‘We were all agreed, even before what happened today,’ reminded Smet. ‘So there’s nothing more to discuss, is there?’
‘Except who’s going to do it,’ said Gaston Mehre.
‘He likes it,’ said Smet, looking at the man’s brother. Gaston was holding Charles’s hand comfortingly. Charles appeared to have retreated into his private world, unaware of the discussion around him.
‘We’re all part of it, whoever actually kills her,’ said the other lawyer.
‘When?’ asked Gaston Mehre.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Smet. ‘We don’t know how long Felicite will stay at the house tonight.’
‘You’ve got to get rid of the body,’ insisted Gaston. ‘Charles can kill her but the rest of you must get rid of the body.’
‘Of course,’ said Blott, too eagerly.
‘I could have come to Antwerp,’ offered Lascelles. He was extremely thin as well as being tall and he held himself forward, so his body appeared concave. He had a soft, cajoling voice.
‘It won’t take me long to drive back.’ Their table was in a cubicle shielding them from the rest of the diners. She passed the brochure of the Namur chateau across to him. ‘This is it.’
Lascelles studied the illustrations and said: ‘It looks magnificent. Have you shown Lebron?’
‘Two days ago. He was impressed. He’s probably bringing as many as ten of his people.’
‘I’ll probably have around the same. Maybe more. They’re looking forward to it.’
‘When will you make your snatch?’
‘Not until you give me a definite date.’
‘Certainly the weekend after next. Maybe sooner.’
‘You’ve caused a sensation.’
Felicite smiled. ‘It’s exciting.’
‘You will be careful, won’t you?’
‘Don’t you lose your nerve, like the others.’
It was still only nine o’clock when Felicite reached the Antwerp house overlooking the Schelde river. She smiled at the child waiting anxiously just inside the heavy door.
‘Hello, darling,’ said the woman. ‘Are you pleased to see me?’
‘Very glad,’ said Mary. She liked the woman being kind to her: kinder than her mother and father, who didn’t seem to care what was happening to her.
In Brussels Blake finally got a call from Henri Sanglier, who said that after picking up the message from his secretariat he’d decided to go to Menen personally to ensure the surveillance was properly in place. He rang off before Blake could transfer the call to Claudine.
At the city’s Zaventem airport the American embassy’s diplomatic bag arrived from Washington carrying the information John Norris had requested about McBride’s armaments corporation.
At the cafe on the rue Guimard that the FBI had made their own Duncan McCulloch said: ‘If you won’t talk to Blake tomorrow I will. It’s fucking ridiculous.’
‘I’ll do it,’ undertook Harding, finally overcoming his reluctance. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t, he decided. And just three years before he would have been out of it all.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The depression was tangible at the first gathering of the day, people talking because they had to but knowing they weren’t offering anything to keep alive the brief hope of the previous day. The clandestine surveillance had produced nothing. Henri Sanglier had agreed with the Belgian squad at Menen that the cafe proprietor was uninvolved and approved direct questioning with the computer-drawn images of the wanted man and woman. The proprietor, a retired Customs officer, recognized neither. Nor did any of his regular users, whose names he’d offered before being asked. None of them resembled the couple or recognized them.
Poncellet said the Belgian police record search had been extended to cover the entire country, not just Brussels. There was no computer graphic match with any arrest photograph in police archives. Nor was there on any Europol or Interpol register. Making up for his previous day’s ignorance the police commissioner said there were only two women with child sex convictions – both with boys, not girls – and neither bore any resemblance to the computer pictures. Both had witness-supported alibis for the day and time Mary Beth McBride had been snatched: one had been in Ghent, visiting a sick mother, the other at a hairdressing salon where she was well known. Both had nevertheless been detained for an identification parade that afternoon that both Johan Rompuy and Rene Lunckner had agreed to attend.
There was nothing for Claudine to contribute. Although John Norris was saying nothing, either, there was more animation about the man: having so studiously ignored her the previous day he now appeared almost anxious to catch her eye, twice openly smiling. It was, Claudine decided, typical of the mood swings recorded against the severe obsessional condition from which she suspected Norris to be suffering. Claudine was anxious for Sanglier’s promised arrival that afternoon. She’d been circumspect on the police headquarters telephone but she’d ensured Sanglier understood the importance of coming direct from Menen to Brussels instead of returning to The Hague. By tonight, after the scheduled five o’clock embassy meeting with McBride, the problem with John Norris should be all over. It had been an unnecessary distraction but it had not interfered with what they were there to achieve. Claudine was dissatisfied. She’d drawn every conclusion she could from what evidence there was, which could practically be fitted on to a pinhead with room to spare for a football match with spectators. Until there was further contact there was absolutely nothing more she could think of doing. And if that contact was still by e-mail she was not certain there would be anything to add to the profile she’d already created. Their continued hope would have to be that Volker’s pursuit would be more successful the next time.
In rare and unsettling self-doubt Claudine wondered if she had been right to guide the ambassador’s public responses as she had. She was sure the messages conveyed disagreement among those holding the child, from which it logically followed one faction dominated the other. And if domination of any sort was a factor, which was a psychologically accepted characteristic of any kidnap, whether sexually initiated or not, then it was right initially to accede to it. But she’d always resisted obedience to supposedly rigid rules in something as inexact as psychology, which as a medical science remained as unexplored as life in outer space.
One eroding doubt created another. Could she be so sure that no contact within twenty-four hours – not twenty-four any longer, little more than twelve – almost certainly meant that Mary Beth was dead? Claudine still thought so. She didn’t want to – it was, she accepted, the subconscious reason for her self-questioning – but after so long without a positive ransom demand, it had to be the strongest possibility. And if Mary Beth was dead, Claudine acknowledged that she’d failed. Others might not think it – Hillary certainly wouldn’t – but Claudine knew it would be so. Which brought her (know thyself! know thyself!) to the very nub of her problem: her reason for reflecting as she now did.
As she’d stood in numbed horror in the doorway of their London home, looking at Warwick’s lifeless body slowly turning from his suicide rope, Claudine had determined never again to fail in a mental analysis, as she’d failed to realize until it was too late her work-stressed husband’s condition. Now she faced failure again but fought against accepting it, as she had before. Things hadn’t fallen out as she’d expected. To allow herself to think as she was thinking at that moment was to panic without cause. A fault she would be the first to criticize in anyone else: a fault that would endanger the child she had to save, if saving her was any longer possible.
Throughout the self-examination Claudine had, as always, remained aware of the justifying discussion continuing all around and was not caught out when it settled upon her. Her surprise, in fact, was that of all people the question came from Jean Smet, further establishing himself as the unelected but so far unquestioned coordinator of their daily, largely unproductive information-sharing. She saw no reason to question it either: someone had to coordinate.
‘Anything you’d like to add?’ asked the Belgian. He was getting the same satisfaction as on the previous day, enjoying himself.
‘I think we should now start to consider bringing them to us,’ announced Claudine, her mind filled with her most recent thoughts.
