Authors: Ian Rankin
‘Good afternoon, Mr Barclay,’ said Joyce Parry.
The trip back to London was the least comfortable of Barclay’s life. Despite the chauffeured car, the airplane waiting on the tarmac, coffee and biscuits on board.
‘My car’s still in Calais,’ he said. ‘And I’ve some clothes in Paris.’
‘They’ll be picked up,’ Parry said coolly. She had her glasses on and was browsing through the big fat Witch file, Dominic Elder’s file. She didn’t seem to be in much of a mood for talking, which worried Barclay all the more. Not much had been said in Herr Grunner’s office. Dominique had been given a few curt words of French and then had followed her superior’s superior out of the room, without so much as a backward glance at Barclay. Barclay had steeled himself for similar treatment from Parry.
It hadn’t come. She’d thanked Herr Grunner - in fluent German - and they’d left. He saw Dominique being driven away in a large black Citroën, while an official-looking person got into her 2CV, started it, and rolled out of the prison car park.
‘Come on,’ said Parry. She led him to a white Rover 2000 where a driver was waiting. He had an embassy look about him which Barclay translated into MI6. ‘Straight to the airport,’ Parry informed the driver.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. Barclay heard humour in his tone, the joke being that Barclay was in for it and he, the driver, was not.
‘How did you know?’ Barclay asked Joyce Parry. He was thinking of Dominic Elder. He had tried phoning the hotel again first thing, but they said they couldn’t put through his call. He hadn’t understood at the time. He thought maybe he did now. Parry turned her head towards him.
‘Don’t be stupid. How could we not know? I’ve heard of cavalier, but this little stunt ...’ She exhaled noisily. ‘“How did you know?’” she echoed, mockingly. She shook her head slowly. By the time they’d reached the airport, she’d decided to explain it to him anyway. ‘Herr Grunner contacted the BfV, who contacted the DGSE and SIS. What do you think SIS did?’
‘Contacted you?’ hazarded Barclay.
‘You can imagine my surprise, being told that one of my agents, who had told me he was in Paris, was actually in Germany. Perhaps you can also imagine my humiliation at having to be told your true whereabouts by bloody SIS!’
Yes, thought Barclay, there was little love lost between MI5 and SIS - the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6. The French DGSE was the equivalent of the SIS, an external intelligence service. They’d no doubt contacted the DST. Dominique was no doubt receiving a similar lashing. Dominique ...
‘You’re as bad as Dominic bloody Elder,’ said Parry. ‘This is just the sort of stupid trick he’d have played.’ She paused. ‘I know he’s been in touch with you throughout. Tell me, did he tell you to come here?’
Barclay stayed silent. No point defending himself. It was best just to let her get on with it; let all the anger roll out of her. But in fact she said nothing more until the airport, where they boarded their plane. As she was fastening her seatbelt, she looked up at him.
‘Why did you lie?’
He’d been preparing for this very question. ‘Would you have let me go?’
‘Certainly not.’
He shrugged. ‘That’s your answer then. You saw Dom ... Ms Herault.
She
was going. If I’d called you for permission and you’d turned me down flat, how would that have made me look?’
‘It would have made you look like a junior agent who’s still got to be kept on a tight leash. Which is the truth. But I suppose that wouldn’t have done, would it? It would hardly have ... impressed Ms Herault.’
‘It would have made me look like a fool.’
‘So you lied to me instead.’
‘I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have.’
‘No, you shouldn’t. Believe me, Mr Barclay, you shouldn’t. As for conspiring with Dominic Elder behind my back, it’s intolerable!’
‘I did what I did because I thought it was in our best interests.’ He paused. ‘Ma’am.’
‘And you think that’s an excuse?’
There was no more dialogue between them until after take-off. Barclay felt a sudden crushing fatigue, despite the sour airplane coffee. It was days since he’d had an unbroken night’s sleep. Adrenaline had kept him going, but now the adventure had come to an abrupt end and his body just wanted sleep. Only fear of his boss’s reaction should he doze off kept his eyes open.
Joyce Parry kept tapping the Witch file which lay across her lap. ‘For your information,’ she said at last, ‘I learned of your little escapade
yesterday.
I arrived in Germany late last night.’
‘What? Then why did—’
‘I had some trouble persuading Monsieur Roche that we should let you and Ms Herault go ahead with the interview.’
‘You let it go ahead? But why?’ He was wide awake now.
She shrugged. ‘Why not? What did we have to lose? Tell me, why were you there?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘And this is a long flight. I expect a report from you, and I mean a
full
report. If you leave anything out ...’
‘I understand.’
‘I’ll want it by tomorrow morning, first thing, on my desk. Meantime I want to hear it from your own mouth. Did you learn anything from Bandorff?’
Barclay shrugged. ‘Tidbits.’
‘But something?’
‘Maybe, yes.’
‘Well, at least there’s
something
to show for all your bungling.’
‘It’s not much. He told me she hated men. He wondered what could have caused that. He said maybe psychoanalysis would provide an answer. What do you think he meant?’
‘Families?’ Parry answered.
‘So it goes back to her parents? He also mentioned two things she carried with her: a teddy bear and a pack of tarot cards.’
Parry considered this. ‘Maybe Profiling can make something of it.’
‘They’re both signs of insecurity, aren’t they? A teddy bear brings past security, a tarot is supposed to reassure for the future.’
She stared at him, eyebrows raised a fraction. ‘Maybe you’ve been in the wrong department all along.’
Barclay gave her just a hint of his winning smile. ‘He also mentioned clairvoyance at one point, just in passing. Maybe it was a reference to the tarot.’
