Castang’s City

by Nicolas Freeling

  The flying-field ‘club-house’, however grandly named, was nothing more than a café like any other village pub; a low long building originally a cottage, with a sort of shed tacked on at one side, handily near the equally pompous ‘Air Traffic Control’ office. Facing the flying-field was a terrace sheltered by privet hedges, much haunted in fine weather by wives and girl-friends: part of this had been glassed-in, covered with a galvanised roof, and served for meetings or reunions as well as for playing cards and drinking beer when weather conditions were bad. It was a pleasant, unpretentious place with the typical atmosphere of amateurish enthusiasm, decorated with badges, banners, and the odd cup or medal won in competition. Aero clubs are the same whenever there is an old grass field long outdated for military or commercial use but proudly showing its origins in the heroic stick-and-string days. A little control tower and meteorological office, a group of hangars with service and maintenance areas, the local air-taxi and -charter firm. A helicopter or so for hire, a couple of old biplanes kept for stunting, and generally a few treasured wartime souvenirs, Spitfire, Focke-Wulf or Cobra kept carefully painted up and decorated with squadron markings. There is nothing from the jet age: ‘the field is too small. At other corners you will probably find the local glider enthusiasts, and almost always a biggish hangar for the storage and folding of parachutes.

  You will find this set-up near any largish town. Secret societies of the Tappertit-type (his was called ‘The United Bulldogs’) abound there, each with its inner circle, private jargon, and special recognition signals. The balloon-freaks (the great status-symbol is to have been to Albuquerque) and the hang-glider fiends: high-jump and free-fall types who make artistic patterns in formation way up there in the blue. All perfectly charming, until the moment when they become grindingly boring.

  The weather had been too uncertain these last days for any really serious work, and there was not too much of a crowd. Castang went up to the bar and ordered a beer. When he got it he flashed an official card with a show of slightly clumsy discretion.

  "Robillard," he said portentously. "Inspection de Douanes."

  "Huh?" said the barman. "Douane?"

  "Not so loud you silly twit. Service de Suppression de Fraudes." Having just made it up he was quite pleased with the rotund cadence. He wasn’t certain it actually existed. Somewhere surely it must. Well, if it didn’t, it did now.

  TWENTY FIVE

  POLICE WORK

  "I’ve no objection," said Richard, "as long as I don’t have to justify it all to the Controleur. The real Customs-and-Excise inspectorate will of course be vexed, but it won’t be the first time. The thing is, enough local businessmen keep planes there to constitute a fairly powerful lobby; enough I may say to squash all the complaints from neighbouring suburbs about noise. You’ve stirred up quite a lot of shit and what exactly have you got?"

  "I took that boy from IJ with the super Japanese; we’ll see how much good they are when the lab has finished processing them."

  "Hm; stills, you know…"

  "And Lucciani with his movie camera – I kept him in the car of course. His infrared thing; the lighting’s not famous. But he has some clear footage of the chap walking. Now if we got a dubious identification of a face; it might strengthen if a witness saw something in a gesture, a movement."

  "Thin! Better, I agree, than nothing. Fausta, can I have the original Marcel file, if you please, the ground inquiry? That young woman, we’ll have to have her here. And the taxidriver. Mm, she’s had the honesty to say all along that she was so startled and flustered that she didn’t believe she’d ever make an identification, Mm, tallish, brownish, hair short."

  "One thing I like," said Castang, "is that a fellow came up to the man and said Hello, I see you’ve shaved the beard then: wasn’t it getting you enough crumpet? If he shaved it just before, it could be a pointer that he wanted to change his appearance. Still far too thin, I know, but I need more time. Got this cat on the hop a bit, and where will he hop to?"

  "How much did you shake him?"

  "Good, he’s a parachute instructor, always around, knows everyone. I had a bunch of old tat photos for him to recognise. He made a dab at one, who in fact is safely in the Centrale at Melun, up for five years on armed robbery. That could happen to anyone. But I’d slipped in one of Lucciani. No no, never seen him before – having spent the evening together just twenty-four hours before." "The idiot partouze – discreet about that."

