Brian Freemantle - The Predators

It was the most basic of all psychological mistakes, even from professionals, to imagine that because a person had been an eye-witness – had been there, watching everything, seeing everything – they would possess the unprompted gift of total recall. No one did. A hundred people, standing side by side, would give a hundred different accounts of something happening literally in front of them, depending upon their age, attitudes, feelings and personalities: it wasn’t human nature – it wasn’t humanly possible – for two people to see the same thing the same way.

The commonest failing was investing a situation with a logical progression. There was no such thing as a logic to human interaction. There was even a recognized psychological term, the phenomenon of closure. Nothing was logical – nothing should have happened in the way it appeared to have happened – in the disappearance of Mary Beth McBride. So it couldn’t be investigated logically. The questioning by the two detectives had been copy-book, a building block attempt to perform their function. And Johan Rompuy had been a deceptive one-in-a-million witness: because he had been so good – so observant – he’d lulled them into carelessness. It was incredible, after learning so much, that neither had suggested Rompuy work with a police artist to create a visual impression of the woman: obvious by not being obvious.

Both men looked sheepishly at her as the second motorist came into the room and Harding said: ‘Do you want to join in as we go along?’

‘Let’s stay as we are,’ said Claudine, hoping they did not infer disapproval.

Rene Lunckner was an air traffic controller at Zaventem airport and like Rompuy had been late for his afternoon shift. He hadn’t known at first why the cars in front had suddenly stopped and only just managed to avoid colliding with Rompuy’s vehicle. He thought he’d sounded his horn three or four times before slightly reversing to swing round the car in front of him. It was then he’d seen Mary Beth McBride, seeming to look directly at him. The driver of the Mercedes had his window down and was gesturing for him to pass but oncoming traffic was too heavy for him to pull out as far as he needed: for a few moments he had, in fact, caused greater traffic congestion than already existed. The driver had signalled with his hand and his indicator that he was pulling away from the kerb. Lunckner was adamant the car into which Mary got was dark blue, top of the range – ‘definitely larger than a 230’ – and that it had a Brussels registration. ‘I couldn’t believe someone who knew the city would stop like that and block the traffic.’

‘Stuck out in the road as you were, could you see the driver?’ demanded Harding.

‘Not very well. He was going bald and he wore spectacles; I think they had heavy black frames. And he had a beaked nose. That’s the best I can do.’

‘A thin man? Or fat?’

‘Quite heavily built.’

‘Did you see enough of him to help a police artist create a picture?’ asked Blake, avoiding their earlier oversight.

The man shook his head. ‘I really don’t think so. I don’t want to mislead.’

‘We’d really like you to try,’ urged Blake. ‘We’ll keep your reservations in mind.’

‘All right.’

‘How old would you say the man was?’ said Harding, also avoiding the earlier omission.

‘Again, I don’t want to mislead. Late forties, early fifties. I can’t get any closer than that.’

‘What about the woman?’ asked Blake.

‘I hardly saw her at all: I was looking at the front of their car, trying to judge the distance to get by.’

‘But you didn’t get by,’ reminded Harding. ‘You had to pull in behind.’

‘Blond. Hair very tightly pinned at the back. I didn’t see her face at all. I wasn’t really interested: it was a mother picking up her daughter, as far as I was concerned. All I wanted to do was get by and get to work.’

‘Is that the impression you had?’ asked Claudine quickly, not wanting to miss the moment. ‘That it was a mother picking up her child?’

‘I drive along the road all the time. I know the school’s there and I’m used to seeing the kids picked up. That usually causes jams, too. I try to beat them by coming along earlier but that day I didn’t make it.’

‘Was there anything other than your knowing there was a school that made you think it was mother and daughter? Anything unusual about the way the child was behaving?’

Lunckner shook his head. ‘She was scowling, as if she was annoyed.’

‘Annoyed?’ persisted Claudine. ‘Not frightened?’

‘Annoyed,’ insisted the man. ‘I thought it was because her mother was late and had made her walk. Or that she was being told off.’

‘When you were driving behind them did you see the woman drop her arm, to put it round the child, which would have been a natural thing to do if she’d been late and her daughter was upset?’

‘It wouldn’t have been comfortable,’ the man pointed out. ‘She was too small against the woman in the back seat. If she’d put her arm down it would have been round the child’s neck, not round her shoulders or her back.’

‘And the woman definitely didn’t do that, reach down to hold Mary?’

‘Not that I saw.’

‘While they were in your view, did you get any impression that Mary didn’t want to be there? Any indication of their arguing or Mary fighting: trying to get out?’

‘Not at all.’

‘How long were they in your view?’

‘Only a few minutes. At the rue de Laeken they turned left and I turned right.’

‘This is very important,’ warned Claudine. ‘You could see Mary’s head, above the top of the seat.’

‘Just.’

‘The whole of her head, down to her neck? Or just the top: her hair?’

‘Not much more than her hair.’

‘How far up the woman’s arm was the top of Mary’s head?’

The man put the flat of his hand virtually at his shoulder. ‘About there.’

Poncellet summoned an aide to take Lunckner to a police artist, waiting for the man to leave the room before saying: ‘I think that was very good.’ He spoke as if he were personally responsible for the success.

‘I agree,’ said Claudine. ‘We’ve got a lot to work from.’

‘I think so, too,’ said Harding. ‘Rompuy particularly: I prefer his recall to the other guy’s. Rompuy’s drawing will be important.’

‘But will it really take us that much further forward?’ asked Jean Smet, coming into the discussion for the first time.

‘Very much,’ predicted Claudine. ‘I’m getting to know who it is I’m up against.’

‘Well?’ asked Norris impatiently. He was leaning forward intently over Paul Harding’s desk in the embassy’s FBI office.

‘Nothing much so far,’ apologized Duncan McCulloch uncomfortably. A towering, raw-boned man, he was a Texas descendant of a Scottish immigrant whose given name he disdained in favour of Duke. ‘Quite a lot of newspaper cuttings about her involvement in some serial killings a few months back: Chinese gangs terrorizing illegal immigrants into prostitution and drugs. There was a failed hit on her. It was at a railway station. A knife attack. She caught it in the arm but the Chinese went under a train.’

‘What about personal stuff?’ insisted Norris. That was where he’d find the lead to her association with the kidnappers.

Robert Ritchie said: ‘She’s described as a widow in some of the cuttings. Apparently she was Britain’s lead profiler before she transferred here.’

‘Anything between her and Blake?’

‘It doesn’t look like it,’ said McCulloch.

‘You lying down on this?’ demanded Norris, abruptly accusing.

‘For Christ’s sake, John! We’ve only just started!’ protested Ritchie.