There were too many people. In Claudine’s view there always were at crime scenes and their arrival – the FBI forensic team with Harding, Rosetti and Blake with Claudine – added to the congestion. Poncellet had come on ahead, after alerting them, and established some order but Claudine wished there had been more. A protective evidence tent had been erected over the body and a generator manhandled alongside for floodlights that not only illuminated the body within the tent but lit an area of about three square metres outside.
The body was ten metres along a rutted, dry stone-and-dirt track running into the forest from a minor metalled road. What tyre imprints there might have been in the dirt had been trampled underfoot by the bald-headed man who’d discovered the body while walking his dog and now stood trembling beside the police car that had answered his call so urgently the further obliterating skid marks still stretched from where it had come to a halt. As they approached, the dog, a mongrel, was completing the damage by scratching dirt over its urine puddle.
They’d all been approaching in a single, minimally destructive line along the edge of the track. Over his shoulder the leading forensic officer said: ‘Why the fuck are we bothering?’
The forensic team were already suited. Harding and Blake stood back for Rosetti and Claudine to put on their coveralls and plastic galoshes. Poncellet was standing ashen-faced away from the tent, a handkerchief against his mouth and nose. ‘He’s been dead a long time.’
Claudine said: ‘We know.’
The sickly sweet smell of decomposing flesh engulfed them as they went into the tent. Already inside were a Belgian pathologist and a police photographer. There were greetings in French but no handshakes: the Belgians were already contaminated. They wore nose clamps and their upper lips were smeared with camphor unguent. Rosetti and Claudine both applied cream and clips beneath their totally encompassing masks.
The boy was face down and partially on his left side. The left shoulder was humped and the left arm and hand hidden beneath it. The body was grotesquely ballooned by decomposition gases, the skin split in places and the major lesions moving with maggots. It was on the edge of a sheet of hessian, glued to it in places by congealed body fluid. The anal entry was greatly distended and on both shoulders and the neck were bite marks difficult at first to identify because of the bloated flesh. The eye sockets were wide open and writhed with maggots that had already destroyed the eyes themselves. There was no visible cause of death. The two pathologists stood side by side to heave the body over on to its back. As they did so the stomach split, spilling choking fluid and gas. Rosetti used a magnifying glass to examine what was left of the penis and had photographs taken of it. Maggots had attacked the stump of the missing toe, making it impossible to recognize a professional amputation.
‘Anything extra you want?’ asked Rosetti, his voice muffled and adenoidal.
Claudine shook her head, holding her hand up against any approach from either Harding or Blake as she and Rosetti emerged. Both men had been driven back by the smell from inside the tent.
They took off their masks and nose clips and Rosetti said: ‘We’re badly contaminated. Infectious.’
The Belgian pathologist and photographer had already stripped off their forensic suits, head coverings and shoes and piled them in the middle of the path. Claudine and Rosetti added to the pyre and stood back for the mortuary attendant to soak the bundle in petrol. It exploded into flame at the thrown match, melting plastic adding a new smell.
‘You want to go into the tent?’ Rosetti asked Harding and Blake. Both investigators remained some way away.
Harding said: ‘We’ll take your word for it.’
‘You going to do the autopsy straight away or wait until it’s properly morning?’ called Blake. ‘It’s still only four thirty.’
‘I’ll do it as soon as we get back to Brussels,’ said Rosetti.
‘You want to attend?’ invited Claudine. ‘I’m going to.’ She went towards the two men, away from the stink. Rosetti followed.
‘We’ll leave that to you, too,’ said Blake. ‘And we’ve seen all we want here.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘Or rather not enough. There’s not a tyre tread to be seen and a herd of elephants couldn’t have trodden the side track and undergrowth any flatter.’
‘And the guy who found the body heard nothing, saw nothing and knows nothing,’ added Harding. ‘It was the dog, obviously, who found it: smelled it.’
‘Maybe there’ll be something from the autopsy,’ said the disappointed Poncellet.
The mortuary attendants emerged from the tent with the remains sealed inside a body bag, leaving it on the ambulance gunney while they added their overalls to the dying bonfire.
Claudine and Rosetti, both long inured to the horror of violent death, returned to the city separately from the others, their bodies cramped together in the front of the ambulance, each aware of the closeness of the other but not acknowledging it. It was, thought Claudine, a bizarre surrounding in which to come physically closer to the man than she ever had before.
