Witch Hunt

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Please, look after Mama.’ Then she closed the door again, gave him a big grin and threw him a kiss, before turning on her noisy heels and making for number thirty-eight. He wondered if that extra wiggle of her leather-clad bum was for him, or whether she was just getting into her part. Then he reached for his receiver, switched it on, and waited.

  She had to climb two flights to the door marked WRIGHTSON, J-P. She spoke in a low voice as she climbed. ‘I hope you can hear me, Michael. This is a very dirty stairwell, not at all like Monsieur Separt’s. It makes me wonder what the two men could have in common, one living in luxury, the other in squalor. What do you think? Their politics, perhaps? Ideals can bridge gulfs, can’t they?’

  She paused outside the door, then pressed the buzzer. She couldn’t hear anything from inside, so she knocked with her closed fist instead. And again. And again. There was a noise from within, a creaking floorboard, someone coughing. The door was unlocked.

  ‘Qui est ... ? Jesus Christ!’ The man who stood there was scrawny, no fat at all on his body. He wore only tight grey underpants, and had a cigarette hanging from one corner of his mouth. He stared hard at every inch of the girl in front of him. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said again. Then he lapsed into French, and Dominique was sure in her mind. When she spoke, she spoke in English.

  ‘Ah ... I am looking for Diana.’

  ‘You speak English?’ He nodded, scratching himself. Then he frowned. ‘Diana? Never heard of her.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked crestfallen. ‘She told me she lived here.’

  ‘Here?’

  She nodded. ‘I think so. She told me her address and I forgot it. I was drunk a little, I think. But this morning I wake up and I think I remember it. I dreamed it, maybe.’

  ‘You mean this building?’

  She shook her head, earrings jangling against each other. ‘This floor.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, there’s old Prévost across the hall ... but he hasn’t set foot outside since ’68.’ Wrightson smiled. He was still studying her, appraising her. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘come in. Can’t remember when I last saw a punk.’

  ‘Is it not still the fashion in England?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, cherie. I’m not English, I’m Australian.’

  Dominique looked excited. ‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Diana told me there was an Australian!’

  ‘Yeah?’ He frowned again. ‘Beats the hell out of me.’

  ‘You do not know her?’

  He shrugged. ‘Describe her to me.’

  He had led her through a hall resembling a warehouse. There were boxes of flysheets, teetering piles of books, and the walls were covered with political posters. One of the posters showed a scrawled capital A over a circle.

  ‘Anarchy,’ she said, pointing to it. ‘Just like my badge.’

  He nodded, but didn’t say anything. Maybe she’d been a bit too heavy-handed. She tried to slow her pulse-rate, keeping her breathing regular. She stared at another poster, another artfully scrawled circle but this time with a capital V on the top of it.

  ‘V for Vendetta,’ he explained. ‘It’s a comic book.’

  ‘It looks like the anarchy symbol upside down.’

  ‘I suppose it does.’ He seemed pleased by the comparison.

  The room they entered was stuffy, and seemed to double as living-room and bedroom. There were more boxes here, more books, more mess. A woman, not too young, was sitting up inside a sleeping-bag on the floor, long brown hair falling down over her naked chest. She looked like she was in the process of waking up.

  ‘Dawn, go make some coffee, girl.’

  ‘Jesus, J-P, I made it yesterday.’ Her accent was American. Wrightson growled at her. ‘What time is it anyway?’

  ‘Nearly ten,’ Dominique answered after Wrightson had shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Middle of the damned night.’ The woman looked about her until she found some tobacco and a paper, rolled herself a cigarette, then stepped from the sleeping-bag and walked through to the kitchen. Wrightson watched her depart.

  ‘No shame, these Yanks,’ he said. ‘Speaking of which ...’ He wandered over behind the sofa and pulled a pair of jeans from the floor, shaking them free of dust before putting them on. Then he sat down again, resting on the arm of the sofa. Dominique was still standing. ‘You were describing Diana to me,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, well, she’s tall, short dark hair. English, I think. She has very ... uh, piercing eyes.’

  He thought for a moment, then shrugged. ‘You say her hair’s short? Pinned up maybe?’

