The Last Witness

THIRTY

Funicelli located a telephone junction box in a service slip-way fifteen yards along from the Hotel Montclaire, the hotel where the English woman was staying. The box also appeared to service three or four other buildings in the first stretch of Rue Berri.

He picked through and found the wires and switches for the Montclaire, then started making the connections. Four minutes, five tops, he estimated. But four or five minutes in the open by a busy street was a lifetime. He’d been uneasy just in the couple of minutes up the telegraph pole outside the Donatiens. But that had been Beaconsfield, peaceful suburbia; now he was in one of the busiest parts of Montreal. The hustle, bustle and the sheer number of things he had to keep a watch out for made it an entirely different proposition.

He’d chosen to do it early: 8.08 am. Telephone engineers often started at 8.00 am, but by the time their rosters were done and they were clear of the depots, the earliest calls were usually after 8.30 am. So he shouldn’t have to worry about a Bell Canada engineer passing and asking what he was doing.

But the rest of the city was coming rapidly to life: the flow of traffic and people passing was increasing, the occasional passer-by throwing him a glance. An East Indian by the deppaneur on the corner, possibly its owner, studied him thoughtfully for almost thirty seconds before going back inside the shop.

Funicelli was sweating cobs, his hands trembling on the wires within the first two minutes. This was a nightmare. But Roman had been insistent that they get a bug on the woman’s line.

‘We’ve got to know what progress she makes with Chenouda. If anything’s going down, it’ll probably be decided within the next few days.’

That was the other thing Funicelli had to worry about. That no faults were reported on any lines within that time to make engineers open up the junction box and discover his bug. They couldn’t risk leaving something like that inside the box for any length of time.

For the last minute he hardly paid attention to who might be passing or looking at him, his concentration was fixed intently on securing the last few wires in place.

He glanced at his watch as he slammed shut and locked the box. Four minutes twenty-two. Not bad. He let out a slow sigh as he walked down to his white van parked round the corner, but still his hands were shaking slightly as he opened its back doors and threw his tools inside.

He nodded briefly to Frank Massenat parked ten yards back on the far side as he jumped in the driver’s seat. Funicelli had kept look-out on the hotel until 10 pm, then Massenat had taken over for overnight.

Take the van back, change, breakfast, coffee, and check his cousin hadn’t burnt down his shop while he was away, then he’d return to take over again from Massenat at 10 am.

‘Nothing, nothing,’ Massenat commented as they changed over. ‘Except that at half-three she suddenly comes out and makes a call from that booth over there. Then she paces up and down as if her ass was on fire before making another call. Then back to the excitement of watching people sleep.’ Massenat shrugged. ‘And no signs of life yet this morning.’

But just over an hour later that changed as Funicelli watched her leave the hotel, girl in tow. She made a quick call from the same booth Massenat saw her use, then hailed a taxi. Funicelli followed through the mid-morning traffic two or three cars behind. A light drizzle started falling halfway along Rene Levesque and he put the wipers on intermittent. He’d already phoned Roman two hours ago to tell him that the bug had been successfully placed, but as he saw the taxi pull up outside RCMP HQ on Dorchester Boulevard, he took out his mobile to call again. Roman would want to know this news straight away.

The first half-hour of questioning was mostly fact-finding and low key. Apart from a couple of jump-backs to fill in small details at first overlooked, Elena ran through everything in historical and hopefully — to Staff Sergeant Michel Chenouda patiently listening — logical sequence: her father, Dr Maniatis with the birth certificate, the Stephanous, the orphanage at Baie du Febvre, and finally the Donatiens.

Michel Chenouda sat directly opposite her at an oval table and the papers she’d produced were spread between them. At the end of the table a tape ran while another officer at its side made brief notes. For the most part Chenouda stayed silent with the occasional thoughtful nod as she ran through the background, appeared on the surface at least to accept her story. But she couldn’t help sensing that underneath he was uneasy, harboured underlying doubt. And then the questions started to reflect that doubt, become more intent; the pressure was turned up a notch.