There were changing facilities at the mortuary and Claudine stripped and showered with strongly disinfected emulsion before re-suiting and re-masking herself, sprinkling the inside of the protective clothing with disinfecting powder. She only bothered with bra and pants beneath.
The body was already on the metal dissecting table when she entered the examination room, Rosetti, the Belgian pathologist and the photographer about to start. Three of the American forensic scientists were in the side laboratory in which Claudine and Rosetti had earlier examined the amputated toe. One was already working on the hessian. The other two were waiting to test samples from the body.
Rosetti led the dissection but in consultation with the other surgeon. Their masks, as well as Claudine’s, were electronically linked, enabling them to communicate with each other. Everything said was automatically recorded. Rosetti dictated quietly, in French, and formally, according to the accepted medical format. He identified himself, the Belgian and the mortuary and stipulated the date and the time. He also named Claudine as an official observer.
He worked quickly but methodically, removing facial skin scrapings, body fluid, head and pubic hair and finger and toenail samples for the waiting forensic experts. He had to break the jaw to carry out the dental examination. When he sawed into the chest cavity – carrying the opening up to the humped left shoulder – they were all covered in a fine spray of bone and body fluid and had to stop to sponge clean each other’s visors. At Rosetti’s urging, as soon as the chest had been opened, the Belgian pathologist sectioned several lung samples for the side laboratory, first having each photographed. Rosetti also had several pictures taken of the anal distension before carrying out an internal examination. To do so he had to turn the collapsing body on to its front. Having done so he shaved the back of the head up to the crown, pointing out to the other man the patterned discoloration that became visible.
Until that moment Rosetti had completed ignored Claudine. Now he turned, although keeping strictly to medical protocol, declaring for the recording that he was interrupting the autopsy for preliminary discussion. And gave the time – 5.45 a.m. – of the break.
It was, literally, like an alarm clock awakening Claudine. Her first impulse was to excuse herself and leave at once but just as quickly she realized she had more than enough time to listen to what Rosetti had stopped to tell her. There was just the possibility there would be something she could use in what he said, although for what she wanted to achieve she doubted it.
Rosetti did not come to her immediately. From the side laboratory he collected the clipboard log, flicking through the several attached notes as he approached.
‘A professional male prostitute,’ declared Rosetti. There was a metallic playback to his voice through the headset. ‘Very active. I wouldn’t put him older than seventeen but I found tunnelling during the internal anal examination. The epithelium is thick, too, indicating constant intercourse…’ Rosetti went to the clipboard. ‘There were traces of make-up on the facial skin.’ He paused. ‘Also of a glue that quite heavily impregnated the hessian in which the body was wrapped…’
The clock on the autopsy wall registered 6.05 a.m. Claudine saw, impatiently. Why hadn’t she thought of it before! Why! Why! Why!
‘There was also the same varnish on the nails that we found on the severed toe,’ continued Rosetti.
‘How long has he been dead?’ asked Claudine, forcing the calmness. Six eight.
‘Sometime during the last fortnight,’ said Rosetti. ‘I can’t be more definite than that. There is still some residual rigor: that’s why the shoulder snapped when the body was thrown down. It was just picked up, obviously from a vehicle, and tossed aside, landing on the shoulder. That’s why it had rolled almost completely free of the hessian. As you saw there was no attempt to conceal it.’
‘What the caller told Smet Gaston was going to do, just get rid of it,’ remembered Claudine. ‘Anything special about the hessian? It looked comparatively new.’
‘It was, although he’d been wrapped in it for a long time.’ He looked quickly at his clipboard. ‘Forensic say it’s high-quality sacking: the sort of stuff used for wrapping things of value.’
‘How did he die?’
Rosetti led her to the dissecting table. Claudine followed, unworried by the closeness to a partially dissected carcase. He pointed to the opened anus, then to the blackened pattern on the back of the shaven head.
‘They’re finger bruising; could be either ante or post death. Hands being pressed either side of the head. I think it was during anal intercourse, not necrophilia. There’s no rectal lesion or tearing, which there would have been if entry was forced after death. The lungs are bubble-enlarged, definitely showing suffocation. During the act of buggery his face was forced into something soft, most likely a pillow, until he died. The anus is distended because muscles don’t contract after death.’ He indicated another pattern, wounds this time. ‘Bite marks. Which could give us a jaw formation impression of the killer. I think the penis was bitten, too.’
