY
Marseille looked more welcoming in the morning sunshine. Victor was performing countersurveillance before the stores had opened, continuing to watch out for other kill teams as well as the security services as he bought new clothes and disposed of his old ones. The tailor’s he figured could be Relou’s was along a narrow street shadowed by the tall buildings on either side. A café stood on the corner, followed by several fashion boutiques with large and elaborate signage that blocked any view of the tailor’s sign until Victor was almost in front of it. Each storefront was narrow and yet the tailor’s was narrower, consisting of no more than a door painted in glossy black and a brass intercom panel. He turned side-on to let pedestrians walk past him. The street was only wide enough for two people without having to squeeze or stand aside, or a single person and their shopping bags. He removed his sunglasses and hung them by the arm from his jacket’s breast pocket. Shadowed from the sun, he was cool as waited a moment to ensure no threats appeared at either end of the street.
