by Allan Massie
The old woman shuffled off and they could hear her still grumbling as she made her way to the kitchen.
‘So, you’ve news of some kind. Did you manage to see Yvette? Is she all right?’
‘Yes, and indignant on your behalf when I told her about the letter sent to Madame Lannes. But that’s not why I’m here, not exactly.’
He took the paper from his packet and handed it to Lannes.
‘This came addressed to the Alsatian. He wasn’t in the office this morning. So I took the liberty of intercepting it. I’m glad I did, because, well I don’t need to say why. They’re trying to destroy you, aren’t they? You see, I did as you asked and spoke to Labiche’s young clerk.’
When Lannes made no reply, but turned the letter over in his hands, René recounted his conversation with Jacques Bernard.
‘It’s all connected, isn’t it, but I don’t see what it’s all about. Is it just malice?’
‘It’s certainly that, but there may be more to it. Labiche, as you told his clerk, is in a dangerous position himself. So perhaps he’s striking out blindly.’
Actually Lannes couldn’t believe this was the case. Labiche was a lawyer, therefore a bargainer, a man always ready to deal. He might want to destroy him, he might also want to have a hold on him which might afford him protection himself.
‘I have to speak to the boy,’ he said. ‘No, it’s better that you aren’t involved in it, René.’
‘You know him then?’
‘He’s come my way more than once. You remember Schussmann, the German liaison officer who shot himself? And then there was that Vichy spook who called himself Félix. He was killed in what we officially described as mysterious circumstances. Actually they weren’t so mysterious, at least I knew all about it, but the man had become what his superiors called a loose cannon, and the investigation was closed down. Conveniently enough, I have to say. A senior spook was happy to be rid of him. I know this one only by the code-name Fabien. I think I need to speak to him again. Judge Bracal knows something about him. So does the Alsatian, but Bracal is more likely to be helpful. He’s a good man, or I believe he is. There aren’t many you can be sure of. So, René, please go to Bracal. Tell him everything as far as you know it, and ask him if he can arrange for me to meet Fabien. Meanwhile I’ll root out the boy, and have a word with him. Give me something to do rather than just sitting here, envying Maigret’ – he indicated the book he had discarded – ‘for finding it so easy to solve cases. Meanwhile, I’ll look up the boy. He’s not a bad kid, but a bloody nuisance every time I’ve had anything to do with him. I need to know just how his little conversation with Labiche went.’
XXI
The stairs were as dirty as on his previous visits, and there were cobwebs hanging from the walls. Nasty smells of cooking-fat and stale air; dry rot too, he thought. It should have been condemned years ago but it would probably still be standing and in this same sordid condition when most of its residents were dead. He knocked on the door and remembered how the old woman, Karim’s mother, who wasn’t in fact old, but aged by drink and poverty and disappointment, had taken several minutes to answer it, shuffling towards the door in carpet slippers with holes in the toe, and wearing a filthy housecoat held together by safety-pins. This time, however, his knock was answered at once.
Karim’s mouth hung open when he recognised Lannes, who pushed past him into the middle of the room in case the boy was tempted to try to shut the door against him.
‘Expecting someone else, were you?’
Karim nodded. He was wearing only sky-blue shorts which revealed most of his thighs and a sleeveless singlet.
‘A client?’
‘Yes, I thought he’d arrived early. They do sometimes.’
‘Get impatient, do they?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Understandable. Who is it? Father Paul?’
The smile which had appeared when Lannes said ‘understandable’ vanished so quickly that he might only have imagined it.
‘No, no, not him. What do you know about Father Paul?’
‘More than enough,’ Lannes said. ‘Take a seat, Karim, we’ve some talking to do. You’ve cleaned the place up, I see. Daresay your clients prefer it, unless they’re the kind who get turned on by squalor. Jules told me about your mother. I was sorry to hear it. Miss her, do you?’
To his surprise, Karim’s lips quivered and his eyes filled with tears.
