‘We’re assuming that you’re right about the families being illegal,’ persisted Poulard.
‘It doesn’t matter if I’m wrong about that,’ insisted Claudine, her enthusiasm growing for her idea as they discussed it. ‘It’s a way of getting the families to make themselves known, which is all that matters. And none of the countries offering it would be making any general concession whatsoever. They’d just be solving crimes terrorizing them.’
‘It’s inspired!’ enthused Siemen, although quietly.
‘If it produces something,’ qualified Poulard.
‘And if it doesn’t, nothing’s lost,’ said Rosetti.
‘Exactly,’ said Claudine.
It occupied less dictation time and written justification than any suggestion she’d so far put forward, although she obviously presented it as a joint, not a personal, proposal. While Yvette was typing it Claudine went to her own office to arrange her too long delayed appointment with a gynaecologist recommended by Europol’s medical unit, enduring the receptionist’s silent condemnation at her admission that it had been more than three years since she’d undergone an examination.
With no reason to do so she didn’t hurry back to the incident room. Instead, with the visual reminder of the safe and its contents directly in her line of vision on the opposite side of the room, she allowed herself to think clearly about the message that had awaited her the previous night.
She had fully recovered from every reaction to it but was as far away as ever from knowing what to do. Logically - sensibly - she should immediately inform Toomey. To do so would prove to the disbelieving man she knew nothing about any insider trading and had nothing to fear from his investigation. But had she? Toomey’s initial inquiry had been - or been phrased, at least - about embarrassment by association for something in which Warwick might have been involved, sexually or criminally or both. Which, inconceivable though she believed either to be, might still exist. So to alert Toomey, who from their last encounter didn’t appear to have sufficient to mount a prosecution, could re-ignite an inquiry which for all she knew might have been already abandoned. On the other hand, Paul Bickerstone, who couldn’t be bothered to come to Warwick’s funeral, wouldn’t have appeared from nowhere if the investigation was over. The fact that he had suddenly materialized had not only to mean that it was still very much alive but that something had emerged to worry him sufficiently to track her down. Into her retentive mind drifted a remark she began by thinking was totally unconnected but then conceded a very real connection. I can’t imagine how but if I can help …
Claudine thrust up, decisively, and made her way quickly back to the incident room, glad that Hugo Rosetti was in the side office he’d taken for himself and that there wasn’t going to be a delay during which she might have changed her very uncertain mind. She crossed directly to the Italian’s office and when he looked up hurriedly said: ‘I’d like to take up the offer you made that night at dinner, in Rome.’
‘I’m glad,’ said Rosetti.
Her decision had been so impulsive - doubted and regretted within minutes of her blurting out the plea - that Claudine hadn’t thought where or when they could talk and was about to refuse the offer of yet another dinner, to suggest instead their meeting at her apartment, when she remembered her limitations as a cook. It might be better, too, to meet on neutral territory. It was not until later that afternoon, still unsure about what she’d done, that Claudine realized Rosetti had made the arrangements at once and for that night, without consulting his family.
Rosetti drove with an Italian disregard for speed limit or right of way. When they entered the park, Claudine realized he had chosen the Chagall, to which they’d both avoided going after the commissioners’ reception. There were several boats out on the Vijver lake and Claudine wondered if the nautical-phrased British commissioner was at the helm of one of them.
Remembering she didn’t drink he only ordered a half bottle of wine for himself and insisted she had mussels because they were the Dutch speciality. Claudine accepted the suggestion and the unusual experience of not being the one in control. Which, she supposed, went with her earlier decision to let someone else - a virtual stranger - into her very private and self-enclosed life.
Having made that decision and refused the many second thoughts about it Claudine accepted she had to be completely honest. So she was, aware that she sometimes repeated what she’d already told him in Rome but consciously doing so to fit everything in time and context. Her only hesitation was at the suicide note and then she told him about that, too, alert for any criticism in his face. There was none. Neither did he interrupt at any time while she spoke.
‘You’ve told me the whole story.’ It was a statement, not a question.
‘Yes?’
‘So now you can tell a lawyer.’
‘I don’t want to put it on an official level.’
‘It’s already on an official level.’
‘Going to a lawyer would be giving in.’
‘That doesn’t make sense.’
‘It does to me.’
‘I don’t see how your husband could have been involved, directly or indirectly, in any financial crime: he wasn’t in a position to help this man Bickerstone.’
‘Warwick was a lawyer, a specialist in European Union legislation. He could have guided them on the differences in financial law between the various European countries: the bank secrecy of Luxembourg, for instance.’
‘If Bickerstone is a dealer on the scale you say he is, he’d hardly need guidance on that, would he?’
Claudine finished the mussels, glad she’d let Rosetti order for her and wishing for once she’d accepted the wine he’d offered, Frascati, which he’d declared to be excellent. ‘I was just putting it forward as a suggestion.’
‘We don’t know enough,’ said Rosetti.
