Fever (19 page)

Godofrey ignored him and continued to read out the string of letters and write them down. Then he paused.

“The reversed alphabet,” he said slowly. “Probably German. I don't want to intrude on your little secrets. You managed to decipher it yourself?”

“Er, no,” said Studer, slightly embarrassed. “My wife did.”

“Ah, Madame Studère! Doesn't surprise me, doesn't surprise me at all. A man like you, Inspector, is lucky in everything, even if you don't deserve it. A man like you is bound to have an intelligent wife, a shrewd wife, one only has to look at you to see that. Madame Studère . . .” he repeated. “Will I ever have the privilege of presenting my profound respect to her?”

“I think,” said Studer drily, “that my wife prefers
pâté de foie gras
to respect, however profound.”

“You're a materialist, Inspector Fouché,” said Godofrey, entering into the joke, “but I'll remember the pâté. And now, best of luck. Be careful. Here is a French police identity badge . . .”

Studer in the Foreign Legion

Godofrey had been right. Sergeant Beugnot, who had been given the task of keeping the detective from Bern under surveillance, was not the brightest of officers. Or, and this was the alternative explanation for his behaviour, he considered the Swiss stupid and Sergeant Studer a particularly harmless specimen.

The same Sergeant Beugnot was waiting at the gate of the Palais de Justice. He followed Studer to the Métro, got out with him at Pigalle station, went into the hotel with him, stood behind him while he paid his bill, then followed his charge to the Gare de l'Est – putting the French government to the expense of a taxi – and waited on the platform until the Basel train left the station. Studer was in a good mood. He waved out of the window with his broad-brimmed hat and had to laugh when Sergeant Beugnot, to whom he was waving, automatically waved back. As he did so the expression of astonishment on the French policeman's face made him look even more stupid than regulations required.

He had to be careful, Studer told himself as he sat in his window seat watching the leprous houses of the suburbs judder past. Careful! How different had his journey of a week ago been! Then there had been a girl sitting opposite him: grey suede shoes, silk stockings, fur jacket . . . The sergeant forced himself back to the present. He had to take care. But what did that mean in practical terms? He couldn't go back
to Switzerland. Swiss passport control would let him through with no problem, but how was he to leave the country again? Go through French passport control with false papers? Risky. Dangerous!

The thing to do was to follow the example of some of the other participants in this messy case and disappear. It pained Studer that he would not even be able to tell his wife, but this time he must avoid the least carelessness, and it would certainly be careless to entrust a letter to the French postal service.

He got out at the little town of Belfort and spent the night in a hotel there – in the centre, not by the station. He bought a new suitcase, a homburg, a dark coat and a pair of light brown boots with strong soles. Then he went to a barber to have his moustache shaved off and his hair dyed black. It was going alarmingly grey at the temples. The police badge worked wonders. The barber was flattered and gave him a conspiratorial smile, the hotel owner immediately took the registration form back uncompleted. Studer had said two words: “Political assignment”, and placed his index finger to his lips. “I understand, I understand perfectly,” the hotel owner had replied in the same conspiratorial tones.

Then the Swiss sergeant, who had suddenly become a French inspector, continued his journey to Bourg. There he changed trains and took a branch line to Bellegarde. In Bellegarde he waited for the overnight train from Geneva via Grenoble to Port-Bou on the Spanish border. A few stops before Port-Bou was Port-Vendres, where the unknown man had told the Bern muggers to contact him.

And while he was waiting for the express in Bellegarde Sergeant Studer said farewell to his loyal travelling companion, his scuffed pigskin suitcase. It
was a silent but emotional farewell. Things often have more heart than human beings: every wrinkle that years of use had etched into its leather puckered up – but it didn't cry. Suitcases don't cry, suitcases content themselves with a woebegone, reproachful look.

Port-Vendres . . . On one side of the harbour, which is nothing more than a large, foul-smelling basin, is a huge hotel, which is usually empty. Here, too, the identity badge worked wonders, but it was nothing compared with its effect on the young woman in the post office.

