Siege at the Villa Lipp

CHAPTER THREE

By the time Yves had cleared the visitors’ baggage, the sun was down behind the tamarisks on the headland; and, for the first time since Brussels, I was feeling something like my normal self.

Yves’s first report had made me too angry to think sensibly. It had not been until I had cooled off that I had perceived the obvious: that I had been presented with an opportunity of improving my position; not of escaping completely from the predicament I was in, but of improving my chances of surviving it without suffering permanent damage. I was certainly better off than I had been an hour earlier. How much better off would depend on how skilfully I could manipulate the modified situation.

Mat had spoken of tossing Krom some old bones as if all we had to do was to open some handy closet and dismantle one or two of the skeletons that had been hidden in it. I had gone along with the pretence, and he had let me do so; but we had both known that what Krom would expect and insist on getting was not a bag of old bones but his pound of raw, red flesh. It had also been tacitly understood that the only place from which the stuff could safely be extracted — safely, that is, from Mat’s point of view — was my own personal deep-freeze. As he had so charmingly pointed out, I was the one who was blown, not he.

That Krom might himself somehow make things easier for me, even unintentionally, was a possibility I had not even considered before.

Among the ground rules I had agreed with him in Brussels had been one that gave me the final say on all matters concerned with the security arrangements at our subsequent ‘conference’, and another that laid it down, as a precondition of my giving him any information in the presence of witnesses, that the witnesses would be bound in all respects by the same security restrictions as those he himself had accepted.

I had not needed Mat to tell me that I would have to do an awful lot of trusting. Well, I had trusted and at once I had been let down. Krom’s witnesses had turned out to be about as trustworthy as that legendary Lebanese scorpion. So what about Krom himself? Was it likely, really likely, that he, when it came later to publishing my confidences, would prove to be any more reliable? Perhaps, in the end, I would be less seriously injured if I simply called his bluff and told him to do his worst without my willing co-operation.

I could not really do that, of course, out of loyalty to Mat; but Krom could not be sure that I wouldn’t; he might well feel that he would be wise not to drive me too hard.

Anyway, I now had him in the wrong and would shortly rub his nose in the fact. If he wanted his pieces of raw flesh he was going to have to sit up and beg. That meant that he would get tired sooner and possibly be more easily and uncritically satisfied. If my luck held, I might not have to throw him any of the juicier bits at all.

At least I now had a bargaining position, or thought that I had.

They were in the cool of the drawing-room off the terrace and sitting in a stiff little semi-circle. Melanie, petrified by having to pretend for an hour to be the hostess, was doing her impersonation of a grande-dame. I had warned her when we had worked together before that it made her sound like a retired poule-de-luxe hankering after the good old days, especially in her rather peculiar English, but she had convinced herself in the end that I had only been joking. It is odd that someone who can build up with such marvellous ingenuity roles for other persons to play should perform so dismally when called upon to act a little herself.

She was in the middle of an anecdote about Coco Chanel which she had picked up from a women’s magazine. Krom’s eyes were glassy with boredom. Dr Connell was glowering at her. Dr Henson was holding an empty tumbler in cupped hands and staring into it as if it were a crystal ball.

In the doorway I paused and clicked my heels slightly.

Melanie stopped talking instantly and stood up.

Krom rose more deliberately and pointed at me. ‘This,’ he said to his witnesses, ‘is Mr Paul Firman.’

I waited one more moment, until they were all on their feet, then I went forward with my most charming smile to greet them.

Connell made an instinctive movement as if to shake hands, but I ignored it and let one formal little bow serve them all. The sooner they were reminded that they were uninvited as well as unwelcome guests the better.

‘Welcome,’ I said. ‘So glad you had a safe journey. This, as you have no doubt gathered, is my secretary, Miss Melanie Wicky-Frey, but — ‘ I broke off and threw a reproachful glance at Melanie — ‘I see that your glasses are empty.’

Krom was the first off the mark. ‘Thank you, Mr Firman, but we are travel-weary. What I think we would all like at the moment, if you will be so kind, is to be permitted to go to’ our rooms.’