Chenouda shook his head. ‘But what I don’t understand is why you left it until now to try and make contact?’

‘Well, for a long while I blanked it from my mind. Then I adopted two children of my own and I started working with children in need in orphanages in Eastern Europe, mainly Romania. I think part of that was to push away the guilt that I’d given away my own child.’ Elena looked down, then towards the corridor outside. Three doors along Lorena, aka Katine, waited in an open RCMP general office. ‘It was in fact a problem with one of the Romanian children, not much older than my own daughter, Katine, that started me thinking again about my son. I’d told myself all along that he’d have been alright, he’d have gone to a good home somewhere. And suddenly it hit me that that wasn’t always true.’

‘What sort of problems?’ Chenouda looked at her keenly.

Elena felt the intensity of his stare like a blowtorch on her cheek, and her heart skipped. They’d probably known all along, and the chain of seemingly standard questions had all been leading to this coupe de grace now. She tried to cling again to the steely nerve that had made her able to walk in here in the first place. She’d paused just before the building’s wide glass doors, taking a deep breath. She thought she was okay, but walking along all she’d been able to hear was the pounding of her heart; she couldn’t even hear her own footsteps or any of the movement or activity around. Now, again, it was drowning out all else: the officer at the end was scrawling in his notepad, but she couldn’t hear it. She swallowed hard in an attempt to clear her ears. Perhaps Chenouda was just being thorough, didn’t know anything after all.

‘Well, it turns out her father was molesting her.’

‘I see.’ Michel eyes flickered down awkwardly for a second and he pursed his lips. ‘And what happened to the girl in the end?’

Elena watched Chenouda’s gaze slowly rise to meet hers, and again her resolve slipped away. They’d probably found her on the computer hours ago, and were now busily matching Lorena on screen in the office down the corridor. Her left hand on the table started to shake and she pulled it down and clenched it tight in her lap. The officer at the end looked up keenly from his notes for a moment; she hoped he hadn’t noticed.

‘She, uh… she’s gone to a foster home while the court case is pending. And at the same time she’s undergoing psychiatric assessment.’ Pretty much the scenario she anticipated with Lorena moving things on a couple of months. She’d phoned Lowndes to try and get an early morning appointment, but the closest he could fit in was 2 pm. She’d called Gordon upon leaving to see if he could delay Crowley’s alert; otherwise it would be going out about now. Maybe Chenouda’s people hadn’t found anything yet on the computer, but someone would walk in at any second. Or Lorena would slip up and forget that her name was meant to be Katine. Too many possibilities. She felt them tugging her in all directions at the same time. She must have been crazy to walk in here, crazy.

‘Right.’ Chenouda’s gaze stayed on her steadily, and for a moment she half expected him to suddenly stand up and announce: ‘But that’s not what we in fact know to be the case, Mrs Waldren.’ And signal his assistant to handcuff her. But in the end all he said was, ‘It must have been very tough on you.’

‘Yes… yes, it was.’ She let out a tired breath. As quickly as the pressure had been turned on, it was off again.

Michel contemplated the papers on the table. It would have made everything so much easier if this was a hoax, a predictable try-on from Roman. But it all seemed so real, far too intricate and detailed to be a scam: the English connection, the court order and birth certificate… the orphanage. Roman was devious, but even he couldn’t have gone to these lengths.

Michel had already checked her out on the computer for any criminal record an hour before she arrived: nothing. Now he had some new names and details to check, but his first gut feeling was that this English woman, Elena Waldren, was telling the truth. She was Georges Donatiens’ birth mother.

The coincidence of the timing he’d been uneasy about the most, but her explanation there too had come across as real. Heartfelt, emotional, her voice had been close to breaking at points: if she wasn’t telling the truth, then Roman had found one of the best Michel had ever come across. The other possibility was that Roman had at some stage discovered about her being Georges’ real mother and had pulled her out of the woodwork now when he most needed her.

