The Gare du Midi was busy. Passengers stood around in knots in the big arrival hall watching the boards for arrivals and departures. A thin, metallic voice made announcements alternately in French and Flemish. Neither meant anything to Kale. He was seated on a wooden bench at the foot of a wide pillar from where he could see through glass doors and along a short corridor to the left luggage lockers. It was not yet eleven thirty, but he had sat here for nearly an hour in the hope of seeing whoever it was who would leave the money, if that had not already been done. The time had dragged painfully slowly, so that all the uncertainty of what was in the newspaper had had time to grow in his mind. Over and over again he had thought about the drawing, stared at it. How was it possible there had been a child in the house without his knowing it? He had remembered the cloakroom. She could have been in there. But it seemed too incredible; or perhaps, he thought, it is only that you don’t want to believe it. He felt certain that no-one could recognise him from the drawing. Only the child could know what he looked like, and she was mentally handicapped.
He had struggled through the story in the paper, trying to make sense of it from the little French that he knew. But it was possible. All that he had got from it was the girl’s name; the daughter of the other man he had killed. He swore softly to himself. Things had not gone well at all. The sooner he got out of this damned country the better.
A stream of passengers emerged from platform six, partially obscuring his view of the glass doors. In that moment he saw a figure at the lockers. A figure he recognised. The white hair of a working man in city clothes. He jumped up and pushed his way through the passengers. Someone shouted at him and he stumbled and felt a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged himself free and ran towards the glass doors. The figure was gone. He hurried down the corridor to the lockers. There was no sign of the man. Where the hell could he have gone? He looked back up the corridor towards the bodies that milled past on the other side of the doors. Gone. Breathlessly he took out his key and turned back to the lockers. Number thirty-nine. He fumbled at the lock and pulled open the door. The black case he had left there yesterday was gone. In its place a white envelope that was neither big enough nor fat enough to contain the money he was owed. He ripped it open with trembling fingers and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. There were three words printed across it in a tight, neat hand. KILL THE CHILD.
Chapter Five
I
The telephone woke Bannerman just after eleven. Long, single rings that brought to an end the strange dreams that come just before waking. He slipped from the rumpled bedsheets, still woozy from the restless hours of shallow sleep. He had lain awake almost until dawn, unable to stop his brain from replaying the events of the last forty-eight hours. He was still stiff and his head and face still ached. The air in the flat was cold as ice and he shivered as he went through the hall. He lifted the phone in the living room and sat heavily on the settee.
‘Bannerman.’
He ran a hand over the stubble on his jaw.
‘Tait. That was a good piece you sent us last night, Neil.’
‘That’s what you pay me for.’ Bannerman’s voice was flat and sarcastic. He heard Tait sigh.
‘I’m flying out to Brussels tomorrow,’ Tait said. ‘For the funeral. I’ve been in touch with the Belgian authorities. Slater had no living relatives, so I didn’t see the point in having the body flown back for burial.’
‘Save the paper money, will it?’ Bannerman asked. Tait ignored the remark. He would not be baited.
‘The arrangements are made,’ he said. ‘The funeral will be at the Cimetière de Bruxelles tomorrow afternoon. Two o’clock. I want you to stay in Brussels until this whole thing is cleared up. You can stay at the Rue de Commerce. We’ll be making arrangements for the disposal of Slater’s things. Oh, and you’d better pick up his car. I understand it’s been taken to the police car pound.’ He paused, but there was no response from Bannerman. ‘I’ll meet you at the office tomorrow around midday, we can have lunch and then you can drive me out to the cemetery.’
‘What about the child?’
Tait cleared his throat. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s a bit of an unknown quantity. I suppose the paper has some kind of responsibility... Anyway, I’ll see about that after the funeral. Meantime you stick with the story. Give me a call before the five o’clock conference and let me know what’s happening.’
‘Sure.’ Bannerman hung up. It was all over already. He could read between the lines. By tomorrow night the story would be dead and buried along with Slater. The Post was embarrassed by it. There would be echoes of it in the other dailies and in the Sundays, but the Post would want it over and done with as expeditiously as possible. Bannerman heaved himself out of the settee and went into the bathroom to shave.
Hard, blue eyes stared back at him from the mirror as he soaped his battered face. The politicians, too, would be happy to see the whole affair blow over. The Belgians, like the Post would be embarrassed by it, but for different reasons. A British Government Minister shot to death in the Belgian capital. They would not be relishing the publicity. And the British Government would be worried about electoral repercussions. They could not afford a scandal with a General Election less than three weeks away. The perceptiveness of du Maurier’s warning the previous day only now made its full impact on Bannerman. He was right, of course.
Bannerman sluiced his face and neck with cold water and went back through to the bedroom to dress. He eased himself into a dark, crumpled suit and again sifted everything through his mind. He lit a cigar and stared out from the window across the rooftops that shone black from a fine, wetting drizzle.
He began with du Maurier’s certainty that Slater and Gryffe had been murdered. If he was to work from that basic assumption then it was clear that it would be necessary to find either the murderer or the motive. Find one and you would find the other, he told himself, but without much conviction. The difficulty was knowing where to start.
He turned away from the window and sat on the bed. The murderer, apparently, had left no clues, except that the child had seen him, though Bannerman doubted if the child would ever be capable of identifying him. The motive might be easier to unearth. There was the hostile relationship between Slater and Gryffe, the file of cuttings on the Minister that Slater kept in his office, the money in the suitcase.
Bannerman got up and went through to the living room, lifted the phone and put a call through to the Post. He waited uneasily as the number rang distantly. He felt a lack of commitment to the story. Tait, he knew, would not want him to push it, and he felt a disconcerting lack of personal motivation. It worried him.
‘Edinburgh Post.’
‘Give me the library.’ He waited through a series of clicks and then a receiver lifted.
‘Library.’ It was a woman’s voice.
‘Jean, it’s Neil Bannerman.’
‘Hello, Neil. You still in Brussels?’ And without waiting for an answer, ‘Poor Timothy. What a terrible thing to happen.’
‘Yes.’ Bannerman said. ‘Do me a favour, Jean. Look out any cuttings we’ve got on Robert Gryffe, and anything we may have in the obit. file. I want to know everything we know about the guy.’
‘Are you in a hurry for it?’
‘Yes. Just photocopy the stuff, stick it in an envelope and give it to the editor. He’s flying over here tomorrow. He might as well bring it with him.’
‘Okay, Neil.’