‘Elder visited a fairground in Brighton,’ Parry stated.
‘Really? Coincidence?’
She shrugged. ‘We’ll see.’
Barclay had trouble forming his next question. ‘She left a message for Mr Elder, and Bandorff hints that she hates her father.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘It’s just, when I was at Mr Elder’s, there was a photograph there of his daughter.’
Joyce Parry went very still. ‘Did he talk about her?’
‘He just said she was dead. “Deceased” was his word.’
Joyce Parry nodded. ‘She is.’
‘What happened?’
‘Her name was Susanne, and she was on a school trip to Paris. There was an explosion in a shopping arcade. No group ever claimed responsibility. Three children were among the dead.’
Barclay recalled how Dominique’s father had died. ‘He thinks Witch did it?’
Joyce Parry was staring from her window. ‘He doesn’t know. He
can’t
know.’ She turned to him. Barclay supplied her thoughts.
‘Unless he asks her himself?’
She nodded. ‘That’s his obsession, Michael. He’s got a question he needs to ask her, a question only she can answer.’
He thought of Dominique who had lost a father, of Elder’s lost daughter. It would mean nothing to people like Bandorff and Witch. He saw now why Dominique, who had been so full of action before, had said almost nothing in Bandorff’s cell. She had been facing a ghost, a terror with her since childhood.
‘Get some sleep,’ Joyce Parry was saying. ‘You look exhausted.’
She was right, he was exhausted. Yet he doubted he would sleep.
Enterprise & Initiative
Monday 15 June
They were arriving. Or had already arrived. Mostly, they touched down in their national jets at an RAF base outside London. A few chose to helicopter into the city itself, the rest travelled by way of a huge police escort. These were the heads of state, heading for the summit.
They came with full and impressive entourages, almost as if one-upmanship were the game. Several brought with them personal hair-stylists. All of them brought ‘gofers’: anonymous individuals whose job it was to find and fetch whatever was needed during the stay in London. The gofers tended to be ex-diplomats who had spent time in England and built up a network of contacts in London itself. There were some who said the gofers were the most important people of all. It was they who kept the heads of state happy.
The real show of one-upmanship, as it turned out, was to bring your own chef with you. And the chef brought with him his
equipe,
his pots and pans and utensils. Ingredients from the various homelands were brought, too, all slipping quietly through as diplomatic baggage so that no customs people need declare them illegal. Arms were brought too, of course. More diplomatic baggage, arriving in well-packed crates. High-tech equipment was packed in separate cases: scramblers, decoders, debuggers, communications systems ...
Watching it all arrive, there were those who were glad the summit was only lasting a week. Vans were provided at the base, to be loaded and driven by members of each entourage. Some of the vans made for the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, others for the embassies of the countries concerned, where the delegations were staying for the week. There was fun to be had from sorting out the secret servicemen from the rest of each delegation. Sometimes they made it easy, donning the near-mandatory dark glasses even though the day was overcast and showery. Perfect summer weather, and due to last for the whole week. The hot spell had been just that - a spell. Now someone had cast another spell, and storms were rumbling inland from the west.
So far the movement of the eight delegations into London had been accomplished without a hitch. There were several small demonstrations to contend with outside certain embassies, but these passed off with a minimum of bother. And they gave the secret servicemen a chance to try out their discreet photographic equipment. The Metropolitan Police had drafted several hundred extra officers into the capital for the week. The mood in the ranks was buoyant: there’d be plenty of overtime, plenty of holiday money made over the next seven days.
But the mood elsewhere was verging on panic. There had been a catastrophe at a large nursery garden in Cornwall: an invasion of cows. As a result, several thousand fresh flowers, just ready to be picked, had been crushed or beheaded. The flowers had been ordered to decorate the Conference Centre itself. A ‘floral decorist’ had been hired, and Monday afternoon was when he and his own
equipe
had intended to start their work, finishing late on Monday night. But now there were no flowers for them to work with.
A senior civil servant spent several panicky hours making various telephone calls, until at last four new and willing suppliers were located. Between them, they had just about enough spare flowers to save the day: two hundred carnations short of the original plan, but so be it. However, this in turn led to problems with security, since the new firms needed clearance before delivering the flowers. Once more, the civil servant picked up her telephone.
In a sticky, overworked office on the second floor of a building in Victoria Street, the telephone rang. Judy Clarke picked it up. Judy was in a panic too. Her boss hadn’t come in yet, and it was already quarter past ten. She hadn’t heard of any train disputes or hitches on the underground. Mind you, you only heard of hold-ups on the underground
after
they’d happened. Still, it wasn’t like her boss. And there was so much to do! She was breathless as she picked up the receiver.
‘Hello?’ she said.
‘Oh, hello,’ said the female voice at the other end. ‘My name’s Tessa. I share a house with Chris ... Christine Jones.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Judy’s heart sank. She knew what a call like this meant. Then she brightened. ‘Tessa, yes, hello. Remember me? Judy Clarke. We met at Christine’s birthday party.’
‘Judy ... ? Oh yes, hello again, how are you?’
‘Not so bad. Is Christine ill?’
‘Not exactly. But she’s had a bit of bad news, a bereavement.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Family, an aunt. I think they were very close.’
‘An aunt? Oh dear, I am sorry.’
‘Well, these things ...’
‘So Christine’s not coming in today?’
‘Well, that’s the thing. She’s gone off. The funeral’s not till Wednesday.’
‘Wednesday! God, I need to speak to her. There are things that need—’
‘She said she thought you could cope.’
‘Yes, well, maybe we can but it’s still ...’
‘If I hear from her, shall I tell her to call you?’