‘It was still premature to talk of breakthroughs, though?’ persisted the Dutchman.
Poulard had been a total prick and Sanglier had told him so, in front of Siemen, at the inquest he’d held immediately after the conference. Now it was separation time. ‘I have already told Poulard it would have been better to wait, despite the indications he assures me he was getting from those he talked to in the East.’
‘I hope he understands that in future,’ said Maes.
‘He does,’ said Sanglier. The bloody man really had been an abysmal choice.
‘I think the assumption of American involvement that was allowed during the profiling discussion was most unfortunate, particularly after our earlier recognition of Dr Carter’s efforts,’ complained David Winslow.
‘It was an unfortunate misunderstanding,’ said Sanglier, coming as close as he intended to an apology.
‘Should we make it clear to her that is how we regard it?’
Sanglier felt a twitch of discomfort at the agreeing head movements, reluctant for yet another acknowledgement to be added to the woman’s file. ‘I have already arranged a meeting with her later today. Unfortunate as it is, I don’t see any purpose in trying to correct it by issuing a formal public statement, particularly in view of the other announcement we have to make. And don’t forget Dr Carter specifically sought to avoid any personal publicity.’
‘You’ll pass on our thinking?’ demanded Villiers.
‘That’s the reason for the meeting,’ lied Sanglier.
‘Then I think that’s sufficient,’ said the Belgian.
‘I agree there’s no point in making a public correction today,’ conceded Winslow. ‘But I think a note should be made in the record to give her full credit at the end of all this.’
‘An excellent idea,’ Sanglier agreed, seeing his way out. The end wasn’t in sight yet and a lot could go wrong before they reached it. He was going to do his best to ensure it did.
‘Then everything appears to have resolved itself very satisfactorily,’ said Villiers. It was difficult to believe how different everything was now compared to how it had appeared the previous day.
‘Very satisfactorily,’ echoed Sanglier. It would still have been better described as a miracle.
‘You put me in a hell of a position,’ accused Burrows. He was redder than usual, aggressively angry.
‘It was totally unintentional.’ Sanglier respected the American’s ability, proved beyond any doubt by the reputation that had preceded him, but he didn’t like the man personally. Burrows had actually called him Henri on several occasions. And the wretched man had never disagreed with any of the opinions put forward by Claudine Carter.
‘I had to send Washington a list of every American publication represented yesterday,’ the American went on. ‘The Director himself is getting on to every publisher, Newsweek particularly. They know me by name.’
The concern registered in Sanglier at last. ‘What?’
‘And then he’s coming on to the European Union Commission and the Council of Justice Ministers in Brussels: each of them individually if necessary.’
‘Why should he do that?’
Burrows told him, thinking, Roast, you bastard, like you’ve skewered me on the spit.
‘I didn’t know this: none of the commissioners here did.’
‘It was a US government to EU Justice Ministers’ agreement.’
‘We should have been told!’ It was a defence of sorts.
‘Don’t you think now that I wish to Christ you had been?’
‘It’s ridiculous imagining a problem,’ said Sanglier.
‘You want me to have the pictures and the reports sent over?’
‘Of course I don’t doubt you!’ This was a completely unexpected complication that he needed time to consider. On the surface it looked serious, politically. And he was inescapably identified - on film and in front of more than a hundred witnesses - the sole cause. Why the fuck hadn’t any of them been warned? It was absurd - unforgivable - that he, that Europol, had been put in this position!
‘Neither will the publishers or the Justice Ministers have any doubt after the Director’s finished talking with them. He’s a forceful guy.’
Sanglier couldn’t have cared less about cigar-chomping American publishers but he was very exercised at being the named shuttlecock in every cabinet and chancellery in the European Union. It was those cabinets and chancelleries in which he was planning his future, for Christ’s sake! ‘We’re talking of a distance of three thousand miles!’
‘Henri, we’re talking sick, murderous minds you can’t shift a thought from, once it’s embedded there! Fucking madmen I’ve spent my life protecting people from.’
