There were groans but nothing more. Joe the barman came back to Elder.
“Now then, you were saying...?”
“I’m looking for my daughter. She’s run off and I think maybe she... she might have come down this way.”
“Are you Mr. Elder?”
Elder’s knees almost collapsed under him. “What? How... yes, yes, I’m Dominic Elder.”
The barman nodded and moved back to the bottles. On a shelf sat a letter, which he lifted and handed over the bar. Elder’s hand didn’t quite tremble as he accepted it.
“She left it for you.”
On the white envelope was printed MR. DOMINIC ELDER. Elder knew the score. He knew he shouldn’t touch it. It should go straight into a polyethylene bag for forensic analysis, for checks on fibers, saliva used to stick the envelope down... the arcana of the forensic arts. But then, Elder was a retired member of the security services. He might forget procedures, mightn’t he? He tore open the envelope. Inside was a single folded sheet of lined writing paper on which was scribbled a handwritten message. He looked around him. Joe the barman had gone off to serve yet another thirsty client. Then he read.
“Don’t bother. When it’s time, I’ll find you. W.”
He read it again... and again... and again.
“Don’t bother. When it’s time, I’ll find you. W.”
The “I’ll” and the “you” had been double-underlined. I’ll find you. Yes, but only when it was time. There was something else to be done first. The Khan assassination? Or something on a grander scale? He managed a wry smile. Oh, she was clever. She’d known Elder might well become involved... she’d even guessed that he might track her as far as Cliftonville. So she’d gone into an aptly named pub and left a note for him. She couldn’t know it would reach him of course. But if it did... Yes, it seemed her style all right. But she’d slipped up, too. The note was handwritten. It wasn’t much, but it was something. He looked about for the telephone, and found that there was a booth next to the toilets. He slipped the letter back into its envelope, put the envelope in his pocket, and made for the booth.
Doyle and Greenleaf weren’t yet back at the hotel, so he tried the police station. No, the two gentlemen had called in, but there’d been no one available to help them. They’d arranged a meeting with Inspector Block in a pub somewhere... probably the Faithful Collie. Yes, he had the telephone number.
So he tried the Faithful Collie. Calling to a pub from a pub: talk about a noisy line! I’ll find you... Eventually he got the barman in the Faithful Collie to understand. There was a yell, another yell, and finally Greenleaf answered.
“Is that you, Mr. Elder?”
“She’s left a message for me in a pub.”
“What? I didn’t make that out.”
“Witch has left me a message.”
A burly biker roamed past on his way to the toilets. Another came out. They exchanged hand slaps.
“How do you know?” Greenleaf was asking.
“Because a barman just handed it to me.”
“What does it say?”
“It says I’m not to look for her, she’ll find me when she wants.”
“We’ve got to get it down to a lab...” The fact suddenly struck Greenleaf. “Oh,” he said, “you’ve opened it.”
“Obviously.”
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“I realize...”
“Still, not much we can do now. Which pub?”
“The Cat over the Broomstick.”
“You’re kidding. You think she’s guessed about Operation Broomstick?”
“I don’t know. She knows we call her Witch.”
“We’ll be right over.”
“Is Doyle sober?”
“He will be. Give us... I don’t know, depends how far we are from you.”
“Is Inspector Block still with you?”
“Yes, I’ll bring him along, too.”
“Fine. But be warned, this is a Hell’s Angels’ watering hole.”
“Funny pubs you choose, Mr. Elder. Is it the leather you like or what?”
Elder smiled but said nothing. He put down the receiver and went back to the bar, where his whiskey was still waiting. Joe the barman was waiting, too.
“Can you tell me anything about her?” Elder asked.
Joe shrugged. “Came in about a week ago. Said she was on the move, keeping away from an older man.”
“How did she look?”
“Fine. Tired maybe. And she had a sprained wrist. That’s why she got me to write it.” He looked along the bar to his right. “Coming, Tony.” He went off to serve the customer. But Elder followed him.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean she’d sprained her wrist. She had a bandage on it. So she couldn’t write. She thought for some reason you’d come looking for her in here. I told her we didn’t usually cater to... older men. Well, you can see that for yourself. But she seemed to know... well, you’re here, so it looks like she was right.”
“She didn’t write the note, then?”
Joe shook his head. “One pound thirty-five please, Tony. No, like I say, I had to write it for her. She told me what to put. Looks like she doesn’t want to be found, Mr. Elder, not yet at any rate.”
“Yes,” he said, “looks like.”
A sprained wrist... couldn’t write. She was cunning all right, and at the same time she was playing with him. If he found the note, she must know he would talk to the barman. And if he talked to the barman, he would find out the handwriting wasn’t hers. If she’d really wanted to lead him a dance, she’d have asked someone else to write the note, so Elder wouldn’t know that it wasn’t her writing... Yes, she was playing games. This was so different to the Witch of old. What had happened to her? Had she gone mad? Was she on a suicide mission? What had happened? This wasn’t the old Witch at all.
And yet, obviously it was the old Witch — as shrewd and as deadly as ever.
“I’ll have another whiskey when you’re ready,” he told Joe the barman. “And have one yourself.”
“Thanks, I will,” said Joe, making for the bottles and once more turning up the volume. He received the cheers from the bar with a little bow from the waist.
Looking back on a startling day, Barclay still thought that the most startling thing of all had been Dominique’s driving in central Paris.
They set off from Calais in her car, leaving his in the police station car park, his packed bag locked in the boot. He brought to Dominique’s car a single change of clothes, the Witch file, and a couple of opera tapes. During the drive, and above the noise of the engine and the rather extraordinary ventilation system (a single flap between dashboard and windscreen), they planned their next moves.
“His name,” Dominique yelled, “is Monsieur Jean-Claude Separt. I know of him actually. He is a cartoonist. He draws stories.”
“You mean strip cartoons?”
“Cartoons in a strip, yes.”
“For a newspaper?”
“No, he makes books. Books of strip cartoons are very popular in France.”
“What sort of stuff does he do?”
“Political cartoons, or cartoons with a political point. He is left-wing. More than that I can’t tell you until we get to Paris. There will be information on him when we get there.”
“What about his car?”
“It’s curious, he reported it missing only after it was found. Doesn’t that sound strange to you?”
“A bit. What’s his story?”
She shrugged, pulling out to overtake a lorry. The 2CV barely had enough power to pull past the long, fuming vehicle. A car bore down on them, but Dominique shot the 2CV back into the right-hand lane with two or three seconds to spare. The blood had vanished entirely from Barclay’s face.