Witch Hunt

by Ian Rankin

  ‘It would have made me look like a fool.’

  ‘So you lied to me instead.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have.’

  ‘No, you shouldn’t. Believe me, Mr Barclay, you shouldn’t. As for conspiring with Dominic Elder behind my back, it’s intolerable!’

  ‘I did what I did because I thought it was in our best interests.’ He paused. ‘Ma’am.’

  ‘And you think that’s an excuse?’

  There was no more dialogue between them until after take-off. Barclay felt a sudden crushing fatigue, despite the sour airplane coffee. It was days since he’d had an unbroken night’s sleep. Adrenaline had kept him going, but now the adventure had come to an abrupt end and his body just wanted sleep. Only fear of his boss’s reaction should he doze off kept his eyes open.

  Joyce Parry kept tapping the Witch file which lay across her lap. ‘For your information,’ she said at last, ‘I learned of your little escapade yesterday. I arrived in Germany late last night.’

  ‘What? Then why did—’

  ‘I had some trouble persuading Monsieur Roche that we should let you and Ms Herault go ahead with the interview.’

  ‘You let it go ahead? But why?’ He was wide awake now.

  She shrugged. ‘Why not? What did we have to lose? Tell me, why were you there?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘And this is a long flight. I expect a report from you, and I mean a full report. If you leave anything out ...’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I’ll want it by tomorrow morning, first thing, on my desk. Meantime I want to hear it from your own mouth. Did you learn anything from Bandorff?’

  Barclay shrugged. ‘Tidbits.’

  ‘But something?’

  ‘Maybe, yes.’

  ‘Well, at least there’s something to show for all your bungling.’

  ‘It’s not much. He told me she hated men. He wondered what could have caused that. He said maybe psychoanalysis would provide an answer. What do you think he meant?’

  ‘Families?’ Parry answered.

  ‘So it goes back to her parents? He also mentioned two things she carried with her: a teddy bear and a pack of tarot cards.’

  Parry considered this. ‘Maybe Profiling can make something of it.’

  ‘They’re both signs of insecurity, aren’t they? A teddy bear brings past security, a tarot is supposed to reassure for the future.’

  She stared at him, eyebrows raised a fraction. ‘Maybe you’ve been in the wrong department all along.’

  Barclay gave her just a hint of his winning smile. ‘He also mentioned clairvoyance at one point, just in passing. Maybe it was a reference to the tarot.’

  ‘Elder visited a fairground in Brighton,’ Parry stated.

  ‘Really? Coincidence?’

  She shrugged. ‘We’ll see.’

  Barclay had trouble forming his next question. ‘She left a message for Mr Elder, and Bandorff hints that she hates her father.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘It’s just, when I was at Mr Elder’s, there was a photograph there of his daughter.’

  Joyce Parry went very still. ‘Did he talk about her?’

  ‘He just said she was dead. “Deceased” was his word.’

  Joyce Parry nodded. ‘She is.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Her name was Susanne, and she was on a school trip to Paris. There was an explosion in a shopping arcade. No group ever claimed responsibility. Three children were among the dead.’

  Barclay recalled how Dominique’s father had died. ‘He thinks Witch did it?’

  Joyce Parry was staring from her window. ‘He doesn’t know. He can’t know.’ She turned to him. Barclay supplied her thoughts.

  ‘Unless he asks her himself?’

  She nodded. ‘That’s his obsession, Michael. He’s got a question he needs to ask her, a question only she can answer.’

  He thought of Dominique who had lost a father, of Elder’s lost daughter. It would mean nothing to people like Bandorff and Witch. He saw now why Dominique, who had been so full of action before, had said almost nothing in Bandorff’s cell. She had been facing a ghost, a terror with her since childhood.

  ‘Get some sleep,’ Joyce Parry was saying. ‘You look exhausted.’

  She was right, he was exhausted. Yet he doubted he would sleep.

