Authors: Kevin Wignall
Chapter Thirty
They took a cab the next morning, but once again cautious, they had it drop them a block short of the underground garage where he kept his car to make sure there was no one keeping the place under surveillance. It looked clear, and despite the sense of being slowly encircled, Dan knew that for Brabham it would feel the opposite, that his prey was almost impossible to pin down.
They headed down and Dan picked up the spare keys from the office. He took a torch from the glove compartment and looked under the car, then stood again once he was satisfied.
“Looking for a tracker?”
“Or a bomb,” he said, and she laughed a little, unsure whether he was joking or not—he wasn’t.
For the first half hour he checked his mirrors constantly, but as they moved haltingly out of Paris, and then with more speed into the French countryside, he relaxed a little. They weren’t being followed. That didn’t mean they still weren’t being tracked, but it was something.
The days were falling away towards winter, but with the sun shining on it the country looked as if it was basking in one last summer flush, still ripe and full green. A couple of times as they drove, Inger made a comment about it being beautiful, about the view or the sunlight.
She did the same when they were on the back roads and a village came into view on a small rise in front of them, speaking in Swedish before saying, “Such a pretty village.”
“I guess that’s why Gaston Bergeron moved back there.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
But Bergeron’s place was even more idyllic, an old millhouse sitting on its own in the middle of the woods, the stream that ran past it lit up by the sun falling through the trees.
As they got out of the car, Inger breathed in deeply, closing her eyes briefly before saying, “Isn’t this the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen?”
“It’s beautiful, no doubting that, but what is it with everyone hiding out in the woods?”
She smiled, but before she could say anything, a door opened with a bang and a spaniel came sprinting over to them, sniffing around them as if searching for drugs.
Someone called out in French, “What do you want?”
The question wasn’t friendly, and when Dan looked toward the door of the house he saw a surprisingly fit-looking guy casually leveling a shotgun at them. Bergeron had retired, and Dan guessed he was around seventy, but he was tall and broad-shouldered, a thickness around the waist, but no real paunch.
They stayed by the car, and Dan called out, “Monsieur Bergeron, I’m Dan Hendricks and this is Inger Bengtsson. We’re here to ask you about Sabine Merel, the girl who was murdered in Paris fourteen—”
“You don’t have to tell me who she is. Who sent you?”
This could prove tougher than he’d anticipated, but he said, “No one sent us. I spoke to someone last night, someone from the DGSE. He knew Jean Sainval, and he gave us your address.”
“Jean Sainval is dead. I don’t talk to anyone.”
He looked ready to turn away, but Inger stepped out from the partial cover of the car door now and said, “Monsieur Bergeron, do you speak English?”
He nodded as he looked at her, though he didn’t seem swayed as he said, “Where are you from, Sweden?”
“Yes, I am,” she said, her voice full of warmth, as if impressed that he’d got it in one. She walked closer as the dog trotted back to its owner. “Monsieur Bergeron, the man who stole the tape from the DGSE had to hide afterwards because the Americans wanted to kill him. He went to Sweden, and for fourteen years he tried to prove what he’d seen on that tape. He died without finding it. My friend here is also trying to prove it, and the same Americans want to kill him. The same Americans who killed Jean Sainval. We want to stop them, Monsieur Bergeron, but we also want justice for Sabine Merel. We were with her parents two days ago, and we promised them we would do everything we could. In two weeks Sabine would have been thirty-three.”
He nodded, thinking about that for a moment before he said, “Did they have other children?”
“Yes, they did.”
“Still . . .” He scratched the top of the dog’s head before looking back up at Inger as he said, “You should come inside.” He turned and walked into the house. Inger and Dan glanced at each other, and as he closed the doors on the car, she walked on ahead.
For some reason, Dan had imagined Bergeron living on his own out here, but as he stepped into the house it seemed tidier and decorated with more care than he associated with an elderly man living in isolation.
But as Dan joined them in the kitchen, Bergeron said, “I’m sorry, I can give you coffee, but that’s all. My wife is visiting our daughter in Toronto.”
“Coffee is fine, thank you.”
