Winslow returned smiling. ‘Sir Herbert Brooke has invited us to lunch. Not at the Yard. At his club. In a private room.’
‘And he’ll have to be told about an interception before it takes place, for the move against the factory here in London.’
‘Precisely,’ agreed Winslow.
Their fear of exclusion was resolved even more simply than that. On their way in the car the Metropolitan Police Commissioner sent for them, a message came in on the radio and the driver instantly detoured to the Battersea heliport. The NCIS commander, Edward Pritchard, stood with Patrick Lacey beside the already engine-whining militarily camouflaged machine.
‘The hands were found in a church in Bromsgrove, Birmingham, after matins this morning,’ reported Lacey.
‘The body will go on being distributed in the north,’ said Claudine.
‘Your man Volker has plotted us a suggested route,’ said Pritchard, offering Claudine the print-out. ‘We don’t want to move until you’ve agreed it’s the one we should take.’
Suggested, thought Claudine curiously. And then she remembered her disappointment at the gap in what Volker had transmitted the previous night - the absence of food delivery addresses that would have been in the London factory computer - and realized it hadn’t been a gap at all. Volker had held them back until he got the location of the hands. She pretended to study the route, drawn from Birmingham to Stoke-on-Trent before going east to Derby, then Nottingham, directly north to Sheffield and finally west, to Manchester. ‘A city for each part of the body that remains to be left,’ she said.
‘This will be the truck we want?’ Lacey demanded.
‘This will be the truck we want,’ Claudine agreed. As they belted themselves in in the helicopter, she said: ‘You needed my confirmation?’
‘Yes.’
‘If you hadn’t, would you have included us in the interception?’
‘No,’ admitted the man truthfully.
For the first twenty minutes after lift-off Lacey and Pritchard, helmeted and linked not just to the pilot but to ground control through which they could be patched by landline to wherever they wanted, were in constant radio conversation with Chief Constables throughout the Midland constabularies. The first time they seemed aware of others in the helicopter was when a large industrial conurbation appeared ahead and to their left. Lacey turned briefly and said: ‘Birmingham.’
Almost at once Pritchard, in the seat behind the Home Office minister, announced: ‘A Wo Lim refrigerated lorry has been identified by an M6 motorway patrol, approaching Stafford. It’s to be a Staffordshire interception. Army and police units have been mobilized.’
Lacey was on a separate link-up. He said: ‘The London factory is completely sealed. Telephone lines are going to be jammed at the moment of intercept against a mobile unit warning. The factory plans do not show a radio link facility.’
‘There!’ said Pritchard, pointing ahead.
The M6 motorway loop around Stafford could distinctly be seen from the air, with the town to the right, and literally as they watched police vehicles began to join from feeder roads, sealing off the northbound lanes. Others - unmarked lorries as well as cars - came in behind to give the impression of normal northbound traffic, ready to block the road from the rear when the signal came.
‘There he is,’ said Pritchard.
The Wo Lim lorry was huge, the size of those using the Amsterdam factory. It was in the inside lane, the nearest private car at least twenty yards away and already indicating the intention to overtake.
‘It’s to be junction 14, just after the loop,’ said Pritchard, keeping up the commentary.
As he spoke the helicopter began to descend. Just before they lost elevation Claudine saw police cars streaming the wrong way down the junction’s slip road to block the lorry’s path from the front and the pursuit vehicles forming up in a solid side-by-side line to the rear. She was abruptly aware of other helicopters below them, on both sides of the motorway. Armed, flak-jacketed special police units were pouring out from some. Soldiers in tiger suit camouflage were disgorging from military machines like their own.
By the time they reached the lorry the rear seal had already been broken and the doors yanked open, emitting a ghostlike cloud of condensation against the outside warmth. Two Chinese were sitting on the bank, hands on their heads. Despite the fact that they looked very small and helpless there was an eight-strong armed guard of police and soldiers. The rosy-cheeked, rotund Chief Constable was already there. He smiled at the approach of the Home Office minister, thrust out his hand and said: ‘Baker, Barry Baker. It all seems to have gone rather well. No one’s gone in yet. Need to do it properly, I suppose?’