  Enterprise & Initiative

  Monday 15 June

  They were arriving. Or had already arrived. Mostly, they touched down in their national jets at an RAF base outside London. A few chose to helicopter into the city itself, the rest travelled by way of a huge police escort. These were the heads of state, heading for the summit. They came with full and impressive entourages, almost as if one-upmanship were the game. Several brought with them personal hair-stylists. All of them brought ‘gofers’: anonymous individuals whose job it was to find and fetch whatever was needed during the stay in London. The gofers tended to be ex-diplomats who had spent time in England and built up a network of contacts in London itself. There were some who said the gofers were the most important people of all. It was they who kept the heads of state happy.

  The real show of one-upmanship, as it turned out, was to bring your own chef with you. And the chef brought with him his equipe, his pots and pans and utensils. Ingredients from the various homelands were brought, too, all slipping quietly through as diplomatic baggage so that no customs people need declare them illegal. Arms were brought too, of course. More diplomatic baggage, arriving in well-packed crates. High-tech equipment was packed in separate cases: scramblers, decoders, debuggers, communications systems ...

  Watching it all arrive, there were those who were glad the summit was only lasting a week. Vans were provided at the base, to be loaded and driven by members of each entourage. Some of the vans made for the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, others for the embassies of the countries concerned, where the delegations were staying for the week. There was fun to be had from sorting out the secret servicemen from the rest of each delegation. Sometimes they made it easy, donning the near-mandatory dark glasses even though the day was overcast and showery. Perfect summer weather, and due to last for the whole week. The hot spell had been just that - a spell. Now someone had cast another spell, and storms were rumbling inland from the west.

  So far the movement of the eight delegations into London had been accomplished without a hitch. There were several small demonstrations to contend with outside certain embassies, but these passed off with a minimum of bother. And they gave the secret servicemen a chance to try out their discreet photographic equipment. The Metropolitan Police had drafted several hundred extra officers into the capital for the week. The mood in the ranks was buoyant: there’d be plenty of overtime, plenty of holiday money made over the next seven days.

  But the mood elsewhere was verging on panic. There had been a catastrophe at a large nursery garden in Cornwall: an invasion of cows. As a result, several thousand fresh flowers, just ready to be picked, had been crushed or beheaded. The flowers had been ordered to decorate the Conference Centre itself. A ‘floral decorist’ had been hired, and Monday afternoon was when he and his own equipe had intended to start their work, finishing late on Monday night. But now there were no flowers for them to work with.

  A senior civil servant spent several panicky hours making various telephone calls, until at last four new and willing suppliers were located. Between them, they had just about enough spare flowers to save the day: two hundred carnations short of the original plan, but so be it. However, this in turn led to problems with security, since the new firms needed clearance before delivering the flowers. Once more, the civil servant picked up her telephone.

  In a sticky, overworked office on the second floor of a building in Victoria Street, the telephone rang. Judy Clarke picked it up. Judy was in a panic too. Her boss hadn’t come in yet, and it was already quarter past ten. She hadn’t heard of any train dispu
tes or hitches on the underground. Mind you, you only heard of hold-ups on the underground after they’d happened. Still, it wasn’t like her boss. And there was so much to do! She was breathless as she picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ said the female voice at the other end. ‘My name’s Tessa. I share a house with Chris ... Christine Jones.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Judy’s heart sank. She knew what a call like this meant. Then she brightened. ‘Tessa, yes, hello. Remember me? Judy Clarke. We met at Christine’s birthday party.’

  ‘Judy ... ? Oh yes, hello again, how are you?’

  ‘Not so bad. Is Christine ill?’

  ‘Not exactly. But she’s had a bit of bad news, a bereavement.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Family, an aunt. I think they were very close.’

  ‘An aunt? Oh dear, I am sorry.’

  ‘Well, these things ...’

  ‘So Christine’s not coming in today?’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing. She’s gone off. The funeral’s not till Wednesday.’

  ‘Wednesday! God, I need to speak to her. There are things that need—’

  ‘She said she thought you could cope.’

  ‘Yes, well, maybe we can but it’s still ...’