‘She was a right old cow,’ he said, ‘but … ’
‘Yes,’ Lannes said. ‘There’s nobody now for whom, despite everything, whatever you do, you’re the most important person in the world. Nobody for whom you’re still a little boy. Sit down, I said, and tell me what you’ve been up to.’
‘I don’t know what you want to know.’
He stretched out on a broken-backed couch, trying to look at his ease.
‘You’re in my debt,’ Lannes said, ‘you owe me. Remember Félix. Well, of course you do, you couldn’t have forgotten what he did to you, raped you, didn’t he, beat you up, and then what happened to him. I covered up for you, for you and your old mother.
Remember?’
Karim lowered his head and began to scratch the inside of his thigh.
‘Look at me,’ Lannes said. ‘I cleared up the mess you were in, didn’t I? Got rid of the body, protected you. Not for the first time either. The Gestapo wanted you, searched for you after that poor fool Schussmann shot himself, and I helped you then too, got you out of Bordeaux, into safety. You haven’t forgotten that, have you? I remember how terrified you were when I spoke of the Gestapo. I don’t blame you for that. They are terrifying. You wouldn’t have lasted long if they’d got hold of you, a rent-boy like you, half-Arab, looking Arab. It doesn’t bear thinking of … ’
‘I offered … ’
‘Oh yes, you offered yourself to me. Fair enough, but not my thing, as you knew. You did know, didn’t you? A boy like you? Bound to know if you’ve made a hit.’
Karim looked up and gave a half-smile, a shy one in which Lannes read mischief.
‘It was worth trying. Besides, what else could I offer?’
‘What else indeed? So how do you explain this, Karim?’
He handed him the paper young René had given him.
‘Who have you been telling lies to?’
‘It’s not like that,’ Karim said. ‘Honest, it isn’t.’
Lannes lit a cigarette and passed it over to the boy, then lit one for himself.
‘Let’s start with Father Paul. The word is you were blackmailing him. Easy game, I suppose you thought. A priest who frequents rent-boys. He wouldn’t want that known, would he?’
‘It wasn’t like that at all. Sure, he came here a couple of times. Someone told him about me, he said, told him I was good. Which I am, superintendent, which I am. But then I told him, that’s your lot.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I didn’t like what he wanted. I won’t do just anything, you know. I’m not depraved.’
‘I’ll take your word for it. Go on.’
‘What about? What do you want to know?’
‘Tell me about the lawyer. He sent his clerk to fetch you. Why? Tell me about him. Tell me about the advocate Labiche.’
‘You know him? He’s a horror, he scared me shitless.’
‘Go on. Tell. Tell me everything.’
It took the boy a long time. He couldn’t look Lannes in the face and he kept alternately picking at his thigh and stroking it. But, with hesitations and false starts, he told the story.
The clerk had come to fetch him, come with a promise – there was a rich man wanted him. OK, fine, he was used to that, happy about that. Why not? It was natural, his business. But the clerk was scared stiff himself, or maybe he was just ill-at-ease. It was obvious he didn’t like what he was doing, and didn’t like him either. He wouldn’t walk close to him, as if he was pretending they weren’t together. It was pathetic, but actually it also amused him. The more the
clerk was embarrassed, the more he camped it up, swaying his hips and speaking to him in a fluting pansy voice which some of his clients, he had to say, really went for. ‘You know, some like their boys to be a bit effeminate, and I’m happy to play up to them. So I did that to this chap because it amused me to embarrass him. And anyway, that’s part of me, of what I am. I’m not ashamed of it, you know.’
Lannes remembered how Karim’s mother had once been an exotic dancer, though it was hard to believe it when you looked at what she had become, and how, when he asked for a trunk in which they might remove Félix’s body, Karim had produced one full of her old dresses and costumes, and then that, in a curiously tender moment, he had spoken of the days when they would both, the boy and his mother, dress up in her stage costumes and dance together in a dream of what might have been and for him might yet be.
‘Some men want a girly-boy, others the boy next door and others a young tough from the back-streets whom they like to think has a criminal record. I’m usually happy to oblige.’
