Mind/Reader

by Brian Freemantle

  Burrows sat but hitched a leg over the arm of the chair in what to Claudine looked an awkward position. ‘I know. I just want to talk it through with someone who knows the business.’

  ‘Pickering doesn’t fit a mould,’ judged Claudine. ‘He doesn’t need familiar territory, in which he feels comfortable, like most serial killers.’

  Burrows nodded at her recognition of the most salient factor. ‘So that means he could come?’

  ‘Could. But not that he will. I think, though, we’ve got to take seriously the family history. According to the background material he was brought to Europe as a kid. And I don’t have any doubt about the fixation. It could be wish fulfilment to have scored your name alongside the print references to American participation here, but you’re certainly a target.’

  ‘So he wouldn’t expect me to be back in America?’

  Claudine had wondered how long it would take to emerge. ‘That’s what you’ve decided to do?’

  The overweight American smiled, admiringly, at her understanding. ‘Cheat the bastard if we passed each other going in the opposite directions, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Providing he was going in the opposite direction.’

  ‘I’m not going to run,’ reminded Burrows. ‘If I go anywhere I’m going home, back to America.’

  ‘What sort of protection can the Bureau guarantee?’ He’d already made his mind up, she knew. He simply wanted someone else to confirm it as the right decision.

  ‘As much as they can guarantee anyone anything. We even get presidents blown away, remember.’

  ‘I know it’s Pickering’s too, but you’ll be better - safer - in your own territory, somewhere you know where you can better see things that are out of the normal than you would in a foreign place or city, where everything’s out of the normal because it’s strange to you. If you’ve got to move you should go back, not try to find somewhere different to hide.’

  He smiled broadly, stubbing out the cigar. ‘You sure about that?’

  ‘I told you I couldn’t be positive. I think it’s for the best. But it’s a personal decision I wouldn’t like to make.’

  ‘That’ll do.’

  ‘You told Miriam?’

  ‘Tonight. She’ll want to catch the morning plane.’

  ‘Why don’t we have a drink before you go?’

  ‘Drink? We’re going to have the biggest fucking party this place has ever seen!’

  He turned at Rosetti’s arrival, which coincided with the ringing of her internal telephone. The pathologist had reached her desk by the time Claudine had finished listening to Walter Jones, the media director.

  ‘All the Paris evening newspapers are full of the father responding to the amnesty appeal,’ she told them dully, as she replaced the receiver. ‘There’s pictures of us getting into the car to identify the warehouse. And one of me by myself, apparently. The Neuilly police commander set the whole fucking thing up to get his fifteen minutes of fame!’

  ‘Bastard,’ said Burrows.

  Momentarily Rosetti looked between Claudine and the American. Then he said: ‘There’s been another killing. A young girl. They’ve only found the head and the arms, so far. But they’re all in Paris.’

  Claudine pressed her eyes tightly shut, wishing the bad things would go away. ‘This body won’t be widely distributed. Her name’s Ratri.’

  In his seventh-floor suite above, Sanglier was staring down at the advice from the Paris archivist that Claudine Carter had accessed his father’s wartime records.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  It was Ratri.

  Before Claudine, Rosetti and Rene Poulard arrived in Paris the torso had been found, discarded by the side of the Seine, where the horrors had begun but far upstream from the bateau mouche terminal, close to the Austerlitz bridge. It had not been removed and they needed the police escort that ferried them from the airport to force their way through the media frenzy, which was far greater than it had been in Rome. Claudine was instantly recognized from the earlier newspaper pictures and literally blinded by the explosion of television and camera lights. Her name became a chant from photographers trying to attract her direct attention and the shouted questions blurred into an inaudible cacophony.

  ‘This is absurd. Bloody ridiculous,’ complained Claudine, after they’d shouldered their way through the cordon,

  ‘It’s something we’ve got to become used to,’ said Poulard, not trying to shield himself from the attention.