  "Is a fraud inspector interested in a bit of booze and girls? He doesn’t want his associates looked at. Good, I’ve Davignon sitting on him. It’s in my report; he went off to that pool-table place, the Vienna Woods. Thierry wasn’t there; early night last night and needed. Neither that library fellow, the Bouvet."

  "You like him do you, for the driver?"

  "Too tenuous at present. Longish hair, could be anyone. But they wanted a hot driver, and this fellow is, or so Orthez claims. By the way, he got nowhere on Jackie. Unless – Lucciani heard mention of someone who’s a super billiards player. Orthez identified him with no great trouble: he’s a Monsieur Maresq, a bourgeois, a grower owns some vineyards up in the hills. Not often seen – once a fortnight maybe keeping his hand in at the table."

  "What interest?"

  "None – the barman there refers to him as ‘Monsieur Jacques’."

  "You may as well follow it up since we’ve so little. It’s barely possible you may have found a crack. You’ve nothing for a prima facie, even if the eyewitness thinks there’s a resemblance, any lawyer could knock it down. And where on earth is your motive in all this?" Lawyers do the same. Talking to one another about clients they may be appearing for they say ‘You, I don’t think much of this alibi of yours’ chummily outside the courtroom.

  "I haven’t got any motive. I’ve screws enough loose I’m wondering whether I really need any. It is, possibly, who I’ve been associating with."

  "Tell me," said Richard irritably, "that even if it’s a pinch it’s a psycho case."

  "No I’m not saying that," crossly. "I don’t know why I should be expected to say anything on the base of ten minutes acquaintance."

  "Quite right, let’s not nag at one another."

  "Not conspicuous for brains, certainly. One of those vague, good-humoured, slightly apey faces, hail-fellow with everyone. Too much talk, too many smiles, too much movement. Influenceable and excitable. That’s all I’d risk, this far. I just wonder what ideas he gets, there high, high in the sky."

  "You mean illuminated?" The word, vaguely suggestive of St Francis of Assisi, does duty in French for a wide miscellany of pious fanatics.

  "Conceivably. We had a bit of chat. He had to be easy and forthcoming: that’s his act with everyone. I soft-soaped as usual; that’s an interesting job you’ve got. He was a professional soldier, marine paratrooper down at Tarbes or wherever."

  "Ah. Military training – would know how to hold a gun. Might even think of wiping the cartridges clean – a point that’s always worried me. Mm. Your man’s looking a little better."

  "What I thought," said Castang, "a para regiment, even after his discharge there’d be a dossier. And a medical record. Might help us a bit in a diagnosis."

  "Army doctors! " said Richard with a snort. ‘You’ve the piles, have you laddy? – swift dose of syrup of figs will set you right. Next. And you re seeing visions are you – double the dose."

  "Seriously – don’t they have a psychiatric exam, now, as standard?"

  "Fausta! Letter to Commanding Officer, Military District of Pau or where Castang tells you. Please furnish details of dossier on discharged soldier Chose, under rogatory commission zingzing, reply please greatest urgency all relevant bumf."

  "Telex?" asked the lady, writing swift shorthand. "Okay."

  Richard was back at page one of the dossier.

  "The assassin did not speak, but called out ‘Etienne’ in a funny voice – not enough, that, for a voice-pattern. No finger or footprints, the poorest of physical de
scriptions – photos won’t take us far. You’re on the thinnest of grounds. As the Mayor got so fond of saying – a meaningless arbitrary killing. And you pick someone meaningless and arbitrary."

  "Let it cook some more. In there anybody, on the fringe of this band of Thierry’s, able to extract any profit from the situation? The theory is Liliane’s and I like it," suppressing mention of Monsieur Bianchi. Leave the assassination aside altogether.

  "Profit how?"

  "I don’t know. Say Marcel is dead and Thierry’s mixed up in that somewhere, however obliquely. It could become grounds for pressure, if not actually blackmail. Too many funny things happening in that family. Didier – dead. Noelle attempts suicide. And the daughter – Magali. I gave it no weight at the time: now I’m wondering. She was wound up, nervous, sweaty. Mentioned, even, the possibility of a blackmail pattern, as though she saw something on the horizon."