  ‘Pinned up, yes.’

  Another moment’s thought. ‘Where did you meet her?’

  ‘Outside the Louvre, beside the pyramid. She was sitting by herself, watching the fountains. I was bored. We talked a little. I liked her.’

  He drew on his cigarette, blowing the smoke out through his nose. He was studying her very closely. ‘What was she wearing?’

  Dominique made a show of remembering. ‘Black jeans, I think. A T-shirt, I don’t remember what colour.’

  ‘Sunglasses?’

  ‘No. Maybe she had some in her pocket.’

  ‘Mm-hmm.’

  The woman, Dawn, had come back and was pulling on her clothes. She examined Dominique, saw the badge. ‘Anarchy,’ she said, nodding.

  ‘What’s your name, cherie?’ Wrightson asked.

  ‘Francoise.’

  ‘Like Françoise Sagan?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Are you an anarchist, Françoise?’

  She nodded. He gestured towards the boxes.

  ‘Take some literature with you. Maybe you’ll have read it before, maybe not. And leave an address and phone number. If Diana comes here, I can tell her where you are.’

  ‘You know her then?’

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

  ‘I already gave her my phone number, outside the Louvre. She never got in touch. She said she would. We had a drink together ... I liked her.’

  She hoped she sounded and looked in as much despair as she felt. Wrightson was suspicious, of course he was. He was also very careful. She should have realised that from his telephone conversation with Separt. Only that one word - Janetta’s—had given him away. She had another thought, too: maybe there was another Janetta’s in another street with another Jean-Pierre living across the road. Maybe, but she didn’t think so. This felt right. She walked across to the boxes and pulled out a pamphlet - wordy, written in slightly imperfect French.

  ‘Make Françoise some coffee, too,’ Wrightson said to Dawn, who was making for the kitchen again. Then he came over towards Dominique and put an arm around her shoulders. She flinched. What if he felt the transmitter?

  ‘Easy,’ he said. ‘It’ll be all right. You’ll find other... women friends. I know lots of girls like you, Françoise, believe me.’ His proximity disgusted her. She could smell his sweat, the rancid nicotine breath. Then she saw some cartoon books and moved away from him, picking one up. It was by Separt.

  Wrightson followed her. ‘You like his stuff?’

  She shook her head. ‘Too tame.’

  He looked disappointed. Obviously, he’d just been about to claim friendship with the great cartoonist. Below the cartoon book there was a newspaper. She picked it up, too.

  ‘You read the London Times?’ she said.

  ‘Just the crossword. I enjoy a challenge.’

  ‘The pages are torn.’

  He winked. ‘It saves on toilet paper.’

  She gave a small laugh.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ he said. ‘How old are you, Françoise?’

  Barclay had told her on the way that she would pass for eighteen. ‘Nineteen,’ she said, just to be safe.

  ‘It’s a good age to be. Have you got a job?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘With friends. Some HLM housing...’

  ‘Do you enjoy a challenge, Françoise?
’

  She frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Wrightson waved some of his pamphlets at her. ‘I need help distributing my ... literature. It’s late-night work, you understand? Not much pay, but maybe you’d be interested.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  He nodded. She saw him for what he was, a cunning man but also stupid. A user of women, hiding his true feelings and desires behind political slogans. She’d met his type before.

  ‘Leave me your phone number,’ he said.

  ‘We don’t have a phone.’

  The eyes narrowed. ‘You said you gave it to Diana?’

  She was ready for this. She nodded. ‘The number of a club where some of us go. Everybody knows me there.’

  ‘Okay, which club?’

  She was ready for this too. Her night had been busy with plans, with dress rehearsals. ‘L’Arriviste,’ she said. ‘Rue de la Lune, second arrondissement.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll remember that.’

  Dawn appeared with three filthy mugs, brimming with black coffee. ‘There’s no sugar,’ she said.

  ‘Then we drink it black and bitter,’ said Wrightson, taking a mug, ‘like our thoughts.’