  ‘I don’t want to become used to it.’ She acknowledged that she was using the murder as a focus for a lot of unconnected anger and depression, which was professionally wrong as well as being pointless, but for the moment she didn’t give a damn, needing something, anything.

  The Neuilly police commanders were with officers from the local arrondissement. In the very centre of the group Claudine recognized the Paris police commissioner, Jean Sampire. Both Neuilly officers smiled at their arrival, particularly towards Claudine. She ignored them, going straight to the examination tent. It was larger than the one in Rome, giving more room for her and Rosetti to work inside with the French pathologist. The weather was cooler, too, so it was less uncomfortable in their forensically protective clothing, but she was in the second day of her period and the cramp was as bad as it had been in Italy.

  Poulard came no further than the canopy entrance, looking in briefly before announcing that he was going to join the waiting policemen. Claudine ignored him, too.

  The naked body lay where it had been tossed, on the very edge of the Quai de la Rapée. Only one leg was missing. It had obviously been dumped from a passing vehicle and before they entered the tent Claudine had seen a forensic team going over the area just inside the cordon for tyre and vehicle traces. She doubted the search would produce anything but thought the effort was better than it had been in Italy.

  The ankle on the remaining leg was banded with a thick bruise and the foot was slightly at an angle, where it had broken. Rosetti said: ‘An agony fracture. They tied her down but kept her alive when they started.’

  There was a lot of vaginal mutilation, although the girl’s stomach was not marked with the two downward cuts from cold store meat hooks and Rosetti didn’t think they’d find any ice residue in the blood. The only stiffness in the body was the dissipating rigor. He said: ‘There’s no residual temperature, but considering the state of the rigor I’d say a day and a half. Two days, maybe.’

  ‘It will be two days,’ said Claudine, calculating not from the newspaper and television sensation but from the warehouse raid that would have preceded it by several hours. Probably, even, while she had still been at the Indian embassy. She said: ‘I want a lot of vaginal swabs, for DNA traces.’

  ‘You’re not coming to the autopsy yourself?’

  ‘I don’t need to. Not this time.’

  Knowing why she wanted the tests Rosetti said: ‘The semen could be from clients.’

  ‘I still want it done. They’d have amused themselves.’ She was silent for several moments. ‘She was twelve years old. Her father asked me to help him get her back.’

  Rosetti frowned up from his examination. ‘You’re letting yourself become personally involved.’

  ‘How the hell can I avoid it?’

  The French pathologist turned away from the body, too, but said nothing.

  ‘The Chinese already had her,’ said Rosetti. ‘How could you have got her back?’

  He was right but Claudine refused to admit it. ‘It might have been possible, without all the publicity. Someone might have talked; told us where she was.’

  ‘Let it go, Claudine. There’s nothing you could have done to have prevented this. You didn’t cheat anyone or fail anyone.’

  As she had in Rome Claudine put the canopy between herself and the cameras when she emerged, ahead of Rosetti. The police group saw her come out and moved en masse to where she stood, stripping off the outer protective garments.

  ‘What have you found?’ demanded L
eclerc.

  ‘The body of a twelve-year-old child who’s been raped, murdered and dismembered,’ said Claudine flatly.

  The man’s smile faltered. ‘I meant something that we weren’t already aware of.’

  ‘I know what you meant. Your own pathologist is making an examination and will be at the autopsy. Ask him.’ She turned away to pack the overalls.

  Behind her Poulard said: ‘This is a joint investigation and I am Europol’s police representative upon it. I want to be told now of anything you’ve learned from that examination that will take this inquiry forward and help us when we meet the press.’

  Claudine wheeled furiously towards the group. ‘Help me for a moment! What is more important to all of you? Is it solving a series of horrific crimes? Or is it getting your photographs in newspapers and on television? That’s something I really would like to know!’ She found herself confronting a tableau of fixed-faced men. The Paris police commissioner was extremely red and a vein pumped in his forehead.

