Hidden Faces

I

The hospital was set back from the road and screened by trees and thick evergreen shrubbery behind a high stone wall. The road that ran round the side of the hill that overlooked this outlying suburb was narrow and treacherous in the snow. It was poorly-lit and on the left side there was a steep drop down to a disused railway line. Set in several acres of its own grounds, the hospital was one of several stone-built villas that clung obstinately to the hillside. This had once, perhaps, been an exclusive part of town, a retreat for the rich. Now the large ornately-carved stone gateposts were blackened and chipped. Heavy old wrought-iron gates were rusted, in need of paint, and hung lamely, opening onto driveways where weeds poked up through the light covering of snow beneath the trees.

From the road, most of the houses seemed to be in darkness. They might have been derelict. The only building that showed signs of life was the hospital, fragments of light shining from windows through the trees. There was the same seedy air about the gateway of the hospital that there was about the whole street, a quiet, decaying street that you seemed to come on unexpectedly as your car whined up the steep curve of the road from the housing estate below. A corner of the city forgotten by time.

The brightly polished brass plaque on the gate seemed out of place: HOPITAL DES ENFANTS. Very discreet. A residential clinic for mentally disturbed children. Bannerman swung the Volkswagen into the driveway and they wound up through the trees where the drive broadened in front of the house and levelled out across a terrace. From here you had a stunning view out over the city which lay swathed in cloud.

Thick flakes were still falling around them as Bannerman and Sally stepped out of the car. Half a dozen other cars were parked tight against the house, ledges of snow accumulating on the roofs. The house itself looked well cared for. Sand-blasters had restored the sandstone to its original honeycomb yellow, the window sashes and shutters a freshly-painted green. It was an impressive building with turrets at each of the four corners, and steep grey-slated roofs.

They climbed the steps to double swing doors and pushed them open into a bleak, tiled hallway. A nurse in a white, starched uniform was coming out of a room at the far end. She didn’t notice them at first, preoccupied with charts on a clipboard. Then she looked up and seemed momentarily surprised. She spoke a few words in French and Bannerman was surprised to hear Sally reply fluently in the same language. But, of course, if she taught English she must speak French. The nurse smiled and nodded and asked them to wait.

The two stood in the hall, scuffing their feet impatiently, both disinclined to make conversation. In the stillness of the house, the only sounds to reach them were distant voices and the muffled closing of doors. The place smelled of disinfectant and old age. Then there came the clatter of footsteps from the corridor that opened off to the right at the far end of the hall below the staircase. A man in a dark suit appeared and began towards them. He shook both their hands solemnly and addressed himself to Bannerman in English. ‘You’ve come to see little Tania. I am Doctor Mascoulin.’

‘Neil Bannerman. This is Sally...’

‘Yes, we’ve already met,’ said Mascoulin, and Bannerman glanced at Sally, a little taken aback. He had not known that she had been already. And he realised how little he really knew about her. ‘Some of the older children are still in the playroom. Perhaps you would like to observe her first. She has not integrated well, but maybe it is to be expected.’

He led them along the corridor from which he had emerged and opened a door about halfway along that led into a small observation room where there were six or seven seats. It was only about eight feet by four feet. The left hand wall was a one-way screen that let them observe the children without being seen. A half-light filtered through the screen from the playroom and they found themselves looking in on a large square room where eight or nine children were involved in various stages of play. The walls of the room were covered with paintings and drawings made, obviously, by the children themselves. There were various games spread out on a long, oblong table and two of the children sat on tubular steel chairs playing with a pile of wooden bricks. There were other pieces of apparatus and more chairs scattered about the floor, seemingly at random.

Tania sat alone on one of them, apparently watching the others, but without interest. Her hands were clasped in her lap and her face had a wooden, dispassionate look, distant, as though she were somewhere else. There was one adult in the room with them. A nurse in jeans and a white tee-shirt. She was encouraging the children in their activities and from time to time she would go and speak to Tania. But it was as though the child did not hear her. In the observation room they could not hear the children, or what the nurse was saying. Doctor Mascoulin said, ‘What we are doing here is employing an integrated team approach. One person, usually a nurse, will work with the children in the playroom and attempt to introduce various methods or approaches by which both she and we in the observation room can learn about the child. Of course, in here we normally have sessions where the parents are present and we can learn about the child from them also. Unfortunately, in the case of little Tania there are no parents and so it is much more difficult. Particularly in the light of recent and... er, regrettable, events. However,’ he turned and smiled at Sally, ‘the mademoiselle has proved most helpful already in this respect.’

The doctor spoke in a quiet, mechanical voice that Bannerman found irritating. The children might almost have been bacteria seen through a microscope, arousing only a professional interest. And yet it was possible that his clinical detachment, his cold professionalism, was simply a manifestation of his caring. It was too easy to judge people too quickly.

‘As you can see, Tania has not adapted to her environment in any way. Of course, this is to be expected to a certain extent. And there is the language barrier. We do not know how much French, if any, she understands. Naturally, the other children and the staff... well, French or perhaps Flemish is the native tongue. We cannot upset the routine for one child, though several of our nurses do speak English very well and have spent some time with the child. Individual attention. But, I’m afraid... there is really very little we can do for her here.’

Bannerman was looking at Sally who seemed intent on the children. He wondered again at her interest in Tania. It had not occurred to him that her feeling for the child might be more than that of an occasional minder. Had she been more than once? It was odd, he thought, how the child had affected them both in some ways.

‘...and the sooner she can be taken back to Scotland the better it will be for her,’ Mascoulin was saying. ‘I understand your paper is trying to get her placed in the Doctor George Brook Clinic in Edinburgh.’

‘Yes,’ Bannerman said. He had not known.

‘Doctor Brook has some interesting, if rather unusual, approaches in the treatment of autism. Of course, there is no general agreement on the treatment of autistic children...’

