As for killing people in nasty ways try addressing yourself to the State Tobacco Monopoly.
NINETEEN
SHELLBURST
Sleeping was one of the first things to be reorganised. If the telephone rang at night; worse, if he himself got routed out, and it did happen – it had to happen without disturbing Vera. Who had enough on her plate in the middle of the night. And if the tiny one started yelling in the middle of the night…he would lend a hand. But he needed his sleep too, said Vera: there have to be arrangements that you are not disturbed.
Well, when it’s hungry… But if it’s going to yell out of sheer naughtiness… It’s a thing they do do, or so I read in the book.
Experience, said Vera: a hunger yell, a pain yell, sounds quite different to a caprice yell.
It all sounds like yelling to me.
Nonsense, said Vera.
You’d think she’d been doing this all her life.
This all was not too late, though he was in bed. Half-past ten: he looked at his watch automatically. Damn. He had to be at work tomorrow, but was still officially ‘off’ and who was ringing him at this hour? The way to find out is to answer, instead of looking at the thing and damning its infernal insolence.
" Castang."
"This is Mademoiselle Marcel." He had trouble remembering who this was. Yes – Thérèse. Thérèse!…?
"Yes?" How had she got his home number?
"I’m worried. Something has happened that is disturbing. Something for the police."
"I’m not on duty."
"I know you, at least. I’m not going to ring up heaven knows who."
"If you’ll tell me what’s happened, I can advise you who’d be the appropriate – "
"No," said Thérèse inflexibly. "This is a private matter. I’m not going to blurt it out to just anybody. Nor to you but I’ve thought it over. You’re concerned."
‘Tell me then, and I’ll see what would be the appropriate – "
"No. Come here. You’ll have to come here. I’ll expect you. It’s urgent. Come to the side door," and rang off before he could protest.
"You’ve got to go out?" said Vera.
"Sorry," looking for his socks.
"No – I was awake. Don’t bother about me. I’m fine."
There was no point in wasting words. To complain about Thérèse, to roar at the night guard, who had plainly given his number when asked…if that good lady had her mind set on something it was not easy to put her off. She ‘knew him’. They’d been introduced. So she wouldn’t tell anyone else what it was. And what was it? Coup d’etat, or coup d’éclat?
The streets were full of traffic still. It was not late. Not raining but windy, with low racing cloud.
The house in the Rue des Carmélites was dark and quiet. There was no ‘surveillance’ going on. There was no particular reason why there should be. But having been off he wasn’t up-to-date on developments. Assuming there were any developments. But plainly something had happened. He had to come and see, no doubt of it. As he had been telling himself ever since getting out of bed.
There was light in the kitchen. He pushed the door open; it was warm here. Probably she kept the big solid-fuel cooker going all the year round.
She was in a woolly dressing-gown, madonna blue. The thin hair in a plait. Woolly slippers. Not looking like a madonna. The dog was in its basket, but bounced out and growled.
"Quiet," she said. And to him, "I want to keep this quiet. Press people hang about. Other people I don’t know. This house is being watched."
"There’s nobody watching it now."
"I don’t like it. Now that you’re here at last – Noelle’s gone out. Some time ago. She took her car."
"What’s strange about that?"
"She never goes out at night alone."
"Sensible of her but it’s not late: what’s there to worry about?"
"Shut up," hissed Thérèse. "You know nothing, you understand nothing. Understand this. She’s been very queer these last days. I know her very well. I use my eyes and ears. I watch her. Listen to me."
While talking she had poured him a cup of coffee. He took it without thinking.
"Keep very quiet. I don’t want a disturbance. Enough upsetting things have happened."
"Who’s at home?"
"The old people. Thierry’s out. He’ll be late, probably. So much the better. He need know nothing about this – or so I hope. Noelle ate no dinner, no supper. She’s had a very strange look. She wouldn’t go out. She’d tell me, if she were. She always does. So that I know where she is, what she’s doing." Castang drank his coffee.
"Since you know everything," without sarcasm, "has she had any message you think might have upset her? Letter, phone call?"
"No"
"But at the pub maybe – or the restaurant?"
"Look in her room." He went quietly; Thérèse in her slippers soundless behind him.
He saw the point. Noelle had gone to bed, and got up again.
"What’s she wearing?" Thérèse looked queerly at him. "You saw her you said."
"A housecoat. Over her nightdress."
"I see." He went into the bathroom. In the wastepaper basket was a green cardboard box, empty. It had contained a hundred aspirin.
"We’ll go downstairs again."
"Hush."
She poured him a second cup of coffee. Perhaps she thought he’d need it. He dared say he would.
"You think yourself she might…"
"I said no such thing. God forbid."
"You feel sure she’s not gone to meet someone?"
"In her nightdress?"
"She took her car. What sort is it?"
"I don’t know. It’s black. It’s quite small. It’s English I believe."
"Try and think."
"I think it has a D on it. Sort of like this," Her finger traced a capital D in the air, in script. What? He couldn’t recall seeing her car, and couldn’t thing of anything with a D. A Jaguar? An MG? It was like Noelle, somehow, to have a conspicuous car. Get her better service.
