Brian Freemantle - The Predators

There was momentary blankness. Then: ‘Dad?’

McBride retched. ‘Honey!’ he managed, coughing.

Claudine kept moving her hand, trying to slow him down.

‘It’s me.’

‘Let me speak to her!’ demanded Hillary.

‘I know…! Oh, honey…’ said McBride.

‘I want to come home, dad.’

The effort to get hold of himself shivered through the man. ‘I want that too, honey.’

The volume was uneven and a blankness came after every exchange, Claudine noted. Two minutes had passed, according to the clock.

‘Why haven’t you fixed it, then?’ The petulance was immediate, angry. ‘Are you and mom fighting?’

Hillary was in front of her husband, beckoning demands.

‘No, honey. We’re not fighting.’

Claudine gestured the woman back. To McBride she mouthed ‘Let her tell me how’ and when the man repeated it, word for word, Mary said: ‘You must do everything she says.’

Perspiration was streaming down McBride’s face now, soaking his shirt. ‘I will! I promise I will! How are you, honey? Tell me how you are.’

‘All right.’ A brief blankness. Then: ‘Is Claudine there?’

Hillary actually tried to snatch McBride’s phone. He physically slapped her away.

‘Hello, Mary,’ said Claudine.

‘I don’t like you!’

‘Why not?’

‘Not letting me speak to dad.’

‘He’s here. You can speak to him now.’ Four minutes, she saw. What Mary had said was important.

‘Not today. Before.’

Satisfaction surged through Claudine. ‘Do you want to speak to mummy? She’s here too.’

‘I’ve got to tell you something. It’s…’

To the still demanding Hillary Claudine shook her head and mouthed ‘No.’

Aloud she said: ‘I think you’re being a very brave girl.’

‘I…’ Silence. ‘Tiny fingers come after tiny toes,’ the child blurted.

McBride squeezed his eyes shut in despair.

Claudine felt perspiration prick out on her face. ‘You’re very pretty. I’ve seen lots of pictures of you.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mary and for the first time Claudine guessed the reply had been unprompted. There was a gap before Mary said: ‘I’ve got to go!’

Claudine gestured against the frantic protest she saw McBride about to make. Anxious for a response she could identify from her hopeful manipulation of Smet, Claudine made the sigh, like the contempt, as obvious as she could in her voice. ‘So she isn’t going to talk herself: just through you? I’m not surprised.’

‘Oh yes I am going to talk!’ came the woman’s voice harshly. ‘Why shouldn’t I want to talk?’

McBride surrendered the phone but Hillary didn’t speak.

‘I can think of a lot of reasons.’

‘You think I’m afraid of you!’

Confirmation of the Smet conduit! thought Claudine, triumphantly. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘You know what you’ve just done? You’ve just cost McBride another two hundred and fifty thousand. That’s my new price. Half a million. And you’ll never guess the good use it’s going to be put to. Not much of a negotiator, are you?’

‘How do you want it paid?’ said Claudine evenly, refusing any reaction.

‘Arrangements are being made.’

‘I’m sure,’ said Claudine disbelievingly.

‘Seven hundred and fifty thousand!’ declared the woman. ‘You’d better watch your mouth. Every time you say something I don’t like I’m going to fine you.’

‘How much longer?’ said Claudine, with another sigh. Psychologically she had to press the woman as far as she could. And she was as confident as she could be that the woman had developed a bizarre love for Mary.

‘I’ll tell you when I’m ready.’

‘It’s taking a long time.’ Like this conversation, Claudine thought: ten minutes without any indication from outside that the scanners had traced the signal.

‘The newspapers say McBride’s a friend of the President but I don’t believe it.’

Claudine frowned, unsure of a response. Go with it, she decided. ‘Why not?’

‘They’d have sent someone better than you if he was really important.’

The almost juvenile desperation was unsettling. ‘Maybe it’s you who aren’t sufficiently important,’ she said.

‘You really do have to watch your mouth. We’re up to a million now.’

‘Why not collect it?’

‘You haven’t suffered enough yet. Maybe Mary hasn’t, either.’

‘Mary Beth!’ broke in Hillary at last but there was no response from the other end. Just before it went dead she and Claudine heard Mary’s distant, muffled shout. ‘Please, dad… please…!’

McBride looked at Claudine, his face purple with rage. ‘You stupid bitch! You made her hang up!’

‘I hope it was because of me and not the sudden interruption from someone she didn’t expect!’ said Claudine. Furiously confronting the woman, she said: ‘Mrs McBride, you could have just killed your daughter.’

Jean Smet was the way to bring the woman back. Only if she failed to respond would Hillary McBride have caused a catastrophe by confronting her with something for which she hadn’t been prepared, and Claudine regretted her outburst against the ambassador’s wife.

Hillary and McBride were literally eyeball to eyeball after Claudine’s accusation, screaming abuse at each other. Claudine shouted: ‘Shut up! Shut up and start thinking properly about Mary Beth!’

The fresh outburst silenced both of them. Claudine said: ‘It’s recoverable. The important thing is that I’ve become the person she hates: the person towards whom all her hostility is directed now. And today I was coming very close to gaining control without her knowing it: making her do what I want. Which is seriously to attempt a ransom. I’ve challenged her: doubted that she’s capable.’

‘If today’s call didn’t start out to fix a ransom what was it for?’ demanded Hillary, wanting to recover from her mistake.

‘She wants Mary to hate me as much as she does. You heard what Mary said, about not liking me. And her reply when I asked her why.’ With perfect recall, Claudine quoted: ‘“Not letting me speak to dad… Not today. Before.” She’s transferring the blame in her own mind and trying to do the same in Mary’s for what’s happened to Mary. She’s trying to bond the child to her.’

‘Make Mary like her, you mean?’ asked McBride incredulously. ‘How the hell can she do that!’

‘I didn’t say she could do it. I said that’s what she’s trying to do.’ Paradoxical though it seemed it was psychologically possible, particularly with someone impressionable, for a victim to become emotionally dependent upon a captor.

‘What about the fingers and toes remark?’ persisted the father.

‘That’s to alienate you from me: continue the attack upon me,’ Claudine assured him. ‘She won’t maim someone she wants to like her.’

‘Why is she doing that? I don’t understand!’ protested Hillary.

She’d spare them by not talking about love. ‘It’s the way her mind works.’

Claudine was momentarily surprised to see Hugo Rosetti with everyone else in the briefing room when she reentered. He smiled, fleetingly, and just as quickly she smiled back. Blake, expressionless, watched the interchange.

‘What happened to the scanners?’ demanded Claudine at once.

‘The transmission was too far away: that’s why the volume fluctuated so much,’ said Volker. ‘They couldn’t get any sort of fix, although they don’t think she was moving around, the way she did yesterday.’

For Poncellet’s benefit Claudine summarized to its minimum but still accurately the complete profile she’d given to McBride. To get rid of the police chief, she said she needed to assess the woman’s mental state before they held another planning meeting, and the moment Poncellet left the embassy Peter Blake gave them his explanation for the mobile telephone number.