Seven Nights in Paris by Perry Tasmina

Author:Perry, Tasmina
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781911297475
Publisher: Sunflower & Co
Published: 2023-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

Sitting in a car parked at the curb, Lucas saw Ivo Renaud leaving the police station.

‘So what’s your contact on the inside saying?’ asked Lucas, watching the detective disappear down the street.

In the driver’s seat, Stefan Hanburg stretched and yawned.

‘He’s saying the driver is a nobody.’

Lucas turned to look at Stefan. Slim and wiry, there was nothing particularly imposing about Mimi’s top investigator – until you saw his eyes. Dark, unwavering, Stefan gave the impression that he was capable of anything. Lucas had worked with him back in the day and knew that impression was correct: Stefan believed in the maxim ‘by any means necessary’.

‘Mimi sent me Amar Shebu’s file,’ said Lucas. ‘He’s done time – he was hooked up with the gangs.’

Stefan glanced across.

‘Was is the word. Shebu was just a wannabe with some small-time Turkish gang – went down for a few months for some crappy burglary thing, like, ten years ago. He’s done nothing except cabbing since then.’

Stefan was enjoying letting Lucas know he was more connected on the street than him – better connected that Mimi, even.

‘So maybe he’s a driver for someone else.’

Stefan snorted.

‘Ah. You have a theory?’

Stefan’s tone was cynical, which Lucas supposed was fair enough. Lucas hadn’t been in Paris for five years which was a long time in the underworld. Stefan meanwhile was fully immersed; always had been.

There were all sorts of rumours about him: a French/German orphan, he’d half-killed a man in a bar brawl, joined the French Foreign Legion and lost two fingers in a skirmish with the Sudanese. The missing digits, Lucas could confirm, but it hadn’t held him back. Among the Rapido staff – none of them shrinking violets – Stefan had a reputation for ruthlessness.

If Mimi needed charm or daring, she called Lucas. If she needed someone paid off or intimidated, she called Stefan. And sometimes, like tonight, she put them together. Spots of rain began to dapple the windscreen of Stefan’s car. Lucas glanced at his watch, then wiped condensation from the glass.

‘How do you know that they're going to release this guy?’

‘My man inside,’ replied Stefan coolly. ‘They don't have anything to hold him on anymore. As I said, he’s a nobody.’

Lucas laced his hands behind his head.

‘So what was Mike Green doing that night?’ he said, thinking out loud. ‘Whatever it was, he didn’t want his wife to know about it. Maybe he was buying something on the black market; a cheap diamond for her maybe?’

‘Drugs,’ said Stefan, with conviction - and Lucas had to admit it was a plausible explanation. Zoe had told him she’d met Mike in some party bar in Fitzrovia just before Christmas. Mike was a ‘suit’, a straight-up corporate guy, but he’d seen plenty of City boys cutting loose in the bars – and bathrooms – of Upper Street. Coke was their drug of choice and it wasn’t hard to believe that Mike Green might have slipped out for a Class-A Honeymoon pick-me-up.

‘Shebu was connected to the Turkish gangs,’ said Lucas.

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