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  Claudine fought back the urgency to speak, looking towards the German as well.

  ‘Start how?’ Siemen frowned.

  ‘I was trained to investigate crime by starting at the beginning.’

  ‘Go to each murder scene?’

  ‘Haven’t you ever got your lead from something not in an official report: from a remark or an impression? A detective’s intuition? I know I have. We’ll stand more chance of getting what we want from talking to colleagues and re-interviewing people on the spot than ploughing through millions of words.’

  Claudine didn’t think she would be able to hold back much longer.

  ‘Starting in France?’ nodded Siemen, more in agreement than questioningly.

  ‘That’s where it began,’ Poulard said. He came back at last to Claudine. ‘How would you feel about that?’

  She had to avoid being confrontational, Claudine told herself. Or to stretch longer than necessary the objections almost too obvious to need pointing out. ‘Where, exactly, were the murder scenes in France? Or anywhere else? Do you intend going to every city or place where a body part was found? That would take for ever.’

  There was no facial reaction from the Frenchman, which Claudine thought was hopeful. Poulard said: ‘There is a Europol aircraft available. We would not be restricted by civil airlines. Nor need, necessarily, to go to every location. The French killings, for instance, are being coordinated in Paris.’

  Which defeated the whole object of going in the first place, mentally screamed Claudine. ‘All the scenes were public places. Which have been re-opened. Whatever might have been overlooked or unrealized at the time will have gone by now. All we would be doing is talking to the people who wrote the reports we’re asking to be sent to us.’

  ‘We could re-interview anyone we considered a major witness,’ Siemen suggested.

  ‘The only witnesses, in every case, were terrified people who found pieces of bodies and made panicked calls to police.’ An isolated fact that had been included in the French account occurred to her. ‘The Tolbiac cleaner admitted he’d made up his story of the black-caped phantom figure. By now, without knowing it or intending to mislead, half the witnesses who aren’t still in shock will have mentally embellished what happened. Think about it. For every one it’s the biggest event of their lives.’

  ‘You’re telling us we would be wasting our time,’ Siemen said.

  ‘I’m setting out the drawbacks I would personally encounter as part of this team,’ Claudine said smoothly. ‘Scenes of crimes are vital to me. I get the most important guides to a profile more quickly from them than in any other way. But by being there as quickly as possible after the crime has been committed. I’d gain nothing, this late.’

  ‘So you’re refusing to come?’ said Poulard.

  That question was as ill-phrased as some that Sanglier had posed. ‘I’m saying it wouldn’t help me in any way: that it would be a waste of my professional time, which would be more usefully spent here.’

  ‘I can see your point.’ Siemen was wavering.

  ‘This, surely, is how we are going to have to divide our responsibilities in a lot of things.’ Needing to argue her case like this was another fundamental change, Claudine accepted.

  ‘Obviously,’ agreed Siemen.

  ‘I’ve case files to read,’ said Poulard abruptly, out-argued again.

  Both men were still doing that at midday and Claudine was glad she could eat alone. When she returned Siemen said: ‘You’re right. They’re quite inadequate.’

  Sanglier agreed immediately to see them and just as quickly agreed to protest to every force, both directly and to the individual Europol commissioners. There was a hint of irritation when Poulard began to outline, at too great length, the disagreement about personally visiting the murder scenes, which Sanglier curtly cut off by saying he considered that was an operational decision that could be resolved at their level. Sanglier’s attitude answered Claudine’s uncertainty about raising with the man the previous night’s approach from Scott Burrows. By the end of the day copies of each of Sanglier’s cables, as well as his internal memoranda to individual commissioners, arrived at the incident room.

  ‘For someone concerned with the politics of everything that’s pretty impolitic language,’ said Poulard, surprised at the strength of Sanglier’s complaints.

  ‘We’ve got a commissioner squarely behind us,’ said Siemen.

  ‘It certainly looks like it,’ agreed Claudine.

  Sanglier was genuinely annoyed at what he considered a puerile attempt by national forces to undermine Europol, particularly as it hadn’t been isolated but was evident in every case. He was most forceful of all in his complaints to France, knowing the reaction his name would generate, and in addition to all the memoranda he demanded Franz Sobell convene a full meeting of commissioners. It was a situation that perfectly - and very publicly - illustrated the proper control he was maintaining over the operation.

  The most essential part of his control - again quite properly - was reviewing the tapes of the incident room discussions. From which, he conceded, Claudine Carter emerged as a formidable, mentally agile woman. Poulard had been an idiot persisting in his efforts to gain control of the group and deserved to be talked down, as he had been. But Sanglier discerned the effort Claudine was making to create an amicable working relationship. She’d made a convincing, justifiable argument against their visiting the scenes of the crimes and he remained uncertain of the benefits - professional as well as personal - of the idea, which was why he’d insisted the decision should be theirs, until he was better able to assess advantage against disadvantage of being involved. Of all he’d heard so far Sanglier was most intrigued by the woman’s vehemently stated determination not to fail, which fitted like a matching piece of a jigsaw with what Scott Burrows had recounted over lunch that day about Claudine’s refusal of any help from the American. Sanglier wished he had more than Burrows’ account of the meeting: refusing the advice of such an internationally recognized expert in her art could be a major indictment in any disciplinary hearing that might be orchestrated.

