Greta, Siemen’s wife, was a woman of Wagnerian proportions who even wore her flaxen hair in Brunnhilde-style plaits and whose multi-patterned dress only needed a central pole to be transformed into a tent. She seemed disappointed when Claudine said she didn’t have any children. Heidi, the wife of the proudly attentive Volker, was sylph-like by comparison, as slim even as Yvette but appearing far more sophisticated in the straight, dark blue sheath dress with a single diamond pin high on the left shoulder. She wore her black hair long and had clearly practised rippling it into brief disarray by a sharp head movement before it fell back perfectly into place to her shoulders. She seemed far more comfortable in the exalted surroundings than Volker. Yvette herself had reverted to the sort of over-tight and low cut shift she’d avoided since the earliest days, this one a cream cocktail dress that didn’t need the multi-stranded necklace or the long drop earrings. She came with Poulard, which Claudine half expected. She anticipated the immediate interest switch that Poulard showed in Volker’s wife, too. Volker beamed, prouder still.
Claudine’s first positive surprise was that Hugo Rosetti came alone. Claudine wasn’t at first aware that he had because she didn’t see him arrive. It was only after she’d assigned partner to partner that it registered. Rosetti smiled to her from across the room but remained where he was, talking to the Siemens. Greta towered over him. Claudine didn’t return to the ghetto cluster.
Scott Burrows was the last to arrive, the half-smoked stogie perfuming his progress across the room towards her. Claudine was surprised a professional psychologist needed such an obvious confidence prop but then remembered his lack of academic qualifications, the most likely cause for his inferiority complex. The tightness in her chest was very vague but she still slightly backed away from the clouded presence.
‘We don’t get this sort of thing back home,’ he said in greeting.
‘European sophistication,’ Claudine smiled. The lavishness was as much of a surprise as the size of the reception. There were waiters at a hot and cold silver-dished buffet along the entire length of an inner wall, linked at one end to a separate selection of drinks dispensed by more white-coated attendants. Other waiters circulated with a choice of glasses on silver trays. The favourite appeared to be champagne but Burrows was drinking what she guessed to be Scotch. No pastis seemed to be available.
‘It’ll be dancing girls and a naked broad bursting out of a cake when you solve your serial killings.’
‘Let’s hope to Christ they’re all alive and in one piece,’ said Claudine. She hoped he didn’t light another cigar when he finished the one he was smoking.
The American grimaced at the professional cynicism. ‘You know what they say about all work and no play! Relax, why don’t you?’
Claudine had an abrupt and totally illogical flash of recollection, the remark without the speaker first — You don’t like parties, do you? Loosen up, have fun: that’s what life’s for — before she remembered who’d made the accusation, which made it even more absurdly confusing. A man in a gorilla suit on one of her first outings with Warwick, the man she’d told Toomey she’d totally forgotten. Why now? And why that aside, rather than anything else? Conscious of Burrows’ frowned expectation, she said: ‘I’d like there to be a better reason. In fact I don’t even know there is one, for all this …’ Pointedly she threw in: ‘Do you?’
Instead of responding to any innuendo Burrows grinned, nodding towards her glass. ‘You know what W. C. Fields said about the danger of drinking water?’
‘Yes, but this comes guaranteed that fish didn’t fuck in it.’ Burrows showed no reaction to the obscenity but Claudine mentally threw it back at herself. Wasn’t her propensity to swear - more mentally than publicly - nothing more than an inferiority response, the need to become one of a crowd that Burrows betrayed by smoking his peculiar-smelling cigars? The self-question disturbed Claudine, whose personal analysis had always so totally precluded inferiority that until that moment the possibility of her suffering from it had never ever occurred to her. That it had occurred unsettled her, challenging her conviction that she knew everything about herself. Then she rallied. What reason had she to doubt herself in the middle of a reception that wouldn’t have been contemplated, let alone held, but for what she had done in the past weeks?