‘That’s why I’ve decided what to do,’ announced Claudine abruptly. ‘I’m going to reply. Meet him.’ She uttered the words as they came to her, without thinking what she was saying, as impulsively as she’d thrust into Rosetti’s office earlier that day. If there was a difference it was that she didn’t regret them as quickly.
For the first time an expression came to Rosetti’s face that she could read, a look of total disbelief. ‘That’s ridiculous! Out of the question.’
‘Why?’
‘At the moment, suspicious though it looks - awkward though it is - everything is circumstantial. Your only legal difficulty is the cash gifts from your mother.’
‘This wouldn’t change anything.’
‘You’d be willingly consorting with a man under formal investigation for a two hundred million pound fraud!’
‘Which doesn’t prove I’m part of it. Or that Warwick was.’
‘You can’t do this by yourself. I’ve already told you that.’
‘I’m a trained psychologist. You even called me brilliant in Rome.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘If I talked to Bickerstone I could find out the truth. I’d know.’
Rosetti shook his head slowly. ‘You want some other words, to go with brilliant?’
‘Such as?’
‘Arrogant, conceited, stupid.’
She wouldn’t have accepted them from anyone else. ‘I know I could do it!’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve nothing to employ a lawyer for.’
‘If he’s done half of what’s alleged against him Bickerstone isn’t a small-time crook. He’s a very clever man. You said yourself he wouldn’t have emerged if he hadn’t wanted something.’
‘He called me. That isn’t clever. He’s desperate. I can use that desperation.’
‘What if you can’t?’
‘What will I have lost?’
‘We probably won’t know - or be able to prevent it - until after you’ve lost it. And then it will be too late.’
‘I’m not frightened.’
‘I’m frightened. For you.’
‘How did he find out you were here?’ asked Rosetti.
Claudine considered the question. ‘I left a forwarding address with the people who bought the house. And at the university. He could have known the Kensington address - and about the university, I suppose - from Warwick.’
‘If there was the continuing friendship that Toomey says there was. But you don’t believe that.’
‘I’ll ask him when I see him.’
Rosetti didn’t respond to the remark. Instead he said: ‘Could Warwick have been gay?’
‘Anyone can be gay.’
‘That’s a psychologist’s answer. What’s yours?’
‘He could have been. Bisexual, possibly. I never had the slightest reason to suspect he was either.’
‘Does the possibility upset you?’
‘It upsets me that he didn’t tell me, if he was.’
‘What would you have done, if he had?’
‘All I could to help him be happy. Agreed to a divorce, if that’s what he wanted. But not stopped loving him, if that’s what you mean. It wouldn’t have been married love but it would have been love.’
‘You really think you could have done that?’
‘I know I could. And would have done.’
‘What about your own life?’
‘We’re a long way into speculation,’ said Claudine, smiling again, faintly. ‘I haven’t thought about it.’
‘Haven’t you thought about getting married again?’
‘No,’ admitted Claudine. ‘I don’t think I will but I haven’t given it any positive thought. The need hasn’t arisen.’ Had she been a subject of conversation with Poulard and Siemen, after she’d left Rome? She supposed it was almost inevitable. She didn’t think Rosetti completely believed her: probably thought it was the self-protection she was pulling around herself, to keep out the cold guilt of not recognizing Warwick’s mental illness.
‘You didn’t need to talk it through with me … tell me everything … if you’d already decided to call Bickerstone back.’
‘I hadn’t decided to, until this moment.’
‘Reconsider it. It’s madness. You know it is.’
‘I have to know what he wants. You said yourself we needed to know more.’ The ‘we’ registered with Claudine. She waited for him to react - protest perhaps - to her so readily considering him a confidant, despite the Rome offer.
Instead he said: ‘But not that this was the way to achieve it.’
‘I’ll be careful.’
‘You don’t know what to protect yourself against. This is arrogance, Claudine: stupid, unnecessary arrogance. And it could cost you what you’re most afraid of losing, your job here at Europol.’
She acknowledged the threat as a genuine one and it pricked her determination. ‘I can answer the call, at least.’
‘I want you to tell me what happens, when it happens. Whatever the time. At home, if necessary.’
‘What about …’ she started, changing in mid-sentence ‘ … bothering your family?’
Rosetti seemed to change his mind from what he was immediately going to say. ‘It won’t be a bother.’
‘Maybe I shouldn’t involve you any more.’ She wouldn’t have done so to this extent if he hadn’t instantly responded and she’d had more time to think. Now he knew all about her and she knew virtually nothing about him. Oddly, for someone who’d always had difficulty in sharing her privacy with anyone, even Warwick, Claudine felt no awkwardness. A lot of her attitudes and actions seemed to be changing, very quickly.
‘I don’t think you can stop now,’ he said.
She let him choose the desserts and they took their coffee overlooking the night-shrouded lake and when, belatedly, she wondered if he wasn’t anxious to get home he said there wasn’t any hurry. He still ignored any speed limit driving back to her apartment.
When he parked she said: ‘I really hadn’t decided what to do, when I asked you to help. I didn’t set out to waste your time.’
‘I didn’t think you did. Or that it’s been wasted.’
