Du Maurier said, ‘No-o,’ stretching the word thoughtfully and then lowering his head. ‘I had information for you.’
‘But now you’re having second thoughts?’
The Inspector’s head snapped up and he searched Bannerman’s face. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘Because you’ve been all fired up and angry since they passed you over for promotion, and when the politicians descended to take away your murders at the Rue de Pavie you saw your chance to hit back. You saw that they were vulnerable. Now you’re not sure if you’re doing the right thing.’
Du Maurier wished he had not drunk so much, for his head was fuzzy and he found it difficult to think clearly. A man like Bannerman could run rings around him. He suddenly felt vulnerable, foolish for having said all the things he had said. Bannerman went on, ‘The trouble is, you’ve already committed yourself. For you there can be no going back. I could blow the lid off our relationship any time I chose.’
The years sat heavily on du Maurier’s shoulders. His face crumpled a little, his mouth tight and grim. ‘And would you?’
Bannerman let that one hang a long time before he said reluctantly, ‘No.’
Du Maurier stared at him. ‘Why?’
Bannerman shrugged. ‘My own reasons,’ he said. Then, ‘What you wanted to say to me tonight was that you had changed your mind? That you no longer felt able to pass me information from the inside?’ Du Maurier nodded. Both men stood in silence then, one staring out over the city, the other with his back to the wall staring through the darkness of the cobbled square. Neither spoke for several minutes. Finally Bannerman said, ‘What was the information you had?’
Du Maurier turned his head slowly. ‘Mon Dieu! You expect a lot.’
‘I have a certain belief in what I am doing.’
The other man shook his head. ‘I wish I could believe, one way or another.’ He drew a folded sheet of paper from his coat pocket and pushed it at Bannerman. It had an address written on it in a tight, neat hand. ‘It’s the address that goes with the phone number you gave me. A country house in West Flanders near Torhout, about seventeen kilometres south-west of Bruges. Monsieur Gryffe had been renting the house for about two years. The property is owned by a Brussels registered company, a subsidiary of I.V. Internationale.’ He smiled an ironic smile.
Bannerman said, ‘Jansen’s outfit.’
‘Yes, perhaps you were right after all.’ Bannerman’s fingers tightened around the slip of paper. It was the first tangible fact to emerge from the whole mess. However tenuous, it was something. He heard the Inspector ask, ‘What shall you do?’
He let his head fall back so that he was staring up into the falling snow. ‘I shall go to Flanders.’ Pause. ‘And you? What will you do?’
Du Maurier surveyed the chewed wet end of his cigarette. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I will need to think about it.’ He threw the cigarette over the wall. ‘Goodnight, Monsieur.’ And he turned away to cross the cobbles and turn down the narrow steps to the Rue des Minimes below.
Bannerman watched him disappear into the shadows and pushed himself off the wall and began to cross the Place Poelaert.
Chapter Eight
I
The first grey light of dawn was in the sky. In the waiting room the electric light was white and hard, and the slatted benches cold and uncomfortable. The sounds of the station drifted in the open door with the cold mist that smothered the city. An elderly couple sat close and quiet, staring bleakly through the windows at the porters passing with trolleys of luggage and mail. Occasionally they passed a few words in whispers. There was no reason why people should whisper, but a voice raised in normal speech would have seemed somehow out of place.
A fat businessman, prosperous in his navy coat, camel scarf and dark Homburg hat, stood puffing impatiently on a big cigar. He kept wiping the window where it was misting and staring down the line for signs of the train. It was not due for another five minutes. His premature impatience was annoying Bannerman.
The reporter’s eyes were gritty with lack of sleep. His mood was brittle. He was tense without knowing quite why. The weather had changed overnight, the snow turning to rain, and a fine drizzle was drifting down the tracks towards the platforms that stretched away on either side. The dampness was in everything, chill and raw.
Bannerman had risen early, the sound of the alarm drilling into a confused dream that had dispersed, with the coming of consciousness, like smoke in the wind. The windows of the bedroom were milky white with condensation, and outside it had still been dark. In the living room was the smell of stale smoke and the bottle of malt stood empty on the table like a reproach. The first cup of coffee had been good. A few things were pushed into a holdall to do him if he had to stay overnight. When he was in the hall the phone had started ringing. He had frowned and checked the time. Just after seven. Then he had hesitated a moment before deciding to leave it. It had still been ringing as his footsteps echoed down the stairwell. He could not have known what news the call would have borne had he answered it.
More than a dozen people stood now on the platform below the strands of mist that swirled in the lamplight. It was still dark, despite the lightening of the sky. A tall man with short, sandy hair stooped to peer into the waiting room. His eyes lighted on Bannerman for a second and he turned away quickly as the reporter became aware of him. The lights of the train came out of the blackness of the tunnel beyond the platform end, and with a great deal of clattering and grinding of metal on metal, came to a stop. Doors were flung open and people who had come through the night from Germany stepped down pulling suitcases behind them.
Bannerman left the waiting room, pushing past several people on the platform, and climbed up into the train. At the far end of the corridor he caught sight of the man with the sandy hair. He was carrying a polished wooden case. Bannerman slid open the door of an empty compartment and slipped into its welcome warmth. He threw his holdall into the rack overhead and took a seat by the window with his back to the engine. He watched the figures pass in the corridor, the elderly couple who had been in the waiting room, a thin dark man in a dark suit with a Gauloise between his lips and a briefcase under his arm. They all passed. There was no sign of the man with the sandy hair. Bannerman wondered why he had expected to see him, almost expected he would step into the same compartment. Something about the eyes, perhaps, or the way he had looked at him through the window in the waiting room.
The raised voice of the platform guard reached him, and then the slamming of doors. A whistle sounded and with a slight groan, the train began moving slowly out of the station, gathering speed, wheels clattering across rails at the junction.
II
The early afternoon air was clear and bright and the sunlight reflected strongly in patches on the snow that stretched away across the flatness of West Flanders, broken only by the occasional wall or hedge or row of poplars. The mist had lifted and the heavy grey of the sky was clearing to reveal a pale blue behind it. The road was wet and black, a dirty slush piled along the verges where it had been thrown up by the wheels of cars. The snow was still wet, but if the sky continued to clear then it would freeze again tonight.
There was a deep silence across the land. Only the birds could be heard, greeting the return of the sun. The road was deserted, stretching emptily away into the distance towards a belt of trees beyond which the spire of a church rose to a point. Bannerman had walked nearly two kilometres from where the bus from Bruges to Kortrijk had dropped him on the main road. In that time he had not seen a single vehicle or a single human being. The small town of Torhout lay somewhere to the east of him, but whatever town or village it was that lay beyond the belt of trees, it was not big enough to appear on the Michelin map.