“Can we stop here for a minute, please?”
Delaney said.
Conchi did not look surprised. The driver pulled over onto the scorched grass near the airport perimeter fence and they watched through the wire links as the little send-off ceremony for the bodies proceeded. Like the one Delaney and Smith had watched together some days earlier, this ceremony did not last long before the coffins were unloaded from cars and carried to the waiting aircraft. Grieving relatives embraced. Consular officials in summer suits hovered. A uniformed Thai police guard saluted.
“Three more going home, hundreds and hundreds still to go,” Conchi said.
“Important, important,” the driver said.
“Families want this very much, I know. Thank you for coming from your countries to help us in Thailand.”
“In Bosnia,” Conchi said to Delaney slowly, “after the war, families used to come down to the sites, the mass graves, and watch us as we worked. We had a sort of rope line around the sites and the families would stand there for hours, just watching us dig in the mud and brush dirt off things and put corpses and bones and clothing and wallets and eyeglasses into bags. The women would cry for hours. The men would just stare.”
Delaney had seen his share of mass graves and knew the scene she was describing all too well.
“Everyone wanted to know what happened to the ones they loved,” she said. “Take them home.”
“Everybody, everybody wants this,” the driver said.
Delaney wondered who might possibly have loved the man, the Deutschland man, now proving so hard to identify. He wondered also who might have hated him or feared him enough to now be trying to prevent his identification. Family? Almost certainly not. For families, identification is the goal. A little ceremony, some tears, a grieving process, and the file is closed. For the enemies of this particular man, however, or for those who feared him and what identifying him could mean, the goal, clearly now, was something far different.
At the management centre after their driver dropped them off, Delaney and Conchi were almost bowled over on the steps by a phalanx of BBC people—a sun-burnished reporter, various producers, a cameraman, sound man, script assistant, other hangers on. Braithwaite, in his Metropolitan Police uniform today, was with them. So too were a couple of British embassy types in expensive tropical-weight pastel suits.
The BBC wave poured down the steps toward a small convoy of waiting silver vans. Still getting carte blanche access for their documentary on the heroic efforts of the British DVI teams, and, presumably, the efforts of one Detective Chief Superintendent Adrian Braithwaite, to identify and repatriate all of the British dead.
Braithwaite spotted Delaney and pulled away from the TV crew briefly.
“I’ll need to speak to you, Delaney,” he said.
“When I get a moment.”
“Anytime, Inspector,” Delaney said.
“Chief Superintendent,” Braithwaite said.
“Sorry,” Delaney said.
“Your man Smith has run into some trouble,”
Braithwaite said.
“I know that,” Delaney said.
“I thought you might,” Braithwaite said. “I’ll need to speak to you.”
“Anytime.”
The policeman looked over at Conchi. “And perhaps you too, Miss,” he said.
“This is my place of work,” Conchi said, indicating the building behind them. “I am here every day.”
“I’ve had a word with our press officer, Delaney,” Braithwaite said.
“That’s exactly who I’m looking for right now,” Delaney said.
“Well, she’s in there waiting for you right now. I’ve got to get going but be assured we will speak later. Today, or tomorrow latest,” Braithwaite said. A British consular official rushed up. “Pardon me, Detective Chief Superintendent, but I must ask you to join us in the cars as soon as possible,” she said. “The crew says the light is perfect now for shooting at the mortuary site. Could you join us please?”
“Yes, I’m coming,” Braithwaite said.
“Face away from the sun when they roll tape, Inspector. Don’t squint into the camera,” Delaney said.
Braithwaite said nothing as he hurried away for his fifteen minutes of BBC fame. Conchi laughed and lit a cigarette.
“Chief Superintendent,” she said.
“I know,” Delaney said.
“Crazy, crazy,” Conchi said. “Journalists and police. Cats and dogs.”
Then they watched as a somewhat dishevelled woman moved down the low steps from the entrance of the management centre, calling out as she went. Her accent was distinctly Scandinavian.
