The Predators

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘You had the conversation with the woman,’ said Harrison, to Claudine. ‘Do you really think they would have mutilated the child like that?’

  Claudine hesitated, aware that all of them round the table were trying to push reality away with self-deception, clinging to the hope the toe did not belong to Mary, as they had tried to avoid admitting any sexual element in her original disappearance.

  ‘Yes,’ she said shortly, wanting positively to shatter any false hope. ‘In addition to all the other opinions I’ve formed about her – and there’s no doubt, of course, that the person on the telephone is the woman seen by the eye-witnesses to pick Mary up – I think there’s a dangerous clinical psychosis that makes her capable of extreme violence.’ She allowed another pause. ‘And this morning’s find answers your question anyway. It isn’t an adult’s toe. If it isn’t Mary’s it belongs to another youngster, one we don’t yet know about, who’s been maimed by the same people who’ve got Mary. If they’re prepared to maim, they’re prepared to kill.’ She focused on Burt Harrison. ‘Which puts our chances of getting Mary Beth back alive, even if we comply with every demand, at less than fifty per cent.’

  Horrified silence enveloped the room: even the three clerks behind Smet came up from their notebooks and recording machines to look at her, shocked. Why, wondered Claudine, was it so difficult for everyone – most of them supposedly trained criminologists – to accept the likeliest outcome of this investigation!

  ‘I don’t think the ambassador should be told this,’ said the American diplomat, his voice wavering.

  ‘Neither do I,’ agreed Claudine.

  ‘Severing the toe was to force the ambassador to talk to her,’ Sanglier reminded them. ‘Can he? Is he up to it?’

  ‘He says he is,’ replied the US head of mission doubtfully. Again looking directly at Claudine, he added: ‘Should he, in view of what you’ve just said?’

  ‘Without any question!’ answered Claudine at once. ‘His not doing so would put Mary in enormous danger. There’d certainly be another body part.’

  ‘What can your involvement be now?’

  ‘A conference call, with me on an extension alongside McBride,’ replied Claudine. ‘Hopefully I can guide everything he says: avoid the wrong response. Mary’s safety could depend upon something as small as that: one wrong word, one wrong reaction.’

  ‘Jesus!’ said Harding.

  Smet was as staggered as everyone else by the assessment, although for totally different reasons. The psychologist was so close – actually appeared to know – their thoughts.

  ‘Are you up to it, Dr Carter?’ demanded Harrison pointedly.

  ‘If I didn’t believe that I was I would have withdrawn,’ responded Claudine at once, conscious of both Poncellet and Jean Smet frowning between her and the American. ‘To have done anything else would have risked Mary’s safe recovery.’

  Harrison blinked at the rebuke. Trying to recover, he said in sudden exasperation: ‘All we want to do is pay the money and get her back!’

  ‘They haven’t specifically asked for money,’ she reminded him. ‘And don’t forget that in my opinion money wasn’t what they took Mary for in the first place.’

  ‘Can we talk about yesterday’s conversation?’ intruded Smet, anxious to fill the gaps in what he knew. He patted the dossier in front of him. ‘We’ve got a transcript but no interpretation.’

  There was a hesitation between Claudine and Harding, who had had a brief telephone conversation that morning to discuss connected aspects of the tape. At Claudine’s gestured invitation Harding said: ‘In the original recording, before our people enhanced it, there was a lot of distortion we didn’t understand. Now we do. She used a mobile phone and drove around all the time: the sound dips and interferences are caused by her going under bridges or through highly built up bad reception areas. Enhanced, it’s easy to detect the noise of traffic in the background.’

  ‘It lasted a long time: you couldn’t trace it?’ demanded Poncellet.

  ‘Not yesterday,’ admitted Harding uncomfortably. ‘The equipment we had was to locate a landline approach. Overnight we’ve installed scanners, for both analog and digitalized systems. Our people are hoping it’ll be analog: they’re easier. Unfortunately, most new systems are digital.’