Bannerman had turned his gaze back to the child. She had not moved, nor, it seemed, had she even so much as blinked. Her eyes were dark, mysterious pools that gave no hint of what was going on behind them. Bannerman felt again the touch of her cold fingers on his cheek and he was disturbed by the affection that stirred in him. ‘What kind of future does a child like that have?’ he heard himself asking. And he turned to look at Mascoulin’s square, ugly face.

‘It is difficult to say. Only time will really tell. But there is a great danger in such cases that lack of response to treatment will lead eventually to confinement in a mental institution. There they tend to resort to drugs to maintain some sort of equilibrium. Many cases like this will eventually become schizophrenic.’ He scratched his head thoughtfully. ‘You see, autistic children grow up to become autistic adults. In bad cases, and where there is no-one else to look after them, they are unable to look after themselves. They are unpredictable and sometimes violent. There is little else that can be done. But only in extreme cases, of course.’

The session in the playroom was coming to a close. Another nurse came in and the children were led away. Tania was the last to go. The second nurse took her by the arm and the child followed, at first reluctantly, and then with that passive serenity that Bannerman had seen in her before. ‘She has a room of her own. She seems to like to be left by herself. Sometimes she draws, but never in the playroom, although we always provide pencils and paper there. She regards our attentions as... well, as an intrusion, I suppose.’

‘I’d like to see her,’ Bannerman said.

‘She might react.’

‘I know, I’ve seen it.’

Mascoulin shrugged. ‘There is no harm, I suppose. One just never knows. But only one of you. The mademoiselle can see her another time.’

Bannerman looked at Sally. She had said nothing since their arrival and now she seemed morose, moody. She nodded. ‘That’s okay,’ she said quietly.

The child’s head snapped round abruptly when the door opened. She was sitting at a small desk pushed up against the wall. It was covered with sheets of paper, and a small pencil was clutched in her hand. The weary, pained face of Christ looked down at her from a crucifix pinned to the naked white wall. The sheets on the bed were rumpled and untidy. An old darkwood dresser was pushed against the opposite wall. A faded and threadbare square of carpet covered blackpainted floorboards. It was an austere, functional room, like a cell.

The first thing that Bannerman noticed was the barred window that looked out from the first floor onto the driveway below and the city spread out beyond. Then he was drawn by her eyes.

In the first moment, before she recognised him, her eyebrows were puckered in towards the bridge of her nose and her eyes flared with anger. Almost immediately her forehead unfurrowed and her eyes again became those dark, placid pools. Mascoulin glanced at her to satisfy himself that there would be no tantrums. ‘I’ll leave you for a moment.’ He closed the door softly and Bannerman stood awkwardly, looking at the child. The silence was crushing, and he could hear his own breathing like the scraping of chalk on a blackboard.

The child remained motionless, half-turned in her chair, staring back at him. The seconds dragged interminably. ‘Hullo,’ he said at last, and his voice sounded weak and ineffectual. Still she made no movement, and he took two or three steps towards her and looked at the drawings spread on the table. Even though he had seen her drawing of the man in the house, he was startled by their excellence. Seldom had he seen so much expression conveyed in such simple lines, such movement or perspective, such accurately observed yet simply constructed detail. There were horses and riders, a dog, a bird in flight. ‘They’re beautiful,’ he said, and that, too, sounded inadequate, patronising.

She had turned her head so that she could watch him. What was she thinking? He crouched down suddenly, on an impulse, so that his eyes were on a level with hers, and took one of her hands. For a moment there was something on the tip of his tongue, something he had been going to say. But it vanished as quickly and he lost his grasp of what it was. Everything he felt about her, all the strange feelings that she awakened in him, were so elusive, so indefinable. He was at a loss, foundering in a sea of some unknown emotion, and he felt a sudden urge to take her in his arms and crush her to him. But he was hesitant and again the moment passed, leaving him confused.

He felt embarrassed without knowing why and lowered his head. He sighed lightly and felt the soft warmth of her small fingers in his hand. How could he explain it to her when he could not explain it to himself? He wanted to protect her, to keep her safe always from harm, like a father might feel for his daughter. An instinct foreign to him and yet so natural. But he was not equal to it. He raised his eyes and saw that she was smiling, a slight smile that showed in her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. There was a great serenity in her face that made its plainness almost beautiful. He squeezed her hand and stood up, still touched by embarrassment, but a little easier within himself. ‘I’ll come and see you again.’ But her hand clung obstinately to his and he felt her distress. ‘I must go.’

Still the hand clutched his, and then suddenly she seemed resigned to his leaving and her hand slipped away. He wanted to go, but his feet would not take him. Her face was turned upwards, looking at him with such sadness. He bent over and kissed her gently on the forehead, catching a glimpse of himself in a mirror on the wall opposite. He looked pale and tired, and he turned his eyes away from it. The kiss was a simple thing that seemed to come so easily and he was surprised by it. ‘I will come back,’ he heard himself saying. And then he felt the cold of the metal door handle in his hand and he was out in the corridor shutting the door, trembling a little.

Mascoulin was there and he was looking at him strangely. ‘She has a marvellous talent,’ the doctor was saying. They had walked the length of the corridor and were now on the stairs. ‘Children have such a capacity for affection, for love. With most autistic children it is something in which they are frustrated, as they are frustrated in so many other ways.’ Bannerman became aware of him almost for the first time. The doctor went on in the same tone of professional detachment which had irritated him earlier. Only now the words seemed more important than the way they were spoken. ‘Every child needs a love to return. Just a little love goes such a long way and is returned manyfold. Perhaps little Tania has missed out somewhere.’ Bannerman looked at the doctor. It was almost as though he had seen it all, had known what Bannerman had felt. Then he remembered the mirror on the wall beside the bed where he had caught a glimpse of himself as he stooped to kiss the child. He felt momentarily annoyed that he should have been snooped on. But the anger died quickly.