But her initial enquiries with the search agency were weeks ago, when Roman still had Georges firmly in his sights and high hopes of soon removing him. And from her passport, her flight over was three days ago, eighteen hours before Georges’ abduction. Even her visit to the orphanage was the day before their final announcement and Roman possibly knowing that he might need her as an ace card.

Though still Michel sensed an anxiety and nervousness beneath that he couldn’t quite fathom. He looked at her contemplatively for a second as he forced a weak smile.

‘I’m sorry, but we can’t be too careful.’ Maybe it was more shell-shock than nerves: she’d obviously been through the mill, and now on top had to face the third degree from him and the worry that having got this far she might fail at the final hurdle. She might never get to see her son. And all of that now rested in his hands. It was enough to make anyone nervous, and that realization also pressed the weight heavier on his own shoulders: just how was he going to wend his way through this, explain? ‘These people threatening your son are highly dangerous and probably by now also desperate. They’d go to any lengths to use others to try and get to him.’ Michel held out a palm. ‘Others such as yourself.’

‘Oh, I… I understand.’ Though it had taken a second for the penny to drop. They’d been at crossed purposes all the time! With the questioning starting to have an edge, she’d become convinced that he’d seen something on the computer, but all the time he’d been thinking that she might be a mafia plant! She almost couldn’t resist smiling — partly release of tension, partly at the ludicrousness — but bit it back: out of step with the mood. What had brought them to this room and the fact that its outcome balanced on a knife’s edge, hung heavy in the air, smothered all else.

Now for the difficult part, thought Michel. He felt her eyes on him expectantly, full of hope that he’d say she’d be able to see her son. The son he’d made sure was hidden away from everyone, possibly never for her to see again. He felt the pressure of it like a dull ache at the back of his neck.

He remembered his mother saying that if you tell a lie, it’ll come out somehow. ‘Don’t know how, but it always does.’ He’d convinced himself before the meeting that it must be a ruse from Roman. It had his trademark all over it, was the perfect extra pressure to bring into play: ‘You want to hide him away forever: there, I’ve trumped you. The mother he’s never seen. Get out of that one.’ He’d become so convinced that it was false that he didn’t expect to have to face this moment now. Tell this woman who’d already been through a living hell that the chances of her getting to see her son were slim.

‘The problem is, Mrs Waldren, as I told Claude Donatiens and he no doubt passed on to you — this programme is very strict. The idea is that your son sees no one — and I mean no one from his past. Now that’s not to say that that rule can’t be broken given very special circumstances, and then again only if we can put the right safeguards in place. The first thing to happen is that we tell your son — because it’s certainly not in the programme’s charter that we withhold vital personal information from him. Now if he doesn’t want to see you for whatever reason, then that’s the end of the road right there. If he does, then it has to be put before the department that set up the programme in Ottawa. Then we have to…’ Michel broke off. She’d been through enough for her not to have to suffer him burying the likelihood of seeing her son under a chain of procedural details. It was the least he owed her. ‘Well, put it this way — we have to measure the strength and need of your request against the risk taken by granting it.’

‘What are my chances?’

Michel looked slightly down to one side. She’d wasted no time, cut right to the core. Now the spotlight had swung round on him, and he found the plea in her eyes unsettling, difficult to meet head on. His first instinct was to bluff, buoy her spirits, if nothing else than to ease that searching stare. But he’d already played enough shadow games with this; he didn’t want to also be responsible for leading her on in the final clinches.

‘They’re no better than even.’ His voice was level, matter-of-fact. ‘Your reason and need are strong, couldn’t be stronger — but the risks we’d likely subject your son to are equally as strong. In the end it wouldn’t be up to me to decide — S-18 in Ottawa will have the final say.’ Another truth: Mundy would decide, Michel wasn’t just passing the buck so that he could side-step the pitiful plea in her eyes. Right now he was the only focus for what she wanted.

