The Predators

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘How about some wine?’ suggested Félicité, taking out the already withdrawn but lightly replaced cork.

  ‘Mom doesn’t let me.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever?’

  Mary smiled, guiltily. ‘Once or twice. Bits left over after meals at the weekends.’

  Félicité poured into both goblets. ‘I’ll let you, because we’re friends.’

  She extended her glass and Mary clinked hers against it. She liked the taste of the wine: like fruit. She felt grown up.

  ‘How is it?’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Would you like more meat?’

  ‘Please.’

  Félicité helped her to more and when Mary finished the second helping changed her plate for cheese and fruit. ‘Drink up. There’s a whole bottle for us to finish.’

  ‘Maybe some water.’

  ‘I didn’t bring enough glasses.’

  ‘Where’s the man who usually comes?’

  ‘I’ve come instead. Aren’t you glad?’

  ‘I don’t want you to hit me.’ She felt funny. Not ill or sick, as if she’d been poisoned, but dizzy, things going in circles inside her head.

  ‘I promise I won’t hit you.’ Félicité offered her glass again and when Mary responded said: ‘Cheers. This is nice, isn’t it: just the two of us together?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘More than suppose,’ encouraged Félicité.

  ‘It’s nice. Is there going to be someone for me to play with?’

  ‘I’m sorry. The girl couldn’t come, after all.’

  ‘You promised!’ Mary’s face felt numb.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Félicité reached out and took Mary’s hand.

  It was too much trouble – felt too heavy – for Mary to move it. ‘You broke a promise.’

  ‘There’ll be boys and girls soon.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Very soon.’ Félicité shared the remainder of the wine between them, pouring more for Mary than for herself.

  ‘Have you spoken to my father?’ Mary felt sleepy, as well as dizzy.

  ‘We’re making plans.’

  ‘Honest?’

  ‘Honest.’

  ‘Please let me go.’ It was very hard, not to cry.

  ‘You haven’t showered for two days.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It was very hot today.’

  ‘Not down here.’

  ‘I should shower, too. Shall we shower together?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’re both girls, aren’t we?’

  ‘You’re grown up.’

  ‘So are you, drinking wine.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Then it’s all right, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I’ve seen you with no clothes on.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You don’t mind seeing me with no clothes on, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever bathed with mama?’

  ‘Not since I got big.’

  ‘Why don’t we try?’

  ‘You won’t hit me? Make me jump for the towel?’

  ‘No, I promise,’ said Félicité, her voice thicker now.

  ‘You broke your other promise.’

  ‘I won’t break this one.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Let me help you,’ offered Félicité.

  Neither Henri Cool nor Gaston Mehre had seen the television appeal. Both had listened horrified, Cool open-mouthed, to Smet’s repeated and much more detailed account after Félicité left.

  ‘Was I recognizable?’ demanded the schoolteacher.

  ‘I think so,’ said Smet. ‘She said not: that it was because I knew it was the two of you.’

  ‘What am I going to do!’

  ‘Decide for yourself,’ said Smet. ‘They’ll be shown tonight on the late news programmes. And in the papers tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, dear God!’ moaned the man, hurrying to the drinks tray.

  Charles Mehre came back into the room, standing uncertainly by the door. He said: ‘He’s downstairs. I covered him up.’ The other men said nothing and Charles went back to the chair in which he had sat earlier.

  ‘It’s a mess,’ complained Gaston. ‘Everything’s a total mess. And getting worse. And there’s no way we can get out.’

  Smet was still looking at Charles. He said: ‘Félicité’s right about the whore. There won’t be a big investigation into his disappearance: even into his killing, when the body is found.’

  Cool returned with a refilled whisky glass, his hand shaking. ‘That’s not our problem.’

  ‘I know,’ said Smet, coming back to the two men. ‘It’s the girl, and she’s only a problem as long as she’s alive. Dead – cleaned against any forensic examination and properly disposed of – there’d be nothing to link her to us.’

  Neither Cool nor Gaston spoke immediately.

  Cool said: ‘You’re right. It’s what I wanted from the start.’

  Gaston said: ‘Who?’

  Smet looked back to the man’s hunched brother. ‘Would he, if you told him to?’

  ‘She’d be furious,’ said the antique dealer.

  ‘What’s worse, our being caught or Félicité bloody Galan being angry over something it would be too late for her to do anything about?’

  ‘We should talk about it with the others first,’ said Gaston.

  ‘Why?’ asked Cool. ‘Let’s get the whole damned thing over and done with.’

  ‘We’re a group. We rely on each other: protect each other,’ said Gaston. ‘They should all agree.’

  ‘You’re trying to avoid it,’ accused Cool.

  ‘You do it yourself then!’ demanded Gaston at once, seeing his escape. ‘I agree we have to get rid of her! But don’t use Charles. Or me, to make him do it. Kill her yourselves. Dispose of her yourselves, the way I’ve got to dispose of Stefan.’

  There was another long silence. ‘Let’s talk to the others,’ agreed Smet finally.

  ‘They won’t do it either,’ Gaston said. ‘Not themselves. It’s always been Charles.’