  Leclerc said: ‘It was our intention to ask you to take part in the conference.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ said Claudine. ‘I’d like to explain in detail how much I regret being tricked by senior police officers into being photographed and named, turning a potentially important break into nothing more than a publicity stunt. And how I think that the life of a child I’ve just seen inside that tent, headless and slit apart, might just have been saved if instead of seeking headlines the police of this city had worried more about arresting everyone at premises that were identified to them: people who could have led to the arrest of the killers of another five kids.’

  ‘This is outrageous!’ protested Sampire.

  ‘It is the truth,’ said Claudine. ‘And you should be ashamed of it.’ She knew she’d gone too far: lost control, discarded political correctness and committed the most cardinal error of all, against which Rosetti had only minutes before warned her: become personally affected by a professional situation. All the time she was conscious of the unreal brightness in which they stood, the glare of the lights and flashes of a media circus totally unaware of the confrontation unfolding in front of them. Claudine judged the whiteness appropriate for the suspended-in-ice way they were all standing.

  Rosetti, who’d heard everything, broke the impasse. He emerged from the tent ahead of the French pathologist and announced: ‘The murder is unquestionably linked to the previous ones in France. We’ll need to conduct an autopsy but we think she bled to death from her injuries, which were similar to all the others …’ He hesitated but did not actually look at Claudine when he said: ‘The fact that the recovery of the body is concentrated in Paris and not throughout the country as in the other cases indicates that the killers were panicked.’

  For the benefit of the Paris police chief, before he hurried with his entourage out of hearing, Poulard said to Claudine: ‘Commissioner Sanglier will hear of this.’

  ‘I intend that he should,’ retorted Claudine. ‘And I’m going to be the one to tell him.’ More loudly and more generally she said: ‘I take it I’m not required at the press conference?’

  No one bothered to reply or even turn.

  ‘That was totally stupid!’ said Rosetti.

  ‘I know,’ said Claudine.

  ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘I lost my temper.’

  ‘That isn’t a good enough reason: excuse even.’

  ‘It’s the only one I’ve got.’

  She commandeered the police escort car to take her to Shankar Sergeant and his wife, a frail, white-haired woman whose back, high at her shoulders, was permanently bent with age and a lifetime’s drudgery. They were being held at an immigrant detention centre, which offended Claudine although she accepted it was the most suitable place: they did, at least, have rooms to themselves and were not being kept in the usual dormitories, although the institutionalized smell of ineffective disinfectant, bad cooking and urine permeated everywhere.

  The couple were beyond grief, people to whom nothing worse could ever happen. Shankar only just managed the hand-linked peace greeting. His wife remained hunched in her chair, blank-eyed.

  ‘I am so very, very sorry.’

  ‘There was nothing you could have done. She can’t be hurt any more, can she? Neither of them can.’

  ‘I’ve seen Mr Singh, at the embassy.’

  ‘He’s been here.’

  ‘Nothing can stop your being allowed to stay.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter any more.’

  ‘We’ll get them, the people who killed Indira and Ratri.’

  ‘No,’ said the man, not rudely or angrily but as a quiet-voiced statement of fact. ‘People like them aren’t caught. They are too important. They can do what they like.’

  ‘No, they’re not. And they can’t,’ insisted Claudine, in a denial of her own. ‘I promise you we will get them. They’ll be punished.’

  He wasn’t interested in arguing. ‘You were kind to come. And thank you, for arranging things with Mr Singh.’

  ‘He’ll tell me if there’s a problem. But there won’t be.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is there anything else I can do?’

  ‘No.’ As an afterthought he added: ‘Thank you.’

  He stood again when Claudine left, his hands held before him as Indira’s had been found: found, Claudine thought, in the cathedral, in Lyon where her mother was dying.

  Rosetti had completed the autopsy by the time Claudine reached the police mortuary. The only significant discovery was three separate DNA strings in the semen deposits, which Rosetti again warned need not necessarily have come from the child’s killers.