‘The mirror,’ he said. ‘You watched.’

‘We like to be able to keep an eye on the children without them knowing. It can prove extremely useful.’ He paused. ‘I must admit that her response to you was quite exceptional. With everyone else here she has been surly and uncooperative. Even with the mademoiselle whom, I believe, she knew quite well.’ And again he hesitated. ‘Have you... have you known the child long?’

Bannerman shook his head. ‘I know her hardly at all.’ Sally was waiting in the hall. She looked up as she heard them coming down the steps. ‘I do hope you will come again as you promised,’ Mascoulin said. He shook both their hands again and watched them pass through the swing doors and out into the snow. And he thought about the curious scene he had witnessed in the child’s room.

Outside, Bannerman stopped at the foot of the steps and breathed in the cold night air, turning his face slightly upwards so that the snow flakes cooled the hotness of his skin. He felt Sally’s arm slip through his and she guided him slowly towards the car, her feet scuffing in the soft snow. ‘Why did you really come?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ He searched absently in his pocket for the car keys. ‘The first night I stayed at the flat I woke in the night to find her in my room. She was just standing watching me, and then she came and touched my face. She stood there a while longer and then left. It gave me one of the strangest feelings I’ve ever known.’ The keys were cold in his hand and he unlocked the passenger door. ‘Would you like to go somewhere?’

‘You could take me home,’ she said. ‘I’m very tired.’

II

Kale told the driver to go on past. The brass plaque flashed briefly in the headlights of the taxi, a flicker of information caught in a moment of light and time that told him he need look no further for the child. Beyond where Bannerman’s car had turned into the hospital, the taxi made virgin tracks in the snow and its gears whined as the tyres fought for grip. The vehicle pulled slowly towards the top of the hill. Here there were a few trees where the ground levelled off and the road swung away to wind itself down around the other side. Kale stopped the driver and counted out a thick wad of notes. He was not even sure how much it would be in English money. Perhaps a couple of hundred pounds. It seemed extravagant, but then it hardly mattered any more.

The driver took the money and felt its thickness in his hand. He dared not count it then, but he knew it was a lot. Many times more than the fare he had clocked up. He stuffed it hastily in his pocket and half-turned, a stiff smile on his face, and muttered words of thanks. The cold eyes of his passenger flickered briefly over him, each eye reflecting a pinhead of light from its darkness. The face, pinched and pale, said nothing. Only the eyes spoke, a silent warning, before the man turned to open the door and slip quietly out. The driver wasted no time in pushing into first gear and he turned the car out from the kerb and down the hill. He glanced in the mirror and already the man was only a shadow, hardly distinguishable among the trees. He let out a deep breath that he seemed to have been holding in his lungs all day, grinning as he fingered the wad of notes in his jacket pocket.

All his fears and doubts of earlier in the day melted as quickly as the flakes of snow that fell on his windscreen. The thoughts he had entertained, only a few hours before, of going to the police seemed ridiculous now. His passenger had just been some sullen foreigner with his own reasons for wanting to follow the Volkswagen. He pulled the flap over his pocket and patted it with a certain satisfaction. Perhaps he could take a few days off. Even a week’s holiday.

Kale watched the red tail lights of the taxi vanish from view where the road turned away through the trees. He stood for some minutes. At first he felt nothing. Not even the cold. In a few hours it would all be over and then nothing would matter any more. Back the way they had come he could see the lights of the hospital broken by the branches of trees. He barely noticed the view across the city.

He turned and walked back down the hill until he reached the first of the houses that stood darkly behind its high stone walls. There a spindly street lamp rose above its own pool of feeble yellow light, and he stopped to light a cigarette and turn up the collar of his coat. His every movement seemed remote to him, mechanical, as though he had stepped outside his body and was simply an onlooker. He had given himself over completely to the instincts of his profession.

Already the tyre tracks of Bannerman’s car where it had turned into the hospital were almost covered over. Kale hesitated only for a moment in the gateway, then he moved silently from the drive into the trees. Here the snow lay in patches, the thick layer of dead leaves spongy under his feet. There was a smell of rot and decay, damp and cold, among the evergreen foliage. He scrambled up the slope, his sleeves and trousers snagging on the bushes, and then he waited, breathless, at the top, crouched below the cover of the wall that bounded the terrace. A fine, cold sweat beaded his forehead.

For several minutes he remained there before pulling himself up so that he could see beyond the wall, across the terrace to the house itself. A number of cars, including the one he had been following all day, stood under its shadow, the light of the lamp above the main door streaming out across the terrace towards him. Other lights shone in a number of windows, reflecting their brightness in the snow. He crouched down again and made his way along below the wall to where it cut away at the end of the terrace. From here he had an oblique view across the front of the house beyond where the light fell in long yellow slabs. He eased himself in against a short flight of broken stone steps to watch and wait, silent and unseen, with an infinite and chilling patience.

He could not tell how long it was he had waited before the man and the girl came out. They came down the steps and crossed to their car, the damp snow creaking beneath their feet. Their voices drifted across to him and he registered only a little surprise to hear them speaking English. ‘I don’t know... Would you like to go somewhere?’

‘You can take me home. I’m very tired...’

When the car had gone the silence returned and Kale moved his stiffening legs. He glanced upwards and saw a small face pressed against one of the lit windows on the first floor watching through the bars the lights of the car as it travelled back down the hill towards the housing estate below. Suddenly he felt the cold, felt a pain in his legs and the numbness of his fingers. He no longer stood apart from himself. The face at the window was only a shadow, a small head silhouetted against the light behind it. A small hand came up and pressed against the pane before sliding slowly, hopelessly, down to the sill. Kale knew with a frightening certainty that this was the child that had seen him in the house at the Rue de Pavie.

