Mind/Reader

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘It’s the Sanglier hall-of-fame tour,’ said Françoise contemptuously. to show you later. It’s an obligatory part of the visit.’

  Claudine gestured to a large photograph in an ornate silver frame on a side table. It was of Françoise, maybe ten years earlier, giving a backwards-looking professional smile at the end of a catwalk pirouette. ‘You were professional?’

  ‘I am, in a lot of things.’

  ‘Where were you, there?’ asked Claudine. After the verbal juggling she’d had to perform in the last few weeks, she was unworried by this pressure, although intrigued by the other woman’s tenacity.

  ‘Dior. I was there for eight years.’

  ‘Do you miss it?’

  ‘Not at all. I’ve kept all my special friends. And made a lot more. I go back to Paris all the time. Virtually every week.’

  ‘It’s conveniently close.’

  Françoise savoured a head to toe appraisal. ‘Chanel?’ ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You’d have made a good model.’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘You’ve got a beautiful body. The bust is perfect.’

  ‘Too late now,’ said Claudine briskly.

  ‘For some things.’

  When Claudine refused any response Françoise said: ‘What about you? How often do you get to Paris?’

  ‘Not often. My family - my mother - is in Lyon.’ She wondered if she would get back to the apartment in time to telephone. She’d missed the previous evening.

  ‘Why don’t you come with me?’ demanded Françoise, with new-idea enthusiasm. ‘I’ve a lot of friends you’d find fascinating …’ She glanced briefly down at the shimmering dress. ‘And I pay only about half the price for things like this.’

  ‘Shopping trips hardly fit in with what I’m doing at the moment,’ said Claudine easily.

  Françoise held her eyes. ‘It isn’t all shopping.’

  ‘Still no time.’ That hadn’t been a particularly good reply, Claudine realized: it hinted time could be found.

  ‘When this investigation is over, maybe.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Still not good.

  Now Françoise indicated the photograph. ‘Do you think I am still just as attractive?’

  The directness momentarily robbed Claudine of a reply. ‘Unquestionably,’ she managed.

  ‘Or perhaps more so now?’

  The earlier replies hadn’t been good. It was time to improve. ‘Are you trying to discomfort me?’ She smiled, to take rudeness from the question.

  Françoise smiled back. ‘Am I discomfiting you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. I wouldn’t want to do that.’ The stare was practically unblinking. ‘Not unless you wanted it to happen.’

  ‘I don’t think we have the same preferences, Francoise.’

  The woman moved to speak but stopped at the return of the two men. They accepted fresh drinks but both women declined. It was Françoise who initiated the conversation about the murders, hurrying the talk towards the dismemberment and autopsies. Rosetti refused to indulge the woman, avoiding the details upon which she was determined, and Claudine did the same when Françoise switched the demands to her.

  ‘Who can watch autopsies?’

  ‘People with professional reason,’ said Rosetti. His voice was stiffening with irritation.

  ‘Could I watch?’

  ‘No,’ said Sanglier quickly.

  The woman looked fixedly at her husband for several moments. ‘You could arrange it for me.’

  ‘No,’ Sanglier repeated. He was flushed, refusing to meet the eyes of either Claudine or Rosetti. Claudine was fascinated and realized she was using Françoise’s word.

  ‘What about you?’ said the woman, transferring her attention to Rosetti.

  ‘I won’t have anyone in my examination room who does not have an authorized reason to be there,’ said the pathologist formally.

  Françoise sniggered, looking around the three of them. ‘You all thought I was serious!’

  ‘You were very convincing,’ said Claudine, allowing the woman the retreat.

