One Damn Thing After Another (18 page)

“Make music; I like it. You're as clear as glass. I'm up there in the observatory there across the road. I can see and hear everything you get up to. Give me a good laugh.” He rang off and left her frowning. Henri-le-Hollandais sounded like one of those Amsterdam jokers in Piet's funny stories, a century ago. She went back to work.

If she could get hold of the Laboisserie boy – that sounded too like police work; and she was no more anxious to meet Argentine cops than these funnybunny equivalents here at home – what would she say? That all was forgotten and forgiven, and so what? Estelle had gone on about Uncle François, who was Tante Edwige's husband and who would … all that was going round and round in circles and the boy would not
be the least bit interested. That he should realize he was not a pariah, good. That he should mend his fences, good. That he should realize that throwing his family out of his life was not needed and even actively harmful … but his view of the future would not be a good job in Strasbourg provided by Uncle François.

Suddenly a voice was ringing in her inner ear. ‘He comes from Holland: his name's Henkie.' Sounding in French more like Onky, which threw one, until one thought that even in Holland people aren't called Onky. Whereas a great many Dutch people are called Henk. It is because of the peculiar Dutch mania for pet or babyname abbreviations. A Wilhelmina becomes instantly a Willy or a Mientje, will never be anything else all her life, and wouldn't even recognize her own real name. The Dutch bicycle champion, Joop Zoetemelk, adopted moreover by the French since he married a French girl and lives here, is known to all as Yop. Tell them his name is Joe and they won't believe you. (Known to Arthur, a great bike fan, as Monsieur Lait-sucré and in moments of enthusiasm as Youpi.)

Henk is short for Hendrik and Hendrik is Henri; not after all some exceedingly obscure fourth-century Irish missionary who spread the gospel in Lithuania.

This crack in the darkness ought to allow further light to spread. What could she recall about Dutch Henkie?

He had died, by falling off a barge into the Rhine perfectly plausibly, off a greasy deck in a bobble of current, while emptying the rubbish overside. She'd gone on holiday – had there been any sequel?

The Commissaire of police had not been anxious for a sequel. Had declared in a voice of bland officialdom that it all seemed perfectly normal to him. Nothing to excite the German river police about, or anybody else.

What else had he had to tell? That Henk was yes, a cook on a river tug; was also a gangster, among other activities a specialist in violence for hire to anybody with an interest in using violence, and too cautious or cowardly to do it himself.
Had very likely killed people but evidence for this did not add up to legal proof.

He had let fall some curious and gratuitous information: Arlette racked her brains. He'd told Henk to be seen no more in France (did a barge on the Rhine count as France, or sort-of extra-territorial?). He'd been rather smiling and content to hear of Henk-overboard. Arlette, not quite sure whether she was saying it jokingly, had said You didn't have him pushed, did you? No, no, no, with roars of laughter, but – what was it? – had he finished the phrase? Wasn't going to raise a manhunt if anybody had? Or was she imagining that?

She turned back pages in her daybook to before the holidays, looked the date up, phoned the invaluable fellow-she-knew on the composition of the local paper, asked him would he look it up.

Answer came that afternoon. It had been a ‘Fait Divers'. Happened at pretty near the limit of Alsace, where the Rhine ceases to be French. Body found some days later away down stream. Much lacerated, not to say mutilated. But there was no follow-up to it. Why, should there have been?

Just incidental curiosity.

That somebody had arranged this death was conceivable, since she had herself conceived the idea at that time. People, including the police and Arthur, would of course say that this exemplified her incorrigible, even morbid, taste for melodrama. Hypothesize for a moment if you please.

The somebody, let's say of a tidy and administrative cast of mind, is not wishful for the arrangement to take place in France. Those two handy necessities to the melodramatic mind, the First and Second Murderers, were a bit clumsy as they often are. Say a bit premature. Instead of being well downstream into Germany, the boat puts back into Lauterbourg.

You do realize I hope, my dear woman, that you have absolutely no right whatsoever to imagine anything of the sort.

Simply hypothesizing, gentlemen. I do not suggest that this individual, the woman Davidson, formerly known as woman van der Valk, imagines any such thing. Follow me closely. It
is a personage as yet unseen, but quite real, who is imagining things. Observe this logic.

