“Yeah.” Colin walked over to Caelan and went down on his haunches. “Caelan, bud. I’m going to untie you, okay?”
“Russia spans eleven time zones.” Caelan nodded, then didn’t stop. A tear ran down his cheek. “The length of a day on Earth is twenty-three hours and fifty-six minutes.”
“I know it’s hard, superman.” Vinnie’s tone was gentle. “But you’re doing a great job.”
“Uh, Vin.” Colin prodded the rope. “This is a double fisherman’s knot.”
“Fuck.”
“What’s a bloody double fisherman’s knot?” Manny took a step back to better see everyone.
“Something that I’m not going to be able to untie. Not tonight. These knots were designed to be nigh-on impossible to untie.” Colin looked up at Vinnie. “You have your knife on you?”
“Of course.” Vinnie reached into one of the side pockets of his combat trousers and handed Colin a red multi-purpose knife.
Colin sat down on the floor. “Caelan, bud. I’m going to cut through this. Then we’ll have you out of here and safely at home with some white cookies and milk. Or Vin can make you some of his pasta with white beans and white cheese sauce. Would you like that?”
“China encompasses five time zones, even though the entire country only uses one!”
Colin opened the knife and cut at the length of rope not tied around Caelan’s leg, but the part connected to the chair. He grunted and sat back. “Well, shit.”
“Speak.” Manny’s scowl intensified.
“This rope has a wire core as well as thin wires threaded in the nylon.”
Caelan recited another fact and I had to force myself to slow my breathing.
“Can you cut through it?” Manny asked.
Colin looked at Vinnie. “Did you bring your toolbox?”
“Yeah, but Pink borrowed my wire cutter yesterday. Fuck. I don’t have anything in there that will cut through it.” He nodded at the knife in Colin’s hand. “The best bet is to saw through the wire with that. It will take longer, but that’s an ace knife. It will do the job.”
“What about me?” Fran?ois’ voice had a hysterical tone to it. “What are you going to do to get this off me?”
“We’re waiting for the bomb squad.” Vinnie pressed down on Fran?ois’ shoulder when the injured man started to move. “Just don’t fucking move.”
“I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this. Get this off me.”
The thought of Fran?ois acting on his neurotypical panic and mindlessly struggling to get away brought more darkness to my mind. I pushed hard at it and tried to concentrate. There had to be something I could do to help. It felt like I was fighting against an invisible force to get my mind to let go of the panic and focus on something proactive. “Why did Shahab torture you?”
Fran?ois took a sharp breath and looked at me. “Because he found out I wanted to take his business away from him.”
His frankness surprised me and also didn’t surprise me. In Phillip’s conference room, he’d appeared desperate to share whatever had caused him such fear. It was, however, unusual for someone from his background to disclose criminal activity so quickly.
“What business?” I asked.
“You know.” He started shrugging, but stopped when Vinnie increased the pressure on his shoulder. He winced. He sighed heavily, then winced again, his arms moving closer to his torso, to his broken ribs. “Drugs. I was going to take some of his drug business to fund my art business.”
“You had a plan.” And I wanted to know what it was.
“Yes. Well, élodie had a plan.” His sigh was sad. “I liked her. It’s awful that she died at Shahab’s hand.”
“Why did he torture her?”
“To find out where all the crates with Shahab’s product were, of course.”
“Let’s get back to the plan.” Manny took a step closer. “Tell me about that.”
“élodie had figured out most of Shahab’s operation. She had it all mapped out. She knew how he got his product into France, she knew where he got his product from and she had figured out most of his distributors. It must have been one of those fuckers who told Shahab that we were offering them a better deal.”
“What deal?” I asked when he glanced down at his torso and his eyes widened. “Were you offering them more money?’
“No. A partnership. élodie had it all figured out. She was working with the manager from this storage place. He was going to be the import point for us. The guy had been accepting all kinds of illegal shipments for years, including Shahab’s stuff. He got all this at his courier business. Somehow, élodie found out about that and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”
Something in his tone made me frown.
“You mean she blackmailed him.” Vinnie must have also heard the tone.
“It was her original plan. But when she went to Gilles, he was so excited about the quantity and the kind of money she was talking about, he immediately agreed to accidentally lose one shipment. He would then bring it here. From here, Gilles and I would co-operate in future deals. élodie only wanted to do this one deal. Nothing more.”
“How’re you doing there, Frey?” Manny narrowed his eyes to see past Colin’s hands.
“Slowly, but surely.” Colin didn’t look up.
“An African elephant is pregnant for twenty-two months!” Caelan had slowed his rocking, but now it increased again.
“Oh, God.” Fran?ois groaned. “We’re going to die here. I should never have gone against Shahab.”
“Where did Shahab get his heroin from?” I needed Fran?ois’ attention away from the situation. And I needed something to focus on.
“Rudbar. It’s a small town in Iran. Shahab has a registered vineyard there. And they don’t produce wine.”
“He used the vineyard as a cover.”
“A great cover, as it turns out. He’s been importing crates of wine bottles to France for nine years already. His shipments were always about the same size as the one Gilles had brought here. Twelve crates.” He closed his eyes again, a tear rolling down his cheek. “We really thought we had planned it all out.”
“What went wrong?”
“Shahab has many contacts. He would never have known that Gilles had changed the recipients. élodie helped him and they covered their tracks really well. They made it look like the crates never left Iran. But Shahab had someone at the port in Iran who told him the crates made it to France. His contact at the French port confirmed it.”
“That’s why Shahab came to Strasbourg.”
“Yes.” Fran?ois swallowed. “He went straight to élodie’s house. She’d only taken four crates. Shahab told me that she wasn’t able to tell him a lot before she died.”
“She had a pre-existing heart condition. The stress of the torture gave her a heart attack.”
“Shit. I didn’t know that.” Fran?ois took a shaky breath. “Shahab took the four crates from her house and went looking for the rest. When he didn’t find it and those people he tortured knew nothing about this, he went back to her house to see if she’d lied and maybe had it hidden somewhere.”
That explained why Shahab had spent an hour in Adèle’s house after he’d sent the officers away. Colin grunted and I looked over. He was still sawing away at the rope. It looked like he was almost halfway through. Caelan had calmed down a bit, but was still rocking.
“Did Adèl... élodie tell him about this warehouse?” Manny asked.
“No.” Fran?ois groaned. “He told me she only had time to tell him she had stored the crates in a warehouse, but not which one. It took him a few days to figure that out. Then he found out about the treasure-hunting young people.”
“Geocaching,” Vinnie said. “Not treasure-hunting.”
“Well, he went after them.” He shivered. “First that young man. Then those other two. He made me take them out of his SUV and hide them in the forest. The first time I was lucky. The second time... those women saw me before I could get away. Shahab had already left and I was stuck there with the police. And somewhere in the process of killing these young people he found out about Gilles’ role in this takeover.”
“When did Shahab tell you this?” Manny asked
“When he still considered me a business partner.”