Mind/Reader

by Brian Freemantle

  Not writing, amended Claudine, professionally. Printing. As if it was important - as if his neck-stretched corpse wasn’t sufficient - for her to realize that he and no one else had written the valediction. There was a shake, an unevenness, in the formation of the letters but it was only discernible to her, who knew his handwriting so well. Hardly evidence of someone making their last communication on earth. Jumbled, certainly; agonizingly inconclusive. But with some sort of form. No abrupt erasures or scratching out. As if, even, it was a final copy of an earlier draft. Which was something she hadn’t contemplated until this moment. Should she, now? Was she being as dispassionate as her profession dictated? Or was she trying to complete a jigsaw from a new picture, the picture drawn by a man who went to fancy dress parties dressed as a Greek warrior?

  Positively, with detached determination, Claudine read the note from beginning to end, refusing any line by line distraction and trying to make a judgement as a whole, without lifting a word or a phrase to support a specific conclusion.

  And failed to make that judgement.

  It was as easy - as professionally easy, not because she was judging her own husband - to stand by her initial evaluation of it as being written by a mentally flawed man broken by overwork as it was to imagine Warwick torn apart by the shame (what shame, for fuck’s sake?) of a sexual preference he had been unable to discuss with her. If that were the case, it was another failing on her part, not his.

  Claudine didn’t equate sex with love: hardly, even, with a manifestation of it. She believed - or thought she believed - that she could have lived with Warwick’s bisexuality, if he were ambivalent. Homosexuality, even, although there would have been an element of rejection that might have been difficult for her to adjust to. But either would have been better - divorce would have been better, as well as more obvious - than his killing himself.

  Surely she would have known! Guessed or suspected. Her holding back, which she conceded she might have done, had nothing to do with sexual taboos or inhibitions. Her reluctance had only ever been a reluctance to lose control. She had accepted - initiated - the oral sex. And the anal exploration. Initiated that, too, on occasions. More often, probably, than Warwick. Which would surely have made it easy for him to talk about his sexual preferences. And they had discussed sex. Fetishes and fantasies even. She’d talked of imagining being naked, offering herself, in a crowded tube train or a restaurant and being ignored, analysing it for him as a fear of ultimate rejection. And he’d admitted a fascination with being chained and taunted by whores so raddled they had to be diseased but with whom he still wanted sex, although they denied him. Which hadn’t been something she had found easy to analyse.

  Nor was it easy to re-analyse what lay on the desk before her. Unless Toomey discovered something more - and she’d already decided he’d produced all he possessed, which was totally inconclusive - Claudine realized she would never know the extent of Warwick’s friendship with Gerald Lorimer. Not that it was necessary for her to know. It didn’t - wouldn’t - affect how she’d felt about Warwick. Or mitigate the unalterable, damning fact she had already confronted, that she’d failed him. She was convinced of something else, too, a conviction strong enough for her to consider it another unalterable fact. There might have been things about Warwick of which she wasn’t aware or hadn’t recognized but Claudine was sure he had not done anything illegal or even questionable. So, logically, there was nothing that could emerge from Toomey’s inquiries to disrupt her new life in Holland. That could only be endangered by a professional mistake. And professional mistakes weren’t going to happen: Claudine wasn’t going to allow them to happen.

  She was actually at the shredder, another so far unused piece of office equipment, when she abruptly changed her mind about destroying Warwick’s note. Instead she went further across the office and returned it to the safe.

  The horrific killings escalated, sensation feeding sensation throughout Europe with each new discovery over the next month.

  The third victim was a teenage Asian boy whose head was displayed to an immediately hysterical American tourist when the elevator doors opened for the first ascent at the Eiffel Tower. The praying hands were close to the shrine at Lourdes. They clutched a severed penis. The seated torso greeted the guard on the early morning Paris to Marseille TGV. One leg was left in Bordeaux, the other on the lawns of the Carlton Hotel at Cannes.