“Officer Braithwaite, please, a moment,” Mrs. Stokke called out. “Please, is there any news?”
Braithwaite was climbing into a BBC vehicle, red-faced as usual in the heat.
“Not today, Mrs. Stokke,” he said. “No news for you so far today.”
Ruth Connolly was in what passed for her office. It was a little anteroom off the cavernous hall used for press conferences and media briefings. Her room was littered with folders, newspapers from a number of countries, books, pamphlets, rolled-up posters, yellow Post-It notes, cigarette packs, ashtrays, coffee mugs. On a whiteboard, someone, presumably Connolly herself, had shakily tried to design a planning calendar for the month of March and part of April with a green marker pen. This planning attempt was not going well, from all appearances.
Connolly sat in a battered stenographer’s chair, smoking a Marlboro and fanning herself with a copy of Crime and Justice International magazine. She looked exhausted, or hung over or fed up, or all three. Her Interpol shirt needed a pressing and her tangled thicket of hair needed a good combing out.
“Just the man,” she said when Delaney put his head in the door frame. “Sit. Good dog.”
Delaney sat.
“Well, where shall we begin, Delaney? Maybe with your friend Braithwaite? Or your friend Jonah Smith? You seem to make friends everywhere you go.”
“I saw Mr. Braithwaite briefly on the way in,” Delaney said. “He was rushing out with friends of his own from the BBC.”
“And you are still ambulatory. That’s police talk. As in, he didn’t break your legs and/or shoot you in the kneecaps.”
“Not in front of a BBC TV crew. And I don’t see why he is so upset anyway.”
“Please. Please.”
“Tell me.”
“Smith. File. Hassle. Bashing. Injury. Hospital. Bad,” Connolly said. “Just off the top of my head.”
“Ah,” Delaney said.
“Ah,” Connolly said.
“Smith got beaten up outside a bar in a dark part of Phuket Town, Ruth. Tourists are regularly beaten up in places like that. Right? This would be how you see it, right?”
“He’s not a tourist, he’s a fucking Interpol man,” Connolly said. “He’s not supposed to get beaten up outside a dumpy bar in Thailand. The Secretary-General was on the phone from Lyon with Braithwaite this morning, asking all sorts of questions. And now Smith’s damn wife is coming out from London. She is said to be a harridan of the worst sort, that’s what I’m hearing, and she doesn’t like cops, or even her own husband, apparently. That’s the scuttlebutt around here. And guess who Braithwaite has assigned to shepherd Mrs. Smith around . . .”
“I’m more interested in who you think gave Smith his beating,” Delaney asked. “Who do you think it was?”
“Ah, very good. A trick question. You almost had me blurting out my theories. What a good journo you are, Frank.”
“Seriously.”
“Seriously? Off the record? Way off?”
“OK.”
“I think Smith has pissed someone off with his incessant questions about that missing file, or alleged missing file. I have no doubt he has told you all about his crackpot
theories about that. Braithwaite has no doubt about this either. So Smith has asked so many questions and hassled so many teams and Braithwaite himself about this that someone has arranged to give him a little beating.”
“Police, you mean.”
“Come off it, Delaney. You think cops don’t punch each other out sometimes? After a dozen beers? We’re forever thumping bad guys in the cellar of the station house, even while stone cold sober.”
“They were Thais who beat him up.”
“Don’t be naïve, Delaney.”
“Why would a few questions about a missing file upset anybody so much?”
“Because Smith is more or less accusing other people, openly, of being incompetent or up to something strange or God knows what. He’s making people look bad, Delaney. Police do not like that. Police definitely do not want to be made to look bad.”
“Especially German police?”
“You’re good, Delaney. You’re very good. My, you almost had me there.”
“But what if Smith is actually onto something?”
“Like what?”
“A file goes missing because someone doesn’t want a particular body identified.”