Claudine saw that nowhere among the light-blazing vehicles was there an ambulance and said: ‘There’s a forensic pathologist here.’
Everyone’s attention switched to the Europol group. Lacey said: ‘I suppose you’re the people to have the first look.’
Claudine fell into step behind Rosetti. No one tried to stop her. The lorry was bisected by a narrow central walkway barely wide enough for one person. The produce was packed on either side, in metal drawers recessed into chest-high metal racks, throughout the entire length of the lorry. Into the open space above, from the same double-pronged hooks as those in the refrigerated store, hung the larger pieces of meat, which she guessed to be mostly pork and none of it of carcase size but jointed down into legs and sides of spare ribs. That stopped at the middle of the lorry. Here, on the slabs formed by the tops of the chests, were hundreds of fowl, mostly ducks she thought. This continued for about ten feet before the space was again filled by hung jointed carcases. It was breath-snatchingly cold, burning Claudine’s throat and lungs. Everything was frozen rock hard and was white-encrusted. To Claudine all the carcase joints looked the same.
‘Will you be able to tell?’ It hurt her to talk.
‘Yes.’ He went immediately to the far end of the lorry, the most obvious place for concealment, and began slowly to come back towards her, checking every piece. He did the left-hand side first, stopping where the fowls intervened, and went back to where he’d started to begin the right side. He found the torso almost at once, suspended from a hook in the third line. One leg was still attached. The other, as well as the two arms, was in the drawer immediately below.
‘You were right, Claudine,’ he said, the words groaning from him in the cold. ‘It’s over now.’
They both needed police car blankets and even then it was some time before they could talk properly. Their clothes became damp where the ice that had formed on them melted in the outside air. Lacey and Pritchard were in separate police cars, using the radio and telephone. Lacey emerged first. ‘Went like clockwork, everywhere. There was another body, intact, in the London factory. And at least fifteen Chinese without any papers. And another body in Marseille. No word yet on illegals. There were no bodies in Amsterdam but they’re still counting illegals. Fifty at the last count: could be they’re the entire workforce.’ He paused. ‘And there were no police injuries anywhere.’
‘Wonderful!’ said Winslow.
‘I think we’ve got every reason for a party,’ said Lacey.
‘I wouldn’t think the parents of that kid in there or any of the others will think they’ve got anything to celebrate, do you?’ said Claudine.
‘I didn’t intend to be disrespectful,’ apologized Lacey. ‘I meant everyone should be very pleased – you particularly - that all these bastards are under lock and key.’
They weren’t, of course. Enough were still free to plan Claudine Carter’s murder.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Hugo Rosetti remained in England to take part in the autopsy on the unknown victim but Claudine, Poulard and Winslow returned to Holland for Henri Sanglier’s triumphant press conference, slightly muted for the man by the obvious concentration upon Claudine. Under media pressure even before the conference Walter Jones compiled a background release upon her and the coverag
e was heavily personalized: over subsequent days the British press discovered Warwick’s suicide but she refused requests for separate sympathy interviews before and during the main conference and later complained to both Sanglier and Jan Villiers at the intrusion into her privacy the media division had made possible.
Sanglier’s name was, however, sufficient to guarantee the man almost matching attention and the personalized concentration was equally divided that first day in Amsterdam and afterwards, in The Hague. The outcome was to relegate the coverage in England and France, despite the actual finding of more bodies in both factories and the dramatic interception of the refrigerated truck in England.
At the conference Claudine specifically renewed the amnesty appeal to the victims’ families, anxious that nothing would be overlooked or dismissed in the euphoria of the moment.
