The Man With No Face Read online

  ‘They do a nice line in funerals. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.’

  She sighed. ‘Are you ever serious?’

  Bannerman said, ‘Why are you here?’ He saw annoyance flash momentarily in her eyes, then it passed.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and looked away as if she had lost interest, ‘one has to keep up appearances. And anyway, I was sure you would be here.’

  ‘I thought you were surprised to see me.’

  She turned a tiny smile on him. ‘We never finished our conversation the other night. You left rather abruptly, and without saying goodbye. It was very rude of you.’

  The mourners had reached the gates now and stood in little groups indulging in desultory conversation, stamping their feet against the cold and wishing they were gone. Bannerman saw Sally watching him from a distance. Tait was scuffing his feet impatiently in the snow by the car.

  ‘You don’t seem particularly grief-stricken,’ Bannerman said. Marie-Ange looked surprised.

  ‘Do I not?’ She shrugged. ‘Appearances can be deceptive.’

  ‘So you are?’

  ‘Of course, Mr Bannerman. Death is always sad.’ She paused. ‘Look, Tim and I had an understanding of sorts. A relationship of convenience. There may even have been a little affection between us. But poor Tim, I’m afraid, had begun to take it all a little too seriously. Which doesn’t mean I’m not shocked by his death.’

  ‘And no idea why someone should want to kill him?’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘I understand the police have satisfied themselves that he and the politician shot each other.’

  Bannerman shrugged. ‘A curtain of convenience that those in power have drawn on the affair.’

  She seemed surprised. ‘Why on earth should they wish to do that?’

  ‘I have no idea. One thing is clear, though. Whatever the authorities might say, Slater and Gryffe were murdered.’ He watched closely for her reaction. Was there the slightest colouring of her face? The moment passed too quickly to be sure.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I suppose you have no idea what Slater and the Minister were discussing that night at the party?’

  She smiled and opened her handbag, taking out a small memo pad and a pen. ‘Not a clue,’ she said. And when she had scribbled something on her pad she tore off the top sheet and handed it to him. ‘I take it you are playing detective. And I do so love mysteries. When you have a free evening call me at this number. We can get together and you can tell me all about it.’

  Bannerman folded the paper into his top pocket without looking at it. He pushed his hands into his pockets and said, ‘I’ll call you.’

  ‘Make it soon.’ She turned and walked briskly away towards a black limousine parked further along the line of cars.

  Bannerman watched her go and thought he was probably wasting his time. Sally touched his arm and he turned, a little startled. He hadn’t heard her approach. She turned her eyes in the direction of Marie-Ange’s car. ‘Interested?’

  Bannerman laughed and shook his head. ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Good.’ She looked down, embarrassed. Then, ‘Is seven-thirty all right? For going to see Tania?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll pick you up.’

  ‘No, I’ll come to the Rue de Commerce. Around seven.’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘By the way, I forgot to give you my key to the flat last night.’

  ‘Keep it.’ Bannerman looked at his watch, then glanced at Tait still standing impatiently by the car. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘My editor. I’m not exactly his golden boy at the moment. I’ll see you at seven.’

  *

  In the car Tait retrieved a folded foolscap envelope from his overnight bag and handed it to Bannerman. ‘I almost forgot,’ he said coldly. ‘The stuff from the library that you wanted on Gryffe.’

  Bannerman took it, and looked inside at the photocopied sheets. There were about two dozen of them. Various obituary pieces on Gryffe that had appeared in the important British papers, plus a selection of the cuttings from the Post’s obit file on him. He chucked the envelope into the back seat.

  ‘You can drop me at the airport,’ Tait said. ‘I’m catching a flight to London. I’ll be back in Glasgow the day after tomorrow. I might require you to put Slater’s kid on a plane. At any rate, I’ll be in touch.’ He lit another cigarette.

  Bannerman sat for a few moments then started the car. As he pulled away from the kerb he saw a taxi in his rearview mirror pull out from the line of cars behind him. Even had he noticed the face of the passenger in the back seat he would almost certainly never have recognized it as the one he had passed in the Rue de Commerce the day after the killings. A face he had only glimpsed, without any particular reason that it should have left an impression.

  He had not noticed that same taxi sitting outside the church during the Mass, and then again at the cemetery. If he had, he might have wondered why its passenger had never stepped out. But there was no reason that he should have given it a second thought. The streets were full of taxis.

  *

  For Kale, drawn and fretful in the back of the taxi, none of this had been easy. There had been problems making the driver understand what it was his fare wanted of him. But money was a language all men understood, though Kale was only too aware that money would not erase the driver’s memory. The man kept looking at him in the rearview mirror. These were risks that he would never have taken before. And he knew he was making mistakes.

  An inch of ash fell from the end of his cigarette and burned a tiny hole in his coat. Unaware, he drew more smoke into his lungs.

