Mind/Reader

by Brian Freemantle

‘What?’ said Toomey. The smirk developed into a full smile. ‘You’re admitting collusion!’

  Claudine looked contemptuously at the man. ‘They prove my total innocence of any involvement in what you are investigating. I want you to hear them and I want all this nonsense ended. Now.’

  ‘I don’t think anything will be gained by losing our temper,’ said Sanglier. What the hell did the tapes contain?

  Claudine was irritated by the childish rebuke. ‘This is all totally unnecessary.’

  ‘I’ll need to take advice on their legality but I am not sure we want to introduce anything at this stage that might form part of any defence,’ said Harper. He was a thin, precise man wearing a waistcoated suit like Toomey. Harper’s waistcoat was looped by a gold watchchain. Like Toomey at their previous meetings the lawyer was making notes with a slim metal pencil. Claudine knew the writing would be cramped and neat.

  ‘I’ve nothing to defend myself against,’ she said, her exasperation growing at their refusal to listen to the recordings and get it over with. ‘I’m trying to save everybody a lot of trouble and time, myself most of all.’ She immediately regretted adding the last four words.

  Sanglier felt a stir of unease at her confidence, but reassured himself there was no way she could escape from what Toomey and Walker had already outlined. They were being very clever, letting her do all the talking, digging her own grave. He wondered, with a sudden different concern, if he shouldn’t have had the encounter officially recorded. ‘I think we have to follow the legal advice.’

  ‘You’re all wasting your time,’ protested Claudine.

  ‘If these tapes show Dr Carter to be uninvolved in any criminality then we would be wasting time, wouldn’t we?’ said Winslow, as hopeful as Villiers of avoiding a scandal involving the British representation, of which he saw himself the nominal head. ‘Europol would not have a problem.’ And neither, he thought, would I.

  ‘It would be unfortunate if a charge were made prematurely or on ill-founded information,’ added Villiers.

  ‘I would have hoped that after what we have already discussed you would have accepted our inquiries are neither premature nor ill founded,’ said Walker stiffly.

  ‘They’re both,’ insisted Claudine. Talking directly to Michael Harper she said: ‘I did not retain you and you are not representing me. You are representing the interests of Europol. I wish these tapes to be heard now.’

  ‘I think that is extremely ill advised,’ said Harper.

  ‘If it is the wish of Dr Carter for the tapes to be played then so be it,’ said Toomey, sure of himself.

  Dismissing any further delay, Claudine said to Sanglier: ‘Do you have a machine upon which I can play these?’ regretting that she’d been so preoccupied by trying to reach the cancer specialist that she’d forgotten to bring one herself.

  He did. It was the one upon which he’d hoped, at the beginning, to record something he could manipulate against her. To get it now would mean fetching and carrying for her, he realized furiously. He hesitated, unsure whether to deny its existence, but eventually got up and took it from a desk drawer. The longer he delayed the longer he postponed her final humiliation and he didn’t want that put back a moment longer than necessary.

  Claudine played the telephone call first, then the much longer conversation in her apartment, alert to the expressions around the table. Sanglier was frowning. So was the lawyer, head bent over his legal pad. Villiers smiled and nodded to Winslow, who smiled and nodded back, suddenly as confident as Claudine. Toomey wasn’t smirking any more but there wasn’t the concern she expected as his case collapsed around him. Walker remained enigmatic. Everything sounded very convincing to her.

  ‘Well?’ she demanded, snapping off the machine.

  Inwardly Sanglier was in turmoil, a hollowness gouged from him by the words, unable to speak. She couldn’t escape! It wasn’t possible!

  Villiers said: ‘I think that very satisfactorily exonerates Dr Carter.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Winslow, with hurried relief.

  ‘It would seem so,’ added Harper, looking at Toomey and Walker.

  ‘Or it could be seen as the complete opposite,’ said Toomey, smiling again.

  ‘What?’ exclaimed Claudine, astonished.

