‘Not yet.’
‘When?’
‘Soon. Would you like me to be nice to you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t want me to slap you again, do you?’
‘No!’
‘So you’ve got to be a good girl. Do what I tell you to do.’
‘All right.’ Mary wanted to go back to her room: not to be with this woman and the man who was grunting more than laughing now.
‘Did you like seeing your mama and papa?’
‘Yes.’ They were trying to make her cry again but she wouldn’t. ‘Are you going to talk to him, like he asked?’
‘He knows you’re safe.’
Mary swallowed. ‘When can I go?’ She wished she hadn’t walked away from school. She wouldn’t do it again. Ever.
The man gave a grunting laugh.
‘Not yet,’ said Felicite.
‘When?’
‘When I say so.’
‘You’re bad, for taking me.’
‘Don’t be rude. If you’re rude I’ll slap you again.’ She smiled. ‘And you know I don’t want to do that.’
The woman’s voice was thick again and Mary didn’t like it. She didn’t believe the woman wanted to be nice to her. If she wanted to be nice why had they taken her and locked her up and hit her? It didn’t make sense. She didn’t like not understanding what was going on. ‘I’m not rude. And I don’t want to stay here. I want to go home.’
That was better. Mary was being contrary again. ‘Would you like someone to play with?’
Mary frowned. ‘A pet, you mean?’
Felicite hadn’t but they were going to need another identification. ‘Do you have a pet?’
‘A rabbit.’
‘What’s its name?’
‘Billy Boy.’
‘What colour is he?’
‘White, with black ears. And a black leg.’
‘Who’ll be looking after him?’
‘Mom, I suppose.’
‘I didn’t mean a pet to play with. I meant another boy or girl.’
‘Does one live here, in this house?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Yes, I would.’ Nothing bad could happen if there was another boy or girl in the house. Mary felt better. Safer. Perhaps they could become friends and whoever it was might help her get away, like in the books. ‘Is there someone?’
‘We’ll have to see, won’t we?’
Did she mean it? Or was she playing another silly game? She kept talking about games. This might be one of them, making Mary think she could be with someone and then saying she couldn’t. Cheating her. She wanted so much to be home. Home with mom. Cuddling with mom, like mom wanted to do a lot but she didn’t, saying it was silly. She didn’t think it was silly now. She wanted to be with someone who cuddled her. ‘Please let me go home.’
‘Don’t whimper!’ said Felicite sharply.
‘I hate you!’
‘You’ll love me in the end. Properly.’
‘I won’t.’
‘I’ll make you.’
Without warning the door leading upstairs opened. Without entering Gaston Mehre said: ‘The others are here. They want you to come.’
‘What…?’ demanded Felicite, surprised.
‘Please come.’
He wasn’t wearing a mask and Mary saw a balding man with a red face. What hair he had was red, too. She’d be able to tell people what he looked like when she got home. She wanted them punished for what they were doing to her, the woman most of all. But after she got home.
‘They know!’ declared Jean Smet. He strode round the room with its panoramic view of the now placid river, nervously smoking the cigarette he’d lit from the stub of the previous one.
‘Know what?’ demanded Felicite, lounged in her throne-like chair. ‘And for Christ’s sake stop running around.’ She was angry at the man’s panic, which was making the rest nervous. And at his summoning them all like this, without asking her permission.
The lawyer did stop but it seemed difficult for him to remain still. ‘That we took her for sex, in the beginning. They’re going back through police records not just in Brussels but throughout the country: Europol records, too.’ He looked fleetingly at Dehane. ‘They know computers are being used cleverly. They’re sure there’s no shortage of money.’ He concentrated upon Felicite. ‘Did you go to school in England?’
She laughed at the totally unexpected question. ‘For three years. My father was at the London embassy. What the hell’s that got to do with anything?’
‘She thought the person who wrote the message learned the language properly.’
‘So what?’ Felicite said dismissively.
‘They’re clever. It’s not confused, like last time.’
Only Felicite was relaxed, unworried. The Mehre brothers were side by side with their backs to the water, Gaston holding Charles’s hand comfortingly. The obese Michel Blott was frowning at the apparent knowledge of those hunting them and August Dehane had started nibbling at a thumb nail, a nerve beginning to pull at the corner of his mouth. Smet lit another cigarette from his preceding stub and set off once more, moving up and down in front of the window. The heavily bespectacled Henri Cool sat with his arms awkwardly folded, as if he were holding himself for reassurance.
‘We can’t go on,’ insisted Smet. ‘We’ve got to get rid of her. We should have done it the first day. Not started all this.’
‘That’s what I said,’ Cool reminded them.
‘So they’re cleverer than the last time,’ mused Felicite, more to herself than the others. ‘That’s good. It makes it much more interesting.’
‘They think that, too: that we’re doing it more as a challenge than for the money,’ blurted the government lawyer.
‘They have worked a lot out, haven’t they?’ conceded Felicite. ‘Who, exactly, is the clever one?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Smet. ‘An English superintendent, Blake, did most of the talking at the ministry, but there were two psychologists, a woman and an American. The Americans have brought in a lot of people and their man from the embassy., Harrison, said that as many more could be brought in as are wanted. Poncellet can second as many officers as they want from any force in the country. And the Europol commissioner, Sanglier, said there are unlimited resources once the investigation is focused. The entire Cabinet is determined to find her: find who’s got her. Ulieff’s job is on the line…’
‘All of which I anticipated, and we expected,’ said Felicite mildly.
‘I’m not sure that we did, not properly,’ said Blott, the other lawyer. There was the faintest sheen of perspiration on his forehead.
‘Once the investigation is focused,’ echoed Felicite.
The six men looked blankly at her, none of them understanding.
Felicite stared contemptuously back at them, one by one, finishing upon Smet. ‘That’s what you said, isn’t it?’
