‘Precisely. Softly softly, as the saying goes. Now, sitting here like this, we’re already losing valuable time. Let’s get down to some real work.’
Walking through the blowy streets that night, his feet swelling in his shoes, Dominic Elder was worried. It wasn’t Greenleaf and Doyle who worried him. They seemed capable sorts, if slightly curious as a twosome. Well, perhaps not. It was the old interrogation two-step: bad guy and nice guy. It could be a useful combination. Elder did something he hadn’t done in years. He bought some cod and chips. The meal came on a polystyrene tray with a small wooden fork, the whole wrapped in a custom paper bag. Different to the way Elder remembered it: greasy newsprint coming off on his hands, picking at the fish-flesh with his fingers. The cod had texture but no flavour at all. And the chips tasted mass-produced. There was a regularity about their size which depressed him, but it did not worry him.
Witch worried him.
He could almost smell her, almost taste her behind the seaside flavours and aromas. She had been here. And not long enough ago for her taint to have left the place. Was she still here? He didn’t think so. But if the hunt started to close in on her, she might just come back. A safe port in a storm. This had been her first lair on arriving in England. It would have meaning and resonance for her. Wounded, she might come crawling back. It would do no harm for Elder to learn the ground, her home-ground. So he walked, stopping to talk with people. Was the bakery all-night? It was, but the shift didn’t come on till eleven. He could come back and ask his questions then. As he walked, he became more comfortable with his story. She was his daughter. She’d run away, and he wanted to find her. Doyle and Greenleaf were to tell similar tales in the pubs and clubs, with the necessary alteration turning Witch into their sister rather than daughter.
Elder knew he was getting old. Despite living in the country, tonight was as much walking as he’d done in a year or more. Doyle and Greenleaf were younger, fitter and faster than him. They’d be fast making a life or death decision. Would he be too slow? Say he came up against Witch, came up against her again. Would she be so much faster than him? Or was she ageing too? No, not judging by the Khan assassination. If anything, she was sharper than ever, damn her. He’d been rusty at the police station, interviewing the lorry driver. He’d asked leading questions rather than waiting for Moncur to tell his version. That was bad. That worried him.
Something else worried him, too. She wouldn’t have come to Britain unless she was after very big game indeed. He didn’t know why he felt this, but he did. Britain was enemy territory to her, Elder’s territory. He couldn’t help but think of the whole thing on the personal level. Which was dangerous. Things might start getting out of perspective. He might start reading too much or not enough into certain situations. He wished he knew who her target was. It crossed his mind - it had crossed his mind all week - that maybe he was her target. But, really, this was nothing but ego. It didn’t make sense. He was no threat to her. He was in retirement, off the scene. Unless ... unless there was something in his file on her, something he’d overlooked and which could be dangerous to her. Well, Barclay had the file now; maybe he would see something, something Elder couldn’t see.
Her target had to be the summit. But wasn’t it at the same time just too obvious, as Greenleaf had hinted? All those heads of state ... But look at the challenge it presented to her. The security services of nine countries would be there, protecting their leaders. Over seven hundred and fifty security personnel in total (the majority supplied, of course, by the host nation), and more if you counted the uniformed police officers who would line the routes, holding back traffic and the public. Oh yes, it was a challenge all right, but then challenges had never been Witch’s thing. She worked on a smaller scale. Yes, there was the Pope, but they’d scared her off there with fewer personnel. Besides, that was Wolf Bandorff’s plan, not hers. Kidnappings, peace campaigners ... these were her arena. Would she bother, these days, with a head of state?
God alone knew. God, and the woman herself.
Dominic Elder. A priest’s name. You should have been a priest. That’s what she’d told him. Remembering, he rubbed his back.
He had come to the outskirts of the town. The wind was sharp and salty, the sea a distant clash. Maybe a storm was coming. The wind, though sharp, was warm. Clouds moved fast against the sky. He paused to rub at his back, and stared at the spotlit frontage of a small pub. Pubs were Doyle’s and Greenleaf’s territory. But all the same, the vinegary chips had left him with a dry throat. He stared at the pub’s name.