But her eyes stayed steadily on him, and she reached one hand across the table and gently gripped his. ‘But you’ll do your best to help me? To try and convince them?’

Michel wished she hadn’t made that final physical contact: he’d saved a last gap for himself in case he needed to shield within it, stay remote from her dilemma. And now she’d bridged it: he’d felt her hand trembling like a trapped bird, felt all the hopes and desires of a lifetime built up and now passed on to him with that single touch.

‘Yes… yes, I will.’ His voice wavered slightly, though once again he was telling the truth.

But what he couldn’t explain was that he’d plead her case strongly as much for himself as for her: having trawled his conscience long and hard before finally going ahead with Georges’ faked abduction, what he couldn’t bear was an ounce more doubt or guilt over it. And if she finally got to see her son, there was no harm done. Things would be back to how they were before she’d made contact.

‘I think we can trace her.’

Crowley was hit with the claim as soon as he walked in the squad room that morning. DC Proctor, one of the more technically attuned of his team, invariably took pole position whenever things drifted sufficiently into cyberspace to make eyes in the squad room start to glaze over.

‘Really?’ Crowley prepared himself for an onslaught of techno-babble as he took of his jacket and looped it over the back of his chair. He might have shown more enthusiasm if Proctor hadn’t broken the golden rule that it was best not to speak to him until he’d downed his first coffee.

Proctor continued undeterred. Crowley blinked at him twice heavily, yawned, and halfway through headed to the coffee machine with Proctor’s voice trailing behind him. It was about the call Elena Waldren had made with a call card. Yes, central exchange, but the cards were usually all numbered. ‘If we give them the number called and the time, they should be able to tell us what number card made that call.’ Proctor paused for emphasis. ‘And also where that card was sold.’

Crowley poured and took his first sip, but the last part had already got him fully awake. His eyes were wide above the cup. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Sure as can be.’

Crowley gave Proctor the green light to start chasing it. A stream of secrecy and liability disclaimer forms faxed back and forth between them and the global call company eat up much of the day, and mid-afternoon Gordon Waldren was on the line about his wife’s deadline. Could Crowley extend it? His wife had a session planned with a psychiatrist and she fully expected to come out with proof positive that Ryall was molesting Lorena. ‘But I won’t know for sure until my next contact with her at eight-thirty tonight.’

‘I don’t know.’ Crowley clasped at his hair and looked across at Proctor. At any other time he might have said yes, but if they found a firm trace Turton would probably be reluctant to delay any longer. ‘I’ll make a call to the powers that be and let you know in an hour or two.’

Proctor had the information in only another forty minutes that the card used was in a batch that went through their distributor for Eastern Canada.

‘Eastern Canada?’ Crowley confirmed. ‘They can’t narrow it down closer than that?’

‘No, that’s the closest. They supply to the distributor, and from there have no track of exactly which cities which cards go to.’

Great, Crowley thought: they’d narrowed it to an area geographically five times larger than the half of Western Europe where originally they thought she might be. But at least it was down to a population of 14 million rather than 200 million and the number of cities and towns was far less. He phoned Inspector Turton and explained the state of play.

‘Could be just a delaying tactic from Gordon Waldren,’ Turton commented, sucking in his breath: added weight to his deliberation. ‘He knows that she’s made a mistake with the call card, knows that we could well be close to tracing her. So he’s trying to buy some time. But on the other hand, if he’s telling the truth I don’t want a heavy-handed arrest or her cut down in a hail of bullets. So alert the RCMP, but just keep it light-weight for now. Arrange to speak to Waldren at, say, nine tonight, straight after he’s spoken to his wife. And if it appears he’s only mucking us around, get straight back to the RCMP with a grade one abduction alert.’

‘Jerry! Jerry!.. Jerry!’

As Georges walked into the lounge from having grabbed a coffee in the kitchen, Clive and Steve were on their feet watching Jerry Springer, chanting along with the audience as two scraggly blondes tried to tear each other’s hair out. Chac sat to one side smiling. Russell was downstairs in the study watching monitors.