  Dawn thought this over, then smiled towards Dominique, a smile full of admiration for Wrightson. But she was also warning the young pretender, the arriviste: ‘He’s my property.’ Dominique drank to it.

  They talked politics over the coffee, and she managed to sound less knowledgeable than she actually was. She also made sure to express her naivety, leading Wrightson to give speech after speech. The more he spoke, the less he asked, and the less he asked the more comfortable she felt. Yes, his ego was his fatal flaw. It had made him blind to the motives of others. All he cared about was himself. She had heard better speeches in the bars of schools and polytechnics.

  The coffee finished, she said she had to go. He pressed her to stay but she shook her head. So he put together a bundle of stuff, photocopied single sheets, folded pamphlets, a couple of posters, and thrust it into her hands. The paper everything was printed on was cheap scratchy stuff, some of it off-white, some yellow. She thanked him.

  ‘Just read,’ he said. ‘And pass on the message.’

  ‘Message?’

  He tapped the pamphlets. ‘Tell your friends.’

  ‘Ah, yes, yes, of course.’

  She said goodbye to Dawn, and Wrightson saw her to the door, his hand rubbing her shoulder again, creeping down to graze against the bare skin of her arm. Then, as he opened the door, he put his hand on the back of her head and pulled her to him. With her hands full of paper, she couldn’t push away. He planted a kiss on her lips, his tongue probing against her gritted teeth. Then he pulled away, leaving her gasping.

  As she ran (as best she could in her heels) down the stairs, she could hear him laughing. Then he slammed shut the door, and it boomed and echoed like cannon-fire all the way out to the street.

  Barclay could see that she was in a furious temper. She threw the bits of paper on to his lap, got behind the steering-wheel, and shunted her way out of the parking space and into the road.

  ‘You were in there for hours,’ he said into the silence. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear?’

  ‘Only up to where he had Dawn go make you coffee.’

  ‘He put his arm around me.’

  ‘Probably pulled loose a connection. You’ll have to tell me the rest.’

  ‘First I need a drink. I need to get rid of the taste in my mouth.’ She reached under her T-shirt and ripped off the transmitter, tossing it on to Barclay’s lap beside the bits of paper.

  She was quiet all the way to her favoured corner bar, where she collapsed into one of the terrace chairs and ordered a pression. What the hell, it had just gone eleven. Barclay ordered one too. She still didn’t seem to want to talk, so he glanced through the literature she’d thrown at him, and which he had brought with him to the café.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ he said, holding one pamphlet up for her to see. It was concerned with ‘European Freedom Fighters’. There was mention of the Italian group Croix Jaune, and of the German Wolfgang Bandorff. There was, to Barclay’s eyes, a lot about Wolfgang Bandorff, with a final call to all ‘lovers of freedom’ to follow Bandorff’s dicta, to motivate and mobilise and to let ‘actions speak where the mouths of the oppressed are gagged’.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Barclay. He’d got Dominique’s attention. She read through the pamphlet, but didn’t speak until the beer had been placed in front of her, demolished, and another one ordered.

  ‘Bandorff was mentioned in the Witch file,’ Barclay reminded her.

  ‘Yes, he was in Scotland when the Pope visited.’

  ‘It can’t be just coincidence.’

  Dominique didn’t say anything. She was running her tongue over her gums, as though washing them clean of something.

  ‘So what happened up there?’ he asked.

  Her second beer arrived, and this time she drank it slowly, taking her time as she told him all about John Peter Wrightson.

  Roadworks impeded Elder’s progress on the route to Brighton. There were times when it seemed to him the whole road network of England was being coned off and dug up. He was sure he could remember a time when there’d been no contraflows. But of course there’d been less traffic then, too. It was taking him a little while to get used to Doyle’s car. It was fast and certainly nippy in traffic, but the clutch seemed to have a mind of its own. Doyle had complained when Elder asked for his car. But it was only reasonable. They’d travelled down in the one car - Doyle’s - and now that car was needed. Besides, as Elder pointed out, Doyle was staying in the town. What did he need his car for? And if a car were needed, he could always borrow one from the police. ‘So what’s stopping you doing that, too?’ Doyle had said.

  ‘I’m in a hurry.’