Momentarily Claudine lost her impatience to leave the room. Almost to herself she said: ‘And that was done by one of the people who’ve got the ten-year-old child we’re trying to get back unharmed.’
‘Yes,’ said Rosetti. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever examined a worse manic sex attack. It’s totally animal.’
‘I’ve got to go. Now!’
‘But…’
‘Later.’ It was six fifteen.
Claudine ran clumsily from the room, hampered by the encumbering suit. Remembering the victim’s homosexuality and the spray of the body fluids she forced herself to slow, stripping off the protective clothing, and was even more careful against outside contact while thrusting it down the incinerator chute.
It was six twenty-three when she emerged from the shower, six twenty-eight when she burst into the corridor, searching wildly for a telephone. And physically collided with Peter Blake.
‘I’ve been stupid,’ she gabbled. ‘If we tell Smet this early he’ll call…’
‘I already did,’ Blake said, holding her at arm’s length, smiling. ‘And he called, too. Twice. And we got the numbers. Felicite is Felicite Galan. She lives at the Boulevard Anspach. Gaston’s name is Mehre. He’s an antique dealer in Antwerp.’ The smile expanded. ‘We’re well up to speed, so you don’t have to run.’
With the image of the distorted and sexually mutilated body horrifically vivid in her mind throughout the remainder of the long day, Claudine couldn’t dispel the feeling mat to run was exactly what she – all of them – had to do. To run as fast as they could in every newly pointed direction and break any law to get to Mary Beth.
It was irrational and unprofessional, she accepted, and totally opposite from what they actually had to do. Which was to proceed step by step with the utmost care. Make no unpremeditated move until they’d located Felicite Galan and established the child was with her, and only then risk a strike to prevent Mary Beth being the next disfigured body on the mortuary slab.
By the time Claudine reached the embassy the surveillance had already been organized and in Brussels was in place. Sure of their target and knowing from Smet’s panicked telephone call that Gaston Mehre was at home over his gallery in Antwerp’s Schoenmarkt, Harding assigned a thirty-man squad to put the antique dealer under total observation.
The lawyer’s call to Felicite Galan, while identifying her from the number, had rung out unanswered. It was again McCulloch and Ritchie who led the operation in Boulevard Anspach. Watchers were positioned outside as before, to warn of the woman’s unexpected return, separate from the evidence-collecting ‘floaters.’ In addition there were four CIA agents, all women, two with paramedic qualifications, if Mary Beth were found to be imprisoned in the house.
She wasn’t.
It was the first and immediate disappointment after McCulloch and Ritchie immobilized the rear-mounted, out-of-date alarm box with instant setting foam and picked the rear door lock.
The two men varied their routine in their immediate search for the child, both looking initially for basement cells before quickly working upwards, room by room. At the same time as McCulloch reported failure on his mobile phone he said that from the disarray and cast-aside clothes in Felicite’s bedroom and en suite dressing room – as well as an open-doored cupboard in which suitcases were stored – she’d obviously packed and left in a hurry. He and Ritchie were reverting to routine: some proxile copied material, including bank statements, was already being ferried back. Again they hadn’t found an address book.
Kurt Volker deputed himself, without argument, to collate what came from the house.
Rosetti got to the embassy by mid-morning. For the benefit of the entire group he repeated what he’d earlier told Claudine, adding that around the anal area and stuck by body fluid to the hessian he’d found four red-pigmented pubic hairs, obviously not those of the auburn-haired victim, from which the killer could be identified by DNA comparison. The body was too decomposed for any semen trace to have remained. There was no dental work from which the victim could be identified from orthodontic or dental records and although quite a substantial amount of the face was intact he thought a model reconstruction from skull and facial bone formation would be necessary if they wanted to issue a picture appeal. A mouth impression of the killer was possible from at least two of the bite marks. No effort had been made to clean the body and there were a lot of forensic tests still to be carried out. No one commented on the quickly developed photographs of the boy that Rosetti circulated.