Studer went to the counter, said, in a tone of voice he had picked up from Madelin, “Police!” – perhaps we ought to mention here that Studer spoke French without a German accent, his mother came from Nyon – and flashed the badge at her in the palm of his hand.

The timid girl nodded with alacrity, half getting up from her chair; she remained in that semi-upright posture – knees slightly bent, body tilted forward – all the time.

“What can . . . how can . . . how can I help
monsieur l'inspecteur
?”

“I would like to examine any items of mail that have arrived poste restante in the past few weeks,” said Studer, quaking just as much as the girl. “I mean, my dear girl, items that have not been collected.”

The “dear girl” flushed, which was something of a disaster since the natural red of her cheeks simply did not match the artificial red of her lips.

“The . . . the . . . poste-restante letters? Certain . . . certainly,
monsieur l'inspecteur
.”

Five letters.
Forget-me-not 28, Mimosa 914, Lonely violet in the spring air, Rudolf Valentino 69
and – at last! –
Port-Vendres 30–7
. The handwriting!

“I need this letter.” Studer tried to speak firmly, but
in vain, his voice quavered, but the girl did not notice. “Shall I give you a receipt?”

“A . . . a . . . receipt? If you would be . . . would be so good . . .
monsieur l'inspecteur
.”

The wind was coming off the sea, bringing with it damp air and a faint smell of seaweed and fish. Studer breathed in deeply. Then he opened the letter.

Dear Cousin Jakob,

I know you'll get this letter because you're a clever man. He 's furious that the attack on you didn't succeed, but I just laughed. The panic's over – when I rang you up, I'd lost my head for a moment. Now I've found it again, it wasn't difficult, it's big enough – my head, that is. I'm very glad you've decided to make the long journey, I can't manage the whole business all on my own. And Father Matthias can't help me at all. Why? You'll find out soon enough. It's essential you go via Géryville – if you can find any transport to get you there – and I'll meet you in Gourama. It's a date! I can't manage without you, so make sure you get there. But not before 25 January. And don't worry if you don't see me, I'll appear when I have to. In the meantime you can pass the time with the man in charge of the fort there. He's called Lartigue and comes from the Jura. Perhaps you'll find another to make up a threesome for a game of Jass – but don't play higher than ten French centimes a point. So far you've followed your nose and it's not let you down. Keep it up, you're doing an excellent job!

With warmest greetings from your adoptive niece

Marie

“Little hussy!” Studer growled, then immediately looked round in alarm. No, no one could have heard his exclamation. The quayside was empty, thank God. He read the letter again, then carefully stowed it
away in his breast pocket to keep the temperature chart company. But straight away a gust of wind put a damper on his satisfaction and pleasure at receiving the letter. It swept the homburg off his head and into the waters of the basin. Swear and curse as he might, there was nothing for it but to get a replacement. So Studer bought himself a beret. As he left the shop, he examined his reflection in the window. With his lean, clean-shaven face and his massive body tightly buttoned up in the dark overcoat, which was cut to fit neatly at the waist, he didn't look Swiss at all, and the beret added a rakish touch. He was very pleased with his appearance, was Sergeant Studer, pleased at having transformed himself into a different person. What he did not know was that this faint quiver of pleasure was to be his last for some considerable time. For three weeks, to be precise . . . Though three weeks can seem to go on for just as many years.

A boat leaves Port-Vendres twice a week for Oran and one was due to sail the following day. Studer was glad about that as the miniature harbour was getting on his nerves, particularly its foul stench of tanbark and Spanish nuts. The sea was filthy and the waves were like fat old women with not-quite-clean lace headscarves on their greasy grey hair – the scarves fluttered in the air as the women rolled laboriously on.

