Bannerman shook his head. ‘I never run out. I just thought that what we have to say should be for our ears only.’
Palin pushed himself back in his seat and looked at Bannerman coldly. His face was hard, the hint of apprehension in his eyes and a reluctance to meet his full on. ‘And what could we possibly have to talk about?’ He stuck a match in the corner of his mouth and began chewing it. Bannerman waited, to allow Palin’s apprehension to worry him a little more.
Then he said, ‘About the phone call you made to a certain René Jansen yesterday.’ Palin paled visibly and Bannerman knew he was on the right track. ‘At least, I presume it was a phone call. He wouldn’t have seen you personally.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
Bannerman went on, with the same studied calm, ‘I don’t know if it’s possible to see that you never work for another newspaper again, but I’ll make damn sure your editor is in full possession of the facts. I can imagine what his reaction will be. As for the union, well, they’re not quite as predictable, but I would think there’s a good chance you’ll be expelled. And then there’s the Judicial Police. I’m not certain, but it’s quite possible that you’ve actually broken the law.’
There was a greyness now about the skin of Palin’s face. He was silent for a very long time. Then, ‘You can’t prove a thing.’ Not even a denial. Bannerman kept his anger, his contempt, in check. He drew casually on his cigar.
‘Maybe, maybe not. But even if I can’t there are other factors to consider. You and I both know that Slater was blackmailing Gryffe.’ There was nothing in Palin’s face to give away what he was thinking. Did he know? He switched the matchstick to the other corner of his mouth and said nothing. Bannerman went on, ‘The way I read it, Jansen and Lapointe were involved in some way.’ Still no reaction. ‘Someone killed Slater and Gryffe. I don’t know enough to know who it was, but it is not unreasonable to assume, on the basis of my earlier assumption, that Jansen or Lapointe or both, might also have been involved in that.
‘As I say, I don’t know. Maybe you know more than I do. Whatever, you know something. You knew enough to know that Jansen — or was it Lapointe? — might have been interested in a folder of cuttings that Slater had compiled on them. What were you after? Money? No matter. Let us just suppose that one or both were involved in the murders, where does that leave you?’
Palin folded. His face crumpled and he leaned forward on the desk, dropping his head into his hands. Bannerman watched him with disgust. What made a man with such obvious intelligence and ability fall so low? The drink, the bitterness, his final stupidity were only symptoms. But he did not dwell on it. He was distracted by the muffled sobs and felt sick in the pit of his stomach. Yet there was no pity. Palin looked up, his face smeared with tears, a miserable, pathetic figure of a man who must have been existing on the brink of a break-down such as this for long enough. He reached for his hip-flask and unsteady fingers unscrewed the top which fell and rolled away across the top of the desk.
The neck of the flask disappeared between his lips while he sucked in strength to face the next minutes. It was always to this he would turn for comfort. He slapped the flask down on the desk and looked wretchedly at Bannerman. ‘I never thought,’ he said, his voice breaking somewhere in the back of his throat. ‘I really don’t know anything. I knew that Slater had something on Gryffe. I’d known for some time. Just little things I picked up. The tail end of telephone conversations, the file he had been collecting.’ He stopped to take another pull at the flask. ‘Then I found the cuttings on Jansen and Lapointe. I reckoned he must have had something on all three. God knows what. Believe me, I really don’t know. I thought it was for a story. Something gutsy. I never even thought of blackmail until you said it just now.’ He heaved himself out of his chair and turned away towards the window. ‘It just never occurred to me.’
Bannerman rolled his cigar between thumb and forefinger. ‘Just what did you hope to gain by tipping off Jansen or Lapointe about the cuttings?’
Palin looked back. ‘It was Jansen,’ he said. ‘I thought, I thought he might pay for the information.’
‘And did he?’
‘Not exactly. He said he would need proof first. That he would get in touch after.’
‘And you agreed?’ Bannerman could not believe that Palin could have been so foolish. The man, or what was left of him, returned to his desk and got going on the flask again. A little of the liquor crept out at the corner of his mouth and ran down his chin. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.
‘What you said yesterday, about my appointment here being a short-term calculated risk. You were a damn sight closer than you thought. I...’ he choked on it. ‘I’ve been recalled. Next month. Second man on the night news desk in London. After all these years. Shoved to the side. Put out to pasture. Sit like a stookie through the early hours. Desk-bound. Paperwork. A glorified nothing. A has-been with a title. And London. I don’t want to go back to London. Some grim bed-sitter that smells of stale cooking. I’d rather die. When you’ve been on the road all your life..He looked up. ‘Someday you’ll know it, too. When they don’t want you any more, and they stick you in a corner out of the way and wait for you to retire or die. Yes, that’s the only consolation, isn’t it? That someday, even smart bastards like you are put out to grass.’
The alcohol was reviving his aggression. The flask was now empty and he went into a drawer and pulled out an unopened bottle of whisky. He twisted off the cap and put the bottle to his lips and sucked it freely. ‘Yeah, even bastards like you.’
‘Only you won’t be around to see it.’
‘I’m not that old, sonny, and you’re no bloody chicken. Don’t count on it.’ He was swaying a little now, and Bannerman guessed there must have been another session earlier in the morning. Palin suddenly looked at him sharply. ‘You’re not going to tell them, are you? I mean, you couldn’t prove it, could you? You don’t even know that I made that phone call except that I’m telling you. Yah.’
Bannerman sighed and stood up. ‘No, I’m not going to tell anyone. You’re not worth the trouble. But that’s only my point of view. Maybe Jansen reckons you’re worth the trouble. Maybe he’ll send someone looking for you, like he sent someone up here last night.’
The fear returned to Palin’s eyes. ‘They wouldn’t... I don’t even know anything.’
Bannerman gripped his cigar between his teeth and advanced on the other man. ‘I hope they do,’ he said. ‘I hope they put a hole in your head so that maybe some brains could leak in.’ He put his cigar on the edge of the desk and with a tightly clenched fist hit Palin as hard as he could, aiming for the centre of his face. The drunk staggered back and crashed down over his chair, blood spurting from his nose and mouth. Bannerman held his knuckles which hurt more than he thought they would. ‘That’s for last night,’ he said in a voice that sounded strange even to himself. He opened his hand painfully and looked at the grazing. The knuckles would swell over the next few hours. Palin was trying to sit up. His face was a mess and he was making a strange gurgling noise. All the anger drained from Bannerman as he looked at him, and he regretted having hit him. You always think it will make you feel better, but it doesn’t.
He leaned over and helped Palin up, righting the chair and pulling him into it. As he lifted his cigar there was a knock at the door and it opened and Tait stood looking in at them. ‘Jesus!’
Another figure appeared behind him. It was Mademoiselle Ricain, clutching a fistful of cigars. Her mouth fell open and then her eyes lit on the cigar clamped between Bannerman’s teeth.