have broken the lawyer. Leaving him alone for just one had given the man the opportunity to recover and prepare himself. It was clearly forced but when they entered the interview cell there was even an unworried languidness about the way Smet was sitting, right arm lolled over the back of his chair.
The room was bare, except for the table at which Smet already sat and upon which the apparatus was assembled to record the interview. Alongside was a second tape machine that had been installed in each interview room in the intervening hour. Claudine saw, uncomfortably, that they faced the clock. She made much of putting a folder on the table in front of her, which Smet made just as much effort to ignore.
Rampling started the machine and identified everyone in the room before at once listing dates and times that tapes he intended to produce had been made. And then pressed the second play button.
Smet was visibly shaken by the greatly amplified sound of his own voice echoing into the interview room, involuntarily pulling his arm from the chair back to come forward over the table. He half opened his mouth but didn’t speak.
‘You know what a voice print is?’ demanded the American briskly, trying to indicate the encounter was a formality.
Claudine admired the quick ploy to get a voice comparison at the very beginning but it wasn’t successful. Smet remained silent.
Rampling said: ‘It’s as accurate as a fingerprint or DNA. Scientifically we can prove mat’s you, talking to someone we now know to be August Dehane, about the kidnap of Mary Beth McBride.’
Smet stared tight-lipped across the table.
‘Now what have we got?’ Rampling pressed on. ‘We’ve got you talking to Dehane about killing the child. We’ve got Felicite mentioned and the mobile phones. In fact, Jean, I think we’ve got you pretty tightly parcelled up and tied in ribbon. What do you think?’
Claudine liked the mocking technique.
‘My home has clearly been illegally entered,’ said the man at last. ‘I don’t know what any of this is about but it was blatantly illegally obtained. I demand a lawyer, at once.’
‘What do red stars in your diary signify?’ asked Claudine. ‘Particularly on the day Mary Beth vanished. Are the red-star days those when you all got together? The days you abused children you snatched or rented?’ She tried to infuse as much contempt as possible into her voice.
Smet just stared.
‘Why’d you put a gun in your mouth and try to blow your head off?’ demanded Rampling. ‘You want to tell us about that?’
‘I demand a lawyer.’ Smet was controlled again – polite – not showing the hysteria of the bugged telephone exchanges. Or, even, the anxiety of their planning meetings.
‘Felicite is going to kill the child, isn’t she?’ said Claudine.
‘I don’t know anyone called Felicite.’
‘Who’s Felicite Galan, listed in your address book?’
‘Going into my briefcase was an illegal search. Please get me a lawyer.’
‘It was Charles Mehre who killed the rent boy, wasn’t it: smothered him during the act of buggery.’
Smet didn’t reply.
Claudine took the photographs of the anal distension from her folder, pushed them across the table. ‘That’s what he looked like after Mehre finished with him. That’s what the jury are going to see when you’re arraigned with Charles Mehre, accused of complicity to murder.’
Smet gave no facial reaction. ‘I know nothing about this.’
It was nine thirty, Claudine saw.
‘Charles Mehre was arrested in your house,’ said Rampling. ‘It’s on suspicion of murder that you’re all being held.’
The tapes of the intercepted conversation were as always marked at relevant passages. Claudine made her selection, starting the playback. Into the room came Smet’s voice. ‘… Gaston called… He said he doesn’t give a shit what Felicite says. He’s going to get rid of the other thing. It’s beginning to stink…’ Claudine said: ‘That’s timed and dated before the body was found. You knew about it in advance.’
‘You’ve got to find some way of helping yourself,’ urged Rampling. ‘You’re a lawyer, for Christ’s sake. You can judge how bad things are for you.’
‘Were my house and office burgled with the approval of a judge?’
Formally Claudine said: ‘Miet Ulieff, the Justice Minister – your superior – authorized both.’
‘He doesn’t have the legal authority.’
‘He does for anything that’s done within the ministry he heads, involving a ministry official suspected of serious crime. Which you are.’ Elliot Smith, the American embassy lawyer, hadn’t been that adamant. At most he had conceded it was possible, but a brief flicker of uncertainty showed on Smet’s face.
‘I have nothing to say apart from repeating my demand for a lawyer.’
The mocking clock showed nine forty-five. Why wouldn’t Smet break! thought Claudine desperately. Because his position was so hopeless, she decided, answering her own frustrated question.
There was the sound of a door opening behind them. At once Rampling recorded Blake’s entry. The man bent to Claudine’s ear and whispered: ‘Not one of the bastards is saying anything: Charles Mehre has had to be sedated. Smile, like I’ve just told you something you’ve been waiting to hear.’
Blake straightened, isolating the three sets of keys from the diary and the address book that had been in Smet’s briefcase. ‘Charles was the weak link. Had to be. He said you know all about it and that you’ve got the key.’
The lawyer hesitated, swallowing. Then he said: ‘Dear Jesus…!’ He began to shake. ‘It was Felicite. She made us do it. Always her ideas
… I didn’t have anything to do with the murder.’ And finally he pushed across the single key on its gold ring.
Blake picked it up, dangling it in front of the man. ‘That’s the way. Now tell us where the house is.’
Smet stared at the fair-haired detective. ‘That was a trick… it isn’t…’
Blake looked directly towards the recorders. ‘Let the record show mat Jean Smet isolated from a choice of several the key mat fits the house in which Mary Beth McBride is being held.’ He smiled broadly. ‘You just forgot your own advice and convicted yourself.’
She’d forgotten the kamikaze legacy of Ireland, Claudine thought, following Blake from the interview room. In the corridor directly outside she said furiously: ‘What if it hadn’t worked!’
‘I’d have tried something similar on all the rest until it did,’ admitted Blake easily. ‘Now we haven’t got to waste any more time.’ He grinned. ‘You didn’t smile when I told you to.’
The helicopters were utilized at last, to fly the advance group to Antwerp. The party included Miet Ulieff as well as the tense ambassador and his safari-suited wife. Sanglier had wanted to be the most senior judicial figure at the child’s recovery but the Justice Minister’s presence guaranteed that every local need was instantly provided.
By the time the American back-up arrived by road the entire Antwerp detective division had been mobilized and there were three of the city’s river police boats on the Schelde opposite the house with their engines muted, just holding them against the current, and far enough away for them not to be obvious. Officials in the planning, land registry and rating departments of Antwerp City Council had been located and returned to their offices. The original architects’ drawings for the house’s construction, incorporating the wartime Nazi bunker, had been located for their inspection and Pieter Lascelles, an Eindhoven surgeon, identified as its owner.
Lance Rampling accompanied Peter Blake in the three-car cavalcade that went to Eindhoven. From a radio car Sanglier alerted the Eindhoven police to their impending arrival – until which no approach was to be made to the doctor’s home – and gave a fuller explanation to the awakened Dutch Justice Minister after Ulieff ended his conversation with the man. Into their car as Rampling and Blake drove towards Holland was radioed the message that a ten-year-old boy named Robert Flet and a girl of eleven, Yvette Piquette, had vanished in Eindhoven the previous day.
It was eleven thirty-five when Harding and McCulloch led the assault upon the riverside house, which was in total darkness. Claudine remained at the head of the drive, drawn against a clump of trees with Sanglier, Ulieff and the ambassador and his wife. There was remarkably little noise from so many men spreading out through the