‘That is,’ said Connell tartly and in pretty fair French, ‘if his Algerian truffle-hound has finished snuffling through our bags.’ He went on quickly as I opened my mouth to reply. ‘And if, Monsieur Firman, you could spare us the protestations of injured innocence, we’d appreciate it. We are, as the Professor says, tired.’

I gave him the thinnest of smiles. ‘Oh, I wasn’t going to protest, my dear sir, though Mr Yves Boularis might do so if he heard himself described as an Algerian. He is Tunisian. Of course your luggage has been searched, and most thoroughly. I must remind you that, even though you seem to speak French quite well, the language agreed upon for this conference was English. Am I not right, Professor?’

Krom cleared his throat. ‘Yes, quite right, Mr Firman, though I think Dr Connell has a point. We all submitted with good grace to a body search, but is it really necessary that we should be treated with such deep suspicion, almost as if we were policemen in disguise?’

‘Yes, Professor, I am afraid it is necessary.’

He gave an exasperated sigh as I went to the sideboard and poured myself a drink. Then Connell started again. My not shaking hands had rattled him.

‘I suppose you’re referring to that little tape machine of mine,’ he began, and drew breath to continue.

I shut him up by turning to Dr Henson.

‘What do you say?’ I asked her. ‘Am I being unreasonable, or are you forgetting that you signed a paper agreeing to abide by a set of rules while attending this conference?’

On closer inspection, she was an attractive woman with delicately structured facial bones, fine eyes and a mouth which suggested all sorts of possibilities. Not all of them would be agreeable, however; that brief marriage of hers must have been a harrowing affair. At that moment she was wondering how she might convincingly convert her embarrassment into anger and failing to find an answer. Finally, she just shrugged.

‘You are not being unreasonable, Mr Firman. I haven’t forgotten the paper I signed.’

‘Thank you, Dr Henson. Now, do you mind telling me and your friends here whether it was your own idea to photograph and fingerprint the persons you were to meet in this house, or someone else’s?’

Krom let out a kind of yelp.

Connell started a protest. ‘Now wait a minute! Are you accusing Dr Henson of … ‘

But Dr Henson preferred to take care of herself. ‘No,’ she broke in crisply, ‘he is not making an accusation. He is asking an awkward question about the special cameras and other equipment found concealed in my handbag.’ She surveyed us challengingly. ‘The answer is that it was not my idea. The camera and other things were given to me, with instructions, by the head of my faculty, Professor Langridge.’

Krom yelped again. ‘Langridge! You mean that you told him about this conference?’

‘Of course, I was taking a leave of absence. Short, yes, but at a time when I was expected to be present. Ought I to have disappeared mysteriously and drawn public attention to myself?’

‘You told Professor Langridge where you were going and on what errand? Couldn’t you have accounted for your absence in some other way? Was it necessary to be so indiscreet?’ Krom was becoming very angry indeed.

‘I don’t make a habit of lying to colleagues, Professor. Besides, I didn’t know where I was going until lunchtime today.’

It was time for plainer speaking. ‘You told Professor Langridge that you were going first to join these two gentlemen in Amsterdam?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you know, when you told him, that he often does little jobs for British intelligence?’

She flushed. Connell muttered, ‘Jesus!’ She still had the empty glass in her hands and for a moment I thought she was going to throw it at him. Instead, she put it down carefully.

‘I knew,’ she replied, ‘that he did some work for the government. But there’s nothing remarkable about that. Scholars of most disciplines sometimes accept research commissions from ministries or sit on official department committees. I had always assumed that what he did for the Home Office, or whoever it was, had something to do with his long-term study of the European probation service. A reasonable enough assumption, I think.’

‘When did you discover that it had been a false one?’

‘About a week after I told him that I was proposing to take this time off. One day he called me in and showed me the camera and other stuff.’

‘You didn’t object?’ This was Krom again.

‘Of course I objected!’ Dr Henson was nearly as angry as he was by now. ‘We had a flaming row about it, if you must know. An extremely unpleasant argument, anyway.’

‘Which he evidently won,’ said Krom bitterly. ‘How?’

‘He began by asking, yet again, what our exact intentions were. By “our”, he meant those of us who have concerned ourselves with investigations of the able criminal. What was our object? Did we intend merely to establish his existence, in the way, say, that a microbiologist might, having established the existence of a dangerous viral mutation, simply record the fact? Or did we intend to make use of any knowledge or proofs we might acquire about such persons to assist others in eradicating them?’