  ‘It could be a very clever exchange between two accomplices.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said, contemptuous again. ‘You’ve heard for yourself we scarcely know each other!’

  The detective looked at Toomey, who nodded. Walker took a notebook from his pocket and said: ‘Did you and your husband have an account at Harrods, when you lived in London?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Numbered 656392 00 510 9844?’

  ‘I’ve no idea what the account number was. I closed it when I moved here.’

  ‘But you didn’t close your late husband’s account, did you?’

  ‘What account?’

  ‘The account numbered 564391 00 314 7881.’

  ‘Warwick didn’t have a separate account.’

  ‘He did, Dr Carter. He also had a safe deposit box there. Could you help us by telling us what is in that box?’

  ‘I have no knowledge of any account in my husband’s name. Nor of a safe deposit box.’

  ‘We don’t believe you,’ said Toomey.

  ‘Dr Carter,’ said the other man. ‘You do not have to say anything. But if you do not mention now something which you later use in your defence the court may decide that your failure to mention it now strengthens the case against you. A record will be made of anything you say and it may be given in evidence if you are brought to trial.’

  ‘I want that box to be opened,’ declared Claudine, aware that she had just been formally cautioned.

  ‘That’s what we want,’ said Toomey. ‘We’ve got a court order empowering us to do that. But we want you to be there, fully within British legal jurisdiction, when we do.’

  Sanglier felt like laughing again.

  Claudine remained bewildered by a safe deposit box about which she knew nothing, all the doubts she thought she had allayed stirred up again in a fog of uncertainty. But the sleeplessness was the result of finally reaching the oncologist, close to midnight. She’d spoken to Rosetti by then but called him back after her conversation with the French specialist, wanting to be told something different although she’d known she wouldn’t be: wanting, even, a platitude about experts sometimes being wrong which she’d known Rosetti wouldn’t give either. He didn’t try. It wasn’t his field, but he understood what Foulan said to be medically factual, that the cancer Foulan suspected to have reached her mother’s liver was painless but that it wouldn’t be if it had also reached the pancreas, which Foulan further suspected. It was Foulan, in fact, who’d offered the straw at which to clutch, that the biopsies hadn’t yet proved positive. By dawn Claudine had stopped holding on to that fragile hope, forcing the acceptance upon herself: confronting it.

  She was going to have to face the coming day, too. She wondered briefly if there would be time to contact the Neuilly police for news of the intended raid on the warehouse off the rue Gide, but decided that would have to wait. Sanglier remained the self-appointed ringmaster, declaring the potential difficulties for Europol justified the use of the organization’s plane, which Claudine considered an over-reaction, like insisting all three commissioners accompany her and Harper to London with the two investigators.

  With the exception of Harper there appeared to be a positive attempt to ostracize her in the comparatively small executive aircraft. The lawyer hurried back to her after takeoff to insist it was both pointless and dangerous for her to continue to refuse his representation. He further insisted, soft-voiced, that anything she could tell him before they got to the department store vault would be covered by client confidentiality and could greatly help his response to whatever was discovered when the safety deposit box was opened. Claudine repeated there was no need for her to have a lawyer and that she had no idea what was in the bo
x. To escape the lawyer’s halitosis and refuse the commissioners’ puerile attempt to distance themselves, Claudine went instead to them. Winslow visibly pulled back in his seat at her approach and Villiers looked nervously beyond her, to the lawyer, as if seeking legal permission for them to talk. Claudine ignored the reaction of both, but included them in her account of the Paris meeting with Shankar Sergeant.

  ‘So now we know the reason,’ said Winslow, when she finished.

  ‘The message that I suggested,’ reminded Claudine, angry at their obvious belief in her guilt and wanting to irritate them in return by forcing them to acknowledge her success.

  ‘Yes,’ conceded Villiers.

