He pottered round there on the top floor, not very happy. If there was anything hidden, Thierry would hide it – in Thérèse ‘s room, in the old people’s quarters? Hardly; questions might be asked. What was this door here, next to the bathroom?
An attic. The usual junk, but neat and tidy. Broken furniture and oddments: clothes in plastic sacks, linen put away in lavender and camphor: piles of suitcases, hats, a wardrobe with remnants of furnishing materials, wallpaper.
Likely, more than likely; but he felt small enthusiasm for searching all this, especially not knowing what he was looking for. It would take a whole PJ squad to do a thorough job.
But what could it be? Didier was about to take a shower, without bothering locking the door. Unsuspecting. His own brother pottering about, saying perhaps ‘I’ll just have a bit of a shave’ – it might irritate but wouldn’t bother him. ‘Please yourself; have a drink; I’ll be ready in ten minutes.’ What had happened to Didier? He’d been tapped on the nut, shoved under the running water, the electric fan pushed over. One, two, three. All that is wanted is something that will serve for the tap on the nut.
Maryvonne, and the IJ squad, had made a very thorough job of Didier’s flat, looking for ‘blunt instruments’. Almost anything will do, but Professor Deutz, pointing to photographs, slides and stuff, extravasated subcutaneous technical arguments, said ‘something wooden or metallic no doubt, but covered with a substance like leather, something softer and more elastic…’ A piece of fabric, a pullover? It had been a puzzle, and provisionally abandoned.
The light, from a dusty overhead bulb, was not good. Some bags here in the corner. Tent; sleeping-bag; air-mattress: well yes, Thierry – there was no other likely candidate – had or had had the camping craze. A box with the usual gas-cylinder gadgets, spare valves and cartridges. He rummaged half-heartedly. Another bag aroused curiosity: the sort of tightfitting one-piece suit, neoprene or whatever, carefully packed with talcum-powder. Not diving, or was it? – canoeing, kayaking. Well yes, Thierry shooting the rapids, river-of-no-return act, that was quite in character. Of no interest. A smaller sack, heavier; he jingled it in his hand, guessing – sure, tent-pegs and metal pickets, spare cordage for anchoring – what was this bigger, heavier thing; a torch or lamp? – no. Castang’s hand dived in after fumbling some time with the drawstring.
He held in his hand a little mallet with a hard rubber head, sold to drive tent-pegs in hard ground. He stayed there squatting on his heels, holding it on his palm. The contour was very slightly convex. Not so much rounded, or even bevelled, as smoothed.
Castang had an idiotic vision of an IJ technician solemnly and earnestly tapping another IJ man on the nut, numerous times from every possible angle, and then taking the head to Professor Deutz to be photographed. The head in a neat bag, with a drawstring.
Some cops had always little envelopes and plastic sachets in their pockets, for putting Evidence in. Castang didn’t. The rubber was smooth. The head had perhaps been wet. It was possible, it might be that a hair or a fragment of skin (dandruff or something?) had adhered. Regretfully he left his treasure behind. Send a technician… But he had a small sense of certainty, a tiny glow of triumph. It was the sort of over-ingenious device criminals did think of.
Didier had been all for the game of acquiring little leverages over people. To him, a natural extension of house-agency business. Didier, likewise, had a private life based on hedonism. Business is business, however petty, mean, or boring: one must do what one could to make after-hours lots of fun. Little dives and cosy restaurants, small delicious meals, slightly exotic drinks (sake, tequila with salt, bacardi with fresh limes). Lots and lots of girls. Married women are not just safer and more fun; they cause fewer problems. Girls are for boys.
Didier and Maresq had a small business connection, and Chantal was useful to both. Which first got into the wife-swapping ring, and introduced the other to this game (every little bit of leverage is a material advantage) was of small consequence.
But Maresq had more grandiose notions. A type like Didier was plastic but uninteresting; an imbecile like Bouvet, stuffing himself in his library with power fantasies and taking it out on old souped-up cars, of no interest at all. A type like Lallemand, eternal malcontent, bristling with grudges like a hedgehog and intoxicating himself with the rare air of Free Fall – interesting, but explosive, and likely to backfire (he did!). But put them together… This was not a gang to be used for banal hold-ups or robberies: that would be boring and they would do it badly. But an assassination, that would really be a high.
