Brian Freemantle - The Predators

‘Which I hear you don’t.’

‘From whom?’ At least he’d held off for the first few days. She supposed she should have been irritated now but she wasn’t. Oddly the tiredness was easing, too.

‘Just talk.’

‘I’m not interested in one-night stands. Any sort of stand, for that matter.’

Blake pushed his own plate aside. ‘Is there anyone?’

Claudine realized, surprised, that she hadn’t thought of Hugo Rosetti since the Brussels case began. ‘There’s a friend. Nothing serious.’ Why had she said that, dismissing the situation with Hugo? She loved him and knew he loved her: was prepared – anxious even – for the affair that his rigid, self-imposed rules prevented his entering into. So maybe the dismissal had been justified after all, although not describing it as ‘nothing serious.’ Bizarre was more accurate. How long was she prepared to go on with it? Until Flavia really died, instead of remaining suspended in a living death? The question was as repugnant as the actual prospect. No matter what she felt for Hugo, she couldn’t tell him that. It would sound like an ultimatum: which it would be, she supposed. The way to end it, even. She didn’t want to end it, unsatisfactory though it was, nor did she want it to drift on indefinitely. Impasse. What was the clinical word to describe someone supremely confident of their professional ability whose private life was an insoluble mess? Idiot came easily to mind.

‘I think I’ve overstepped the boundaries,’ said Blake.

‘Perhaps you have.’

‘Are you offended?’

‘No.’

‘I’m still sorry. Embarrassed, too.’

Claudine didn’t think he was. ‘We should be getting back.’

‘Kurt’s got this number, if anything comes up.’

‘I’d still like to get back.’

‘So you are offended.’

‘Tired.’

Claudine thought Blake was going to protest at her paying her share of the bill – shifting the colleague-to-colleague understanding – but he didn’t and she was glad. On their way back across the square he kept even further away from her than he’d previously done. There were two telephone calls from Rosetti logged at the reception desk.

‘Anything?’

‘Personal.’ She didn’t feel like returning them tonight.

‘Goodnight, then.’

‘Goodnight.’

He nodded towards the corridor bar, holding her eyes. ‘I thought I’d have one last drink.’

Claudine answered the gaze. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’ She wasn’t offended, she decided, as the open-sided elevator took her upwards. There wasn’t any possibility of a personal situation developing between them, but the suggestion she might have responded to one was flattering. He was, in fact, a very attractive man.

‘You looked very grand on television. Autocratic, like de Gaulle.’ Francoise was totally naked, examining herself in the full length mirror. She did it most nights when she slept there, which wasn’t a lot. It went beyond narcissism to become a permanent taunt directed at him.

Sanglier had collected the Europol masterfile on the McBride disappearance on his way from the railway station. He didn’t bother to look up from it until he became aware of the woman, close to his bed.

She turned with a model’s grace, jutting out her left hip. ‘What do you think?’

There was still some distorting soreness around the small tattoo of a yellow and blue bird, high on her thigh. ‘What is it?’

‘A love bird. Maria’s got one to match.’

‘Who’s Maria?’

‘She makes films: sometimes very special films. I love her very much.’ Gauging his sudden interest, she said: ‘But not enough to leave home. It suits me to be married to you, just as it suits you to be married to me. We adorn each other.’

Once but not any more, thought Sanglier. How – and when – was he going to tell her about returning to Paris? Not yet. She’d probably be glad to be going back. She hated The Hague. ‘I was with Claudine Carter in Brussels.’

‘One of the few to get away,’ pouted Francoise, in mock regret. ‘Why did you bring us together?’

‘Another mistake,’ conceded Sanglier.

‘You’d never think of involving me in a situation to get rid of me, would you?’ demanded Francoise.

‘With a member of my own staff? Hardly!’

‘Don’t even think about it,’ she warned.

She would embarrass him one day, Sanglier knew. And he did want to get rid of her, so very desperately.

The message said MARY, MARY QUITE CONTRARY IS MISSING BILLY and at the first combined gathering of the day Claudine stressed that she might have missed the identification without Norris’s complete background on the McBride family. Initially she actually held back, hoping the American himself would isolate what was so glaringly obvious from the ten other possibilities thrown up by Kurt Volker’s fast-track word-recognition selection, but Norris didn’t. He didn’t respond to her praise, either.

The success anyway was more Kurt Volker’s than hers. He’d filleted Norris’s background information of trigger words for his tracer program, which had instantly flagged the only reference to Mary’s pet in any of the incoming e-mail. It also activated a print-out, and timed the duration of the message precisely at sixty seconds – confirming Volker’s earlier estimate – before clearing.

‘What about a trace on the source?’ demanded Norris, hiding any approval he might have felt, which Claudine didn’t think was much.

Volker shook his head. ‘There’s still too much incoming, slowing down any possible response. All the key words – in this case “contrary” “Mary” and “Billy” – spelled with an “ie” as well as with a “y” just in case – had to be matched by my comparison program. It’s like trying to swim against a tide.’

‘Could you get a location if the traffic eases?’ asked Poncellet, responding to Jean Smet’s obvious prompting.

‘Yes,’ said Volker, immediately and confidently.

Poncellet went sideways, to a fresh nudge from the ministry lawyer, before asking in apparent disbelief: ‘In as little as sixty seconds?’

‘I think so.’

Looking invitingly at Norris, Claudine said: ‘They’ve maintained contact!’ Come on, she thought, hopefully: analyse it as you should be able to and show me I haven’t done as much harm as I think I have. Harding, Rampling and Harrison were all looking expectantly at the FBI supervisor.

‘Not properly,’ complained Norris. ‘There should have been a negotiating link established by now. They’ve been frightened off by the publicity.’

‘Don’t you think we might still be in the power stage, their showing us they’re calling the shots?’ she suggested. How could she hope to help this man – treat this man – when saving the child took precedence over everything?

‘They already know that.’

‘But psychologically they need to prove it, to themselves more than to us at the moment. It’s the predictably established formula: your formula,’ said Claudine. By trying too hard to be kind she was coming close to exposing the man’s mental limitation!

‘The longer it goes on, the more dangerous it gets for Mary,’ insisted Norris.

‘I agree,’ said Claudine at once. ‘Today’s message was important.’

‘How?’ demanded Blake. He was the only one in the room aware of how much reconciliation Claudine was attempting with Norris and he was professionally impatient with it. Having operated alone for so long in Ireland Blake was unused to working with or considering the feelings of over-sensitive committees. It was diplomatic bureaucracy and that wasn’t the way to solve crime. He was anxious to start an investigation he wasn’t yet prepared to discuss with anyone, not even Claudine, and he was personally unsettled by the previous evening. He certainly wasn’t prepared to discuss that with her, either. He’d hoped, perhaps stupidly, that the days of having to carry the Beretta in his belt-line, where it was chafing him now, were past, too.