“Oh, I see. Does that really make sense to you, Delaney? Really? In a place like this, after a disaster like this?”
“What do you think, really?”
“Off the record?”
“Yes.”
“I think some lazy, tired out, distracted, heatstroked cop has lost the damn thing, or misplaced it somewhere. Or some Thai clerk has lost it. Or a cleaner has thrown it away. Or one of the super-sized Thai cockroaches has carried it off for his lunch.”
“I see.”
“Why would anybody want to steal a file like that anyway? Be serious. Why would anybody want to prevent us from identifying a body over here?”
“Why indeed?” Delaney said. “That’s what Smith is asking.”
“And now Delaney of the Geographic is asking too.”
“Yes.”
“For your magazine piece.”
“Possibly.”
“When I was a girl, International Geographic just did nice picture stories about rivers and rainforests and young black African girls with bare tits,” Connolly said, lighting another cigarette off her previous one.
“That’s still the magazine’s bread and butter.
Pretty much.”
“Braithwaite will have your ass in a sling if you go with that angle anywhere in your piece, Delaney. And my ass. And Smith’s.”
“I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this angle, Ruth. Maybe nothing.”
“Excellent idea.”
“But if I do go with it, I’ll need something on the record from your side. You. Or Braithwaite.”
“Braithwaite is not going to tell you anything except to warn you to pull your head in. I’m not going to tell you anything on the record, except that, let’s see, the international DVI teams have received the utmost cooperation from the Thai authorities in setting up a highly efficient forensic identification operation here, under very difficult conditions. We are all working steadily toward our common goal, which is the rapid identification and repatriation of all victims. Et cetera, et cetera. Blah, blah, blah, blah.”
“Thank you, Officer Connolly. That’s Connolly with two N’s and two L’s?” “Yes. Ruth with an R.”
“I would very much like to put a few new questions to Braithwaite about all this. Seriously I would.”
“You can’t be serious. You’re joking, of course. You think Braithwaite will answer any of your questions, on any subject.”
“Can you try to set something up for me, just to see?”
“How long do we have to have you around here, Delaney? Can’t you just finish your piece fast and piss off home?”
“I’ve still got bits and pieces left to gather,”
Delaney said.
“Well, do me a favour, OK?” Connolly said. “Will you please interview one of the DNA guys for me before you go? Get those people off my back? They’re upset that reporters are not interviewing them as much as the fingerprint guys and you know what they’re like. Or do you? Perhaps you, like Smith and his crowd, are lost in the fingerprint era. Nowadays, in case you’ve missed it, it’s always DNA this and DNA that and the DNA guys are sniping at the fingerprint guys day and night. Fingerprints not reliable anymore, comparison errors, examiner error, mistaken identifications. Or so the DNA boys say. I have someone good lined up for you already, from the DNA team. They want him to tell people how good they all are at what they do.”
“All right, Ruth. That’s actually one of the things I still need.”
“It’s a Canadian officer. RCMP. One of yours. He’s very good, apparently. Young guy, terribly earnest, doesn’t appear to have ever needed to shave. What is it with you Canadians anyway? Don’t you ever get weathered and wrinkled?”
“It’s the fresh air.”
“Can you get his picture taken too? Even if it doesn’t run in the mag? That will get his team off my back for a while.”
“OK.”
“And can you use that cute young Tim Bishop guy for your shooter? I will personally escort that particular young photographer anywhere. As in up to my room. He’s a spunk, as we used to say at the Dublin convent school for wayward girls.”
“Not your type, Ruth. Tim doesn’t drink or smoke. He’s vegetarian. Goes to bed early. Works out in the hotel gym.”
“Disgusting. I shall bring him down into the gutter in no time at all. I have been flirting with him since the day you guys arrived in this tropical paradise.”
“I thought you were flirting with me, Ruth, on the day I met you anyway. Am I wrong on this?” “I thought it was the other way around.”