Why Etienne Marcel? A set of motives so muddled – he wished Colette Delavigne luck with that part of the instruction. To the one an oppressive and resented family tyrant. To another a symbol of capitalist hegemony. To a third, perhaps, a detested form of bureaucratic authority. To the guru? – who knows. Perhaps, buried in the past somewhere, an old resentment over a project blocked, a bit of easy money diverted into another channel. A rival, even? Did by any chance Clothilde know Maresq, even indirectly?
In fact the more he thought the more he thought about Clothilde.
He used the telephone, and waited till the IJ came for the rubber hammer.
He felt he’d been tapped a bit himself with a rubber hammer.
Richard had turned the different interrogations over to Lasserre. He had sent Liliane and Lucciani up to Maresq’s house, to see if anything interesting came to light in his papers or possessions. Maryvonne had been sent to have a soothing (on the whole) tactful talk with Bertrand. He himself, very soothing, had gained access to Noelle, or would that afternoon. Davignon and Orthez had been put on a ‘pending’ that a judge of instruction was complaining about: no work been done for too long. The Mayor had to be seen. Something had to be told the press. Briefly, Richard was busy, and what was it now?
About Magali he was calm. He’d have a nice talk himself with Miss Magali. She held an important key, and would turn it. One had to put her, that what’s-her-name – Salome – and the woman Chantal together in Colette Delavigne’s cabinet, with perhaps an assurance about discretion, and it would all come tumbling out. Bertrand, if promised some sort of immunity, would unscrew his mouth about Maresq’s proposals: come in with us, bring your charming wife: we’ll have a few more, and I can promise you – you’d be surprised. Any time you want to change your job, I can guarantee you… Since there was another civic councillor in the Partouze circle the Mayor would Not be anxious for publicity. It’ll be tricky, though.
Thierry – that, Castang, was just fucking crass of you (Richard was tired or he would not be saying fuck). If you’d been a bit less casual a lot of trouble might have been saved.
It didn’t do to make excuses. He produced evidence in a hurry of industry, zeal, intelligent deduction: an IJ man with a rubber hammer. This got the champing jaws quietened down a bit: not that Richard would ever be impressed (short of hitting him on the head with it) but judges love things like this. Material Exhibits, on dramatic tables in courtrooms, that they can have borne solemnly across to look at, and play with. Hand it to the Jury, please – held at arm’s length by the usher, like a long-dead mackerel. Professor Deutz agreed that it fitted, said Castang virtuously.
He went home for lunch, and was taken aback to find Vera had been out, for the first time, with the object in a pram; secondhand pram, but given a new coat of stove enamel. He scolded: wasn’t this too premature? No no, only up and down the street, and just as far as the Dirty-shop to buy greens, and those alsatian noodles called spätzle, and look, one of his favourite meals. Little medallions cut from a filet mignon of pork, flavoured and cooked in the pan; piccata alla marsala – should be veal really, but it’s far too dear. And going out had done her good: just look at the weather, warm and mild like Mummy-milk.
Vera was not all that good a cook: secretly, Castang believed he himself was better. Just lack of practice, he said, when he turned out something horrible. But it was very nice, as well as piggy-chauvinist, to s
tretch one’s legs out under one’s own table, and stuff away lordly at dinner cooked by one’s wife.
"Tell me," once it was stowed away where it belonged, "your Tappertit figure; would he go kill himself, if the game was up?"
"I don’t think so, no. Surely not – far too conceited. He’d try to find a hole where he could hide. Rest up out of sight, don’t you know, convinced that things would blow over in a little while. Once he recovered his protective good opinion of himself and his doings. He’d find someone, be sure, to cosset him and be kind to him – they always do.’ He nodded; he saw it that way too. Thierry would have slipped off to Paris, to some friendly pad, and would reappear jaunty in a few days, with a polished tale about his knowing nothing about any of this. Oh well, yes, he’d known. But he’d kept quiet, you see, Inspector, out of loyalty to his friends.
