‘That Jansen got him to arrange to have me killed last night.’
‘And what else?’
‘Nothing.’
The Inspector moved across the room and helped Lapointe to his feet. He turned back to Bannerman. ‘And do you still believe that Jansen was responsible for what happened at the Rue de Pavie?’
There was a long silence. Then, ‘No.’
Du Maurier nodded. ‘It is time we talked.’
III
Bannerman sat alone in du Maurier’s office. It was almost exactly a week since he had last sat here, on the same hard seat in front of the same cluttered desk. The same broken umbrella leaned against the wall beside the same pair of mud-spattered gumboots. In this little world, at least, nothing had changed.
Outside it had grown dark. The rain battered against the window. Bannerman was drained. His whole being was numb. The anglepoise lamp spread its small circle of light in the darkness so that everything on the desk seemed hard and so finely focused that it hurt his eyes to look at it; as it hurt inside to think of the child.
The door opened and du Maurier came in, the habitual cigarette hanging from his wet lips. He rounded the desk and sat, flicking his ash carelessly at the ashtray and missing it. He let the cigarette burn in one hand while pulling with the other at the whiskers that grew from his nostrils. He regarded Bannerman for some moments. Then finally he said, ‘They finished operating two hours ago.’ Life flickered briefly in Bannerman’s eyes.
‘And?’
‘The next twelve hours or so will tell. It is the critical period. The surgeon gives her a fifty-fifty chance.’ Bannerman subsided into his gloom.
‘First, Monsieur,’ du Maurier went on, ‘we should deal with Lapointe. He has made a very full statement which has implicated both himself and René Jansen in the murder of Monsieur Platt. We should have the actual gunman in custody before the day is out.’ He lit another cigarette from the end of his old one and drew deeply. ‘I think we can safely rule out either man from involvement in the murders of Monsieur Gryffe and Monsieur Slater, and, I am quite certain, the man hired for the act was the one shot dead at Zavantem this morning. The child’s drawing was uncannily accurate. Unfortunately, one of the few things we do not know is who hired him and why. But I shall return to that.
‘From what I have learned from Lapointe I think it can be safely assumed that Monsieur Slater was indeed blackmailing Monsieur Gryffe.’
Bannerman leaned forward. ‘How?’
Du Maurier smiled wanly. ‘Lapointe has a daughter. She is divorced and until recently lived with her father before moving into a flat of her own. They were quite close, father and daughter. She knew about most of his activities. According to Lapointe there were few secrets between them. Then... they had a row, she moved out. Her name is Marie-Ange. And she has retained her married name, Piard.’
Bannerman shook his head. He had known it, even before the policeman said it. ‘Slater’s girlfriend,’ he said, heavy with disappointment ‘Why in God’s name did I not think of her before?’
Du Maurier smiled again. ‘It is something we both overlooked, Monsieur.’
‘So she provided the dirt, Slater made it stick, and they shared the spoils. A very cosy little arrangement.’
‘Unfortunately,’ the Inspector sighed, ‘I do not think it is something we will ever prove.’
Bannerman felt the anger welling up inside him. ‘God damn the bitch! If she hadn’t...’ But he stopped. Life was too full of ‘ifs’. And yet it rankled with him that she might be the only one untouched by it all.
‘I know,’ du Maurier said. ‘In my business there are always the ones that get away. In yours too, no doubt.’
‘Yes, in mine too.’
Du Maurier clasped his hands on the desk in front of him, his mouth set in a grim, hard line. Both men knew there were many things they could never hope to know, to understand. The power and influence of old Madame Jansen. She had come as a surprise to them both. How much did she really know? And there was her son, and Lapointe, and their arrangement with Gryffe. How had it come about? Why had Gryffe so risked an outstanding career in politics? So many things that you could never hope to understand. Why men do the things they do. You can only ever hope to scratch the surface. And even then...
‘It won’t go away,’ du Maurier said at length.
Bannerman looked at him curiously. ‘What?’
‘The question of who had Messieurs Gryffe and Slater murdered if it wasn’t Jansen.’
‘No, it won’t.’ An ugly little thought had been burrowing into his consciousness since the episode in Flanders and now it returned. He remembered his conversation with the Foreign Minister the night before he left, the PR man’s telephone call in the lobby of the restaurant, the sandy-haired man at the Gare du Midi, the professional’s rifle with the laser sight.
He was hardly surprised when du Maurier said, ‘The man who shot at you in Flanders was an SIS field man. British Secret Intelligence Service. Our own people have him on their files.’ And yet he could not bring himself to believe the implications.
Bannerman dropped his head into his hands and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. Then he looked up. ‘I find it difficult to accept what you are saying,’ he said. ‘I know that in one sense it seems logical. I agree that the British Government stood to lose much more than Jansen and Lapointe. With a General Election at the end of the month they would have been annihilated if it had leaked out that their understudy to the Foreign Minister was selling arms to South Africa and Rhodesia. But there is nothing to suggest that they ever knew. And even if they had, I just can’t accept that they would have had him murdered. I know that Governments can do some pretty horrendous things with their secret services, but to assassinate a Junior Cabinet Minister, and a journalist... There would have been no need. All they would have needed to do would be remove him from office, put pressure on him to resign his seat, even from the Party itself. Why kill him?’
Du Maurier looked at him seriously. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I wonder if perhaps I am too old and too cynical. Your reasoning is sound, but I am not convinced. Maybe if it was my own Government I would see it your way, give them the benefit of the doubt. But was it not my own Government that closed this case when it was clear that there had been two murders? Now why should they do that? Diplomatic relations? Pressure from your Government in London? Your people moved too quickly not to have known.’ He paused to consider his next words. ‘For me the only real doubt arises from the fact that they did not kill you in Flanders. That they never meant to. And then, of course, there is the man killed at the airport. There appears to be no connection.’
‘Who was he?’
‘An Englishman. William Francis Kale. That, of course, was not the name on his passport. We put out a finger-print check through Interpol who tracked him down through his British Army record when he served three years’ conscription in the early nineteen sixties. He did nine months for assaulting an Officer. He had no police record, but he was known to the police in England. Suspected of a number of killings. But nothing ever proved.’
Bannerman felt crushed. He thought about what du Maurier had said. There were so many conflicting bits and pieces, of fact and assumption. All that was clear was that someone had hired a man called Kale to kill Gryffe and Slater and make it look like a quarrel. When it had become apparent that the child had seen it, she had become the next target. But if you eliminated Jansen and Lapointe, and if you eliminated the Government in London, who else had a motive? And then, why did the man, Kale, not kill Tania at the clinic when he had the chance? Or at some other time? Why choose a busy airport where he had little or no chance of getting away with it? ‘Is there anything among his things, Kale’s things...?’