Bannerman folded Platt’s story and held it out to the Inspector.
‘No you keep it. It is better that we never found it. I shall wait until you have published it. You see, Monsieur, public pressure will have a greater influence on my superiors in reopening the case than an uncorroborated story found on the body of a dead journalist. And we would not want to warn them, would we?’
Chapter Twelve
I
Sunday. The change in the weather overnight was marked. It had rained steadily for some hours before dawn, and when the first light misted the rain-sodden air much of the snow had gone.
In the taxi that swept east through the city along the Boulevard Leopold III to the airport at Zavantem, Bannerman and the child sat in silence. He had barely been able to speak to her and he saw the hurt in her eyes. She had been expecting him yesterday, and now he had come to put her on a plane that would take her away from him. He had not even bothered to explain it to her except to say that a lady and gentleman from America would be with her on the plane and that he would come and see her when he was finished with his business in Brussels. She was wondering what it was she had done to offend him, and that ache inside her that was the seed of frustration was growing. She was afraid of it, afraid that it would take control and that he would not understand. She slipped her hand into his. It felt warm and big and it responded with a little squeeze. Please let me control it, she was saying inside. Please let me control it.
Bannerman stared at the buildings he had passed on his arrival ten days before and thought how ten days can change your life.
At the Hotel Regent the Schumachers had risen early and Mrs. Schumacher had fussed and gushed with excitement. ‘Which dress should I wear, Henry?’ She had held up two dresses, one cotton print with a colourful pattern, the other plain blue wool.
‘I don’t know, dear. You look good in them both.’
‘Oh, Henry, don’t be so infuriating.’
‘Perhaps the print dress,’ he said.
She looked at it and then the other. ‘I think I’ll wear the blue. More sombre for the occasion. Poor child. Oh, but isn’t this exciting, Henry?’
‘Yes, dear.’
‘No, no, don’t wear that tie, Henry, it clashes so with your suit. Yes that one. Now that looks so much better.’ She struggled breathlessly into the blue dress. ‘Zip me up, please, Henry. Do you think maybe we could stay on in Edinburgh an extra day?’
‘Well, I do have to be back in Washington for Saturday...’
‘Yes, yes. Of course, you’re right.’ Pause. ‘I wonder what she’s like. I certainly hope she won’t throw any tantrums on the plane. That, I could do without.’ Then she added, ‘Poor thing. We must do what we can, Henry.’
‘Yes, dear.’
‘Hurry now, or we’ll miss breakfast.’
But as the car sped them towards Zavantem she was curiously quiet. Henry Schumacher stared morosely from the windows, and his wife wondered why she felt so nervous. A touch of indigestion, perhaps. She had eaten breakfast much too quickly. Or it might be the change in the weather. The weather could often do that. Tomorrow the damp would bring the rheumatic stiffness back to her arms.
Kale felt a lightness in his heart. He liked the rain. It reminded him of London. He liked the feel of it on his face and the dampness in the air where people gathered for a drink with their coats and hats wet. For him this was the day of release, the day when the nightmare of the past week would be ended. All the questions about his future remained unanswered, but they could wait. The prison sentence of his past was drawing to a close. The only conscious reminder was the weight of the gun in the holster strapped across his back and over his left shoulder. He had decided not to leave it at the hotel, though he could not take it with him, for it would not pass the security checks at the airport. But it was at the airport, he had decided, that he would dispose of it, in one of the flush tanks in the toilets, after he had wiped it clean of prints.
His taxi drew up outside the terminal building and he stepped out into the bluster of wind and rain. Through sliding doors, head down as he passed the security policemen with their hip holsters and machine guns. Rows of airline desks, and people with cases milling back and forth, the mechanical voice announcing flights over the tannoy. Kale breathed a sigh of relief and glanced at his watch. He had half an hour before his flight would be called.
He checked in at the BA desk and left his case, and then looked for signs for a toilet. They led him up a flight of steps onto a concourse on a higher level. He saw the toilets at the other side, brushed past a group of travellers sharing a joke, and stopped with a feeling like death in him. The child was not looking his way, but he saw her head turning. Perhaps she sensed that he was there. Beside her stood the man he had been following earlier and an elderly couple. He could hear the woman’s voice. An American.
‘Well, Mr. Bannerman,’ Mrs. Schumacher was saying, ‘I don’t think you need have any fears about leaving the little girl in our custody for the flight. She is such a darling. I know we’re going to get on just great...’ Her voice trailed away sharply as the scream tore from the child’s lips.
Heads all around them turned. Bannerman looked at her, at the terror on her face, and followed her eyes. He saw a man in a shabby coat, a man in a drawing without a face.
Kale panicked. Suddenly the prison door had slammed shut and he was still on the inside. The screaming went on and on, and yet it must only have been a few seconds. Everything seemed to be happening so slowly. It wasn’t his will that drew the gun from its holster, but the instincts that had kept him alive and safe all these years. He was aware of the gun trembling in his hand as he raised it with the speed and efficiency of his training and practice. And for just one more second there was an enormous battle between will and instinct, before he squeezed the trigger and saw the child thrown backwards.
Now there was screaming all around him and he glanced to either side, still unable to move. The elderly American was advancing slowly towards him, his wife yelling at him hysterically. ‘Henry...!’
‘Okay, son, give me the gun,’ the American was saying. ‘You’ve done what you came to do. No need for anyone else to get hurt now. Just give me the gun.’ The voice was soothing, relaxing, its effect almost hypnotic. Kale felt his gun hand dropping.
Then there was a voice shouting at him above the noise of the others. He looked round and saw the dark uniform of a security policeman. He looked back helplessly at the American, and for a second Schumacher thought he saw the hint of a tear in the man’s eye.
Kale ran, bodies scurrying to either side, squealing like rats in a panic. Again he heard the voice of the security policeman and he seemed to be running into a vast emptiness. The guard levelled his pistol and fired one, two, three times. Kale’s head hit the tiles with a smack and his body slithered several metres across their smoothness, carried on by its own momentum, spraying blood in its wake. He came to rest, twisted and ugly, with a pool of blood spreading rapidly around him. His eyes were open and staring through the walls of glass across the runway. But he saw nothing.
II
The sound of voices echoed mechanically along the corridor, footsteps on a hard floor, unseen doors opening and closing. They seemed remote, disembodied. A trolley was wheeled from one ward to the next, the flash of a nurse’s white uniform, the laugh of an orderly.
Bannerman stood in the emptiness of the vast, glass-walled reception hall. The lights above reflected off the polished floor. He looked over at the bowed head of Henry Schumacher sitting on one of the red vinyl seats and thought of the man’s courage as he had stepped forward to face the gunman. He thought too, of the child’s blood on his own hands and he glanced at them now. They were pale and white, the blood all washed away.