  The driver caught sight of Kale’s face in the mirror and felt a slight chill run through him. He did not like this fare. If it hadn’t been for the money . . . Perhaps, when he had finished the job, he would go to the police. But what could he say? That an Englishman with a face that disturbed him had paid over the odds to have him run around after a blue Volkswagen? More than likely they would laugh at him. Was he in the habit of running to the police every time he took a dislike to the face of a passenger?

  What was it about this face whose still, dark eyes stared out from the back seat? What could he tell them? He was being stupid, and yet he could not shake himself free of disquiet. He turned his attention to the road and the Volkswagen ahead of him.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The office was empty when Bannerman got back to the IPC building. It was just after five and already it was dark outside. He was frustrated and tense. In twenty-four hours he had got exactly nowhere. The office was warm and stuffy and he threw open one of the windows, allowing cold air to rush in. It brought with it the odd flake of snow that landed on the sill and melted almost immediately. Twenty-four hours ago he had been sitting with du Maurier in the Café Auguste. What had he accomplished since then? He had been attacked here in this office, punched a colleague in the face, done a deal with Platt, fallen out with his editor and attended a funeral. But he had achieved nothing.

  He turned from the window and found a note on his desk from Mademoiselle Ricain. Inspector du Maurier had phoned twice. There was a number to call back. It was the same number the Inspector had given him the other day. There was also an invitation to British press correspondents to attend a dinner at a Brussels restaurant that night where the Foreign Office would announce its arrangements for shipping Gryffe’s body back to London. There was an embargo until ten a.m. tomorrow when an official government statement would be put out on the wires. Dress was informal.

  Ironically, the invitation was addressed to Timothy Slater Esq., EEC Correspondent, Edinburgh Post. Bannerman crushed it in his fist and chucked it in the bin. One more exercise in government PR. The tragedy was that their attempts to draw a veil over the affair would probably succeed. Most journalists were susceptible to good food and drink and the gentle persuas
ions of contacts they were almost certain to need in the future. Correspondents based here in Brussels, like the two he had met the day he arrived, would be reluctant to dump in their own backyard. It was the staff men sent over from London who would be harder to convince. But how many of them would stay here long enough to get to the truth?

  Bannerman sat down and examined his swollen knuckles. His hand had stiffened up. He wondered where Palin had gone. Was he getting drunk somewhere? And Mademoiselle Ricain. She would not understand why he had hit his colleague. The world was filled with people who would not understand, who would never understand. Bannerman took out the envelope Tait had brought him and began reading his way laboriously through every article.

  It took him half an hour to read them all twice. But there were no sudden revelations, no blinding lights on the road to Damascus. Just the bare bones of a man’s life. Not much more than he’d known already from the file of cuttings Slater himself had compiled.

  Gryffe had been forty-four years old when he died. Born in a London suburb, the son of a wealthy lawyer, he had been educated at a lesser-known public school before going on to academic distinction and an honours degree in economics at Cambridge. His background did not suggest that his politics would fall on the side they did.

  It was while at Cambridge that he’d first become involved in the youth movement of the party he would later represent, initially in the Commons and then in Government. He was an enthusiastic convert to begin with, but on leaving university his first choice had not been a career in politics. He had taken up a lucrative job as a junior executive with a US-based company that built tractors in seventeen countries. During his ten years with that company he travelled widely, rising quickly in the firm, latterly establishing new plants in a number of African and Middle Eastern states.

  At the age of thirty-three he had finally joined the party with which he had first flirted in his early twenties. A year later he was nominated as a parliamentary candidate for a safe constituency and was elected the following year with a majority of fifteen thousand. Almost from the start of his political career he had fallen under the influence of the party’s ageing chairman and guiding light of the previous thirty years, Lord Armsdale, becoming something of a protégé. Which had earned him both respect and influence.

  It was obvious, even then, that he was destined for great things. He was appointed private secretary to the then leader of the opposition. During the next five years he gained experience in a number of important positions before finally winning his coveted post as Minister of State at the Foreign Office, shortly after his party won the general election. However, within a year of that appointment his mentor, Lord Armsdale, had suffered a coronary and was forced to retire from active political life. Many commentators seemed convinced at the time that Gryffe’s meteoric rise in the party would come to an end. Armsdale, they said in their columns, had been the real architect of his success. Without him to pull the strings Gryffe would slide back into obscurity. But he had proved them all wrong, not only by retaining his job but by extending his circle of influence, and expanding his status as a public figure. A populist, he seemed to have brought a breath of fresh air to the tarnished domain of British politics – a grey world bereft of character and charisma.

  Even the commentators appeared to have been converted, and within two years they were describing him as the natural successor to his boss at the Foreign Office. Some even went so far as to predict that he might one day lead the party itself – a future prime minister.

  Bannerman rubbed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. Gryffe had not only been an astute politician, but a manipulator of the media, climbing to political success initially on the back of the party’s former chairman, and then demonstrating to his critics that he could have done it on his own anyway.

  It was now nearly six. Bannerman looked again at the note Mademoiselle Ricain had left for him, and picked up the phone. He dialled and leaned forward on his elbows listening to it ring. This would be a direct line to du Maurier’s office. He was about to give up when the receiver was lifted from its cradle.