He gestured for them to sit down at the heavy table and then talked to them as he got the coffee, saying, “I’ve thought about it many times, of course, but they left me alone, and it was easier that way. My own daughter wasn’t much older than Sabine Merel. She lives in Canada now, as I said. Our son lives in the village here. If you have children of your own, you always think, what if it had been them. So yes, I thought of it often, and I felt bad many times for never doing more, but I had my own family to worry about too.”
He brought the coffee over to the table and as he sat, Dan said, “Why did you go to Jean Sainval instead of the police?”
“Actually, it was luck. I kept the tapes for that night because I was still on duty when the police arrived across the street, but I didn’t look at them, I just put them in the locker in case the police asked to see them. The next day I was unwell, but when I returned the day after that, I heard that two Americans had been, and that made me suspicious. I looked at the tapes that night, saw clearly the man with Sabine Merel, and I . . . I added everything together. He was from the American Embassy, he had to be, that was why they wanted the tapes. So I thought it was safer to send to Jean. It turned out safer for me, not for him.”
“The police spoke to you afterwards?”
He laughed at the understatement, saying, “Not just the police, everyone, with the Americans there sometimes. I always told them the same thing, almost what I just told you, but I told them as soon as I heard the Americans had asked for the tape I didn’t even look because I knew it had to be dangerous—I just sent it to Jean.”
Inger said, “And they believed you?”
Bergeron shrugged, as if his continuing presence in the world was proof in itself, then said, “I haven’t talked about it since. A journalist came once, ten years after the murder, and I told him to get off my land or I would shoot him.”
Dan smiled, not doubting it for a minute, picturing the journalist jumping back into his car, but then he said, “Why didn’t you do the same to us?”
“I nearly did,” he said with a laugh that was as much in his eyes as on his mouth, a mischievous quality about him. He looked more contemplative then and said, “Luck again, your luck this time. I’ve thought about her many times over the years, and wondered if I had done the wrong thing, for the right reasons perhaps, but still wrong. And maybe because my wife is away, a man gets to think, and this last week I’ve been thinking very much about Sabine Merel. I never met her, saw only that little film and the pictures in the press, but I can’t help thinking . . . I am responsible.”
“There was nothing you could have done.”
“To save her, no. But to find justice, for her, for her family, that was the responsibility given to me, placed into my hands, the thing I’ve been thinking about so much this week. Then you turn up here. It’s like fate.”
To Dan’s surprise, Inger said, “Monsieur Bergeron, I told you people have tried to kill Dan, and they’re still chasing us. If you think talking to us will put you in any danger at all, we should leave right now.”
Bergeron smiled warmly at her, but said, “What is it that you want to know?”
“We want to know what you saw on that tape, but again . . .”
He put his hand up to stop her and said, “I don’t want to talk to you about what I saw. How would it help you, anyway? To this day, I don’t know who the man was, and now I’m old and . . . No, I don’t want to tell you about it, but the time has come.” He stood up. “What I would like is to
show you
the tape.”
Dan stood immediately and said, “You made a copy?” It should have been one of the first questions, and maybe he’d been asked it at the time, but he seemed so straightforward, so guileless, that Dan could understand why the police and everyone else had believed him and left him alone all these years.
Inger stood as well, as Bergeron said, “I never even told my wife. How could I?” And Dan understood that too—how could he ever tell his wife that he had a tape in his possession that could easily get them both killed?
Chapter Thirty-one
He took them up one flight of stairs, along a landing and then up another flight, to a room on the top floor that had been turned into an office or study. It seemed to be littered with all kinds of household accounts, but also a computer and shelves laden with books, a lot of them on country pursuits, but a fair number on genealogy too. This was clearly Bergeron’s den.
He turned the computer on, then reached up without looking and pulled a couple of books from a shelf. He reached blindly into the space and pulled out a disk before putting the books back.
“It was a video cassette, but I converted it, not so difficult as you would think.” He handed the disk to Inger and said, “It’s yours now.”
“You have another copy?”
“On here,” he said, pointing at the computer which had already booted up. “And a copy of the disk with my . . . with my lawyer, in a box.” He sat down in front of the computer, and went through a few folders before clicking on a file. As soon as it opened though, he paused it, and said, “There is another file with three hours of the camera, but this just shows thirty minutes. It’s the key.”
