The Predators

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘We’re learning what they look like,’ said Blake. ‘You getting to know what’s in their minds?’

  Claudine nodded. ‘There’s no doubt that it began as a classic paedophile snatch, with a woman to allay the child’s fear. The woman’s the key, possibly the ringleader. And she’s recklessly arrogant, sitting casually, not hurrying, even when they’d caused a traffic block. The man was anxious, hurrying people by and even using his indicators when he pulled away, trying to minimize the inconvenience he’d caused by stopping as suddenly as he had at what I’d guess to be the woman’s command when she saw Mary walking by herself. The woman’s very quick, mentally. Mary’s scowling was at having an adventure spoiled. She was expecting a car and must have said something the woman was able to pick up on. She got Mary into the car and was able – at first, at least – to control her verbally. The most obvious way would have been by pretending to be the back-up car taking her where she expected to go. Physically to have touched Mary would have frightened her so she’s a practised child abuser. She’s probably taken kids this way before so we’ve got to go carefully through those previous case histories Poncellet is assembling. There is money. The jewellery description sounds like a Cartier set: I know because I’ve got the same. It’s called Constellation. So she likes expensive jewellery. That – coupled with the reckless arrogance – tells me she’s vain, overly sure of herself. The way she dresses her hair supports that: everything in place, controlled. When Kurt and Rompuy are happy with the computer compilation we should blanket hairdressing and beauty salons with it.’ She paused, searching for anything she needed to add. ‘And I’ve very little doubt that it was the woman who created the Mary, Mary Quite Contrary message: arrogance again. If it was her, it confirms her as the person in charge.’

  ‘A woman paedophile, targeting a girl?’ queried Blake, frowning.

  ‘It’s an unusual pattern but not totally unknown,’ said Claudine.

  ‘The publicity will be intense when the computer pictures are released,’ suggested Harding. ‘Won’t the physical risk to Mary increase – quite apart from the sexual danger – if they think we’re getting too close?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Claudine flatly. ‘But it’s something we can’t avoid.’

  ‘Would there be an element of protection in the fact that a woman is involved?’ wondered Blake.

  Claudine shook her head positively. Even more flatly she said: ‘The majority of case histories of women sex perverts show them more physically cruel and deviant than men.’

  ‘Thanks for picking up on the things we missed,’ said Harding.

  Claudine saw the opening at once. She hadn’t expected it to be so easy. ‘It’s a combined effort now, not a contest any more, isn’t it?’

  ‘It certainly is as far as I am concerned,’ said the American guardedly. ‘And I think today’s gone pretty damned well.’

  With an aggression that surprised Claudine, Blake said: ‘You sure about that, Paul?’

  ‘I don’t think I understand that question,’ protested the American.

  ‘I thought we’d ironed out the working relationship,’ said Blake.

  ‘So did I.’

  ‘It would be unfortunate if it got fouled up again.’

  Claudine had imagined she would have to lead this discussion and frowned curiously at her partner. Blake refused to meet the look.

  ‘It won’t on my part,’ assured Harding.

  ‘It didn’t make sense, John walking out as he did,’ said Claudine. It had to be confronted, not allowed to drift into innuendo and misunderstanding. ‘I know re-interviewing the eye-witnesses was primarily an investigative procedure but I’d have expected someone as obsessional as John to insist on remaining.’

  ‘I know,’ said the American. ‘I was as surprised as you.’

  Claudine didn’t think she could go as far as openly suggesting Norris was suffering a mental problem. ‘So what are we going to do about it?’

  ‘He’s got a lot of respect, back in Washington,’ said Harding. What the hell was he doing, talking disloyally of a colleague? But Norris was behaving like a horse’s ass. Harding was more discomfited by the man’s behaviour today than he had been when he received the initial Iceman cable alerting him to Norris’s arrival.

  ‘I thought McBride had clout, too,’ said Blake.

  ‘I don’t have any reason – or the authority – to question John. If I tried my feet wouldn’t touch the ground until I got to Washington, probably in protective custody.’