For a moment he looked pleased with himself, forgetting his fear.
‘I’m sure you’re good at it,’ Lannes said. ‘Go on.’
The clerk took him to a first-floor apartment overlooking the Place de l’Ancienne Comédie, richly furnished, a lot of gilt, velvet and fine paintings. Good money, he thought. But then three men came in, and this made him anxious.
‘Some boys don’t mind that,’ he said, ‘but for me it’s just one to one, and I was about to say “no thanks” when one of them, a big bruiser with a cauliflower ear, came up and punched me hard and low in the belly. I doubled up and fell down, and heard one of them laugh. The bruiser pulled me up by the hair and flung me into a chair. That’s just a taster, he said, as I was still fighting for breath. But one of the other two said, “That’s enough for now, Fritz, he’s got the message, I’m sure.” ’
‘Describe him,’ Lannes said. ‘The one who spoke.’
‘Short, broad, balding, a mouth turned down at the corners. He was wearing a double-breasted suit and a silk shirt.’
‘You took all that in, even after that punch?’
‘Not then. I’d time later, enough time, too much time. He spoke very quietly and that made it worse.’
The description, as Lannes expected, fitted Labiche, and so he said, ‘That’s the advocate. I don’t think I’m going to like your story. He’s as nasty a piece of work as anyone I’ve come across in years. And the third man?’
‘He was tall, fair-haired, thinning, though, and he didn’t speak much. In fact he looked like he didn’t want to be there. It was the one in the double-breasted suit, Labiche you say, did all the talking.’
‘Go on … ’
‘I don’t like to. He spoke to me like I was dirt, like that Félix indeed.’
He pulled his knees up, with his hands round them, and buried his head.
‘Go on. You have to.’
Lannes felt sorry for the boy. He could picture the scene. It disgusted him, as cruelty always did, but he had to know the worst.
‘He said Father Paul had told him I was blackmailing him and I could go to prison for that. I wouldn’t enjoy it, I knew, didn’t I, what they did to boys like me in prison. I said I wasn’t blackmailing Father Paul, and he laughed. Your word against a priest’s, who would they believe? But it wasn’t true and anyway I didn’t believe Father Paul would dare. My word against his, certainly, but it wouldn’t do him any good, would it. You’d still go to prison, he said, but you don’t have to. I’ll make a bargain with you. Just sign this paper and we’ll forget about it. Easy for you. So sign it. What does it say? I asked. It’s just a confession, he said. A confession of what? There’s a policeman, he said, a senior policeman, you know who I mean, don’t you? This little paper – all it consists of is an admission that he’s paid you for sex a number of times, first when you were still under-age. Sign it and you’re free to leave, nothing will happen to you. No, I said, it’s not true. Then the one they called Fritz grabbed me by the hair again and smacked me hard, first one cheek, then the other. Give me five minutes with the little rat, he said. There’s no need for that, his chief said, he’ll see sense, he’ll sign. If you don’t, he turned to me, it won’t be the prison I spoke of. It’ll be worse. My friend here – he indicated the tall man – is an officer in the Milice, a captain. He doesn’t care for your policeman friend any more than I do, and the Milice? They don’t like boys like you, degenerates they call them. They despise them. They like beating them up, not that it would stop at a beating. If you’re stupid and obstinate, I’ll give you to him. Suspected of working for the Resistance, wouldn’t that be it, captain. Yes, it would, he said – first time he’d spoken. And you don’t bother with a trial, do you? No point, we just shoot the little bastards. So there you are, your choice is simple, Labiche said. And then he laughed, not that I would call it a choice, not really. Fritz pulled me up and over to the table. A pen was put in my hand. I signed. I’m sorry. But what else could I do?’
‘What else indeed?’
Lannes couldn’t blame the boy. Given that choice, there was no other way he could have expected, or required, him to act. Confess to a lie or choose death? How many would have made a different decision? Dominique and Alain, he thought, Dominique from principle, Alain on account of his natural obduracy, his bloody-mindedness. But Léon and little Jérôme? He had no idea. There is so often a time when courage fails. Or Clothilde’s Michel? Perhaps. Karim looked up, his mouth open, tears in his eyes.