  ‘K-14 – probably other Triads as well - are running a vast illegal immigration trade into Europe and using it to stock a brothel and prostitution business,’ continued Claudine, not bothering to conceal the satisfaction from her voice. ‘And we’re powerless to prove it or stop it.’ She hadn’t intended the final sentence to sound like a criticism of Sanglier’s investigation but realized, too late, that it did. She realized, too, from the man’s face-tightening reaction that was how he’d taken it. To try to qualify the remark would only worsen the misunderstanding.

  Let her have her tiny, imagined victories, thought Sanglier. He’d have his, soon enough. The embarrassment to Europol of a public, sensational trial - which this would undoubtedly be - would actually be minimal, although Villiers and Winslow and all the other pusillanimous idiots hadn’t yet understood that. Whatever scheme she’d been involved in with the financier and God knows who else had been before she had officially been appointed to the organization, which could be made clear either during or directly after the court appearances. With fitting and appropriate irony the embarrassment would be that of the United Kingdom, the country that had done most to obstruct and prevent the creation of a European FBI. None of the other commissioners appeared to have realized that, either. It was a point he’d make when he gave an account of whatever happened today to the full and unscheduled meeting of the Commission he’d insisted Villiers convene before they’d left The Hague. He became aware of the woman promising to provide a written account of her Paris meeting and Sanglier contented himself saying that in view of what might transpire after today it would probably be better if she did so as soon as possible.

  Claudine met Sanglier’s look as he made the remark, and stopped regretting the misunderstanding about the stalled inquiry.

  Toomey had risen to the luxury of executive jet travel and had two official Home Office cars waiting. He also invoked Home Office authority to bypass all entry procedures and they arrived at the Knightsbridge store early for the scheduled rendezvous with officials of the Harrods bank and its security division. There were three of them, one a woman, and they were waiting anyway with two other men who, from the deference, belonged to Walker’s Serious Fraud Office squad. There were no introductions. Claudine was conscious of a lot of curiosity from customers as they marched to an elevator closed to the public. Sanglier was aware of it, too, and thought it unfortunate there wasn’t a press photographer or television camera to record Claudine Carter’s moment of ignominy.

  There was a Harrods lawyer waiting at the safe deposit vaults. Toomey produced the court order and Michael Harper officially consulted it with the man, although he’d already gone through it on the flight from Amsterdam. Both lawyers pushed into the barred examination room, together with everyone from Europol and two of the Harrods officials. It was very crowded and quickly became extremely hot. Claudine would have liked to use her inhaler but thought she could manage without it. Briefly, for no more than a few seconds, no one appeared sure what to do next and then Sanglier, exceeding any authority but impatient for the dénouement, said: ‘Let’s get on with it, shall we?’

  The bank official who’d greeted them on the ground floor turned the two keys and extracted the long, rectangular container from its recess. There was another moment of uncertainty, broken by John Walker, who announced: ‘The court order authorizes me to take possession,’ and reached forward to receive it.

  There was insufficient room for everyone to get around the table and Claudine was almost jostled aside by one of the unnamed policemen. Toomey was next to Walker as the detective began to extract documents and the Home Office man said: ‘Bearer bonds!’ and looked at Claudine.

  Methodically, Walker placed the bonds carefully one on top of the other beside the box, like a croupier dealing cards. ‘Six,’ he counted. ‘Each in the sum of twenty thousand dollars, payable to bearer upon presentation.’

  ‘Unnamed,’ said Toomey, at the other man’s elbow. To Claudine he said: ‘That’s very discreet, isn’t it, Dr Carter? All you have to do is present them, as the bearer, and receive twenty thousand dollars each time. A grown-up game of Monopoly: twenty thousand dollars for passing Go.’

  Walker was sifting slowly through a stapled document upon whose fronting page red waxed seals were visible to everyone. To read it he’d had to break another waxed seal on a heavy manila envelope and untie the sort of pink ribbon Claudine had frequently seen in courts. Everyone was sweating in the confined heat of the room. Claudine felt the tightness increasing around her chest. There was a lot of foot shuffling and coughing.

  Walker at last looked up and said: ‘It’s a legally signed and witnessed affidavit. Sworn by Gerald Lorimer.’