  The dinner, served by a subservient girl older than the one who had offered drinks, was as magnificent as the manoir and the hostess. There was genuine foie gras and sole slivers in coulis before wild duck. There were separate French wines - a Chablis, Poulignay Montrachet and a claret - with each course. The dining hall was large and panelled in ornate carved wood, like every other room in the house. The huge dining table matched the panelling, but was unlaid. They ate at a separate circular table small enough for their legs occasionally to touch. Françoise’s did often against Claudine’s. Urged on by their dominating hostess, Rosetti and Claudine talked as generally as possible about cases in which they had been involved before joining Europol. Towards the end Sanglier took over the encouragement, pressing Claudine to explain her profile of the current investigation by putting the indicators against the conclusions she drew from them. Françoise said ‘fascinating’ a lot of times.

  A fresh separation, for brandy and cigars, was not suggested, for which Claudine was grateful, but immediately they rose from the table Francoise said she’d take Claudine to freshen up. Undeterred when Claudine said she didn’t need a bathroom Françoise insisted on ‘the obligatory visit to Henri’s special place’.

  It was special and briefly Claudine was so overwhelmed she was distracted enough to allow Françoise to hold her arm in such a way as to be able frequently to brush her left breast, occasionally even the nipple. Claudine wished it hadn’t hardened under the pressure before she managed to disentangle herself.

  The study was next to the room in which they’d had drinks and was a virtual shrine to the man who had become Sanglier. The man’s birth certificate was actually there, in a glass case along with his marriage certificate and the wartime ration book and identity documents that had been issued in Berlin. In an adjoining case there were photocopies from Gestapo records referring to the unknown Sanglier, complete with a copy of the death warrant in that name ‘on the personal orders of the Fuhrer’. The walls were festooned with photographs. Sanglier with de Gaulle and Sanglier with Churchill and Sanglier with Schuman and Sanglier restored in his office in St Cloud and visiting the new headquarters in Lyon, accompanied by the Director General. In every picture he was smaller in stature than the men around him but made bigger by the Legion d’Honneur ribbon in his lapel. On a table were all the books that had been written about him, along with the bound accolade that accompanied his entry in the French archive of heroes. Claudine presumed the boxed video cassettes were the films and documentaries that had been made about the man.

  From across the display case of Gestapo memorabilia that Claudine had intruded between herself and the other woman Françoise said: ‘Incredible, isn’t it?’

  ‘Totally,’ said Claudine, meaning it.

  ‘I think it’s ridiculous but it occupies his time. He’s fanatical about it.’

  It certainly explained the curious references to her own father, Claudine accepted. Judged professionally it most definitely indicated a fanaticism, as Françoise’s sexual persistence betrayed a fanaticism of a different sort. She succeeded in rejoining the men with only the minimum of fondling and reached a single chair ahead of Françoise’s efforts to guide her to a larger sofa.

  ‘Was your father in any of the pictures?’ asked Sanglier. ‘There’s a lot from Interpol.’

  ‘They weren’t contemporaries,’ said Claudine. It hadn’t occurred to her to look anyway.

  ‘My father made several visits to Lyon after he officially left the organization. Your father would have been there, I should have thought.’

  ‘I didn’t see him in any of the photographs.’

  ‘It would have been quite a coincidence, considering the association now,’ offered Rosetti.

  The remark succeeded in gaining Claudine’s attention and from his look she realized Rosetti was as anxious to leave as she was. Sanglier pressed one further brandy on the Italian be
fore they were able to begin their excuses, which Claudine did against renewed insistences from Françoise of an expedition to Paris together, when the investigation was over. Before then she promised to keep in close touch. She brushed her lips lightly against Claudine’s cheek at the door.

  As he started the engine, Rosetti made an exaggerated blowing sound and said: ‘That was one of the most unusual evenings I’ve ever endured!’

  ‘Me, too,’ agreed Claudine. Homosexuality in every direction, she thought.

  ‘Did she frighten you?’

  ‘No,’ said Claudine. With hindsight she added: ‘But it was probably a mistake for me not to have appeared so.’

  ‘She might misconstrue it as interest, you think?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘He’s as strange as she is, with that monument to his father.’

  ‘But not quite so dangerous.’

  ‘You worried about the autopsy fixation?’

  ‘I think she’s probably a very strange bed partner. But I suppose they’re consenting adults.’