  ‘I can’t see there’s any rush.’

  Elder had already filled both Doyle and Greenleaf in on his planned trip, and the reasoning behind it, so he stayed silent and let Doyle have his grumble. As ever, Greenleaf wasn’t saying much. The silent type.

  They looked like they’d been working together on interrogations for years. They looked confident, successful. They looked like a team.

  ‘If you scratch it,’ Doyle said at last, digging his hand into his trouser pocket, ‘if you so much as fart on the seat-fabric ...’ He held the keys in the air for an instant, not letting Elder have them.

  ‘Understood,’ he said. ‘It’ll get a full valet service before I bring it back.’

  Doyle spoke quietly, spacing each word. ‘Just bring it back.’

  Elder nodded. ‘Will do.’ He reached out his hand and took the keys from Doyle.

  There was nothing for him to do in Cliftonville anyway. The note was already in the forensic lab. The paper and envelope would be analysed, since Witch rather than the barman had provided them. Sometimes you could tell a lot from a sheet of paper: brand used, batch number, when produced, where stocked. Same went for fibre analysis. They would take the envelope apart with surgical precision, just in case there was a fibre or anything similar inside, anything that could tell them anything about Witch.

  Joe the barman had been little help. And so far no one they’d spoken to had seen or heard anything that Sunday night. The thing to do was get the local police involved and have them do the leg-work. Time was pressing. They needed to be in London. The summit would start on Tuesday; hardly any time at all to recheck security. A few of the delegations, Elder knew, had already arrived. Most would arrive over the weekend. The last to arrive, the Americans, would touch down on Monday morning. Thirty secret servicemen would protect the President. But they couldn’t protect him from a single sniper’s bullet, from a well-placed bomb, from most of the tricks Witch had learned.

  Sitting in a slow-moving queue, Elder leaned forwards the better to scratch his back, just where it itched. He’d had the itch for a long time. It hadn’t really bothered him in Wal
es, not often, but now it had started up again. There was just something about a traffic jam that set it off. At least, he kidded himself it was the traffic jam.

  Finally, he reached the outskirts of Brighton. He knew the town well, or had known it well at one time. He used to have a friend just west of the town in Portslade, beyond Hove. A female friend, the partner in a veterinary practice. He remembered her bedroom faced onto the sea. A long time ago ... He made friends with difficulty, kept them with even more difficulty. His fault, not theirs. He was a slovenly correspondent, forgetful of things like birthdays, and he found friendship at times a heavy baggage to bear. That was why he hadn’t made a good husband: he didn’t make a good friend in the first place. He sometimes wondered what kind of father he’d have made, if Susanne hadn’t been taken from him.

  He drove through Brighton until he hit the seafront. There was no sign of a travelling fair. He couldn’t see any posters, either. Nothing to say whether it had been and gone, or was still to arrive. Nothing. But what he did notice were kids - kids lounging about, kids with nothing to do. School-leavers, probably, their exams over. Or the unemployed youth of the town. There were tramps too, and younger men, somewhere between school-leaver and tramp. They tried begging from passers-by, offering swigs from their bottle as trade. Living in rural Wales, Elder was accustomed to the occasional hippy convoy, but nothing like this. The unemployed men he knew in his local village had been hard-working men who wanted to get back into hard work.

  He drove slowly all the way along the front and back, studying the faces he saw. The world was changing; time was slipping into reverse. It was like the 1920s and 30s, or even the Victorian world described by Dickens. In London, he’d seen teams of windscreen washers, something he’d only before seen on American TV dramas. Young men - predominantly black - would wait at traffic lights and, when the lights turned red, would wash windscreens, then ask to be paid. One group Elder had seen had brought a sofa to the kerbside, so that they could relax in comfort between shifts. He wondered how much they made. He’d arrived in London without his car. A car would have protected him from the worst of it, from the beggars waiting for him in underpasses, the buskers in the Underground, the cardboard boxes which had become people’s homes. That hopeless, toneless cry: ‘Spare change, please, any spare change. Spare change, please, any spare change.’ Like rag and bone men expecting society’s leftovers.