Brian Freemantle - The Predators

‘The two motorists who saw them are happy.’

‘I think it’s all very clever,’ said Norris solemnly.

‘Their German computer guy is a genius,’ agreed Harding, misunderstanding.

Norris frowned. ‘What do you know about her?’

Harding’s misunderstanding remained. He looked at the digitalized image on the table between them and said: ‘We don’t have a name, John.’

‘Dr Carter!’

Harding couldn’t speak for several moments. At last he managed: ‘You’re losing me here.’

‘I’ve got a bad feeling about her. I want her thoroughly checked out. I’ve assigned Ritchie and McCulloch but they’re drawing blanks. I want you to do better.’

On the scale of bad feelings Paul Harding’s score was eleven where the graph stopped at ten. What the fuck was he going to do! Remembering, he said: ‘We checked the school again. The principal had an odd phone call from a woman wanting to know the curriculum languages. The phone number she left was wrong.’

‘I’m interested in the Carter woman,’ said Norris, dismissive still. ‘Concentrate on her.’

Kurt Volker was waiting impatiently for Claudine when she re-entered their offices at the Belgian police HQ. ‘I think there’s something significant,’ he announced.

‘It’s time to declare yourself,’ said Lucien Bigot. He’d made the first approach, all those months ago.

‘I know that,’ agreed Sanglier.

‘So what’s it going to be?’ demanded the politician.

‘I’d like a final meeting.’ He had to have the commitment, even if only verbally.

‘We’d like that too.’

‘For positive undertakings,’ said Sanglier.

‘That’s what we all want,’ said the other man.

Felicite recognized that she was right, as she usually was: there was a sexual excitement about danger. It was, perhaps, why she so much enjoyed cruising the streets, hunting. The pleasure had gone on now for more than half an hour, ever since Jean Smet had burst into the Anspach house babbling about pictures of her and Henri Cool to be shown on television.

‘You’ll be recognized! Identified!’ The man was unable to keep still, striding about the room as he had at the beach house, his mind butterflying from anxiety to anxiety, his words jumbled. He’d tried to smoke, too, but Felicite had forbidden it. She detested the smell of stale tobacco in her home.

‘Sit down!’ she ordered sharply. ‘How can they know about me?’

‘Two motorists saw you pick her up.’ Smet remained standing, shifting from foot to foot.

It was the first comprehensible sentence the man had uttered and Felicite felt another spurt of excitement. She rose and put both hands against Smet’s shoulders to press him into a chair on her way to the drinks tray, where she poured brandy for both of them. As she handed his glass to him she said: ‘From the beginning. Everything that was said, how it was said.’

Smet made a slurping sound with his first drink and the cognac caught his breath, making him cough. He tugged a tightly folded wad of paper from inside his jacket and said: ‘Read it yourself. That’s a copy of today’s report to the Minister.’

Felicite took her time, sipping her drink as she read, acknowledging that this investigation appeared much more thorough than the previous one. Which was why it was that much more satisfying. When she finished the account she remained looking down at it, turning several sheets over before looking up. ‘So where’s the computer graphic?’

‘I only heard there was going to be one in a telephone call from Poncellet on his way to the television studio! We’re not getting a copy until tomorrow, in time for our cooperation meeting. And that’s the problem I’m trying to make you understand. I don’t know everything they’re doing, not all the time! And not quickly enough.’

There was still ten minutes to go before the special newscast, Felicite saw. She waved the report. ‘You read this?’

‘Of course I’ve read it: I wrote most of it. And it’s you, isn’t it!’

‘It’s a very general description of a woman who is older than me and wears indeterminate blond hair in a chignon.’ Felicite ran her fingers exaggeratedly through the lightly waved hair that fell almost to her shoulders. ‘Which I never do except when I’m choosing someone new: precisely because it will be confusing, if I’m seen. My hair is more golden than blond. The estimate of how tall I am makes me almost into a giant. Cool too. It’s ridiculous. They haven’t even got the car right: it’s dark green, not blue or black. And it’s a 320.’ She cupped her breast with her free hand. ‘And I’m not at all flat-chested: I’ve got nice tits. You like them, don’t you?’

Smet shook his head, although not in answer to her question. ‘This isn’t anything to joke about.’

‘Nor is it anything to wet yourself about.’ She had imagined far more from the man’s garbled rambling and her excitement was going. ‘You told the others?’

‘I wanted to speak to you first.’

Too frightened to do anything by himself, Felicite thought. Or even to be trusted. There could never be any question of Smet going to the authorities. He was too deeply involved, as legally culpable as the rest of them. Which he well knew. But the risk – not a danger by which she was sexually aroused – was in his making a stupid mistake. Unlikely, she reassured herself. Not that he wouldn’t make a mistake – as nervous as he was Felicite didn’t doubt he’d do something wrong – but that it would in any way direct attention towards them. But Smet was still a weak link, useful only because of the position he occupied. Not just weak. Boring, too. Boring like them all: as Marcel had complained, just before he died. Maybe she should abandon them, after this. There’d be nothing they could do about it and she had other connections, through Lascelles and Lebron. Moving on, finding new people, was definitely something to think about.

‘It’s time,’ announced Smet, anxiously.

It wasn’t but Felicite turned the television on anyway and was glad because the introduction had already begun, with a clip from the earlier conference at which the ambassador had openly wept. The main newscast anchorman talked over the old footage, announcing a different format. Tonight was not going to be a media event. It was to be a personal appeal, by McBride and his wife, following important new evidence that the Brussels police commissioner would disclose. On that cue the previous conference faded, to be replaced by a screen-filling photograph of Mary Beth McBride which held for at least thirty seconds before cutting to the studio.

McBride and his wife were seated at an oval table, with Andre Poncellet to their right. The three were facing the anchor, an eagerly talking, dark-haired man who spoke in sound bites. To his prompting Poncellet described the eye-witness information as dramatic, sensational, vital, a breakthrough, only just stopping short of predicting an early arrest.

The camera focused tight on the ambassador’s face for the man’s appeal. There were no tears but McBride was grave-faced, Hillary visibly strained beside him. They held hands, although listlessly. McBride’s plea was for private and immediate contact with Mary’s captors.

‘Come on! Come on,’ said Felicite impatiently. ‘Where am I?’

Smet broke away from the screen, frowning curiously at the woman.

‘We want to negotiate,’ McBride was insisting, keeping strictly to Claudine’s instructions, even using the words she’d suggested. ‘But that’s not possible on the Internet. Find another way. Tell us and we’ll follow it: we’ll obey every instruction. Please let us know that Mary Beth is unharmed.’