‘Don’t tell me you’re into this shit?’ Georges raised an eyebrow as he sipped his coffee.

‘Yeah, we’re into this shit,’ Clive said defensively. ‘It’s one of our top-bet shows. You never know how many times that bleeper’s going to go.’

As the show wound down and Clive and Steve exchanged some money — Steve apparently held Russell’s stake money — Clive explained. To kill the boredom on safe-house assignments, they’d started betting at first on sporting events: ice-hockey, football, boxing, whatever. Then they’d stretched it to normal TV, with Springer one of the first candidates.

‘We’ve been running bets now for over a year on just how many bleeps and fights there are in one show — closest call wins. The record so far is eighty-four bleeps and twenty-two fights.’

They bet on how many times the dog appeared or the brother called at the door on Frasier, how many tunes were played on Ali McBeal and how often the record needle scratched off halfway through, or whether Kenny would get killed or Chef would sing on South Park. For them the soap opera day suddenly took on a new excitement.

Georges shook his head with a wry smile and went out to the terrace as Friends came on. The running bet was apparently how many times Joey said ‘Hey’ or whether Phoebe would pick up her guitar. The sun was strong enough by midday that you could sit out wearing a thick sweat-shirt, but still it was crisp. Georges’ breath showed on the air.

Chac joined him after a minute. ‘You okay?’

‘Just starting to worry that this is what my life holds from hereon in: watching ice melt and putting bets on the number of F-words on Springer.’ Georges went back to staring out blankly across the frozen lake.

‘I know.’ Chac shrugged. ‘But don’t worry — it’s just the first months until the trial. After, you’ll be re-located with a new identity — be playing golf in the Carolinas or fishing in the Florida Keys with some Jennifer Lopez look-alike on your arm. Or maybe with the language thing, they’ll buy you a new life in the South of France. Things will be looking up again.’

‘Yeah, sounds good.’ Georges nodded dolefully. He confided in Chac more than anyone else. Perhaps because Chac had been with him throughout since the abduction, or maybe it was just his size: broad shoulders and soft edges to cushion problems. ‘But the thing is, Chac, I’m missing her. I’m missing her like hell.’

‘Did you speak to Michel about it?’

‘Yeah. But he says no go. They’ll be watching her too closely, and whatever I said would probably only be used against us at trial.’

Chac joined him in staring out across the frozen lake. Georges had probably explained it better to him than he’d got a chance to over the phone to Michel: just why he was unhappy leaving things on this note with Simone. And it made sense: a sort of closure to that part of his life so that he could get on with this new chapter now. But Chac could also see the risk from Michel’s viewpoint.

‘I’ll try and talk to him about it next time he calls,’ Chac said. ‘Maybe there’s a different angle to play it.’

Crowley’s call came through to RCMP central in Ottawa at precisely 11.08 am EST.

‘No, we can’t narrow it down more than that, I’m afraid.’ And, no, she wasn’t armed and dangerous. ‘In fact they know each other quite well, so the girl is in no immediate danger. But it is urgent we have contact with them and that the girl is returned to her parents.’

Within the hour the alert was logged and put out on the network for the attention of all stations in Eastern Canada, which included Dorchester Boulevard. But Michel Chenouda had already done his checking for Elena Waldren on the system over an hour ago.

Then at 12.52 pm EST, Ottawa received another call from Crowley.

‘We’ve narrowed it down! They’ve gone to Toronto.’

‘You’re sure of that now? Before I make the final change.’

‘Yes, yes… positive. We just got the confirmation through from the airline.’

‘Okay.’ A few key taps, and the alert was amended solely for Toronto and Ontario police. It had been on the Quebec network for less than two hours before vanishing like a dying radar blip.

Hanging up, Crowley was bursting with excess adrenalin and energy. They’d finally traced the flight, a charter from Brussels to Toronto and Edmonton: she’d booked all the way to Edmonton, then changed at the last moment.