  In London the next Asian girl’s head was found at the foot of Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square. The clasped hands were recovered at a Reading chapel prepared for a wedding which had to be cancelled because the bride collapsed into hysteria. The torso, wrapped like a parcel, revolved into view on the baggage carousel at Heathrow’s Terminal Four on the day the Pope arrived on a State visit. A leg was added to the existing two on the statue of Palmerston in the Hampshire town of Romsey, the other placed as an addition to the effigy of Sir Francis Drake in Plymouth.

  In Cologne the dismembered and scattered remains of a sexually abused girl - thought to be Turkish because of the large Turkish guest worker population in Germany - were discovered. The butchered girl in Vienna was Chinese. The strongest investigative theory, of monstrously orchestrated and obscene racism, was undermined by the finding in Amsterdam and Brussels of two similarly dismembered and distributed white girls.

  Hysteria convulsed the European Union, compounded by the inability of any national or local police to make a single arrest.

  There were emergency debates in national parliaments echoing in rhetoric but as silent on practicality as their police departments. For the first time the European assembly in Strasbourg - a victim city - became a centralized, cohesive forum. It was from Strasbourg that the proposal came to post army units at schools and universities. It was adopted in France, Germany, Austria, Spain and Italy. And was expanded in each of those countries with other units guarding and sometimes providing early morning and late night transportation for shift workers. Yet more army units, issued with live ammunition, supplemented police street patrols. Minority group leaders, ignoring the Dutch and Belgian murders, insisted the continent was menaced by a racial pogrom. Among the wilder theories were suggestions of witchcraft and Satanic sacrifices.

  Inevitably, in London, there were Jack the Ripper analogies that had begun much earlier with the French killing. Vigilante squads were formed among Asian and immigrant groups in several European capitals and in two weeks four people died and countless others were injured in panicked shootings, fights and disturbances. Immigrant hostels in Germany, Austria and Holland were firebombed and two Turks were shot dead in a reciprocal arson attempt on the Reichstag in Berlin. Immigrant groups were also blamed for the explosion that badly damaged two of the public rooms of the Hofburg royal palace in Vienna. Predictably, synagogues and Jewish cemeteries were vandalized, mostly in Germany, Austria and France.

  The German-initiated resolution in the European Parliament that the serial killings were a logical investigation for the newly operational Europol was hailed throughout the Union as one of the few positive suggestions to emerge since the horrors began, even supposedly by jealous national police forces apparently prepared to abandon previous resistant hostility in their eagerness to transfer responsibility for their own shortcomings.

  Henri Sanglier immediately recognized the potential benefit of involvement. Utilized properly, it could sensationally establish the reputation and credibility of any investigating force. Designated officers of that force would, of course, be just as sensationally destroyed by failure.

  Either way, Sanglier decided he couldn’t personally lose. He looked up as Françoise entered the room.

  ‘How was Paris?’

  ‘wonderful, as always.’

  ‘You were discreet?’

  ‘Don’t be such a fucking bore.’

  He’d have to be extremely careful how he timed the divorce. ‘Anyone new?’

  Francoise looked at him curiously. ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘You alway
s smell of sex when you’ve made a new conquest.’

  ‘Her name is Ginette. She’s delightful. Only nineteen.’

  ‘Does she know who you are?’

  ‘Who you are, you mean?’

  ‘Does she?’

  ‘No. Stop pissing your pants.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The major difficulty in turning Europol into a properly functioning investigative bureau had been achieving unanimous EU agreement on how operational control should be exercised. The eventual resolve had been to form, from senior police officials from individual member countries, a committee of commissioners, the chair rotating every month. The solution achieved essential continuity at the same time as avoiding the impression of any one country’s improperly influencing or manipulating decisions.

  When the dismemberment serial murders became Europol’s first investigation there were still three weeks to run under the leadership of the Austrian commissioner, Franz Sobell. The timing suited Sanglier perfectly. His chairmanship, with its politically necessary but distracting need to shuttle between the EU capitals of Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg, was still six months away - time enough to put into place all the professional stepping stones he intended using for even greater personal success and honour.

