Brian Freemantle - The Predators

Pieter Lascelles admitted being surprised by her moving into the Antwerp house but didn’t question it, more immediately interested in the arrangements for what was going to happen.

‘What do you think about the identification?’

He smiled quizzically. ‘What is it?’

‘An English nursery rhyme I learned at school.’

‘Very appropriate.’

‘You still bringing the same number of people?’

‘Yes. You?’

‘Just me.’

The surgeon didn’t speak for several moments. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I’m simply not including anyone.’

‘Your decision,’ Lascelles conceded.

‘I’ll probably be seeing a lot more of you in the future,’ said Felicite.

‘I’ll look forward to that.’

In Lille Georges Lebron responded as excitedly as Lascelles. ‘I was becoming impatient,’ he complained.

‘How many of you will there be?’

‘Ten, as arranged,’ said the man. ‘And a special guest, of course.’

Throughout the conversations Mary hadn’t turned from the window. Felicite said: ‘I’ve got hamburgers.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ said the child sullenly, her back to the woman.

‘Hamburgers and then we’ll telephone papa,’ said Felicite.

Mary turned, finally. ‘All right.’

The outraged head of mission insisted upon summoning the young embassy lawyer, Elliot Smith, and that McBride be told, so they’d all transferred yet again to the ambassador’s study, taking McCulloch and Ritchie with them. McBride’s reaction was mixed. Like Harrison he showed incredulous disbelief, but he was quicker to recognize the restrictions of the discovery. ‘The bastard!’

‘He’s got to be arrested! Made to talk,’ exclaimed Hillary.

The reluctant Elliot Smith was once more thrust into the forefront, as he had been during the original jurisdictional problem and again when Norris had committed suicide. It seemed, he thought, as if events had come full circle. Nervously – apologetically – he said: ‘In my opinion there is no official action that can be brought against Smet. There’s probably a Belgian law against possessing pornography featuring children: there is in most EU countries. But that information was gained illegally. It can’t form the basis for any formal investigation. He’s a lawyer. He’d know that.’

‘What about the basement cell, for Christ’s sake!’ demanded McBride.

‘It’s a coal bunker, with a strengthened door,’ said Blake. ‘It could be for burglar prevention from the street outside.’

‘You absolutely sure he’s in contact with who’s got Mary?’ demanded Hillary.

‘Yes. But I can’t prove it,’ said Claudine.

Ignoring her qualification McBride said: ‘You telling me we couldn’t sweat it out of the bastard?’

‘That’s exactly what we’re telling you,’ said Claudine pityingly. ‘He’d have to be arrested to be interrogated. We’ve got no legally obtained evidence for his arrest. And he’d know more than that: he’d know the only way he could face prosecution would be by admitting knowledge of Mary’s captors. So there’s no way he’d do that. At this moment we’ve got a way through to them, whoever and wherever they are. We’d lose all that even if we could persuade the Belgians to pick him up.’

McBride thrust up from his desk, stomping to the window overlooking the formal grounds and the avenue beyond. No one spoke. After several minutes, without turning back into the room, he said: ‘My kid’s out there somewhere with a bunch of perverts who could be doing God knows what to her. We know who one of them is. And we can’t do a goddamned thing about it?’

‘I just don’t believe it!’ said Hillary, in rare agreement with her husband.

No one wanted to reply. Claudine looked to Sanglier. Uncomfortably the Europol commissioner said: ‘I know it sounds absurd. But we can’t do anything. Not if we want to save her. It is absurd. But that’s precisely what the situation is.’

McBride turned back into the room, but he did not go immediately behind his desk. Instead he came to Claudine. ‘Which brings it all back to you, Dr Carter. To how well you can mislead him into showing her a direction and how well you can manoeuvre the woman without her realizing it’s being done.’

‘Not totally,’ said Harding. ‘Every telephone and every room in Smet’s house is wired. He can’t make or receive a call, talk to anyone who comes there, without our hearing every word. And we know there’s more than just Smet and me woman. He’s bound to speak to the others. When he does he’ll take us with him.’

‘What’s come from the house since the devices were installed?’ challenged McBride.

Rampling shook his head. ‘Not even an incoming call.’ Bitterly he added: ‘Obviously a guy with a very limited circle of particular friends.’

‘There’s a point about that,’ said McCulloch, nodding sideways to his partner. ‘We combed that house. Gave it a second shake after we’d found the pictures and the cell. I’m sure we didn’t miss anything. There wasn’t an address book. Not one he left lying around in the house, anyway. Nor any personal letter. Just business stuff.’

‘He’ll carry it with him,’ guessed Harding. ‘There’s a damned great briefcase in all this morning’s surveillance pictures.’

‘The entire ring – the woman herself – are most likely in it,’ said Ritchie. ‘So how do we get it?’

‘Not easily,’ said Rampling.

‘But we’ve got to,’ said Blake.

The American looked sourly at him. ‘That so?’

McBride had gone back behind his desk and was listening intently, gaunt-faced, to the operational discussion. For once Hillary was silent.

‘And there’s his office,’ added Blake, unembarrassed. ‘We don’t have any wires there.’

‘The Justice Ministry is an official government building!’ protested Harrison. ‘You’re not suggesting-’

‘You know damned well what he’s suggesting and it sounds good to me,’ snapped McBride impatiently. ‘If anyone wants superior authority, I’ve just given it. And if that’s not enough I’ll get it from the fucking President. You got any problem with that?’

‘No, sir,’ said Harrison.

For the record Sanglier supposed he should voice an official caution but this was a meeting where records were not being taken. He’d have to be very careful of the Americans when he took up office in Paris. But then, he reflected, he’d been careful about everything and everyone ever since he could remember. It would be a relief, just once, to be able to relax: a relief but impossible. He said: ‘What are we going to tell Poncellet?’

‘Nothing,’ said Harding shortly, totally confident now as the overall American supervisor. ‘I don’t imagine he’d have a problem but he is the police commissioner and we are acting illegally. We can’t take the risk he wouldn’t try to intervene in some way: screw everything.’

‘His house is bugged!’ reminded Sanglier.

‘We won’t listen,’ said Harding.

Still with two hours to go before the earliest the woman might call, even if she kept to her roughly established schedule, Sanglier remained with McBride and the chastened Harrison when everyone else left.

With time to kill, the rest moved without any positive decision back to the room made available to the Europol group now that the embassy had become the focal point for the investigation. The accommodation was actually a rarely used briefing room for both the CIA and the FBI and slightly bigger although less comfortable than Rampling’s suite, which they’d used previously. It was also, considerately, at the furthest end of the corridor from where Norris had killed himself: the area remained behind canvas screens but cleaners, workmen and decorators had moved in.