Still he did not move. Another figure appeared in the room. A nurse. She came to the window and the child turned and they both moved away from view. Several more minutes passed before the nurse reappeared at the window and drew the blind so that the light behind showed only around the edges. Then the light went out.

It may have been after midnight, he was uncertain, when the last lights went out and the house and its grounds lay in darkness. For the last hour his attention had been riveted to the child’s window. He had been surprised to see the blind rise slowly to reveal the paleness of her face in the light reflected from the snow below. For a moment she had vanished again and then returned with a chair to sit motionless, staring into the dark, her head pressed against the window. He had found himself thinking about her. Alone in the world without parents, without love, separated from others by something in her head, something that set her apart, condemned to exist in the loneliness of her own strange world. There was an affinity between them. Her life was no more, no less, than his had been, than his life was now. There would have been a saving of much pain if some stranger with a gun had brought an end to his life thirty years ago. No loss. No-one to suffer. But, he knew, he was only seeking some virtue in what was to be done. A justification. Such a bitter irony. He had never needed it before.

Now, with all the lights gone, he could no longer see her at the window. But she was still there, he knew. He moved his stiff limbs and felt for the gun in his pocket. The cold of the barrel burned his fingers. With a heavy resolution he began up the steps to the terrace. It was time.

Her skin was burning as though with a fever. Occasionally she moved her forehead on the glass so that it was cold again. She did not feel sleepy. She would wait at the window, she had decided, until Bannerman’s car returned. Maybe tomorrow, or the day after. She wanted to see the car come up the driveway. She wanted to see him standing in the snow. Perhaps he would glance up and see her at the window and wave. And perhaps she would smile and wave back. It might be difficult, but she wanted him to know. She wanted him to know all the things she couldn’t tell him. Why was she so drawn to the cold blue eyes? Maybe it was what she saw behind them.

The lights of the city twinkled and shone in the valley below in seemingly random patterns. He was out there somewhere. Doing what? Did he think about her as she thought about him? Of course not. Her reasoning was clear and sound. She constituted only a tiny fraction of his life, of his thoughts. It was only in the great void of her own existence that he was so important to her, filling the emptiness, bringing light into the darkness. There was no reason why he should think of her at all. And yet he had come here, and he had felt something for her, something that he too was unable to express. He would come again. Had he not told her he would?

The house had been in darkness for some time now. The others would be asleep. The doctors, the nurses, the other children who all seemed like mirror-images of herself. Prisoners within themselves, prisoners in this house whose windows were barred.

She gave a slight start as a door slammed somewhere in the depths of the house. Not everyone was asleep. A light came on downstairs, throwing a broad wedge of light out across the snow on the terrace. Something was moving down there, something dark and hunched that froze as it was caught in the sudden light. The shadow of a man fell away from the house, long and thin. A face turned up towards the window, sickly pale, almost whiter than the snow. The child did not move. The muscles and skin tightened across her face and throat. It was a face she knew, a face in which she saw fear, bitterness, anger. She saw the eyes clearly as they had met hers and recognized the same hunted look as she had seen in the Rue de Pavie. Then the light went out and she could no longer see him, but she knew he was still there. And she knew what he had come for.

III

The night was empty and yet still young. Bannerman had dropped Sally outside a block of tenement flats in an old part of town. She had not asked him up, returning alone to an empty flat. He sat for a few minutes in the car and watched her light go on three floors up. Her mood was so unpredictable. Someone must have hurt her very badly.

He remembered the girl from tele-ads, the night that he finally had taken her to bed. ‘Please don’t!... Will it hurt? Oh, please be gentle.’ He had been clumsy, inexperienced, and it had hurt so that she sobbed for nearly an hour afterwards, and he had been stricken by the blood that soaked the sheets. It was a moment spoiled by youth, by ignorance and fear. It was the final disillusionment of the angry years. Nothing in his life had been sacred since. It was a night when he should have grown up. But that was not to come for more than six weeks after, when she came to him one night after work and told him that she carried his child.

Even then he had not learned. It was ironic that it was she who would teach him, that it was she who had learned more quickly than he.

Bannerman lit a cigar and pulled the car away from the kerbside. A curtain on the third floor fluttered and a face appeared momentarily at the window. But he did not see it. He glanced at the time. It was not yet nine, and he recalled the crumpled card in his pocket and drew it out. He stopped the car under a lamp-post and held the card in the light. ‘Her Majesty’s Minister for Foreign Affairs extends an invitation... Nine p.m., Restaurant Noir in the Rue des Bouchers.’ He rummaged in the glove compartment and found an indexed street map. The Rue des Bouchers was only about a hundred metres from the Grande Place where he had sat that morning under the yellow awning enjoying the winter sunshine. He allowed himself a grim smile and slammed the glove compartment shut. It was about time he began stirring things up.

The Restaurant Noir was set back from the street. Thick red curtains hung on rings from a polished brass rail. The name was written in scroll, gold on black, above the window, and the menus were displayed in two glass-fronted cases ostentatiously mounted on elaborate imitation gas lamp standards on either side of the door. They were expensive menus. You did not eat here unless you had a fat wallet. Doubtless HMG could afford it. After all, it was in a good cause. Wasn’t it? What price the goodwill of the press? A commissionaire in maroon uniform and gold-braided cap held the door open for him and he stepped inside, his feet sinking into a thick red carpet.

The muted sound of voices, of knives and forks on plates, of bottles brushing the lips of glasses, came softly through from the dining-room. It was set behind stained glass scenes of mediaeval knights and gracious ladies mounted in a carved wooden framework. An arched doorway led through from the subdued light of the reception hall into the slightly less subdued light of the dining room. Another door opened into an adjoining bar where the voices were less muted.

