The Man With No Face

by Peter May

  *

  Kale stared up at a crack in the ceiling of his hotel room. He had one day left before the hit. He would use it well.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Bannerman looked from the window of this office on the top floor of the IPC building, down into the back courts below. Mean little yards bounded by brick walls that formed geometric patterns between the terraced rows. Beyond them, against the night sky, two cranes rose high above the houses that were being swept away in the redevelopment.

  He had spent the afternoon sitting in the press lounge at the Council of Ministers, drinking coffee and watching the curious rituals of the lobby men. These creatures of strange habit sat about in the lounge among the potted plants, drinking, talking, or working behind a smoked-glass screen which hid rows of desks and typewriters and a bank of telephones. From time to time groups of reporters would launch themselves suddenly from their seats as they spotted various officials whom they would follow into small rooms off the lounge, a well-practised choreography that required no apparent communication. In these tiny rooms impromptu press conferences were held. The press relations officials held court. Pens scribbled in sacred silence as the high priests delivered careful words to the scribes. The ceremonies were, without exception, performed in French. Questions were frowned upon, brushed aside. The sermons concluded, the journalists would then drift away, sometimes back to the lounge, sometimes to the press room, dependent upon whether the words were relevant to a particular country or readership. It was a strange protocol, baffling to the outsider. Only those in the inner sanctum, who could read the faces and interpret the words, were privy to its secrets.

  In one corner, the Italian Minister for Agriculture, making a rare personal appearance, had delivered a diatribe to a group of excitable Italian journalists whose voices rose and fell, arms waving, frequent laughter. In another, a clutch of British reporters was gathered round a Foreign Office minister; notebooks in pockets, wary eyes on the earnest face of the minister as he spoke. Bannerman had recognised him: Robert Gryffe, Minister of State for Europe, earmarked by the Prime Minister for a senior post if the government won the election – or so it was rumoured.

  Gryffe, unusually, had become a popular public figure. He had that quality, rare amongst post-war politicians, of charisma. He was an outspoken moderate, a ‘man of the people’. The tabloids loved him. And the Party had capitalized on his popularity in the run-up to the election by using him frequently in party political broadcasts. Bannerman watched him with distrust. He was gravely suspicious of men of the people.

  When he left the Council of Ministers it was dark, and he had walked up the Boulevard Charlemagne, past a bar where German journalists spent their days. At the IPC building he had found Slater in his office. It was well after seven now and he turned away from the window to take in the figure of Slater crouched by the open drawer of a filing cabinet. The Herald man had left and the secretary, Mademoiselle Ricain, was on her break. ‘I won’t be long,’ Slater said.

  Bannerman looked around the cluttered office. Four desks were pushed together to form a square. They were strewn with discarded press releases, overflowing trays of copy, technical journals, wordy reports and empty coffee cups. The walls were plastered with charts and maps, and a door led off to an anteroom where a chattering teleprinter shared by the Herald and the Post sent copy back to the mother ships to be printed for publication in clattering machine rooms in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

  The panoramic windows looked out east across the rooftops, a forest of leaning chimneys and television aerials. Bannerman pulled up a chair and sat down, and reached for an open file. It was filled with loose newspaper cuttings from various papers. He saw a grey, smeared photograph of Gryffe and picked up the cutting. He was bored already by Brussels and the EEC, depressed at the thought of spending as long as a month in this dreary place. He let his eyes wander over the cutting. Mr Robert Gryffe, a rising star at the Foreign Office, yesterday warned at a meeting of the EEC Council of Ministers in Brussels of an impending slump . . .

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Slater snatched away the cutting and grabbed the folder from his desk. Bannerman looked up, surprised, mildly irritated. Slater eyed him suspiciously, a fragile, unhealthy-looking man, all his wasted years stretching behind him like links in a rusted chain. He was a man who had started out on his journalistic career full of ambition and enthusiasm, only to have both slowly battered out of him by long, weary years of fires and murders, of knocking on doors and carving initials on court benches. There had been the anonymous pubs and reporters, drinks and stories, night shifts and fictitious expenses. And there had been, too, the moves from paper to paper until the faces had all begun to look the same, the conversations predictable, the copy more turgid.

  The Brussels job had come out of the blue, like suddenly rounding a bend in a long dark tunnel and for the first time seeing light at the end of it. Old hopes had been resurrected and held out the prospect of a brighter future. But that too had gone sour, as he should have known it would, settling into an old familiar pattern. The Post’s interest in the EEC had been too restrictive. They wanted parochial Scottish angles on every story. And that had quickly curtailed his interest. As had the EEC itself.