  ‘If I hear from her, shall I tell her to call you?’

  ‘Could you get in touch with her? Is she at her mum’s in Doncaster? Maybe if you gave me the phone number ...?’

  ‘She didn’t leave one.’

  ‘That’s not like—’

  ‘She was a bit distraught. She’s not in Doncaster anyway. The aunt lived somewhere in Liverpool.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’ Liverpool? Christine hadn’t mentioned an aunt in Liverpool.

  ‘Shall I get her to call you?’

  ‘Yes, please, Tessa. I really need to know about Dobson’s and about the MTD meeting.’

  ‘Hold on, I’ll write that down. Dobson’s ...’

  ‘And the MTD meeting. Management Training Directive. Just tell her MTD, she’ll know what it is.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And if you do hear from her, please tell her I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, I will.’

  ‘Oh, and Tessa?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Have you got a cold or something? Your voice sounds hoarse.’

  ‘Must be the anabolic steroids. ‘Bye, Judy.’

  “Bye, Tessa,’ said Judy, putting down the phone. She sighed. Oh, hell. No Christine till Thursday. No one to steer the ship for the next three days. Three days off for a bereavement. She wondered how Mrs Pyle in personnel would react to that. She didn’t like you taking off three consecutive days for major surgery, never mind a funeral. Liverpool? An aunt in Liverpool? Oh well, it came to us all, didn’t it? Maybe she’d phone Christine’s house tonight ... talk to Tessa again, see if Christine had been in touch.

  Then again, maybe she wouldn’t. Derek was supposed to be taking her out to the pictures. That was typical of him, choosing Monday night. He knew the cinemas were half-price on a Monday ...

  ‘There goes another one,’ said her colleague Martin, coming into the room.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A motorcade.’ He walked to the window. She joined him, peering down. Four growling motorbikes preceded the slow-moving convoy of long black cars.

  ‘Wonder who it is this time?’ she said.

  ‘I can’t see. Usually there’s a flag on the front of the chiefs car. Can you see one?’

  She craned her neck. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘I feel we should be throwing down confetti or something.’

  He laughed. ‘You mean tickertape. Except these days, we’d have to use the leftovers from the paper-shredder instead.’

  She laughed at this, at the idea of tipping a binful of shredded documents out of the window. Martin could be really funny at times. If he took off his glasses, he wasn’t bad-looking either. Nice bum, too. He seemed to sense what she was thinking and turned towards her, taking off his glasses to wipe them with his hankie. There were red marks either side of his nose where the frames pinched.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘what are you doing tonight, Judy?’

  She thought for a moment, swallowed, and said: ‘Nothing.’

  Witch put down the receiver. Shit, merde, scheisse. Trust her to end up speaking to someone who knew Tessa. A girl called Judy ... who sounded concerned about Christine Jones. Concerned enough to pick up the phone and make some enquiries? Concerned enough to telephone the real Tessa this evening? Witch bit her bottom lip. Dispose of the girl Judy? No, it would be too suspicious. Two people disappearing from the same office ... a laughable idea. No, this would have to be one of those rare occasions where she was forced to trust to luck. That’s all there was to it. Maybe she should read her tarot again, see what it had planned for her. Maybe she shouldn’t. What good would it do if the news were bad? She’d still have to go through with it. Too late to back out now.

  She had time to kill. Her meeting with the Dutchman wasn’t till lunchtime. She took her hand-mirror out of her shoulder-bag and looked at herself. She’d cut and dyed her hair, plucked her eyebrows, dusted her cheeks. She felt she resembled the photo of Christine Jones on her security pass almost more than Christine Jones herself did. After all, the photo had been taken some time ago. Christine’s hair had grown out since it was taken. But Witch’s was just the right length. And Christine had let her eyebrows grow out, too. Sensible woman. It was an unnecessary and painful chore. All to attract the male ...