Henri! Outrage built upon outrage as the overfed slob actually lighted one of his strange-smelling cigars - without asking - and literally did start to chomp on it. ‘I don’t think there’s any reason to panic.’
‘What the hell do you think I’m doing here in the first place?’
‘Things can easily be corrected by a rectifying statement.’ It meant reversing the opposition he’d voiced at that morning’s meeting but the circumstances were very different now. Like a distant bell (sick, murderous minds … fucking madmen) an idea began to ring in his head.
‘Yesterday was a live TV newscast. Featured on all three majors, coast to coast. How do you think a flat press statement is going to play by comparison? It won’t even get air-time. Or that much newspaper space.’ Burrows narrowed his thumb and forefinger until they were practically touching.
‘What can be done, then?’ asked Sanglier, not liking the note of helplessness.
‘Hope you’re right and I’m wrong,’ said the American. ‘It was the Director’s idea I tell you. He doesn’t want any more snafus.’
‘Pity he hadn’t thought of that in the first place,’ said Sanglier stiffly, refusing to take the entire responsibility.
‘You want me to tell him that?’
‘I’ll tell him myself if he’s got the courtesy to call,’ said the Frenchmen belligerently. ‘That’s what you can tell him.’
Sanglier had fully regained his frayed temper by the time Claudine arrived, occupying the intervening hour exploring the idea the American’s complaint had given him. Burrows’ experience was not, of course, a guarantee. In fact, objectively, there was a desperation about it, but it was very much something to keep in mind if it became necessary. Far too much - virtually everything - of whatever else he’d tried had for a variety of reasons not just gone wrong but rebounded in the woman’s favour. Even now, to get her with Françoise, he would have to appear the peace-maker.
He adopted that role at once, striding almost the entire length of the office to greet her, leading her away from the officialdom of the desk to the informal area where she’d set out her first profile. He patiently went through the drinks and coffee ritual, which she rejected with less patience, and then announced: ‘The profiling discussion yesterday was a mistake.’
‘Yes,’ she said unhelpfully. ‘It was.’
‘I did not wish to convey the impression that Burrows was in any way involved in anything that you’ve done.’
‘But you did.’ Fuck him, she thought. Before she’d left the incident room Rosetti had cautioned against appearing overly annoyed (What’s done is done) but she didn’t see why she had to show respect to someone she didn’t believe deserved it.
‘It was unintentional,’ he said, the unaccustomed humility sticking in his throat.
‘Whites hate blacks, blacks hate whites,’ she paraphrased.
Sanglier looked at her blankly.
‘Your theme,’ she reminded him. ‘Burrows’ too.’
‘The American is the acknowledged world expert on criminal profiling,’ said Sanglier, understanding. In total honesty he went on: ‘I sought his views: it would have been ridiculous for me to let pride - yours, mine, anyone’s - stop me using everything available to solve crimes of this horror and magnitude.
’ The honesty bent. ‘Scott Burrows has not monitored any of your assessments. Points have, of course, come up during discussion between us, made by me. He’s never once opposed or argued against a view you have taken. At a meeting of commissioners this morning I was asked to make absolutely clear to you how much everyone regrets the misunderstanding that occurred yesterday.’
The only thing missing was sackcloth and ashes, decided Claudine. She had intended challenging him about not outlining for the commissioners the justification for an amnesty, after her conversation with Winslow, but it suddenly seemed a pointless inquest. What’s done was done. She felt uncomfortable, oddly embarrassed, not immediately able to think of a suitable response. The only thought that did settle was the decision not yet to reveal to the man what she intended asking Volker to attempt the moment she went back to the incident room. If Sanglier was telling the truth, which sometimes she doubted, it was petulant to hold back until she had something more with which to impress the commissioners: according to Sanglier there wasn’t the need to impress them further, and anyway, although it was her idea, it would need Volker’s expertise to make it work. She would, in fact, be imposing on someone else’s credit, the very offence that had caused her so much anger. Nevertheless, she decided to keep it to herself. At last she said: ‘Thank you for the explanation. And the assurance.’