They nodded and he pressed Play again and tilted the screen upwards so that both of them could see it without crouching down. There was no sound, and it was a static view, covering the entrance to the bank, but also obliquely, a portion of the other side of the street, including what Dan imagined was the entrance to the alley.
For a full minute the shot was completely empty, the timer in the corner steadily clicking away. They kept their eyes fixed on the screen, even Bergeron who knew what was coming, and then two people emerged across the street, moving with an urgent disunity from left to right across the frame.
The woman was Sabine Merel, immediately familiar as she turned to face the man, and unwittingly the camera, and appeared to shout something. He heard Inger catch her breath at the sight of that face, and imagined her immediately remembering the photographs she’d looked at with Sabine’s mother.
Sabine walked on then, as if the shouted comment had settled it, picking up her pace and moving ahead of the man, moving towards the entrance to the alley. She was certainly angry, perhaps afraid, but Dan doubted she could have had any idea that she was walking with such determination towards her own death.
She was almost at the alley entrance, a few seconds from being past it, when the man picked up his pace and ran to catch up with her. She turned, that same confused mix of anger and fear, one supplanting the other as he grabbed her arm and the two of them disappeared into the dark mouth of the alley.
There was only one problem, and as they looked at the picture, once more motionless and empty, Dan said, “We didn’t see his face.”
“Patience,” said Bergeron, and used the mouse to move along the bar. “This is nearly twenty minutes later.”
He pressed Play again. For a moment, there was nothing, then a slight shift in the density of the shadows and the man emerged back into view and walked quickly out of the alley and out of shot. They’d hardly registered him, but Bergeron paused it again, wound it back and pressed Play, and this time as the man emerged, he froze the image so that the gaunt face was there, clearly visible even from the other side of the street.
Inger said, “But . . .” And offered nothing more.
“Oh my God,” said Dan. He wasn’t sure if Inger had worked it out for herself, and the shock of it was still scrambling his own thoughts. “It’s not Brabham, it’s his son, Harry. Jesus!”
Bergeron span his chair around to look at Dan and said, “You know him?”
Dan shook his head, remembering now that Charlie had known him a little, that he’d talked about him being a decent kid. And this was why Redford had focused on the whole family, because Brabham was the danger, but it was his son who’d committed the murder.
“I don’t know him, but his name is Harry Brabham, and he’s now a United States congressman.”
Bergeron looked to Inger, as if wanting confirmation, and she nodded, but Dan could see she was lost in her own thoughts. This was a much bigger story than they’d ever imagined, but as if the knowledge of it hadn’t been dangerous enough, the existence of this recording made it even more so.
“What will you do?”
Dan didn’t respond directly, but he knew they needed safeguards now, that one disk wasn’t enough, and he said, “Would you be able to email that file to me?” Bergeron shrugged. Dan leaned over and wrote down the email address on a piece of paper sitting on the desk.
Bergeron turned back and spent a minute sending the email and for the whole time it took him, Inger and Dan simply watched him in silence, both of them still too shocked to think much beyond the present moment.
Bergeron said, “It’s done.”
Dan looked at the screen, checking the details, and said, “Thanks. And now, Monsieur Bergeron, I think it’s important that we leave you alone.”
He stood up and said, “It changes things, this tape?”
“It changes a lot of things. They don’t know we have it, they don’t know you have it, but it’s still not good for us to stay here too long.” He pointed at the screen, even though the image was no longer there. “That man’s father is a very powerful person in the CIA, and he wants me dead. They’re looking for me now, so the sooner we get away from here the better it is for all of us.”
Inger held up the disk too, saying, “And the sooner we get this to the right person the sooner Dan can walk a little safer.”
Bergeron smiled at her, and said, “Then I wish you good luck. And I’m happy. For fourteen years I was afraid to do the right thing, but now it’s done.”
Dan nodded, understanding why he’d concealed it all that time, an instinctive sense of needing to protect his family. That was undoubtedly what had driven Bill Brabham too, and he almost respected him for that, but the way he’d gone about it probably went some way toward explaining the actions of the son—it was what Jack Redford had been trying to prove all this time; that the Brabhams were a family who believed themselves untouchable.