The knock was soft. She ignored it. The next time was louder and when she still didn’t respond he said: ‘Claudine, don’t say anything. Just let me in.’
‘I don’t-’ she started but he repeated: ‘Don’t say anything.’
The urgency wasn’t sexual, she realized at once. She didn’t know what it was – didn’t know what was happening – but she was abruptly sure she’d misunderstood everything so far. She unbolted the door and tentatively opened it.
Blake was standing anxiously on the threshold. Loudly – too loudly – he said as he hurried in: ‘I’m sorry. I had to put him to bed: he’s completely gone,’ and made exaggerated rolling motions with his hands to indicate that she should respond. He went straight past her, to the bottom of the bed, orientating himself to the room.
Bewildered but obeying, Claudine said: ‘Will he be all right?’
‘He’ll probably feel like shit in the morning.’ Blake revolved both hands again, telling her to keep talking, nodding as well.
Claudine nodded back, comprehending at last. An absurd charade unfolded in which Claudine remained by the door, discussing the evening – apologizing even for not having anything to drink – while Blake swept the room, keeping up the empty conversation with her as he did so. She’d never seen it done before and occasionally faltered in what she was saying, distracted by his obvious expertise. He came back to where she remained standing to unscrew the light switch just inside the door. From there he moved on to every light fitting and socket and every electrical plug and connection, using a handkerchief pad to remove hot bulbs.
The bedside telephone was clean but there was a listening device in the extension phone on a table, in front of the curtained window. It was so minute, little more than a pinhead fitting snugly into one of the tiny diaphragm holes, that she had difficulty seeing it when he pointed it out to her and wouldn’t have suspected it even if she’d unscrewed the instrument herself.
Blake reassembled the telephone without removing the bug, moving some way away before saying: ‘As you haven’t got any booze here I guess we’ll have to go back to the bar.’
‘OK,’ Claudine accepted at once.
At that moment the telephone rang.
‘I left messages,’ said Hugo Rosetti accusingly.
‘It was too late to return them when I got back.’
‘What about today? Tonight?’
‘There are a lot of problems we didn’t expect.’ Go away! she thought, hating herself for thinking it.
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t want to talk about them on the telephone.’ She was being listened to. She didn’t know by whom or why but everything they were saying – Hugo as well as herself – was being overheard. And Blake was in the room, as well, although he’d started searching again, disappearing into the bathroom.
‘What’s so mysterious?’
‘It’s far more difficult than we thought it was going to be: problems with the Americans.’
‘I thought you allowed for that.’
‘Not enough.’
‘What are you going to do about it?’
Blake appeared at the bathroom door, pointing with a jabbing finger at what she guessed to be the switch just inside the door.
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘The Americans send a negotiator?’
‘He’s the problem.’
Blake sat down on a chair by the door, stretching his legs in front of him.
‘Can you handle it?’
‘I’m going to have to.’
‘I’m missing you,’ said Rosetti.
‘I’m missing you, too,’ she made herself say, face burning. There was no reason for her to be embarrassed, not in front of Blake. This was awfuclass="underline" terrible.
‘It hardly sounds like it.’
‘I’ve got to go.’
‘It’s eleven o’clock at night!’
‘Something’s come up.’
From his chair Blake made warding-off gestures.
‘What?’
‘Something I’ve got to talk about with someone.’
‘Blake?’
Oh God! ‘Yes.’
‘Is he a problem?’
‘Of course not! That’s a silly question.’ Why had she said that!
‘Sorry!’ He stretched the word, to show he was offended.
‘You’re misunderstanding.’
‘It’s difficult not to.’
‘I said I didn’t want to talk on the telephone!’
‘I love you,’ said Rosetti.
‘I’ll call you back tomorrow. Say around seven.’
‘I said I loved you.’
‘I’ll explain later.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing! I really do have to go.’
‘I thought I’d come down this weekend.’
‘Aren’t you going to Rome?’
‘Would it be inconvenient for me to come down? Apart from anything that might come up with the case, I mean.’
‘Of course not. I’d like you to come down. Let’s talk about it tomorrow. Goodnight.’ Claudine hurriedly replaced the receiver but remained standing by it.
Blake grinned and said: ‘How about that drink?’
Claudine’s hands were shaking, from anger not fear, rippling the brandy in her glass, which she held in both hands. She’d sat where he directed, at a table some way from the bar and other late night drinkers. She at once recalled the bizarre conversation about carrying a gun when he identified the night he’d detected the surveillance at La Maison du Cygne and said: ‘You thought it was on you!’
He nodded. ‘Had it been we probably wouldn’t have got back across the square, either of us. It was the fact that we did that made me doubt I was the target in the first place, even before I found my room was clean.’
He’d kept himself curiously apart from her, she remembered. ‘Norris?’
‘Obviously. It’s not the people who’d like to find me and it’ll hardly be the people holding Mary, will it? Norris will never admit responsibility, though. No one will.’
‘The paranoid bastard!’ she said, fresh anger surging through her. ‘How long’s it been there?’
He shrugged. ‘Sometime during that day, I expect. That was when you positively faced him down.’
Claudine forced herself to be calm, frowning. ‘I haven’t used the phone much: certainly haven’t talked about anything the Americans don’t know about.’
‘They’re open transmitters, in both the telephone and the bathroom light switch.’
‘You mean they’re live all the time: relaying everything that happens, not just the telephone calls?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t want to stay in that room any more.’
He smiled again, trying to relax her. ‘There’s mine but I’m not going to risk the rebuff. You know you’re being listened to now. Use it to our benefit.’
‘You think Harding knows?’
‘I’m not sure. He came a long way towards us with his concern about Norris. I think if he had, he might have said something.’
‘It’s so fucking stupid! So pointless!’
‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know, but I suppose it makes sense to pretend we’re unaware.’ She looked directly at him. ‘There were a lot of times tonight when you could have told me what you thought there was in my room. Why all the drama?’
‘I might have been wrong. Then I would have looked foolish.’
‘You still made it into a drama. And you must have been sure.’
He grinned. ‘I wanted to see if you’d let me in.’
‘Bastard!’
‘But not a paranoid one.’
Claudine put her glass down, relieved her hands had stopped shaking. ‘Are there really people who’d like to kill you?’
‘Not until they’d hurt me as much as they could.’
August Dehane’s wife was completely unaware of his membership of Felicite Galan’s group, which always made it difficult speaking to the man at home. The conversation was one-sided and led by Jean Smet. The lawyer impatiently dictated the message upon which Felicite insisted and said he did not, of course, expect it to be convenient for the telephone executive to meet the rest of them until the following evening. Dehane’s hesitation was obvious when Smet gave his address off the rue de Flandres as the meeting place.