The Cat over the Broomstick.
The name decided him. He pushed open the door and entered smoke and noise. It was a young people’s pub. Jukebox, video games, loud conversations peppered with swearing, and necking in the few dark corners available. He hesitated, but walked up to the bar anyway. The youth in front of him, being served with seven pints of lager, wore a denim jacket with its arms shorn off, and beneath it a leather jacket, arms intact. Elder recognised biker gear when he saw it. A biker pub then, the dull offspring of the original Hell’s Angels. Someone behind him called out ‘Hey, Grandad!’ to snorts of laughter. Elder stood his ground. The pints had been loaded onto a tray, the tray taken away. The barman was Elder’s age, and sweating. He wore an apologetic look for his new customer, a look which said, ‘It’s business. If they weren’t spending money here they’d be doing it somewhere else.’
‘Whisky, please,’ said Elder, ‘a double.’
He wondered if Doyle and Greenleaf had made it out this far yet. Somehow he doubted it. They’d most probably have a drink in every pub they visited ... He gave the barman a fiver and, while waiting for his change, added plenty of water to his drink from a jug on the bar.
‘I’m looking for my daughter,’ he told the barman. But as he started to speak, a particularly thunderous track started on the jukebox, gaining a roar of approval from the drinkers.
‘What?’ said the barman, leaning his ear towards Elder.
‘My daughter!’ Elder yelled. ‘I’m looking for her.’
The barman shook his head, and then jerked it towards one of the loudspeakers. The message was clear: We’ll talk when the music stops. He went off to serve another customer. Another tray was needed. At one point, the barman twiddled with a knob mounted on the wall behind the optics. He did this as the song was ending. Another started up, but not so loud any more.
‘Turn it up, Joe!’
‘Come on, Joe, we can hardly hear it!’
‘Crank it up!’
He shook his head and smiled. ‘In a minute,’ he called. ‘Just give me a minute’s rest, eh?’
There were groans but nothing more. Joe the barman came back to Elder.
‘Now then, you were saying ... ?’
‘I’m looking for my daughter. She’s run off and I think maybe she ... she might have come down this way.’
‘Are you Mr Elder?’
Elder’s knees almost collapsed under him. ‘What? How ... yes, yes, I’m Dominic Elder.’
The barman nodded and moved back to the optics. On a shelf sat a letter, which he lifted and handed over the bar. Elder’s hand didn’t quite tremble as he accepted it.
‘She left it for you.’
On the white envelope was printed MR DOMINIC ELDER. Elder knew the score. He knew he shouldn’t touch it. It should go straight into a polythene bag for forensic analysis, for checks on fibres, saliva used to stick the envelope down ... the arcana of the forensic arts. But then Elder was a retired member of the security services. He might forget procedures, mightn’t he? He tore open the envelope. Inside was a single folded sheet of lined writing-paper on which was scribbled a handwritten message. He looked around him. Joe the barman had gone off to serve yet another thirsty client. Then he read.
‘Don’t bother. When it’s time, I’ll find you. W.’
He read it again ... and again ... and again.
‘Don’t bother. When it’s time, I’ll find you. W.’
/>
The ‘I’ll‘ and the ‘you’ had been double-underlined. I’ll find you. Yes, but only when it was time. There was something else to be done first. The Khan assassination? Or something on a grander scale? He managed a wry smile. Oh, she was clever. She’d known Elder might well become involved ... she’d even guessed that he might track her as far as Cliftonville. So she’d gone into an aptly named pub and left a note for him. She couldn’t know it would reach him of course. But if it did ... Yes, it seemed her style all right. But she’d slipped up, too. The note was handwritten. It wasn’t much, but it was something. He looked about for the telephone, and found that there was a booth next to the toilets. He slipped the letter back into its envelope, put the envelope in his pocket, and made for the booth.
Doyle and Greenleaf weren’t yet back at the hotel, so he tried the police station. No, the two gentlemen had called in, but there’d been no one available to help them. They’d arranged a meeting with Inspector Block in a pub somewhere ... probably the Faithful Collie. Yes, he had the telephone number.