  Sanglier arrived intentionally early in the conference suite, anxious to prepare his groundwork and immediately pleased that David Winslow, the UK commissioner, was ahead of him. Sanglier, who believed himself the most adept of them all at balancing allies against enemies, considered Winslow the leader of his resentful detractors. The portly, sleek-haired Englishman was deep in conversation with Italy’s Emilio Bellimi in the closed off section of the window terrace. Sanglier shook his head against the offered coffee from the hovering attendant, smiling as the two men turned at his approach. Neither smiled back.

  ‘The moment we’ve all been waiting for,’ said Sanglier enthusiastically.

  ‘Are you sure?’ queried Bellimi, serious-faced. He was a short fat man whose pursuit of fashion always made him appear to be wearing a slimmer man’s clothes.

  Sanglier, who at well over six feet towered over the Italian, was glad at the obvious uncertainty, although hardly surprised after the Europe-wide hysteria of the previous weeks. ‘Isn’t it exactly the sort of investigation we should be involved in?’

  Winslow put his coffee cup on the window ledge. Beyond, the greyness of the day made it impossible to distinguish the faraway shoreline of a slate sea. ‘I’ve just finished reading all the exchange traffic: not one investigation, in any country, has got anywhere. We’re getting the responsibility for failure dumped on us. And that could mean the end of Europol as an investigative agency before it even starts!’ Winslow was four months away from the Commission chairmanship.

  ‘Then it’s important to ensure we don’t fail, isn’t it?’ said Sanglier, meticulously fuelling the attitude he wanted to engender. After only a few months at Europol, Sanglier was familiar with the suspicion in which he was held by most of the other commissioners, who disdained his appointment as the nepotism of a legend. But this was the first time he’d consciously cultivated the feeling.

  In exaggerated exasperation Winslow puffed out cheeks already reddened by blood pressure. ‘We can’t afford to be that glib. It’s been difficult enough getting this far. We’re going to be on trial.’

  Other commissioners were entering the chamber and gathering in small, intense groups. The smiles were perfunctory, quickly gone, and Sanglier’s expectation grew. He said: ‘We were always going to be on trial, on our first investigation. And will be, for a lot to follow.’

  ‘Would you want to be the case officer on this?’ demanded Bellimi, imagining he was being threatening.

  Sanglier thought he’d been astonishingly lucky, immediately hitting on these two. It wouldn’t be necessary for him to move on, although they still weren’t sufficiently irritated. ‘I wouldn’t give up before I’d even started, which is the impression I’m getting from this conversation.’

  ‘Have you read the files?’ demanded Winslow, his face growing redder.

  ‘No,’ lied Sanglier, who probably knew every case note better than anyone else in the room.

  ‘They’re spread over six countries the length and breadth of the continent. The way they’re dismembered is the only common link,’ pointed out the Englishman. ‘There’s nowhere to start. No focus.’

  ‘We don’t know that, without making our own investigation,’ said Sanglier, intentionally going beyond his normal arrogance. ‘Surely the dismemberment is the focus?’

  ‘It began - and has been concentrated - in France,’ said Bellimi, not attempting to hide the annoyance. ‘If that’s the obvious focus it seems to have eluded your people!’

  ‘Because there’s no centralized, overall control,’ insisted Sanglier. ‘Which is what we were formed to provide. There couldn’t be a better case - or cases - to justify our existence. Or our operating Convention.’

  ‘Or a worse one to make us appear an ineffective irrelevance,’ said Winslow.

  Sanglier’s provoking was interrupted by Franz Sobell’s striding purposefully to the head of the conference table, beckoning the other commissioners as he went. Each place was designated by a country-identifying nameplate. There were headphones at every position already tuned for simultaneous translation from the multilinguists unseen behind their smoked glass windows overlooking the chamber. There was a separate table for the note-taking and recording secretariat. Sanglier’s seat was opposite those of Bellimi and Winslow. He smiled again to both men. Once more neither responded. The uncertainty around the table was palpable.

