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Chapters (45)
  1. The Man With No Face
  2. Also by
  3. Title
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. Epigraph
  7. Contents
  8. INTRODUCTION
  9. CHAPTER ONE
  10. CHAPTER TWO
  11. CHAPTER THREE
  12. CHAPTER FOUR
  13. CHAPTER FIVE
  14. CHAPTER SIX
  15. CHAPTER SEVEN
  16. CHAPTER EIGHT
  17. CHAPTER NINE
  18. CHAPTER TEN
  19. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  20. CHAPTER TWELVE
  21. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  22. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  23. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  24. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  25. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  26. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  27. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  33. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  34. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  35. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  36. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  37. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  41. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  42. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  43. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  44. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  45. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

She gave a slight start as a door slammed somewhere in the depths of the building. Not everyone was asleep. A light came on downstairs, throwing a broad wedge of light out across the snow on the terrace. Something was moving down there, something dark and huddled that froze as it was caught in the sudden light. The shadow of a man fell away from the house, long and thin. A face turned up towards the window, sickly pale, whiter than snow. Tania did not move. It was a face she knew, a face in which she saw a reflection of her own fear. Eyes in which she recognized the same hunted look she had seen in the Rue de Pavie. Then the light went out and she could no longer see him, but knew he was still there. And knew, too, that he had come for her.

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY

The night was empty and yet still young. Bannerman had dropped Sally outside a block of tenement flats in the old part of town. She had not asked him up, returning alone to an empty apartment. He had sat for a few minutes in the car watching her light go on three floors up. She was so unpredictable. Someone must have hurt her very badly.

He remembered the girl from telesales, the night that he had finally taken her to bed. Clumsy and inexperienced. A moment spoiled by youth, ignorance and fear. The final disillusionment of the angry years. Nothing in his life had been sacred since. It was a night when he should have grown up. But that was not to come until six weeks later, when she came to him one night after work and told him that she was carrying his child.

Though even then he had failed to learn. It was ironic that she was the one who would teach him, that it was she who grew up in that time much more quickly than he.

Bannerman turned the car away from the kerb. A curtain on the third floor fluttered and a face appeared momentarily at the window. But he did not see it. He glanced at the time. It was not yet nine, and he recalled the crumpled card in his pocket and took it out. He stopped the car under a lamp post and held it in the light. Her Majesty’s Minister for Foreign Affairs extends an invitation . . . Nine o’clock at the Restaurant Noir in Rue des Bouchers. He rummaged in the glove compartment and found an indexed street map. The Rue des Bouchers was about a hundred metres from the Grande Place where he had sat that morning under the yellow awning enjoying the winter sunshine. He allowed himself a grim smile and slammed the glove compartment shut. It was about time he began stirring things.

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