"A small car? A sports car? Hard top?"
"Yes." Orthez would know. Where the hell was Orthez? An antique? An Aston-Martin? He was being dim, and it was not the moment to be dim.
Light, in answer to prayer, dawned.
"Ha! Has it got a silver radiator, with sort of wavy lines?" His turn to sketch in the air with his finger. "A Daimler?"
"That’s right," said Thérèse with approval. That at least made things easier. There weren’t many of these. Sort of thing the royal family went to race meetings in. That too was somehow typical of Noelle. A barmaid is as good as a queen any day.
"I’ll see to this. You were right to call me. Say nothing to anybody. If she comes home make no comment – see that you call me at once. At the office. Like you did before."
"The young man didn’t want to give me your number. I insisted." I bet you did.
He slipped out and got into his little car with the automatic gearbox and the brakes fixed so that Vera could stop with her finger if her foot went to sleep. Not at all like a Daimler. The mind thought, going fast.
She wouldn’t have gone anywhere into the town. Too many people about.
The boy on guard looked up as he bumped into the downstairs office at the PJ which was the ‘communications room.’
"Thought you were off. That old biddy who was on for your number? – she said it was urgent."
"It is. Gendarmerie headquarters. I’ll speak to them. Get a move on. Got any beer, here?… Castang here at PJ. I want the cars alerted; every patrol on the outskirts and country districts – well, every patrol there is within the fifty-kilometre radius, on full alert, urgency one, suicide or attempt. English car, make Daimler, don’t say I don’t make it easy, sports type, hardtop coupé, colour black, silver radiator sort of accordion pattern. Model unknown, number unknown but how many will there be for God’s-sake. Woman alone, fifty – middle-aged, idiot – fair hair, medium height, sturdy
build. Wearing housecoat, sort of dressing-gown, dark blue or sapphire blue, gold or silver embroidery, over long nightdress. Like an evening dress, nearly. Concentrate, obviously, isolated areas, wooded or watered, waste ground. Particularly along the river. And upstream surely. Use your loaf. One more item – discretion. Not for the press. Judicial enquiry. Understand this, I have the woman’s identity but I don’t want it divulged. So no blabbing. Go by the description. Been missing only an hour and a half: she’s probably quite close by. Call me here, the moment you get any signal."
If we have three deaths, Castang was thinking, in this family…but don’t think about it; it doesn’t bear thinking about.
Little surveillance had been done on Noelle. She was an uncomplicated person. She worked hard, and she played hard, at childish, innocent pleasures. Above all, she needed people round her, lots and lots of people. She thrived on noise, light, bustle. Not for her the husband’s addiction to music: operas, choral societies bored her stiff. But she had a reserved place in the best seats at the local football club: never indeed missed a home match. It wasn’t the play that excited her as much as the atmosphere… She had an immense circle of acquaintance – they would call it friendship – among the businessmen and their wives. With the women there would be tremendous ‘shopping expeditions’. Not a lot actually got bought, but every novelty or event would be inspected; gazed at, poked at, sniffed at, commented upon. Noelle needed lots of novelty.
When Thérèse said she ‘never went out at night’, alone was what she meant. In fact she was out most nights, but always with a gang. Men – never just one man – and women. A favourite ploy was an expedition to the spa town sixty kilometres off. Race meetings there in the summer she never missed, and throughout the winter about every ten days they would have dinner and go gambling at the casino. A compulsive gambler, yes, but ruinous to nobody. On the contrary, both clever and lucky. Came out about even over the season, minus expenses and the house percentage. No harm in that. She was ready to pay, and generously, for pleasure, and had plenty of money of her own. Absolutely no scandal. If she went to other people’s houses it was to play cards, or even Scrabble. For money, certainly, but the word ‘play’ was meant literally. It was for fun. She liked fun, pursued it, got it. She worked hard after all. With the pub or the restaurant she was never satisfied to take her cut and let things drift. She wasn’t frightened of shifting beercrates or getting up on stepladders.
For exercise twice a week she went riding, to keep her stomach flat and her hips trim. Hereabouts her path crossed Clothilde’s… They knew one another to say hello to, but there was no intimacy. Whether they really ignored one another, or pretended to – it came to much the same thing.
Castang knew no more. If anything more had been found out – but truly, none of them would have thought Noelle a likely candidate for a suicide attempt.
"Are both cars out?" he asked.
"Only Lucciani."
This was just the thing with ‘light surveillance’ of this sort, which might go on a long time. If you didn’t have anybody to spare (and somebody too had to do these boring night guards, and the weekend duty when the office staff went home) you had to fit in days-off. This is a toss-up. Cancel days off, and then nothing happens, and everybody’s grousing. Give people time off, on the grounds that it looks like a quiet evening – and that was the moment that things like this happened… With Castang ‘off’ Liliane had strictly speaking no business letting someone else go, but if you didn’t they began inventing toothaches or saying they had the curse. He didn’t blame her: he’d have been doing the same.
