Ulieff frowned, realizing he was being told something other than the obvious but not easily able to understand what it was. It sounded like an apology but what did they have to apologize for! ‘I hope that too. I don’t see why there should be.’
Sanglier looked obviously disappointed. ‘We don’t want Smet hiding behind legal barriers.’
Ulieff saw a faraway light. ‘I won’t allow that to happen.’
‘With so many being the potential informer, having access as they did to every early planning discussion, it would have been difficult obtaining a judge’s order authorizing a wire tap without their knowing it,’ persisted Sanglier. He let a silence grow. ‘You could privately have approved it, in consultation with myself and the ambassador.’ It begged the question of why they hadn’t and Sanglier had an explainable apology if Ulieff challenged him.
The man didn’t. Instead his face cleared. ‘If it removes an obstacle…’
‘Smet is a criminal lawyer. One of the others seems somehow connected with the law from a remark that was made when he arrived at Smet’s house tonight.’
To McBride the minister said: ‘Is this what your Secretary meant by cooperation?’
‘We did not speak in specifics, only generalities,’ said McBride, easing the Belgian’s way. ‘This conversation is between the three of us. As it will always remain.’
At that moment Andre Poncellet bustled into the room, stopping uncertainly at finding the other three men obviously well settled ahead of him. Ulieff said: ‘Commissioner Sanglier has something to explain to you.’
Poncellet remained standing – he had little choice while Ulieff expansively occupied his desk – his face tightening as the minister’s had initially done for different reasons, although Sanglier said nothing about the man’s own house being entered and bugged.
‘You actually thought I could have been one of them!’ protested Poncellet, aghast.
‘We couldn’t trust anyone,’ said Ulieff, taking up the role he had been offered. ‘It was my decision it should be this way.’
Welcome to the club, thought Sanglier, waiting for the obvious demand about his own home to come from the still incensed policeman. It didn’t. Quickly Sanglier said: ‘Your credibility – your authority – has not publicly been questioned or impugned. Nor will it ever be: there is no reason why it should be. You were personally present much earlier today at the discovery of a murder victim. The men being brought to this building tonight are unquestionably involved. They are also part of the kidnap of the ambassador’s daughter that has yet to be resolved. When it is, again tonight, you’ll be there as the representative of Belgian authority: of the Belgian police.’
‘I greatly resent being doubted; being suspected.’ The protest wasn’t as stiff as it should have been.
‘Until we had positive proof I couldn’t make any exception,’ said Ulieff. ‘I would like now personally to apologize. Which I do, unreservedly.’ The police commissioner would leak the apology to restore his credibility, guessed Ulieff. And by so doing confirm his knowledge as minister from the beginning of the trap. Everything had settled perfectly.
Poncellet accepted the regret with a short head jerk. As he did so the intercom on his desk announced the arrival of the first arrests from the rue de Flandres. Ulieff said: ‘Let’s get the child back. End the whole unfortunate business.’
As the lift descended Sanglier decided that diplomacy was like a child’s early comprehension exercise. All you had to do was fit the pieces into their correct shapes to make a smooth, unbroken picture.
Everyone had been brought in by the time they reached the ground floor. The vestibule was in chaos. There had been no advance warning of any arrests on any charge and once again there were too many people milling about, virtually all with no idea what to do. Poncellet at once took officious charge, loudly declaring the detentions were connected with that morning’s murder and without prompting ordered that each man should be detained in an individual cell.
Charles Mehre screamed, loud enough to startle, when he realized he was being parted from Gaston, who instinctively reached out a comforting hand. Charles’s escort hesitated, looking to Poncellet for guidance. Claudine had anticipated the moment, manoeuvring herself next to the commissioner. Quietly she insisted: ‘By himself. Solitary.’
Charles immediately began to fight, violently, scattering everyone around him. He head-butted his escort, bursting the man’s nose, and split the eye of one of the three policemen it finally took to subdue him. Claudine was among those thrown back by the outburst, close to where Rosetti had remained, against the wall.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘Both of them have got red hair and misshapen teeth,’ the pathologist pointed out. ‘The orthodontic cast should be conclusive but one of them’s the most likely candidate.’
‘Something easy at last,’ remarked Claudine.
Little else proved to be.
Smet’s cosseted briefcase did contain an address book. There was also a diary. The book carried the names and addresses of the five men seized with him in the rue de Flandres house, as well as that of Felicite Galan. Only the house they’d already entered and found empty was listed against the woman’s name. The diary appeared strictly limited to business appointments but Claudine quickly isolated the simplistic code, red-inked stars dotted alongside various dates, the majority at weekends. One star, however, was against the mid-week date of Mary Beth’s disappearance.
The only other contents of the briefcase, apart from every record of their planning meetings, were three separate and undesignated keyrings. One ring, gold-coloured, held a single key.
The ideal psychology – indeed virtually a universal practice among police interrogators seeking incriminating confessions from a gang – would have been to leave them separated overnight, for each man to be eroded by his fear of what the others might admit or accuse him of. That night, with everyone’s eyes constantly drawn to the ever-moving police station clocks, it was difficult for Claudine to argue restraint for longer than an hour. Sanglier agreed to her sharing Rampling’s questioning of Jean Smet.
Claudine guessed at once that the psychology was totally skewed. A gap of twenty-four hours would probably 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?’