A face hovered darkly behind a cloakroom counter away to his left and a flunky in a black suit and white starched collar approached on tiptoe, smiling with the ease of a professional smiler. ‘Monsieur?’ Bannerman held out the battered invitation card which the flunky took between thumb and forefinger as though it might bite him. ‘Ah, bien. May I take your coat?’

The newspapermen were in the bar with the Minister, a junior member of the Foreign Office staff and a Government press officer — another professional smiler. There was a distinct lull in the conversation as Bannerman came in. Without exception every face was turned in his direction. It was a moment that passed quickly and after it everyone pretended not to have noticed. All except the press officer who pushed forward to greet him. ‘Neil Bannerman, isn’t it?’ The well-practised smile had broadened and a dimple on his right cheek threatened to swallow up the rest of his face.

The reporter took the limp hand offered by the smiler. ‘I’ll have a whisky,’ he said.

‘Of course, of course,’ A few of the faces at the bar were familiar to him. Others he did not know. He recognised Willis, and Kearney who turned away when he saw Bannerman looking at him.

‘Here you are.’ The PR man handed him his whisky. ‘My name’s Holt, Harold Holt.’ He was a young, mouse-brown-haired man of around twenty-five. He oozed confidence and an ersatz buddiness that was the hallmark of his profession.

‘Well, Harold, how would you like to tell the Minister that I would like a word with him?’

Holt’s face darkened a little, though the smile never wavered, ‘I don’t think the Minister will want to discuss...’

‘Just a chat, that’s all. Off the record.’ He watched Holt approach the Minister, touch him lightly on the shoulder and utter a few words close to his ear. The Minister half-turned and smiled in Bannerman’s direction, raising one finger to indicate that an audience would be granted in just a few moments. Holt scurried off to the bar to fetch some more drinks. Bannerman took a mouthful of whisky, swilling it slowly before swallowing.

‘Well, Mr. Bannerman. I don’t believe we’ve met.’ The Minister approached with an outstretched hand. ‘You have quite a reputation. It seems such a pity that you spend most of your time buried away up there in Scotland.’

Bannerman smiled. ‘Maybe you ought to put it on your list of countries worth visiting. I’m sure it would not be beyond a man of your abilities to re-open diplomatic relations.’

‘Very amusing, Mr. Bannerman. Another drink?’

Bannerman shook his head. ‘No. Thanks. I’d like to talk.’

‘That would depend what you want to talk about.’ His manner was impeccable. A man of sixty years, he had met with almost every head of state in the world that was worth meeting, and a few that weren’t. He was not a man to use words carelessly. His smile was almost beatific. Bannerman was sure that when the face adopted its mask of concern or sympathy or understanding, it would be faultlessly convincing. Gryffe would have been the obvious successor. Perhaps that was why the two men had never got on too well.

He had a good head of suitably distinguished greying hair and shrewd brown eyes that held you mercilessly in their gaze. A man of gentle but firm persuasion, the ultimate diplomat. He had a reputation as a hard man, but fair, good at his job. At a glance you could see why, and Bannerman thought, there is no point in staying for the meal. ‘I’d like to talk about Robert Gryffe and Timothy Slater.’

The Minister smiled patiently. ‘Our of bounds, I’m afraid, Neil. Unfortunate, of course, the whole affair. After the meal I shall be releasing details of our plans for having Robert’s body flown back to England. And for the memorial service.’ He put a friendly arm around Bannerman’s shoulders and steered him gently back towards the bar. ‘Of course, after the election, when...’ he grinned, ‘when my Party is returned to office, we can perhaps get together for lunch some day and have a little chat about it, hmmm?’

Bannerman shook his head and returned the Minister’s smile. ‘Not good enough, sir. Of course, I can understand your reluctance to say too much to the press before the election. A nasty business. Can’t have the voters getting the wrong idea. All the same, I’m sure many people would like to know why the murders of Gryffe and Slater have been hushed up by the Belgian authorities with, I hesitate to add, the connivance of the British Government.’

‘Oh, come now, Mr. Bannerman.’ The diplomatic smile was becoming a little frayed around the edges, and he had lapsed from ‘Neil’ back to ‘Mr. Bannerman’. ‘There is no evidence to suggest that either man was murdered. A quarrel...’

‘Bullshit! All the evidence points quite clearly to murder,’ The Minister was steering him away again from the bar. Bannerman went on, ‘The trouble is that most of that evidence hasn’t been made public. Yet. But you and I both know, don’t we? The left-handed Slater with the gun in his right hand. The quarter of a million dollars in the suitcase. Slater’s air tickets to the States. The break-in at Slater’s flat within half an hour of the murder. Perhaps you forget that I was there.’

For the first time the Minister was looking uncomfortable. ‘Really, Bannerman, you have no evidence to support all this... this journalistic fantasy.’ Now he had even dropped the ‘mister’.

Bannerman laughed. ‘You cannot be so naïve, Minister. I don’t need evidence. If I am satisfied I have the truth all I need do is write it. So long as I slander no-one then there is nothing to stop me. And no amount of denials can make a story like that go away. It will need to be disproved. And that might prove difficult if it’s true.’

It was Bannerman’s turn to place the friendly arm around the Minister’s shoulder and steer him further from the bar. ‘You know what I think, Minister? I think that your Robert Gryffe was into something that might prove embarrassing to quite a number of people. I think Timothy Slater was onto him and was blackmailing him.’

The Minister was frowning, but superficially he had lost none of his composure. He had donned his mask of sincerity and now adopted a different tack. ‘Just how good is your information, Neil?’ He looked searchingly at the reporter.

‘Good enough.’

‘Because if what you say is true then it may be that we shall have to take another look at the whole case. About the murder, I mean. It may be that we have been misinformed by the Belgian authorities. Perhaps we should get together, discuss the source of your information.’