The American exchanged his empty glass for a full one from a passing waiter. ‘You don’t know what this does to a guy.’
‘I do,’ said Claudine, serious still. ‘Only too well.’
Burrows looked to Claudine to continue but she didn’t. They heard the increasing noise of a glass being tapped by a spoon and the room quietened for the current Commission chairman. Sobell disclaimed any intention of making a formal speech, to the usual sniggered disbelief. The organization was being tested by an investigation unique in most people’s recollection of crime, anywhere in the world. Europol, by the very nature of its multinational concept, was always going to be an uncertain but necessary crime defeating experiment. They still had a horrendous series of murders to solve - or to assist local forces to solve - but he was confident from knowing in full the contribution they had already made in the Cologne and Rome cases that they would enhance within the European Union the acceptance of Europol that had already been indicated to him by the Justice Ministers of every member country.
Standing where she was, away from most of her group, Claudine wasn’t actually included when Sobell looked directly towards them and said he was grateful for all they had so far done.
The gesture increased the nods and mumbles of approval that had throughout accompanied the platitudes from the assembled commissioners. Claudine was conscious of several - David Winslow more obviously than anyone else - looking towards her instead of the main group but didn’t respond to their attention.
Sanglier filled the lull the moment the Austrian finished. He thanked Sobell for the confidence that had been expressed and said he was proud of what the task force had achieved and was sure the inevitably successful conclusion would reflect to the further credit of an organization of which all of them were proud to be part.
‘Shouldn’t there be rousing music with all of us standing wet-eyed to attention?’ whispered Burrows, beside her.
‘They’d never agree the choice of tune among themselves,’ Claudine whispered back and wished she hadn’t because the American’s snorted laugh was too loud.
Burrows seemed to think so too, wandering off in the direction of the bar immediately after the desultory smatter of applause from people not really sure what they were clapping. Claudine had so determinedly been avoiding any direct attention upon anyone that she was not aware of Sanglier’s wife until the woman was beside her.
Françoise Sanglier was an exceptionally tall woman, hardly dwarfed by her husband. She was angular and small-busted, with prominent features accentuated by the style in which she wore her hair, cropped to her neck and with a definitive side-of-the-head parting. Claudine recognized as Versace the green, cerise-slashed dress that did all it could for the woman’s figure because she’d seen it in the salon close to the Kloosterkerk. Françoise Sanglier was tall enough to carry it off but Claudine was glad she’d chosen the more subdued black and white Chanel.
‘Were you frightened Henri was going to mention you by name?’ demanded the woman openly.
Designed immediately to disorientate, gauged Claudine, intrigued. ‘It would have been invidious if he had.’
‘The fitting modesty of a team player,’ Françoise mocked gently.
As close as she was Claudine could very clearly see the faint moustache on the woman’s upper lip and wondered why she didn’t have it waxed. ‘It is a team.’
Françoise flipped a dismissive hand-wave. ‘Henri admires you very much. Says very little would have been achieved without you.’
What the fuck was this all about? ‘That’s gratifying to hear.’
This time there was a mocking grimace at the persistent formal modesty. ‘Aren’t you frightened?’<
br />
‘By what?’ asked Claudine, genuinely disorientated.
‘By what you’ve seen! Henri says you attend medical examinations.’
Sanglier seemed to have an odd choice of dinner table conversation. ‘It’s an essential part of my job.’
‘Looking at women defiled like that! Opened!’
Françoise shook her head at the waiter’s approach and Claudine realized Sanglier’s wife was empty-handed, not even making the pretence of drinking. It was a fleeting awareness. She’d tried to detect the outrage in the woman’s voice but couldn’t. ‘How can I know people, describe them to those hunting them, unless I see what they’re capable of doing? And how they do it?’
‘You can come to know people, from that?’
‘Learn a lot about them.’
‘How they feel when they do it? How they do it: which they decide to do first?’
‘A lot of the time, yes.’
