Brian Freemantle - The Predators

‘Neither answers the description or looks anything like the videofit picture,’ cautioned Volker.

‘The source could also be anyone at police headquarters with a duplicate key to the incident room and all its records and transcripts,’ suggested Blake.

‘The transcript of this morning’s meeting, when I called her mad, won’t be in the incident room records yet,’ Claudine pointed out. ‘It can only be one of the eight.’

‘If Dr Carter’s interpretation is wrong the fall-out will be incalculable,’ said Sanglier. How could a future Justice Minister answer for wrongly suspecting another Justice Ministry! It was precisely the sort of embarrassment he’d been warned about in Paris. On the other hand, if her suspicions were right… Why did things become so difficult just when he imagined they were becoming simpler!

‘My function is to interpret words and behaviour,’ Claudine said slowly. ‘There are some interpretations of today’s conversation that I’ve still got to suggest to you. But the most important is my total conviction that there is an informer, among us.’ She was reluctant to challenge Sanglier openly, after the apparent relaxation of their earlier uneven relationship, but she couldn’t avoid it. ‘We surely can’t risk the other incalculable: what’s going to happen to Mary Beth if my interpretation is correct?’

He couldn’t argue against her and he didn’t want to go along with her, Sanglier thought desperately. Why had he stayed! Why hadn’t he gone back to The Hague immediately after resolving the problem of the suicide? He would have been safe there, able to claim that operational details had been kept from him if there was a disaster.

‘What are the other interpretations you mentioned?’ asked Harrison.

‘Principally a further confirmation of what I’ve feared and warned against: probably the biggest,’ said Claudine. ‘She’s seen McBride openly cry, on television. Knows his desperation. She knows, too, how rich he is. That he’ll pay anything. Yet all she asks for is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Which is derisory.’

‘No intention of giving Mary back?’ Blake realized.

‘There never has been,’ insisted Claudine. ‘Now, for the first time, we’ve got a real chance to prevent that happening. Our first real chance, in fact, to get her back. But from now on our proper decision-making has got to be carried out like this: just by us, in this room. Our sessions at police headquarters have to be conducted solely to manipulate the woman and the people with her, through whoever their source is.’

‘We need to do more than that,’ insisted Harding, presented at last with an operational opportunity. ‘There’re only eight people to check out, for Christ’s sake!’

‘And we’ve got an army looking for work,’ endorsed Rampling, equally enthusiastic.

‘An American operation, you mean?’ Sanglier said, trying to keep any eagerness from being obvious.

‘We’ve been through the problem of legality,’ Harding pointed out. ‘I don’t think the circumstances are the same any more.’

‘We’re straying into dangerous water,’ protested Harrison, as diplomatically uneasy as Sanglier. ‘In effect – in fact! – we’d be spying upon and investigating justice officials of a sovereign state actually in their own country.’

‘That’s exactly what we’ll be doing,’ said the aggressive Rampling, intentionally changing tense. ‘And need to do.’

‘Can you do it?’ demanded Harrison of Claudine. ‘Manipulate a response we’d recognize, I mean?’

‘Very easily,’ she assured him.

‘And with Poncellet, Smet and at least three of the clerks at your meeting in the morning we know where more man half our suspects will be, don’t we?’ smiled Rampling.

‘I don’t think any positive action should be taken until we’ve fully assessed Dr Carter’s success at the morning conference,’ said Harrison.

‘Neither do I,’ said Sanglier, anxious to support the reluctant diplomat.

‘I totally agree,’ said Harding, not caring if the lie was obvious. What was even more obvious was what he had to do, as the operational commander. By this time tomorrow – sooner if possible – he wasn’t just going to know the favourite breakfast cereal of eight near strangers, he’d be able to say in which hand they held the spoon.

By the end of the meal Claudine accepted she had been the only person with any real problem but believed she had lost it early enough for neither of them to have been aware of it. Blake appeared very much at ease and Rosetti, usually a reserved man, matched his friendliness. She’d wished Hugo hadn’t been so territorially obvious, cupping her arm and holding out chairs and unfolding dinner napkins: twice she’d caught the curiosity on Blake’s face. They ate at the hotel at the request of Claudine, who pleaded exhaustion at the end of such a crowded day, which was only part of the reason. It would, she decided, make it easier to leave both men at the end of the evening.

There was only the vaguest of tensions, each man competing to admire the profiling and analysis that had led to the breakthrough, which neither doubted. The more cynical Blake was genuinely funny parodying the desperation of Harrison and Sanglier, who’d gone off alone to eat together, to avoid any personal responsibility for whatever Harding and Rampling did.

‘Let’s just hope they do it well,’ said Claudine, quickly cutting off the laughter.

Blake didn’t look at her when he pleaded tiredness to excuse himself as soon as the meal ended, leaving her with Rosetti. Claudine felt a sudden warmth and hoped she hadn’t coloured. That would have been ridiculous.

‘Kurt told me about the American,’ said Rosetti.

‘I’m all right.’

‘You sure?’

‘I should have prevented it.’

‘So you’re not all right,’ said the man.

‘I’ll be OK.’

‘It would be wrong to blame yourself.’

‘Easy to say.’

‘But true. He wasn’t your responsibility – or your patient.’

‘I said I’ll be OK: I can function. I don’t want to analyse it any more.’ She regretted the sharpness.

‘Peter’s a nice guy.’

‘Yes.’

‘You obviously get on well.’

‘I told you we did.’ She felt a sudden sweep of anger.

‘I remember.’

‘I’m very tired. I’m going to bed.’

‘Of course.’

She expected it to be Blake when her phone rang. ‘You didn’t tell me about you and Hugo.’

‘There’s nothing to tell.’

‘It didn’t look like that tonight.’

‘We see each other. But we’re not sleeping together.’ Why was she defending herself: telling him that!

‘Oh.’

‘I really am tired.’

‘How about lonely?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But no.’

‘You sure?’

‘Quite sure.’ She hoped she hadn’t created an unnecessary problem for herself.

Rosetti and Volker were at the bar and both drunk when Henri Sanglier got back to the Metropole. The German, emboldened by whisky, invited him to join them but Sanglier said he had calls to make.

‘Things could really start to move tomorrow,’ forecast Volker, carefully enunciating each word.

‘I hope you’re right,’ said the Frenchman.

‘We’ve done our best,’ Volker assured him enigmatically.

‘I don’t want to know!’

In his suite Sanglier remained undecided for several moments before picking up the telephone to dial Francoise, to whom he hadn’t spoken since Paris and hardly expected to reach now. He was actually surprised when she answered almost immediately. She appeared as surprised to hear from him. There was noise – music and people – in the background.

Instead of talking about Paris, which he’d intended, he said: ‘What’s going on?’