Connell grunted sympathetically. ‘Yes. I’ve had that one. What did you reply?’

‘That I didn’t know, that the question was in any case both premature and hypothetical as well as grotesquely unfair to microbiologists. He then said that his “masters” — he actually used the word “masters” like some pompous senior official — that his masters were already convinced of the existence of this new kind of offender and were determined to eradicate him.’

‘Did he say what evidence they had?’ Krom was almost boyishly eager now. The tidings of yet another band of converts to his private religion had quite dissolved his anger.

‘Naturally, I asked, but I soon realized that he didn’t really know much. He did, though, make two statements of interest. This wasn’t a Home Office matter any longer because conventional police forces hampered by rules and restrictions were helpless in these areas. Not much in that. But he also said that for the less-inhibited forces acting on Treasury orders, and in concert with foreign counterpart services where collaborative relations existed, it would be a different story.’

She paused. ‘And then he threatened me.’

‘Sounds a sweet guy,’ Connell remarked.

‘He said that if I refused to co-operate, that is endeavour to get photographs and prints and report fully and secretly on my return, his so-called masters would place me under surveillance of a kind which would frustrate the whole exercise. It’s not as stupid as it may sound. He knows, you see, how I feel about our work in this field.’

‘I suppose he was talking about harassment, men in trench coats breathing down your neck.’

‘And your neck too, I imagine, Dr Connell.’ She turned to me. ‘What about it, Mr Firman? How far would we have got? Turin?’

‘No farther, certainly,’ I replied. ‘Naturally, the possibility of one or all of you being under surveillance had to be considered, and not necessarily surveillance of the obvious kind with which Dr Henson was threatened in order to ensure her co-operation. Professor Langridge’s masters had other options available to them. I had you very carefully watched all the way.’

Connell snorted disbelievingly. ‘All the way, Mr Firman? Taking that amount of trouble to cover yourself costs money.’

‘Yes, the overheads on an operation of this sort can be quite heavy.’

‘Of this sort? I thought this operation was supposed to be one-off, unique.’

‘It is.’ I gave him the needed rap over the knuckles. ‘But I was speaking in general of operations involving inexperienced persons, for whom, or from whom, one needs protection. Naturally it is expensive, but you don’t have much choice. Either you accept the expense when the need for it arises or you resign yourself to the prospect of being very soon — what was Professor Langridge’s word for it? — oh yes, eradicated.’ I turned and looked Krom in the eyes. ‘A serious question must now be asked,’ I went on. ‘We have breaches of security on your side and also gross breaches of good faith. How, under these circumstances, can we possibly continue our conference as planned?’

I did not really expect him to throw in his hand; he had too much at stake for that, but it was worth a try. The more defensive he was forced to become the better.

He responded shakily at first. ‘I agree that you have cause for complaint, Mr Firman, but no damage has yet been done. Has it?’

‘No damage? I don’t understand. To me, the whole situation now seems completely compromised.’

He rallied. ‘Why? Thanks to your own caution, security has been completely preserved. As for good faith, Dr Henson has admitted that she erred and satisfactorily explained the dilemma that led her to do so. You have the apparatus given her by Professor Langridge. What has been lost?’

‘Trust, Professor.’ In Brussels I had used Mat’s phrase about trusting on Krom. I had also used it several times on myself. I used it again now. ‘So far I have done an awful lot of trusting. In return I have been rewarded with deception and equivocation. As things stand at this moment, it seems to me that I have less to lose by telling you the deal is off and that you can do what you like with your researches to date, than by continuing to accept bland assurances that your side of the bargain will be kept because you are honest folk, and that it is only I and my associates here who are villains.’

He showed his teeth. ‘Oh no, you don’t, Mr Firman. Who is deceiving or attempting to equivocate now? We on one side have been completely open and frank. Stop overstating your case.’

I laughed shortly. ‘You’re bluffing, Professor. Shall I ask Dr Henson or will you? When she took that apparatus and agreed to use it, what did she intend? With whom did she mean to keep faith when she brought it here? Professor Langridge and his masters or you and me?’

