Authors: Ian Rankin
‘Clip it on to your lapel,’ he ordered.
Barclay did so. ‘Why the ribbon?’
‘Red and blue means security. There are different ones for media, general staff, delegates ...’
‘You’ve seen my report?’
At last Elder gave a grim smile. ‘Joyce gave me the highlights over the phone.’
Barclay swallowed. ‘And?’
‘And what?’
Barclay waited. ‘Nothing,’ he said.
Elder looked at him. ‘Look, number one, I wouldn’t have got caught. Number two ...’
‘Yes?’
‘Never mind. Come on.’
Elder led the young man back through the corridors. He’d ‘sprung’ Barclay to keep him out of Joyce Parry’s way. She was angry, and with good reason. But then Elder had done her a favour, taking the force of Jonathan Barker’s heat and spending a long Sunday in a fuggy room talking about defending the indefensible. So she was letting Elder have Barclay. He knew he was in a strong position anyway;
he
could always shuffle back to Wales. But he was also in a very weak position, because he wanted very much to stay put. Joyce was allowing him a lot of rope, more even than he’d expected.
After all, if the shit really did hit the fan, Joyce would be closest.
He saw that Barclay was bursting to talk to him. That was why it wasn’t a good time for them to talk. He’d wait till the young man calmed a little. He knew that Barclay’s career was hanging by a thread, but that had been Barclay’s decision, not his. All the same ... It was true that Elder would have done exactly the same as Barclay all along the line. He’d done as much before. And as for never getting caught ... well, that wasn’t entirely accurate. Several times he’d come close to disaster; closer than he liked to admit ...
A message on the already-overworked Tannoy system.
‘Call for Mr Elder. Call for Mr Dominic Elder.’
They made for reception. The place was chaotic. Flowers were being delivered, and nobody seemed to know where they were to go. One-day security passes were being made up for half a dozen sweating florists. The switchboard was jammed with incoming calls, and someone had arrived to fix the malfunctioning baggage X-ray machine. Tomorrow, the summit would begin, and on the surface all would be placid. But underneath they’d be kicking like hell.
‘I’m Dominic Elder,’ he said to a receptionist.
‘What?’ she said, cocking a hand to her ear.
‘Dominic Elder,’ he said, more loudly. ‘There’s a call for me.’
‘Yes, hold on.’ She picked up a receiver and handed it across the desk to him, then flipped a switch. ‘You’re through.’
Elder listened for a moment. ‘Can’t hear a thing,’ he said into the mouthpiece. ‘It’s pandemonium here. Can you speak up?’
He listened again. Barclay, standing behind him, looked around the foyer. Some people were just entering the building. Instinctively, he knew they were French: their clothes, their gestures, the way they moved. There were two women, one a tall redhead and the other shorter, wearing a red beret and round sunglasses. As she entered the dim interior, she slipped off the sunglasses.
Barclay nearly collapsed. It was Dominique. She saw him, pointed, and laughed. Then she bounced over and kissed him right cheek, left cheek, right and left again.
‘Hello, Michael. What are you doing here?’
‘Never mind me, what are
you
doing here?’
Elder turned around. ‘Keep the noise down!’
Barclay took Dominique’s arm and led her away from the reception desk. He was trembling and couldn’t control it.
‘I’m here with the French delegation,’ said Dominique.
‘I was expecting you to be in chains in the Bastille.’
She laughed again. ‘There is no Bastille, not for a long time.’
‘Well, you know what I—’
‘Yes, but your superior, the woman ...’
‘Joyce Parry?’
‘Parry, yes. She told Monsieur Roche all about the threat posed by Witch. Our own President could be her target. So now Monsieur Roche is worried. And guess who is the French expert on Witch?’
Barclay nodded, understanding.
‘There may be a punishment for me when I go back to Paris, but for now ...’ She opened her arms wide. ‘Here I am!’
One of her crowd called to her.