  ‘Can your technicians guarantee a location?’ asked Smet at once.

  ‘I’m told it’ll be practically impossible if she keeps moving,’ further conceded Harding. ‘The hope is to get a number, which will be difficult if she’s routing through any of the Iridium or Globalstar satellites.’ To Poncellet he said: ‘Before she’s due to call tonight we have to set up number-trace arrangements through Belgacom and the major mobile phone companies and satellite servers. And have a lot of people on instant-response readiness if we get a fix. Now that the contact method has changed we’re scaling down our e-mail monitor at the embassy, to have most of our Washington people on standby.’ It had been Harding’s first command decision. He’d talked with Claudine before issuing it, and was still uneasy despite her assurance that it was probably safe.

  Peter Blake said: ‘A copy of the tape went to Europol’s forensic laboratories last night for positive voice analyses. At the moment Dr Carter is guessing that the woman is a French speaker, not Flemish. The backpack has gone for all the forensic tests, too. I’m not hopeful of anything being found, from people as organized as these.’

  ‘What about the actual contents of the tape, Dr Carter?’ asked the Belgian lawyer hopefully.

  ‘More than enough confirmation of the arrogance I’d already suggested,’ said Claudine. ‘The entire tone – virtually every word – is taunting. Take identifying herself as Mercedes, for instance. And there’s very clear reference to sex, in all the remarks about what Mary is learning. The most worrying phrase, particularly after this morning’s backpack find, is when she gloats that she’s not sure she wants to give the child back.’

  ‘What’s the overall picture?’ queried a subdued Andre Poncellet.

  Claudine considered the question for some moments. ‘The woman we’re looking for is suffering an extreme psychosis. She is accustomed to achieving absolute and total control over everyone around her but is, in fact, on the very edge of losing it over herself. And she is, as I’ve already said, capable of extreme violence.’

  It was, thought Smet, a superb characterization of Félicité Galan. He said: ‘Would you say she was insane?’

  ‘Without any doubt very seriously mentally ill,’ agreed Claudine. ‘What a layman would definitely call mad.’

  Hugo Rosetti collected Claudine at police headquarters and on the brief journey to the mortuary he said: ‘It’s been difficult to get in touch.’

  ‘I’ve been very busy.’

  ‘So you said when you finally called. You sure you’re all right?’

  ‘A lot’s happened. I’ll tell you about it later.’

  ‘Happened personally or happened professionally?’ he pressed.

  ‘Professionally, of course! What else?’ Almost too stridently defensive, she thought.

  ‘I’ve missed you.’

  ‘I’ve missed you, too. How’s Flavia?’ Why the hell had she said that? It was pointless.

  He took some time to answer. ‘The same as always. How’s it worked out with Blake?’

  ‘He’s very professional.’

  ‘No personal problems?’

  ‘None.’

  The main autopsy room was obviously unnecessary for such a small article. Instead they used one of the small side laboratories in which immediate tests were carried out during full crime-victim post-mortems and didn’t completely robe up, just putting on protective aprons and gloves.

  Claudine had watched the Italian work before – there’d been eight dismembered corpses in the serial killing investigation – and was impressed again by the finesse, even with a body part like this.

  Rosetti had a series of pictures taken, a selection against measuring graphs and others under
magnification, by a waiting photographer before studying the toe under even greater magnification. He scraped on to separate slides from beneath and on top of the nail before slicing a selection of surface skin on other slides. On to yet more he smeared the invisible result of several swabs. Only after completing all his surface examinations did Rosetti take prints for later comparison with those due to arrive from America later that day. He carefully cleaned away every vestige of dye before finally making a deeper incision for tissue samples within the toe itself. Claudine was conscious of although not offended by the smell.

  ‘Anything you want me to do?’ he asked without looking at her. On their earlier case she’d sometimes asked for tests beyond his, to help her profile.

  ‘No,’ said Claudine.

  ‘Do you have a precise time of what was obviously the threat to do something like this, in the telephone call?’

  ‘Five sixteen in the evening,’ replied Claudine at once.