  She placed the mirror back in her shoulder-bag. She was also carrying Christine’s office-issue satchel, containing a few of her files but also some bits and pieces which were specifically, unquestionably Witch’s own. She came out of the phone-booth and, in less than ten steps, was back on Victoria Street. Just in time to see the tail-end of the convoy. A policeman, who had been holding back traffic at the intersection, now told pedestrians they could cross the road.

  ‘Just a bloody nuisance, this conference,’ muttered one elderly lady, wheeling her shopping-trolley off the pavement and on to the road, making it rattle noisily as she pushed it.

  A driver, stuck in line and awaiting permission to move, opened his car door and leaned out.

  ‘How much longer, guv?’ he called to the policeman.

  ‘Couple more minutes,’ the policeman called back. He shook his head at Witch. ‘Some people got no patience.’

  ‘Patience is a virtue,’ she agreed. For some reason, he laughed at this. Witch walked on. She wasn’t headed for 1-19 Victoria Street. She was making for another DTI building closer to Victoria Station. It was a very short walk. Not enough time for her to become nervous. She went to push open the glass door to the building, but a man, just leaving, held it open for her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said with a smile. She strode through the lobby, her security pass held out in her hand as she passed the guard-desk. The man on duty looked at her dully, blinked, and returned to his reading. She waited for the lift to descend, and at the same time checked out the ground floor, especially the stairs. Entrances and exits were important. The stairs actually kept on going down. She wondered what was downstairs. In the lift, there was a button marked B for Basement. So she pressed it and headed downwards. The doors shuddered open, and she found herself staring at another entrance lobby - the back entrance to the building - and another guard, who was staring at her. She smiled at him.

  ‘Pressed the wrong button,’ she called, before pushing the button for level 2. It took a moment longer for the doors to close. She saw two grey-liveried drivers coming into the lobby. Their cars were parked just outside the doors. Now she remembered. She’d walked around the back of this building before. There was a slope down from street-level to the back entrance, and on this slope the chauffeurs left their cars while they waited for their ministers or other ‘important people’ to finish their meetings. So: back entrance, front entrance, two lifts and
one set of stairs. She nodded to herself.

  At the ground floor, the doors opened and two men in pinstripe suits got in, giving her a moment’s glance, deciding they didn’t know her, and continuing their conversation.

  ‘Spurrier’s doing a good job,’ said one of them. ‘That office was a shambles ...’

  Witch got out at the second floor while the men continued upwards. She was standing in a small entrance area from which led, to left and right, narrow green-carpeted halls. She chose to go right, and passed several offices. Green seemed the predominant colour: she saw lime green chairs in some of the offices, and olive green curtains. In some of the offices stood a single desk and chair. Other rooms were larger, with a staff of secretaries working away on word processors, or clerical-looking people rushing around with sheaves of paper or large manila envelopes under their arms. Telephones did not ring; rather, they buzzed, quite annoyingly. In the corridor ahead, two shirt-sleeved men were having an intense discussion. One stood with arms folded, resting most of his weight on his forward foot. The other had his hands in his pockets. Both wore pale shirts and dark ties. They looked senior. The one with arms folded turned and watched Witch approach.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he said.

  Damn! She was supposed to look as though she belonged here. She swallowed.

  ‘I’m looking for Mr Spurrier,’ she said.

  He grinned. ‘Mrs Spurrier, you mean.’

  ‘Oh yes, Mrs Spurrier.’

  ‘Next floor up,’ said the man. ‘You’re new, aren’t you?’ He was almost purring. His colleague was staring fixedly, nervously, at the tips of his shoes.

  She managed a coy smile. ‘No, I work at Number One.’

  ‘Ah.’ Folded-arms nodded as though this explained everything. ‘Back along here, lift to the next floor, corridor on the left.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, turning away. Another close call. What if he’d said, ‘I’m Spurrier, how can I help you?’ It was bad enough that Spurrier had turned out to be a woman. She was beginning to take risks. The game was becoming difficult. Difficult, but not dangerous. It would turn dangerous if she were forced to take risks ... She took the stairs, not the lift. Just to experience them. At the top of the stairwell, two girls were giggling together.