“Ah.”
“You look married, anyway, Frank. To my practised eye.”
“Do I?”
“Yes, you do.”
Delaney thought for a moment of Kate Hunter, and Natalia. For some reason, the image of Natalia lying dead in the snow in the Quebec woods suddenly flashed up as well. He had not thought of Natalia for a long time. And certainly not of that particular winter’s day, so long ago now. Connolly watched him with great interest. “Something I said?” she asked.
When he got back to the Metropole, there was a voicemail message on his telephone from Conchi. She wanted to see him again that night, to talk about what to do next. Why she hadn’t just sought him out at the management centre after his meeting with Connolly was not immediately clear.
Tim Bishop had also left a couple of messages. Bored, he said, with waiting around for whatever was next on the International Geographic assignment. Delaney was wondering about that too, though now clearly on a different sort of assignment than the one he and Bishop had embarked upon.
He checked emails and the news headlines using his laptop and the hotel room broadband link. He scanned the faintly glowing computer screen while drinking a Singha from the bar fridge. The usual journalistic emails, editors’ emails, junk emails scrolled past him. One message from his sister in California. Her American husband, it seemed, was thinking about spending his vast tech-boom wealth on another helicopter. Such were the concerns of Delaney’s only surviving blood relative.
No emails so far from Ackermann in Berlin. And no freelance spying assignments from Rawson. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service had been able to go about its work without Delaney’s assistance for some time now, it seemed. But there was a somewhat ominous message from Kate Hunter in Montreal.
Hi Francis. Haven’t heard from you for a bit, so just checking in. I’m fine, in case you are wondering. I assume you’re doing OK over there or I would have heard something. Maybe. I hear from Brian O’Keefe, though, that you two have been in touch. He says you are over there trying to figure out what you want to be when you gr
ow up. He’s funny, Brian is. If he had said that about anyone else but you I’d think he was joking around. Bests, Kate.
He read Kate’s message several times, seeking subtexts beyond the obvious. Her theme was always the same, of late. And O’Keefe was not helping the situation at all. Delaney tried several times to compose an appropriate reply. Perhaps this?
Dear Kate . . . I’m fine, thank you for asking. Weather in Thailand is lovely, hotel fine, food very good. Yes, I am in fact still trying to figure out who I want to be when I grow up. Or who I am right now. I am surrounded by experts here who can help me on this. I will let you know when the identification process is completed . . .
Delaney closed his laptop, no messages sent, and opened another beer instead. Sometimes, even after all his years as a journalist, words failed him.
Chapter 6
Perhaps because Delaney had spent so much time in recent years consorting with spies, or perhaps he was simply becoming reckless, but it was he who suggested breaking into one of the refrigerated storage containers to take fresh fingerprints off the Deutschland body.
He had expected to encounter strong resistance to this idea from Smith, after his release from hospital, because Smith was Scotland Yard—a bythe-book man, a correct procedures man. Instead, Smith simply sat in a chair on the balcony of his hotel room in the intense sunlight, a day after leaving the hospital, and stared at Delaney intently for a long time before saying, eventually: “Good idea.”
Smith was looking better. They had kept him in the hospital for 48 hours, and now his black eye was fading and his mouth was far less swollen than it had been. But he still very much looked like a man who had been in a fight.
“I like it,” Smith said. “We really have no other choice at this stage than to get a fresh set of prints. Who knows when the pathology teams will get around to that body again, or even if they’ll get to that body again at all.”
“You think we can get in there and get what you need?” Delaney asked.
“Yes, I think so,” Smith said. “We can go in after the pathology people go home, after dark. From memory, there is only one man, a Thai policeman, at the gates to the compound late at night. In the mortuary buildings there may be people working late, doing paperwork, but all the bodies get returned to the containers at night. There are no postmortems done after about seven or so. We’ll go in very late. Three, four o’clock in the morning.”
The Tsunami File Page 11