‘Not really.’
‘Then you’d better take it.’ He held it out.
Bannerman took it and looked at him with genuine surprise. ‘Why?’
‘Because it is of no use to me, and my superiors would only destroy it.’
‘But I thought you had decided to play it their way. That you wouldn’t fight them any more, that you would stop feeding me information.’
Du Maurier’s head dropped a little and an odd expression of melancholy came over his face. ‘Things have changed since then.’
‘What’s changed?’
The policeman sighed. ‘The night before last, only a few hours after you visited her, the child, Tania, went missing from the clinic. She... someone broke in.’
Chapter Nine
I
The afternoon editions of the evening papers were on the streets. The sounds of traffic, of people laughing, of the paper-boy calling headlines, floated into the remoteness of the café. Tucked away in a side street off the Boulevard Adolphe Max, it seemed removed from all life that went on around it, like an eddy at the edge of a stream.
Kale sat in the farthest corner from the door. Here he sought his refuge, alone in a dark place where his face was not known, would be neither noticed nor remembered. It was a curious place. The only light came through dirty windows that faced out onto the street, the floor was unswept and the tables and chairs rocked on uneven legs. Half a dozen people sat at tables on their own, staring gloomily into drinks that they made last for hours, or watching the flickering screen of the crackling black-and-white television set on the far wall. The sound was turned down, but the second-hand pictures of other people’s worlds held a remorseless fascination, were company for lonely souls.
An old woman with short, dirty-grey hair sat behind the battered zinc bar, staring into space, puffing periodically on an evil-smelling cheroot. Kale stared despairingly at the newspapers in front of him. He had bought them all. This day and the day before. Scrutinising every column inch of words he did not understand. Searching but never finding. There was nothing that even remotely suggested a story about the missing child. Not even on the shootings at the Rue de Pavie. It was as though none of it had ever happened. He was discovering a quiet, quite alien desperation in himself, a need to know that his existence made a difference to the world, that the things he did had consequences. Here, in this city that was strange to him, where he knew no-one and no-one knew him, it was as though he did not exist at all.
A quality of nightmare about the last days haunted him. It was a time when he had discovered things in himself that he had never known were there, things that confused him, frightened him. His values, if he had ever had any, his relationship with the life that went on around him, had altered beyond his understanding. He was like a man who, having thrown a pebble into a pool, sees the stone vanish without breaking the surface of the water. There are no concentric rings spreading out to infinity, no evidence that he has thrown the pebble. Would such a man, perhaps, begin to doubt his very existence? Would he then dare to look into the pool for fear that there might be no reflection?
He pulled on the last inch of his cigarette and blew the grey smoke back out through nicotine-stained teeth. Why had he not killed the child? The opportunity had been his for the taking. And why, after only two days, had the killings in the Rue de Pavie died in the public consciousness. The papers should be full of it, as they should be full, today, of the child’s disappearance.
He had bought the English newspapers, too, at a large newsagent’s in the centre of the city. After the second day, nothing. The front pages had been given over again to the election; the Prime Minister speaking in Edinburgh, the Leader of the Opposition making an important policy statement on immigration designed to win votes. Why had he not killed the child?
His mind drifted back to the hospital rising above him in the darkness, to the sudden flood of light from the downstairs window that had caught him like a rabbit trapped in the headlights of a car. He had seen the child looking down at him in the reflected light, seen the recognition in her eyes. Even then, after the light had gone, he had not thought of drawing back. It had not occurred to him to fight the almost irresistible drag of the currents that drew him towards the vortex. He had moved around the house, forcing a window and climbing into the pitch darkness of the kitchen. It must have been then that he had heard the first whispers of guilt. Something in the warmth, the smell of stale cooking, a scrap of blue ribbon lying on a work surface by the door. Something that reminded him of when he was a boy.
In the hallway, night lights glowed faintly along the wall and his heart leapt at the sight of a figure watching him from the far end. It was several seconds before he realised that it was his own reflection that watched him from a mirror on the wall. He had stood staring at the mean, cheap, dirty figure, unable to move, to draw his eyes away from it. For just a moment he thought he saw his mother’s face peering back at him out of the darkness. He had never seen the resemblance before. It was uncanny.
The spell had been broken then by the sound of soft footsteps somewhere in the house. They fell like blows upon him. Was it fear that had made him turn on his heels and run? Back through the kitchen, out again into the cold night, the window left open behind him.
In the darkness he stumbled through the snow in despair. And as he came around the house he saw her, a shadow in the night, running down the steps, a coat clutched around her, a woollen hat pulled down on her head. She had glanced in his direction, but had not seen him, and had run on across the terrace. She slipped and fell. He heard her sobs as she picked herself up and ran out of sight down the driveway. He might have followed. It would have been easy then. But he had not.
A policeman came into the café, a black cape across his shoulders, and Kale tensed. The policeman cast an eye around the figures at the tables. Was it only Kale’s imagination that the man’s eyes rested longer on him? He stared back out of sullen, hateful eyes and the policeman turned away to buy a pack of cigarettes. He exchanged a few words with the grey-haired woman and then went out without a backward glance.
Kale finished his beer, and left fifty francs in the saucer and went out into the street. He scuffed along the pavement close to the wall, away from the boulevard, turning left into the Rue Neuve and along to the Place de la Monnaie. A great weight had settled on him. He stopped to light a cigarette and looked up to see the man he had followed to the hospital. Bannerman was crossing the square only fifty metres away. Kale stood fixed, watching as the man climbed the steps and pushed through the great heavy swing doors of the Post Office. It all came back to him. The knowledge of what he must do. He might almost have cried, something he had not done since he was a child. But then, that would have been a weakness, and he could not afford to discover yet more weaknesses in himself. He slipped his right hand into his coat pocket and felt the slip of paper he had drawn from the left luggage locker. Just three words. They almost burned his fingers.
II
Bannerman stepped into the warmth of the IPC building. There was still a rawness in his bones and he felt a slight shiver crawl across his skin. A fine, cold sweat formed over his forehead. He passed the reception desk. The telephone girl did not look up from her magazine. In the press bar he sat on one of the high stools and leaned forward on his elbows breathing noisily. The barman raised an eyebrow. ‘Monsieur?’
‘Whisky.’
He clutched the glass eagerly and poured its golden warmth over his throat. ‘Another.’