‘Oui,’
she called back,
‘j’arrive!‘
She turned back to Barclay. ‘I must go with them.’
‘Yes, but where are you staying? When can I see you? What about tonight?’
‘No, tonight I have to work. But you are attending the summit, so we will meet.’
‘Yes, but—’
There was a sudden tug at his arm. It was Dominic Elder.
‘Come on,’ Elder said, ‘things to do.’
‘Yes, just a—’ But Dominique was waving a farewell as she headed back to the French group.
‘That was Doyle on the phone,’ insisted Elder, still tugging a reluctant Barclay towards the exit. ‘They’ve located Breuckner’s hotel. Let’s go take a look.’
‘What?’ Barclay twisted his neck for a final glimpse of Dominique. She was in conversation with a tall, long-faced man. The man was looking towards Barclay. Dominique was not. ‘Who’s Doyle?’ he said. ‘Who’s Breuckner?’
‘Christ, you
are
out of touch, aren’t you? Hasn’t Joyce told you anything?’
‘No.’ They were out of the building now.
‘Then I’ll bring you up to date on the way. By the way, was that ... ?’
‘Yes, that was her.’
‘Pretty girl,’ Elder said, pulling Barclay further and further away from her. She reminded him a little of the woman he’d opened the police station door for, the woman he was sure had been Witch. He kept hold of Barclay’s arm. ‘By the way, you’ve got lipstick on both cheeks.’
The hotel in Bloomsbury was every bit as upmarket as Elder had been expecting, this being the age of expense-account terrorism, of
legitimised
terrorism. You could bomb a place of worship, strafe a busful of women, then a few months later be sitting down to peace talks with a posse of well-known politicians and negotiators, your photo snapped for front-page posterity and the six o’clock news.
‘Very strict about his privacy,’ said the manageress, leading them upstairs. She had her hair swept into a beehive, revealing large ears and a bulbous forehead. ‘Only wanted his room cleaned once a week.’
‘How long has he been a guest, Mrs Hawkins?’
‘Almost a month now. Prompt with payment, beginning of each week.’
‘He paid cash?’
‘Yes, cash. Along here.’ She led them to the room, and produced a key from the folds of her skirt. ‘Very quiet man, but secretive. Well, I always try to mind my business ...’
‘Yes, Mrs Hawkins, thank you. A policeman will be along shortly to take your statement.’
She nodded with sharp jolts of her head. ‘Always happy to help the authorities.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Hawkins. Leave the key, and we’ll lock up afterwards.’
‘Right you are.’
‘And remember, nobody else is to enter before the forensics team gets here.’
‘Forensics ...’ She jabbed her head again, then giggled, the tremor running all the way through her large frame. ‘It’s just like on the television, isn’t it?’
Elder smiled. ‘Just so, Mrs Hawkins, just so.’
He pushed Barclay into the room then followed him, closing the door softly but determinedly on the hotelier. Then he swivelled Barclay round to face him.
‘You’ll see her tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Now snap out of it. You’re no good to me like this. I’d be as well sending you back to the bloody office.’
That did it. Barclay straightened up, and his eyes seemed to come into focus.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘Okay, now let’s see what we’ve got here. Remember, don’t touch if you don’t need to. We might find some prints when forensics get here—
if
they ever bother to turn up.’
‘Whose prints?’
‘Witch’s maybe. Or - outside chance - whoever’s paying her. But that really is an outside chance.’ He paused. ‘You did a good job in that cartoonist’s apartment, let’s see you do it again now.’
Breuckner wasn’t messy. The bedclothes had been pulled back and straightened, his clothes were hanging neatly in the wardrobe, and on the bedside table sat a copy of the previous day’s evening paper, a travel alarm, and a used ticket to Madame Tussaud’s.
‘Travels light, doesn’t he?’ said Elder. ‘To say he’s been here a month.’
‘For a holidaymaker, he certainly hasn’t collected many souvenirs.’ Barclay reached down and lifted a shoe. ‘Shall I check the heel for a radio transmitter?’
