Claudine held back until she was safely halfway across the open embassy forecourt before exploding: ‘What a fucking pantomime!’
Blake showed no surprise at the outburst. ‘I’ve seen better,’ he agreed mildly.
‘It was frightening,’ insisted Claudine. She turned, looking directly at the man. ‘And I really mean that. Frightening.’
Although the road checks hadn’t started the rue du Canal was already congested. They were still early for their meeting so they abandoned the taxi and found a pavement cafe some way from the school, in the direction in which Mary was known to have walked. As they sat there two detectives, one a woman visibly carrying a photograph of Mary Beth McBride, were escorted from inside by a shoulder-shrugging manager. Blake shook his head against making contact and Claudine held back as well.
‘So what’s so frightening?’ demanded Blake.
‘In my professional opinion, Norris is very close to being mentally ill,’ declared Claudine starkly. ‘I believe he’s severely obsessional, which is a clinical condition that needs treatment.’
Blake stared at her, coffee cup half raised. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘That would be something to be very frightened about. You sure?’
‘He’s beyond challenge: won’t consider any argument contrary to his own. Because he doesn’t believe there is any opinion other than his own. You saw it yourself, if you examine it hard enough. He won’t countenance any possibility beyond kidnap. That’s not the rationale of a psychological investigator: it’s the very antithesis of it. Everything is possible at this moment: at the beginning. I don’t think he’s capable of being either objective or subjective…’ She paused. ‘Most worrying of all, I think John Norris is on the edge of losing control. And if he loses control during any negotiation for Mary’s freedom, then she’ll die, if she hasn’t already been killed.’
Blake held up a halting hand. ‘We went in there today knowing that the Bureau were going to give us a load of runaround bullshit and empty promises and try to handle the entire show themselves. OK, so Norris is a supremely arrogant asshole who made it more obvious than we expected. But we’re equals: people to whom he didn’t have to prove any professional ability. He might be entirely different when he’s negotiating.’
‘Norris doesn’t for a moment consider us equals. He thinks we’re grossly inferior. He thinks everyone is inferior to him. John Norris is God in his own heaven. I’m frightened he could make Mary Beth McBride one of his angels.’
Blake regarded her doubtfully. ‘Can you be that positive, from just one meeting?’
‘Until he realized I’d picked up on it, virtually every sentence or opinion began with I. He’s got more victims back than he’s lost and probably been able to manoeuvre the failures into being someone else’s fault, never his. He’s become the Great Untouchable, the Great Unquestionable. It’s affected him.’
‘You’re the expert. But all I’ve heard since I’ve joined Europol is that it’s not just us against the villains but us against every national force and their dog as well.’
Claudine shook her head. ‘The attitude of national forces is resentment, pure and simple: no one wanting their territory encroached upon. That’s not what we’re talking about here. I think Norris is operationally dangerous. To the child, I mean – who’s probably in enough danger as it is.’
‘So what can we do about it?’
‘Nothing,’ conceded Claudine. ‘That’s what upsets me most.’
‘Recovering the child – if she can be recovered – is all that matters?’
Claudine frowned. ‘Yes?’
‘Why not feed the obsession: use it to our advantage? Say you need his help: can’t do it without him and let him believe he is in charge. Couldn’t you control him if you got in on the negotiations?’
‘Don’t give up the day job,’ said Claudine, smiling at the amateur psychology. ‘He doesn’t need to believe he’s in charge. He’s sure he is. He’d see that approach as me patronizing him.’
‘What about getting Sanglier to intervene?’
‘In what? About what? There’s no way we could make any official protest, based upon my impression.’ She hesitated again. ‘Incidentally, you took a lot upon yourself naming Sanglier as our representative before knowing he’d agree to a press conference.’
‘Appearing with ambassadors and commissioners is Sanglier’s level. He more or less said that, at the briefing.’
‘I think he might have liked prior consultation.’
Blake shrugged. ‘If he doesn’t want to do it he can refuse.’
More kamikaze disregard, thought Claudine. To go with a mentally disarranged man and a lost ten-year-old child and a controlling commissioner whom she didn’t trust. Her cup was being filled to overflowing, and they hadn’t even started yet. ‘We were right to argue for a press conference. It would have been a miracle if something hadn’t broken before tomorrow.’
‘Norris conceded on that,’ suggested Blake.
‘We gave him the time he wanted.’
‘I’m not arguing against you,’ said Blake, before making his point. ‘But wouldn’t it be great if in that time there was an approach and Norris managed to get her back?’
Claudine looked quizzically at the man, disappointed for the first time. ‘Great,’ she agreed. ‘But it won’t happen, even if there is an approach. Norris might have been able to do it once but I don’t think he’s capable of doing it any longer.’
Which was suffering the greater delusion of grandeur? wondered Blake. He checked his watch. ‘Time to go.’
Henriette Flahaur, the school principal, was an autocratic, grey-haired, stiffly upright woman trying hard to conceal a disaster behind aggression. The severe black suit reminded Claudine of how her mother customarily dressed to greet customers at the Lyon restaurant. She’d been autocratic, too.
The meeting was more for Claudine’s benefit than Blake’s but the detective led at the beginning, confronting the woman’s insistence that she had already told as much as she knew to both American and Belgian investigators with smiling, sympathetic politeness that impressed Claudine and coaxed a third account from the woman within minutes. It was a terrible, inexplicable misunderstanding, the first time anything like it had ever occurred at the school. A new system had already been introduced, with security guards individually checking pupils in and out of the school. The world seemed to have become a dreadful place. The whole school was praying for Mary Bern’s safe return. Blake said he was sorry but he didn’t think the school’s name could be withheld from the publicity.
‘Have you – or any teacher or official – ever thought your school was being particularly watched?’ he asked.
‘By someone intending to snatch a pupil, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
Madame Flahaur vigorously shook her head. ‘Anyone would have seen how careful…’ she began, trailing off in mid-sentence. ‘That doesn’t sound right now, does it?’
‘It wasn’t the answer to my question anyway,’ Blake said gently. ‘I’m talking about recent weeks or days: a car or a person hanging around that made you curious.’
She shook her head again, although less forcefully. ‘There’s a specific rule. If any member of staff notices anything like that, they have to tell me immediately. And I would have informed the police. There’s been nothing.’
‘That sounds as if such a situation has arisen in the past?’
‘Never,’ the principal insisted. ‘That’s the tragedy: I thought we’d anticipated everything to prevent something like this happening.’
‘Mary Beth would have known she should not have walked off, as she apparently did?’ suggested Claudine, choosing her moment. She needed to decide how well Mary Beth could face the terror of being seized. Upon the child’s behaviour – her strengths or weaknesses – depended the way she would be treated. Literally, perhaps, her survival.
‘Before she became a pupil someone from the embassy visited the school. Talked to me about security. He told me Mary had strict instructions never to leave the premises unless her transport was waiting. That’s our rule, too, with every child. I made sure Mary understood that when she arrived…’ Briefly the woman’s composure wavered, her lip trembling. ‘I know and accept she should not have been released in the first place but having found there was no car waiting she should have immediately returned inside.’
