That Will Do Nicely by Ian Campbell

Author:Ian Campbell [Campbell, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Retail, Suspense, Thriller
Publisher: Amazon.com
Published: 2013-11-10T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

The best laid plans of mice and men…

They slept the sleep of the dead until they were eventually woken by the hotelier's insistent knocking on their door. It took Pascoe several seconds to work out where he was. Sam merely stirred, turned onto her other side and drifted straight back off to sleep.

"C'est l'heure," came the call from through the door.

"O.K." Shouted Pascoe, wondering if the expression meant the same in French. His watch, showed it was 10.30 a.m., and he realized how tired he must have been from the exertions of the previous week. After a quick shave, he went down to the bar to breakfast alone.

"Nom de dieu. Quelle heure a-t'il?" His friend ribbed him, looking at his watch.

"Onze heures moins le quart," Pascoe replied.

"Onze heures moins le quart? Regard," said his friend Delangue, pointing to to the clock above the bar, "c'est presque midi!" Pascoe had forgotten the time difference which meant that they had slept in until nearly mid-day. The hotelier, Gilbert Delangue, put his arm around Pascoe's shoulder and walked him toward the bar, switching to English, which he spoke like a native.

"She must have given you a hard night.., that new woman of yours. She is delightful, yes?"

"You could say that." Pascoe didn't want to get into a conversation which would inevitably lead to discussing the split with his wife, so he allowed the Frenchman to fantasize.

"It is almost mid-day, my friend, time for a glass - it will for you be breakfast!" Delangue poured from the bottle of Pastis they had started the previous evening. Pascoe knowing it would be futile to protest waited until after the second glass before he excused himself and returned to Sam.

Because they had overslept, it was past five o'clock when they finally reached Paris by train. Pascoe made straight for a place he knew of old in the nearby Rue des Petits Hotels. Across the Channel events had been gathering pace.

Luck had finally ran out for the American who had called himself O'Hara. He had chosen to work Heathrow airport again, on the same day that one of the special police anti-pickpocket squads had concentrated on the international arrival lounge. By the time he'd been arrested it had been too late to do anything except brazen it out. Too late to run. Too late to protest his innocence as the police had captured the whole episode on video. Even the 'victim' he had selected turned out to be a plain clothes detective and they also had the evidence of two earlier incidents.

He was formally cautioned before being taken to the interview room in the police station buried deep beneath the airport complex. There, he was searched by a uniformed member of the airport police and the contents of his pockets and other possessions were placed on a Formica topped table, described and recorded by a second officer before being placed into an appropriate property bag. O'Hara was left in the company of a silent policeman, while

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