Читать книгу The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET - Scott Mariani, Scott Mariani - Страница 35

Gaston Clément had been too slow to take Ben’s advice. Counting his newfound wealth, he poured himself a glass of cheap wine and drank to the strange foreign visitor.

When three other visitors found him he was dozing in his tattered armchair, the half-empty bottle by his side. Godard, Berger and Naudon dragged the pleading Clément down off his platform and threw him bodily to the concrete floor. He was seized and held down in a chair. A heavy fist slammed into his face and broke his nose. Blood poured from his nostrils, soaking his grey beard.

‘Who gave you this money?’ roared a voice in his ear. ‘Speak!’ The cold steel of a pistol pressed against his temple. ‘Who was here? What was his name?’

Clément racked his brain but couldn’t remember, and so they beat him harder. They hit him again and again until his eyes were swollen shut and blood and vomit were all over the floor around him, his beard and hair slick with red. ‘Il est Anglais!’ he let out in a garbled, bubbling scream, remembering.

‘What’d he say?’

‘The Englishman was here.’

Clément’s face was down hard to the cold floor with a heavy boot across his neck that threatened to break it. He groaned, and then passed out.

‘Go easy, boys,’ said Berger, looking down at the pitiful unconscious form on the floor. ‘We’re to deliver him alive.’

As the Audi sped away through the derelict farm with Clément stuffed in the trunk, flames were already appearing at the barn windows and black smoke billowed into the sky.

Monique Banel was walking through the Parc Monceau with her five-year-old daughter Sophie. Monceau was a pleasant little park, with a peaceful atmosphere where the birds sang in the trees, swans paddled in the picturesque miniature lake and Monique liked to unwind for a few minutes after she finished her part-time secretarial work and went to pick Sophie up from her kindergarten. Monique said a cheerfully polite ‘Bonjour, monsieur to the elegant old gent who was often sitting on the same bench around this time reading his paper.

The little girl, as always, was full of attention for all the sights and sounds of the park, her bright eyes sparkling with joy. As they walked down one of the paths that wound between the park’s lawns, Sophie exclaimed in delight, ‘Maman! Look! A little dog’s coming to see us!’ Her mother smiled. ‘Yes, isn’t he pretty?’

The dog was a small neat spaniel, a King Charles Cavalier, white with brown patches and wearing a little red collar. Monique looked about. His owner must be somewhere nearby. Many Parisians brought their dogs here for a walk in the afternoon.

‘Can I play with him, Maman?’ Sophie was ecstatic as the little spaniel trotted up towards them. ‘Hello, doggie,’ the child called out to it. ‘What’s your name? Maman, what’s that in his mouth?’

The little dog reached them and dropped the object it had been carrying on the ground at Sophie’s feet. It looked up at her expectantly, tail wagging. Before her mother could stop her, the child had bent down and picked up the thing and was examining it curiously. She turned to Monique with a frown, holding the object up to show her.

Monique Banel screamed. Her little girl was clutching part of a severed, mutilated human hand.