‘Now, Minister, you know I would never discuss my sources. And if you are so misinformed, you will be of little help to me.’ Pause. ‘But I’ll tell you what. When I’ve got my story together I’ll give you a call and you can give me your on-the-record reaction. Hopefully I will have things tied up and out of the way before the election. Either way, I promise you, you’ll be the first to know.’

Bannerman admired the Minister’s control. He would give nothing away despite the somersaults he had been forced to make in the last few minutes. ‘Oh, and I do apologise,’ Bannerman said. ‘I shan’t be able to stay for the meal. I hope it goes well. Goodbye, sir.’ He leaned across and laid his empty glass on a table and left quickly.

From the comparative dark of the hallway he glanced back into the bar. The reporters were uneasy. They knew that something had passed between Bannerman and the Minister, although the Minister would do his best to smooth things over.

The Minister himself was muttering thoughtfully to Harold Holt, whose agitation was obvious. The press officer nodded and began towards the door as the Minister turned back to the journalists and beamed beatifically. ‘I think we might eat now, gentlemen.’

Bannerman glanced down the hall. A telephone booth was lit at the far end. He stepped briskly the other way towards the face hovering behind the counter. ‘My coat.’ The attendant vanished among the coats that hung in rows like carcasses in a butcher’s shop. Holt came out into the hall without seeing Bannerman and headed straight for the telephone. Bannerman smiled a little to himself. He had tested the water and found it hot. He took his coat, leaving a few francs on the counter, and walked slowly to the door as he pulled it on. Holt’s mouth opened and closed silently in his pale face behind the glass door of the booth. The commissionaire opened the main door and Holt looked over. All the smiles were gone. He glared at Bannerman as the reporter flashed him a grin and stepped out into the cold Brussels night.

IV

The stairwell seemed colder than it had on other nights, the landing lights harsher, the stairs darker. Outside the snow was falling even more thickly. The winter seemed determined to tighten its grip on the city. Someone coughed on the landing above. A man’s cough, a deep retching cough. Bannerman could smell cigarette smoke. Whoever was there was making no attempt to conceal his presence. He must have heard Bannerman’s footsteps.

Bannerman climbed the last flight cautiously before he saw Platt’s face, round and fat, peering down at him. ‘Is that you, Bannerman? I’ve been hanging around here for more than half an hour. I’m bloody freezing.’ Platt’s face was very white and touched with blue around his eyes. He was wearing a thick coat with a scarf wrapped tightly round his neck, and his battered checked hat was pulled down over his forehead. He made an exaggerated show of stamping his feet for warmth and making fists with his gloved hands.

‘What do you want?’ Bannerman asked, turning his back on him to unlock the door.

‘Oh, that’s nice,’ Platt whined. ‘I’ve been knocking my pan in all afternoon trying to get background on Jansen and Lapointe and then most of the night trying to track you down...’

‘I told you tomorrow would do.’ He paused and looked at the pathetic figure on the landing and relented a little. ‘You’d better come in.’

Platt followed him through to the living room slapping his hands together and making loud blowing noises. Bannerman took a bottle wrapped in brown paper from his pocket and laid it on the table, and draped his coat over the back of the settee. He switched on the fire and saw Platt eyeing the bottle. ‘Malt,’ he said, but did not offer him a drink. ‘Let’s see it.’

‘What?’ Platt looked confused.

‘Your stuff on Jansen and Lapointe.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Platt struggled out of his coat and dropped his gloves on the chair beside it. He drew a large folded envelope from his inside jacket pocket and held it out for Bannerman. He dropped gratefully into the chair, his scarf hanging loosely from his neck over the bulge of his waistline. His eyes fell longingly again on the bottle and involuntarily he licked his wet, purple lips. He said, ‘I got most of what I needed on Jansen from a series the Soir ran on him about six months ago. I went over it and typed out a precis of the relevant details in English. There was some stuff on Lapointe as well, but not as much. He’s not as up front as Jansen, so we don’t know as much about him.’

Bannerman lit a cigar, sank back in the settee and looked at his watch. It was just after ten. He threw the envelope carelessly on the table. ‘Tell me the salient details. I haven’t time to read the stuff just now. I’m going out again shortly.’ Platt made no attempt to hide his irritation. ‘When are you going to come clean with me, Bannerman?’

‘In good time.’ Pause. ‘Did you make your second edition?’

Platt’s mouth tightened. ‘Yes, I made it. The paper was fifteen minutes late getting to the street. I got a right roasting.’ Bannerman couldn’t resist a smile, to Platt’s further annoyance. The old reporter glanced for the umpteenth time at the bottle. ‘How about a drink, Bannerman? You owe me that. Take the chill out of my bones.’

Bannerman drew lazily on his cigar. ‘Alcohol accelerates loss of body heat. Help yourself.’

‘Glasses?’

‘In the kitchen.’

Platt sat for a few moments waiting for Bannerman to get them, but when the younger man made no move, he heaved himself reluctantly out of his chair and crossed towards the kitchen door. ‘In here?’ Bannerman nodded.

He listened to the sound of Platt searching noisily in the cupboards and remembered how he had been when he’d first met him all those years ago when he joined his first weekly paper.

Platt had been there for years, knew it all and breathed whisky and contempt on the succession of keen young news-hounds who passed through the paper on their way to better things. He had been a lonely man, a widower, embittered by all life’s opportunities that had passed him by. At first he had poured scorn on Bannerman the way he had poured scorn on all the rest. But even Platt had come to recognise the possibilities in him and had done everything he could to make life even more difficult.

Bannerman had hated him then. Wasn’t it Platt who had mixed things for him with the editor over the business with the tele-ad girl, Platt who had taken delight in his hurt and dismay? It was possible that he was responsible for Bannerman losing his job. Bannerman had been sure at the time and his anger had lived in him for a long time after. Only the passing of the years had peeled away the anger and brought a little understanding, before finally despatching him to the mists of a half-forgotten past.