‘I was afraid it might have influenced your reaction to Francoise last night.’
It hadn’t been the only factor, but it had definitely been a major one. Now she felt embarrassed at the petulance of that, too. ‘I was reluctant to commit myself. Something might come up at a moment’s notice.’ It sounded appallingly weak.
‘It’s hardly likely we wouldn’t understand the reason for a last-minute cancellation, is it?’ Sanglier was openly mocking.
‘I suppose not. It’s extremely kind of both of you.’
‘And after yesterday’s misunderstanding I even think I owe you a dinner.’
‘I take it the invitation is for two?’
Shit, thought Sanglier, imagining another attempted evasion. ‘Of course,’ he said.
Poulard and Siemen had already left for Amsterdam by the time Claudine returned to the incident room, but to her relief Rosetti was still there. On her way to Volker’s station with the most recent files to arrive from the various forces, she asked if she could see him later.
At the computer area, she set out everything there was about the attempts to trace the outlets for the Dutch-manufactured baling wire with which the Celeste five had been tethered: each dossier was preceded by a protest at the impossibility of the task.
She outlined her thoughts to Volker. ‘Britain is an island that’s kept its border controls in place. It’s still a hell of a task but trying to do it backwards might be a short cut.’
‘It might indeed,’ agreed the German.
‘Could you do it without being detected?’ At the pained look the German gave her, she said ‘Sorry’ and turned away to where Rosetti sat, waiting.
Claudine closed the door behind her, although the room outside was empty apart from Volker, whose concentration was elsewhere, and Yvette, at the far end. Rosetti listened, frowning, as she recounted the reception encounter and Sanglier’s persistent dinner invitation.
‘You sure about her?’ he asked.
‘I’m not interested in finding out.’ Half smiling, she said: ‘So I’m asking for help again.’
Rosetti didn’t smile back. ‘All right,’ he agreed.
The doubt was very obvious in his voice. ‘If it’s inconvenient …’ she said, letting the sentence trail.
‘I’ll escort you,’ he said.
‘That sounds very formal.’
‘That’s how I want it to be,’ he said.
‘Am I being told something?’
‘That I can’t let it become anything else, even if I wanted it to.’
Claudine was numbed, half-formed emotions colliding at the rejection. She wasn’t sure if it was embarrassment or humiliation: perhaps embarrassment at the humiliation. Even if I wanted it to. What did he mean? That he would have liked their relationship to go further but was prevented from letting it happen because of his permanently damaged wife? Or that he wasn’t interested? It didn’t matter. He’d rebuffed her and now she felt a fool. With difficulty she said: ‘Thank you.’
‘I’m not sure you’ve anything to thank me for.’
Neither was Claudine. ‘You’re going to come with me. Which is what I asked you to do.’ But she wanted much more.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Claudine sought labels and couldn’t find the right one. There was outrage and offence and bewilderment and then - know thyself - she abandoned the pretence. She wasn’t at all outraged or offended or bewildered by what Hugo Rosetti had said. Wrong. There was a little of each of those reactions at what he’d said: the refusal. But not at what that refusal meant.
The labels better attached to herself than to Hugo. To be hung around her neck like an accusation. Shouldn’t there be bewildered, offended outrage - still at herself - that she could be excited by an emotion she shouldn’t feel just seven months after finding her husband dead? Of course there should. But there wasn’t. Shame perhaps, although not enough. Embarrassment, although again not for the right reasons: because he’d blurted the words out in his glassed cubicle, making her glance startled towards the incident room as if the two people there might have heard, which of course they hadn’t, leaving her to seem stupid in front of him. Which she’d never wanted to seem. Or to be.
