Tsing-Boum

by Nicolas Freeling

  ‘I’ve no idea; I’m a poor illiterate barefoot Provençal peasant. I am the chèvre de Monsieur Séguin.’

  ‘Except that you ate the wolf. Well, I won’t be home for lunch. I have to go to the effing Hague. Sandwich in snackbar.’

  ‘Well I’ll keep you some for tonight. I fixed Ruth’s school.’

  ‘Good. Well I’ll see you this evening – I hope.’

  ‘Toi-toi-toi,’ said Arlette in German; a slightly politer way of wishing one good luck than the classic ‘Break your neck and your leg’ so cheerfully used by sports reporters …

  He was agreeably surprised, all the same, when at exactly thirteen minutes to two he was sitting on an overheated chair, having already said his little piece, and the gentleman across the Empire desk in a very pleasant airy Empire room – the overheated chair was strictly his own fault: central heating was under control, for once – was meditating.

  ‘I can’t quite see what this French security lot …’

  ‘That’s it, Excellency; they’re being enigmatic – their way of tipping me off and wondering if I’m bright enough to catch on. They won’t give us any co-operation, naturally, because they’re the soul of tact and wouldn’t dream of dabbling in our affairs. The message seems to me plain. No secret army, but something there. They may not know, or be unsure, or it may simply be something they prefer not to touch. They may be using me as a stalking horse. But it appears to me crass to overlook it.’

  Fingertips were pointing at each other in too clean shiny rows like chessmen; a green onyx pen set occupied neutral ground between.

  ‘At all costs we must avoid anything political,’ said a quiet voice. ‘If you go, the newspapers will lose interest. I can see to it that a discreetly-worded release goes out, after you leave. I tell you frankly that if I agree it is to the least of evils, possibly. The French … charming, brilliant, delightful, and diabolical – not always in that order …’

  ‘I have a confidential tip that they may smooth my path.’

  ‘At least you’re well placed. You’re familiar with the language, the people. If I remember aright your wife is French?’

  ‘Quite correct, Excellency.’

  ‘I spoke to the Procureur-Général about you. Once you were called on to undertake an inquiry in France on behalf of a family. It appears that you made a good job of it. But you got shot. We don’t want any of that.’ He reached out and drank a half-glass of milk that was on the corner of his desk. ‘Forgive me – I had no lunch.’

  ‘I sympathize, Excellency – neither did I.’

  There was a slow wintry smile. ‘Very well, Commissaire. Your experience in these matters is perhaps a treasury. Will you be cross with me if I repeat that under no circumstances must there be conflicts and scandals with these official and unofficial French watchdogs?’ The avuncular manner did not ring false. This is a simple kindly man, thought Van der Valk, who liked to ‘be cross with me’.

  ‘I won’t be silly,’ he promised.

  ‘Well, well,’ sighing, ‘I’ll have a word with the Chief Commissaire. You’d better go and see the Comptroller about currency and so on. I’ll see that it’s cleared with him.’

  In a dingier office he got a sub-Comptroller, who haggled for a long time about expenses.

  ‘Don’t come back with any notes for taxi fares or the Comptroller will take a very dim view.’

  ‘Fancy that.’

  ‘France is a very expensive country, you know.’

  ‘I had no idea. I’ll try not to enjoy it.’

  ‘Rather you than me,’ said this dogfaced baboon, stung.

  ‘Is there a choice?’

  There was rather a nasty silence while a lot of paper got shuffled about and signed. When it was all over Van der Valk clutched a great mass of it, raised pious eyes to heaven, asked ‘Where do they get them from?’, bowed and closed the door softly behind him.

  In his own office, half an hour later, he asked for coffee, called for his senior inspector and gave him a cunning grin like Talleyrand going off on the Stock Exchange and leaving Foreign Affairs to run themselves.

  ‘As I told you might be probable, I’m going to be away a few days. Maybe a fortnight, maybe less. Simple enough; you make a brief résumé of the daily report and shove it over by messenger.’

  ‘What are you going to say to the press?’

  ‘I’m going to eat the press with those lovely little baby garden peas.’

