wrongdoing, would we?’
‘No,’ Harding managed. Holy shit, he thought.
Claudine liked the vaguely faded, turn-of-the-century ambience of the Metropole, complete with its over- furnished art deco lobby, exuberantly potted foliage and rattling, open-grilled elevator. Peter Blake was already waiting, wedged into the corner of the inappropriately small bar for a complete view of the lounge, the lobby beyond and the hotel entrance to the sidewalk cafe. His beer glass was half empty. She chose white wine. They touched glasses.
‘More guidance for a new boy,’ demanded Blake. ‘What’s Europol like for expenses?’
Claudine frowned. ‘OK, I guess. I never got a query the last time. But they like receipts. Why?’
‘The concierge recommends La Maison du Cygne, which is just around the corner on the Grande Place,’ said the man. ‘But says it’s expensive. Chez Francois is good for fish and is slightly cheaper but it’s not so close, on the Quai au Brigues. Your choice.’
Getting-to-know-each-other time, realized Claudine. That slightly surprised her, too: on the train from Holland Blake hadn’t made much of an effort, engrossed for most of the journey in a book by Elmore Leonard, whom he’d called the best detective writer in the world. The name of the fish restaurant was an unfortunate reminder of Sanglier’s marauding wife, Francoise. ‘Let’s walk around to the Grande Place.’
La Maison du Cygne was old, with a lot of dark wood and an air of being sure of itself without conceit. It reminded her of the Michelin-starred restaurant her mother had run in Lyon until her death, eight months earlier. Claudine had the lobster, which was superb, Blake had moules and chose the wine without consulting her, which is what Hugo Rosetti had done during their first outings.
Claudine was curious, although not apprehensive, about this initial encounter. It hadn’t taken her long to realize that sex and the pursuit of it was the only way Europol’s ghetto barriers were breached, the majority of the polyglot male detectives and crime staff appearing automatically to consider the majority of the polyglot female contingent available prey to be hunted, with no closed season. There was an irony, she recognized, in the fact that after becoming so adept at rejection it was Hugo Rosetti, the one man she wouldn’t have rebuffed, whose principles prevented his attempting what most other men in the organization tried all the time.
Careful not to be obvious – determined against any irritating misunderstanding – she studied the man, as intent upon any signs she might professionally isolate as she was upon his physical appearance. He didn’t have the awkwardness of a lot of big men and on balance she decided the always direct look from those oddly blue eyes was polite, unstraying attention, not appraisal. She liked, too, the fact that he hadn’t invaded her space escorting her from the hotel: there had been no physical contact, cupping her elbow or putting his hand at her back to guide her. Extremely confident, she thought again, without the need for gap-filling gestures or movement. She guessed the barely discernible Irish accent had been exaggerated on the assignment that preceded Europol.
‘Who’s going to go first?’ he demanded openly.
‘I didn’t think you liked talking about yourself?’
‘The observant psychologist!’
‘You made it pretty obvious whenever anyone tried to make you.’
‘I can’t be bothered to help people get off listening to imagined James Bond exploits.’
‘Weren’t they James Bond exploits?’
He held his wine glass in both hands, staring at her over its rim. She was too strongly featured to be a beautiful woman but there was a very positive attractiveness he found intriguing. He liked the way she wore her black hair short, cut into her neck, and how the grey eyes met him, in neither challenge nor flirtation: if there was a message it was that they were equals. Strictly professional, he thought, remembering her remark at their first meeting. ‘I didn’t drink vodka martini, get seduced by any big-breasted virgins or drive a car that fired rockets.’
Claudine recognized the self-parody avoidance. She went only partially along with it. ‘But it was one bloody great gamble?’
Blake had been half smiling, inviting her to join in the mockery. Abruptly he became serious. ‘There was an attempt on you, during the serial killing investigation? An attack? I read the archives, after Sanglier’s briefing.’
‘I got trapped into some publicity: French police wanting their pictures on television. Mine was there too…’ Claudine slightly lifted her left arm, along which the knife scar ran from shoulder to wrist. ‘That’s why I have to wear long sleeves.’ The advice was to wait another year before considering cosmetic surgery. She looked steadily at him. ‘We were talking about you, in Ireland?’
‘No we’re not.’
There were mental scars and she guessed they were deep. ‘You’re not showing any signs.’
‘It took a while to get rid of them: to get rid of a lot.’
‘Inpatient?’
‘For three months.’
‘What about medication now?’
‘I carry it, as a precaution.’
‘Worried about the pressure of this?’
‘I don’t think so. It’ll be a lot different from what I did before.’
‘Sure you don’t want to talk about it?’
‘Positive. It’s locked away.’
Was there guilt, as well as stress: the sort of eroding remorse that a mentally well balanced person would suffer if he’d had to go as far as killing someone? Angrily she stopped the reflection: she was behaving – thinking at least – like his cocktail party interrogators. ‘If anything starts to become unlocked and you think I can help, professionally, while we’re here…’
‘It won’t,’ he insisted. ‘I’ve thrown away the key. But thanks.’
Claudine knew she should move on but she didn’t want to. It was impossible for her to make any proper judgement without knowing what he’d gone through, but in her professional opinion traumas weren’t adjusted to by sealing up the experience and pretending it never happened. She’d lost a husband who’d thought he could handle a mental problem like that. ‘How was it for your family?’
‘There isn’t one. No wife, current or prior. Only child. Both parents dead. I was well selected.’
There was bitterness, so the door wasn’t as securely bolted as he would have liked to imagine. ‘Selected?’ she challenged. ‘You would have had to have volunteered, surely?’
‘I did,’ he admitted.
‘So you got yourself into whatever it was. You weren’t pushed into it unwillingly.’
Blake nodded ruefully. ‘Thank you, doctor.’ There was a grin, to show there was no offence. ‘So far this has all been a bit one-sided, hasn’t it?’
Claudine didn’t mention it was through being an English representative at the Lyon-based Interpol that her father had met her mother. Nor did she mention that her father’s archival investigation into Sanglier’s father’s wartime heroism had created the fluke she was now convinced formed the basis of the man’s uneven and at times bewildering attitude towards her. She talked of her husband’s death but not that it had been suicide from work- stressed depression she’d been too professionally preoccupied even to notice. And she didn’t say anything about Hugo Rosetti.
‘And what about Kurt Volker?’ he demanded. ‘You seemed very keen to get him aboard?’
‘Kurt you’ve got to see for yourself!’
Blake regarded her with raised eyebrows. ‘Sorry if I’m venturing on a personal situation!’
‘You’re not. Not that way. Just wait, if this comes to anything. How do you want to handle tomorrow’s meeting?’ she asked, in a suddenly decided test. There’d been some distracting, who’s-in-charge problem with the French detective with whom she’d worked during the serial killing investigation.
He shrugged. ‘According to all the warnings about how Europol is viewed it looks as if it’s going to be you and me against the world. I think it should be a double act, don’t you?’
It wasn’t the reply Claudine had expected but she liked it. She thought she was going to enjoy working with this man. Only, of course, professionally.
‘Your fault!’ screamed Hillary.
‘You agreed Mary Beth should go to a local school,’ McBride yelled back.
‘I didn’t want it.’
‘It’s too late to talk like that now.’