  "Don’t fall in love and get carried away," said Richard, dry. "You’ve a suspect, and that’s a very fine thing to have." The warning was unspoken: Castang didn’t need it spoken. Harried by overzealous prosecutors, a cop will go far to make a good arrest. Far can mean too far. It hasn’t just ‘been known’; it’s a commonplace. A cop in love with a hypothesis…the suppressions and distortions start coming unconsciously. "Go work on it," said Richard chillingly.

  You learn early not to put faith in witnesses of things which took place in a flash, even when they are not shown to have had their back turned throughout the entire episode. Some change their stories daily. Some, perhaps more, become increasingly rigid. Concerning something that happened three weeks before, as now, the distancing in time will not have brought perspective to the violent foreshortened moment of drama. It is still painted in the bright hard colours of terror, and ashamed of their terror they will not admit to it. It was that way, and nothing changes their mind. Like a bad cop, they are in love with their story.

  Young Madame Thing, within the dreary portals of the Banque de France, could have been forgiven either immovable obstinacy or even the total amnesia which often overtakes witnesses to a blood crime; not only those who were told by the mafia to cultivate a faulty memory. This august financial establishment dislikes cops, loathes dramas, and takes a dim view too of junior, especially female, employees being a witness to anything at all but what they have been told.

  Castang, after hesitation, got stood in one of the soundproof boxes where only one of the world’s two principal subjects of interest is habitually discussed. Love, and ten per cent: guess which. He was given leisure to reflect on things like mortgages, which no bank is inclined to grant to cops. Too much mort for their liking, and not enough gage. Finally the young, pretty, composed woman who had seen Etienne Marcel shot was ushered in by an official who glanced pointedly at his watch.

  "Let’s sit down. I wouldn’t disturb you, bar a thing which might turn out to be important. Will you just look at these few photographs, and try to tell me whether any of them are at all like the man you saw."

  She took her time.

  "This one, I think, and perhaps this one." She was consistent at least. Tallish, brownish, shortish hair. How it grew, what kind of texture, was it parted – all crushed under ‘one of those little hats’.

  Neither photo was his bird. But after hesitating she came back to it and said slowly, "Possibly this one too."

  "Very well. Now try and see what it is that prods your memory. They are all roughly the same type and colouring, so…perhaps features?

  "Or a stance; an attitude?"

  "I don’t remember the features, not distinctly. Rounded – not sharp features. Perhaps something in the build. I don’t know about stance. Hard to tell, in a photo."

  "I’m going to ask you to pass by this evening, when you get off. Will you do that? It won’t take above ten minutes. I’ll ask you to look at a few feet of movie."

  "All right," reluctantly, "if you think… I don’t know whether… I mean, I saw so little." He wasn’t going to say ‘sign of a good witness’.

  "You’ll only be asked ‘is that like’. If you can’t confirm, but can’t deny, that’s reasonable. Don’t try to strain your interpretation. But you must accept your responsibilities. You saw an assassin; it can’t be repeated often enough."

  "Yes. I’ll try."

  "Till six, then."

  The taxi-driver was ‘on the rank’ in the Cours la Reine. Castang got into the cab with him, wondering afresh why taxi-drivers hate fresh air.

  "No good, chum. I saw a fella, half-walking, half-running, jump in a car. T’other chap driving. Never saw faces, not to recognise, not what you’d say profile. They didn’t stay still to take pictures of them."

  "Think you could do better with some movie, like a man walking across a parking lot?"

  "Couldn’t say. Might. I doubt it. If I did, even – I don’t want to get fingered by no terrorists. Get a bomb wired to my ignition and Bam – thanks very much."

  "There aren’t any terrorists," said Castang. "Okay, six or a bit after."

  The other reports weren’t up to much. Clothilde had helped out at a wedding party, and that night with another, family kind of gathering – a boy celebrating the passage of a difficult entry-exam. Nothing there. Magali and Bertrand, like Thierry, had had a quiet evening at home. Noelle’s restaurant, and the Three Crowns brasserie, were functioning normally enough, or as best they could, as the case might be. Maryvonne had worked hard on possible letters and phone messages, and got nowhere with it. A dogsbody looked up Monsieur Jacques Maresq. That’s right, local wine-shipper in quite a high-class way, grower in a small but aristocratic way: well off: lived in an unpretentious but elegant country house locally known as ‘the château’. In his fifties. Widowed, or divorced. Office in the town staffed by an agent. Moved around a lot, travelled a lot: the business ran on wheels. A good life, what. Like many another prosperous businessman, had an aeroplane.