‘I’m sorry, truly sorry. Can you forgive me?’
‘Big word, forgiveness,’ Lannes said. ‘I don’t like big words. You’ve only done what people all over France have been doing for the last four years, submitting to reality, to things as they are. You’re no worse than most of us. Dry your tears, you’ve a client coming.’
‘You despise me too, don’t you?’
‘Why should I do that? You’ve come up against a force you couldn’t resist. Like so many of us. I think they’ll leave you alone now.’
On the stairs he met a middle-aged man in a light summer suit.
‘He’s all ready and waiting for you,’ Lannes said. ‘Nice boy. Enjoy yourself.’
XXII
René was nervous about approaching Bracal. He had never spoken to him and indeed because of his junior rank he had never had any dealings with the instructing judge in any case under investigation. That was normally the superintendent’s responsibility, or Moncerre’s, now that Lannes was suspended. Moreover he distrusted these gentlemen. Well, distrust wasn’t perhaps the right word. It was just that he was uncomfortable with the idea of these men with university degrees, products of the Grandes Écoles, men who wore expensive three-piece suits and smelled of eau de cologne. He was a working-class boy, a widow’s son, reared in poverty by a mother who went out cleaning for the sort of ladies who had never done their own marketing and who might indeed be the mothers of men like the instructing judge. But Lannes had asked him to do this, and naturally he was ready to obey. So he sent through a note, saying that the superintendent had asked him to speak to the judge. He got a reply asking him to call at once if it was convenient. It surprised him to find his own convenience being considered, and he was happy that Moncerre was out of the office; he would have been first curious, and then offended if René had had to explain that the superintendent had asked him, rather than the bull-terrier, to approach the judge. But he was still unsure of himself when he was shown into Bracal’s office, and since Bracal accorded exactly with his impression of these gentlemen, he felt out-of-place and tongue-tied.
To his surprise, however, the judge got up from behind his desk and came forward to shake his hand.
‘I’ve had good reports of you,’ he said. ‘From Superintendent Lannes. He speaks highly of you. Do please sit down.’
And he returned to his own chair behind the desk.
‘So?’ he said. ‘The superintendent has been unfortunate. But things won’t long r
emain as they are now. I suppose you understand that?’
‘Do you mean … ?’
‘We don’t need to spell it out. There are things better understood without words than spoken. But you say he has asked you to see me.’
‘Yes, he asked me to give you these letters. They’re copies of the originals which he has retained.’
Bracal glanced at them.
‘Unpleasant.’
His well-manicured fingers tapped out a little tattoo on his desk. Lannes could have told René this was the judge’s habit when thinking.
‘Unpleasant,’ he said again. ‘To whom were they sent? Do you know that?’
‘The first, the one about the girl, was sent to Madame Lannes. The second … ’ he hesitated.
‘Yes?’
René felt himself blushing.
‘Yes?’
‘It was addressed to Commissaire Schnyder. He wasn’t in the office. It came to me that the writing – printing really – resembled the first letter which the superintendent had shown me. So … ’ he paused and swallowed. ‘I intercepted it.’
‘Remarkable.’
René waited, nervously expecting a reprimand.
‘So the commissaire hasn’t seen it?’
‘No.’
Bracal smiled.
‘Good. The fewer who see such things the better, don’t you think? But the superintendent asked you to give them to me?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m honoured.’
He resumed his finger-tapping, then he got up, crossed to a cabinet, took out a bottle and two glasses, filled them and passed one to René.
‘Schnapps,’ he said. ‘A present from one of our German friends. Not bad, actually. Your health or prosit as they would say on the other side of the Rhine. So, what next? Do you happen to know who the people referred to in these letters are? I’m assuming – not that it greatly matters – that there is, shall we say, no substance in the accusations, but that the two people nevertheless exist. I should tell you I have a considerable respect for the superintendent, as I’m sure you have yourself.’