  ‘Someone’s got to,’ insisted Cool.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Charles from his corner.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Gaston. ‘Don’t get upset: I’ll look after you.’

  For the first time since they’d arrived in Brussels Kurt Volker ate with them – at the Comme Chez Soi on the Place Rouppe, another first – and proved to be an unusual dinner companion. He dominated the conversation with cyberspace through-the-keyhole anecdotes of peccadillos, foibles and downright carelessnesses of the rich and unrich, famous and infamous, ordinary and extraordinary. Mostly with the people he spoke about, it was extraordinary.

  When Blake said so, actually using the word, Volker said: ‘Who’s to judge extraordinary?’ and Claudine, impressed, said: ‘He’s right. Psychologically – mentally – there are no criteria for ordinary. So no one can be extraordinary, can they?’

  ‘What about the people we’re investigating?’ said Blake. ‘Aren’t they extraordinary?’

  ‘The point is that paedophiles convince themselves – actually believe – that they are ordinary. That it’s normal to have sex with children. And if I forget for a moment that we’re hunting people who think their sexual preferences are perfectly natural, we’re going to lose Mary.’

  ‘What if you get to them?’ demanded Blake urgently. ‘What will you be feeling and thinking if you get to negotiate one to one, in some way?’

  Claudine was surprised by the question, disconcerted by it. ‘I’d suspend any personal judgement. Revulsion, contempt, would come through, and I can’t afford that. More importantly, Mary can’t afford that.’

  ‘You’ve never negotiated a kidnap before: certainly not a paedophile kidnap,’ Blake said solemnly. ‘Can you do it?’

  ‘I won’t know until I try,’ Claudine conceded, wishing she hadn’t been confronted by such a direct question. Pe
ter’s attitude had, in fact, confused her from the very start of the evening. He’d appeared tense, unaccustomedly ill at ease, and for want of any other explanation she’d put it down to Volker’s unexpected presence, although that could scarcely be considered an intrusion. Peter, she suddenly thought: she’d obviously called him that, from the beginning, but until now had distanced him in her mind by using his surname. It was an unimportant reflection, she decided: like thinking that Blake’s attitude tonight was any different from what it had been on the previous nights.

  Volker worked hard to restore some lightness with further stories of a marauding cyberspace Robin Hood (‘to benefit the good and defeat the bad’) and Claudine enjoyed the change from the Grande Place restaurant.

  Volker turned out to have a low tolerance but great liking for alcohol and became heavy-eyed, thick-tongued when he retold two of his best stories. Blake had the restaurant order them a car, rather than hail a street taxi. Volker, between them in the back seat, fell almost immediately asleep. Blake sat supporting the man with his arm along the back seat exactly, Claudine realized, as the blond-haired woman had sat enticing Mary into the Mercedes. He stayed like that for most of the time, half facing Claudine. When, on two occasions, she looked pointedly across the car towards him, he turned away to stare through the rear window.

  They both had to help the German to his feet on the Place de Brouckère. It brought Blake and Claudine close together and Blake said quietly: ‘Let me in when I come to your room.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Do it!’

  They ascended without speaking in the open-grilled elevator, the half-asleep German leaning amiably between them. Claudine stared fixedly at Blake, who looked back expressionlessly. Volker’s floor was below hers and as Blake helped the German out she again said: ‘No!’

  Blake ignored her.

  Inside her room Claudine put the dead bolt across the door as well as double locking it. She was confused. Offended, too. She wouldn’t let him in. What right did he think he had – what right did any of the bastards at Europol have – to think every woman was going to roll over on her back and open her legs, grateful to be fucked! Disappointment joined her other feelings. Peter – Blake, she corrected herself at once – was attractive: considerate, attentive, fun to be with. In other circumstances – a lot of other circumstances, chief of which had to be the exclusion of Hugo – she might have been drawn to the man. But not like this: not with the slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am cowboy approach.

  The knock was soft. She ignored it. The next time was louder and when she still didn’t respond he said: ‘Claudine, don’t say anything. Just let me in.’

  ‘I don’t—’ she started but he repeated: ‘Don’t say anything.’

  The urgency wasn’t sexual, she realized at once. She didn’t know what it was – didn’t know what was happening – but she was abruptly sure she’d misunderstood everything so far. She unbolted the door and tentatively opened it.

  Blake was standing anxiously on the threshold. Loudly – too loudly – he said as he hurried in: ‘I’m sorry. I had to put him to bed: he’s completely gone,’ and made exaggerated rolling motions with his hands to indicate that she should respond. He went straight past her, to the bottom of the bed, orientating himself to the room.

  Bewildered but obeying, Claudine said: ‘Will he be all right?’

  ‘He’ll probably feel like shit in the morning.’ Blake revolved both hands again, telling her to keep talking, nodding as well.

  Claudine nodded back, comprehending at last. An absurd charade unfolded in which Claudine remained by the door, discussing the evening – apologizing even for not having anything to drink – while Blake swept the room, keeping up the empty conversation with her as he did so. She’d never seen it done before and occasionally faltered in what she was saying, distracted by his obvious expertise. He came back to where she remained standing to unscrew the light switch just inside the door. From there he moved on to every light fitting and socket and every electrical plug and connection, using a handkerchief pad to remove hot bulbs.

