The Man With No Face

by Peter May

  II

  It was dark now, the wind battering sleet against the window. Inside it was warm and stuffy, insulated against the inhospit­able night that had fallen over this grey Belgian city. The office was small and cluttered, an anonymous place in a vast building of concrete and glass that architects without a sense of history had annexed to the Palais de Justice – a building blackened by the years but still vast and impressive in its brooding grandeur. The annexe housed the police headquarters through which all life passed along drab corridors beneath glaring fluorescent lights.

  On reflection, Bannerman thought that perhaps this office had a little more character than the others he had been in. A large old oak desk sat at an angle across one corner. Wire trays were piled high with ageing reports, a dog-eared blotter was scribbled with a hundred phone numbers, names, doodles. There were two overflowing heavy glass ashtrays, a fountain pen, a broken pencil. On the wall behind the desk, maps of Belgium and Brussels, charts and a Playboy calendar. Beside the door stood a tall, old-fashioned coat stand hung with two long dark raincoats that had seen better days, and an old tweed jacket. A broken umbrella leaned against the wall beside a pair of muddy gumboots. Along the door wall and the far wall, filing cabinets of different heights, some wooden, some a grey-painted metal, were pushed together, yet more documents piled untidily on top. The room was lit by an Anglepoise lamp on the desk.

  Bannerman sat waiting on a hard wooden chair in front of the desk. He had been waiting for nearly three hours. The doctor had examined him first, dressing the wound on the back of his head. There were no ribs broken, but he was severely bruised. He might suffer the effects of concussion for some time, the doctor had warned. He should have plenty of rest, plenty of sleep.

  Then he had spent a gruelling half-hour in a room with two plain-clothes policemen who spoke bad English. They had paid no heed to the doctor’s advice. Who was he? Who did he work for? What was he doing at Slater’s flat? Who had attacked him? What had been taken from the safe? What did he know about Robert Gryffe? Bannerman had answered everything they asked without ever seeming to satisfy them. They, in turn, had told him nothing. His curiosity had been dulled by his own discomfort and he had not pressed for information. He had been brought a bowl of soup and a cup of cold coffee, then taken to this office where he had sat watching darkness descend on Brussels.

  He checked with his watch. Six-thirty. He was hungry, enormously weary, stiff, the pulsing in his head still painful. He ran his tongue over his lips where the blood had dried leaving dark brown rims. Whatever they told him eventually, he thought, would not surprise him, though he had given little conscious thought to what that might be. There was an unreal quality about everything. Like a dream. Or more correctly, a nightmare. A sequence of events through which he had passed without ever feeling that he had in any way participated.

  The door opened and a lean man in a baggy brown suit stepped briskly into the office carrying a slim, beige folder. The crown of his head was bald and shiny, but dark, wiry hair grew in bushy abundance round it, and he wore round-rimmed tortoiseshell spectacles over a long, thin nose with flaring nostrils. He would be in his fifties, Bannerman guessed, with a grey, deeply creased face from which peered two small, very dark eyes behind the spectacles. His suit was well worn and fitted only where it touched. His waistcoat was open, a thin brown tie hanging from an open-necked white shirt. He carried about him an air of age and defeat, like a schoolmaster nearing the end of his career, reeking of chalk dust and blackboards and thankless years.

  He closed the door behind him and nodded solemnly at Bannerman. It would have been obvious to anyone that this was his office. He dropped his folder on the desk and rounded it to sit in a leather captain’s chair, resting his elbows on its arms and pressing the tips of opposing fingers together. Long, thin fingers on big-knuckled hands. He gazed through Bannerman and seemed lost in thought, and Bannerman noticed the tiny bushes of hair that grew out of each nostril.