Half-truths, arranged and repeated in his own mind until they became true: once they sounded convincing enough to him they had to be true.
He had bicycled. He picked up the car at the office. Remember to get the technical squad to take out that damn transmitter, or he’d have Cantoni’s people asking to borrow it. Pinching it, likely as not.
There was a bolthole that had to be stopped. An unlikely one, but – could one ever be sure? And he was day-dreaming perhaps, but it would be nice to acquire a bit of prestige. He had not distinguished himself throughout this affair. Even finding Noelle the gendarmerie had done for him.
The village square was nice: the usual expanse of beaten earth, with a double row of plane trees, where the market stalls got set up; given over on other days to boule players: among the old, at least, this was still boule-lyonnaise country, rather than boring pétanque. It was extremely conventional, he thought parking the car, and noticing Clothilde’s battered poison-green Alfa down the road; he hadn’t wasted his trip. You’d find the same in most villages. But at least they haven’t tarted anything up. Since all these village houses were bought up by townspeople…well, you could say little about the houses. Country people had money too, and as bad taste or worse. You saw stone walls two centuries old, covered in plastic tiles imitating travertine.
But townspeople would go filling their gardens with horrible things bought from suburban garden-centres: stuff with golden or silver foliage, ough, trained to weep instead of growing upright: proud examples of the hybridist’s art. Nice and small. Sterile things. Trees? – pederast treelets. He looked with approval at the scarred knobbly planes, only now getting into their full long-distance stride.
Warm! He would have liked to take his jacket off, but you couldn’t leave a gun-belt, with a nine-millimetre Smith and Wesson, in a parked car! Not even in the village square you can’t.
Toc – toc. A long wait. Clothilde’s day for washing her hair? Scurrying sounds from within, indicative of hasty tidying.
She was in trousers, which suited her. In riding breeches she would look better still. The big horsewoman’s hand went to her hair and pushed at it, while she looked at him ruffled yet resigned, as though it wasn’t worth the trouble to get cross.
"The bad penny once more."
"Or, Alice is At It Again."
"Still determined that I can’t be left in peace to rebuild myself?"
"I’ll promise that this will be the last."
"Mm." Put your faith in a cop’s word…
"Well, aren’t you going to ask me in?"
"Can I refuse? It’s like pulling at a half-healed scar. If the choice is between that and attracting the attention of all the neighbours – the lesser of two evils. Come on in then…this room needs airing," opening the front windows, "I try not to, during the day, because of all the dust from outside." The room had a smell of stale cigarette smoke, but why make a fuss? Empty the ashtrays, by all means: she’d been smoking a lot. Or had a visitor over lunch.
"By yourself?"
"Of course I’m by myself. The housekeeping has to be done, you know. Can’t always be sitting the elegant hostess with fresh flowers and the table just waxed."
"I thought it might be one of your days at the shop."
"Not always. A woman likes to potter in her own interior. A quiet day to do her nails. Anything wrong with that? Shall we come to the purpose of the visit?"
"Read the paper?"
"I never read papers; they’re full of lies." One could agree with that! "I glance at it from time to time – skipping."
‘You’d have seen a report, brief, that we’ve made some arrests in the matter of Etienne Marcel. Superficial, of course. There’ll be a press release this evening in all likelihood."
"And this would interest me? I’m afraid you’re mistaken. Etienne alive… But Etienne dead – I can’t feel vengeful, or even really curious. Some people who got twisted, distorted out of their true balance."
"How can you know that?"
"How could it be anything else? You yourself said as much."
"It was always the probability. Degrees of responsibility are not my job, I probably added. Everybody can claim attenuating circumstances, and everyone does. Once we pinch them. My job is answerability. The rest is for judges. We’ve two, three people who have to answer for what they did, plotted, combined, or even just imagined."
"Well congratulations."
"One is missing."
"Oh? Bad luck."