  Sanglier’s office door was unlocked that night so he didn’t have to get up to admit René Poulard but he did pour the whisky. Poulard, ingratiatingly, at once thanked Sanglier for the forcefulness of his protests, adding that he hoped national opposition wouldn’t be a continuing interference. Sanglier promised that if what he’d already done didn’t eradicate the problem he’d insist the current Commission chairman challenge the obstruction at the next meeting of the EU Justice Ministers, which he’d already decided to demand anyway, anxious as he was to get his already well known name circulating in political circles.

  The evidence inadequacy was an obvious delay but otherwise Poulard thought they had begun well. There’d been no opportunity yet to judge Kurt Volker’s ability but Yvette Fey had already proved herself an excellent administrative assistant. His initial impression of Bruno Siemen had been confirmed: in every discussion so far the man had shown himself to be a sound, practical policeman. He was afraid Claudine Carter might try to exceed her authority within their group but he did not see that as a problem. He admired the way she was working, so soon after the personal tragedy of losing her husband.

  Suicide, remembered Sanglier, from Claudine’s personnel file. There’d been no discussion on any tape he’d heard. ‘She mentioned it?’

  ‘At lunch. Said he had died suddenly only five months ago.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She didn’t say. An accident, I presumed.’

  It was understandable she wouldn’t volunteer the circumstances. Could there be any connection between the suicide and the visit of Peter Toomey? The British commissioner would be at the special meeting he’d convened, reflected Sanglier. It might be an opportunity to keep in mind. ‘Any indication of the personal preferences you believe she has?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘This obstruction nonsense will be sorted out.’

  �
��I still think we should go to where the murders occurred,’ said Poulard.

  ‘I thought we discussed that earlier,’ said Sanglier, refusing to make the decision for the man.

  ‘Siemen agrees with me.’

  ‘It’s for you to decide.’

  ‘We’ll go.’

  Scott Burrows fully accepted the irony of his being in The Hague as a result of his own profile, although he didn’t use the word. He thought of it as a bastard. He felt the Bureau had over-reacted to the danger - they could have surely looked after one of their own, him more than most - but there was fuck all he could do about it. Except wait. Which was the pisser. He’d never been so bored in his life, stuck in a godforsaken country among more squabbling, back-biting assholes than you could shake a stick at. It would have been all right if he could have become officially involved in the serial killings investigation. He could understand the woman, though, not wanting to share with anyone else. He’d have felt the same way himself, at her age. All he felt now was regret: regret at her refusal and at having to wait for the word from Washington DC that was taking for ever to arrive. That was the real pisser. The waiting.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Although Claudine was not completely alone – Yvette Fey was annotating the filing cabinets on a country-by-country basis in readiness for the expected murder dossiers and Kurt Volker was creating individual programs for each victim - there was the impression of having the incident room to herself and she welcomed it. She supposed it had been a reasonably good beginning, with no unpredictable disputes, but she still didn’t enjoy being part of a committee, with the constant need to consider everything she said and did from the viewpoint of others. That wasn’t Claudine’s way. She’d adjust, because she had no alternative, but she intended to take every advantage of times like these, when she could operate entirely by herself without the encumbrance of having to persuade others to her way of thinking if she disagreed with theirs.

  So what was her way of thinking?

  Despite the obstruction of inadequate case notes there were some conclusions she could reach. With the exception of the two white girls in Amsterdam and Brussels - and the girl, believed to be Turkish, in Cologne - all the victims were Asian. So Burrows’ racism theory had some validity, obvious though it might be. The killing of the Turkish girl fitted, too. So, letting the theory run, did the absence of identification, in every instance. It was impossible for that many people to die, in such an appalling way and surrounded by such hysterical publicity, without the family of at least one claiming the dismembered body - unless those families had entered the countries illegally and faced prosecution and deportation if they came forward. Age was another common denominator: maybe, even, the strongest linking factor, negative though it might be at the moment. Because there was no identity there was no specific age known for any of the victims but all were young, medically estimated between fifteen and twenty-two.

  Picking up the magnifying glass she’d brought from her own office Claudine rose from the small table, going for the first time to Yvette’s carefully created photographic sequences, further impressions at once jostling for attention in her mind. Yvette had not just maintained them in dated sequence but had logically devoted individual boards to the remains of each body. Although there were the omissions Claudine had isolated the previous day there were sufficient from each selection to make some preliminary comparisons, which were intriguing both for the similarities in some cases and for the differences in others.