  The detail was of sufficient interest to make Castang want to know more. Without much trouble he ran to earth a man who knew Monsieur Maresq fairly well: the gentleman was, simply enough, fairly well known.

  "Not an awful lot to tell, probably, that you don’t know already. He’s got some very good stuff, knows his job, looks after it. Stepped of course into a very good business: Delestang was famous a hundred years ago and more. He married the old man’s daughter. Old Mother Delestang died a couple of years back and since then he’s done what he wanted. The wife had some obscure illness, aplastic anaemia or something. What? Well, summertime they have to work like hell, from now till the vintage you’re watching your grapes virtually every day. He works very hard when he has to. In the winter they can take it easy. Place on the Cote d’Azur, nice trips to markets. Tokyo, New York, you know. Sure he’s got a plane, whip down to Nice or up to Paris, nothing odd about that. Competent pilot. Bit of a playboy in off hours, likes to throw a party, for the vintage or whatever. Women – oh, I dare say. Nothing serious. Gambles a bit – likes to enjoy himself, huh?"

  "Fast cars?"

  "Oh, only the usual – BMW or Mercedes."

  "Reputation?"

  "Commercially excellent. Private – nothing against him I ever heard. Why?"

  "Nothing at all, probably. Wizard billiards player, is that right?"

  "Oh yes, I’ve heard about that. Pool table up in the château: I’ve been there occasionally, but not in recent years: I knew the old lady quite well."

  It didn’t really sound as though the ‘Monsieur Jacques’, occasional visitor to show off his skill with little balls, could seriously have much connection with the ‘Jackie’ who arranges partouzes. Fellow lived way out in the hills, anyhow.

  He was right or he was wrong and if he was wrong then heavy witticisms about barking up the wrong drainpipe, such as Lasserre would not spare him, would look like profound thought compared with his own substitutes for ideas. Richard had let him down gently… If he was right all these threads led somehow back to Thierry.

  Castang took
a piece of paper. What was known – Known – about Thierry?

  Workshy. There was no way of persuading Master Thierry into a permanent job. Suggest such a thing, and he got hay fever. Psychosomatic: Proust’s asthma. Monsieur Proust had been working away there in his head, and hard, all the time he seemed to be doing nothing but go to parties. Hm: maybe Thierry is an unsuspected genius, but it’s against probability. Meanwhile – over thirty and his gravest affliction is laziness. A perpetual student, and is that just laziness, or chronic immaturity too?

  Means of support. Pa and Ma, plus scratching up ten per cent here and there on go-between trivialities. Says he’s not interested in money. Manages to keep himself in comfort, and whisky. Sponges off Thérèse, and the old folk too. Off anybody, in fact, susceptible to charm – or his jokes. Still, unless he’s on a famous big retainer from the CIA, he can hardly pay for his amusements.

  Now that Etienne is dead there’s a source of income the less. Everybody argued that Thierry, at least, had the poorest possible motive for seeing Dad dead. Has he now come into any kind of an inheritance? Richard, or Massip, had thrashed all the finance out with the notary, and Etienne, apart from the house, didn’t have a lot to leave. Or not in Noelle’s lifetime.

  He hadn’t thought of this before. An interest in Noelle’s death? Mm, some house property: the restaurant – sort of business whose ‘goodwill’ is worth very little. The pub the same: half the income would disappear with Etienne’s death, and more again with Noelle’s, i.e. with the death of both his parents Master Thierry would lose as much as he gained, save in the very short term.

  Interests: occupations, amusements. Slop. ‘The Way’, occultism and eastern religions: over ninety per cent intellectual laziness, on the average. Cars, motorbikes and parachutes: machismo stuff, to impress the girls. Tends to impress the kind of girl that’s rather too easily impressed. Work at these things hard enough to achieve competition quality, you deserve respect. Play at them, you’re nothing.