Mexico Set

'Thanks,' I said. 'Sounds like you've already narrowed it down to eight million suspects.'

'I'll get someone to take you downstairs.'

They were holding Paul Biedermann in the specially built cell block that is one floor below the police accommodation. It is a brickbuilt area with a metal-reinforced ceiling. In 1973 – by which time airports had become a major attraction for hijackers, assassins, demonstrators and lunatics and criminals of every kind – the cell block was tripled in size and redesigned to provide twenty-five very small solitary cells, eight cells with accommodation for three prisoners each (current penology advising that four prisoners together fight, and two get too friendly), and four rooms for interrogating prisoners in secure conditions. Three cells for women prisoners were also built at that time.

Paul Biedermann was not in a cell of any sort. They were holding him in one of the interrogation rooms. Like most such rooms it had a small observation chamber large enough for two or three people. The door to that was unlocked and I stepped inside it and watched Paul Biedermann through the mirrored glass panel. There was all the usual recording equipment here but no sign of its being recently used.

The interrogation room in which Biedermann was being held had no bed; just a table and two chairs. Nothing to be broken, bent or used as a weapon. The door was not a cell door; there was no iron grill or bolts, and it was secured only by a heavy-duty mortise lock. After I'd had a good look at him I opened the locked door and went inside.

'Bernd. Am I glad to see you.' He laughed. The scars down the side of his face puckered, and his smile was so broad that his twisted face looked almost demented. 'Jesus. I was hoping it would be you. They said that someone was coming from Berlin. I can explain everything, Bernd. It's all a crazy mistake.' Even under stress he still had that low-pitched hoarse voice and the strong American accent.

'Easy does it, Paul,' I said. I looked around the white-tiled room but I couldn't see any obvious signs of hidden microphones. If the observation chamber was not in use they were probably not recording us. Finally I decided not to worry too much about it.

'I did everything you told me to do, Bernd. Everything.' He was wearing expensive linen pants and open-neck brown shirt with a scarf tied at the neck. There was a soft brown cashmere jacket thrown carelessly on to one of the chairs. 'Have you got a cigarette? They even took away my cigarettes. How do you like that.'

I offered him the pack of Atika cigarettes. They were his own cigarettes from the things on Nicol's desk. He took one and I put the pack on the table. There was a tacit understanding that he'd get them if he was good. I lit his cigarette and he inhaled greedily. 'Were you carrying all that secret junk I saw upstairs?'

'No,' he said.

'You weren't carrying it? You never saw it before?'

'Yes. That is to say, yes and no. I was carrying it. But I don't know… submarines.' He laughed briefly. 'What do I know about submarines?'

'Sit down. Relax for a moment. Then tell me exactly how you got the papers,' I said.

He exhaled smoke, and waved it away with his hand as if trying to dispel the smoke in case a guard came and took the cigarette away from him. 'I always travel light. I was flying to Rome. I have a holiday place on Giglio – that's an island…'

'I know where Giglio is,' I said. Tell me about the papers.'

'I travel light because a car always collects me at the airport and the only clothes I'll need will be those that I keep there.'

'What a life you have, Paul. Is that what they call la dolce vita down there in Giglio.'

He gave me a fleeting smile that was no more than a grimace. 'So I just carry a little shoulder-bag that is well under regulation size for cabin baggage.'

'Just clothes inside it?'

'Hardly anything inside it; shaving stuff and a change of linen in case I get delayed somewhere.'

'So what about the brown leather case?'

'I paid off the taxi outside the arrivals hall and went in through the main entrance, and before I got anywhere near the Alitalia desk the taxi driver came running after me. He gave me the brown case and said I'd forgotten it. I said it wasn't mine but he was already saying that he was illegally parked and he pushed it to me and disappeared – it was very crowded – and so I thought I'd better take it to the police.'

'You thought it was a genuine mistake? What did the cab driver say when he gave it to you?'

'He said, I'm the cab driver. Here's the bag you left behind.'

'Give it a minute's thought, Paul. I'd really like to get it right.'

'That's what he said. He said, I'm the cab driver. Here's the bag you left behind.' Biedermann waited, looking at my face. 'What's the matter with that?'

'It could be all right, I suppose. But if I was a cab driver and someone had just paid me off, I wouldn't feel the need to say who I was, I'd be egoistical enough to think he'd know who I was. And neither would I be inclined to tell him what the bag was. I'd expect my passenger to recognize it immediately. I'd expect him to fall over with excited appreciation. And I'd hang around long enough for him to manifest that appreciation in the time-honoured way. Right, Paul?'

'Yeah… It seemed all right at the time. But I was flustered.'

'Are you quite sure that the man who gave you the case was the man you paid off in the cab?'

Paul Biedermann's face froze. Then he inhaled again and thought about it. 'Jesus. You're right, Bernd. The cab driver was wearing a leather jacket the same colour as one I've got, and a dark-blue shin. I noticed his sleeve while he was driving.'

'And the one who gave you the case?'

'He was in shirt-sleeves. I thought my driver had taken his jacket off. But the second man's shirt was white. Jesus, Bernd, you're a genius. Some bastard planted that bag on me. I was going to find the police office when they arrested me.'

'You were near the Alitalia desk,' I said. 'Don't get careless, Paul. Who would have known you would be at the Alitalia desk?'

'Can you get me out of here?' he said. His voice had that soft, whispery quality that I'd heard from other desperate men.

'I'll try,' I promised. 'Who'd know you'd be at the Alitalia desk?'

'Only the girl in the hotel reception. She phoned them for me. Was it your people who forced the case on me? Is it a way of getting me to work for you?'

'Don't be stupid, Paul.'

'Why would the Russians do it? I mean they could have asked me to take the bloody case and I would have taken it. I've taken other things for them, I told you that.' He stubbed out his cigarette. He had that American habit of stubbing them out half smoked.

'Yes,' I said, although he hadn't told me about carrying packages for them. There was a long silence. Biedermann fidgeted.

'Why did they do that?' said Biedermann. 'Why? Tell me why.'

'I don't know,' I said. 'I wish I did know.' Nervously he reached for another cigarette and I lit it for him. 'I'll go and talk to the chief inspector again. London have asked for you. He's waiting to hear if Paris will release you into my custody.'

'I hope to God they do. Trying to sort this out in the French courts will take years.'

I unlocked the door with the key Nicol had given me. Biedermann, as if anxious to do me some extra service, for which I might pay in goodwill, said, 'Watch out for that guy Moskvin. He's an evil old bastard. The other one is almost human at times, but Moskvin is a fink. He's really a fink.'

'I'll do what I can for you, Paul,' I promised.

I went out and locked the door. I went back along the corridor to the stairs to speak again with Nicol. I was at the top of the stairs when I almost bumped into a woman in a blue overall coat. She was quite young, about twenty-five, and carrying a tiny plastic tray upon which there was a coffee with froth on it and a dried-up sandwich. 'With the compliments of Chief Inspector Nicol,' the woman said in a shrill working-class accent. 'It's for the man being held in custody. The inspector said you had the key.'