So he tried the Faithful Collie. Calling to a pub from a pub: talk about a noisy line! I’ll find you ... Eventually he got the barman in the Faithful Collie to understand. There was a yell, another yell, and finally Greenleaf answered.
‘Is that you, Mr Elder?’
‘She’s left a message for me in a pub.’
‘What? I didn’t make that out.’
‘Witch has left me a message.’
A burly biker roamed past on his way to the toilets. Another came out. They exchanged handslaps.
‘How do you know?’ Greenleaf was asking.
‘Because a barman just handed it to me.’
‘What does it say?’
‘It says I’m not to look for her, she’ll find me when she wants.’
‘We’ve got to get it down to a lab ...’ The fact suddenly struck Greenleaf. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘you’ve opened it.’
‘Obviously.’
‘You shouldn’t have done that.’
‘I realise ...’
‘Still, not much we can do now. Which pub?’
‘The Cat over the Broomstick.’
‘You’re kidding. You think she’s guessed about Operation Broomstick?’
‘I don’t know. She knows we call her Witch.’
‘We’ll be right over.’
‘Is Doyle sober?’
‘He will be. Give us ... I don’t know, depends how far we are from you.’
‘Is Inspector Block still with you?’
‘Yes, I’ll bring him along too.’
‘Fine. But be warned, this is a Hell’s Angels’ watering-hole.’
‘Funny pubs you choose, Mr Elder. Is it the leather you like or what?’
Elder smiled but said nothing. He put down the receiver and went back to the bar, where his whisky was still waiting. Joe the barman was waiting too.
‘Can you tell me anything about her?’ Elder asked.
Joe shrugged. ‘Came in about a week ago. Said she was on the move, keeping away from an older man.’
‘How did she look?’
‘Fine. Tired maybe. And she had a sprained wrist. That’s why she got me to write it.’ He looked along the bar to his right. ‘Coming, Tony.’ He went off to serve the customer. But Elder followed him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean she’d sprained her wrist. She had a bandage on it. So she couldn’t write. She thought for some reason you’d come looking for her in here. I told her we didn’t usually cater to ... older men. Well, you can see that for yourself. But she seemed to know ... well, you’re here, so it looks like she was right.’
‘She didn’t write the note then?’
Joe shook his head. ‘One pound thirty-five please, Tony. No, like I say, I’d to write it for her. She told me what to put. Looks like she doesn’t want to be found, Mr Elder, not yet any road.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘looks like.’
A sprained wrist ... couldn’t write. She was cunning all right, and at the same time she was playing with him. If he found the note, she must know he would talk to the barman. And if he talked to the barman, he would find out the handwriting wasn’t hers. If she’d really wanted to lead him a dance, she’d have asked someone else to write the note, so Elder wouldn’t know that it wasn’t her writing ... Yes, she was playing games. This was so different to the Witch of old. What had happened to her? Had she gone mad? Was she on a suicide mission? What had happened? This wasn’t the old Witch at all.
And yet, obviously it was the old Witch - as shrewd and as deadly as ever.
‘I’ll have another whisky when you’re ready,’ he told Joe the barman. ‘And have one yourself.’
‘Thanks, I will,’ said Joe, making for the optics and once more turning up the volume. He received the cheers from the bar with a little bow from the waist.
Looking back on a startling day, it still seemed to Barclay that the most startling thing of all had been Dominique’s driving in central Paris. They set off from Calais in her car, leaving his in the police station car park, his packed bag locked in the boot. He brought to Dominique’s car a single change of clothes, the Witch file, and a couple of opera tapes. During the drive, and above the noise of the engine and the rather extraordinary ventilation system (a single flap between dashboard and windscreen), they planned their next moves.
‘His name,’ Dominique yelled, ‘is Monsieur Jean-Claude Separt. I know of him actually. He is a cartoonist. He draws stories.’
‘You mean strip cartoons?’