  ‘Du Maurier.’

  ‘Bannerman. You were looking for me.’

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘I was at the funeral.’

  ‘Ah yes.’ He sounded tired. ‘Can you meet me?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘No, I’m going to see the child.’

  ‘Later then.’

  ‘Okay. At the Café Auguste?’

  ‘No. In the Place Poelaert. At the far end of the Rue des Quatre Bras. At the far side of the Palais de Justice. We should not be seen together.’

  ‘Can you tell me what it’s about?’

  ‘No. When can you be there?’

  Bannerman thought for a moment. ‘Eleven?’

  He heard du Maurier sigh. ‘All right. Eleven.’ The line went dead and Bannerman hung up. He swung round in his chair and saw the invitation to the Minister’s dinner lying crumpled in the bin. He lifted it out, smoothed it on the desk and stuffed it in his pocket.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The hospital was set back from the road and screened by trees and thick evergreen shrubbery behind a high stone wall. The poorly lit road that ran around the side of the hill overlooking this outlying suburb was narrow and treacherous in the snow. A steep drop on its left side fell away to a disused railway line. Set in two acres of its own grounds, the hospital was housed in one of several large stone villas that perched precariously on the slope of the hill. 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. Rusted wrought-iron gates opened on to driveways where weeds poked through the light covering of snow beneath the trees.

  From the road, most of the houses simmered in darkness. They might have been derelict. The only building that showed signs of life was the hospital itself, light from its windows divided into fragments by the naked branches of winter trees. The whole street huddled in the shadow of the hill, an air of hushed decay falling with the snow. They came upon it unexpectedly as Bannerman’s car whined up the steep curve of the road from the housing estate below, tyres slipping in the snow. It was a corner of the city forgotten by time.

  The polished brass plaque on the gate seemed quite incongruous. HÔPITAL DES ENFANTS. Very discreet. A residential psychiatric clinic for children. Bannerman swung the Volkswagen into the driveway and they wound up through the trees to where the drive broadened into a parking area in front of the house. From here there was a stunning view over the city, which lay swathed in snow below them.

  Thick flakes were falling around them as Bannerman and Sally stepped out of the car. Half a dozen other vehicles sat close to the house, ledges of snow accumulating on their roofs. The house looked better cared for than its neighbours. Sandblasters had restored the stone to its original honeycomb yellow, window sashes and shutters a freshly painted green. It was an impressive building with turrets at each of its four corners, and steeply pitched grey-slate roofs.

  They mounted the steps to double swing doors and pushed into a bleak tiled hallway, a staircase to their left climbing to the next floor. The air here was warm and heavy with a sour smell that reminded Bannerman of the school dinner hall. A nurse in a starched white uniform came out of a room at the far end. She was preoccupied with charts on a clipboard and didn’t notice them at first. When she looked up she seemed momentarily taken aback. She approached and spoke to them in French. Sally replied, and Bannerman wondered why he was surprised by her fluency. 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 shuffling impatiently, neither inclined to conversation. In the still of the house, the only sounds to reach them were distant. Muffled voices, the opening and closing of doors, the chatter of a typewriter. The
n the clatter of footsteps on the stairs and a man in a dark suit came down to greet 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.’

  Bannerman nodded. ‘Neil Bannerman.’ And he turned towards Sally. ‘This is . . .’

  Mascoulin interrupted. ‘Yes, we’ve already met.’ And Bannerman glanced at Sally, surprised to learn that she had been here before. He realized how little he really knew about her. Mascoulin said, ‘Tania’s with some of the older children still in the playroom. Perhaps you would like to observe her first. She has not integrated well, but maybe that is to be expected.’

  He led them upstairs and down a cream-painted hallway. Halfway along it he opened a door that led into a small observation room. A dozen seats were gathered around a one-way mirror that allowed for observation of the children without being seen. They found themselves looking into a large, brightly lit room where eight or ten children were involved in various stages of play. Paintings and drawings, clearly done by the children themselves, covered its walls. Games were spread out on a long, oblong table and two of the children sat on tubular steel chairs playing with a pile of wooden bricks. Other pieces of apparatus and more chairs lay scattered about the floor, seemingly at random.

  Tania sat alone on one of the chairs, watching the others. There was not the least flicker of interest in her eyes. She clasped her hands in her lap, her face wooden, dispassionate. Distant, as though she were somewhere else. A nurse in jeans and a white T-shirt encouraged the children in their activities and from time to time spoke to Tania. But Tania appeared not to hear her. No sound reached Bannerman and the others from the playroom. It was like watching a silent movie.

  Doctor Mascoulin said, ‘We employ an integrated team approach here. 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. In here our sessions normally involve the parents, and we learn from their experience, too. Unfortunately, in the case of little Tania there are no parents.’ He turned toward Sally. ‘But Mademoiselle Robertson has proved most helpful in this respect already.’