And now, all these years later, here they both were. How different it all was. Bannerman had no idea what ebbs of fortune had brought Platt to this end, exiled in a foreign city, still chasing the dreams that had passed him by so long ago.

Platt came out of the kitchen with two cups. ‘I can’t find the glasses.’ He set them down on the table, opened the bottle and poured two large measures. Then he dropped into his seat and raised his cup, smiling a broad, hollow smile. ‘Cheers.’

How he detested Bannerman. His success, his arrogance, his self-assurance. He took a gulp of the smooth malt and grimaced as he felt the first twinges in his stomach. Bannerman was watching him. ‘Ulcer,’ he said. ‘First one always gets it that way.’ Still, he thought with some comfort, there are one or two things that I know about you. He grinned. ‘Where should I begin?’

‘At the beginning.’

Platt shifted in his chair and took another gulp of whisky. ‘Well, René Jansen is probably about the richest man in Belgium. His pedigree is spotless. He comes from one of the oldest and most influential Flemish families in the country. An only child. All this lavished freely upon his fair head. Education, breeding, money. He’s got the lot. When his father died he inherited the Jansen empire. But he didn’t just sit back on it. He built on it, made it more than it ever was when his father was alive. He’s into everything. Owns the biggest private aerospace concern in Europe, supplying not only the bulk of the planes for the Belgian airforce and the national airlines, but also for about half the major airlines in the world — and exclusively to a number of the smaller Third World airlines.

‘And he’s into the construction industry. His companies are almost single-handedly re-building Brussels and some of the bigger provincial towns. About half of that is on government contracts, the other half is in the private sector. Those are the two biggies. But he’s got fingers in lots of other pies. Property, department stores, and he even owns a couple of provincial newspapers. He’s got interests in a shipping line and owns a few breweries.’

Bannerman knew now why the name Jansen had seemed familiar. He was one of the two percent of men who own ninety-five percent of the world’s wealth. Those men who exist in a world of private jets, executive suites, massive estates; whose pictures you see sometimes in the diary pages of newspapers, dining with Royalty, dropping half a million on the tables at Monte Carlo. Always with pretty girls on their arms. The kind of life-style to which Robert Gryffe had aspired. ‘How does he organise his affairs?’

Platt filled his cup again. He offered the bottle across the table but Bannerman shook his head. ‘Well, everything comes under the umbrella of the parent company, I.V. Internationale, which has its headquarters in the Boulevard Bischoffsheim.’ Platt paused. ‘If you’re trying to find skeletons in his cupboard you’ll be hard-pushed. It’s been tried before. Everything’s above board. All I.V.’s activities are on record and can be checked. Company registration in this country is as accessible as it is in Britain. Companies are registered at the Tribunal de Commerce and there is one of those in every commercial court in the country. Each Tribunal de Commerce feeds a central register held here in Brussels by the Ministry of the Middle Classes. And you or I or anyone can examine that register. You can find out the names of a company’s directors, or what its capital is, as easily as you can obtain the same information at Companies House in London or Edinburgh.’

‘What about a company’s financial state or shareholders?’ Platt shook his head. ‘Afraid not. You’re not required to give that information. But it’s not really important, is it?’

Bannerman shrugged non-committally. ‘Go on,’ he said.

Platt drained his second cup. A little colour had returned to his cheeks. ‘He’s not married, he’s in his late forties and lives with his mother in a huge mansion just outside Brussels. He’s got no overt political affiliations, although it is said he contributes funds. Generally he keeps a pretty low profile, though he’s widely known as a bit of a philanthropist, contributing large sums annually to old folks’ homes, hospitals, international aid organisations and the like. His private life is private.’

Bannerman frowned. He had no clear picture of the man. The description might fit any of a couple of dozen men in Europe. The philanthropic millionaire who steers clear of public politics and jealously guards his spotless reputation by keeping it out of the glare of publicity. All very virtuous. And yet this same man had sent a hoodlum to break into the Post’s office in the IPC building to steal an innocuous folder of newspaper cuttings. He checked the time and then drained his cup quickly. ‘And Lapointe? Make it quick. I have to go.’

Platt was in no hurry, remembering how Bannerman had made him late with his copy that morning. He filled his cup for the third time and sank back again in his chair. ‘Lapointe,’ he said at length, ‘is the legal brain behind I.V. Internationale. He’s a short, stout man in his middle fifties. Very grey and very proper. Wears neatly-tailored dark suits and carries his wealth discreetly. Old-fashioned, conservative. A widower, one grown-up daughter, divorced, I believe. Began his career in criminal law and went on to specialise in company law. He worked for Jansen’s father before he died and was associated with the family for many years. He’s not a man in the public eye at all, but a key figure in the company. And that’s about it, though perhaps a little surprisingly he’s from the south, a French speaker.’ Bannerman stood up suddenly and Platt blinked at him. ‘What is it?’

‘I’ve got to go. You can let yourself out.’ He snatched his coat and went out into the darkness of the hall.

Platt heard the front door closing, and then a few minutes later the car coughing to life in the street below. He smiled to himself, satisfied with his day. The whisky was having its effect. He would show them all. Especially Bannerman. His eyes wandered towards the Brueghel snow scene, reminding him of how it was outside. That, and the dull ache of his ulcer, were the only things that troubled him now. He took a tablet from his pocket and crunched it between his sharp little teeth, and prepared to pour himself another whisky to wash away the taste.

V

The Palais de Justice took on a dark, sinister air at night. In the day it was one of those vast, blackened buildings whose pillars and ornate façades seemed strong and old and solid and always reliable, though now it was all a little shabby. Odd pieces of scaffolding had been erected by workmen who worked between cups of coffee and glasses of beer in the nearest bistro to try to maintain its original dignity.