She had hurried from the tiny office but then not known what to do in the larger room, staring unseeingly at the electronic hat out of which Volker was trying to pull a cyberspace rabbit before starting a conversation about the detectives’ Amsterdam trip with Yvette of which she now couldn’t remember a single word.
All she could recall with any clarity was Hugo’s quiet-voiced promise - too quiet, she was sure, for even Yvette to hear - to collect her that night as arranged.
She had difficulty even in concentrating upon that: certainly upon what to wear and what sort of evening it was going to be with Henri and Françoise Sanglier. She chose black, for the first time conscious that it was the predominant colour in her wardrobe, unadorned with any costume jewellery. Apart from diamond earstuds, she wore only her wedding ring.
Her entry bell sounded precisely on time and she announced she was coming down at once, which she did because she’d been standing in the vestibule, waiting. Rosetti was wearing black too, with only a faint stripe in the suit, and Claudine decided they looked very funereal. Rosetti even seemed to drive more slowly than usual and as the Italian picked up the Delft road Claudine realized she was unconsciously aping his habit of twisting her wedding ring around her finger. It symbolized, she supposed, the barrier behind which each was held. She was relieved she was still breathing easily.
The Polish breakthrough was their neutral ground. When Claudine admitted not having seen or heard any newscasts - she’ d been too disorientated - Rosetti recounted the television appearance of the Warsaw police chief, whose insistence on close cooperation with the Dutch and Belgian forces had been confirmed by a television appearance by the head of the Amsterdam vice squad. Poulard and Siemen had appeared with the latter, who had publicly acknowledged Europol.
‘So Sanglier should be very happy,’ said Claudine.
The French commissioner certainly appeared so when they arrived, the hesitation when he realized who Claudine’s escort was only momentary. The Sanglier home was what the French called a manoir, a solid three-storey country house cresting a hill from which Claudine guessed the original squire could survey in every direction all the land he owned. She wondered how much now belonged to Sanglier. Dark and presumably old wood panelling dominated the interior, particularly in the expansive entrance hall where Sanglier greeted them. It was not, however, what attracted Claudine’s immediate attention. That was caught, as was obviously the intention, by the large, spo
tlight-illuminated photograph of Sanglier senior standing stiffly to attention to receive the Legion d’Honneur from Charles de Gaulle. It was flanked by two smaller photographs of the man at other ceremonies with the late French president.
Only Sanglier greeted them in the hall. Françoise was statuesquely waiting in the drawing room, the vermilion of the ankle-length gown shimmering into lighter and darker hues in the folds in which it fell from her shoulders. Claudine guessed it was Versace again. The short, side-parted hair shone where gel kept it immaculately in place: the pale, matt make-up heightened its blackness. Like Claudine, Francoise had been sparing with her jewellery, with just a three-strand gold choker at her throat. There was no wedding ring. The red paper of the cocktail cigarette in a black malacca holder came close to matching the colour of the dress and Claudine acknowledged the entire, brilliant effect was very belle époque. Or was it art deco? Whatever the correct definition, she liked it, staged and obvious though it all was.
The handshake was overlong and caressing, as it had been at the reception. The contact with Rosetti was far quicker, although the interest grew when he was identified as the pathologist involved in the investigation. From her attitude and the way Françoise treated her Claudine decided the obediently eye-lowered uniformed girl offering drinks was a house servant, not someone brought in specially for the evening. When Claudine took mineral water Françoise, who was drinking the same, said: ‘I remembered, from the reception. I wonder how many other preferences we share.’
‘That was considerate,’ said Claudine, ignoring the heavy double entendre.
Rosetti and Sanglier chose Scotch. Attentive to everything - still unsure why she was there - Claudine was aware that Rosetti was according the other man the politeness befitting his seniority but stopping far short of Poulard or Siemen’s obsequiousness. She noticed, too, how positively a divide had been immediately created, Sanglier guiding the Italian to the far side of the room to another photograph she guessed to be of his father while Françoise remained where they were.
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