  ‘Which would seem to sum up the problem,’ said Claudine.

  ‘Any move is going to have to come from your side,’ Harding insisted.

  ‘It would help if we knew when and where to make it,’ said Blake.

  Harding shook his head despairingly. ‘I can’t work against my own task force commander!’

  ‘Don’t work against us, either,’ said Blake.

  ‘I won’t,’ repeated the American. Shit, he thought: what a total fuck-up!

  Blake was about to speak when the telephone sounded. Harding grabbed it, eager for the respite. It was a very brief conversation. To Claudine he said: ‘It was Harrison, at the embassy. The ambassador has asked to see you.’

  Claudine went alone to the Boulevard du Régent, leaving the two detectives watching Volker creating a startlingly life-like portrait of a narrow-faced, suntanned blond that both Rompuy and to a lesser extent Lunckner insisted was an amazing re-creation of the woman in the back of the Mercedes. It would, Volker assured them, be ready by the evening.

  James McBride was more composed than Claudine had previously seen him. So was Hillary. Norris was facing them across the desk, legs outstretched in easy relaxation. The chief of mission remained standing.

  ‘The ambassador—’ started Harrison, but McBride broke in at once.

  ‘—can talk for himself. I’m not sure this second television appearance is a good idea. John doesn’t think so, either.’

  Norris smiled and nodded. He looked beyond Claudine, clearly searching for Harding. The smile disappeared.

  Claudine realized at once that the ambassador respected her opinion. So she’d impressed the man at their earlier encounter. She didn’t think it would be difficult to do it again: inexplicably leaving, as he had, meant Norris was totally ignorant of what they’d achieved with the eye-witnesses. It wasn’t going to help the man’s mental condition but Claudine wasn’t sure anything short of hospitalization would.

  She repeated her conviction that the abductors had to be drawn into contact upon Europol’s initiative (‘the first, unwitting, erosion of their control’) and that it should be achieved in the shortest possible time (‘it’s the fourth day now: Mary mustn’t be allowed to think no one is trying to help her and start trusting those who are holding her’). Throughout Norris sat complacently, shaking his head in dismissal to every point.

  McBride provided the opportunity for which Claudine was waiting. ‘Won’t it simply be a repetition of the appeal I’ve already made?’

  ‘That would be sufficient by itself,’ said Claudine easily. ‘But we’ve got digitalized pictures of the man and woman who took Mary—’

  ‘You know who they are!’ Hillary interrupted.

  ‘We think we’ve got a fairly accurate picture of what they look like,’ qualified Claudine. ‘They’ll be ready by late afternoon, early evening. And their impact will be that much more if you appear, reiterating your appeal directly to them.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this, John?’ McBride demanded.

  Norris was sitting primly upright now, his face fixed, knowing Claudine Carter was lying. She wouldn’t allow anything like an accurate picture of her accomplices to appear publicly. ‘I was waiting to hear from Paul,’ he said inadequately. ‘There’s a danger of getting a lot of bad leads if the pictures aren’t good.’

  ‘The witnesses are happy with them,’ Claudine assured him. To the ambassador she added: ‘I don’t want to expose you or your wife to any more distre
ss than you’ve already suffered. But I really want these pictures to achieve the maximum impact. Your appearance would ensure that.’

  ‘I made a fool of myself last time,’ blurted McBride.

  ‘Not for the first time,’ said Hillary.

  ‘You couldn’t have done better if you’d been rehearsed,’ insisted Claudine, pleased to contradict the other woman.

  ‘You sure about that?’ asked McBride doubtfully.

  Norris was shaking his head vigorously.

  ‘We’ve got to make the biggest possible impact, to get them to come to us,’ repeated Claudine. ‘Don’t stage a press conference, as such. Make it a television appeal, limited to yourselves and an interview …’ She hesitated, remembering the need for diplomatic correctness. ‘Include Poncellet, to talk about the importance of the computer graphics to the investigation.’

  ‘We’ll do it,’ decided Hillary.