  ‘What, at this time of year?’

  ‘No, I’m not cockeyed – I’ve been drinking milk with the Minister of Justice.’

  ‘A short statement,’ said Van der Valk surveying the press assembled. ‘There are a few misconceptions floating about. This machine-gun – you can enjoy yourselves with it, but don’t let’s lose sight altogether of the truth, children, however boring. I recap. Esther Marx is not Jewish, nor is she Arab. I beg your pardon – was. She was not, repeat not, a refugee, political or otherwise. Married regularly to a Dutch citizen, her status was regular. No political motive for her killing has been uncovered or is likely to be. So much for that.’ His voice took on the ritual drone.

  ‘No particular friendships or suspect associations have been found. Her personal life was quiet, retired, and free from any hint of scandal. Since there are no gangsters, there is in consequence no gang. Full stop. Paragraph. The killer – we don’t know him, we have no picture of him. He is certainly mentally deranged, which does not mean that he is dangerous or a criminal lunatic. No danger exists for the population and you can print that. This man has disappeared without apparent trace. No details can or will, repeat can or will, be given of actions either afoot or envisaged to find him. Lastly, no spectacular developments can be expected in the near future. Patience and a long boring checkup of several lines of inquiry. Very well, questions.’

  ‘Are you yourself conducting the inquiry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Leaving the country?’

  ‘If need be.’

  ‘Had the woman Nazi sympathies?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear me the first time?’

  ‘What about her past?’

  ‘Being looked into, naturally – that’s routine.’

  ‘She met her husband in France – is that a pointer to your future movements, Commissaire?’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘What about the little girl that your wife is caring for?’

  ‘No mention of the child will be made. Contrary to ethics, and has no bearing or relevance – get that clear.’

  ‘Has her husband produced any constructive ideas?’

  ‘He has no idea whatever why his wife should have been killed.’

  ‘Commissaire, you’ve ruled out gain, sadism, politics, passion. What motive in your opinion is the right one to base your inquiry upon?’

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘A meaningless murder?’

  ‘I said the man was certainly deranged mentally if not actively certifiable.’

  ‘You’re sure it’s a man?’

  ‘No. The gun makes it a probability; that’s all.’

  ‘Your theory of yesterday – a professional killer – it doesn’t stand up in the light of what you now know?’

  ‘I’m heaving great patient sighs. It looked and looks as if we have to deal with a man of calm, skill and quick wits, who is probably used to handling firearms. The rest remains to be seen.’

  ‘Commissaire.’ A last effort at tugging. ‘Are the military authorities helping you in your inquiries?’

  ‘When I see any need I’ll ask them. At present. And now if you’ll allow me I’m going home to supper.’

  He was in the outer office when he was called back.

  ‘Telephone, chief. Shall I say you’ve gone?’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘The French Embassy, it says.’

  ‘Give it here … Van der Valk … Thanks.’

  ‘I hoped I’d catch you,’ said a light rapid voice in French. ‘I only just hear
d myself. She was in Hanoi at the time. Convoyeuse de l’Air. She certainly made trips out there to the high plateau. Wasn’t of course present at the siege. I give it you for what it’s worth.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The house was as still as it usually was at this time. Arlette had gone to her hospital and Ruth was drawing.

  ‘Hallo. How did you get on with your school?’

  ‘I can go tomorrow. I’m weak on history and geography, and Arlette says I’ll have to do extra and you can help me.’

  ‘What’s she going to do – sit back and criticize?’

  Ruth had been instructed to put the supper in the oven at half past six; at twenty to seven Arlette’s deux-chevaux made a loud noise outside.

  ‘Her arithmetic is passable, Mr. Thorbecke says, and her French is only fair because her grammar is poor and he made faces at her written work. But he is quite reasonable. She knows nothing about history or geography at all, but he says generously that that’s no fault of hers. She can start either German or English next year. What do you think – is Latin a suitable subject for a girl? Since her French is fluent mightn’t Spanish or Italian be better?’ It was a problem they had not faced before; they had only had boys!

