his BMW.'
'If you add Gaunt to the equation you do make out a very strong case,' Tweed admitted. 'I have an idea we'll break this mystery open in two bites. First the film and the tape will tell us the Washington angle – solving Norton's frantic efforts to stop us. Later we may have to return to Padstow to pin down who was responsible for the massacre. To say nothing of the murders of Frey, Klara and Theo Strebel.'
'You think you know who is guilty of those murders, don't you?' Paula challenged him.
'I've known for some time. The key is Jennie Blade's references to the so-called Shadow Man appearing in Colmar.'
When Marvin Mencken left the restaurant in Basle Bahnhof – he had carefully waited for fifteen minutes to be on the safe side – he hurried to where his Renault was parked. He was about to climb behind the wheel when he noticed his front right tyre was flat.
He swore aloud, then began the time-wasting task of changing it for his spare tyre. He had no way of knowing it was sabotage. While Tweed was confronting him inside the restaurant Butler had used a simple method of disabling the car.
Crouching down by the front tyre as though lacing up his trainer, he had taken out a ballpoint pen, unscrewed the cap, inserted the end of his pen and pressed down the valve, holding it there until all the air had escaped. He had then replaced the cap.
Mencken worked frantically in the vain hope of arriving in Ouchy before Norton. Sweating with the effort, despite the bitter cold, he eventually got behind the wheel and started the car. The delay meant that when Norton reached his destination there was no one to tell him where his troops were located in different hotels.
The Hotel Chateau d'Ouchy was one of the weirdest, most intriguing hotels Paula had ever seen. Tweed had driven the Espace down a steep hill, had turned on to a level road and as the moon came out from behind a cloud Paula had her first view of Lake Geneva, the largest of all the Swiss lakes. The water was calm, without a ripple, stretching away towards distant France on the southern shore.
Butler overtook them in the station wagon as Tweed paused, crawling ahead to sniff out any sign of danger. As Tweed waited Paula peered up at the Chateau d'Ouchy. Illuminated by external arc lights, it was built of fawn- coloured stone and its steep, red-tiled roofs were decorated with a black, almost sinister zigzag design. At the corners steepled turrets reared up and it looked very old.
'Looks as ancient as history,' she commented.
'Used to be a castle in the twelfth century,' Tweed told her, 'before ages later it was rebuilt and converted into a hotel. At least it's quiet down here.'
Paula thought that was an understatement, recalling the furious hustle and fast tempo of Zurich. Across the road from the hotel was an oyster-shaped harbour encircled with eerie green street lamps, their light reflected in the harbour water. Boats cocooned for winter in blue plastic covers were moored to buoys.
But it was the stillness which most struck her – the waterfront was deserted, there was no other traffic, no one else in sight. To their left beyond the road they had driven along was a line of small hotels and cafes, all apparently closed. Tweed had lowered his window and refreshing air drifted inside – so different from the ice-cold of the Vosges. Marler appeared from nowhere alongside the window.
'OK to come ashore,' he drawled. He handed a sheet of paper to Tweed. 'That lists the hotels round here where Norton's men are stationed. The Chateau d'Ouchy, so far as I can tell, is clean…'
Tweed had parked the Espace in a courtyard alongside the hotel and next to Marler's red Mercedes. He entered reception with Paula, who spoke to the girl behind the counter, reminding her of the phoned reservations.
'And you said we could have dinner even if we arrived at a late hour.'
'The dining-room is at your service, but only when you are ready.'
'I think we'd like to go up to our rooms to freshen up first,' Tweed told her.
He had seen Ives coming in, accompanied by Amberg and Cardon. Behind them followed Butler and Nield flanking a defeated-looking Joel Dyson. He ordered Butler to take turns with Nield in guarding Dyson in his room, that the photographer was only to be given sandwiches and mineral water, then he asked Paula and Newman to accompany him with Ives to his room after registering. There was no time to waste. Lord knew what the morning would bring.
'What sort of person would those six wealthy women who were then brutally raped and murdered stop for – driving in the middle of nowhere in the dark?'
Tweed deliberately repeated the key question he had put to Barton Ives aboard the train from Colmar to Basle. He had previously recalled, for the sake of Paula and Newman, in abbreviated form the story Ives had told him. The FBI man sat up straight on the couch he occupied with Paula, facing Tweed and Newman who were sitting in chairs.
'Yes, that was the question I asked myself over and over again. Then, in the last two cases, there was someone else driving late on the fatal nights. They overtook the cars of the victims – and saw a brown Cadillac parked in a nearby field. I had a hunch, a sudden flash of inspiration, luck – call it what you will. I began checking the movements of a certain man to see whether by chance he was in the state concerned on any of the six fatal nights.'
Ives paused, lit a rare cigarette. Paula glanced round at the suite she had booked for Tweed. It had its own sitting area, spacious and comfortable, and beyond a row of arches, the bedroom. She concentrated again on Ives as he continued.
'The checking on this point wasn't too difficult. What was difficult was carrying out my enquiries without anyone knowing what I was doing. If I was right I knew my life could be in danger. Power carries a lot of clout.'
'So you were investigating a powerful man?' Paula suggested.
'Powerful and ruthless,' Ives agreed. 'To get where he had, to get where he is now. As I checked I began to get more excited – I was hitting more pay dirt than I'd ever really believed I would. The person I was after had made a political speech early in the evening in the same state in the first three cases. And the city where he'd made the speech wasn't all that far, in driving distance, from where a woman was raped and murdered later that same evening.'
'Circumstantial. But not conclusive,' Tweed commented.
'Wait!' Ives held up a hand, stubbed out the cigarette. 'I went on checking the last three cases. Certain that the same circumstances wouldn't apply. But, by God, they did. Senator X – as he then was – had again spoken in public in all three states hours before the last three women victims were attacked and died. A lot of speeches in six states, but then he was running for the highest-' Ives broke off briefly. 'I'll get to that in a minute.'
'What about this Senator's movements after he'd made his speeches?' Tweed asked. 'Were you able to check them?'
That was my next task. Even more difficult to conceal. And he has a very shrewd hatchet woman who runs a whole network of informants. But over a period of time I did manage to do just that – to check his movements after he left the place where he'd made his speech, lifted his audience out of their seats – a real rabble rouser. He was known for wanting to be on his own after bringing the roof down. Always says he needs to recharge his batteries, go some place on his own, drink one bottle of beer. He did exactly that after all six speeches – on the nights when later within driving distance, I checked the times – a woman was raped, murdered.'
'So at least he has no alibi,' Tweed remarked.
'But he does have a brown Caddy he likes driving. And this I haven't ever told anyone so far. I explored round the area of the sixth victim, combed the grass for hours. I was about to call it zilch when I found this empty beer bottle, with a complete set of fingerprints. Some beer that the guy I was checking on likes. That bottle – inside a plastic bag – is in the boot of the Lincoln Continental I have hidden away in an old barn.'
'Again the evidence is circumstantial,' Tweed pointed out. 'No offence, but the trouble is a court would only have your word for where you found that bottle. Unless you can get the fingerprints of the man you were tracking. Of course, if they match…'
'Not so easy.' Ives lit a fresh cigarette. 'Not so easy,' he repeated. 'Not to obtain the fingerprints of ex- Senator Bradford March, now President of the United States.'