  ‘And the time this was found?’

  ‘Seven this morning.’

  ‘How old, exactly, is Mary Beth?’

  ‘Ten years and four months.’

  ‘Build?’

  ‘Small for her age.’

  ‘The tests will take me a while.’

  ‘I’ll wait.’ Claudine stripped off the protective clothing and perched on a stool just inside the door, watching him work. He was completely absorbed, seemingly unaware of her presence, muttering the verbatim record of what he was doing into the recorder strung around his neck and pinned out of the way against his chest.

  Had last night – the entire time she’d spent with Peter on the inquiry – affected her feelings for Hugo? There was a newness, an excitement, about Peter. And what he’d done in Ireland – and its appalling cost – was incredible. But there surely had to be more than exciting novelty, fuelled by awed admiration? Remaining strictly objective, Claudine didn’t think her feelings went beyond that. Which wasn’t, of course, saying they wouldn’t.

  She didn’t want to search now for the answer to a question she didn’t know, Claudine decided. It was too soon. But it wasn’t sex: if she’d wanted sex she could have got it from any one of the dozens who regarded Europol as a harem. She was lonely, Claudine acknowledged, with know-thyself honesty. Lonely and too often sad: fed up not living a proper life, using work as a substitute to subjugate everything else. That was what John Norris had done.

  She didn’t want a man to think for her or decide for her or protect her: she could do all of those things by herself. She wanted … she didn’t actually know what she wanted, not fully. All she knew was that she needed a personal life very different from what it was at the moment, because at the moment it was non-existent. Outside work she was non-existent. Last night she hadn’t been.

  She became aware of Rosetti crossing the small room towards her, unpinning his microphone as he walked.

  ‘There’s one thing that I’m sure about,’ announced the man. ‘It was a professional amputation, not hacked off by an amateur. So one of those you’re looking for is a doctor or surgeon …’

  ‘… which could narrow down the records search.’

  Rosetti nodded. ‘We’ll need the confirmation of the footprint, obviously, but I don’t think the toe belongs to Mary. In dimension and length I think it belongs to someone older: certainly not a child just gone ten who is small for her age. According to your time frame, if it came from Mary the amputation occurred within the last fifteen hours. There’s far more than fifteen hours’ decomposition in the toe I’ve just examined: there was a noticeable smell of putrefaction, even before I put a tissue sample under the slide. I’d estimate death four or five days ago.’

  ‘Mary could have been dead that long,’ Claudine pointed out.

  ‘I know,’ said Rosetti. ‘That’s why we need the print confirmation. But there’s another guide we can get from the parents. The nail was carefully manicured and kept: there was no scrape residue at all from beneath it. But I got a lot from on top: traces of ethyl acetate and glycols copolymer. Both are constituents of nail varnish: in this case extremely pale pink. The parents can obviously tell us if they had Mary’s feet manicured.’

  ‘She was a pampered kid but I don’t think she would have been that pampered,’ said Claudine.

  ‘It won’t be necessary if the prints don’t compare but I’ve naturally got sufficient skin samples for a DNA match with anything we can recover from Mary’s bed or clothing – hair, for instance – and we could also make a comparison with the parents’ DNA.’

  ‘Did the toe come from a dead body or from someone who was still alive?’ asked Claudine.

  ‘Dead, unquestionably.’

  ‘So we’ve got a separate murder, quite apart from what’s happened to Mary?’

  ‘I could be wrong, although I don’t think I am,’ said Rosetti.

  He wasn’t. There was no match at all with the print that arrived two hours later from Washington.

  Félicité Galan had insisted that Jean Smet and August Dehane meet her that lunchtime at the Comme Chez Soi on the Place Rouppe, which they’d both initially welcomed because it was a public restaurant in which she could not openly berate them, but they were immediately terrified when she arrived. Félicité again had her hair in the tight chignon of the day of the abduction and was wearing the same jacket that had been described in the wanted posters and appeals. She strode from the entrance, exaggerating her walk like a model’s catwalk parade, and didn’t immediately take the waiter’s offered chair, smirking down at the lawyer and the telephone company executive.