  ‘Do you imagine she uses the two girls in the house?’

  ‘Almost inevitably. She’s very predatory.’ Claudine saw the outskirts of The Hague forming shapes in the darkness ahead.

  ‘I’m surprised Sanglier lets her behave as blatantly as that, even in their own home: certainly among people who know him professionally, aware as he must be that Europol is just one great big revolving rumour and gossip mill.’

  ‘He didn’t appear to have a lot of control over her.’

  ‘Isn’t he lucky we don’t gossip.’

  ‘We’ve got more to talk about than the Sangliers,’ Claudine said abruptly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And I think we should.’

  ‘So do I.’

  The one message on her answering machine was from her mother, who said she was fine and hoped everything was all right because Claudine hadn’t telephoned for two days and that she would expect a call from her tomorrow. Claudine suggested Rosetti choose some music while she prepared coffee and he tried to lessen the tension by saying his physics degree was inadequate to operate the equipment and she smiled, dutifully. Each waited for the other to begin when she came back from the kitchen.

  It was Rosetti who blurted: ‘I’m very sorry. I should not have said what I did. I’m embarrassed and I know I embarrassed you and I’m … sorry.’

  ‘I wasn’t embarrassed. I’m not embarrassed.’

  He didn’t seem to hear her. ‘It was offensive. Arrogant of me to think …’ He let the sentence slide away, unfinished.

  Determined to reach him, she said: ‘I was flattered.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Flattered,’ she repeated.

  ‘That’s difficult to believe.’

  ‘Why should it be? Professionally I seem to be getting on all right but personally life’s been pretty shitty for a long time. Too long. And could get much worse. It was a surprise, a shock, to have something nice to think about for a change. To remember I was a woman. I think I’d actually forgotten that.’

  ‘I meant to say—’

  ‘I know what you meant to say,’ Claudine interrupted, but Rosetti went on.

  ‘—I’m attracted to you, which isn’t the way I want to say it but is probably the safest. It was arrogant, talking as I did so soon after what happened to Warwick. I really do apologize for that, because it was as offensive as imagining that your interest could extend beyond work. And to use our word, none of it was fair. Because there’s Flavia. Because I love her. I accept, although I told you I didn’t, that she’ll never get better. That she’d never know: never be hurt more than she already has been …’ He swallowed. ‘Did you understand any of that?’

  ‘All of it,’ said Claudine.

  ‘I don’t know how that leaves us.’

  ‘I’m not sure I do, either.’

  ‘Platonic relationships seem to be unknown here: even supposing you’d consider that.’

  Plato, thought Claudine: know thyself. ‘I think I’d find it very easy to consider.’

  Rosetti smiled doubtfully. ‘People say there’s no such thing.’

  ‘We could prove them wrong.’

  His smile went. ‘Or we could keep everything professional: confine everything to work.’

  ‘I don’t want that,’ said Claudine. ‘And I was the one to take things beyond work, remember?’

  ‘Not like this.’

  ‘It’s a semantic argument.’

  The smile returned, more strongly. ‘The coffee will have been ready a long time ago.’

  As Claudine returned with the tray Rosetti said: ‘Can you imagine how people - Françoise Sanglier, for instance - would have laughed if they’d heard the conversation we’ve just had?’

  ‘I’m not laughing.’

  Rosetti took the remark seriously. ‘We don’t, do we? Laugh, I mean. There’s not a lot of cause to, in what we do. But we haven’t laughed a lot outside work either.’

  ‘There hasn’t been a lot of reason to, so far. Now perhaps we will.’

  ‘You were outrageous,’ Sanglier protested.

  ‘I’m always outrageous.’

  ‘With your own people, maybe. Not with those I work with.’

  ‘You asked me to test her out, for fuck’s sake!’

  ‘You practically raped her!’

  ‘That would have been fun.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be easy. But she might. Just might. It would be a hell of a challenge. Is Rosetti a lover?’

