Colin Forbes - The Power

'Eve does like to know what's going on,' Paula commented. 'Unlike Amberg, who seems to have thrown in his hand.'

A door slammed. Newman and Cardon were aboard. Cardon took up his old position next to the Swiss banker while Newman sat behind Paula. Tweed replied as he started the Espace moving, heading out of Basle, 'Amberg is sitting there with a grim expression. Typical that he hasn't enquired if Karin is all right. But he always was the cold fish of the two brothers as I recall. Let me concentrate on driving,' Tweed said brusquely.

Paula glanced at him. What he really meant was – let me concentrate on thinking this thing out.

They were well south of the city, driving with the Jura mountains rearing up to their right, when Tweed began talking to Paula in a voice which wouldn't carry to his passengers in the rear.

'I was right in my theory about two different jigsaws interlocking, that one wouldn't exist without the other. Two quite different styles of murder have been committed, which suggests two different groups are involved.'

'Two different styles of murder? That's a graphic phrase,' she remarked. 'Explanation, please.'

'The blowing up of our headquarters at Park Crescent, the bomb thrown at me in Zurich, the planned demolition by explosives of the Kaysersberg bridge, the second use of demolition by explosives of that cliff up in the Vosges. All those are what I'd call organization acts, requiring the services of a large and powerful apparatus. In short, Norton and the Americans. That is one distinctive style of attempted murder.'

Tweed accelerated a little more. There was no other traffic on the road below the mountains. He was anxious to reach Ouchy, to question Joel Dyson, to compel

Amberg to produce the film and the tape, and to hear the rest of Barton Ives' story. Paula glanced back and saw Ives, seated next to Newman, staring out into the night with a far-away look.

'You said two different styles of murder,' she reminded Tweed. 'What about the second style?'

'Highly individual. One person, disguised as the postman, arrived at the manor, knifed the butler, walked into the kitchen, sprayed the staff with tear-gas, then marched into the dining-room with a machine-gun and mowed down the seven people sitting there. Cold-blooded, audacious.'

'Not Norton, you mean?'

'A different style from Norton. Then take the hideous garrotting of the call girl Helen Frey and her friend Klara. I think the killer had a wire garrotte disguised as a string of pearls – hence the single blood-stained pearl found in Prey's apartment.'

'How do you think it was managed with such horrific skill?'

'Oh, not difficult. You offer to loop the pearls round Prey's neck so she can see how she looks in them. What woman could resist such an offer? Same technique with Klara.'

'A man,' Paula said thoughtfully. 'Maybe he even offered to give them the pearls. That would be irresistible.'

'Again an individual murder – as opposed to Norton's mass killing attempts.'

'But what about that nice detective, Theo Strebel? He was shot,' she reminded him.

'You'd hardly play the murderous trick with the pearl garrotte on a man, would you? But I'm sure he was shot by someone he knew, who put him off his guard. Again an individual murder. Don't forget the Shadow Man with the wide-brimmed hat who stalked Jennie Blade.'

'Butter wouldn't melt in Jennie's mouth. That type of woman always makes me suspicious.'

'It couldn't be simply that you dislike her?' Tweed probed.

'Men can be very naive about attractive women,' Paula persisted. 'Especially when a woman like her gazes at a man adoringly. And much earlier Jennie remarked she'd seen Eve in Padstow about the time of the massacre. I think she was lying, but it could be a significant lie.'

'In what way?' Tweed enquired.

'It suggests that Jennie herself could have been in Padstow at the time of the massacre.'

'You could be right, I suppose.'

'And,' Paula went on, in full flood, 'I only caught a glimpse of the fake postman who killed all those people, riding along the drive up to the mansion.'

'Which suggests something to you? Remember Jennie has a mane of golden hair.'

'There again men don't know enough about women. Jennie could have piled up her hair on top of her head. That fake postman wore a uniform cap which could conceal the hair. It was a cold day so I didn't think it odd that the figure on the cycle wore a cap – it was a very cold day.'

'I still find it difficult to believe,' Tweed commented.

'And now she's gone off with Gaunt, who, according to Butler, was in the devil of a hurry to get to Ouchy in his BMW.'

'If you add Gaunt to the equation you do make out a very strong case,' Tweed admitted. 'I have an idea we'll break this mystery open in two bites. First the film and the tape will tell us the Washington angle – solving Norton's frantic efforts to stop us. Later we may have to return to Padstow to pin down who was responsible for the massacre. To say nothing of the murders of Frey, Klara and Theo Strebel.'

'You think you know who is guilty of those murders, don't you?' Paula challenged him.

'I've known for some time. The key is Jennie Blade's references to the so-called Shadow Man appearing in Colmar.'

When Marvin Mencken left the restaurant in Basle Bahnhof – he had carefully waited for fifteen minutes to be on the safe side – he hurried to where his Renault was parked. He was about to climb behind the wheel when he noticed his front right tyre was flat.

He swore aloud, then began the time-wasting task of changing it for his spare tyre. He had no way of knowing it was sabotage. While Tweed was confronting him inside the restaurant Butler had used a simple method of disabling the car.

Crouching down by the front tyre as though lacing up his trainer, he had taken out a ballpoint pen, unscrewed the cap, inserted the end of his pen and pressed down the valve, holding it there until all the air had escaped. He had then replaced the cap.

Mencken worked frantically in the vain hope of arriving in Ouchy before Norton. Sweating with the effort, despite the bitter cold, he eventually got behind the wheel and started the car. The delay meant that when Norton reached his destination there was no one to tell him where his troops were located in different hotels.

The Hotel Chateau d'Ouchy was one of the weirdest, most intriguing hotels Paula had ever seen. Tweed had driven the Espace down a steep hill, had turned on to a level road and as the moon came out from behind a cloud Paula had her first view of Lake Geneva, the largest of all the Swiss lakes. The water was calm, without a ripple, stretching away towards distant France on the southern shore.

Butler overtook them in the station wagon as Tweed paused, crawling ahead to sniff out any sign of danger. As Tweed waited Paula peered up at the Chateau d'Ouchy. Illuminated by external arc lights, it was built of fawn-coloured stone and its steep, red-tiled roofs were decorated with a black, almost sinister zigzag design. At the corners steepled turrets reared up and it looked very old.

'Looks as ancient as history,' she commented.

'Used to be a castle in the twelfth century,' Tweed told her, 'before ages later it was rebuilt and converted into a hotel. At least it's quiet down here.'

Paula thought that was an understatement, recalling the furious hustle and fast tempo of Zurich. Across the road from the hotel was an oyster-shaped harbour encircled with eerie green street lamps, their light reflected in the harbour water. Boats cocooned for winter in blue plastic covers were moored to buoys.

But it was the stillness which most struck her – the waterfront was deserted, there was no other traffic, no one else in sight. To their left beyond the road they had driven along was a line of small hotels and cafes, all apparently closed. Tweed had lowered his window and refreshing air drifted inside – so different from the ice-cold of the Vosges. Marler appeared from nowhere alongside the window.