Harding was actually remarking that antique dealers used hessian to wrap sale items – and specialized glue for repairs – when the first contact came from Antwerp. None of the combined FBI and CIA team had yet entered the premises as purchasing American tourists – the prepared cover – but from external observation there appeared to be two men working there. Both had red hair and from their facial similarity were clearly related.
‘The hessian will match that in the shop, as well as the hair,’ predicted Harding. ‘So we’ve got ourselves a couple of murderers. One at least.’
The still unknown executive at Belgacom was the first caller, just after eleven, to be picked up on the agonizingly limited microphone in Smet’s office. The lawyer did most of the talking, as he did on the three subsequent and connected calls, and a murmur of anticipation went round the listening group at the repetition in every one.
‘My house tonight. Seven.’ To the man they now knew to be Gaston Mehre, he added: ‘It’s desperate. Terrible.’
Harding had already phoned the controller of the Antwerp squad, giving the time when the shop would be empty that night. By then the search of Boulevard Anspach had been completed, listening devices installed in every room and telephone and all documentation McCulloch and Ritchie considered relevant copied and returned to where they had been found. There were thirty CIA and FBI agents dispersed around the house and along every road feeding into it.
Smet didn’t dominate the conversation when Felicite Galan called. He told her about the discovery of the body and in reply to her obvious question said: ‘I don’t know if we’re going to meet this afternoon! The bastard wouldn’t say what was so important about what they’d found! Just that it was good. Important. I’m going to try Poncellet if they go on saying they’re too busy.’
There was a long period of silence, interspersed with grunts and single-word agreement. Towards the end Smet complained: ‘I know they’re stupid. It’s too late now: too late for anything.’ To her unheard response to that, he said: ‘Kill myself.’
His final words were: ‘Please, I’m begging you… I can’t help it… do it now…? When…? Now, it’s got to be now…’
They were careful to keep the sequence in the proper order. Blake told Poncellet there appeared to be a useful amount of forensic clues connected with the body find that wouldn’t be analysed in time for any meeting that afternoon. Further contact from the woman in any case had priority. He said exactly the same to Smet, promising to call him again at the office or even at home that evening if there was any development. They all listened to Poncellet accurately recount his conversation with Blake to the other Belgian when Smet reached him.
‘It looks as if things are moving at last,’ said Poncellet.
‘They haven’t told you what it is?’
‘No.’
Felicite did call McBride. Her attitude – her tone of voice even – was totally different from what it had been on any previous occasion. Claudine tried to involve herself – although not goading, alert to the change and careful to avoid antagonizing her – but the woman told her, without anger, to get off the line. Claudine did. After her earlier debacle, Hillary didn’t attempt to grab the telephone.
‘It’s a million.’
‘I know,’ said McBride.
‘It’s ready?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cash?’
‘Yes.’
‘Deposit it at a branch of Credit Lyonnais. You choose which. Tomorrow, precisely at 11 a.m., I’ll give you a bank and an account number into which it’s to be transferred. If it’s not in the account I designate by 11.30 a.m. Mary Beth will be killed. Understood?’
‘No, wait…
‘Shut up! You there, Claudine?’
‘Yes.’
‘Pay attention and you’ll learn how a ransom exchange can be made to work.’
The line went dead. The scanner failed to isolate the source of the call. It was, the technicians later insisted again, because it had been long distance, nowhere within the city limits.
In his study McBride looked sideways to Claudine and said: ‘She didn’t sound the same.’
‘No,’ agreed Claudine. It wasn’t right: not right at all.
‘Am I going home?’ asked the child, urgently, as Lascelles entered the beach house.
‘Yes. But you’ve got to be very good,’ said Felicite.
‘I will be. Honest I will be.’ She smiled up at Lascelles and said: ‘Hello.’
‘Hello.’
‘Are you going to take me home?’
‘Both of us,’ said the man.
‘Can I wear my new clothes?’
‘Yes,’ said Felicite. ‘But hurry.’
‘Why are you crying?’
‘I’m not crying. The wind flicked my hair into my eyes.’ She’d actually been hoping the Luxembourg lawyer would tell her mat the bank chain hadn’t been established.
As they got into Lascelles’ car Felicite said, in French: ‘You’re quite sure it won’t hurt?’
‘Positive. Pills will be best. For all of them.’
‘Mary Beth first,’ insisted Felicite. ‘I want to be the one to do it. It’s got to be me.’