  It was most obvious in the genital disfigurement. Although the autopsy reports were inadequate in every case, it appeared that a knife had been inverted into the pubis of the two girls in France, the teenager in London and the Chinese girl in Vienna and drawn upwards, grotesquely elongating their vaginas. Two parallel slash marks had been made on either side of the main wound. As well as having his penis severed, the Asian boy in France had been anally split in the same way, again with parallel cuts on either side. The wounds on all four were completely clean and visible in obscene detail: there was a pathologist’s note on the French killings insisting that it was the condition in which the torsos had been found at the scene, not cleaning that had been carried out by the surgeons prior to examination. The Viennese pathologist had recorded that the body of the Chinese girl had contained less than one pint of blood. The entire pubis of the girl in Cologne had been removed and the scene-of-discovery pictures showed the torso lying in so much blood that it was only after the post mortem cleaning in this case that it was possible to understand how she had been virtually disembowelled. The pubic areas of the white girls in Amsterdam and Brussels were both slashed by a series of criss-cross cuts and again there had been heavy blood loss, although in neither case had an attempt been made to disfigure the vagina. Only in these two cases had the breasts been removed, causing further heavy bleeding.

  Claudine went carefully but quickly over each board, examining the coupled hands wired into their cupped, praying position, taking far more time on her second examination. The hands of the washed-clean girls and the boy were in every instance held by wire looped three times round the wrist and finally secured by the two ends bent to form opposing hooks. There was only a single strand around the wrists of the Turkish girl and the wire was twisted secure, although it had failed to keep the two palms together. The wire binding on the girls in Brussels and Amsterdam was twisted closed, too, but in both cases was around the middle fingers of the hands, not around the wrists. And every fingertip had been cut away.

  ‘Is the display not done correctly?’

  Claudine turned at Yvette’s question, her concentration broken. ‘It’s very well arranged. Made it easy for me to reach some early conclusions.’

  ‘Only a total maniac could have done things like that to other human beings,’ said Yvette.

  Claudine was still surprised the girl could remain so controlled in front of such images. She suspected the remark was more what the girl imagined she was expected to say than genuine revulsion. She shook her head. ‘Maniacs did not do any of this. All of these murders - these injuries - were done by sane, calculating people.’

  ‘You can’t be serious!’

  ‘It might make finding them easier,’ said Claudine hopefully. Why had it stopped, she wondered for the first time. She shouldn’t overlook the interrupted regularity: nothing for more than a fortnight after a killing every week. She was standing by the first board, which showed photographs of the initial French murder, and bent close to it studying intently through the magnifying glass something she’d missed about the tethered hands. She examined the print of one of the recovered legs for confirmation and realized the task force needed another expert in their support group. She didn’t see any need to discuss it with Poulard and Siemen: it was so obvious they should have decided upon it before. They’d gone for an indeterminate time and there was no reason to impose her own delay: she could tell them when they made contact, which they’d undertaken to do. She didn’t think she had to clear it with Sanglier, either. It would be sufficient to send him a copy of the request, as a matter of courtesy.

  She moved from the display boards at last, making her way towards Volker. She was aware of a photo image on the screen in front of the man as she approached, although she was not immediately able to distinguish what it was. She was almost behind the German before realizing it was a digitalized picture of a completely naked woman reclining on a bed, legs splayed to expose her genitalia. The list of sexual services and the prices were recited in English.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  The unkempt German turned to her, smiling. ‘It’s an Amsterdam whores’ directory, on the Internet. I looked yesterday at the photo exhibits you’ve just studied. And couldn’t understand why the two white victims had their fingertips sliced off, unless it was to delay identification from after-death prints. Which would mean a police record. So I thought I’d run through the obvious possibilities.’

  Claudine was impressed by the ini
tiative. The same thought had occurred to her. ‘And?’

  The man shook his head. ‘Could be I’m maligning the girls. Or if I’m not they didn’t advertise. I guess the majority don’t. But I’ve still got Brussels to go through.’

  ‘How did you know how to find out if they advertised at all?’ frowned Claudine.

  Volker waved towards his inner office. She saw he’d had floor-to-ceiling racks moved in. Telephone book sized loose leafed binders were already neatly arranged. ‘There’s over a million entry codes and passwords there, hard copy back-up …’ He patted the side of the screen in front of him, like a proud owner acknowledging a favourite pet. ‘I’ve downloaded my disk copies, too. Indexed, of course …’ He scrolled to the next advertisement. It was of two black girls offering lesbian shows.

  ‘I’m glad I’m forewarned for when the accounts department query our computer charges for accessing sex lines.’

  ‘It won’t show as that,’ said Volker easily. ‘I’ve hacked into Amsterdam police central computer: I’ve lodged a parasite program there they don’t know about, with my own access code. I’m in every national police computer in Europe. And Interpol. Amsterdam will get charged for this. And it’s not just the cost. I can go in and out whenever I want. Entering a target system piggy-back avoids leaving a computer “fingerprint” traceable back to us: some systems have that as part of their security protection against unauthorized access.’

  Claudine laughed openly. ‘I thought we were supposed to be upholding the law!’

  ‘We’re all on the same side,’ said Volker, unabashed. this way is quicker than going through the bureaucracy of official requests and delivery. If we get anything at all, that is: I was appointed when Europol was just a distribution centre.’ He jerked his hand to where her files lay at the other end of the room. ‘You were lucky to get those.’