The door to the hall opened. She hadn’t aged much; she still swept rather than walked. The tan was smooth, professionally correct like the room. She was dressed too young, he thought, looking at her short skirt and low-cut top. With Annette there would always be something not quite right.
As they touched cheeks, she put both her hands lightly on his, as if to suggest a physical intimacy which he was certain she didn’t feel. Then she stood back and lifted an eyebrow.
He said, ‘It’s wonderful to see you. I was hoping to see Antoine as well. Is he away?’
She nodded thoughtfully, as though mentally reviewing the possible reasons for Seurat’s arrival.
‘Yes, he’s away. He’s often away. He’s very busy. He doesn’t always tell me where he is. I don’t enquire.’
Seurat could not help admiring the adroit way in which she had taken the bull by the horns and wrong-footed him. Before he could respond, she advanced the conversational contest a further step.
‘Is there any particular reason for your asking about him?’
‘Well, yes. I need to talk to him.’
‘That’s obvious enough. I don’t expect you came here just to chat me up, Martin, pleasant though we might both find that. Or did you?’
‘Annette – look. He’s got himself into a difficult position. I don’t want it to get worse for him. It needn’t do that – if I could speak to him. You must know either where he is or where he might be. It would help him if you would tell me.’
She smiled, slowly took a cigarette from a silver box on the ebony table, lit it, blew out smoke, tapped her foot on the floor and said, ‘I dare say he’s amusing himself. There are plenty of places where he could be doing that. When he’s finished, he’ll let me know when to expect him back.’
Seurat ground his teeth. She knew perfectly well where the bastard was.
‘Well then, how long has he been gone? What’s he up to at the moment – I mean, business-wise? How long is he usually away?’
‘That’s rather a lot of questions, Martin – I’m glad we’re still on Christian name terms.’ She smiled seductively. ‘Do you always tell your wife what business you are on? Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot you’re divorced now, aren’t you? Fond as I am of Antoine, I do actually appreciate his reticence, even his absences for that matter. I don’t want to know about his business, so long as it’s going well. As far as that goes, I’m perfectly satisfied.’
Checkmate, thought Seurat. We’re getting nowhere. What particularly irritated him was the way she moved her head ever so slightly from side to side without moving her eyes, a bit like a snake-charmer with his eyes on a cobra.
‘Eh bien. You have my card. Please tell him to call me. Tell him I can help him. Tell him I understand his difficulty.’
‘Do you? Well, naturally, of course I will tell him that. When the possibility occurs, of course. I’m sorry you should have come so far for so little. Perhaps next time you should telephone in advance. Can I offer you a drink? No?’
He now saw that she had been holding his card in her hand throughout the interview. She gave it a slight flourish, put it face down on the ebony table, and put the cigarette box deliberately on top of it.
‘There! All safe now,’ she said. ‘I’m sure he’ll get in touch. Sooner or later.’
Seurat gave up. There was no point in deliberately antagonising her. ‘It’s a very nice place you have here. Very chic, very comfortable. Rather out of the way though, isn’t it? I always thought you were a Parisian to your fingertips.’
‘No, no. In fact I come from this part of the world. You never noticed my southern accent?’
He grinned. ‘That’s the only piece of information you’ve given me since I got here, Annette!’
For just an instant her eyes darkened, as though some shaft had gone home. Why? The remark had been innocent enough. Curious. He put it away to think about later.
‘I’ll say au revoir then. Do ask Antoine to get in touch.’
‘So lovely to see you again. I’m so sorry there’s been nothing I could tell you.’
As the front door closed behind him, Seurat swore. Why didn’t I hold that taxi? He started on his long walk back down the hill.
40
‘We were the first,’ Otto Perkins declared, and it took Judith Spratt a moment to understand what he was talking about. ‘Concrete barriers, armed police patrolling the terminals, sniffer dogs checking the luggage – we had them all years ago. It took 9/11 for the rest of the world to catch up.’ Judith wondered if this was a lead to be proud of, but Otto’s enthusiasm made it seem churlish to demur.
The little man was full of irrepressible energy, waving his arms about when he talked, and walking around his tiny office in the Portakabin in the car park so it vibrated with transferred energy. With his prominent upper teeth, which a bushy moustache did nothing to disguise, and his chin sitting at the bottom of his face like a small hard pear, Otto was such a pixie of a man that Judith had to resist the urge to pat him on the top of his head.
Otto had been manager of the Davis Hire car rental agency next to Belfast Airport for eleven years, he told Judith, and before that he’d worked at the adjacent airport as a supervisor in the terminal. Throughout those years he had also been on the books of the RUC Special Branch as an agent, transferring his services to MI5 when they’d taken over the old police force’s counter-terrorist duties.
Otto was a useful source; he seemed to know everyone who worked at or around the airport. More specifically, the rental car depot was a convenient location for parking cars safely when MI5 officers travelled. It also served (in the form of Otto) as a conduit for messages, a temporary repository for keys, and a fount of information on his customers when, as now, that was needed.
At last Otto paused to draw breath and Judith managed to get a few words in. ‘You had a customer from France last week called Antoine Milraud, who hired a Renault Megane.’
She gave Otto the registration number, and he began to tap at the terminal on his desk.
‘Got it!’ he crowed suddenly, like a man whose horse had won the race. ‘The maroon Megane – I know it well.’ He swivelled in his office chair and pointed out of the grimy window towards the car park behind, where two or three dozen cars were neatly parked. ‘It’s over there at the back.’
‘It is?’ asked Judith dubiously. Somehow she had expected the car to be missing – just like Milraud. ‘When was it returned?’
‘Hang on,’ said Otto, resuming his manic attack on his keyboard. ‘It was the day before yesterday – early in the evening. Just when it was due. No damage to the car and the petrol tank was full.’
‘You don’t remember who brought it back, do you?’
He looked slightly puzzled. ‘I assume it was Mr Milraud himself. But I can’t say for certain – I was off duty at the time,’ he added, sounding slightly guilty that he wasn’t there round the clock.
‘Who would have served him when he returned the keys?’
‘It might not have been anyone. An awful lot of people use the express service – they write the mileage on an envelope, put the keys in, then put it in the box outside. We never see them. Let me look—’ and he quickly flipped through a large file box of recent receipts until he found the right form. ‘You’re in luck; the keys were handed back in person.’
‘Who would have dealt with it?’
Otto looked again at the form. ‘It was one of the mechanics in the garage.’
‘What garage?’
‘Our garage. Over there.’ And he pointed to another low building on the edge of the car park. ‘We do most of the servicing for the cars ourselves. Right here. And any minor problems – dents, broken wing mirrors, that sort of thing. Believe me, it saves us a packet.’ He picked up the phone on his desk. ‘Let me give them a ring.’ Someone answered right away, and Otto said, ‘Danny, you worked the evening for me day before last, didn’t you? You know, the evening I was off.’ He listened for a moment. ‘I thought so. Listen, can you come over for a minute?’