‘We are making every effort to find her.’ Du Maurier’s words came to him, crisp in the cold air as they walked across the street from the inn to the car. The sun had been rising over the tops of the trees that were sculpture against the pale sky. ‘But there has been none of the attendant publicity you might expect. It would help. Someone might have seen her. But if the story got out... Well, the politicians are afraid that the whole case would be resurrected by the press.’ Bannerman’s breath had drifted like mist into the early morning.
‘And you think you will find her alive?’
There had been a look of shame on du Maurier’s face. ‘No,’ he said.
‘And I suppose nothing of what happened here last night will reach the papers either. At least, not through you.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And what about me?’
‘I can’t stop you. Others perhaps, but not me.’
Bannerman drained his second glass, dropped some coins on the counter and went back out past the telephone girl to the lifts. The whisky had restored a little of his strength and numbed the hurt.
Mademoiselle Ricain looked up in surprise as he came into the office. She was embarrassed and stood up. ‘I... Monsieur...’ she stuttered. ‘Your office in Edinburgh has been trying to reach you for nearly two days. And...’ she fumbled among some papers on her desk, ‘...a man called Platt. He has phoned several times, as has Mademoiselle Robertson.’
He sat down and glanced across at Palin’s empty desk. ‘Where’s Palin?’
Mademoiselle Ricain blushed. ‘He... he’s gone back to London.’ Pause. ‘You look terrible, Monsieur.’
‘Flattery will get you nowhere. For God’s sake sit down. You make me nervous fluttering about like that.’
Her face flushed again and she sat down. She slipped a sheet of paper into her typewriter and began typing furiously.
Bannerman took an envelope from his pocket. It had been so easy. After du Maurier dropped him he had gone straight to the Post Office at the Place de la Monnaie and presented Gryffe’s card. The girl behind the counter had not given him a second glance, but returned within a minute with the envelope he now held in his hand. Perhaps he should have felt more excitement than he did, but the child still filled his thoughts. He tried to feel detached, to remain unaffected. Why should it matter to him? But it did. Then he thought, let it feed your anger. Let it make you angry so that you want all the more to get at those responsible. If he could not channel it into something positive, then the sorrow was always there, waiting to well up and choke him.
He looked at the postmark and stamp on the envelope. It came from Switzerland and it had been posted at the beginning of the month, nearly two weeks ago. He slit it open. There were two sheets of paper clipped together. The top sheet was letter-headed, a firm of chartered accountants in Geneva — Fouquet, Maxim and Schmidt, 50 Rue des Quartiers. It was addressed to M. Robert Gryffe, and the letter was brief and in English.
‘Dear Sir, please find enclosed, as requested, a quarterly statement of the accounts of Machines Internationale S.A. for the three months ending the immediate past year. Your servants etc.’
The sheet below listed purchases, sales, overheads, in columns of figures down the right-hand side. It showed a pre-tax profit for the three months of one and a half million pounds with a rolling total for the first nine months of nearly five million pounds. Further returns were expected.
Bannerman was stunned. He ran his eyes up and down the figures. Just numbers on a sheet of paper. But they meant so much. Sales, purchases and overheads were not itemised, but that would come. He had a start, the first inkling of what it was that Gryffe had been involved in. He was oblivious to Mademoiselle Ricain’s typing, to the late afternoon sunshine that slanted into the office across his desk, to the film of sweat on his forehead. He reached for the phone and dialled rapidly.
‘Edinburgh Post.’ The line was good and clear across all the miles.
‘News desk.’
Gorman, the Post’s news editor, was preparing the schedule for the news desk secretary to type before the five o’clock conference when the phone went. He was harassed. It had been one of those afternoons. Five dead in a fire in Maryhill in Glasgow, the Prime Minister’s conference before an election rally to be held later in the Usher Hall. Then there was a Nationalist MP claiming a political motive behind a burglary at his home. Important documents on the Nationalists’ election strategy were missing, he was saying. There were two reporters off with flu. And, of course, there had been the diary markings of the daily round of press conferences that the Parties insisted on giving in the run-up to polling day. But if he was to stop and think about it, this was the way Gorman liked it.
‘David!’ he barked, as a copy boy dropped long, ragged-edged sheets of pink paper on his desk. A young reporter with a thick dark moustache and a broken nose ambled across the newsroom. Gorman held out the sheets of pink paper. ‘That’s the PA copy on the fire. You’d better check it and see if they’ve got anything we haven’t.’
‘Not a chance,’ the reporter grinned and ambled back to his seat clutching the sheets from the wireroom.
Gorman’s phone rang. He lifted it and said wearily, ‘News desk.’
‘Gorman?’
‘Speaking.’ Then, ‘Neil?’
‘The same. Look, I’m in a hurry, I...’
‘Hold it, hold it! Where in God’s name have you been, Neil? Tait’s been looking for you for the last two days, ever since Slater’s girl went missing.’
‘You know about that?’ Bannerman was surprised.
‘Yes, they told Tait. But he won’t use anything on it. He’s been going spare, and I have been getting the heavy end of the stick, I can tell you. Where have you been?’
‘Busy. I don’t have time to go into it. I want a number from my contacts book.’
Gorman interrupted irritably. ‘Look, I think you’d better talk to Tait.’
‘No way. I’m through talking with Tait. I guess he didn’t tell you I was leaving the Post?’
The words dropped into Gorman’s confusion like lead weights. For a moment he could not think of anything to say, then blurted lamely, ‘You’re joking.’
‘No. There isn’t much room in my life for jokes these days. We had a little disagreement in Brussels, Tait and I. But I don’t suppose he would tell you about that either. When I’m through with this story I’m getting out. However, that is neither here nor there. I need that number. A guy called Hector Lewis. He’s got a small business in Geneva that does company searches among other things. I must get in touch with him tonight. The book’s in my desk.’
‘Hold on.’
Gorman made his way across the newsroom. In the last week he had found himself missing the familiar sight of the cantankerous Bannerman sitting at his desk chewing cigars and being thoroughly objectionable to all around him. It did not seem possible that he might not be back. He was good to have around. If you were a news editor, then he might make life pretty difficult for you, but there was a safe feeling knowing that he was there. Damn Tait with his brash bad manners and his tantrums and the knives that he kept sharpened for his staff. He was killing the Post as surely as if it were a ship he was steering onto the rocks in a cruel sea. You could not afford to lose people like Bannerman. He was not the first, neither would he be the last. When, Gorman wondered, would his turn come? Soon, he suspected.
He lifted Bannerman’s contacts book from its drawer and returned to the news desk. He picked up the phone. ‘I’ve got your number, Neil.’ He read it over, hesitated, then asked, ‘What will I tell Tait?’