‘Fascinating!’ Françoise was bright-eyed, intent upon Claudine.
Making a conscious, cocktail party effort to change the subject, Claudine said: ‘Do you like living in The Hague?’
The brightness went from the other woman’s eyes. ‘Not particularly. I’m glad Paris is so near. What about you?’
‘I haven’t had enough time to judge yet.’
‘Henri tells me you’ve spent more time in France than in England, before you came here?’
‘Lyon. My mother still lives there.’
‘It’s a coincidence that your father worked for Interpol, as Henri’s did.’
This was even more bewildering than autopsies in detail. ‘I hardly think there’s a comparison.’
‘He was a very shy man, Henri’s father. I could never bring myself to understand how he could have done what he did. As difficult as I find it to understand what you do, I suppose.’
Claudine was unable to decide if this woman was very clever - and if she was, what she was trying to achieve - or only able to appear so for a limited time before the naivety began to show. Or whether she was properly analysing Françoise Sanglier at all. ‘I most certainly don’t think a comparison’s possible there, either.’
‘You know about Henri’s father, of course?’
‘There can’t be anyone in France who doesn’t.’
‘I mean there must have been stories about him, in Interpol?’
‘I suppose there must.’
‘Didn’t your father ever tell you about them?’
‘No,’ said Claudine.
‘Never?’
‘He was only in the archive department,’ apologized Claudine, badly.
‘So was Sanglier.’
‘But as I said, two very different people.’
‘I’m surprised it was never mentioned.’
The woman wouldn’t have been if she’d known her father, Claudine thought: would have found, in fact, the first proper comparison from all her previously failed attempts that evening. She was relieved at the approach of the red-faced British commissioner, who also appeared to be alone. ‘Neither of you are drinking! Or eating!’ accused David Winslow.
This time it was Claudine who shook her head against the waiter’s beckoned approach but she gratefully allowed herself to be steered towards the buffet table. Françoise Sanglier said she wasn’t hungry and didn’t go with them. Claudine wasn’t hungry either but justified her rescue with two pastry boats of caviar. She and Winslow went through the required exchanges of apartment hunting and liking or disliking The Hague and Winslow said, quiet-voiced, that he’d advised London of the full extent of her contribution to the mass murder investigation and Claudine thanked him. It was, she thought, like painting by numbers.
‘So everything’s OK?’
She immediately recognized the opportunity, ill fitting though the surroundings were, to ask the man why he’d approached Toomey, hesitating for several moments before she said, instead: ‘Shouldn’t it be?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘It seemed an odd question.’
He was awkward, growing redder. ‘Not really …’ He smiled hopefully. ‘Consider myself captain of the English ship here: like to know everyone’s happy. No personal problems. Things like that.’
‘That’s very considerate of you.’ She hadn’t known what this reception was going to be like but in her wildest dreams she wouldn’t have anticipated any of these strange, oddly worded encounters.
‘You do understand that, don’t you? About the need to keep everything on an even keel?’
From all the boating analogies Winslow had to have a boat on the lake. ‘I think so.’
‘If anything does arise … any problems … I’d like to know. Like to do anything I could to help.’
Claudine decided on the spot that if she was going to confide in anyone about the Toomey inquiry it most certainly wouldn’t be this blustering, burning-faced man. ‘People must be reassured to be told that.’
‘They are.’
Knowing that with his back to them Winslow wouldn’t detect the lie Claudine excused herself by saying some of her group appeared to want her. As she reached them Poulard was pressing another glass of champagne upon an already flushed Yvette and Greta Siemen was proclaiming to the politely nodding Heidi Volker the joys of motherhood, which was a conversation she’d begun when Claudine drifted away an hour before after admitting she didn’t have any children herself. Burrows was just entering that morose stage of drunkenness when it seemed important to examine, without comment, the contents of his glass.
‘Quite a party,’ said Poulard.