  ‘Arlette – oy.’ It was nine; Ruth had gone to bed.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I saw the man from DST today.’

  ‘Oh.’ There was a silence, perhaps a scrap embarrassed on both sides.

  ‘She was at Dien Bien Phu, you know. I’ve been grasping some of the implications, though all this is of course pretty intangible.’

  ‘If they’re intangible how can you grasp them?’ asked Arlette pedantically.

  ‘I floundered about – I’m only a poor Dutch peasant. No, you aren’t in the secret army, and Esther wasn’t either and there’s something peculiar about Esther all right, but he may not know it himself, but the ground is clear, so I can go off to France and try and find out, against a barrier of double-talk because Esther – whatever she did – got covered-up for.’

  ‘You’re not making an awful lot of sense.’

  ‘No but neither does she. Now I don’t want you persecuted by this. This child …’

  ‘Stays where she is.’

  ‘Good – that’s all I want to hear. That we mustn’t be disloyal to Esther. I think I see – you have quite a lot in common.’

  ‘This woman,’ said Arlette very slowly, plainly determined to stand no more nonsense, ‘she was at Dien Bien Phu? Convoyeuse de l’Air? But she didn’t stay. De Galard was the only one who stayed.’

  ‘Hanoi, I gather, filled up with people who wanted to get in, some of whom succeeded. Has it occurred to you that something might have happened – that she did something – which has been covered up? I got a hint that that was it, today. She did something. Maybe later it leaked out and that’s why she left France. Somebody might have taken this length of time to find out where she was. Consequently the machine-gun – but what the hell did she do and how am I to find it out?’

  ‘She may have done something that the world calls a crime but the army doesn’t,’ said Arlette.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. Other women joined that life, feeling – how should I know? – disgusted with life, with the bourgeoisie, with cowardice and envy and petty dirty filthy ways to turn two cents into three – I only know that I could well have done the same. Brigitte Friang asked to parachute in and they refused her permission. I understand. If Esther was like that, and I somehow have inherited her child, all I can say is that it is a mercy of God. Find out what you can about her. For me. I have to bring this child up; it’s important to me.’

  Van der Valk searched for and lit a cigarette in silence.

  ‘Yes. Well, I’m going – I have a green light from the Minister.’

  ‘The Procureur?’

  ‘No – this is an administrative thing: what standing I have professionally in France, what expenses I’m entitled to. They want it kept quiet, not to upset the French, not to alert the Press, at all costs nothing political. Like the Marschal time.’

  ‘Where you ended up getting shot.’

  ‘Oddly enough, that’s just what the Minister said. Don’t worry, having eaten Anne-Marie’s rifle bullet I’ll be very cautious of this maniac with the sub-machine-gun. The thing is, how to go about it. I go to the spot, I get dusty answers. That policeman – champagne or no champagne – he’s a last resort. I have to have something to go on, first. I can’t trot in and ask what it was Esther did and why it got smothered. I have to make a more indirect approach. The thing is, perhaps, to find people who were in the battle, and try to find someone who knew her. It was a relatively small group – how many, about?’

  ‘The good ones – who survived the camps too? About two thousand. There are plenty around.’ She hesitated. ‘Those who were there … why don’t you ask Jean-Michel?’ Her brother, who lived in Toulon and sometimes lent them his country house. An engineer, very prosperous. When he had had his wound, in the Pyrenees, they had stayed a fortnight in Toulon after he was half convalescent. He liked Jean-Michel.

  ‘He wasn’t there, was he?’

  ‘No, but he was in the delta. Another one who tried to get in. But he was a bridge engineer – at that stage they’d no use for the likes of him. Why don’t we ring him?’ reasonably.

  The simplicity of the solution appealed to him.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  As she was dialling, his impulse, suddenly reversed, was to put his hand out to strangle the purring throat of the chat-machine: did he really want to bring her further into this by introducing her talkative, clever family? Was there not something ignoble in thus baring Esther’s private life, which she had fought so hard to keep secret, for the amusement and edification of the Toulon upper crust? Too late, now; she had composed several sets of figures with great care and her tongue sticking out, automatic long-distance had done its fell work, Toulon had flown towards him like released elastic and the little bip-bip was already sounding in Jean-Michel’s living-room. She brandished the instrument at him in triumph.