So the sea was a disappointment, and the boat did nothing to improve matters. As commonly happens in the Golfe du Lion, a storm made its presence felt, with an admixture now of hail, now of snow. Studer was not seasick, but he wasn't happy either. As a French police inspector he couldn't smoke his Brissagos. The French are unacquainted with that inspired invention, they smoke cigarettes, at most a pipe. Studer had bought himself a pipe. On board he practised not letting it go
out. It was difficult. But then all at once he got a taste for it and enjoyed it so much he threw one of his last Brissagos, which he had been surreptitiously lighting up in his cabin, out of the porthole. The perfidious thing had suddenly started to taste of glue.

As there was nothing for him in Oran, he travelled straight on to Bel-Abbès, where he was plunged into a world so foreign it made his head ache.

The arrival at the little railway station to start with: a dozen men were standing to attention, dressed in green greatcoats tied at the waist with greyish-white flannel cummerbunds, the bayonets on their rifles shining with a blackish gleam. Men in uniform, but without rifles, poured out of the carriage behind the engine. They were lined up in rows of four, surrounded by the men with bayonets, then marched off.

Studer followed them. A long road between fields with stunted tree trunks. They were grapevines, but they grew them differently here than at home in Vaud. In the sky was an improbably white moon, which was vainly trying to wipe away the clouds that kept floating past its flat nose.

A town gate, the pillars and arch of red brick . . . A broad street . . . Railings, and outside the railings a sentry, also in a pale green greatcoat, guarding the entrance . . . And behind the railings a barracks square surrounded by dreary buildings; with their leprous plaster they reminded him of the houses he had rumbled past in the Paris suburbs.

Studer went up to the sentry and demanded to see the colonel. The sentry listened to his request impassively, then indicated the direction with a backwards jerk of the head. Studer was beginning to lose patience. Where should he report, he snapped.

“Guardroom,” the man said, letting his rifle drop
from his shoulder with a crash. Studer jumped back in alarm. But the sentry had caught it with his left hand, which had suddenly come up to the horizontal – only then did Studer realize the sentry was presenting arms. An officer went past, being taken for a stroll by his wife, and flapped a salute at him.

“What?” Studer asked, when the rifle was back at the slope on the sentry's shoulder.

“You have to report to the guardroom,” the legionnaire repeated. The words were as hard as flint. But the intonation of his French? The timbre? Yes, there was no doubt about it, the sentry spoke French with a Bernese German accent. Studer looked at him and was immediately reminded of the song about the soldier “on lonely watch in midnight dark”, thinking of the girl he left behind. But the familiar sounds only made the whole thing more eerie. And there was a cold wind blowing that tasted of soil and sand . . .

The sergeant commanding the guard was a Russian, a well-mannered man who made an effort not to let his dislike of the police become too apparent. But his expression spoke volumes. “Just let me catch you down a dark alley,” it seemed to say. Detectives were not popular with the Foreign Legion.

Colonel Boulet-Ducarreau, he informed Studer, was in his quarters, but he would advise
monsieur l'inspecteur
Fouché to come back the next day.

Studer departed with a sigh. One more day! But he had time, plenty of time. As long as he was in Gourama on 25 January. Today was the eleventh. He had his dinner in a brightly lit restaurant, no worse than in Paris. He drank a very acceptable white wine, which, however, turned out to have a sting in its tail. At one point – he was just about to put a forkful of food in his mouth and it gave him such a shock he stabbed his
lip – he felt a hand grasp his ankle. Had he been unmasked? Was he about to be clapped in irons? Trembling, he lifted the tablecloth. A tiny Arab boy grinned up at him with two rows of snow-white teeth. A shoeshine boy.

The best way to imagine Colonel Boulet-Ducarreau was as an Edam cheese balanced on a huge balloon of blue cloth. The cheese was his head, the blue balloon his trunk, without his legs, which he kept concealed under the table.

“Enlisted in Strasbourg?” he wheezed. “Despine? Yes, I know, I know. Took the money and deserted. When? Just a moment. Saturday today, isn't it? They get their pay on Thursday. Two hundred and fifty francs. By the evening Despine had vanished. Haven't been able to find him yet, you'll have to look for him yourself. One thing we do know, he didn't take a ship in Oran. Perhaps my secretary has more details. Vanagass,” he squawked.