Connell said, ‘Oops!’

Krom thought it through, then glowered at Henson.

From her came a shrug and an exasperated spreading of the hands. ‘Several answers,’ she said, ‘all of them muddled. My first thought was simply to leave the camera and other stuff behind in England, but then I realized that leaving it would create complications.’ Another spread of hands. ‘Where was I to leave it? In my flat where it could be found by the friend with whom I share the place? She works for Langridge and adores him. Ought I to have tried explaining the whole situation to her? And how could I be certain, that even though I’d promised to co-operate with these people, they wouldn’t send someone to watch me anyway? All things considered, it seemed sensible to go through the motions of co-operating by taking the box of tricks with me. Does anyone mind if I smoke?’

She started fumbling in her satchel, but Melanie was there so promptly with cigarette box and lighter that any respite Dr Henson may have been hoping for was brief. When she saw that we were all just waiting for the more crucial parts of her explanation and that no one felt disposed, at that stage, to assist her by making any sort of comment, she continued.

‘In Amsterdam the only place I could have left it safely was in the airport consigne. But if I was being watched, and I still don’t know whether I was or not, that would have given the game away completely. How could I have returned with my lie about having failed to use the camera through lack of opportunity, when they knew that I’d ditched it at Schipol Airport? So I put off doing anything about it and waited to see where we were going. It was after Turin when I first began to wonder if perhaps I had been making a mistake, if perhaps I’d allowed my personal dislike of Langridge and his Secret Service nonsense to cloud my judgement, or distort it sufficiently for me to reject any and every argument that he put up without even pausing to consider it. However, it turned out that whether I liked it or not, one of his arguments, along with some of the phrases he used to advance it, had stuck in my mind.’

Connell said, ‘Aha!’ an exclamation she ignored.

‘Professor Langridge said‘ — and she ran her fingers through her hair again in the way I had seen from the terrace — ‘he said that this conference as I had described it, seemed to have more to do with journalism than with scholarship. And not even investigative journalism of the socially useful kind. It sounded to him more like one of those exercises in sensationalism currently favoured by the popular press and the seamier television channels. A news or TV feature is manufactured out of interviewing at a secret rendezvous some notorious terrorist or other wanted criminal.’

She began now to stride about, slicing the air with the edges of her hands as she spoke. It was obvious that she had begun to reproduce Professor Langridge’s physical mannerisms along with his rhetoric.

‘And what is the object of these journalistic antics?’ she demanded at the ceiling. ‘I will tell you. For the new media which indulge in them the object is readier access to the eyes and ears of audiences of cretins. For the crooks and thugs who are the star performers the reward is a big jar of the most marvellous cosmetic ointment of all — free publicity. Smeared with that stuff even the most odious of men and the most detestable of causes can enlist a measure of popular sympathy and support. Many distinguished politicians as well as eminent divines have become involved in such tawdry enterprises, so why not an ageing Dutch professor of sociology?’

She avoided locking at Krom, who seemed to be more amused than annoyed by what she was now saying, and continued to talk at, or to, me. ‘The team-leader gathers the brainwashed and compliant subordinates before setting off into the wide, baby-blue yonder. What is different about this adventure? Two things. Journalists working for the established media are to some extent privileged. Unless the casework upon which we are engaged happens to confer on us quasi-medical standing we most certainly are not. And neither are your collaborators. The only way you could refuse information about these criminal contacts you propose to make, should you be challenged on the subject by a lawful authority, would be by a pretence of ignorance.’

She paused, and then, with a grimace of disgust at the whole recollection, became herself again. ‘His other point made more sense. Reporters on secret-interview assignments are invariably, and for their employers’ as well as their own legal benefit and safety, accompanied by a cameraman, an assistant to fetch and carry and somebody to operate a tape recorder. Even if the person to be interviewed elects to wear a hood or mask, a camera is still there to authenticate the fact that he has done so, and if he chooses to make a voice-track analysis difficult by speaking into a water glass, the tape-recorder will take note of that too. Why is this Mr X so shy? Is it because, and only because, he wishes to preserve his total anonymity and all the cover identities with which it is ringed, or is the truth rather more drab? Could it be that Mr X is just another professional incompetent after all, and that, far from being unknown to police anywhere, he is very well known indeed to those forces with access to Interpol files? Only photographs and/ or fingerprints on the subject could establish the truth.’

