‘Platt.’ The voice was thick with phlegm. The call had clearly woken him.
‘Bannerman.’
‘Oh...’ Platt was wide awake now and fumbling for his bedside clock. ‘What time is it...?’
‘Time you and I had a talk.’
‘What...? What about? What is it?’
‘I’m at the Rue de Commerce. I suggest you get over here. I’ll expect you.’ The line went dead on Platt’s confusion.
Bannerman thumbed through his notebook until he found the unlisted number he had copied from Slater’s contacts book. There was a sense of excited urgency in him now. He picked up the phone again and dialled. It rang three times before a voice answered in Flemish.
Bannerman asked, ‘Do you speak English?’
‘A little.’
‘I’d like to speak to René Jansen.’
‘Who is it that wants him?’
‘Neil Bannerman.’
There was a long wait before the voice returned. ‘Herr Jansen is not available.’
Bannerman said calmly, ‘Tell him I intend to expose a company which is selling arms to South Africa. I think he knows who l am.’
‘I don’t think...’
‘No-one’s asking you to think. Just tell him.’
Another wait. Then, ‘Herr Jansen will speak to you at his home this evening. If you will be here for eight thirty.’
Bannerman dropped the phone and sat back to light a cigar and noticed the number of stubs in the ashtray. He had been smoking too much recently. The flame at the end of his match flickered uncertainly in the flutter of his breathing and he shook it out, leaving the unlit cigar hanging in his mouth. He was putting off what he had already decided to do. He reached for the telephone directory and looked up the Hotel Regent in the Avenue Louise.
Initially Schumacher took the call, then his wife took over. ‘I thought that since you were flying to Edinburgh on Sunday anyway you wouldn’t mind,’ Bannerman said. ‘It’s just that there is no way she can travel alone.’ They were more than willing to take the child.
He spent an uncomfortable fifteen minutes on the phone to her, wondering if he was right to entrust the child to these eccentric Americans. Was Laura-Lee’s concern for the child genuine, or was it simply something else that she saw as a focus of conversation for her social evenings back home?
When, eventually, he got her off the line he called the airport and booked the child a seat on the Schumachers’ flight.
Now it only remained for him to make the arrangements with the clinic. And he would have to tell the child. For a long time he sat looking at the phone. That would be the easy way out. To phone the clinic, let Dr. Mascoulin explain to her. And yet, he knew, he owed it to her to tell her himself. This time he lit his cigar and sat back to wait for Platt.
It was almost half an hour before he heard footsteps on the stairs. He eased himself out of the settee and went through to the hall. Platt stood flushed and breathless on the landing. ‘I got a taxi straight over,’ he said and followed Bannerman through to the living room. ‘What’s happened? I thought after yesterday...’
‘You’re back in business, Platt,’ Bannerman interrupted and he sank into the settee.
Platt stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that the stuff you dug out on Lapointe’s Corniche company has turned up trumps — in the light of further evidence. And I’m prepared to do a swop. Documentary evidence. Your information for mine. A simple exchange, and then we’ve both got a story.’
‘But... but what have you got?’ Platt was suspicious. Why, suddenly, should Bannerman have such a change of heart? And Bannerman knew that he would have to tell him everything; his conversations with Lewis, the information unearthed in Switzerland, the deal he had been forced into.
Platt sat down on the edge of a chair and listened in astonished silence. He was barely able to conceal his excitement, mopping his fat flushed face repeatedly with the now familiar red handkerchief.
‘What about Jansen?’ he said when he had had time to think about it. ‘We’ll have to put it to him.’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘Tonight. I’ve already fixed it. But I’m seeing him alone.’
Platt did not fight that. Indeed, he was rather relieved. He would not have relished a confrontation with a man like Jansen. He knew his own limitations and, anyway, why not let Bannerman do the work? Hadn’t he dismissed Platt’s efforts so disparagingly only yesterday? Let him do it on his own and then make him eat dirt. Now he had Bannerman right where he wanted him. Platt could hardly believe his good luck. The euphoria of the day before returned and he beamed happily at Bannerman. ‘How about a drink to celebrate?’
Bannerman shook his head and looked at Platt with a faint disgust. ‘I agreed to share the story. I don’t feel obliged to drink with you.’
Platt’s smile never wavered. I’ll show you, he thought. ‘Can I borrow your car?’
Bannerman was surprised. ‘What on earth for?’
‘There’s things I need to do. I’ll have to go to the office and take copies of my notes from the Tribunal de Commerce and then I can bring them round to you tonight. After you’ve seen Jansen.’
Bannerman felt in his pocket for the keys and threw them across to Platt. ‘Don’t wreck it.’ At least it was an excuse for not going to the clinic.
Platt scurried off with all his happiness and his dark secrets, leaving Bannerman to face the phone call he knew he must now make. An image came to him of the child at the window, watching for him. She would be expecting him today, and he had not the courage to face her, to tell her of the plans other people were making for her future.
Across the city Kale lay fully clothed on his bed as he had done thoughout the hours of darkness. At first it had been the thump of the music from the night club next door that had kept him awake. It had gone on until after five. But by then he had been beyond sleep. He had left the shutters open and a red neon in the street outside had flashed on every few seconds to bathe the room in a warm pink fight. And now the smoke from his cigarette drifted lazily upwards in the late morning fight to thicken the haze of the many cigarettes he had smoked before it.
He had reached a decision. All these days of torment, of discovery and self-doubt, were behind him. Tomorrow he was leaving. Tomorrow he was walking away from it all. He didn’t care about the second half of his fee or his reputation. He didn’t care about anyone or anything. He was simply leaving. It seemed so easy now, now that he had finally admitted to himself that he could not kill the child in cold blood, that there was a potential in him, if not to love, then to not hate so fiercely. No longer was he haunted by the compulsion to follow her, to confront himself with the failure that was his own humanity.
Tomorrow morning a taxi to the airport, a flight that would take less than an hour, and he would be back in London. Safe.
II
You could not see the house from the road. It lay somewhere behind a high stone wall in secluded darkness. The avenue was broad and well-lit, sloping gently uphill and the taxi cruised past the mansions that wealthy men had built in this exclusive quarter of the city over two hundred years ago. Not for the nouveau riche, this. There was a tasteful, classical elegance about the houses, all locked away behind their high walls and tall cypresses. You only glimpsed their grandeur through the bars of sturdy gates like portcullises. No brash or ostentatious floodlighting, just a dark and brooding quiet that seemed somehow to say more about the real power and wealth of the men who owned them.