Fézard stood tensely, waiting for a response to the buzzer. But no one came through the doorway and no sound came from within. Covered by his officers, who had now all drawn their weapons, Fézard took three slow steps to the doorway. He stared into the silence, and gradually the expression on his face changed, from alert to puzzled.
Then, jerking his head sideways to his officers, he said quietly, ‘Follow me,’ and walked through the doorway. As Martin followed behind, he saw in front of him a large open-plan office. Roughly the size of the briefing room at the Préfecture, it held about a dozen desks, each equipped with a black leather swivel chair and a glowing television-sized computer monitor. Soft beige carpet ran wall to wall, and the ceiling was lined with sound-deadening panels in which long lines of lights were recessed. The effect was like the hi-tech trading floor of an investment bank, but instead of shouted phone calls and frantic activity, the room was silent and apparently deserted.
‘Where is everyone?’ Isobel whispered to Seurat. ‘Is it an Asian holiday or something?’
Overhearing her, Fézard said, ‘No one’s gone anywhere.’ He sounded puzzled. ‘They all came in this morning and we haven’t seen any of them going out. We’ve been watching the place all day. He started suddenly. ‘Wait a minute!’ he said, and pointed to the far corner of the room. A young man dressed in a black turtleneck sweater and black trousers sat slumped forward on his desk, his head pillowed on his crossed arms. He looked as if he was taking a catnap, but he must be very sound asleep not to have been woken by the commotion of their arrival. On the screen in front of him a satellite image showed an area Seurat recognised as the Gulf – on one side the sandy shores of the UAE with Oman beneath, on the other Iran north of the Strait of Hormuz.
Fézard walked over to the desk and shook the young man’s shoulder. ‘Monsieur?’ he said gently. There was no movement. ‘Monsieur,’ he said again, shaking the man more sharply. This time the head rolled slightly on the arms but the man did not sit up.
Fézard turned to the others who were watching him and shook his head; there was no point in trying to wake the man – he wasn’t asleep, he was no longer breathing. Martin took in the implications and suddenly felt sick. What did this mean for Liz?
At this end of the room there was a little archway, leading to a short corridor with three doors opening off it along one side. Fézard motioned to two of his men to check the rooms. The first contained toilets with no one inside. The second door was kicked open and the two men went in. There was a pause, then one came out and gestured for Fézard. Isobel and Martin followed.
This was a small meeting room. Round a long table sat six young Korean men, all dressed in black turtleneck sweaters and black trousers. They too seemed to be asleep – some sat upright in their chairs, some were slumped on the table. Most had mild expressions on their faces, as if they were dreaming. On the table in front of them were small teacups, all empty or nearly empty. In the middle of the table sat a large Chinese teapot. There were four empty chairs and, stepping into the room, Martin saw two more bodies sprawled on the carpet at the far end.
He counted the teacups around the table – there were eleven. Eight bodies here, one in the open-plan office; that left two unaccounted for. And where was Liz?
‘Inspector!’ one of Fézard’s men said from the door. ‘I think you’ll want to see this.’
Dreading what they might find, Martin and Isobel followed Fézard down the corridor. The third and final door led to a small kitchen, fitted with a wall cupboard containing glasses and plates, a counter top with a microwave, a fridge, and a sink. The tap on the sink was running in a desultory stream.
On the linoleum floor a man was lying flat on his back. His eyes were closed and he wasn’t moving. He also looked to be Korean, but he wasn’t wearing the office uniform of black turtleneck and trousers – he was dressed in a suit and a shiny silk tie. It became obvious that he wasn’t breathing either.
Crouching down, Martin carefully reached into the inner pocket of the dead man’s jacket and drew out a wallet and a passport. The wallet contained 400 Euros and several credit cards. The passport was French and named the holder as Dong Shin-soo Wong, a French citizen. The photograph was of the same man who lay on the floor.
Fézard was on the phone, summoning a forensics team, when another of his men appeared in the doorway. ‘Sir, we’ve searched everywhere now. There’s no one else in these offices. All we’ve found is a safe, in a cupboard off the corridor. It’s locked.’
‘All right. Let’s get it open; maybe that will tell us who these people really are.’
It took forty minutes, by which time the silent mortuary was humming with activity. It seemed plain that someone else must have been here and administered the poison. Unless it was a suicide pact, which was possible but seemed unlikely. But how did the killers get in and out without being noticed by the surveillance team? Fézard had sent one of his officers to collect the surveillance logs and photographs, and while the forensics team, pathologist and photographers all went about their business, Fézard himself converted one end of the office into an interview room.
The owner of the building, summoned from his office in the town, said that as far as he knew, Technomatics Inc. was a South Korean computer consultancy. They had had good references and always paid their rent on time by direct debit on an account at a bank in Marseilles. There had been no problem with their tenancy.
The younger Monsieur Beauchêne, the wine merchant from the adjoining office, said he knew very little about his neighbours. He occasionally met one or two of them going in or out. He had the impression that they started work earlier than he and his father did and that they did not leave the building at lunchtime. He did know that they convened in the afternoon in their boardroom – ‘I called on them one afternoon when my water supply had stopped working, to see if they had the same problem. They hadn’t – it was something to do with our pipes. I found them all sitting around the table like the Apostles, sipping tea from tiny cups.’
The safe, opened at last, was empty except for two large envelopes. One contained 40,000 Swiss francs and $30,000 in hundred-dollar bills. The other held a number of passports. Martin examined them, sorting them into two piles. ‘Look at this,’ he said. ‘There seem to be two passports for each person. One is South Korean all right but the other looks to me as though it’s North Korean. The photos in them are identical and the names seem to match, but I guess one is real and the other’s a fake. It doesn’t take much imagination to work out which is which. This isn’t a South Korean computer consultancy at all, it’s something to do with North Korea.’
‘Bizarre,’ said Fézard. ‘They claimed their head office was in Seoul.’
‘More likely to be Pyongyang.’
‘But who murdered them?’ asked Isobel. ‘I realise they must have been poisoned, and probably by the tea they drank. But how could anyone do it without being spotted?’
‘Easily,’ said Martin. ‘Come have a look.’ He led the way down the hall to the conference room. From the doorway he pointed at the teacups on the table. ‘There are eleven cups.’
‘Yes,’ said Isobel, and looked at him a little curiously.
‘But only ten bodies.’
‘You think we’re missing a corpse then?’
‘No.’ He pointed at the table. ‘One of those cups is full. I think our killer was joining these unfortunate gentlemen for tea. Somehow he managed to put poison in the tea, and didn’t drink any himself.’