‘We have a specimen like that who sits on our Board of Regents,’ said Connell. ‘He’s known as The Syllogist.’

‘The conclusion I came to,’ Dr Henson continued firmly, ‘was that I didn’t yet know nearly enough to make even a preliminary judgement. When I heard what Mr X had to say, and formed an opinion of him, then I would review the position. Meanwhile, I would attempt to conceal the camera and ninhydrin spray.’

It occurred to me that for a person who professed to dislike lying to colleagues this was a pretty cool admission. I was about to say so when Krom cleared this throat loudly. Thinking that he was about to deliver the admonition, I let him go ahead.

He didn’t even slap her wrist.

‘I think that answers the question in all its aspects,’ he announced. ‘Our agreement stands.’

‘Of course it stands,’ said Connell. ‘Naturally, with a deal like this there are going to be little misunderstandings which need clearing up.’

Obviously, none of them had the smallest sense of right and wrong. I had one more try.

‘They may be cleared up to your satisfaction, Dr Connell,’ I said, ‘but they are very far from being cleared up to mine.’

Krom grinned at me. ‘But it’s not your satisfaction that has to be considered, is it? If it were, the chairman of the Symposia Group and director of the Institute of International Investment and Trust Counselling called Paul Firman would long ago have disappeared in a puff of smoke, to emerge three or four days later with an entirely different identity in Sao Paulo or Mexico City. We wouldn’t be standing here at all. But we are standing here, and we are doing so because Paul Firman can’t afford just to disappear. Time and affluence have done their work. His cover is too well established now and his face too well known. He may even be involved in a pension plan. He is caught between two evils and he has sensibly chosen the lesser of them. Am I not right, Mr Firman?’

I almost gave up, but not quite. I managed, apparently unmoved, to meet his eyes. ‘We’ll see later who is right and who is wrong, Professor,’ I said. ‘Meanwhile, dinner will be in an hour. Melanie, perhaps you would be good enough to show our guests to their rooms.’

The listening post Yves had chosen was a storage loft over the garage. It had the advantage of being accessible from inside the house via an inner door to the garage, yet well away from the servants’ rooms.

When I got there the receivers covering the guest rooms had already been switched on and I was in time to hear Melanie telling Connell that she hoped he would be comfortable and to ring if there was anything he needed.

Yves nodded to me gloomily.

‘You handled them well down there, Patron,’ he said, ‘but I think it is hopeless. Nous sommes foutus.’

‘It’s only a matter of time. That lot will never be able to keep their mouths shut about anything. They’re supposed to be intellectuals, persons of probity. One feels tempted to treat them as common crooks.’

‘It can do no harm if we think of them in that way. In fact it might be a good idea.’

He gave me a sidelong look. ‘When we started here, I had a feeling that there was a lot I didn’t know. Letting your arms be twisted by a party of amateurs, however clever they might be or think they were, didn’t sound like you, Patron.’ He paused. The fact that he was calling me Patron instead of Paul meant that he was really worried. He added a sigh for good measure. ‘You handled them well, as I said, but you handled them carefully and gently. I’d have pushed their faces in and told them to walk home.’

‘If it were as easy as that they’d never have arrived.’ I had been listening to a bumping sound coming from one of the rooms. Now there was a loud scraping noise. I wanted to change the subject anyway, so I asked what it was.

Yves plugged in the earphone he was wearing. This action enabled him to concentrate on the sounds from the room without ceasing to cover the rest. ‘It’s Krom,’ he reported after a moment or two, ‘trying to locate our bug, I think. He’s been dragging a chair from place to place, then standing on it, probably to peer at the cornices through that pocket monocular he had tucked away in his suitcase.’

‘Any chance of his seeing the bug?’

‘Well, if he knew what it looked like he just might spot one end of it, but I don’t think he will. Anyway, he couldn’t get at it. It’s in the chandelier, and you know how high those ceilings are.’

‘He could fall off the chair and break a leg trying to get at it.’

‘He has nothing to try with. I went over the curtain rods and put extra fastenings on them. If he tried to get one of those down he’d make a noise as well as a mess.’