One, this fellow exists, because I don't go about hearing voices. Not Joan of Arc, nor that annoying friend of Arthur's, Mr Gilbert Pinfold, who was not only permanently pissed but putting huge doses of barbiturates on top.

Two, he describes himself as a Friend of Henri-le-Hollandais. And why should he think I have any connection with or interest in HIH? I wasn't even a witness.

Because three, he's the one who imagines things. Like it?

Listen, Arlette dear, let's get it clear: Friend is of an imbecile cast of mind. Friend sees people juxtaposed, and sees a casual connection – witness the attack upon Xavier. You were in companionship, and apparently friendly, with the paternal Commissaire. Arrived at Lauterbourg in his car, you recall? Friend thus, repeating the Xavier pattern, equates your accidental presence at the scene with complicity in it.

And doesn't this mean that Friend knows, or makes at least an informed guess, that the Paternal
did
have complicity in it? Stop in your tracks right there, girl.

Can't you see, you're piling one supposition upon another, and that leads you to far-fetched conclusions. One doesn't mind it being far-fetched, but the conclusion must be utterly false. Just like those silly and tiresome German people who were convinced Arthur was their father. Clutching at any handy straw to shore up the theory they wanted to believe in, they ended by committing themselves irrevocably to its being true. It
had
to be true.

A couple of days ago, Madame, you had a full-scale demonstration of what happens when people fall so deeply in love with a mistake. They make themselves totally ridiculous. You should be able to see that Friend has tumbled into the same trap. Do me a favour, girl: don't make it three in a row.

Whatever this was or this wasn't, decided Arlette, determined not to work herself up, it was plainly police business. By police I don't mean those slobs down the road. Nor ex-Sergeant Subleyras. But Police Judiciaire.

A quandary here. If it was the Paternal it would be a simple
matter. Ring him up, say Look, I know nothing and I want to stay that way. But a perfectly casual connection with you has somehow dragged me into the shit. So it's up to you to get me out, okay?

That was a present conditional, meaning she wasn't sure either that she could or would do this, but it was at least possible.

Reality indeed was a past conditional. Not ‘would be'; ‘would have been'. Had not Sergeant Subleyras informed her that the Paternal was gone, translated to exalted spheres? There was a new one in his place.

Now a divisional commissaire of Police Judiciaire, commanding an important, thickly populated region like Strasbourg – sensitive too, and a listening post, because of the double frontier with Germany and Switzerland, is a complex person, dealing with complex affairs. An iceberg, showing only a tip. This was simply self-evident. One had only to recall Schleyer. Mr Schleyer (one recalled) was the titular head of German industry, the patron of the Patrons, the bosses' boss. Assassinated by the Red Faction, the so-called Baader-Meinhof gang. To be more precise kidnapped in Köln, hidden down in South Germany, transferred when things got too hot to Switzerland, and perhaps France – there had been a confusing pattern of dodge-and-double-back on the three-cornered frontier. But when the body was discovered, it was in Mulhouse, and that is a French town. Coming within the competence of the Regional Service of Police Judiciaire in Strasbourg. Which, in its subsequent prolonged dealings with the Germans and the Swiss, had to show diplomatic skills, tact, nicety of touch.

For a cop, in fact, about the roughest test you could face. It is not just a murder enquiry: it's the political heat you have to take. Prefects, Ministers, even Heads of State are breathing down your neck; you're up to here in all the Secret Service ‘parallel police'; with your free hand, if you had one, you're fending off the entire international press. As for your own staff, whose readiness and wakefulness is under severe strain, they do nothing but complain that these goddam Germans have unlimited funds and the very latest, ultrasophisticate, electronic
communications and tracking material, while they have to make do, more or less, with a donkey cart and a World War One field telephone.

She put the whole puzzle out of her mind: thinking along these lines wasn't going to get her anywhere at all. Who did she know at the PJ office?