"Etienne’s own younger son. Thierry."
"I thought for a moment it was going to be me."
"Pretty bad, isn’t it? Parricide, you know."
"I’m afraid I don’t know. It’s outside my experience."
"We don’t in fact suppose it is, technically, parricide. Likely, to a person like that, the idea in abstract might seem rather fine. A blow for freedom. Even a dotty notion of gallantry. When it came to the point, probably he shuffled and backed out."
"Mm."
"We think, in fact, that the real moving spirit was elsewhere. We’ve got him too. A person whose unpleasant speciality was to see how far he could influence weak-minded, silly, fanatical or otherwise-stunted personalities. Vicious. He’ll try to pin the blame on the others. We’ve two of those – the actual authors, it’s as good as certain, of the assassination. Friends of Thierry’s."
"Oh?"
"Thierry himself got wind, probably, of what was going on. Smelt something, had it confirmed by a phone call. Best thing he could think of was to bunk. Paris or somewhere. Question of a few days, before we pick him up. Foolish of him."
"Really?"
"The instructing judge will charge him, of course, with the conspiracy. And this instruction will tag along, six months or so. The Prosecutor would then likely plead incitement or inducement – but with some good lawyers – there’d be a stubborn defence. Cases like that, naturally they try to shift the blame to other shoulders. You don’t seem much interested."
"I told you, I’m not."
"The judge hasn’t summoned you yet, as a witness? She will."
"I’ll tell her what I’ve told you. I’m in no way concerned."
"You’ll have a hard time convincing her of that."
"Why?"
"Because it sounds so phoney."
"Neither you nor your equally odious boss, Monsieur Richard, were able to scratch up anything showing that I’m in any way involved, Mr What’s-your-name."
"Things are different now."
"In what way, may I ask?"
"I tell you a story that concerns you, Madame Chose, in the most intimate areas of your life and feelings. You pretend indifference. In reality, I think, you’d heard it all before."
"What justification can you possibly have for saying a thing like that? You play throughout with my emotions in the most ignoble way."
"Your remarks have a fabricated, pre-rehearsed sound. Your lack of interest, in case I popped in, seemed to you then the most plausible front you could put forward."
"Then? When the hell is then? I hear all this stuff – invented for all I know this minute to put a squeeze on me – thirty seconds ago
."
"You’ll forgive my saying I think you’re a liar."
"How dare you!"
"My experience of liars is comprehensive. Is he here?"
"Who?"
"He didn’t know, of course, we could guess he knew you, or even knew of you. He snuffled out, of course, everything he could concerning his father’s life. Made it his business."
"God – you are a filthy thing."
"Yes, it’s a dirty trade, thinking evil of people. People have to clean the sewers too. Wear protective clothes, high boots, take a shower when they get home. Gravediggers have to examine people too from time to time. Do it before light. There’s a smell, sometimes. All these people have to pick their boots up, go on putting one foot in front of another. However little they like it. Pathologists have to look at puss, and piss, and shit. Lab attendants take slides from a vagina, a rectum. They like that?
"I’m a PJ officer, I’ve search powers. I don’t specially want to go in your bedroom. I daresay he appealed to your warmheartedness which is real. Maternal instincts, and a lot more. I don’t have to know. The judge will want to. I want him to come out, or you to fetch him out. If he goes over the garden wall at the back it’s useless: he’s bottled, and I’ve two cars full of cops here in ten minutes."
She looked at him a long moment, making her mind up, and got slowly to her feet.
"I don’t believe in a word you’ve told me. In any of it."
"You don’t have to. As the man says, just stand and deliver." Castang hitched his open jacket back, put a deliberate hand behind his hip, and reached his gun out, put it on the table. She stared down at it.
"You don’t need anything like that," with open contempt.
"Of course not. Tell him – if he has one, unlikely but possible – to give it to you." She turned and walked out of the room: he heard her go slowly up the old, creaky stairs. Oak. A nice feature to have in a cottage. But not if you have fugitives to shelter.
She called in a dead voice from the top of the stairs.
Castang’s City Page 26