There, in a few words, are summed up several of Yves’s virtues. His vices were not then in evidence.

His versatility was wholly practical and selective. He did not waste time learning how to make amateurish electronic monitoring gadgets; he made sure of picking the most reliable equipment by seeking out the little man near Lausanne who supplies the CIA.

When resourcefulness and imagination could be enlisted to solve unfamiliar problems economically, they were permitted to do so; the curtain rods, which might have been decked revealingly with alarm-bell circuits, were simply fastened more securely to their supporting brackets.

A voice came suddenly from Connell’s room. He was speaking into his tape-recorder.

‘Research project Alpha-Gamma, cassette one, side two. As from Villa Lipp, near Cap d’Ail, France,’ he said. ‘July 13, 19.30 hours. Arrived, accompanied Krom and Henson, at 17.30 approx. having followed route and instructions already noted. Query. Is this room bugged? Casual inspection which says no as likely to be wrong as right. Lacking equipment necessary to make proper check, no point in speculating.’

As Yves nodded his approval of that sensible decision, Connell went on.

‘Our party was met by woman who described herself as Firman’s secretary. Age, fifty plus. First impression that of Madame de Stael pretending, with aid of faded, little girl type prettiness, to be bird-brained. Hair rinse: brunette with approximately one centimetre grey-auburn visible near scalp. Named by Firman as Melanie Wicky-Frey. Rhymes with tray, but I’m not sure of the spelling. Fluent English, but strong accent with mixed American-British usages. Must ask Krom, who has European ear, for his diagnosis of nationality.’

A longish silence. Then: ‘On second thoughts, no. Don’t ask Krom anything. You won’t get a straight answer. He’s a jealous little god about this project. Continue. Secretary Melanie then hands us over to lean and hungry character named Yves Boularis. Expression, mournful yet threatening. Reminded me of that termite-clearance inspector who gave me such a hard time when we were selling house on Cheviot. Diagnosed this Yves as Algerian butler. Wrong on both counts. Not butler, but some sort of right-hand man. Also doubles as security guard. According to Firman, not Algerian but Tunisian. My present disinclination to believe a word the man Firman says — have a suspicion that there’s one who could enjoy lying for its own sake — leaves doubt in mind, however. Who trained Yves to search baggage and frisk? The French? Had big fight to keep this recorder, but sweet reason, or my open fury, prevailed. However, Henson got into serious trouble, and thereby hangs a tale.’

He proceeded to tell it to the recorder, while we listened in turn to Dr Henson taking a bath, and Krom, who had by then abandoned his search for electronic monitoring devices, breaking wind.

When we came back to Connell, he was comparing the British use of men like Langridge in amateur espionage roles with the deeper penetration of the American academic world by US government agencies such as the CIA.

He went on: ‘Have left description of Firman character till last. Reason? Call it insufficient evidence. Just can’t make up my mind. First impressions, all tenuous. Caucasian, yes. Country of origin? Take your pick. Anywhere from the Caspian to Gibraltar, including Cyprus and Malta. Can’t I pin it down a bit? Sure. He has a one-hundred-and-ten per cent British accent. Only other guy I ever met with an accent like it is an American with a Lebanese passport who works for UNESCO and was educated at the English High School in Istanbul before going on to the Sorbonne. He has brown eyes too. Very helpful. Be more specific. Age: mid-fifties, maybe younger. Difficult to judge. Height: two inches shorter than I am, say five-eleven. Looks like weight-watcher, sunlamp-user and wearer of steel-grey toupee. Could also look, with only a little help from the imagination, like ageing movie star who never really quite made it to the top, but who got out at the right time, with self-esteem and investments still intact, to make a killing in California real-estate. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe what I am looking at is a retired con-artist who gets his kicks now out of sticking pins into the pretensions of academic clowns like us. Could be. He’s already needled Krom, and Henson took quite a beating; though she did, after all, set herself up for that. Maybe, as old Krom started to say in Amsterdam before the sheer horror of the idea switched it off, he isn’t Firman at all but a covering stand-in. Oh no, forget it. This guy’s no stand-in; he reads the lines too well. Want to know something, Connell? As long as he was a deduced, theoretical phantom of the opera, a conceptual bundle of joy who stuck in the Establishment’s craw, you believed in the existence of Mr X one hundred per cent. Now confronted by a person who says he is Mr X, you cop out. You say: “Him? Can’t be. He looks human!” What did you expect? Bela Lugosi? The Man in the Iron Mask? Or hadn’t you given that side of the matter any thought? Ah, well, you’re tired now. So how about a shower and a clean shirt? Then, just watch and wait. Okay? Okay. More anon.’