For the first time that evening she had a twinge of personal uncertainty with him. Feeling that she had to, she said: ‘Would you like to come in for coffee?’
‘No,’ he said at once. Then: ‘I’d still like you to think again, before speaking to him.’
‘Maybe I will,’ said Claudine, knowing she wouldn’t and guessing he knew it, too.
‘Why weren’t you annoyed when I called you stupid and arrogant?’
She smiled at him across the car. ‘Because it’s true,’ she said.
Sanglier had recognized at once the controversy the amnesty suggestion would create, just as he anticipated the irritation from the Asian countries at having the Internet proposal announced to them, without any consultation. Already there’d been feed-back from France about Interpol’s fury at his arbitrary dissemination request with which they’d had to comply. Both fitted perfectly into the presentation he’d carefully prepared for the commissioners’ weekly conference.
He knew Françoise had been lying with her glib denial of being attracted to Claudine Carter, because Françoise was attracted to every woman. Could she have been lying, too, about there being no reciprocal attraction? It was an intriguing thought. It would certainly explain the public humiliation of Poulard: even the Carter woman’s virtual refusal to involve herself in any social activity, like the quick avoidance of the restaurant visit after the reception, about which Poulard had told him. He would have thought it difficult to conceal in such a gossip-ridden environment as Europol, which was the goldfish bowl he’d described to Françoise. But then she was discreet. Why wouldn’t Claudine Carter be? He couldn’t think of any way of finding out, apart from using Françoise and that was full of danger.
It certainly justified the idea of a dinner invitation, though.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The fifteen commissioners divided as usual into their several, pre-conference private caucuses. Sanglier didn’t bother to join any of them, not believing he had to gain support or manipulate opposition in advance of the actual session: sheep always followed a leader or the barking of a corralling dog and by now he knew how to become either, according to circumstance. He expected the attention he still attracted, however, because his recommendations made up most of the agenda.
Franz Sobell was the last to enter the room, a pretentious custom the man always adopted during his chairmanship. He bustled, too, fussily urging everyone else to the conference table with him: a very small dog with a very small bark, decided Sanglier. He was already seated, ahead of them all. The greetings were perfunctory, unnecessary. Looking directly at Sanglier but addressing them all, Sobell said: ‘As you will see from your notes, the first proposal of our French colleague is that we make a complete examination of the progress of the investigation up until now. Any observations on that?’
‘I would have thought we were all sufficiently familiar - and extremely pleased - with everything that’s happened so far,’ said Hans Maes, the Dutch representative.
Sometimes, thought Sanglier, there was divine intervention. The barking-dog brusqueness as prepared as everything else, he said: ‘If I believed that I wouldn’t have asked for it to be put upon the agenda. I think there is very little for us to be extremely pleased about.’
Maes blinked, surprised at the retort, and Sanglier knew he had the attention of everyone. Willi Lenteur, the German commissioner, said with faint mockery: ‘Our French colleague clearly has a point to make.’
‘A very serious and important one,’ insisted Sanglier, quite content for the German to make himself a target. Maes moved to speak again, too, but Sanglier talked over him, the impatience as well feigned as the brusqueness. ‘And I hope this will be one of the few meetings during which we can properly fulfil our function.’
There were sideways looks between everyone. Sobell said: ‘Is there something we’re unaware o
f?’ With only two days to go before the transfer of the chairmanship, there was no concern in the Austrian’s voice.
‘There shouldn’t be but it would seem to be the case. Regrettably,’ said Sanglier.
‘Riddles,’ said Paul Merot. As Luxembourg had been spared the atrocities he felt able to attempt the sarcasm with which Lenteur had failed.
‘Only to people too obtuse to recognize the obvious,’ said Sanglier, verging upon open rudeness. Without waiting for any formal agreement to his agenda listing, he bulldozed on with his carefully prepared review, isolating every salient point from Claudine’s profiles against its relevant factor in each murder and then, talking directly at the discomfited German commissioner, he set out how Cologne’s obstruction had failed to prevent Claudine from making a completely accurate analysis. He concluded by recounting the Rome killings, but concentrated upon the cooperation and gratitude publicly expressed by Giovanni Ponzio.
He held the full attention of Lenteur, angered at being so obviously singled out, and of Emilio Bellimi, in contrast pleased at the praise of Italy, but there were varying attitudes of diminishing interest from the others. Spain’s Jorge Ortega gazed steadfastly out in the direction of the familiar grey sealine and David Winslow occupied almost the entire reconsideration doodling images of ships.
Maes said: ‘I thought the object of the reception was to show our appreciation, particularly of Dr Carter?’
Quickly Lenteur said: ‘I was under the impression there was a point to this discussion. So far I’ve failed to see it.’
‘Which is to our disadvantage and it is therefore fortunate that I have raised it,’ said Sanglier. ‘If it needs to be made even clearer, which it obviously does, then let me spell it out. At the very beginning we each of us accepted the importance to ourselves and to this organization of a successful conclusion. Towards which we’ve had the brilliant assessments of Dr Carter, assisted to a degree by others of her task force …’
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