The Rift, Rachel Lynch [books recommended by bts .txt] 📗

so Peter couldn’t hear. ‘Just don’t make it personal,’ Sylvia said. Helen stared back at her. ‘I’ve got your back, for now,’ she added.

Helen turned back to her phone and pretended to read intently, but a genuine report from a member of the public caught her eye. The mighty engine of the internet had kicked in and particulars of tips from the general public from Spain to Russia had begun to trickle in. 90 per cent of such leads turn out to be insignificant, but they all needed checking for that one tiny piece of information that could turn out to be crucial. This one caught her attention.

‘Listen to this,’ she said. Peter and Sylvia stopped what they were doing.

‘A group of cyclists say they saw a man of Fawaz’s description crossing the Pyrenees three days ago. One of them fell off his bike, and they said the man stopped his truck to help them. He was face to face with him and said he’ll never forget the man who saved his life,’ Helen said.

Peter stopped what he was doing. ‘Check it out,’ he said. ‘By the time I arrive in Paris, I want to know if it was him.’

Chapter 46

‘Shall we?’ Sylvia asked. Helen nodded and got her bag. The two suspects arrested on Thursday had been transferred to Interpol HQ and were waiting for follow-up interviews downstairs. They’d been granted custody for both suspects for up to twenty-eight days by the Cour de Cassation, the highest court in France. A ton of work had gone into finding out as much about their backgrounds as they could, and Helen had read the information through several times. She needed a way in, and both she and Sylvia desperately needed the suspects to crack. This time, they’d go in hard. Without them being persuaded to give up information, the authorities faced a futile search of les traboules, which would essentially be like going down a foxhole.

Grant agreed that the chances of Hakim still being in Lyon were great. There was no point moving him; it would be too much of a risk getting caught now, when he was nearing the end of his usefulness.

The two men had been continuously disturbed during their two nights in custody. They’d be tired, confused and disorientated. They decided that Sylvia would go in hard with the Reid technique, which was to go in all guns blazing, telling the accused with determined certainty that they did commit the crime. Helen was to use a softer emotional approach to render the suspect disarmed and vulnerable, by concentrating on facts about their lives. She’d read that the one called Farid had lost his little sister under tragic circumstances. At the age of six, she’d been playing in a field near her home and had been talked in to going with two young men. Helen read the file and her stomach knotted. The girl had been subjected to hours of sexual abuse before her body gave in. The two men were hunted down and killed vigilante style, but even such swift justice wasn’t enough for the family, and her brother was left haunted.

Helen and Sylvia took the elevator and chatted about the case.

‘This source of yours, how did you talk him round?’ Sylvia referred to Grant.

‘Like I said, he’s an old army colleague, I noticed his name on the flight manifest when Khalil flew to Marseilles. I presumed that he was Khalil’s head of security.’

‘And you were right. He’s put a lot of trust in you – did you serve together?’ Sylvia asked.

Helen nodded, but said no more, as Sylvia’s gaze burned into her cheek.

‘I presume you know where he is now?’ Sylvia asked.

‘At my flat,’ Helen said.

‘Marvellous, always keep a man either near your kitchen or your bed,’ she said, winking. Helen returned the scrutinised stare but said nothing.

‘Easy to gather the intel from his boss, then?’ Sylvia asked.

‘Yup,’ Helen replied. Sylvia was telling her that as long as she got the job done, she wasn’t going to examine her methods too closely.

They parted company and entered the two suites.

Helen smiled broadly to the man slumped over in the chair. The lawyer next to him read his documents and appeared bored. She’d had a brief telephone conversation with him where he’d confirmed that his client was close to caving in to the pressure of incarceration. The sleep disruption was doing its work. It could be a cleaner’s hoover outside the door, a faulty light going on at two a.m., a barking police dog or a new bottle of water delivered at three a.m.: they were all common tactics.

Helen sat down and he raised his head. Farid looked exhausted. She took a can of Coke and a pain au chocolat out of her bag and put them down on the table. He stared at the items and Helen smiled again.

‘How are you doing, Farid?’ she asked.

He looked confused.

‘Here, I thought you could do with the sugar.’ She spoke in French as she pushed the Coke and pain au chocolat over to him.

The lawyer glanced at her and blinked his acknowledgement of what she was doing. He settled back to watch the show. They both knew it was a slam dunk, anyway; his client was guilty as hell, and the quicker he confessed, the quicker they could all get on with other things. Farid looked at his lawyer, who nodded his approval that he could take what was being offered. His cuffed hands shook as he struggled with the can’s lid.

‘Let me help,’ said Helen. Farid let his hands drop, and Helen could see that his eyes were full of emotion. Poor bastard. It was young men like this who were groomed and radicalised all over the world, and easily so because they usually felt they had nothing to live for. Images of his little sister screaming for her mother, no doubt, brutalised and in agony at the penetration, must haunt his every waking moment. He ate the pain