‘It certainly has been,’ agreed Claudine, to herself more than to the Frenchman.
‘It ain’t over till the fat lady sings, remember that,’ Burrows insisted with inebriated wiseness to anyone who cared to listen. No one did.
‘Seems a pity to end it, now we’re all together for the first time,’ said Poulard. ‘We thought we’d all go on to the Chagall, out by the lake.’
‘It’s very pretty there, among the trees,’ Heidi put in, clearly seeking relief from Greta Siemen.
She should make up the party, Claudine knew: to refuse would make her appear aloof to people with whom she had to work, from whom she didn’t want to remain aloof and from whose professionalism she most definitely couldn’t afford to distance herself. But she didn’t want to prolong the evening. She didn’t enjoy mass social occasions and she’d already endured one which had mostly been bizarre. ‘I’m going on a trip tomorrow and I’ve got to make a very early start. I’d like to, some other time.’
‘Maybe after the reception to celebrate our next triumph,’ said Poulard heavily.
Claudine ignored the remark, looking around. ‘Where’s Hugo?’
‘He couldn’t make it either,’ said Greta Siemen. ‘He left a long time ago. Didn’t he say goodbye?’
‘No,’ said Claudine.
‘She thought I was a total fucking idiot,’ protested Françoise Sanglier, naked at the mirror sponging off make-up. ‘And I felt like one, too. She was sending out “rescue-me” messages to everyone in the room.’
‘Which you recognized.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘Do you believe her father wouldn’t have said a single bloody thing?’ Sanglier didn’t bother to look at his wife as he spoke.
She threw dirty tissues into the bin beside her. ‘I don’t give a damn whether he did or he didn’t. You shouldn’t have asked me to initiate a conversation without telling me what you expected me to find out.’
‘I didn’t want you to find out anything specifically,’ lied Sanglier. ‘Her father worked in Interpol, after the war. I was curious if there’d been any anecdotes I hadn’t heard about my father, that’s all. You know I like to know everything possible about him.’
‘If there were any she didn’t seem to know them. Or couldn’t be bothered to tell me.’ She stood up, stretching languorously.
Sanglier got into bed, naked too. ‘What did you think of her?’
/> ‘Got good dress sense. Nice body. But she holds herself back all the time. I’m fascinated by her watching those examinations!’
‘Did you talk to her about that?’ frowned Sanglier.
‘She said it was essential, for her to do her job.’ She got into bed. ‘I think it would be exciting to do that.’
‘Were you attracted to her?’
‘She wasn’t interested: there was no response,’ insisted Françoise. ‘Are you?’
‘No. Poulard tried. She humiliated him publicly.’ Poulard could have been wrong about Claudine’s sexuality as well, but at the moment he was keeping an open and curious mind about that.
‘Poulard would risk splinters to fuck a knot-hole in a tree. He’s a joke among the French contingent.’
‘You will be careful, won’t you?’ said Sanglier, increasingly concerned at Françoise’s behaviour. ‘Don’t forget this place is a goldfish bowl.’ It was unthinkable that he should still be with her when he switched to politics.
‘Haven’t I always been discreet?’
‘Giving your friends our home phone number wasn’t discreet.’
‘It was the one and only time, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Don’t let it happen again.’
She didn’t bother to reply.
‘I thought we might invite Claudine Carter to dinner one night, by herself.’
‘Why?’
‘Why not?’
Françoise shrugged, beside him. ‘Doesn’t she have a husband? A partner?’
‘Her husband died.’
‘If you like.’ The woman turned her back on him. ‘Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight,’ he said, turning away from her.
Claudine hadn’t been able, either last night back at the apartment or today on her way to Lyon, to find any rational explanation for the behaviour of Françoise Sanglier. The macabre interest in watching bodies dissected did not confuse her, any more than the woman’s obviously ambivalent sexuality had either confused or offended her, although the combination of both fitted certain and perhaps worrying psychological parameters.
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