Bannerman saw, through a small window, the night watchman pouring coffee from a flask at a small wooden table. Behind him a stove glowed brightly. A little insipid yellow light fell out across the snow.

The Place Poelaert was quiet. The night traffic rumbled past in the Boulevard de Waterloo back along the way he had come, two hundred metres distant. At the far end the snow crusted along the top of a high wall beyond which the city fell away below. A floodlit church, rooftops sloping this way and that. In the misted distance the Martini neon on the Manhattan Centre at the Place Rogier.

Footsteps on cobbles rattled in the silence from the shadowed lee of the Palais de Justice where the snow had not fallen. Bannerman turned to see the tall, stooped figure of du Maurier step from the shadow into the weak lamplight. The Inspector seemed older, his coat hanging loose and open on the thin, brittle frame. A cigarette hung at one corner of his mouth and his breath blew shallow and grey in the cold. His hat, tilted forward, threw a shadow over the top half of his face. Hands pushed into his pockets, he walked slowly to the wall, brushed away the crusting of snow and leaned on it to stare out across the city. Bannerman smelled drink on his breath.

Without looking at him the Inspector said, ‘Five years ago I was up for promotion for the post of Principal Commissaire. I was turned down. One of my contemporaries, a Flem, got the job.’ He paused, then, ‘You see, Monsieur, this great country of ours is really an uneasy alliance of two very different cultures. The Flems in the north and the Walloons in the south. The language of the north is Flemish and of the Walloons it is French. But the differences go much deeper than language. It is cultural; it is historical. Brussels, they say, is the new political capital of Europe, a great cosmopolitan city.’ He laughed a short, sour laugh. ‘That is all veneer. Beneath the surface bubble all the old hatreds and prejudices. They say that Belgium is bi-lingual. It is not true. Outside of Brussels, where we all pretend, we are a nation of two one-language communities. The language and culture of the region, rather than of the nation, prevail. It is expected, in the schoolroom, in the boardroom, the officers’ mess, the law courts, the tax office, the church.’ He lit yet another cigarette and seemed lost in thought for some time. Bannerman shuffled impatiently, but said nothing.

‘You see, Monsieur, it was my misfortune to reach promotion at a time when the balance of power was shifting. For years the French speakers held the position of power and influence in Government and in all its institutions. It was a conscious political decision to reverse that tide to create a balance. It had been the turn of the Flems.’ His face tightened. ‘It is ironic that I have always been opposed to the traditional discrimination against the Flems. I have always believed... again my belief in justice... that a man should be judged on his abilities. But you see, I lost my chance because I spoke French at a time when the political climate was not in my favour. Not because I was not good enough.’ He turned to Bannerman again. ‘Why should I feel any allegiance to such a system?’

Bannerman cupped his hand around the end of his cigar and struck a match. He wondered how many absinthes the policeman had put away. He said, ‘You didn’t have me meet you here in the middle of the night to tell me all this...’

Du Maurier said, ‘No-o,’ stretching the word thoughtfully and then lowering his head. ‘I had information for you.’

‘But now you’re having second thoughts?’

The Inspector’s head snapped up and he searched Bannerman’s face. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Because you’ve been all fired up and angry since they passed you over for promotion, and when the politicians descended to take away your murders at the Rue de Pavie you saw your chance to hit back. You saw that they were vulnerable. Now you’re not sure if you’re doing the right thing.’

Du Maurier wished he had not drunk so much, for his head was fuzzy and he found it difficult to think clearly. A man like Bannerman could run rings around him. He suddenly felt vulnerable, foolish for having said all the things he had said. Bannerman went on, ‘The trouble is, you’ve already committed yourself. For you there can be no going back. I could blow the lid off our relationship any time I chose.’

The years sat heavily on du Maurier’s shoulders. His face crumpled a little, his mouth tight and grim. ‘And would you?’

Bannerman let that one hang a long time before he said reluctantly, ‘No.’

Du Maurier stared at him. ‘Why?’

Bannerman shrugged. ‘My own reasons,’ he said. Then, ‘What you wanted to say to me tonight was that you had changed your mind? That you no longer felt able to pass me information from the inside?’ Du Maurier nodded. Both men stood in silence then, one staring out over the city, the other with his back to the wall staring through the darkness of the cobbled square. Neither spoke for several minutes. Finally Bannerman said, ‘What was the information you had?’

Du Maurier turned his head slowly. ‘Mon Dieu! You expect a lot.’

‘I have a certain belief in what I am doing.’

The other man shook his head. ‘I wish I could believe, one way or another.’ He drew a folded sheet of paper from his coat pocket and pushed it at Bannerman. It had an address written on it in a tight, neat hand. ‘It’s the address that goes with the phone number you gave me. A country house in West Flanders near Torhout, about seventeen kilometres south-west of Bruges. Monsieur Gryffe had been renting the house for about two years. The property is owned by a Brussels registered company, a subsidiary of I.V. Internationale.’ He smiled an ironic smile.

Bannerman said, ‘Jansen’s outfit.’

‘Yes, perhaps you were right after all.’ Bannerman’s fingers tightened around the slip of paper. It was the first tangible fact to emerge from the whole mess. However tenuous, it was something. He heard the Inspector ask, ‘What shall you do?’

He let his head fall back so that he was staring up into the falling snow. ‘I shall go to Flanders.’ Pause. ‘And you? What will you do?’

Du Maurier surveyed the chewed wet end of his cigarette. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I will need to think about it.’ He threw the cigarette over the wall. ‘Goodnight, Monsieur.’ And he turned away to cross the cobbles and turn down the narrow steps to the Rue des Minimes below.

Bannerman watched him disappear into the shadows and pushed himself off the wall and began to cross the Place Poelaert.