Two days with nothing, and suddenly the breaks were all hitting at the same time, the squad room was once again buzzing with it. Often the way.

The squad room was like a morgue.

A hubbub of activity only seconds before, each time Michel Chenouda walked in it fell quiet. This was the pay-back for having put them under suspicion with S-18. Michel felt like picking out individuals and saying I don’t think it’s you or you, or ‘Come on, we’ve worked together years now: I’m not pointing the finger at you, it’s others here I’m not so sure about.’ And then those others would stare at him blankly. Chac and Maury Legault were getting the treatment too, because they were the only ones he’d singled out to trust. He’d had to trust somebody, and they were his longest standing partners. But nobody had any idea just how much he’d trusted them, that they shared his secret of Donatiens’ abduction.

Maury had taken notes during his interview with Elena Waldren, and the squad room had predictably fallen silent as they’d walked back in. Chac thought he’d drawn the short straw getting the main duty guard with Donatiens: unlike him and Maury, he didn’t have kids to see, a failed marriage to try and make good on after the event. But Chac was better off out of it, Michel reflected: at least his isolation was real, tangible. This forced isolation, surrounded by people you knew so well yet were made to feel so apart from and out in the cold, in a way was much harder to take.

He felt guilty having roped Chac and Maury in on his little scheme, subjected them as well to this icy inter-departmental blast. Along with their help, he’d wanted them as sounding boards to convince himself he was doing the right thing: ‘If we just leave Donatiens, Roman’s going to take him out for sure. All we’re doing is advancing what Roman’s going to do to him in a few days. And at the same time we get our witness.’ Chac and Maury had been heavy with doubt and concern at first. There’d been a lot of frowns and forehead-cradling at the terrible risk to their careers, and Michel moved in swiftly with the clincher. ‘What’s the alternative? We know he’s about to die — yet we just sit around and let it happen?’

He’d wanted their honest input, but in the end had shamelessly cornered them, left them little choice: how could they put their precious careers before a man’s life? The reverse of that same coin, once the battle banners had been raised, suddenly made their actions seem terribly noble. They’d put their necks on the line to save Donatiens’. Michel clung to that, recited the same headline justification each time the guilt seeped back.

Because what Michel didn’t want to have to face is that his obsession with the Lacailles might have finally made him step too far. He’d known all along that he was going to corner Chac and Maury, because he couldn’t have done it without them. He didn’t just want head-nods that he was doing the right thing. Chac had in fact helped him choose the two abductors and set things up, then he’d assigned Chac and Maury to watch over Donatiens, allowing just the right leeway for his abductors to get away — until the last moment. Every detail had been painstakingly pre-choreographed and timed.

And now Maury was alongside him in a small back office at Dorchester Boulevard with Chac and Georges at the other end of the line in the safe house. Russell had set up the scrambler and watched a monitor for a second to ensure the signal kept shifting and the line was secure, then left them to it. Their small circle of conspiracy was once again complete.

Chac spoke only briefly and said that he wanted another word when Michel had finished, then passed him over to Georges.

Michel swallowed hard. This wasn’t going to be easy.

Georges had at first been defensive and incredulous. It was impossible. His real mother had died when he was only three in a car accident: Maria Stephanou. And his father had been too spineless to bring him up on his own.

‘That’s how I ended up in the orphanage. And that’s why I never troubled to see him since, or even tried to make contact.’

‘I’m sorry, Georges. I’ve seen her papers and heard her story. And I think she’s for real.’ Michel ran through everything as it had been presented to him: early pregnancy, dominating father, the court order, the birth registration with the same doctor also finding the Stephanous. He didn’t want to pull any punches, so his tone was straightforward, almost matter-of-fact; belied the emotional weight of the subject.

