They didn’t seem to fall into any category. Altogether there were about forty cuttings, not stories that Slater had written, but taken from different newspapers. They went back about two years, covering important speeches the politician had made at home and abroad, his appointment eighteen months earlier as a Junior Minister at the Foreign Office, a piece from The Times on his growing importance as a figure of charisma and influence in the Party and the country, and forecasting his probable rise to leadership of the Party within the next ten years.
There were a number of photographs. Gryffe, shaking hands with some African Head of State, Gryffe speaking at the Party’s annual conference, Gryffe relaxing at the side of a swimming pool with a young lady on holiday in Malta. He even appeared in the columns of the society diarists; best dressed man in Britain; the most eligible bachelor; a romance with Royalty (the punters would like that, though some of his Party colleagues would not); a man of the people destined for the top.
Bannerman had not been aware of just how fast this man had become a popular and fashionable figure in British political life. He had known about Gryffe all right, but not as much as this. Working in Scotland you tended to become parochial, insular like the rest of them. It was too easy to lose touch with what was happening in the south. Most of the cuttings, he noticed, were taken from the English papers. He should have known more, but then, you can only know so much about so much.
He crammed the cuttings back in the folder and pulled the second unmarked one open. There were fewer cuttings here. A dozen in all. They were all taken from Belgian newspapers, some in French, others in Flemish. There were two names that emerged, though they didn’t seem to be connected. From a smudged, single column pic Bannerman was able to put a face to one of the names, Michel Lapointe. It was a short, fat face, but the quality of the reproduction was poor and it was a face you would pass in the street without recognising. There was no pic with the cuttings specific to the other name, René Jansen. It was a name that rang a bell somewhere distantly in the back of Bannerman’s mind, without his being able to place it. He slipped the cuttings back in their folder, pushed the two unmarked ones aside and put the remainder back in the cabinet.
He sat for a moment, pulling the last smoke out of his cigar before stubbing it in the ashtray. Then he took out a spiral-bound notebook and took a fresh page. He pulled out a pen and wrote four names, one below the other; Tim Slater, Robert Gryffe, Michel Lapointe and René Jansen.
There had to be a common factor. Something that linked all four. Or did there? Certainly there had been something between Slater and Gryffe. It was possible that Lapointe and Jansen were simply red herrings. Bannerman could waste a lot of time checking them out. He tossed the possibilities around in his mind and looked out through the window at the heavy grey skies. There were times, he thought, when you had to chase red herrings, because there was nothing else to chase. He would need something before Tait got in tomorrow, because Tait would fight it. He would need something.
He became aware suddenly that his head was still hurting. There was a bad taste in his mouth from lack of sleep and his stomach was complaining that it needed more than the coffee and croissants he had fed it earlier. He lit another cigar and thought, I’m smoking too much. He got up and searched about the desks for a telephone directory. He found several and spent three or four minutes searching for the number he wanted.
Mademoiselle Ricain came back in as he lifted the phone. She smiled. ‘Dial zero,’ she said, ‘if you want an outside line,’ Bannerman saw that she had powdered her face and put fresh colour on her eyes and lips. He dialled zero and then dialled his number. A girl’s voice crackled in his ear.
‘Inspecteur du Maurier,’ he said.
‘Ne quittez pas.’ He waited, then the policeman’s voice came across the line.
‘Du Maurier.’
‘Inspector. Neil Bannerman.’
‘Ah, Monsieur, how are you today?’
‘I’d like to talk.’
‘Bon. Good. When?’
‘Whenever it suits.’
‘Hmmmm.’ He hesitated. ‘Say five o’clock?’
‘That’d be fine,’ Bannerman said.
‘But not here.’ The policeman cleared his throat. ‘At the Café Auguste in the Boulevard de Waterloo. It’s not far from the Rue des Quatre Bras.’
‘Okay.’ Bannerman hung up, searched through the keys Mademoiselle Ricain had given him and found one that fitted the drawer in Slater’s desk. He pulled it open and slipped in the two folders. He was about to slide it shut when he saw a battered old notebook squeezed down one side. It was Slater’s contacts book.
Bannerman took it out and thumbed through it, a record of all the people a dead man had known. People from whom information had been squeezed. Information that had sometimes been given freely, because it had come from a friend, sometimes had to be prised from unwilling lips. A good journalist was not only good with words, but he was good at getting information, and that was all about knowing the right places to look, the right people to ask.
As he thumbed through the pages that were carefully filled by Slater’s neat hand, it occurred to Bannerman that he might look under J for Jansen and L for Lapointe. It was so obvious he might not have thought of it. Like when you are trying to track down a home number for some obscure union chief and you search every contacts book in the office and wade through the office contacts file, only to find half an hour later that he’s listed in the telephone book. It was a simple lesson that Bannerman had learned many years earlier. Never overlook the obvious. And this time, too, it paid off. There were home and office numbers listed for both men. Bannerman carefully noted them opposite the names he had written in his notebook. And then, as an afterthought, he looked up Gryffe.
There were three numbers listed. One would be the flat in the Rue de Pavie, another was Gryffe’s London mews house and a third number, another Belgian number. It had an H marked beside it to show that it was also a home number. Bannerman frowned. He had not known that Gryffe had two houses in Brussels.
He noted all three and put the contacts book back in the drawer. Mademoiselle Ricain was watching him over her typewriter. She smiled. ‘Anything I can do...?’ she said.
Bannerman shook his head. ‘Thanks,’ he said distractedly. He saw the night stretching ahead of him, lonely dark hours in Slater’s flat or in some bar getting drunk. Then an idea came to him, forming slowly, like a light growing in the darkness. ‘Sla... Tim had a girl who came in and looked after his child during the day,’ he said. ‘Any idea where I can get in touch with her?’
The secretary thought about it. ‘Sally Robertson. Her number’s probably in Tim’s contacts book.’
‘Of course,’ he said and took the book out again. The number was there. He got an outside line and dialled. He let it ring about ten times before he hung up. So that was that. But he took a note of the number anyway.
The door opened behind him and a middle-aged man with a crumpled face and an equally crumpled suit came in. He had an untidy mop of dark hair going grey, and heavy eyebrows that met in the middle above a pair of small, piggy eyes. He carried a dog-eared notebook between the ink-stained fingers of his right hand. Half a dozen pens and pencils stuck out of the breast pocket of a jacket of indefinable colour and shape. He raised his eyebrows when he saw Bannerman, rounded the first desk and sat at his own, at right angles to Bannerman.