The Evolution of Fear (Claymore Straker #2) - Paul E. Hardisty Page 0,13

questions and intrusions. The ring tone pulsed for the fourth time, a fifth. Clay looked down at his boots, the rain falling across the pavement, the shoppers scurrying past with fists clenched over straining plastic.

‘Allo?’ A woman’s voice. Not Rania.

‘Is Rania there?’

‘Who is calling, please?’ A strong French accent, an older voice.

He decided to take a chance. ‘It’s Clay, Madame.’ He doubted that they would be monitoring her calls, that the police had made any sort of connection between them, yet.

‘Monsieur Clay?’ the woman gasped.

Clay knew the voice now. It was the old lady who’d led him to Rania after the violence in Yemen. The violence that had brought him here. Madame Debret.

‘She is not here, I am afraid.’

‘Where is she?’

Silence. Caution. Good.

‘Do you remember the Café Grand Quai in Geneva?’ he said. Where he and Madame Debret had met for the first and only time.

‘Oui.’

‘You held my hand. Told me about Rania’s father.’

A deep breath. ‘I am worried, Monsieur Clay. I told her that she should not leave, but she insisted.’

‘Where has she gone?’

‘Chypre.’

‘Cyprus?’

‘Nicosia, yes. Her editor has given her this assignment. He contacted her two weeks ago. At first she did not want to go. But he was insisting very much, calling her many times.’

‘LeClerc?’

‘She did not say his name.’

It had to be LeClerc, the man Clay had met in London, the one who’d finally published Rania’s story, the one who, in doing so, had helped to blow the casketlid off Medved’s corrupt and deadly oil production activities in Yemen, helped expose the murderous cover-up entrusted to the Bulgarian mercenary, Zdravko Todorov.

Soon after publication, the Medveds had lost all financing for their Petro-Tex venture in Yemen and were forced to sell the company at a loss.

‘When did she leave?’ Clay asked.

‘More than two weeks ago. You might see one of the stories she has written in the journaux.’

‘Did she say when she’d be back?’

‘No.’

‘Have you heard from her since?’

‘Non.’

‘Forwarding address?’

‘None.’

‘Telephone number? Mobile?’

‘I am sorry.’

‘Thank you, Madame.’ He was about to hang up when he heard her call out.

‘Monsieur Clay, please. Wait. She left a message for you, if you called.’ Noise down the line, scraping, a drawer being opened and closed. ‘I have it here. She wrote it for me.’

Clay waited, said nothing.

‘It says only: ‘Ecoutons la confession d’un compagnon d’enfer.’

Clay understood only one word: enfer. Hell.

‘It is Rimbaud, I believe,’ she said. ‘Listen to the confession of hell’s companion.’

A tumour of ice materialised in Clay’s chest. He knew this, from the boy-poet’s A Season in Hell, the chapter entitled ‘The Infernal Husband’. He curled his lip, hung up the phone and stared out into the half-light of day. She’d chosen carefully, knowing he’d read this prose-poem over and over while he was in Geneva searching for her, this lament, taken by its power: I am lost. I am impure, a slave of the infernal husband. A widow.

Why this? Something was wrong. Clay pulled in a half breath, let it flow back out as vapour, then looked long both ways along the storefront pavement, out into the carpark, through the big front windows into the fluorescent glow of the supermarket, the patchwork of vivid primary colours, his insides roiling in a Southern Ocean gale.

Shoppers raced for their cars, newspapers and umbrellas over their heads. Raindrops drummed on the stretched skins of car roofs and pelted the tarmac like bullets. Clay stared at the rain guttering down from the roof.

He picked up the phone and dialled his Cayman Islands banker. It was the first time he’d made contact since the killing. Clay gave the password and his account number.

There was an urgent message for him, the banker said. It had arrived only three days ago. Clay jotted down the name and telephone number. The prefix was for South Africa, the area code Johannesburg. He put down the phone, checked his watch, took a breath and dialled.

A receptionist put him straight through to the clinic’s director.

‘This is Declan Greene,’ he said. His new identity, a recent and unintentional gift of the Yemeni secret police, complete with offshore bank accounts, an Australian passport and an apartment in Perth, Western Australia. ‘I had a message to call.’

The director paused, as if searching his memory. ‘Yes, thank you for calling, Mister Greene. We were expecting to hear from you sooner.’

‘I’ve been busy, Doctor.’ Doing nothing. Waiting.

‘I am very sorry to disturb you like this, but you see…’ The director stopped, cleared his throat. ‘There is no easy way to say this, I am