The Last Witness

have gone to these lengths.

Michel had already checked her out on the computer for any criminal record an hour before she arrived: nothing. Now he had some new names and details to check, but his first gut feeling was that this English woman, Elena Waldren, was telling the truth. She was Georges Donatiens’ birth mother.

The coincidence of the timing he’d been uneasy about the most, but her explanation there too had come across as real. Heartfelt, emotional, her voice had been close to breaking at points: if she wasn’t telling the truth, then Roman had found one of the best Michel had ever come across. The other possibility was that Roman had at some stage discovered about her being Georges’ real mother and had pulled her out of the woodwork now when he most needed her.

But her initial enquiries with the search agency were weeks ago, when Roman still had Georges firmly in his sights and high hopes of soon removing him. And from her passport, her flight over was three days ago, eighteen hours before Georges’ abduction. Even her visit to the orphanage was the day before their final announcement and Roman possibly knowing that he might need her as an ace card.

Though still Michel sensed an anxiety and nervousness beneath that he couldn’t quite fathom. He looked at her contemplatively for a second as he forced a weak smile.

‘I’m sorry, but we can’t be too careful.’ Maybe it was more shell-shock than nerves: she’d obviously been through the mill, and now on top had to face the third degree from him and the worry that having got this far she might fail at the final hurdle. She might never get to see her son. And all of that now rested in his hands. It was enough to make anyone nervous, and that realization also pressed the weight heavier on his own shoulders: just how was he going to wend his way through this, explain? ‘These people threatening your son are highly dangerous and probably by now also desperate. They’d go to any lengths to use others to try and get to him.’ Michel held out a palm. ‘Others such as yourself.’

‘Oh, I… I understand.’ Though it had taken a second for the penny to drop. They’d been at crossed purposes all the time! With the questioning starting to have an edge, she’d become convinced that he’d seen something on the computer, but all the time he’d been thinking that she might be a mafia plant! She almost couldn’t resist smiling — partly release of tension, partly at the ludicrousness — but bit it back: out of step with the mood. What had brought them to this room and the fact that its outcome balanced on a knife’s edge, hung heavy in the air, smothered all else.

Now for the difficult part, thought Michel. He felt her eyes on him expectantly, full of hope that he’d say she’d be able to see her son. The son he’d made sure was hidden away from everyone, possibly never for her to see again. He felt the pressure of it like a dull ache at the back of his neck.

He remembered his mother saying that if you tell a lie, it’ll come out somehow. ‘Don’t know how, but it always does.’ He’d convinced himself before the meeting that it must be a ruse from Roman. It had his trademark all over it, was the perfect extra pressure to bring into play: ‘You want to hide him away forever: there, I’ve trumped you. The mother he’s never seen. Get out of that one.’ He’d become so convinced that it was false that he didn’t expect to have to face this moment now. Tell this woman who’d already been through a living hell that the chances of her getting to see her son were slim.

‘The problem is, Mrs Waldren, as I told Claude Donatiens and he no doubt passed on to you — this programme is very strict. The idea is that your son sees no one — and I mean no one from his past. Now that’s not to say that that rule can’t be broken given very special circumstances, and then again only if we can put the right safeguards in place. The first thing to happen is that we tell your son — because it’s certainly not in the programme’s charter that we withhold vital personal information from him. Now if he doesn’t want to see you for whatever reason, then that’s the end of the road right there. If he does, then it has to be put before the department that set up the programme in Ottawa. Then we have to…’ Michel broke off. She’d been through enough for her not to have to suffer him burying the likelihood of seeing her son under a chain of procedural details. It was the least he owed her. ‘Well, put it this way — we have to measure the strength and need of your request against the risk taken by granting it.’

‘What are my chances?’

Michel looked slightly down to one side. She’d wasted no time, cut right to the core. Now the spotlight had swung round on him, and he found the plea in her eyes unsettling, difficult to meet head on. His first instinct was to bluff, buoy her spirits, if nothing else than to ease that searching stare. But he’d already played enough shadow games with this; he didn’t want to also be responsible for leading her on in the final clinches.

‘They’re no better than even.’ His voice was level, matter-of-fact. ‘Your reason and need are strong, couldn’t be stronger — but the risks we’d likely subject your son to are equally as strong. In the end it wouldn’t be up to me to decide — S-18 in Ottawa will have the final say.’ Another truth: Mundy would decide, Michel wasn’t just passing the buck so that he could side-step the pitiful plea in her eyes. Right now he was the only focus for what she wanted.

But her eyes stayed steadily on him, and she reached one hand across the table and gently gripped his. ‘But you’ll do your best to help me? To try and convince them?’

Michel wished she hadn’t made that final physical contact: he’d saved a last gap for himself in case he needed to shield within it, stay remote from her dilemma. And now she’d bridged it: he’d felt her hand trembling like a trapped bird, felt all the hopes and desires of a lifetime built up and now passed on to him with that single touch.

‘Yes… yes, I will.’ His voice wavered slightly, though once again he was telling the truth.

But what he couldn’t explain was that he’d plead her case strongly as much for himself as for her: having trawled his conscience long and hard before finally going ahead with Georges’ faked abduction, what he couldn’t bear was an ounce more doubt or guilt over it. And if she finally got to see her son, there was no harm done. Things would be back to how they were before she’d made contact.

‘I think we can trace her.’

Crowley was hit with the claim as soon as he walked in the squad room that morning. DC Proctor, one of the more technically attuned of his team, invariably took pole position whenever things drifted sufficiently into cyberspace to make eyes in the squad room start to glaze over.

‘Really?’ Crowley prepared himself for an onslaught of techno-babble as he took of his jacket and looped it over the back of his chair. He might have shown more enthusiasm if Proctor hadn’t broken the golden rule that it was best not to speak to him until he’d downed his first coffee.

Proctor continued undeterred. Crowley blinked at him twice heavily, yawned, and halfway through headed to the coffee machine with Proctor’s voice trailing behind him. It was about the call Elena Waldren had made with a call card. Yes, central exchange, but the cards were usually all numbered. ‘If we give them the number called and the time, they should be able to tell us what number card made that call.’ Proctor paused for emphasis. ‘And also where that card was sold.’

Crowley poured and took his first sip, but the last part had already got him fully awake. His eyes were wide above the cup. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Sure as can be.’

Crowley gave Proctor the green light to start chasing it. A stream of secrecy and liability disclaimer forms faxed back and forth between them and the global call company eat up much of the day, and mid-afternoon Gordon Waldren was on the line about his wife’s deadline. Could Crowley extend it? His wife had a session planned with a psychiatrist and she fully expected to come out with proof positive that Ryall was molesting Lorena. ‘But I won’t know for sure until my next contact with her at eight-thirty tonight.’

‘I don’t know.’ Crowley clasped at his hair and looked across at Proctor. At any other time he might have said yes, but if they found a firm trace Turton would probably be reluctant to delay any longer. ‘I’ll make a call to the powers that be and let you know in an hour or two.’

Proctor had the information in only another forty minutes that the card used was in a batch that went through their distributor for Eastern Canada.

‘Eastern Canada?’ Crowley confirmed. ‘They can’t narrow it down closer than that?’

‘No, that’s the closest. They supply to the distributor, and from there have no track of exactly which cities which cards go to.’

Great, Crowley thought: they’d narrowed it to an area geographically five times larger than the half of Western Europe where originally they thought she might be. But at least it was down to a population of 14 million rather than 200 million and the number of cities and towns was far less. He phoned Inspector Turton and