Bannerman glanced down the hall. A telephone booth was lit at the far end. He stepped briskly the other way towards the face hovering behind the counter. ‘My coat.’ The attendant vanished among the coats that hung in rows like carcasses in a butcher’s shop. Holt came out into the hall without seeing Bannerman and headed straight for the telephone. Bannerman smiled a little to himself. He had tested the water and found it hot. He took his coat, leaving a few francs on the counter, and walked slowly to the door as he pulled it on. Holt’s mouth opened and closed silently in his pale face behind the glass door of the booth. The commissionaire opened the main door and Holt looked over. All the smiles were gone. He glared at Bannerman as the reporter flashed him a grin and stepped out into the cold Brussels night.
IV
The stairwell seemed colder than it had on other nights, the landing lights harsher, the stairs darker. Outside the snow was falling even more thickly. The winter seemed determined to tighten its grip on the city. Someone coughed on the landing above. A man’s cough, a deep retching cough. Bannerman could smell cigarette smoke. Whoever was there was making no attempt to conceal his presence. He must have heard Bannerman’s footsteps.
Bannerman climbed the last flight cautiously before he saw Platt’s face, round and fat, peering down at him. ‘Is that you, Bannerman? I’ve been hanging around here for more than half an hour. I’m bloody freezing.’ Platt’s face was very white and touched with blue around his eyes. He was wearing a thick coat with a scarf wrapped tightly round his neck, and his battered checked hat was pulled down over his forehead. He made an exaggerated show of stamping his feet for warmth and making fists with his gloved hands.
‘What do you want?’ Bannerman asked, turning his back on him to unlock the door.
‘Oh, that’s nice,’ Platt whined. ‘I’ve been knocking my pan in all afternoon trying to get background on Jansen and Lapointe and then most of the night trying to track you down...’
‘I told you tomorrow would do.’ He paused and looked at the pathetic figure on the landing and relented a little. ‘You’d better come in.’
Platt followed him through to the living room slapping his hands together and making loud blowing noises. Bannerman took a bottle wrapped in brown paper from his pocket and laid it on the table, and draped his coat over the back of the settee. He switched on the fire and saw Platt eyeing the bottle. ‘Malt,’ he said, but did not offer him a drink. ‘Let’s see it.’
‘What?’ Platt looked confused.
‘Your stuff on Jansen and Lapointe.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Platt struggled out of his coat and dropped his gloves on the chair beside it. He drew a large folded envelope from his inside jacket pocket and held it out for Bannerman. He dropped gratefully into the chair, his scarf hanging loosely from his neck over the bulge of his waistline. His eyes fell longingly again on the bottle and involuntarily he licked his wet, purple lips. He said, ‘I got most of what I needed on Jansen from a series the Soir ran on him about six months ago. I went over it and typed out a precis of the relevant details in English. There was some stuff on Lapointe as well, but not as much. He’s not as up front as Jansen, so we don’t know as much about him.’
Bannerman lit a cigar, sank back in the settee and looked at his watch. It was just after ten. He threw the envelope carelessly on the table. ‘Tell me the salient details. I haven’t time to read the stuff just now. I’m going out again shortly.’ Platt made no attempt to hide his irritation. ‘When are you going to come clean with me, Bannerman?’
‘In good time.’ Pause. ‘Did you make your second edition?’
Platt’s mouth tightened. ‘Yes, I made it. The paper was fifteen minutes late getting to the street. I got a right roasting.’ Bannerman couldn’t resist a smile, to Platt’s further annoyance. The old reporter glanced for the umpteenth time at the bottle. ‘How about a drink, Bannerman? You owe me that. Take the chill out of my bones.’
Bannerman drew lazily on his cigar. ‘Alcohol accelerates loss of body heat. Help yourself.’
‘Glasses?’
‘In the kitchen.’
Platt sat for a few moments waiting for Bannerman to get them, but when the younger man made no move, he heaved himself reluctantly out of his chair and crossed towards the kitchen door. ‘In here?’ Bannerman nodded.
He listened to the sound of Platt searching noisily in the cupboards and remembered how he had been when he’d first met him all those years ago when he joined his first weekly paper.
Platt had been there for years, knew it all and breathed whisky and contempt on the succession of keen young news-hounds who passed through the paper on their way to better things. He had been a lonely man, a widower, embittered by all life’s opportunities that had passed him by. At first he had poured scorn on Bannerman the way he had poured scorn on all the rest. But even Platt had come to recognise the possibilities in him and had done everything he could to make life even more difficult.
Bannerman had hated him then. Wasn’t it Platt who had mixed things for him with the editor over the business with the tele-ad girl, Platt who had taken delight in his hurt and dismay? It was possible that he was responsible for Bannerman losing his job. Bannerman had been sure at the time and his anger had lived in him for a long time after. Only the passing of the years had peeled away the anger and brought a little understanding, before finally despatching him to the mists of a half-forgotten past.
And now, all these years later, here they both were. How different it all was. Bannerman had no idea what ebbs of fortune had brought Platt to this end, exiled in a foreign city, still chasing the dreams that had passed him by so long ago.
Platt came out of the kitchen with two cups. ‘I can’t find the glasses.’ He set them down on the table, opened the bottle and poured two large measures. Then he dropped into his seat and raised his cup, smiling a broad, hollow smile. ‘Cheers.’
How he detested Bannerman. His success, his arrogance, his self-assurance. He took a gulp of the smooth malt and grimaced as he felt the first twinges in his stomach. Bannerman was watching him. ‘Ulcer,’ he said. ‘First one always gets it that way.’ Still, he thought with some comfort, there are one or two things that I know about you. He grinned. ‘Where should I begin?’
‘At the beginning.’
Platt shifted in his chair and took another gulp of whisky. ‘Well, René Jansen is probably about the richest man in Belgium. His pedigree is spotless. He comes from one of the oldest and most influential Flemish families in the country. An only child. All this lavished freely upon his fair head. Education, breeding, money. He’s got the lot. When his father died he inherited the Jansen empire. But he didn’t just sit back on it. He built on it, made it more than it ever was when his father was alive. He’s into everything. Owns the biggest private aerospace concern in Europe, supplying not only the bulk of the planes for the Belgian airforce and the national airlines, but also for about half the major airlines in the world — and exclusively to a number of the smaller Third World airlines.
‘And he’s into the construction industry. His companies are almost single-handedly re-building Brussels and some of the bigger provincial towns. About half of that is on government contracts, the other half is in the private sector. Those are the two biggies. But he’s got fingers in lots of other pies. Property, department stores, and he even owns a couple of provincial newspapers. He’s got interests in a shipping line and owns a few breweries.’
Bannerman knew now why the name Jansen had seemed familiar. He was one of the two percent of men who own ninety-five percent of the world’s wealth. Those men who exist in a world of private jets, executive suites, massive estates; whose pictures you see sometimes in the diary pages of newspapers, dining with Royalty, dropping half a million on the tables at Monte Carlo. Always with pretty girls on their arms. The kind of life-style to which Robert Gryffe had aspired. ‘How does he organise his affairs?’