She stressed that danger as strongly as she could at the following day’s official review of the entire investigation, at the end of which fresh commendations were voted for all of them, Sanglier included. Claudine’s strongest argument was that against the arrested Amsterdam Chinese - the obvious ringleaders - the most serious charge was organizing illegal immigration. She persisted until it was formally agreed that Europol pressure the police in each country in which arrests had been made - but in Amsterdam particularly - to make DNA comparisons from every detained man with samples taken from the victims.
David Winslow’s warning of the intended British protest at ministerial level ruined the self-congratulation for Jan Villiers. Sanglier, refusing to surrender his elation, replied easily that Villiers could argue that security against a leak had been essential to destroy the biggest and most evil criminal enterprise uncovered in the European Union, and Claudine guessed the man had been rehearsing sound-bite phrases for every eventuality.
Sanglier pointed out that the task force had officially to remain in existence until the various trials at which they were likely to be witnesses, and as its now very publicly identified head undertook personally to stress the need for DNA comparison.
Claudine’s proposal had even more purpose when she learned in a later telephone conversation with Rosetti that he’d recovered DNA evidence from both English victims. She was disappointed he wasn’t going to get back in time for Scott Burrows’ farewell party and realized he was not going to be able to make his customary weekend journey to Rome, either, when he said he intended going direct from London to Marseille to examine the body found in the Wo Lim factory there.
‘You going to Lyon?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She hadn’t yet told him about the oncologist’s fears but decided against doing it now, on the telephone.
‘I could come up from Marseille on the Sunday. It’s on the way by train.’
Her disappointment vanished. ‘That would be wonderful!’
‘I wouldn’t be intruding?’
So he anticipated meeting her mother. ‘Not at all. You could eat the best food in France.’
Scott Burrows had been allowed the executive bar and it was already crowded when Claudine arrived. His wife was a petite, bottle-blonde woman whom Claudine guessed to be at least fifteen years younger than her husband. From the patterned voile suit Claudine decided that while the woman might not have liked Europe she’d visibly benefited from its fashion influence. As the thought came to her Claudine became aware of Francoise Sanglier bearing down. She wore a suit, too, in black silk with billowing trousers, complete with white shirt and a man-length tie.
‘Where’s Hugo?’ the woman greeted her.
‘Still in England.’
‘So you’re by yourself ?’
For all her sophistication Françoise Sanglier had the subtlety of a drunken marine, Claudine thought. ‘For the moment.’
‘And you’re drinking?’ said the woman, indicating the champagne glass in Claudine’s hand.
‘I’ve changed some habits,’ said Claudine, regretting the words as she spoke.
There was a quick smile. ‘That sounds interesting?’
‘Drinking habits,’ qualified Claudine.
‘You’ve been avoiding me. I called seven times: I’ve kept count.’
‘I’ve been very busy.’
‘But now you’re not. We can make plans for Paris.’
‘I don’t think so, Françoise.’
For the briefest moment Françoise’s face darkened, someone unused to rejection. ‘I’ve made up my mind.’
‘So have I. I prefer to shop alone.’
‘What can I do to make you change your mind?’
‘Nothing. I’m not interested.’
‘Not in half-price couture?’
‘Nor anything that goes with it.’
‘Nothing need go with it.’
Claudine’s patience snapped. ‘I fuck men, Françoise. I prefer that, too.’
‘You ever tried the alternative, to find out?’
‘I don’t intend to. Don’t call me any more, Françoise. You’re wasting your time. Mine too.’ Claudine looked around for escape, sufficiently grateful for Burrows’ approach to forgive the cigar.
Françoise became aware of the anticipation. The anger settled more heavily in her face. ‘Am I being dismissed?’
‘Judge for yourself.’
‘I might do just that,’ snapped the woman, in a confused threat.
‘Give up, Françoise,’ said Claudine, exasperated. ‘You’re making yourself look ridiculous.’