Elder smiled. ‘Radio transmitters are more your line.’
‘You know I left a couple of bugs at the cartoonist’s?’
‘Don’t worry, someone’ll take care of them.’
‘Really?’ The relief in Barclay’s voice was all too evident.
‘But don’t tell Joyce I told you. She’ll want you to sweat for a bit.’
‘Understood.’
The search continued, throwing up nothing out of the ordinary except the sheer lack of the usual traveller’s detritus: no used travel tickets, used carrier bags, stamps, foreign change, no guide books or souvenirs.
Barclay squatted down and angled his head to peer beneath the bed. ‘Something under here.’ He looked around him, then got up and went into the small bathroom adjoining the room. He came back with, of all things, a loo-brush, which he used to manoeuvre out from under the bed whatever was there.
‘No fingers, you said,’ he informed Elder, who stood over him smiling.
‘I just hope that brush was clean,’ said Elder.
Magazines. Glossy magazines. Dutch writing on their covers. There were three of them. Still using the loo-brush, Barclay awkwardly turned some of the pages.
‘Yes, I get the gist,’ said Elder.
‘S and M,’ said Barclay, closing the magazines. ‘Heavy duty stuff.’
‘Really? You have some expertise in this area?’
‘I know what’s legal, and this stuff isn’t.’
Elder clapped his hands together. ‘Bloody good point, Michael. If we nab friend Breuckner for nothing else, we can have him under the Obscene Publications Act. Importation of material likely to offend. Anything else under there?’
Barclay had another look. ‘Over the other side,’ he said. ‘Looks like a paperback.’ He walked round the bed, crouched again, and swept from beneath the bed an A-Z book of London streets.
‘I’ll bet the pages for the city centre are missing,’ said Elder. ‘He had them in his pocket.’
‘There’s a piece of card.’ Barclay pointed to where a cardboard edge protruded from the book. Elder took a pen from his pocket and eased it between the pages marked by the card. Then slowly he used the pen to open the book. The piece of card was a one-day travelcard, nearly a month old. The pages opened were those showing Hackney, Leyton and Clapton.
‘Interesting,’ said Elder. His first thought was of the address given to the police by the woman calling herself Christine Jones. It had been around this area. But no, not quite ... her address was just off this particular map, one page back in the book in fact. So, rule that out.
‘What do you think, sir?’ asked Barclay. They were both crouching now, with the book between them on the floor.
‘There was a key in the Dutchman’s pocket.’
‘Yes, so you said.’
‘Greenleaf—’
‘Doyle’s partner?’
Elder nodded. ‘Greenleaf reckoned it might be the key to a lock-up.’
‘Plenty of lock-ups round there,’ Barclay said, nodding towards the map.
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Lots of tower blocks. Well, at least there used to be in Hackney. I had a friend lived on the top floor of one.’
‘Well, it’s worth a try. At least it gives us a starting-point. I’d better get on to Special Branch and tell Greenleaf. What time is it?’ He checked his watch. ‘No, he’ll still be out at Christine Jones’s address. Not that
that’ll
take long. My guess is, nobody at that address will even have heard of anyone called Christine Jones. The lock-up idea is more interesting though.’
‘Maybe we should get some copies made, help speed up the search.’
Elder nodded. ‘Copies are being made.’ He looked around the room. ‘Nothing else for us here, is there?’
‘We haven’t checked the bathroom or under the carpets or ...’
‘Not really our department. The police’ll do all that. I just wanted a quick look at the place before they started. Hold on though.’ He walked up to the bedside cabinet and looked at the evening paper. ‘Open at the crossword, but he’s hardly even started it.’ Elder stared at the clues and the answers entered in the grid. ‘Mmm, no, nothing there.’
‘You thought maybe a code?’
‘It’s a handy way of leaving a message for someone if you’re in a hurry. Stick the message in a crossword grid, no one gives it a second look.’