It would have made everything so much easier if Donatiens just said ‘I don’t want to see her.’ Washed all the guilt and the difficult decisions yet to come on this away in one. And it would have been easy to put the spin on it now to lead to that response. But Michel already carried enough on his shoulders through influencing events, moulding them the way he wanted. It was doubtful enough that Donatiens might ever be able to see his birth mother; he didn’t want to be responsible for driving home the final knife, trying to influence to ensure they never met just to save added complications. That would be a step too far. This one he’d have to play straight down the line.

Georges still clung on defensively, much of it covering ground that Michel had tossed around a dozen times over the past two hours. Surely it was all just a scam dreamt up by Roman? No, first thing Michel had thought of: no possible link and her search had started ten days before Georges had even been abducted. Then why had she left it until now to try and make contact? And Michel had told him the rest: her cutting herself off from her father and trying to blot it from her mind; her work with adopted children to salve the guilt.

‘…Telling herself all along that you’d have gone to a good family somewhere. And everything was going well until she suddenly hit the brick wall of a child placed with a family where everything wasn’t so fine.’

Georges let go reluctantly: it was almost half an hour before his anger and defensiveness finally wound down. Silently submissive. Too silent after the earlier outbursts, stiflingly awkward: Michel could still sense a hundred questions bubbling beneath. But it was probably as close to acceptance as Georges would come until all the pieces had sunk in and finally settled.

There was a moment close to the end when Georges suddenly blurted our: ‘What would you do in my position?’

‘Well, I don’t know. I suppose I — ’

But Georges butted in. ‘Oh, I forgot. You couldn’t possibly have any idea of my position or know how I feel. Cut off from everyone I know and love, and now one more added to the pot.’ He eased an awkward, muted chuckle. ‘Are you sure this isn’t one of Roman’s warped games?’

‘Yeah, I’m sure. As I say, we checked it every which way.’ As if countering the barb, after a second he added that Georges didn’t exactly have the exclusive on isolation. ‘Since I went out on a limb for you by bringing in S-18, a lot of backs have turned here. I might as well — ’ Then it was his turn to cut short. His situation paled in comparison. The closest he’d come to knowing how Georges felt was the situation with his own family. Following his wife from Toronto to Montreal because he couldn’t bear being away from his children. When they’d left it had been like a stab to the heart, grinding month by month deeper: the ten months before he finally got transfer and followed were one of the hardest of his life. Because of this squad room cold shoulder now and his role winding down as S-18 took over, he’d thrown himself more into his family, arranged a couple of days out with Benjamin and Angelle; with his absorption with the case, all too often they’d taken a back seat. The cold shoulder from work colleagues was one thing — uncomfortable, a pain in the ass — but separation from family was in an entirely different league. ‘Well, if it’s any consolation, I know how you must feel — I was seperated from my own children for a while.’ Though he didn’t have the time or inclination to explain just how and why. He took a fresh breath. ‘This might not be a decision you can make right now. But she has flown all the way from England and can’t stay indefinitely on the off-chance — so I promised to let her know one way or the other within twenty-four hours. If you’re not ready now, fine, we can just tell her that and when you are finally ready — three months, six months, whatever — she can be contacted again.’

Georges sighed nonchalantly. ‘What’s the point? Even if I decide I want to see her, it’ll probably just be the same as with Simone: no go.’

‘I can’t say one way or the other. I’m just the messenger here. I passed on what she said — and if you decide you want to see her, I again pass that on to S-18. In the end it’s up to them to decide. One thing in her favour is that unlike Simone, she’s not the first place that Roman and Jean-Paul will be watching. She’s new on the scene — they won’t even know about her.’

Michel was pleased with the way he’d handled it: no edge or influence. If Georges finally decided he didn’t want to see her, he couldn’t possibly be held to blame. But with what Chac had to say as he came back on the line — pausing momentarily for Georges to leave the room — Michel began to wonder whether perhaps he should have tried to influence Georges; mould him, push him where he wanted. Things hadn’t changed: each time he feared the Lacailles might slip from his grasp, all else quickly went to the wind.