  Finally he seemed to focus and said, ‘Well, Monsieur, your story seems to check out.’ The phone on his desk rang and he lifted the receiver. ‘Oui?’ He spoke rapidly in French so that Bannerman could not follow him. Then he hung up and studied Bannerman again before rising and extending his hand. ‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘Inspector Georges du Maurier of the Judicial Police. Homicide division.’ His handshake was dry and firm. He sat down again and considered his next words carefully. ‘Shortly after ten o’clock this morning a passer-by in the Rue de Pavie heard a child screaming in the house at number twenty-four. He rang the bell several times and knocked repeatedly on the door, but no one came to open it and the child continued to scream. The gentleman concerned called the Gendarmerie from a telephone at the Residence Ambiorix at the end of the street.

  ‘Two uniformed officers forced entry to the house and found an eleven-year-old girl screaming hysterically in the back room on the ground floor. In the study there were two bodies. Timothy Slater, a journalist, had been shot through the heart. Robert Gryffe, a British government minister, was shot through the forehead. There were two guns. One belonged to Monsieur Gryffe. It was lying beside him and bore his fingerprints. We have been unable to trace the origin of the second gun as yet, but it was found in Monsieur Slater’s right hand, which was folded beneath his body. There were no signs of a forced entry to the house, no traces of a third party, except of course for the child. Conclusion?’ He paused and then answered his own question. ‘They killed each other. On the face of it, everything points to that. Trajectory of the bullets, position of the bodies, prints on the guns.’

  Bannerman sat in stunned silence. He had thought himself prepared for anything, but not this. For the first time in many hours he was no longer aware of the places where he hurt. He remembered Slater’s file of cuttings on Gryffe, the tension between the two men at the party the night before. He leaned forward, his mouth dry. ‘So, what . . . You’re closing the case already?’

  For the first time, du Maurier smiled. ‘At present we are treating both as suspicious deaths.’

  ‘And?’

  Du Maurier raised his eyebrows but said nothing, waiting for Bannerman.

  ‘You said everything points to them killing each other . . . on the face of it.’

  The Inspector’s smile broadened. ‘Yes, there are other factors to consider.’

  Now Bannerman waited as du Maurier lit a cigarette.

  ‘Apart from the three or four clear prints on the gun Monsieur Slater was holding, it is otherwise clean. No other prints, no smudges. But what is more important, Monsieur Slater, it would appear, was left-handed. It is very unlikely that he would be able to place a shot so accurately with his right hand.’

  The smile was gone now, and he drew distractedly on his cigarette.

  ‘Also, the bullet that killed Monsieur Slater entered the heart centrally. Monsieur Gryffe, we discover, has owned a gun for many years but has never had any formal training in its use. A remarkable piece of shooting for two untrained men. And we must also consider that each shot would have been instantly fatal, so that unless they were fired at precisely the same moment the man who shot first would have survived. In addition we found a suitcase in a cupboard off the study. It contained two hundred and fifty thousand American dollars in used notes.’

  Du Maurier folded his hands on the desk in front of him.

  ‘And, of course, there was the assault perpetrated on you in Monsieur Slater’s flat within an hour of the shooting. And whatever was taken from the safe, if anything.’

  Bannerman frowned. ‘So it was murder.’

  ‘Ah, well, none of these things, either in themselves, or collectively, is conclusive. But they do raise the question. Forensics might provide a clearer insight when we get their report back from the lab.’

  Bannerman tried to sort it all out in his mind through a haze of pain and fatigue. None of it seemed to make sense. ‘What about the chil
d? Tania.’

  Du Maurier pulled thoughtfully at the whiskers growing from his nostrils and stared into the darkness beyond the ring of light from the Anglepoise. In the silence both men heard the soft slapping of sleet against the window. At length the policeman turned his gaze on Bannerman, and Bannerman wondered at his openness. ‘The child was only brought under control finally by the use of sedatives. We brought in her carer . . . a young woman who normally looks after her.’

  ‘Sally.’

  ‘Yes. And one of the teachers from the child’s school. We tried to question her, but as you might imagine it was hopeless. She was sufficiently drugged to keep her calm, but she was completely withdrawn. Absolutely no communication. And none likely, we’re told. We provided her with a pencil and pad in the hope that she might be able to write something, anything. But she refused even to take the pencil.’