  Slater saw the Commission as a great, slow-moving machine whose purpose was simply self-perpetuation, self-justification. The Brave New Europe had never emerged and, he believed, never would. All its processes were too tortuous and obscure without ever being fully productive. Thousands of civil servants sat in spacious offices dreaming up schemes for yet more intricate legislation to weave into an already complex tapestry of international rules and regulations. The only purpose served being to complicate further already difficult relations between member countries. And even when still no more than ideas, they often ran into hundreds of pages of fat, incomprehensible reports that had to go before the Council of Ministers. There they would undergo a lengthy process of review and amendment before those that survived would be sent, finally, to the European Parliament in Strasbourg or Luxembourg. And it too, Slater thought bitterly, was an impotent body, even after direct elections.

  Had he not met Marie-Ange there would have been no hope. Now there was the chance of escape from it all – from the crippling cynicism and loneliness of Brussels, the memory of his wife, the worry of his daughter. Maybe now the child would have a real chance too. Specialist treatment.

  But Bannerman’s arrival complicated things. What was he after? Only a few more days and Slater could leave all this behind him. Surely Tait couldn’t know anything. Couldn’t have sent Bannerman to find out. Could he? Gryffe wouldn’t have talked. He wouldn’t dare. Slater decided to take a chance. ‘What are you really here for, Bannerman?’

  Bannerman frowned. He had sensed Slater’s uneasiness at their first meeting, and now this extraordinary behaviour over the file of cuttings on Gryffe. ‘I already told you,’ he said. ‘What’s your problem?’ He watched Slater carefully. But the reporter turned away and slipped the Gryffe file back in the cabinet and locked it. He turned again, hesitantly, to face Bannerman and seemed to consider what he should say.

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t like you very much. Never have. And now you come over here, digging around where you’re not wanted, inflicting yourself on me for the next month, insulting guys I have to work with.’

  ‘Hey,’ Bannerman snapped. ‘You know none of this was my idea. The Post owns your apartment here, and if Tait reckons he can save the paper money by having me shack up there then that’s up to him. If you have any objections you know where you can take them.’

  Slater eyed him angrily for a moment, then took a deep breath and seemed to relent. ‘Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I . . . well, this place gets to you after a while.’

  ‘Really? I thought you people had it easy out here.’ Bannerman’s sarcasm seemed to revive some of Slater’s antagonism.

  ‘Oh, sure, if y
ou like the idea of quietly vegetating amongst all the decaying political ideals of a generation of squabbling Europeans.’ He hesitated and crossed to the window so that Bannerman could not see his face. ‘This is a cold, lonely city, Bannerman. It’s a God-awful place. There are more than two hundred thousand temporary or permanent immigrants in Brussels. Thousands of civil servants and politicians and journalists from all over Europe who have never integrated with the local population. Most of them live in the Euro-ghettos.’ His laugh was without humour. ‘Sprawling wealthy suburban areas on the edge of the city where life is divided into nationalities and private clubs and expensive social functions. If you can afford it.’ He turned back to face Bannerman. ‘You think I can? Working for the Post? There’s no way a paper like ours can compete with the money that’s being earned even by the average EEC official. These guys can make anything up to a basic eighty grand a year, with all kinds of additional allowances for home entertainment, household, family, school, cost of living.’

  Bannerman felt Slater’s bitterness as powerfully as if he could touch it. Something about him jarred. He was more than just a disillusioned newspaperman, more than just bitter. But it was not easy to know what more there was. Bannerman knew that Slater’s wife had died shortly after the move to Brussels, that he had been left to support an autistic daughter – a girl who could not speak, who could barely write, whose terrible deficiency was her inability to communicate.

  Slater was still talking. ‘The Belgians are okay to work with. But there is no way you will get to know them. Not socially. A Belgian will never invite you into his home, even if you’ve known him for months, or years. They are a strange, introverted, suspicious people. I don’t like them.’

  ‘It seems there are a lot of people you don’t like.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Slater stared at him, almost defiantly, then turned to lift his coat from the stand. ‘Time we went home.’

  Bannerman stood and pulled on his coat, glancing at this odd-looking man with his red hair and beard, pale face, and dark-ringed green eyes. And in that moment he knew what he had sensed in Slater. It was guilt. He had seen before how it could affect men. Perhaps it was something in his past. The death of his wife. Or maybe connected to his child.

  Slater locked the door behind them and they walked in silence along the length of a hushed corridor to the elevator. There, as they waited for the lift, Slater turned to him. ‘Don’t expect any help from me, Bannerman.’ And, almost as though he knew what Bannerman had been thinking, he added, ‘And keep your nose out of my affairs.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  I

  The child sat alone in the darkened room, the muted light from the streetlamps seeping in through net curtains. She had been sitting there for nearly half an hour and her eyes had grown accustomed to the dark. She could follow clearly the lines of the old dresser, the bookshelves and the desk. She could pick out the faded pattern of the old worn rug, the shape of the fireplace, the armchair opposite, the bed. From the kitchen came the sounds of Sally preparing the evening meal, in the street the occasional passing car.

  It had been a bad day. Twice she had lost control; the screaming, the flailing arms and legs, the aimless striking out. She had tried, God how she had tried, to control it. But the frustration had been growing, taking hold of her in a way she did not know how to rein in. There had been the patient faces, the firm hands, and then the angry words. The vacant, staring faces of the other children who also knew how it was, but could never express it. Sally had talked to her on the way home; silly things, just chatter. But it had helped in a way.