  ‘Hallo? Claudine? Yes, it’s me. Yes, fine, yes, she’s here. Me? Suffering as usual; how are you? And Jean-Michel? Is he there? Would you put him on a minute and then I’ll get you Arlette. Hallo, vieux, how’s life? Tell me, are you at home more or less, this next couple of days? I’ve a notion to drop in if that’s not a horrible thought. I’ve something rather interesting on which I’d value your opinion. Yes – yes – oh, a long rambling tale. No no: professional. Something banal here and suddenly the shit hit the fan. Won’t put you out? Nor Claudine? But of course: over a long blissful drink. Tomorrow evening probably – what can I bring you – a smoked eel? Yes of course – hold on, here’s Arlette.’

  There it was; he was committed now. Ach, the idea was not that bad. Jean-Michel was bright and alert and very modern. He knew how to operate the System D anywhere in the Var or the Bouches-du-Rhône. Better still he was a balanced person and no fool at all. One could do a great deal worse. Arlette was gossiping happily down the chat-machine; he went to the kitchen for some milk.

  ‘Alors bye-bye,’ she was saying when he got back: that awful way French women had on the phone, using idiotic franglais phrases like ‘because le job’ which he had heard in the doorway. It was the same when they were in France – the first day Arlette exaggerated everything, her accent, her appetite, her mannerisms, to show that she was ‘home’. One couldn’t blame her; it was human that even after twenty years in Holland she still cared passionately for the smell and sound and feel of her land. That was not chauvinism; it was right and proper. What had Esther felt? Had she too hungered for her ‘own’ land while she sat in the municipal flat on the sterile Van Lennepweg? What was her own land? Jugoslavia which she had quite likely never even seen? The Pas de Calais where she was born? The arid, fiercely hot and bitterly cold uplands of the South-west? Or Indochina?

  ‘Remind me to buy a smoked eel for t
hem.’

  ‘And I’ll remind you to bring back a smoked goose for me.’

  ‘I’ll ring the airport.’

  Airports … do you think they had a flight to Marseilles next day? After an intolerable argy-bargy he got an Iberia flight that would land him in Paris and after some hours’ delay an Air-Inter down to the coast, after rejecting two that would gain him one hour and land him (a) at Nice and (b) at Lyons … He would miss lunch again.

  Chapter Twelve

  At eleven the next morning the Commissaire, clutching his smoked eel, was at Schiphol, with an official warrant authorizing Van der Valk, Peter Simon Joseph to proceed upon the affairs of the State of the Netherlands by air (tourist class). A bored ticket girl translated this into an illegible carbon saying Amsterdam-Schiphol to Marseilles-Marignane via Paris-Orly, with a great deal of small print all about the Warsaw Convention. Chauvinism showed; the morning paper was full of how the French were being very naughty and wounding to the Dutch about subsidized margarine.

  ‘Rather you than me,’ she whined, unconsciously echoing the Ministry of Justice. Van der Valk – loyal to Arlette, loyal to Esther – was irritated.

  ‘Just stick to the job, Sissi. Keep the home-thoughts-from-abroad for the distressed provincial lady.’

  Arlette was waiting by the registration desk with his case, containing, had he known it, cosmetics-for-Claudine, so cheap at airports.

  ‘And duty-free whisky, so you aren’t empty-handed.’

  ‘I should say not,’ he groaned, taking the case. ‘God, it’s like lead.’

  ‘I packed your raincoat and a suit and thick shoes and a good shirt in case you go somewhere …’

  ‘Oh, woman – all I need is spare underclothes.’ Women … always so bloody zealous when it came to packing!

  ‘That’s what you think. You don’t know Marseilles – freezing cold and simply pouring – you’ll see.’

  ‘Many thanks.’

  ‘I can’t stop – I’ve Ruth coming home for lunch.’

  ‘What are you having?’ full of envy. He would get an airport meal, as revolting as it was expensive, at silly Orly …