There was a moment of wide-eyed outrage before the woman turned, model-like, to walk away slowly, the disdain appearing hers. She had, accepted Claudine, made a devout enemy instead of a lover and was quite happy at the choice.
Burrows arrived smiling broadly with a half-filled tumbler of whisky in the hand not occupied with the cigar. ‘Miriam wants to meet you.’
‘I want to meet her,’ said Claudine. ‘All ready to go?’
‘Packed and parcelled,’ said the man.
Claudine didn’t answer the smile. Before being led across the room she said: ‘Anything from America?’
Burrows became serious, too. ‘Not a thing, since Baltimore.’
‘You be careful.’
The man’s smile came back. ‘I will. Let’s go and meet Miriam.’
Burrows’ wife had a deep Southern drawl not helped by a tendency to lisp and Claudine had to concentrate very hard. The American with her, Joe Hardy from the embassy, had a similar accent but it was easier to understand without the speech impairment. The man said: ‘We’re getting rid of him.’
‘At last!’ said Miriam, with feeling. She didn’t try to disguise her eagerness to get home by reciting the usual clichés about her sadness at leaving Europe, although there was the traditional insistence for Claudine to look them up if she was ever in Washington. Claudine, just as traditionally, promised that she would.
‘Scott says you did a hell of a job on these killings,’ said Miriam, to her husband’s frown. ‘Said it would have taken him much longer.’
Claudine saw Burrows visibly colour. ‘I don’t think it would, given all the evidence I had to work with.’
‘It needed a European mind,’ said Burrows, conceding their most protracted disagreement during all the seminars.
Now it was Claudine who felt embarrassed. ‘If we keep up this mutual admiration you’ll have to divorce Miriam and marry me.’
‘You wouldn’t like it,’ said Miriam. ‘He snores.’
‘That I could stand,’ said Claudine. ‘It’s the cigars I’d have difficulty with.’
‘He’s not allowed to smoke them at home,’ smiled Miriam.
‘I cut down with you, too,’ Burrows reminded Claudine.
‘I didn’t notice,’ she said.
Jan Villiers gave a speech and made the presentations, a Europol plaque and a framed photograph of Burrows seated in the middle of the entire Commission, each of whom had signed the memento. There was a bouquet for Miriam which reminded Claudine of the one Paul Bickerstone had brought to her apartment. She was anno
yed it hadn’t occurred to her to bring a personal gift for the American.
She was one of the first to leave and Burrows walked with her to the door.
‘You would come to see us if you ever came over, wouldn’t you?’
‘Of course I would.’
‘I meant what I said about your being careful.’
‘Likewise.’
‘You thought about asking for some protective security for a while?’
‘Of course not!’ said Claudine, bemused at the question.
‘It might be an idea.’
‘You’re being paranoid, for Christ’s sake. It’s a recognized police risk from every arrest.’
The American made a motion with his hand, moving the whisky around his glass. ‘Too much of this. Keep safe, you hear.’
‘You too. And sorry.’
‘For what?’
‘Behaving like a bitch, at all those early sessions.’
‘You’re the only one among them with any balls. It would have been dull if you hadn’t.’
The car park had already been crowded when Claudine arrived that morning and she had to pick her way through the vehicles that were still there to get to her car. The sensation of being watched came to her when she was halfway across, so strongly that there was a skin tingle along her shoulders and she stopped, swinging around. She saw nothing and was annoyed at herself. The feeling had been so real that she mentioned it to Rosetti when he telephoned that night to ask about the party. He dismissed it as part of the anticlimax, after the tension of the previous days, combined with the conversation with Burrows, about which she also told him. She laughed awkwardly, sorry that she’d admitted it, and said that of course he was right.
She still stared out into the apartment block car park and the street beyond when she pulled the lounge curtains but she didn’t see the man with the half-moon scar on his face, patiently staring up in the hope of identifying her apartment, which he did the moment he saw her.
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