  Now she was at peace again, or as much at peace as she could be, and control was easier. If she closed her eyes and sat here in the dark, then she could speak, not aloud, but with some inner voice. She could walk to the window if she wanted and touch the curtain, feel its smoothness in her hand. It meant little, but it was contact with something. It was good when she could touch things, feel things, embrace things; express her love, express herself. But such moments were rare, though they had seemed more frequent recently. Perhaps as she grew older it would improve still more. They always said it would. But, in the past, as it had improved, so her frustration had increased at those times when the improvement was not there and she could not make contact. God gave with one hand and took with the other.

  Still, there was always the drawing, she thought, and when that came it was like every good thing she knew concentrated in a few furious moments of expression that flowed through her arm, her hand, her fingers, through the pencil and out on to that vast white landscape of fresh, crisp paper. And then afterwards, there was such pleasure in seeing it.

  She heard the front door opening and her father’s voice. There was someone with him. A voice that she did not know. She listened now in the darkness, finding as she always did that the presence of a stranger in the house unsettled her. Routine was something she clung to without knowing why. There was a great security in the familiar, a devastating uncertainty in the unknown. Always she looked forward to her father’s return from work. She found an odd comfort in it, though she had no love for him. She had long since been aware that he had no love for her. The memory of her mother, a pretty, smiling, caring woman, had faded quickly, leaving her with nothing more than the hollow affection of her father. He went through the motions of love, was almost always gentle with her. But he gave her so little of his time, and she felt his lack of interest with an extraordinary perception. Still, it did not affect the comfort she sought in his presence. If only it was possible to say what she felt, to tell them the things that were in her head.

  Her father and the other man were in the living room now and she listened carefully. There was something oddly familiar in the stranger’s voice. He spoke English with an accent like her father, but there was another quality in it that she felt, almost like a hand touching her. She had already detected the hostility in both their voices, though neither man was arguing and there were no harsh words. It was simply there, and she sensed it. She pulled her bedroom door gently inwards so that it stood slightly ajar, enough for her to see through into the living room.

  Her first sight of Bannerman affected her in the same way as his voice had done. There was something more than just the man she saw; the set, sarcastic face, the hard blue eyes, the relaxed liquidity of his body in the chair. She sensed in him an aggression, perhaps frustration. Yet more, there was a feeling of contact, as though they were touching, the way she had felt his voice touch her. It was important somehow, she knew, though she didn’t know why and she was seized by a sudden foreboding. Everything about him and all she felt about him filled her with great confusion and uncertainty. It was clouding her mind—thoughts that had not come in words but in some inner understanding of things that words could never make as clear. With the clouding, the frustration was returning, and the control was slipping away. She left the door and crossed to the window. Her hands were starting to tremble and then she heard her father’s voice calling. The door opened and she saw him framed in the doorway against the light.

  ‘It’s all right, Tania,’ he was saying. ‘There’s a man come to see you. He’ll be staying with us for a while. He wants to meet you.’ All she heard was his ersatz sincerity. He came to the window and took her hand and she allowed herself to be led passively to the door and into the living room. There she stopped and pulled back. The man had risen from his chair and was standing by the fireplace below the big framed painting. He turned to look at her. All her self-control began dissolving under the gaze of those blue eyes and she felt herself pulling her hand from her father’s.

  Bannerman was startled by the first shriek and alarmed when this clumsy, unattractive child, who only seconds before had appeared so passive, clutched at her hair with both hands and began backing away into the darkness behind her. The screams ripped into the quiet of the apartment. Slater became quickly flushed and he tried to pull the child back toward
s him, coaxing, appealing with soft words that only seemed to increase her distress.

  ‘It’s all right, Tania. It’s all right, little one. There’s nothing to worry you.’ She lashed out with a tightly clenched fist, catching him a sturdy blow on the side of his face. ‘For Christ’s sake!’ he shouted and snatched her arm, half turning towards Bannerman. ‘I knew this would happen!’ As if it were Bannerman’s fault.

  The girl was struggling and pulling against him, tears streaming down her cheeks, her voice hoarse already with the screaming. Bannerman’s confusion gave way to a stinging embarrassment. He stared numbly, sensing a great inner pain behind the child’s dark eyes. And for the first time he had a glimmer of sympathy for Slater. Father and daughter were grotesquely entangled, the child’s arms still trying to beat on her father who had lifted her and was clutching her to him. And still the screaming went on, filling the room, the dreadful cries of a troubled mind.

  Suddenly Bannerman was aware of another presence in the room. He turned to see a dark-haired young woman, perhaps in her middle twenties, standing in the open doorway to the kitchen. She was watching in silence and Bannerman thought she looked tense. She glanced in his direction and smiled, but it was an uneasy smile. ‘You never quite get used to it,’ she whispered.