A Death in Sweden(48)

Dan nodded and said, “I have to move tomorrow anyway, out of Paris. I’ve got a lead.” He was distracted even as he spoke, looking at Inger. “Maybe it’s better if you do take a . . .”

She shook her head, a barely perceptible movement, but letting him know that she was part of this, that she would remain part of it, no matter what Brabham was planning.

In the pause that followed, Ville said, “You got out with no problem?”

Dan looked at him and said, “They were moving in. Another five minutes and I might have been in trouble. But no, I got out okay, thanks. Killed one guy in the alley behind the hotel, not CIA, a freelancer.”

“Oh, sure. I see.” Ville looked shocked, perhaps by the fact that Dan’s version of a trouble-free exit including killing someone. “Well, anyway, you should be okay for a while.”

Dan looked at the room, but Inger said, “Not here. I’ve booked us into a business hotel. It’s better that way, so Ville doesn’t know where we are. We go there now.”

Dan shook Ville’s hand again and said, “I appreciate everything you’ve done for us. I don’t suppose your channels picked up anything else that might be useful, anything on Brabham?”

Ville smiled, saying, “I hate to break the bad news, but I think you’re already becoming the number-one expert on Bill Brabham.”

Dan nodded, taking it as a joke, hoping it was a joke, and hoping even more that Bergeron would give him something decent the next day.

They left Ville in the room and traveled a little way out to the business hotel she’d booked. In the car they hardly spoke but she held his hand the whole time and seemed to express more in the clutch of her fingers around his than if they’d talked.

When they did talk, it wasn’t about Brabham, and it wasn’t until they were lying in bed together, much later, that she said, “Where do we go tomorrow? You said you had a lead?”

He almost didn’t want to think about the next day, or that day as it now was, not many hours ahead of them. How long, he wondered, would they be able to just hole up here and keep the world at bay? The simple answer was never long enough.

“There was a security tape from a bank, which by chance covered the entrance to the alley where Sabine was killed. The security guard was related to someone at DGSE headquarters, so he sent the tape to him—”

“So it’s true! Jack Redford got into the DGSE?”

“Not only that. The guy who received the tape had set up a meeting with a colleague from the Interior Ministry the next day, but the guy died in a car wreck that night.”

“And Redford disappeared. But without the tape?”

“I’m guessing so. What we saw in the shelter suggests Redford was trying to reconstruct the case after the fact. With the tape he wouldn’t have needed to do that.”

She nodded impatiently, as if annoyed with herself for not seeing that, and said, “So, presumably, he handed over the tape, maybe they tried to kill him or he got nervous, and he ran.”

Dan nodded, thinking back over what he’d heard the night before, and said, “Someone I spoke to said he’d received a letter from an old friend in Beirut, that it had unsettled him, so maybe that played a part in him disappearing. There’s someone else I can see about that, but it’s hardly the main issue right now.” He waited a beat, and said, “The tape may be gone, but as far as we know, there is someone still alive who saw it—the security guard. He lives near Auxerre, about an hour and a half’s drive from Paris. That’s where we’re headed tomorrow.”

“But why is he still alive?”

Dan shrugged and said, “Who knows? Maybe Brabham got complacent, maybe he reasoned a dead security guard would arouse more suspicion than a security guard who might make claims but wouldn’t be able to back them up. Maybe the guard is crazy. Maybe Brabham saw the tape and realized it proved nothing. Whatever it is, we’ll find out tomorrow.”

“Auxerre,” she said, as if just for the pleasure of saying the word.

“Near Auxerre,” he said, correcting her.

“We’ll need a car.”

“I have a car, here in Paris. They might not even know about it, but even if they do, we’ll probably be just as under the radar in my car as we would with a rental.”

She looked at him as if he’d said something extraordinary.

“You have a car, here in Paris?” He nodded. “What kind?”

“It’s a Mercedes. An SUV. I haven’t driven it in ages—be nice to get behind the wheel again.” She looked at him, a lightly mocking smile on her lips. “What?”

“It’s something I’ve thought several times, that you’re quite a lot like Jack Redford. And now I find out you also have an SUV that you hardly ever drive. Another similarity.”

“Yeah? Maybe I should go the whole hog and move to Sweden.” Already, this soon, it was only half a joke, and he studied her face carefully to gauge her expression—she was trying to play equally cool, but he couldn’t help but think he detected a certain interest, even happiness in her eyes. “I could rent a place to begin with, not up in the north like Jack, but maybe some nice neighborhood in Stockholm. What’s your neighborhood like?”

Looking like someone determined not to be teased, she was offhand as she said, “You know it. We met for coffee there.”