  He stopped and fumbled for another cigarette.

  ‘We left her alone in the room for, I would say, no more than half an hour while we had a brief conference. That was late this afternoon. We discussed the case with the police psychiatrist. He told us there was no hope of ever learning from the girl what had happened. In fact he suspected that the trauma of whatever she saw could well have done irreparable damage. Set her back years. It was decided that in the meantime she should be taken to a residential psychiatric hospital for children on the outskirts of the city, at least until her future is decided. Her teacher went back to fetch her and interrupted the child in the middle of this . . .’ He opened the folder in front of him and slid a sheet of paper across the desk towards Bannerman.

  Bannerman turned the sheet around. There was a drawing on it. A line drawing in pencil of extraordinary perspective and depth. In the foreground the figure of a thin man in a long coat was coming through a doorway. There were foreground scribblings on the wall that seemed to form a pattern. Wallpaper perhaps. Through the door, and behind the central figure, stood a large stone or marble fireplace. Part of an armchair was visible, a framed picture on the wall with the outline of a head. The drawing was vividly evocative, and yet distorted as if seen through a fisheye lens. Or a disturbed mind. There was something almost sinister about the figure in the foreground. It seemed to be stepping right out of the page. But most striking was the man’s lack of facial detail. Tania had drawn only the outline of the head and ears. Everything else was observed in such detail that you would not have thought a child capable of retaining it, never mind reproducing it. But there was no face.

  Bannerman was fascinated, confused. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

  Du Maurier lit a third cigarette from his second one and blew a jet of smoke at the Anglepoise. ‘The picture on the wall in the background represents a head-and-shoulders portrait, a Rubens copy that hangs above a marble fireplace in Monsieur Gryffe’s house in the Rue de Pavie. If you stand in the cloakroom in the hall and look through the open door into the back room you can see almost exactly what the child has represented in the drawing, including part of the armchair. The scribblings on the foreground wall seem to represent the patterned paper in the hall. The drawing is uncannily accurate. I have just returned from a visit to the house to make the comparison myself.’

  Bannerman thought about it for a few moments. ‘And the face of the man?’

  Du Maurier shook his head.‘If our meeting had lasted just a few minutes longer the child might have had time to complete the face. But she was interrupted before she had finished and nothing would make her continue. As you can see, almost everything else is so detailed. Buttons, pockets, hands. The carer, Sally, told us that the child often begins her drawings with an outline and then works inwards.’

  Bannerman looked at the drawing again. It was hard to believe that it had come from the hand of an eleven-year-old. He looked up to find du Maurier watching him. ‘And who is the figure in the foreground?’

  The Inspector sighed. ‘The man is too slight to have been Monsieur Gryffe. And if it had been her father, then surely the outline of the head would have indicated the beard.’

  ‘So there was a third party.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Who didn’t know the child was there?’

  Du Maurier shrugged wearily. ‘Perhaps. Though it’s difficult to imagine how.’

  Bannerman sat back and dropped the drawing on the desk. ‘Maybe not. But it’s clear there was a third man.’

  ‘Then why didn’t he take the money in the suitcase?’

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t know it was there.’

  ‘Then what was his motive?’

  Bannerman had no answer. But already he knew he was being drawn inextricably into this whole affair whether he wanted to or not. He wondered why du Maurier had told him as much as he had. But the policeman broke into his thoughts almost as though he had read them.

  ‘This is not just a straightforward case of suspicious death, Monsieur Bannerman. It involves the murder of a British government minister. A diplomatic minefield at any time. But with an election in your own country less than three weeks away, and Monsieur Gryffe a high-profile poster boy for his party . . . I imagine there could well be political pressures brought to bear. A tragic double homicide, each man responsible for killing the other, the reason for which will probably never be known. Case closed.’

  He hesitated for a second.