  ‘I hardly think it is necessary for me to stress the importance of what we have to discuss today,’ began the white-haired Austrian chairman. ‘Or to say I’ve never imagined a set of crimes like these.’ He spoke in English. Only two commissioners - Spain’s Jorge Ortega and Paul Merot from Luxembourg - bothered with their headsets.

  ‘There’ve been official requests for assistance from every country?’ queried Bellimi, as if there might be an escape in discovering proper formalities had not been followed. He unbuttoned his tight jacket, breathing out in relief.

  Sobell nodded. ‘All personally delivered to me in Brussels yesterday, at an emergency meeting of Justice Ministers.’ He paused, looking to where Winslow sat representing the country that had been most resistant to creating a federal police force. ‘The United Kingdom was the last.’

  ‘I spoke to London by telephone last night,’ said Winslow, unconcerned at being singled out. ‘I’ve been authorized to guarantee full cooperation.’

  ‘I was given the same assurance from everyone yesterday,’ said Sobell.

  ‘To ensure they get rid of the problem as fast as they can,’ Bellimi put in.

  ‘We can’t pick and choose,’ said the Austrian. ‘I don’t think I’m being over-dramatic when I say the seriousness with which we will be regarded in the future stands or falls by how we handle this case.’

  ‘I don’t think any of us needs reminding of that,’ said Bellimi.

  Sobell looked at Winslow again. ‘A point that was made most strongly by the British Home Secretary.’

  There was a shift of discomfort around the table and Sanglier decided it could not have been going better for him. Now it was time definitely to steer the discussion. ‘I’m sure none of us underestimates the importance to this organization of what we have to achieve. But surely, in view of that, we should be talking far more positively than we are.’

  Both Winslow and Bellimi looked sharply at him, imagining personal criticism. Several other commissioners whom Sanglier guessed held him in the same disdain frowned, too.

  ‘There’s a difference between being negative and being objective,’ said Winslow defensively.

  ‘I haven’t detected it yet,’ said Sanglier. ‘Each of us knows why we’ve at last become involved. And how difficult it’s going to be. Our function is to centralize the inquiry. So we should be discus
sing how to centralize it, who should run it and how they should operate.’

  Now there were several head movements of agreement from around the table and Jan Villiers, the Belgian commissioner, said: ‘I’d like very much for us to look forwards, not backwards over our shoulders as if we were afraid of something.’

  ‘No one’s afraid of anything!’ said Sobell unconvincingly.

  ‘I am,’ said Winslow. ‘I’m afraid we won’t be able satisfactorily to conclude an investigation, thus proving all the critics, my own country chief among them, right in dismissing Europol as an unworkable organization.’

  ‘That’s defeatist,’ protested Villiers.

  ‘It’s objective common sense,’ said Winslow.

  Sanglier, who anticipated the benefit of two opposing sides, turned at the Englishman’s remark. ‘For God’s sake let’s go on being objective!’

  ‘Which I’m sure you’ve already given a great deal of thought to!’ said Sobell stiffly. It didn’t emerge as sarcastically as he’d intended.

  ‘Haven’t most of us?’ asked Sanglier, wanting the commitment of others before committing himself.

  ‘There are at least a dozen separate crime scenes in six separate countries,’ said Paul Merot, abandoning the headset and speaking in English. ‘We’ll need a huge amount of manpower.’

  ‘A minimum at least of five officers to each task force,’ suggested Willi Lenteur, the German commissioner, coming into the debate.

  ‘Would that include technical and scientific personnel?’ asked Ortega.

  ‘I would have thought they could be assigned as and when they were required,’ said the Dutch commissioner, Hans Maes.

  ‘Shouldn’t we create a special supervising committee from members of this Commission?’ asked Winslow. Looking pointedly at Sanglier, he said: ‘Like it or not, there has to be a political consideration exercised at our level.’