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Back The Man With No Face
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

The next few minutes he spent slowly, painfully, making fists with his right hand and working his arm straight and then crooking it. Gradually the muscles and the nerves eased and he got a pins-and-needles sensation from shoulder to fingertips. But that passed and he leaned back in his seat to look around the office. It seemed much as it had earlier in the day. There was no evidence of an intruder. He got up and crossed to Slater’s desk, pulling open the drawer. The folders were gone. So was the contacts book. Someone had known what they were looking for and exactly where to find it. That narrowed the field considerably. He sat for a few minutes more, then took out his notebook, flipped over several pages, picked up the phone and dialled. He wasn’t sure why he was calling her. A cry in the dark. The number rang out and he hung up.

He stood up and swung his head to either side to ease the stiffening in his neck. He switched out the light and closed the door behind him, making sure it was well and truly locked.

III

A light shone from the window of the top-floor flat in the apartment block in the Rue de Commerce. Bannerman might not have noticed it except that there were only two other lights showing in the entire block. Slater’s car, a dark blue Volkswagen, sat at the kerbside. Bannerman paid off his taxi and watched the vehicle move off down the street. It was only a fifteen- or twenty-minute walk from the IPC building, but he had not felt like walking.

He shuffled about on the pavement, unsure what to do. He looked up again at the light in the window, weighing the possibilities. But he was too tired and too sore to think too much about it. It was cold out here, his breath billowing yellow in the street lights, melting the big snowflakes that were falling all around him. Inside he started up the stairs, listening to his footsteps clattering back at him off the walls. It seemed even colder in the stairwell than it had outside. The landing lights were mercilessly icy in the chill of their glare. But the light they cast on the stairs was feeble.