  ‘You going to apologize to Sampire and Leclerc?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You should.’

  ‘Why? It’s true.’

  ‘Not completely. The Chinese would have known the moment the warehouse was raided. It would have been a miracle if the French had got a lead to where she was before she was killed.’

  ‘Without the newspaper photographs they might not have known so quickly who’d led the police to the warehouse,’ argued Claudine, though without much conviction. ‘There might have been a chance.’

  Because she was now recognized Claudine wasn’t able to go into the room where the press conference was held. She watched instead on a closed-circuit television monitor in another part of the police building. Poulard was on the dais but wasn’t included in the speakers until someone asked why Dr Carter was not taking part. Poulard replied dismissively that she was engaged in other inquiries: he couldn’t say what they were. Sampire declared the detention of fifteen Chinese, three Bangladeshi and five Indian illegal immigrants in the warehouse raid. That number went up to seventy when all their dependants, who had also been detained, were added. Five legally resident Chinese on the warehouse premises at the time of the raid were being questioned about the illegal immigrants, as well as about the murder of two Indian girls, Indira and Ratri Sergeant, whose father had led police to the unregistered Asian workshop off the rue Gide. Under the terms of the agreed amnesty, he and his wife were being allowed to remain in the country.

  As Claudine visibly relaxed Rosetti, beside her, said: ‘That’s one of your concerns resolved.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Claudine, unconvinced.

  ‘Don’t you trust anyone or anything?’

  ‘I’m learning not to.’

  ‘Thanks!’

  ‘With exceptions,’ Claudine added heavily.

  ‘Thanks again!’ The man began to move and for a moment Claudine thought he was about to feel out for her hand. Abruptly Rosetti halted the gesture, half formed.

  When Poulard joined them minutes later the Frenchman said: ‘Have you spoken to Sanglier?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I thought he should be warned.’

  ‘I knew you would,’ grimaced Claudine. ‘That’s why I didn’t bother.’ Then she said: ‘Tell Leclerc to do DNA tests on the Chinese running the war
ehouse. Three different men have been with Ratri.’

  It was time for yet another re-evaluation, which Sanglier didn’t at first want to make because it involved re-examination of all the personal failures and there’d been too many of those. At least professionally he was still at the pinnacle, which was the most important consideration. And briefly after the London episode he had imagined his fears of Claudine Carter groundless, a combination of the coincidence of her appointment - which had, after all, been his first assessment - and the visit from London of Peter Toomey.

  But why had she studied his father’s official archive when she was supposed to have been in Paris responding to the amnesty offer in the Celeste inquiry?

  It put him back virtually where he’d started and as uncertain as when he’d started. So there had to be a new approach. No more false starts and too easily reached misunderstandings this time. No positive moves against her at all, in fact. Frustrating though it would be to do nothing but wait that was precisely what he intended to do. Wait and watch but not try to anticipate because all the mistakes had occurred because he’d too quickly tried to anticipate.

  The Celeste investigation with which he was now so publicly linked and upon which so much depended in the future was far more important. Until its conclusion it had to have his total attention. That was why he hadn’t presented more positively at that afternoon’s Commission meeting Poulard’s breathless complaint from Paris, contenting himself with using it as an argument against adopting Winslow’s vote of confidence in the woman.

  Although she’d clearly ignored behavioural and operational instructions - and could be censured for it whenever he chose - her criticism had been justified. So he’d been wise to remain in The Hague and not go to Paris as well, which he’d been initially tempted to do. He couldn’t be linked to any media accusations if the press started thinking like Claudine Carter.

  An hour later came the report that the severed head of an Asian girl had been found on the memorial statue to Queen Victoria outside Buckingham Palace. It took Sanglier a long time - more than thirty minutes - to assimilate every significance, the most important of which was that everything he’d done in Amsterdam had failed to prevent another Céleste murder. And everyone would know it.