There was no more then from any of the receivers. After a few seconds, Yves switched both them and our own recording tapes to voice-actuated operation.

‘An observant man,’ he commented.

‘Describing you or describing me?’

‘Both, I thought. And the woman is even more dangerous, Patron. I think we are doing now what you have always said we should never do.’

‘I’ve said that we shouldn’t do many things.’ His gloom was beginning to depress me.

‘But, in particular, you have said that we should never step out into the street without looking up first to see if the woman on the floor above is about to empty a chamber pot.’

‘I have never said anything so crude. I did once say that one should always look carefully where one is walking on certain streets.’

‘Same thing, Patron. If you don’t look, you’re in the shit either way. I think that is where we may be now, and I would like to understand why.’

‘Later, Yves,’ I said. ‘Later, perhaps.’

There was no point in confirming his fears before it became necessary to do so.

We dined on the terrace.

Personally, I dislike eating in the open air at any time, even when there are no insects to plague one; but it was a very warm night and, as Melanie had said, with six at table and the cook’s sister-in-law in from the village to help the husband serve, a few moths fluttering around would be a preferable discomfort to that of the staff body-odour in a confined space.

All three of our guests, advised by Melanie that the most casual clothing would be de rigueur, had decided to take her at her word. The white-haired Krom in faded blue slacks with a pink linen sports shirt looked positively elegant.

I gave them a white Provençal wine before dinner. None of them refused it, and the large round table at which we could all sit comfortably made for general conversation. At least we looked relaxed though, of course, there had been no real lessening of tension. Their suspicion of me, only slightly modified by increasing curiosity, still hung over us; but their readiness to be physically comfortable declared at least a kind of armistice.

It did not last long. Refreshed by his shower and change of clothing, Connell had soon forgotten his decision to watch and wait. He was ready for action again.

It took the form of hitching his chair closer to mine and telling me in a confidential undertone that he had been trying to place my accent. ‘I know it’s British, of course,’ he added quickly, ‘but British from whereabouts? I know it’s not Australian or South African. I suppose it could be … ‘

He got no farther, Krom was half out of his seat and leaning across the table with teeth bared.

‘No, Dr Connell, no!’ He swallowed a couple of times trying to get rid of some of his anger before it choked him. ‘No, I shall not need that sort of assistance from you in questioning Mr Firman about his origins and background.’

He had begun in his vehemence to spray saliva, and Dr Henson hastily moved her wine glass out of the line of fire.

Connell was looking utterly astounded. It was a facial expression of which he made much use I was to find. ‘Of course, Professor, of course, of course. I was simply making an idle enquiry.’

Krom was neither deceived nor appeased. ‘It was agreed between us, let me remind you,’ he grated on, ‘that all enquiries of whatever kind will be made by me. Here, everything will be conducted throughout in the way that I decide and only in the way that I decide. That was positively agreed.’

‘Sure, Professor, sure it was agreed.’

‘But not,’ I remarked distinctly, ‘by me.’

They all stared at me except Yves, who poured himself some more wine. I continued: ‘I will be the one who decides which questions are answered and which are not. I will also decide the areas of business activity concerning which information may be given. No, Professor, it’s no good you huffing and puffing. Since our meeting in Brussels I have had plenty of time for reflection and decision. After Dr Henson’s demonstration of her disregard for her agreement about confidentiality, to say nothing of Dr Connell’s less covert breach of his, my conviction that none of you is to be trusted has been further strengthened.’

Krom made a gargling sound of disgust and sat back in his chair. ‘No, Mr Firman, no. No more wriggling, please. Will you not even now accept the fact that you are hooked?’

‘When you accept the fact that the fish on the end of the line is not after all the one you thought you had, yes.’ I did not wait for him to answer but turned to Henson. ‘Why did they give you ninhydrin to bring here, Doctor? Do you know?’