  ‘I don’t know. It didn’t look as if he is. He didn’t do much to rescue her from you. Or appear offended.’

  ‘Perhaps he enjoyed it.’

  Sanglier sighed. ‘What about Father’s room?’

  ‘She agreed it was incredible.’

  ‘That all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nothing about her own father?’

  ‘Not a thing. I don’t think she looked for him in any of the pictures, either.’

  ‘Nothing about the Gestapo photocopies?’ He’d intentionally left them at an incomplete section, where there was an obvious omission.

  ‘Not a thing.’

  All he’d done was risk the one thing he wanted most to avoid with Françoise, embarrassing gossip. ‘It was a wasted evening.’

  ‘Henri?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was outrageous, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Probably made me a laughing stock within the organization.’

  ‘Just imagine what I could do if I really tried.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘I don’t like these conversations you’ve been starting lately. It’s almost as if you want to divorce me. Don’t try to do anything silly like that, will you?’

  The following morning Claudine received the official notification that the cervical smear and mammogram were entirely satisfactory.

  Kurt Volker was waiting for her when she entered the incident room, his face split by his even-toothed grin. ‘Come and see what I’ve got!’ he invited triumphantly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Volker actually giggled in his excitement, dancing his fingers across the keyboards as he pulled up his discoveries on his various screens. ‘You were right. Doing it backwards was the way. And it wasn’t even difficult!’

  The key that unlocked everything had been Claudine’s suggested use of the United Kingdom’s refusal to open its borders within the European Union. Which means that British Customs have to maintain entry and exit records of imported and exported goods, together with cargo manifests for lorries covered by the European Transports Internationaux Routiers system under which vehicles are Customs sealed at points of loading and exempt from border checks.

  He had, Volker explained, chosen Harwich, Dover and Newhaven as the three most convenient ferry ports into England from Holland, the country in which they knew the wire that bound the Celeste five had been manufactured. He’d only had to hack i
nto one Customs computer system - at Harwich - to access the other two because they were all linked. If necessary he could have penetrated every Customs terminal and database in the country. Without any intended irony, he said: ‘The security is virtually non-existent. It’s criminal.’

  He’d concentrated upon the month prior to the finding of the English victim, obviously targeting refrigerated delivery lorries because they knew the body had been frozen. During that month a total of nine hundred and thirty such pantechnicons had entered England through the three ports, between them owned by forty companies spread throughout the European Union. He’d accessed the databases of each and eliminated thirty-one because their purchasing records proved they did not buy Dutch-manufactured wire. Of the remaining eight food packaging and delivery companies that did, three were French, two based in Paris and one in Bordeaux. A further three were Dutch-domiciled, in Amsterdam, Haarlem and The Hague itself. There was one trading from Munich and the eighth had its offices and factory in Linz. All eight factories had extensive refrigeration facilities and all bought their binding wire from the same Dutch company, Alfred Koonig, in Rotterdam.

  ‘This is unbelievable,’ said Claudine, openly astonished as figures and facts and addresses materialized in front of her.

  ‘I haven’t finished yet,’ said Volker briskly, filling each of his screens with comparison programs. ‘Delivery sheets,’ he identified. ‘Of the eight only three trade in France, England and Austria, where the Celeste bodies have been found.’ There was a sideways grin as all but one of the screens went blank. ‘But only this one, Wo Lim Ltd, of 32-40, Van Diemen Straat, Amsterdam, shows deliveries within a week of each of the five killings, along the routes where the parts were discovered.’ One of the blank screens abruptly filled with addresses. ‘It seems to be one of the biggest delivery companies supplying Chinese shops and restaurants in Europe: it’s got these subsidiary offices and factories in London and Marseille, which again fits the pattern. The Dutch company itself is owned by another registered in Hong Kong, the Lo Ling Corporation …’ the words and figures scrolled up ’ … the parent company of which, Ho Yat Ltd, is listed in Macao but without any disclosure of directors, which is permissible under their law …’