She was a plain plump woman in her middle forties, her long, thick hair pulled back and held with an elastic band. She smiled.
‘Are you strong enough to talk?’ the policeman asked. Bannerman glanced at du Maurier and nodded. The Inspector spoke briefly to the woman whose face suddenly clouded. She snapped back at him. But du Maurier interrupted her with an authority Bannerman had not seen him exert before and she stopped in mid-sentence, the colour rising in her cheeks. Without another word she bustled to the door and through it, pulling it sharply behind her. A quiet descended on the room.
It was not a big room; bare floorboards with a small, square rug in the centre. The rough plaster walls were painted white. The old brass bedstead was pushed into one corner against the wall opposite the window. There was a big wardrobe, a dresser and two chairs. There was no shade on the light-bulb that hung from the ceiling throwing its harsh, unrelenting light into every corner. Du Maurier took off his hat and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, running the rim of the hat round and round through his fingers. ‘I don’t suppose you would have a cigar?’ Bannerman said.
The policeman shook his head. ‘A cigarette?’
‘All right.’
Du Maurier got up and walked round the bed. He handed Bannerman a cigarette and lit it for him, and then walked back to his chair. His own cigarette was almost spent. He lit another from the end of it and stood on the butt. ‘So,’ he said, ‘I’ve driven all the way from Brussels and I’ve sat up most of the night.’
‘I didn’t know you cared.’
Du Maurier sighed and glared at him. ‘If I had not come you might have been in a great deal of trouble.’
Bannerman drew on his cigarette and tasted burning paper. ‘You were sent?’
‘I was sent.’
‘To smooth it over, cover it up?’
‘I want to know what happened.’
‘And if I don’t want to tell you...?’
‘You could still be in a great deal of trouble.’
Bannerman considered this. His head still hurt, his body still ached. He had not the strength to fight it. So he told it, as it had happened, as he remembered it. But he said nothing about the poste restante card. Somehow in the telling of the story it seemed such an obvious hole. Du Maurier gave no sign of missing anything. He sat without expression, just listening. ‘I have no idea what happened to him,’ Bannerman was saying. ‘There was an explosion. I don’t remember everything, but there was not very much left of him.’
The Inspector nodded. ‘I know, I’ve seen it. You were very lucky, Monsieur. He died in a way he could never have imagined. A German land mine from the last war. The woods are riddled with them and there are warning signs every hundred metres or so. It is quite common in this part of the country. You are very fortunate that you did not go the same way.’ Bannerman shuddered suddenly as though someone had walked over his grave. Du Maurier looked to the floor and then back at Bannerman. ‘And you have no idea what the spot of red light might have been?’
The reporter shrugged and felt weary. ‘I don’t know. Some kind of sighting device maybe.’
Du Maurier nodded. ‘A laser beam. It can pinpoint a target at over one thousand metres. It’s a new American gun, the B120. A high-powered sight enables the marksman to line up the laser on any target. You can’t miss. Even I could handle it.’
Bannerman frowned. ‘But he did miss.’
‘Yes, he did.’ Pause. ‘Let me tell you something. The B120 is a highly specialised weapon. There are very few of them around. You’ve got to be somebody pretty special to have one. A top professional. And there is no way a top professional would miss.’
Bannerman flicked ash at the floor. ‘You mean he wasn’t trying to kill me?’
‘It seems possible.’
‘Well it sure as hell didn’t seem that way at the time. How about the gas?’
Du Maurier waved one hand in a vague semi-circle. ‘Tear gas, maybe. Or something a little more toxic. But you were never in danger. He left you a way out and you took it. He could not have planned for the fact that you very nearly did come to grief, as he obviously did not plan his own end. How long was it since you had eaten?’
‘I don’t know. Early morning probably.’
‘So you had not eaten all day you had spent several hours in a cold house. You had cuts on your head and leg. You inhaled toxic or semi-toxic gas, then you went out into a bitter night hardly dressed for sub-zero temperatures, and ran nearly two kilometres through the snow before falling into a half-frozen stream. Fatigue, shock, exposure. You must have the constitution of an ox. When the police communal found you in the road you were very nearly dead. They got some food and drink into you last night and a doctor came from Torhout and dressed your wounds. He recommends that you remain in bed for two or three days.’
Bannerman looked across at the window. The shutters were closed. ‘What time is it?’
Du Maurier looked at his watch. ‘Just after eight. It should be getting light outside.’
‘Where are we?’ It had not occurred to him until now to ask. It hadn’t seemed important before.
‘A small inn at the village of Smoelaert. Only a few kilometres from Monsieur Gryffe’s house, or what’s left of it.’
‘Are you going back to Brussels?’
‘In an hour or so. I have one or two things to attend to first with the local police.’
‘Will you give me a lift back?’
‘If you insist.’
Then they fell silent and there was not a sound in the place. Bannerman rubbed the stubble on his chin and looked down for the first time to see that he was wearing an old woollen dressing gown with a faded checked pattern. He looked up again at du Maurier. ‘Who was he?’
The policeman shook his head. ‘I have no idea. But I shall find out. He had been staying here at the inn for two days, under the name of Michael Ritchie, an Englishman. Presumably it was he who searched the house before you. The night before last he checked out in a hurry after getting a telephone call.’ A new doubt was suddenly planted in Bannerman’s mind as an ugly little thought wormed its way into his consciousness. He pushed it aside. Du Maurier went on, ‘What he did that night or the following day, we have no idea. But the local police found his car last night. It was parked off the road about half a kilometre from the house.’ Pause. ‘You’d never seen him before?’
Bannerman nodded. ‘Yes, I’d seen him. Yesterday morning at the Gare du Midi. He was on the platform.’ He remembered the face peering into the waiting room. And he remembered that same face with its dead eyes staring out of the mud and snow. ‘Why should someone go to all that trouble not to kill me?’ he asked.
Du Maurier stood. ‘Perhaps simply to frighten you.’
‘They did that all right.’
‘They?’
Bannerman smiled wanly. ‘Men like that act under instruction, or for money. Someone else pays the wages, calls the tune.’
‘Yes.’ The policeman put his hand into an inside pocket and pulled out a small, square poste restante card. He walked slowly round the bed and held it so that Bannerman could see it. ‘You forgot to tell me about this.’
‘So I did.’
‘And do you want to?’