  ‘Unfortunately, Monsieur Bannerman, I have no doubt that they were murdered. And not by each other. Though by whom or for what reason, I do not pretend to know. But I don’t want this taken out of my hands.’ Bannerman watched him carefully. ‘Political expediency, Monsieur Bannerman, can be as corrupt as murder itself. I have been a policeman all my life. Politics doesn’t interest me. I believe only in the law. And justice.’

  Bannerman said, ‘So the men in suits are going to close down your investigation?’

  ‘I imagine they are sitting in smoke-filled rooms right now wondering exactly how to do it.’

  ‘Then how can you stop them?’

  ‘By moving before they do.’

  Bannerman saw determination in the set of his jaw.

  ‘I have called a press conference to be held downstairs at . . .’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Seven-thirty. In just five minutes’ time. I shall tell your colleagues most of what I have told you, though not everything. I have had the child’s drawing photocopied and the copies will be distributed to the media. I imagine there will be quite a feeding frenzy.’

  Bannerman raised an eyebrow. ‘What about the men in suits?’

  Du Maurier smiled. ‘Politicians,’ he said. ‘They’re too fucking slow.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and got to his feet. ‘We’d better go downstairs. Your colleagues await me.’

  III

  Bannerman sat at the back of the conference room, a small lecture theatre with rows of seats stepped back in tiers. Du Maurier took the conference, accompanied by a younger man. Both looked burned out in the glare of the television lights. A bank of microphones was mounted centrally on the rostrum for the dozen radio and television stations that would give the deaths widespread European coverage. There were more than fifty scribes straining not to miss a word, scribbling their shorthand outlines in tattered notebooks, cigarettes stuck in the corners of mouths.

  Du Maurier delivered a terse statement in French and then English to a hushed silence. He covered most of what he had told Bannerman, though in less detail, and made no initial mention of Tania or the drawing. Neither did he make any reference to Bannerman.

  Then came the questions. Thick, fast and confused, in French and English and Flemish.

  ‘Are you treating this as murder?’

  ‘At the moment we regard both deaths as suspicious.’

  ‘What was Slater doing at Gryffe’s house?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘Do you think the motive was political or financial?’

 
‘We don’t know.’

  ‘How were the bodies discovered?’

  ‘The alarm was raised by a passer-by who heard a child screaming in the house.’

  There were a few seconds of stunned silence, then a barrage of voices out of which no single question was distinguishable. Du Maurier raised his hands.

  ‘Monsieur Slater’s daughter was found in the house.’

  ‘Did she see what happened?’

  ‘We don’t know. The child is autistic. She is unable to say.’

  The excitement among the scribes rose like the temperature of a fevered man. The story had just got better. Bannerman imagined how tomorrow’s headlines would read. Already he could see excited reporters knocking out copy on well-worn keyboards, polishing their clichés, dreaming up colour, emotive catchlines, seductive intros. All packaged and served up to be digested at breakfast along with the cornflakes.

  ‘How old is the girl? What’s her name?’

  ‘She is eleven years old. Her name is Tania.’ Du Maurier was impassive. He was making them work for it.

  ‘Is there a pic of the girl?’

  ‘No photographs.’

  A chorus of voices raised themselves in protest. Again du Maurier lifted his hands.

  ‘As I said, the child has been able to tell us nothing.’ He paused. ‘However, as a result of a drawing she made showing a man, clearly in the hall of the house in the Rue de Pavie, we are now working on the assumption that there was third-party involvement.’

  Silence fell again. Absolute, if short-lived. The possibilities were turning themselves over in the minds of the scribes. Then the questions began again. But du Maurier pre-empted them all, lifting a folder from the bench and handing it to the young man beside him. ‘Copies of the child’s drawing have been made for your use. Monsieur Lousière will distribute them.’

  Journalists clustered around the podium and Lousière fed hands that reached out like the beaks of chicks straining for food from their mother’s mouth. Bannerman watched the melee with vague distaste, and yet whatever he felt, he could not detach himself from it. He was one of them. One of the vultures that gorged on the carrion of news, that fed the ugly millions their daily diet of death, tragedy, sex and intrigue. His cynicism ate at his insides, like stomach acid.