  McBride nodded, in agreement. ‘I’m to appeal—’

  ‘Plead,’ broke in Norris contemptuously.

  ‘Yes!’ said Claudine, eagerly again. ‘That’s what you’ve got to do. Plead. Do whatever it takes to bring them to us.’

  McBride was silent for several moments before saying: ‘Will you prep us?’

  ‘Willingly,’ said Claudine, relieved. ‘We’ll rehearse it word for word.’

  Turning to Harrison, McBride said: ‘Fix it through public affairs. And involve Poncellet.’

  Norris stayed, listening disparagingly to Claudine’s advice but offering none himself. He realized the woman was extremely clever. His mistake had been in underestimating her. It was possible he’d have to take some very direct action. Detain her and interrogate her. Make her talk.

  Norris was waiting in Paul Harding’s chair at Paul Harding’s desk when the local FBI man arrived back at the embassy. He didn’t make any effort to move.

  ‘You should have called me about the computer graphics. The woman wrong-footed me.’

  ‘I was still working!’ protested Harding.

  ‘You got print-outs of the pictures?’

  Harding offered them across the desk.

  ‘I’m not impressed,’ Norris said dismissively. ‘Could be anyone.’

  ‘The two motorists who saw them are happy.’

  ‘I think it’s all very clever,’ said Norris solemnly.

  ‘Their German computer guy is a genius,’ agreed Harding, misunderstanding.

  Norris frowned. ‘What do you know about her?’

  Harding’s misunderstanding remained. He looked at the digitalized image on the table between them and said: ‘We don’t have a name, John.’

  ‘Dr Carter!’

  Harding couldn’t speak for several moments. At last he managed: ‘You’re losing me here.’

  ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about her. I want her thoroughly checked out. I’ve assigned Ritchie and McCulloch but they’re drawing blanks. I want you to do better.’

  On the scale of bad feelings Paul Harding’s score was eleven where the graph stopped at ten. What the fuck was he going to do! Remembering, he said: ‘We checked the school again. The principal had an odd phone call from a woman wanting to know the curriculum languages. The phone number she left was wrong.’

  ‘I’m interested in the Carter woman,’ said Norris, dismissive still. ‘Concentrate on her.’

  Kurt Volker was waiting impatiently for Claudine when she re-entered their offices at the Belgian police HQ. ‘I think there’s something significant,’ he announced.

  ‘It’s time to declare yourself,’ said Lucien Bigot. He’d made the first approach, all those months ago.

  ‘I know that,’ agreed Sanglier.

  ‘So what’s it going to be?’ demanded the politician.

  ‘I’d like a final meeting.’ He had to have the commitment, even if only verbally.

  ‘We’d like that too.’

  ‘For positive undertakings,’ said Sanglier.

  ‘That’s what we all want,’ said the other man.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Félicité recognized that she was right, as she usually was: there was a sexual excitement about danger. It was, perhaps, why she so much enjoyed cruising the streets, hunting. The pleasure had gone on now for more than half an hour, ever since Jean Smet had burst into the Anspach house babbling about pictures of her and Henri Cool to be shown on television.

  ‘You’ll be recognized! Identified!’ The man was unable to keep still, striding about the room as he had at the beach house, his mind butterflying from anxiety to anxiety, his words jumbled. He’d tried to smoke, too, but Félicité had forbidden it. She detested the smell of stale tobacco in her home.

  ‘Sit down!’ she ordered sharply. ‘How can they know about me?’

  ‘Two motorists saw you pick her up.’ Smet remained standing, shifting from foot to foot.

  It was the first comprehensible sentence the man had uttered and Félicité felt another spurt of excitement. She rose and put both hands against Smet’s shoulders to press him into a chair on her way to the drinks tray, where she poured brandy for both of them. As she handed his glass to him she said: ‘From the beginning. Everything that was said, how it was said.’

  Smet made a slurping sound with his first drink and the cognac caught his breath, making him cough. He tugged a tightly folded wad of paper from inside his jacket and said: ‘Read it yourself. That’s a copy of today’s report to the Minister.’

