Maybe it was because it was night, and the hours of darkness are the hours of fear and danger, or maybe it was something he heard or the slightest movement registering in the darkness. It might even have been that intrinsic sixth sense that warns of the presence of another human being when you can neither see nor hear him. Whatever it was, it triggered in Bannerman a reflex action, his crooked arm rising swiftly to take the full brunt of a blow that would surely have cracked his skull. The pain tore up his arm to his shoulder and his knees buckled. He staggered into the darkness, falling, tangling with the legs of his unsighted attacker. The other man lost his balance and toppled heavily over Bannerman’s back, grunting as he fell. A foot caught Bannerman’s throat. Bannerman choked back the vomit and felt fire in his head and chest. His right arm and hand had gone numb already.
The heavy figure of the other man was frantically disentangling itself from Bannerman’s legs. Then he was up and running, heavy steps beating their retreat down the length of the corridor towards the lifts. But Bannerman was not interested in the other man at that moment. He rolled over and spat blood and saliva at the floor. His head had cleared a little, but his throat hurt like hell. He pulled himself up to his feet with the help of the edge of a desk, and took two or three unsteady steps to the light switch.
The glare filled his head again with fire and he pulled up a chair and sat down heavily. His mouth tasted of blood and sick. ‘Shit,’ he whispered softly to himself. This was getting to be a bad habit. You’re going to have to take more care, son, he told himself.
He let his head drop between his knees for several minutes while he breathed deeply. Then he sat upright and saw a narrow-necked water jug with a glass over it on the desk. He reached over with his left hand, lifted off the glass and poured some water into it. The first swig he rolled around his mouth and gargled in his throat before spitting it out on the carpet. This was no time for niceties. Then he took a long draught and felt the smooth coldness all the way down to his stomach. He turned his attention to his right arm. It was the fleshy bit of the forearm that had taken the blow. He slipped his jacket off and rolled up his sleeve. Already the arm was swollen and bruised. But nothing broken. His fingers seemed to have locked, and his arm was bent at the elbow and hurt badly when he tried to straighten it. Must have got a nerve, he thought.
The next few minutes he spent slowly, painfully, making fists with his right hand and working his arm straight and then crooking it. Gradually the muscles and the nerves eased and he got a pins-and-needles sensation from shoulder to fingertips. That passed and he took out a cigar with his left hand, peeled it one-handed and stuck it between his lips. He lit it and drew deeply. The kick in the neck had probably burst a small blood vessel in his throat. He didn’t know if the smoke would help, but right then he didn’t particularly care.
He leaned back in the seat and looked around the office. It wasn’t a shambles. It looked much as it had looked earlier in the day. There was no evidence of an intruder. He turned to Slater’s desk drawer and pulled it open. The folders were gone. So was the contacts book. Whoever it was had known exactly where to look. That narrowed the field considerably. He sat for a few minutes more, then he took out his notebook, flipped over several pages, picked up the phone and dialled. He wasn’t sure why he was calling her. A cry in the dark. The number rang out and he hung up. It wasn’t his night. He stood up and swung his head to either side to ease the stiffening in his neck. He switched out the light and closed the door behind him and locked it.
A light shone from the window of the top floor flat in the apartment block in the Rue de Commerce. Bannerman might not have noticed it except that there were only two other lights showing in the entire block. Slater’s car, a dark blue Volkswagen, sat at the kerbside. Bannerman paid off his taxi and watched the car move off down the street. It was only fifteen or twenty minute walk from the IPC building, but he had not felt like walking.
He shuffled about on the pavement, unsure about what to do. He lit a cigar and looked up again at the light in the window, weighing up the possibilities. But he was too tired and too sore to think too much about it. And it was cold out there, his breath billowing out yellow in the street lights, melting the big snow flakes that were falling all around him, settling on his head and shoulders. He went inside and started up the stairs, listening to his hollow footsteps clattering back at him off the walls. It seemed even colder in the stairwell than it had outside. The landing lights were harsh, each landing icy in their cold glare. But they didn’t light the stairs too well.
At the door of the flat he fumbled with the keys and then carefully opened it, standing well back and letting it swing inwards. The landing light spilled into the darkness of the hallway and at the far end he could see a crack of light framing the door of the living room. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. The air was warm and dusty and touched with a faintly familiar scent. He stood perfectly still as the crack of light widened ahead of him and a long shadow reached out across the hall as though to touch him. The figure in the doorway was silhouetted against the light behind. Bannerman couldn’t see the face, but he recognized the slightness of the outline and the hair cut close around the head. ‘Hello,’ Sally said. Her voice sounded very small. ‘I’ve been waiting for you. Quite a long time. It’s kind of scary sitting alone in a dead man’s house.’
Very slowly Bannerman slipped his coat off and dragged it along behind him the length of the hall. He stopped in front of her and looked down into her shadowed face. ‘How did you know I would be here?’
She was disconcerted by his closeness. ‘I didn’t know for sure. I’ve still got a key, so I came up. I found your clothes still in the bedroom, so I guessed you’d be back. I... I was frightened I might not see you again.’
‘Why? Would that matter to you?’
‘Maybe,’ she said.
He let it lie for a while, smelling her perfume, warm and musky, and he sensed her reserve. ‘Why is it so difficult to get close to you?’
There was a very long silence. ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last, knowing that she did. Then she looked up a little more brightly. ‘I brought some wine. I put the refrigerator on and left it in there to chill.’ Bannerman lowered his head and let his lips brush hers. It was what she had wanted, and yet still she drew back. ‘I’ll get some glasses.’
He followed her into the living room, puzzled, disappointed, wondering why she had come, and yet glad she had.
She went up into the kitchen. He heard her open the refrigerator then the sounds of her searching for glasses. He switched off the overhead light, turned on a table lamp and sat back in the settee staring at the painting over the mantelpiece. The browns and blacks, blues and greens, their starkness against the white of the snow that covered the scene. A group of weary hunters returning from the kill, mean-looking dogs slinking at their feet, a fire being lighted at the inn on the hilltop. Through the trees they looked down onto two square frozen-over lakes where tiny figures wrapped in winter coats were skating. There was a great peace about the painting, a strange sense of satisfaction in it, men and women frozen in the painter’s mind below the palest of blue skies that faded almost to yellow.