  ‘Why not hide beneath the table?’ she said.

  ‘Sit down, for God’s sake!’ Smet spoke in a fierce whisper.

  ‘Please!’ added Dehane.

  Smet waited for the waiter to leave. ‘You’re mad. She said you’re mad and you are. Totally insane.’

  ‘And you disobeyed me. Both of you. All of you. You sent Charles to kill her, didn’t you?’

  ‘No,’ Smet said, keeping to the rehearsed story they’d agreed with Gaston to follow. ‘You know what Charles is like. And he’s getting worse. Has been for months.’

  ‘How could we have known what he was going to do?’ protested Dehane unconvincingly.

  ‘You’re a liar. You’re all liars. None of you are to go near her any more.’

  ‘I don’t want to go near her at all,’ said Smet.

  Dehane said nothing.

  ‘I’m not sure that I’ll let any of you, even when we have the party.’ She wished there was a greater penalty she could impose. Hurt them, disgrace them in some way that wouldn’t involve her.

  ‘Claudine knows all about you,’ declared the Justice Ministry lawyer. ‘Knows what sort of person you are. It’s frightening, how accurately she’s described you.’

  ‘Did she really say I was mad?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Smet petulantly. ‘And she’s right: you are.’

  ‘Tell me everything,’ ordered Félicité.

  ‘They’ve excluded me,’ announced Smet dramatically. ‘The bastard Poncellet!’

  ‘How?’

  ‘They’re staging a big operation at the embassy for your call. To trap you. The others would have accepted my being there as a matter of course but Poncellet made a fuss about its having nothing to do with liaison: said I’d get a transcript later for the Ministry. I’d have drawn too much attention to myself if I’d argued against it.’

  ‘To trap me!’ echoed Félicité, looking to Dehane. ‘I hope you’ve got the phone ready!’

  ‘Don’t do it!’ pleaded the man. ‘I’ve no idea what sort of tracking equipment they’ll have but it’s bound to be state of the art.’

  Félicité’s hand was already outstretched. She snapped her fingers and said: ‘Give it to me.’

  Reluctantly Dehane passed over the instrument.

  ‘Whose number is it?’ she asked.

  ‘A director of a restaurant group. His phone was stolen from his car two nights ago. It hasn’t
been recovered yet.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Félicité, dropping the mobile into her satchel handbag. ‘Now I need to know everything mat’s happened …’ She paused. ‘But most of all I want to hear her opinion of me.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Only Claudine saw a twisted contradiction in her guiding James McBride in the rudiments of negotiation so soon after what she considered her disastrous attempt to talk John Norris into compliant surrender. She tried to drive the thought from her mind: to drive everything from her mind except preventing the man from making any mistake in the telephone confrontation that was to come.

  Her first concern was that it should not be a public spectacle, as it had been with her the previous day. Her attempted insistence that only she and McBride be in the room was met with shouted objections from Hillary, to whom Claudine had to concede. Everyone else was relegated to the communication centre and its audible, two-way reception.

  Claudine briefed the ambassador in the sealed office, too, wanting him to become accustomed to the circumstances in which he had to conduct the conversation. It was ludicrous to expect the man to be relaxed but Claudine strived to achieve something as close to it as possible. It didn’t help having Hillary there. Nor did the woman’s sneer that if McBride became incapable she would take over.

  There was no way Claudine could know that McBride’s initially intrusive euphoria had almost as much to do with the death of his personal embarrassment along with John Norris as it did with his learning the severed toe was not his daughter’s, although the disclosure led to another brief dispute with Hillary, who complained that she hadn’t been told that a toe had been found and demanded that in future she be informed of everything. ‘Everything! You understand?’

  The over-excitement made McBride dangerously confident. It was essential to bring him down to a manageable level of self-assurance without swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction and making him realize the real danger the amputation still represented to his daughter.