‘Oh, not that again!’ from Connell.

Krom did some more gargling.

She took no notice of either of them. ‘Apparently,’ she said ‘quite a lot of people still don’t know that one can raise fingerprints from matt-surfaced papers if one knows how. They didn’t think it would be prudent for me to try stealing something else you’d handled and start dusting it in the old fashioned way. Besides, the results wouldn’t have been as good.’

‘Supposing I hadn’t handled the papers while you were here?’

‘They said you would. As long as your hands were warm, a book, a newspaper or even a paper napkin would work. As a last resort I was to ask you to read the typescript of a book review I have just written and get your opinion on it as well as your prints.’

‘I’ll gladly read it, Doctor.’

‘Unbelievable!’ blared Krom.

‘Rubbish!’ I said irritably. ‘What about you and your friends in West German intelligence, Professor? When they ask you confidentially for the precise details of your adventures in the quest of Mr X, are you going to remain, after all the kindness they have done you with their files, resolutely silent? Of course you aren’t. None of you is going to keep his mouth shut. He won’t be able to. So, what you are going to be given is not all the truth, if there is such an entity, but bits of it. And you, Professor, can take your choice. Leak what you know and you get nothing more. Play it my way and you get something.’

He thought about it, then glowered at me suspiciously. ‘How much?’

‘Some days in the life of Herr Oberholzer?’

‘I have one already.’

‘No, you haven’t. You can’t begin to know what happened that day. You don’t even know what crimes you might accuse him of.’

‘Extorting money by threats. Blackmail. There are more, but those will do to begin with.’

I laughed sufficiently to choke a little over my wine. ‘Extortion, Professor,’ I said when I had recovered, ‘is, as you must surely know, the standard cry raised against those who collect, or try to collect, payment from delinquent debtors. Blackmail is often used to describe letters from creditors beginning with the word “unless”. Oberholzer was no debt collector in any case. If that’s all you have. . ‘

‘I am not speaking about debts incurred for goods or services legally supplied. I am speaking of the exactions of criminals.’

‘But the services which we supplied were always perfectly legal. Is it a crime to give good advice?’

‘Some advice, yes. To advise a man who has himself committed a criminal act how he may, by giving you money, avoid the consequences is certainly criminal.’

‘And, Professor, if you ask for information instead of money?’

Henson giggled and Connell smirked, but it took Krom a moment or two to grasp the implication. It did not please him. He straightened his back.

‘Very well, if such hair-splitting amuses you, I have, in the interests of social science, become an extortionist. Maybe you will find it less amusing, Mr Firman, if I now ask you to start paying up?’

‘Of course,’ I looked at Melanie. ‘Would you mind getting the copies of file number one for me, my dear?’

Krom stared at me suspiciously as she went. I sipped my wine and took no notice of him.

The moment had arrived, as I had known it would eventually, and I was prepared to serve Krom what I believed would look, smell and taste like the meat for which he had asked.

The work they are doing in the food laboratories nowadays to make protein artificially is really amazing. I believe that they have even been able to produce it from really unlikely substances such as oil. The only trouble with the artificial stuff, though, is that it doesn’t really taste of anything much. You have to add a meat essence to give the concoction flavour.

If you are feeding social scientists, especially criminologists, you have also to add to the artificially produced material a little truth.

When I saw Melanie returning along the terrace I turned to Krom. ‘In expectation of our meeting,’ I said, ‘I have prepared papers concerning Oberholzer, his employer and later senior partner, their business associates and their business activities over a period of three years. They are papers for discussion of and, of course, I am prepared to be questioned by you on them. My answers may or may not satisfy you. We shall have to see.’

At that moment, the butler announced that, at the other table on the terrace, dinner was served.

Melanie had timed it perfectly.

Their eyes were on the files she held, their stomachs were thinking about dinner.

One can divide one’s adversary without necessarily conquering him, of course, but any division is better than none. I had won at least something; not a battle, still less a campaign, but perhaps a minor skirmish on an outer flank.

The first course was a duck-liver paste. For the occasion I had called it Pâté Oberholzer.

I don’t care for such things myself.

The others ate all of it.