‘Cartoons in a strip, yes.’
‘For a newspaper?’
‘No, he makes books. Books of strip cartoons are very popular in France.’
‘What sort of stuff does he do?’
‘Political cartoons, or cartoons with a political point. He is left-wing. More than that I can’t tell you until we get to Paris. There will be information on him when we get there.’
‘What about his car?’
‘It’s curious, he reported it missing only after it was found. Doesn’t that sound strange to you?’
‘A bit. What’s his story?’
She shrugged, pulling out to overtake a lorry. The 2CV barely had enough power to pull past the long, fuming vehicle. A car bore down on them, but Dominique shot the 2CV back into the right-hand lane with two or three seconds to spare. The blood had vanished entirely from Barclay’s face.
‘I don’t know yet,’ she continued, as though nothing had happened. ‘We shall have to ask him ourselves ...’
The car didn’t have a tape-deck, but it did have a radio. Dominique found a jazz station and turned the volume all the way up, so the music was just about audible above the engine. She beat her hands against the steering-wheel.
‘In your room,’ she yelled, ‘I saw your cassettes - classical music.’
‘Opera,’ he corrected.
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Jazz,’ she said. ‘Jazz is the only music in the world, and Paris is the capital!’ She signalled, slipped the gear down into third, and roared out to pass another lorry.
In Paris, she first headed for her office, Barclay remaining in the car while she sprinted to the building, and, moments later, sprinted out again. She threw a file on to his lap, slapped his hand away from the radio (he’d been trying to find a classical station), and slammed shut the driver’s-side door. Then she indicated and screeched back into the traffic again, horns sounding all around them.
‘They had it waiting at reception for me,’ she said of the file. ‘Read it out while I drive.’
So, in his stilted French, he read from the report, thankful for it since it served to take his eyes off the madness all about him. Lunchtime in Paris. He’d been here for weekends before, and even then had marvelled at the ability of the local drivers to squeeze five-abreast into a three-lane road without scraping up against each other. Meanwhile, as he read, Dominique translated some of the more difficult sentences into English, until at
last he’d finished the report on the life and career of the cartoonist Jean-Claude Separt and they were pulling into a narrow street, the buildings tall on either side, blocking out the light and a good deal of the city’s noise. There were shops and offices at ground level, dingy-looking things with unwashed windows. But the storeys above were apartments, some with small verandahs, all with dusty shutters, the paint flaking off, some slats missing or hanging loose. Dominique double-parked the 2CV alongside a venerable-looking low-slung Citroën.
‘Come on,’ she said.
‘Where?’
She motioned upwards. ‘This is where I live ... my home. I have to change my clothes.’ She pulled at the material of her jacket. She was smiling. ‘Coming?’
He nodded. ‘Sure,’ he said. His heart started pumping a little faster. ‘Sure,’ he repeated, getting out of the car.
‘Stairs only,’ she warned him. ‘No elevator.’
The place smelled a bit like the London Underground. He couldn’t think why. It was a smell like burnt oil, and lurking beneath it dampness and rot. He got the feeling that if he touched the dark green walls, a residue would come off on his fingers.
He was behind Dominique, carrying her small suitcase. He watched her body as she climbed the winding stairs.
‘Next floor,’ she said, a little breathlessly.
‘Right, okay.’ But it wasn’t okay. Her case was heavier than he’d expected. What did she have in there, a couple of sub-machine guns?
And then they were standing facing one another outside an ornate front door. She smiled, catching her breath. He smiled back, concentrating his eyes on hers, trying not to show how hard he was breathing after the climb. She brought a key out of her bag and opened the door.
He looked into a well-kept if old-fashioned hall. The carpet was faded. So were the furnishings. Was there a radio playing in the distance?
‘Mama,’ called Dominique. ‘C’est moi.‘
Briskly, she took the case from him and walked up the hall.
‘C’est toi, Dominique?‘ came a wavering voice from behind one of the doors. Barclay still stood in the hall, drinking in this unexpected reality. Dominique waved for him to follow her, then opened a door at the end of the hall.