Well, there was Papi, an inspector, meaning medium-grade officer. Experienced, intelligent, tortuous like all these PJ types – but on the whole sympathetic. He should be able to handle a thing like this, or know who could … There was also Corinne Klein, a junior inspector who had taught her some of the things that police females are supposed to know about. As a woman, disadvantaged by the machismo mentalities of Criminal Brigades, and a bit too junior.

“Hallo. Papi, please … Not in the office? … Gone? what d'you mean, gone? Gone where to? … oh, lor' … well then, Corinne Klein, please, if she's there.” Blasted Papi posted, Avignon or somewhere. “Hallo Corinne? – Arlette … Middling, and yourself? Look, can you manage a drink? Like to hear how the world goes – when are you off? What about the pub in the Rue de Zürich? Okay, make it then? No, now if you like, I'm free. Okay, ten minutes.”

Even meeting the PJ might be tricky. Friend was hanging about. Did he know any of them? Was he really following her about, or was that all a lot of bullshit designed to get her rattled? She wasn't going to get rattled. But she would put her gunbelt on. Her wearing a gun was a thing Corinne's trained eye would not miss, but would not be perturbed by. Arlette had a right to carry a gun. Her permission to do so had come right from this PJ office, and it had been Corinne that had taught her to manage it.

Corinne was waiting for her, and was, moreover, wearing a gun herself. It is not difficult to tell: a tendency to loose, hip-length jackets. Police agents, even the girls, are not mucking about with whore-pistols. The pearl-handled nickelled twenty-two went out with Carmen Sternwood, and the thirty-two not much later. It's all the big calibre now. If you're going to point it at all, it has to impress people. If it's someone who thinks he's the Monster and isn't impressed, the thing has to stop him, even if he's coming at you like a Diesel train. The smallest that will do this is a nine-millimetre calibre, an American 38. The boys have taken to magnums, but these have too much charge for a woman's wrist and forearm, unless she were an East-German swimmer or something. Arlette's was a revolver with a short barrel; no effective range, but both impressive and guaranteed to stop a bear. What Corinne's was, she had never enquired. She was a shortish, stubby girl; the local morphology. Nicely shaped, with a square handsome head, hair cut short – as opposed to those on television, police-girls do not have long hair – and good legs. Arlette was a lot taller, but child-bearing had given her a bigger behind. Corinne indeed had a tiny behind like a frog, enviable when you have to wear a gunbelt. If the beastly thing is to be of any use, it is no good having it in your handbag.

The two women sat in the corner of the pub and had a beer.

Gossip, shop, jokes. They were easy with one another; got on comfortably. They didn't know one another well: nothing heart to heart about them. Corinne knew perfectly that Arlette had asked her for a professional purpose: until it came out, one simply observed the forms.

“So you've a new boss, I hear.”

“Indeed we have. Early days yet. Got to watch your step with him. Big contrast.”

“What way?”

“Oh the other, you know, looked all austere and ascetic but was fairly easy-going, a good delegator. This one's rather younger, has an affable teddybear manner. Plumpish face and soft-spoken, but cracks the whip. That's fairly normal in a new guy taking over a big department, but you can see it's going to be the authoritarian style, once the getting-to-know-you is done with. What's this memo, who wrote it, where is she, send her up here: what's the meaning of this? Big fitness campaign: no excess waistline tolerated.”

“I was on holiday: must have missed the announcement. What's his name?”

“Casabianca. Out of the mafia down in Nice. And he'll stand on the burning deck all right, whence all but he have fled. A small, local fire, he'll say: put it out by myself. Pass me that bucket.”

“I'm not sure that he sounds altogether my cup of tea.”

Corinne laughed good-humouredly.

“You'll be all right. You stay quiet and nobody'll worry about you. You've good marks. All that stuff Devious Dan invented about giving you a permit was to have a rug to pull if need be. Giving it to let you know he could withdraw it again any time. If it's Casa you're worried about, you can forget it. He's less legalistic than Berger was.” If it was – even ever so slightly – patronizing, this was not going to ruffle Arlette. Corinne had saved her life, and that was not pitching it too high, upon an occasion. Professionally, it was true; in the call-of-duty. Nevertheless.

“Tell me, Corinne, did you ever come across mention of someone called Henri le Hollandais?”