Detonator

The profanity kept echoing around the back of the barn as I rolled Claude on to his stomach, pulled his wrists together behind his back and wrapped the tape around them. I made it tight, very tight, so his hands would soon start to swell. I wanted him to focus on the pain instead of raising the alarm.

I tugged off his wellies and did the same to his ankles, then bent his legs back so I could co

Finally, I fastened him to one of the legs of the feeding trough.

I stepped over the fence post he’d dropped me with and grabbed the bungee cords off the shelf on my way out. I padlocked the main door for good measure and threw away the key.

There was no need to push the Honda anywhere now. The shouts had mostly turned into whines, and as soon as I hit the starter button the engine noise drowned them out completely. I pulled up beside the bridge and clambered into the gully.

Stefan had finished the chocolate and most of the water by the time I got back to him. Other than that he hadn’t moved an inch. Either he trusted me completely, or he was still so traumatized he was frozen to the spot. His foot was obviously giving him some grief, but he’d kept it in the stream. As for the rest, only time would tell.

He took one look at me, opened his mouth and pointed at my temple. I touched it with my fingertips, still hoping that Claude might just have gobbed on me. They came away sticky and crimson.

I shrugged. ‘No time now. I’ll sort it later.’

He still didn’t say anything, but I saw a ghost of a smile when I carried him up the bank and he spotted the Honda. I settled him on the front of the saddle and strapped our bags to the rear rack with the bungee cords. I didn’t bother refilling the water bottle. Now that we had wheels, dying of thirst wasn’t an issue.

I climbed on behind him, and told him to hang on to my arms. When I turned the ignition key, even the cows took no notice. I aimed the machine directly across the slope towards the trees. The incline wasn’t too steep, but I didn’t go into Red Bull Extreme mode. Rolling it would really fuck us up.

Once we were twenty metres or so in cover I spotted a track, which was probably a ski run in the winter. I turned on to it and opened up the throttle whenever the gradient allowed. I knew this wasn’t the first time today I’d travelled downhill at speed through trees, but now I could see our route stretching ahead of us, and the further we got, the more confident I became that we weren’t going to launch ourselves into space.

I stopped every so often to scan the open ground below us, and to check the compass and the map. I wasn’t worried about taking a wrong turning: I needed to keep fixing the bearings of our journey in my head. It wasn’t leaking so badly now.

Shit from my past had started to bubble up through my brain. Maybe the drama in the barn had triggered something way beneath the waterline.

I knew I was ex-Special Forces.

I knew Frank Timis was a Ukrainian oligarch.

I knew I’d rescued his son in Somalia, back in the day.

I knew he had needed my help again.

I knew that whoever had killed him wanted me dead too.

But I didn’t know why. Maybe the Timis house in Courchevel would give me some answers.

The mountain air made everything ahead of me pin sharp. I was still a long way short of total recall, but the breeze against my face seemed to be blowing away some of my confusion. It was also drying off the bomber nicely.

Once we’d got well away from the body on the mountain and the flashing lights around what was left of my wagon, I brought the ATV to a halt. I lifted Stefan off and told him to take a piss while I unhooked the bungees and took my stained T-shirt out of my day sack, emptied the rest of the water bottle on to it and dabbed as much of the blood off my head as I could manage. There was fuck-all I could do about the wound itself right now, but at least I’d look a bit tidier.

Then I had a closer look at the contents of his rucksack. Under the hand towel and washbag there was a paperback the size of a small breezeblock. ‘You’re kidding me, right?’ My Russian wasn’t anything to shout about, but I recognized Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment when I saw it. Fuck, he was only seven. I hadn’t even managed Jack and Jill by the time I was his age.

He gave me the kind of look that suddenly reminded me of his dad. No, he wasn’t kidding.

I carried my bloodstained T-shirt and his Brindisi strip ten metres in from the track, scraped back some loose earth and leaf litter behind a tree and buried it. Being caught with Frank’s son would compromise me big-time. Having the dead man’s blood on my clothing and his would be even more difficult to explain.

8

We made it to the outskirts of Courchevel 1850 an hour or so before last light. The ATV had done what it said on the cowling; I’d managed to go the whole way without spending any more time on tarmac than we had to.

I pulled up beneath an empty chairlift on the high ground. We were still sheltered by trees, but had a clear view of the layout of the resort. Hotels and apartment blocks rubbed shoulders with cable-car stations and overpriced restaurants.

Further up the valley, the dying rays of the sun glinted off the canopy of a Bell Jetranger coming in to land at the Altiport, the airfield of choice for the super-rich that popped out there for the weekend. Snow still dusted the peaks that dominated the skyline behind it.

I’d seen Frank’s place before. But from the front, not the back. I asked Stefan to ID it and he pointed at the middle building in a row of massive fairy-tale chalets with gently sloping roofs and wide eaves a few hundred metres to our left.

I could see that he was straining to get in there, like a puppy on a lead. I steadied him with a hand on the shoulder. ‘Mate, we can’t rush this. Whoever fucked up your dad on the mountain might be paying it a visit …’

I swept the binos across the rear of the property. Massive picture windows on the top floor reflected knock-out views of the upper slopes. Most of the shutters on those below were closed, either against the sunlight or because nobody was home.

A party-size Jacuzzi took pride of place in a walled terrace that separated the back door from the granite hillside. The whole set-up had been built to repel boarders, but you could obviously ski straight in there during the winter, through a steel security gate set into an archway.

I couldn’t see any sign of movement, inside or out.

I’d definitely been to this three-storey slice of paradise, though I still couldn’t remember exactly when. Whatever, poor people obviously weren’t allowed in this part of town: we were looking at Oligarch Central.

Before hitting Frank’s place, I had to hide my day sack. If everything went to rat-shit in there I needed to have travel docs and cash securely in a place I could get back to. I tucked it behind the bright orange padding that surrounded the base of the nearest chairlift pylon, then parked the ATV behind the one fifty metres below. It wasn’t completely out of sight, but you’d have to be right on top of the thing before you pinged it.

I swung Stefan off the saddle. ‘How’s that ankle? Do you think you can walk?’

He nodded, and gave me the gritty, determined look I’d seen on the hillside. But after a couple of paces I knew it still wasn’t working. I picked him up and carried him back to our original vantage-point. He started to shiver. The temperature was dropping now. I hadn’t noticed.