Blake was beside her. She leaned towards him and whispered: ‘It’s gone wrong.’ He frowned back at her, not replying.
She looked intently at Poncellet, on the other side of the blond-haired man. It surely couldn’t be the police chief? She hadn’t thought whom she could continue to trust, until that moment: hadn’t thought about anything, except her conviction. Now she did. She thought about how they could use what she’d learned and how she could keep Mary alive and wondered how much easier or more difficult it made everything. And she wondered who it was. There was only a small possible number. Through all the confusion and conflicting impressions Claudine abruptly felt very confident. She couldn’t risk telling anyone – her biggest and most immediate problem was deciding whom she could tell about anything – but for the first time almost since the investigation started she believed there was a chance of getting Mary back alive. Just as she decided, suddenly, that Mary was still alive. If she’d been dead, it would have been Mary’s toe in the backpack, not someone else’s.
Claudine was briefly thrown off balance, for just seconds, by the implications of that awareness, sickening but at the same time hopeful though it was. I’m not sure I want to give her back yet. I’ve become attached to her. There could be another interpretation of that remark, as obscene but not as life-threatening as her first. Bizarre though it might be to a rational mind – which she already knew the woman didn’t possess – but totally in keeping with the sexual deviancy of paedophilia, Claudine thought it more than likely that the unknown woman had fallen in love with Mary Beth McBride. Which, while posing a terrible sexual danger, meant that she wouldn’t, for the moment at least, be subjected to any other physical danger. Rather, bizarre upon the bizarre, that she would be protected from it.
Poncellet leaned from Claudine’s other side and said: ‘This doesn’t sound right.’
‘It isn’t,’ said Claudine. ‘She’s beaten us.’
The family was brought to the US embassy because that was where the investigation was concentrated, but long before their arrival there was an explanation of crushing disappointment.
There was no reason whatsoever for embarrassment or recrimination, because the location operation had worked perfectly. But there was a squabble of accusations between the Belgian, American and Europol squads, particularly among those who’d first arrived at the supermarket car park in the Ganshoren suburb of the city.
Paradoxically, Hortense, the daughter of Horst and Sonia Eindicks, was the same age as Mary Beth McBride to within a day. The family always did their major supermarket shopping on the last Friday of every month, when Horst got paid. Neither parent could remember the Mercedes parked next to them when they’d emerged to unpack their trolleys, but Hortense said she was sure the nice lady who’d taken one of their trolleys instead of getting one for herself and given her the deposit money had yellow hair. Certainly none of them had seen her drop the telephone, still connected to the embassy, among the plastic bags in the back of the family Ford.
‘And while we all went one way she went the other,’ said Poncellet bitterly.
Harding paid double for the trolley coin to be sent for forensic analysis, along with the abandoned telephone. The Eindicks family, awed by the sensation in which they had become so innocently involved, accepted apologies for earlier being terrorized.
It was not until the family was being escorted from the embassy that Claudine had the opportunity to draw Sanglier aside.
‘We’ve got to have a meeting but without Poncellet,’ she said urgently.
‘What about?’
‘The person who knows who’s got Mary,’ said Claudine simply.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It didn’t take long to organize, after the departure of Andre Poncellet, but there was a lot of questioning impatience from everyone, particularly Sanglier, after Claudine’s dramatic announcement. Sanglier demanded a preliminary explanation, which Claudine avoided by insisting that they needed complete transcripts as well as the tapes of both her conversations with the woman to understand her discovery.
Unable to gauge how serious the leak was and with the bugging of her hotel room very much in mind she asked to remain at the embassy instead of returning to their police headquarters accommodation, claiming it might no longer be safe. That assertion heightened the drama and increased the demands.
The delay of transcribing and then copying the second tape gave time for Rosetti and Volker to arrive from the hotel. Both men made contributions to an investigation far beyond their individual disciplines, but observing her know thyself dictum Claudine acknowledged a determination to present something that would turn the entire investigation on its head to both Hugo Rosetti and Peter Blake. She at once confronted the self-examination. It wasn’t immaturity, although maybe there was a small, disturbing element. It was, instead, the far deeper need after John Norris’s suicide to prove herself not just to two men to whom she felt emotionally attracted but to everyone else as well. Including herself. She wanted to stage a performance, almost literally, in front of them all. Gain their plaudits. She didn’t like the awareness. It was good – cathartic – that she’d diagnosed it but she had to rid herself of it.
They used the CIA quarters, which meant Lance Rampling had to be included. Because of the possible political consequences Claudine had considered including the ambassador as well, and there was no doubt his larger office would have been far more comfortable. However, she decided it was unnecessary as well as wrong to cause McBride and his wife any more distress. Hopefully Burt Harrison could assess the political repercussions far more dispassionately.
Belatedly trying to minimize the stage-like appearance, Claudine did not actually sit behind Rampling’s desk but perched casually on its side edge. Even so, as Rosetti and Volker finally entered, Sanglier said testily: ‘I hope you can justify all this mystery: we’re supposed to be working with the Belgians, not against them.’
Claudine decided she could not have sought a better cue. ‘As they’re supposed to be working with us. But someone isn’t.’
‘What?’ That was Harrison.
‘The people who’ve got Mary are aware of every word we’ve spoken and every move we’ve considered making against them, virtually from the start of this investigation.’
The stunned, disbelieving reaction came from Harding. ‘How in the name of Christ can you know that?’
Instead of replying Claudine depressed the play button on the machine beside her. Into the room echoed her previous day’s exchange.
I want McBride. The woman.
I’m speaking on his behalf. Claudine.
The wife?
No.
Ah, the clever little mind-reader!
Claudine stopped the tape, looked expectantly – hopefully – towards the men ranged in front of her. Rosetti had his head to one side, frowning in what she thought was half-awareness. Blake’s face was blank. So were those of Sanglier and Harding. Harrison was looking to them for guidance. Rampling was still hunched over the transcript from which he’d followed the replay. There was a half-smile on the face of the always laterally thinking Volker.
Claudine minimally rewound the tape for just one sentence.
Ah, the clever little mind-reader!
‘It’s wrong!’ declared Claudine urgently. ‘She doesn’t get McBride, whom she expects. Mrs McBride is an outside possibility, whom she doesn’t get either. And when I deny it’s Mrs McBride there’s an immediate recognition: Ah, the clever little mind-reader! Not “Who are you?” Not “Put me on to McBride, he’s the only one I want to talk to.” No threats. No arguments, until much too late. She was waiting for me…’ Claudine started the tape again.