  The bedside telephone was clean but there was a listening device in the extension phone on a table, in front of the curtained window. It was so minute, little more than a pinhead fitting snugly into one of the tiny diaphragm holes, that she had difficulty seeing it when he pointed it out to her and wouldn’t have suspected it even if she’d unscrewed the instrument herself.

  Blake reassembled the telephone without removing the bug, moving some way away before saying: ‘As you haven’t got any booze here I guess we’ll have to go back to the bar.’

  ‘OK,’ Claudine accepted at once.

  At that moment the telephone rang.

  ‘I left messages,’ said Hugo Rosetti accusingly.

  ‘It was too late to return them when I got back.’

  ‘What about today? Tonight?’

  ‘There are a lot of problems we didn’t expect.’ Go away! she thought, hating herself for thinking it.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about them on the telephone.’ She was being listened to. She didn’t know by whom or why but everything they were saying – Hugo as well as herself – was being overheard. And Blake was in the room, as well, although he’d started searching again, disappearing into the bathroom.

  ‘What’s so mysterious?’

  ‘It’s far more difficult than we thought it was going to be: problems with the Americans.’

  ‘I thought you allowed for that.’

  ‘Not enough.’

  ‘What are you going to do about it?’

  Blake appeared at the bathroom door, pointing with a jabbing finger at what she guessed to be the switch just inside the door.

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘The Americans send a negotiator?’

  ‘He’s the problem.’

  Blake sat down on a chair by the door, stretching his legs in front of him.

  ‘Can you handle it?’

  ‘I’m going to have to.’

  ‘I’m missing you,’ said Rosetti.

  ‘I’m missing you, too,’ she made herself say, face burning. There was no reason for her to be embarrassed, not in front of Blake. This was awful: terrible.

  ‘It hardly sounds like it.’

  ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘It’s eleven o’clock at night!’

  ‘Something’s come up.’

  From his chair Blake made warding-off gestures.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Something I’ve got to talk about with someone.’

  ‘Blake?’

  Oh God! ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is he a problem?’

  ‘Of course not! That’s a silly question.’ Why had she said that!

  ‘Sorry!’ He stretched the word, to show he was offended.

  ‘You’re misunderstanding.’

  ‘It’s difficult not to.’

  ‘I said I didn’t want to talk on the telephone!’

  ‘I love you,’ said Rosetti.

  ‘I’ll call you back tomorrow. Say around seven.’

  ‘I said I loved you.’

  ‘I’ll explain later.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing! I really do have to go.’

  ‘I thought I’d come down this weekend.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to Rome?’

  ‘Would it be inconvenient for me to come down? Apart from anything that might come up with the case, I mean.’

  ‘Of course not. I’d like you to come down. Let’s talk about it tomorrow. Goodnight.’ Claudine hurriedly replaced the receiver but remained standing by it.

  Blake grinned and said: ‘How about that drink?’

  Claudine’s hands were shaking, from anger not fear, rippling the brandy in her glass, which she held in both hands. She’d sat where he directed, at a table some way from the bar and other late night drinkers. She at once recalled the bizarre conversation about carrying a gun when he identified
the night he’d detected the surveillance at La Maison du Cygne and said: ‘You thought it was on you!’

  He nodded. ‘Had it been we probably wouldn’t have got back across the square, either of us. It was the fact that we did that made me doubt I was the target in the first place, even before I found my room was clean.’

  He’d kept himself curiously apart from her, she remembered. ‘Norris?’

  ‘Obviously. It’s not the people who’d like to find me and it’ll hardly be the people holding Mary, will it? Norris will never admit responsibility, though. No one will.’

  ‘The paranoid bastard!’ she said, fresh anger surging through her. ‘How long’s it been there?’

  He shrugged. ‘Sometime during that day, I expect. That was when you positively faced him down.’

  Claudine forced herself to be calm, frowning. ‘I haven’t used the phone much: certainly haven’t talked about anything the Americans don’t know about.’

  ‘They’re open transmitters, in both the telephone and the bathroom light switch.’

  ‘You mean they’re live all the time: relaying everything that happens, not just the telephone calls?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t want to stay in that room any more.’

  He smiled again, trying to relax her. ‘There’s mine but I’m not going to risk the rebuff. You know you’re being listened to now. Use it to our benefit.’

  ‘You think Harding knows?’

  ‘I’m not sure. He came a long way towards us with his concern about Norris. I think if he had, he might have said something.’

  ‘It’s so fucking stupid! So pointless!’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know, but I suppose it makes sense to pretend we’re unaware.’ She looked directly at him. ‘There were a lot of times tonight when you could have told me what you thought there was in my room. Why all the drama?’

  ‘I might have been wrong. Then I would have looked foolish.’

  ‘You still made it into a drama. And you must have been sure.’

  He grinned. ‘I wanted to see if you’d let me in.’

  ‘Bastard!’

  ‘But not a paranoid one.’