"See if you can raise him." They had officially two radio cars, or would if Lasserre didn’t invent pretexts for borrowing them. Of course, if only one person at a time is out in a radio car, and busy surveying something (the word is vague; it has to be, covering the multitude of sins it does) she or he cannot be expected to stay glued to the handset: they are ordinary radio-telephones: the PJ has a different frequency of course to the urban police and emergency services.
If the she/he has gone wandering off on survey leaving the car parked you have the blipper, the gadget people carry pinned to their overall to tell them when they’re wanted. The trouble with this thing is that it blips, and agents turn it off to stop it being a nuisance. There exist of course sophisticated versions which will tickle you gently instead of making a racket. These are dear, and grudged to provincial police forces: they are thus status symbols. The perpetual wail of the PJ is ‘The Germans have far more money than we do’. If we (runs the argument) had a Red Brigade that did us a favour for once and kidnapped a few Cabinet Ministers, then we’d get some credits in a hurry. As things are, all the money goes to surrounding them with expensive precautions. As though anyone gave a farthing for those rabbits anyhow… Three armour-plated helicopters to open a flower show…
Of course Lucciani had undone his bleeper, damn him. Castang didn’t even know where he was.
"The Tuileries was last I heard. Thierry went out that way on a pal’s motorbike." Thierry had a car of his own but was hard to follow because forever borrowing other people’s. Mm, it was anyway unlikely. Noelle would not have gone to Magali in her nighty. Nor anywhere much in that down-stream area, he thought. Desirable residential suburb, heavily built over and thickly populated, well-lit (local taxes were high) and no ‘wild’ countryside. Much-patrolled, and full of people up to midnight. Even the villages further out, such as where Clothilde lived…no, don’t interfere with the gendarmerie. They do this sort of job efficiently. Indeed, most gendarmerie brigades are a lot less sleepy than urban police forces.
Most of the area in the plain – flattish, vaguely agricultural – was a poor prospect. Industrial, and working-class residential, where people went to bed early, save on a Saturday night. Farming country beyond and some woodland cover, but it would not be countryside Noelle knew well or was likely to seek.
In the foothills there was vine land, orchards, and plenty of forest. There were any amount of possibilities out that way.
Look, there is no use getting into a flap; and stop smoking so much.
"Whip out very quick to the pub and get a couple more beers. I’ll watch the switchboard."
The river banks upstream were surely the likeliest bet. He fidgeted with the switchboard, but hell, any gendarme knew this as well as he did.
The river comes out of the hills in a turbulent irregular fashion. In a rainy month of May, as now, it is full of water and has never been easy to control: it floods fields, slops up side alleys, creates boggy areas full of scrubby alder and willow and shitty undergrowth, interesting enough to local duckshooters, not much good to anybody else. Some engineering has been done on it, but in a desultory fashion: the water is too irregular to be good for hydraulic power. And there are three or four little side-rivers that come carting in…
He’d just got a beer uncapped when the phone rang.
"Castang – we’ve got the car. Empty, locked. At one of the worst places for a search. By the island, you know, just above the power station – she could get lost in there. And if she’s gone in the river…"
"No use worrying about that. I’ll be there in under twenty minutes. Get any spare cars you can. If we don’t get her quick we won’t get her at all. She may have swallowed a lot of aspirin, she may have other stuff I don’t know about, and she may have done other silly things."
She was a healthy woman, and no compulsive pill-swallower. But with the double death, any doctor would let her have sedatives, and they are so easy to get. ‘I’m not sleeping very well at present; have you any I could borrow?’ All the bourgeois had cupboards of dangerous rubbish. Practically nobody has any confidence in their doctor unless there are six items on the prescription form, of which four serve no purpose. A hundred francs at least or it won’t cure you, and a thick satisfying dossier for the Securité Sociale, full of complicated notation, before you can feel it’s really doing you good. Tell them to stick to senna-pods and
they’ll go to another doctor. Or more. As Ray Chandler once said: ‘Go jump in two lakes if one won’t hold you.’
The dark-blue Estafette van of the gendarmerie is recognisable a kilometre off even without its blue winker on the roof. An officer’s car and a second van drew up as he did. Little enough for a job like this. Deal out a few walky-talky sets. You don’t want to shout or make a to-do. Such things have been enough upon occasion to send hesitating suicides over the brink.
They’d got a fire-brigade ambulance too. Not as well equipped as a ‘Samu’. But they were not far from the town. If she were alive, quicker than the helicopter. There was nothing for it but to beat the bushes. The May greenery was thick and lush and wet. There were paths made by fishermen, poachers, gipsies. Not so many out-of-door fornicators as in Castang’s youth. They had to hope she’d got tired before going far.
Luck for once was with Castang. He’d never been particularly lucky. But some people are, and Noelle was one. The good gamblers. A gendarme in leather gaiters (better equipped than himself) found her, only two hundred metres from where he was standing sweeping a clearing with his torch. He took shortcuts through bramble bushes, doing his trousers no good. Soaked to the knee already anyhow. The real riverbed was a couple of hundred further, but the ground was bog from there on.
Castang’s City Page 14