  There was nothing else in the box and they’d escaped to the larger office of the bank director, who’d ordered coffee and mineral water which everyone had needed. A solemn-faced Toomey had been the first person to read the document after Walker and when Michael Harper reached forward to be next in line Claudine said: ‘I think I’ve every right to know what it says. I’d like you to read it aloud,’ not knowing if she’d like all of what she might hear but not in any doubt about the confusion of both the Home Office man and the detective.

  Harper hesitated, looking from face to face for any objection. When there wasn’t any he said: ‘There is the formal beginning, with the necessary legal entitlement and proof of the deponent. The affidavit itself reads: Before setting out the facts of this testimony, which I am swearing under oath, I wish to state that a dear and trusted friend whom I have asked to help me has no knowledge of the acts I have committed He has no knowledge of the contents of this testimony, which is being sealed in the presence of those whose signatures appear both on this document and upon its envelope.

  For a number of years, beginning at Cambridge where we were both students, I was a consenting homosexual partner of Paul Bickerstone. In more recent years I have regularly supplied Paul Bickerstone with confidential financial information, in breach of the undertakings I understood and signed in the Official Secrets Act. I did this because of the personal relationship to which I have already referred. Paul Bickerstone used this knowledge in business dealings and has rewarded me, financially, although I did not do it for monetary gain.

  At the beginning of this year I told Paul Bickerstone I wanted our relationship to end I also told him I would no longer supply him with the classified financial material as I had in the past.

  Since that time I have been subjected to a number of threats and suffered physical assault. The threats have been to supply photographs of myself in certain situations, to my employers. I was also so badly beaten after agreeing to go to his flat by someone I met at a club that two of my ribs were broken. On another occasion my car was deliberately rammed by a hit and run driver in a vehicle later discovered to have been stolen. The attempt was to force me off a road on a high embankment, at the bottom of which there was a river.

  I believe that unless I agree to supply classified information again I shall be more seriously injured. Maybe even killed. I am making this statement and depositing with it bearer bonds given to me by Paul Bickerstone with instructions to my friend, Warwick Jameson, to give the package to the police if I die violently or suffer serious injury.

  I have been advised by the lawyers to whom I have made this sta
tement and who are prevented by client confidentiality from divulging its contents to go the police. This I have declined to do.’

  There was brief but total silence in the room. Michael Harper said to Walker: ‘You’re going to need a lot of advice about where to take your investigation now but one thing is quite obvious. There is no way in which Dr Carter is connected.’

  ‘And I want a formal apology and withdrawal of the caution under which I came here,’ said Claudine.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Walker. ‘Of course the caution is withdrawn.’

  ‘Mr Toomey?’ persisted Claudine.

  ‘I apologize,’ said the man tightly, face blazing.

  It was a fleeting impression, because Sanglier had already turned to leave the room, but Claudine thought the look on the man’s face was one of unrestrained fury.

  On the return flight Claudine endured the hypocritical assurances from Villiers and Winslow that they had never doubted her, respecting Sanglier for not joining in the recitation. Michael Harper thought client confidentiality might prevent the lawyers who’d acted for Lorimer supporting any prosecution of Paul Bickerstone and doubted the unsupported statement of a dead man was admissible by itself, unless Lorimer had been murdered, for which there seemed no evidence.

  Back at The Hague she told Volker and Yvette there had been a huge misunderstanding over something that had occurred before she’d joined Europol which had been thoroughly resolved. She recounted the entire episode in detail to Rosetti as he walked with her to her office for her twice postponed meeting with Scott Burrows.

  ‘So you won?’

  ‘Hands down.’

  ‘I still think you were lucky: that you should have got a lawyer from the beginning.’

  ‘Winning is all that counts.’

  ‘Not every time.’

  ‘This time.’

  They parted at the door, through which the American entered minutes later clouded in aromatic smoke.

  ‘You know I’m not going to consider this a proper profile, not able to do or see anything myself first hand,’ Claudine cautioned at once.