He wasn't sure whether he believed her or not. He couldn't read her eyes, let alone her mind.
`I'm sorry you felt unwell,' he said. 'Feeling any better now?'
I lay down for most of the afternoon, then had a bath. I think I'll soon feel half-civilized. The brandy is helping.' `Good. Sip it slowly.'
She laid a hand on his arm. 'Am I forgiven, Bob?' `Nothing to forgive. You can't help feeling unwell. I'd recommend a quiet evening.'
`I suspect I dragged you away from a business meeting. So, if you want to go please do.'
'If you don't mind…'
He paid for the drinks, left the bar, and saw Helen Claybourne standing in front of an exhibition poster. She swung round, walked towards him with her slow, elegant step. As always, she looked neat as a new pin, clad in a pale blue blouse, a dove-grey pleated skirt, and low-heeled shoes. Her cool eyes had a mischievous look which Newman found rather fetching.
`I'm an abandoned woman,' she told him. 'No sign of my Willie. The Brigadier has gone missing. Would you think it very forward of me if I asked if you were free for dinner later?'
`I might be. I'll know later. Sorry to be so vague but I'm going to a business meeting. Never know how long they're going to last. I'll try and cut it short,' he said and smiled.
She showed him the little folder the hotel provided with the room number. Leaning forward, she spoke in her soft voice.
'If you could let me know by eight o'clock. Meantime I'll live in hope..
Going up in the elevator Newman was a disturbed man. I think it was a woman, Paula had said while they stood close to the dead body of Mordaunt.
Had he – within the past ten minutes – been talking to the murderess?
34
In Liege Dr Hyde returned to the obscure 'hotel' where he was staying. He had just sampled the local offerings of feminine companionship. The quality was way below that available in Brussels. The nosy woman, who ran what was no more than a lodging house, met him as he entered.
`You have had a phone call,' she said in French. 'They wouldn't leave a name or a number,' she went on regretfully, tut they said it was urgent.'
`It will have to wait,' Hyde said quickly. 'I have just remembered something I forgot to buy. Be back soon.'
He hurried to the nearest public phone box. The only person who knew where he was staying was Dr Wand.
He dialled the number and, to his surprise, it was Dr Wand who took the call. Normally he spoke first to the man called Jules.
`Are you packed and ready to leave, my dear sir?' Dr Wand asked after checking where he was calling from.
`I'm always ready to move on at a moment's notice,' Hyde assured him.
`Then that is what I would much appreciate your doing. If you would be so good, leave Liege at once. Catch the first express to Cologne. From there you fly to Hamburg. As soon as you have found a suitable resting place, be so good as to leave an anonymous note for me at the Four Seasons Hotel. A note which simply gives me your phone number. Dr Hyde, I would earnestly advise you to go now without losing a minute. I am most concerned for your safety. And be ready to treat a new patient. A German who is seventeen years old…'
When Newman arrived in his room he found Pete Nield seated on a couch, staring out of the window at the lights of Brussels, a blaze of cheap neon on the far side of the Boulevard de Waterloo. Benoit was sitting at a desk, a large sheet of paper in front of him covered in his neat handwriting. Paula sat beside him.
`We have been working,' Benoit said with an impish grin, 'while you go off with the first curvy blonde who catches your eye. Why, I can't imagine, when you have the delightful Paula in your room.'
`I thought I'd leave you to enjoy her company for a while,' Newman retorted. 'What work?'
`She has been making a statement about what she saw in the Parc d'Egmont, about her earlier lunch with the victim. Now I want one from you…'
Ten minutes later Newman signed his own statement. Benoit countersigned it, as he had done after Paula's signature.
`Strictly speaking,' he explained, 'I should have asked one of my men to witness these statements. But I am, after all, the chief of police. Anyone who questions the procedure will get my boot up a tender part of his anatomy.'
`You had news for me,' Newman reminded him. 'Grim, you said.'
`Would you like the good or the bad to start with?' The bad.'
`Then I think I'll give you the good first. I phoned Tweed recently, told him we'd traced this Dr Hyde to a boarding house here in Brussels. But the bird had flown. So now we are concentrating on Liege. A team is checking every low-down dump in that beautiful city.' He looked at his watch. 'They will be starting about now.'
'I can't make out why Mordaunt was murdered,' Newman ruminated. 'And just after lunching with Paula – so if by chance he was leading up to luring her away to be kidnapped… Although that's a pretty wild theory.'
`Maybe not so wild,' Paula said quietly. She sat down next to Nield, looking depressed. 'He was playing up to me to start with, turning on the charm. Then, during lunch, his attitude changed. He' – she searched for a wording which would not sound conceited – 'seemed to genuinely like me. Was going a bit overboard, I thought. Supposing he decided not to go through with it?'
`Then, remembering our interview with Dr Wand, I'm sure he became expendable. If that is what happened it really is alarming – the speed with which Wand moved.'
`No proof.' Benoit threw up both hands. 'And Dr Wand is a man of great influence in high places. I would need a cast-iron case before I dared approach him.'
`So what is the bad news?' Newman asked.
`They dragged the dead body of Lucie Delvaux out of the Meuse. Killed by a cyanide injection. Gaston Delvaux has gone to pieces.'
Tweed travelled to catch his flight at London Airport by taxi. At his suggestion, Butler had taken a different taxi and would not sit anywhere near Tweed on the plane. It did no harm to conceal from the opposition the team he was building up against them.
He was walking towards Passport Control when he saw Jim Corcoran, Chief Security Officer and his old friend. To his surprise Corcoran looked away, started walking in a different direction. Tweed caught up with him.
`Something on your mind, Jim? You looked right through me.'
`Sorry. I was miles away. You're off somewhere again?' `Brussels.'
`Have a good flight…'
`Thank you.'
Tweed moved on, holding his boarding pass. Corcoran had seemed distinctly uncomfortable. Three-quarters of an hour later he was in his seat aboard the aircraft. Butler sat two rows behind him.
As the plane took off and climbed, Tweed settled back to think. He preferred travelling on his own: no phone calls to interrupt his flow of thought. Refusing all refreshment, he concentrated on the pattern of events now taking definite shape in his mind.
His last act before leaving Park Crescent had been to get in touch with a powerful contact at Special Branch. He'd given them specific instructions – to be put on hold – about Moor's Landing. He'd emphasized they mustn't go near the place. Not until they received his signal.
Vulcan. His brain had switched to another tack. Philip Cardon had been very confident that the unknown Vulcan existed, that he was an Englishman, that he had long ago left Hong Kong for Britain. Vulcan – a key figure in the elaborate preparations for Operation Long Reach. Who was most likely to be Vulcan? Because Tweed was convinced he had already met him.
The executioner. The killer of Hilary Vane, the American woman who had been murdered at London Airport