  Félicité took her time, sipping her drink as she read, acknowledging that this investigation appeared much more thorough than the previous one. Which was why it was that much more satisfying. When she finished the account she remained looking down at it, turning several sheets over before looking up. ‘So where’s the computer graphic?’

  ‘I only heard there was going to be one in a telephone call from Poncellet on his way to the television studio! We’re not getting a copy until tomorrow, in time for our cooperation meeting. And that’s the problem I’m trying to make you understand. I don’t know everything they’re doing, not all the time! And not quickly enough.’

  There was still ten minutes to go before the special newscast, Félicité saw. She waved the report. ‘You read this?’

  ‘Of course I’ve read it: I wrote most of it. And it’s you, isn’t it!’

  ‘It’s a very general description of a woman who is older than me and wears indeterminate blond hair in a chignon.’ Félicité ran her fingers exaggeratedly through the lightly waved hair that fell almost to her shoulders. ‘Which I never do except when I’m choosing someone new: precisely because it will be confusing, if I’m seen. My hair is more golden than blond. The estimate of how tall I am makes me almost into a giant. Cool too. It’s ridiculous. They haven’t even got the car right: it’s dark green, not blue or black. And it’s a 320.’ She cupped her breast with her free hand. ‘And I’m not at all flat-chested: I’ve got nice tits. You like them, don’t you?’

  Smet shook his head, although not in answer to her question. ‘This isn’t anything to joke about.’

  ‘Nor is it anything to wet yourself about.’ She had imagined far more from the man’s garbled rambling and her excitement was going. ‘You told the others?’

  ‘I wanted to speak to you first.’

  Too frightened to do anything by himself, Félicité thought. Or even to be trusted. There could never be any question of Smet going to the authorities. He was too deeply involved, as legally culpable as the rest of them. Which he well knew. But the risk – not a danger by which she was sexually aroused – was in his making a stupid mistake. Unlikely, she reassured herself. Not that he wouldn’t make a mistake – as nervous as he was Félicité didn’t doubt he’d do something wrong – but that it would in any way direct attention towards them. But Smet was still a weak link, useful only because of the position he occupied. Not just weak. Boring, too. Boring like them all: as Marcel had complained, just before he died. Maybe she should abandon them, after this. There’d be nothing they could do about it and
she had other connections, through Lascelles and Lebron. Moving on, finding new people, was definitely something to think about.

  ‘It’s time,’ announced Smet, anxiously.

  It wasn’t but Félicité turned the television on anyway and was glad because the introduction had already begun, with a clip from the earlier conference at which the ambassador had openly wept. The main newscast anchorman talked over the old footage, announcing a different format. Tonight was not going to be a media event. It was to be a personal appeal, by McBride and his wife, following important new evidence that the Brussels police commissioner would disclose. On that cue the previous conference faded, to be replaced by a screen-filling photograph of Mary Beth McBride which held for at least thirty seconds before cutting to the studio.

  McBride and his wife were seated at an oval table, with André Poncellet to their right. The three were facing the anchor, an eagerly talking, dark-haired man who spoke in sound bites. To his prompting Poncellet described the eye-witness information as dramatic, sensational, vital, a breakthrough, only just stopping short of predicting an early arrest.

  The camera focused tight on the ambassador’s face for the man’s appeal. There were no tears but McBride was grave-faced, Hillary visibly strained beside him. They held hands, although listlessly. McBride’s plea was for private and immediate contact with Mary’s captors.

  ‘Come on! Come on,’ said Félicité impatiently. ‘Where am I?’

  Smet broke away from the screen, frowning curiously at the woman.

  ‘We want to negotiate,’ McBride was insisting, keeping strictly to Claudine’s instructions, even using the words she’d suggested. ‘But that’s not possible on the Internet. Find another way. Tell us and we’ll follow it: we’ll obey every instruction. Please let us know that Mary Beth is unharmed.’

  The camera pulled back again to include the anchorman who used a renewed selection of sound bites to reintroduce Poncellet and the digitalized computer images of Félicité Galan and Henri Cool.