The taxi drew up at the gates of the Jansen place and Bannerman climbed out. It was a cold night and the sky was hard and clear.
‘Wait,’ Bannerman told the driver. He pressed a button set in the carved stone gatepost and leaned forward to the speaker grill. ‘Bannerman.’
Almost immediately there was a soft hum in the air and the gates moved noiselessly inwards. Bannerman climbed back in the taxi and they drove through the gates along a smooth paved drive between an avenue of thick-trunked trees whose branches intertwined above them so that in the headlights of the car it seemed as though they were moving through a tunnel. You could see nothing in the blackness on either side and little more than the faint silver glow of filtered moonlight beyond the line of the headlamps.
Then, quite unexpectedly, they came out into a flood of naked moonlight that lay across the flat snow-covered lawn. The road divided it into two squares in front of a tall three-storey house whose arched windows grew in number on each floor. Not one of them showed a light. This, Bannerman thought, was the end of the road. And he felt the excitement rising in him. A tiny stab of fear.
The driveway opened into a gravel square that ran the length of the house and the driver pulled up his car at the foot of the short flight of steps that narrowed towards a big, arched doorway. Again Bannerman told the driver to wait and the man switched off his engine and settled back in his seat with a book in front of him.
As Bannerman climbed the steps the door swung open and a soft yellow light split the darkness. A bald, elderly man with a dark, neatly pressed suit and starched white collar beckoned him into a huge circular hall, panelled in polished oak. His shoes clicked on the mosaic tiling and he found himself facing a broad marble staircase that swept upwards in a curve to the first floor whose balcony repeated the circle before more stairs continued the spiral, rising to the next floor and the next. Bannerman looked up to the top of the house to a dome of stained glass that would be quite magnificent in sunlight. Dark, anonymous portraits stared down at him from the walls. The man at his side coughed discreetly. ‘Your coat.’ Bannerman slipped it off and the butler draped it carefully over his arm. ‘Please follow me.’
The sound of their footsteps on the marble drifted away into the echoing vastness. The first-floor balcony was carpeted in a rich, dark blue. They walked round about half its circumference before the butler stopped and opened one of the countless doors leading off. Bannerman thought, when a man has all this, why does he need to sell arms to fascists?
He walked into a long, high-ceilinged room with several windows hung with claret velvet curtains opening out to the rear of the house. Set in the door wall was a huge open marble fireplace. There was no fire in the hearth, though the room was not cold. A crystal chandelier threw its almost perfect mirror reflection onto the surface of an oblong dining table of polished mahogany. There was a place set at either end and at the far end a tall man in a claret smoking jacket stood waiting. The door closed behind Bannerman and the man extended his arms towards the other place. ‘Have a seat, Mr Bannerman. I take it you have not eaten.’
‘No.’ Bannerman moved towards the nearer end of the table and both men sat down to face each other along its length. Jansen was not as Bannerman had imagined him. He seemed older than he had expected. He had kept his hair, but it was streaked with grey, and his face was drawn and lined, cheekbones high and angular. Large eyes, brown and watery. A long, straight nose that was almost aristocratic. A fine wide mouth. But the hard line of the jaw was weakened by a loosening of the flesh of his neck and skin that had the texture of crepe. He had a high noble forehead and if he had lived a hundred years earlier he would almost certainly have worn a monocle. His hands, too, like his face, were thin and bony and angular, and the shiny, paper-thin skin was splattered with the brown spots of age. And yet he was not an old man. A man in his late forties. And that showed in the way he held himself. His eyes stared steadily back at Bannerman. They had a poise and distance about them, held a disconcerting sense of vision. He smiled without warmth and his voice was clear, without accent. ‘My father built this house,’ he said. ‘And my mother still lives here. You will have something to drink before we eat?’
‘Whisky.’
Jansen lifted a small bell from the table and rang it. A door opened from an adjoining room and a young man, Latin and well-groomed, entered at the far end. Without turning Jansen spoke briefly in Flemish. The young man disappeared and returned with a decanter of whisky and two glasses. He poured the drinks at each place and left. Jansen raised his glass. ‘Your very good health, Mr. Bannerman.’ They drank in silence before Jansen said, ‘Shall we talk before we eat?’
‘I’d prefer it. Do you mind if I smoke?’
‘By all means.’ Bannerman lit a cigar and Jansen rang for an ashtray. The young man placed it on the table beside the reporter and Bannerman waited until he was gone. Then he looked at Jansen and wondered if the man was always as distant, untouchable. Had he been this way when he ordered the deaths of Gryffe and Slater?
‘You knew a man called Robert Gryffe.’
‘A question or a statement?’
‘Both, but it is a question only out of politeness.’
Jansen smiled again, with the same cold smile. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I knew him. Not well, but I met him on a number of occasions.’
‘Timothy Slater?’
‘No. I did not even know he existed until I read about him in the newspapers.’ He shook his head. ‘I know what you are thinking, Mr. Bannerman. But you are wrong. The assumption from what you and I both know is clear. That Mr. Slater came into possession of certain knowledge with which he was blackmailing Robert Gryffe. But that is a conclusion we have both come to with hindsight. If it were the case, then I knew nothing about it. And I certainly had nothing to do with their deaths. Even if I had known...’ He paused to smile again. ‘You see, I can weather the storm of a scandal over the sale of arms to South Africa...’
‘You don’t deny it then?’ Bannerman had been listening to this with a growing uneasiness.
‘Why should I? You are obviously in possession of the facts. Naturally I would prefer to avoid such a scandal, but if necessary I will face it. It will hurt me only a little. Heads will roll, but not mine. The burden of guilt will fall upon others, though it is I who shall accept the ultimate responsibility for the indiscretion of certain of my employees. In six months it will be forgotten. The Government will be embarrassed, but then they need me more than I need them. As I have said, it is a storm I can weather. Murder, however, is something else. One would not entertain murder lightly, and I would not entertain it at all. Not, you understand, from any moral standpoint, but simply because when you compute the risks involved they are far too great.’
Bannerman stared throughtfully at the smoke rising gently from his cigar. It was not what he had expected. And yet there was a ring of truth about it. Wasn’t it so often the case that men like Jansen never took the fall? They all had the ‘right’ things on their side; money, power, influence, such effective buffers against retribution. Would he really need to resort to murder? But still, there were too many questions left unanswered. He looked up with sudden resolution. ‘You sent someone to recover files of cuttings from Slater’s office.’
Jansen nodded slowly. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But at that point it seemed as though our secret might yet remain intact. Lapointe attended to the details. Perhaps it was a mistake.’
‘And the house in Flanders?’
‘Ah, yes, it was burned down, I believe. I am told there will be problems over the insurance.’