an impression they were expected and physically blocked her way so that Blake could knock on Smet’s door and enter at the same time.
Smet was behind his desk, about to sit. There was no sign of the briefcase. He looked visibly frightened at their entry and said: ‘What the…!’ before fully recognizing them.
‘Hi!’ said Harding cheerfully. ‘We’ve had a great idea!’
‘All we’ve done is meet round a conference table,’ added Blake. ‘Let’s lunch.’
Smet seemed to need the chair. He lowered himself swallowing heavily, giving a dismissive gesture to the hapless secretary in the doorway. He forced a smile. ‘I can’t possibly. The minister expects a report on this morning’s meeting.’
‘He just got it from Sanglier,’ said the American, leaning forward invitingly over the man’s desk. ‘Take a break. We deserve it.’
‘Maybe another time. I’ve got other things to keep up to date with, as well as the kidnap.’
‘You sure you can’t make it?’ pressed Harding. ‘We’ve got pagers: they could get us at once if anything breaks.’
Smet had recovered. ‘No. Thank you, but no.’
‘Our guests,’ insisted Harding.
‘No.’
‘OK then,’ said Harding. ‘Another time.’
‘Until this afternoon,’ said Blake, at the door.
In the car Harding said: ‘There’s a great little restaurant on the Avenue Adolphe Buyl.’
‘Sounds good,’ said Blake. ‘Pity the whole thing didn’t work out. The briefcase particularly.’
‘We’ve got something into his office. It’s better than nothing.’
‘Where did you put it?’
‘Under the desk edge when I leaned forward the first time. As near as I could to the telephones.’
‘There was what looked like an individual private line, next to the multi-extension bank.’
‘That’s the one I got closest to.’
It had been premature to celebrate installing a bug in Jean Smet’s office. They learned from the two relevant calls among a lot of extraneous inter-office communication not to expect contact that day from Felicite, and while that allayed the apprehension there would otherwise have been Claudine thought that only to be able to hear Smet’s side of a conversation was almost worse man not being able to listen to anything at all.
Felicite’s was the first and obviously complaining call, Smet apologizing at once for being kept from his office by Ulieff’s reception when she’d first called. There was a comprehensive account of that morning’s briefing, an apparent agreement that the investigation was stalled and a lot of subservient grunts from the lawyer. Several times he asked the woman to explain whatever it was she’d told him and at the end a long period of silence before the line closed down.
From Smet’s responses Claudine at once identified the second caller as the Belgacom executive. She guessed the man to be more concerned than he’d ended up the previous night from Smet’s saying it had not been one of that morning’s decisions that the Belgacom investigation should start at senior management level.
It was only at the very end mat Smet’s remarks became unambiguously clear. The lawyer declared outright: ‘She’s not calling them today,’ and when the man obviously asked why said: ‘She wants to make them sweat for a day. Says she wants to teach them a lesson.’
There was initially more lost bewilderment man anger from the ambassador and his wife. After having the appropriate remark replayed twice McBride said dully: ‘Nothing until tomorrow?’
‘No,’ said Claudine. ‘But it’s an attack on me, not Mary.’
‘What the fuck reassurance is that! You’re safe, here! Mary’s with a monster. Mary isn’t safe.’
She didn’t have an adequate reply. ‘It’s not just to make us sweat. She will attempt a ransom.’
‘A day!’ insisted the man, irrational anger taking over. ‘If she doesn’t make a definite demand – set out how she wants it paid – in twenty-four hours I’m going to insist Smet is picked up, by our people if necessary. I don’t give a penny fuck about legality. I’ll make him talk myself if I have to. I want it over. I want my baby back.’
There wasn’t any point in arguing, Claudine knew. ‘Twenty-four hours,’ she agreed.
Mary was squatting cross-legged in front of the television on the other side of the river-view room, a tub of popcorn in her lap, engrossed in the satellite cartoon channel.
Felicite, who had already delayed the call twice, finally picked up the house phone. As usual, Lascelles answered at once.
‘Everything is going to be in place for tomorrow.’
‘Wonderful!’ said the doctor. ‘We’ve got our special guests. The boy is named Robert. The girl is Yvette.’
‘How are they being taken down?’
‘Separately, of course.’
‘Either by you?’
‘No.’
‘I need to get the key from the agents in Namur. And someone to drive me. By myself Mary might try to get away.’
‘You want me to pick you up?’
‘I’ll call McBride at three.’
‘She’ll see my face.’
‘That’s not going to matter, is it?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘I don’t want it to hurt. Is there something? An injection?’
‘Of course. Pills, too: a choice of pills.’
‘There mustn’t be any pain.’
‘There won’t be.’
‘She wouldn’t know?’
‘She’d just go to sleep. Feel nothing.’
‘That’s what I want.’
‘You must have grown very fond of her?’
‘I love her,’ said Felicite.
Although there was a specific understanding between them that Francoise never brought her friends to the house, Sanglier warned her of his return after an hour-long conversation from his Europol office with Lucien Bigot in Paris. He was immediately alarmed by the unknown, Paris-registered Citroen parked at the head of the drive, his first thought was that it might be someone carrying out the background investigation that Castille had talked about, although he would have expected Bigot to have mentioned it and Francoise had said nothing about a visitor.
They met him in the hallway, Francoise with her arm round the shoulders of a startlingly attractive dark- haired girl. She wore jeans and a shirt that was too tight, so that her nipples protruded. Francoise wore trousers, too, part of a black silk evening suit.
‘I wanted you to meet Maria,’ announced Francoise. ‘I told you about her.’
Sanglier said nothing.
‘Hello,’ the girl smiled.
Still Sanglier said nothing, waiting.
‘Aren’t you going to say hello?’ demanded Francoise.
‘I want you to go. Immediately,’ Sanglier told the girl.
‘She was just leaving anyway.’ Francoise kissed Maria lightly on the cheek and said: ‘I told you he was a bore, didn’t I?’
That night the naked body of a boy was found on the edge of a forest near Dilbeek, on the outskirts of Brussels. The big toe was missing from the left foot.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
