You’d better come up."
Thierry was sitting on her bed, hands between his knees, round-shouldered and head sunken, staring out of the window at the little garden; there was a patch of grass with a table painted white and two wooden chairs.
A sunny wall. An espaliered peartree. A narrow parterre either side. Dahlia bulbs, shooting up greenery.
Castang had always wanted a cottage garden. Things to make a bright warm mass of colour and happiness, all muddled together. Morning glories and larkspurs and snapdragons and sweet williams and love-in-a-mist. And nasturtiums all round. And if you had a wall, damn it, Huge Big sunflowers. AND HOLLYHOCKS.
THIRTY FIVE
JACQUES BREL HAS DIED
Colette Delavigne, the Judge of Instruction, after pulling so many faces – judges hate all those experts, and Maresq had already imported a talkative Paris lawyer, a red-hot, the PJ would have called him a shit-hot, on procedural points – was content…
She pulled that corniest of all instruction-gags, a reconstruction. If they come off, lovely. The examining magistrate, ordering everyone around like a movie-director, saying more or less ‘Places everyone. Quiet. Sound. Camera!’ has a lovely time. And think of all the favourable publicity.
If they don’t come off, in ploughed fields in a drizzle of a February day, oh well, there was only one wretched photographer from the local rag.
She chose the same time of day, to get the light right, had the whole Cours la Reine cleared of traffic. Cops with crowd barriers. Castang doing Etienne Marcel, collapsing riddled with lead. Orthez driving the getaway car, Lasserre with that clumsy great forty-five Army automatic. Richard, who loathed Alfred Hitchcock, stood there with the Mayor, but said they were strangers on a train, definitely. The eyewitnesses, much drilled, did several different takes. The lawyers were very obstreperous. The Paris lawyer kept saying No doubt, Madame, No doubt; I fail to see why it should interest me.
The employees of the Banque de France had crowded to their windows and so had everyone else. You’d think you were outside the Santé, at five in the morning, in the good old Public Execution days, with le père Deiber doing his stuff.
Riotous success all round.
For the PJ, finished, save for that excruciating chore of having to give evidence in front of the Assize Court, a job no cop enjoys.
A month, two, or three had passed. It had faded and grown dim. More – six, and the trial was slated for the next sessions. Castang came home, of a dreary November evening. Vera was sitting on the floor snuffling drearily, tear-sodden, blowing her nose on a ghastly dishcloth.
"What has happened?" Lydia, good as gold, was on her tummy on the floor some distance away, banging with both fists and quite plainly happy. "Please tell me."
"You haven’t heard?"
"I’ve been in the country." Vera pointed wordlessly at the television set. Superimposed on a long, sad, horse face a reporter, overdressed as usual and with his national-mourning expression above his huge knitted tie, was saying, "Nothing, I believe, has so cut into us here," pointing at his well-filled waistcoat, "since Edith Piaf left us."
"Oh, God – no."
"Oh, God yes."
Vera cried buckets at the end of Verdi operas, and when she came out in a distraught daze, walked under trams. Castang the Boot, professionally insensitive, was not a weepie.
Now was different.
There are not enough poets. How many are good poets, and not just pop lyricists? How many go round the world? A Beatle once said ‘We are more important than Jesus’: he was mistaken, though forgivably.
Jacques had never thought of himself either in terms of importance or any resemblance to Jesus, but he was real, always.
No more would that voice say, with that dignity
‘It is late, Mister,
And I must be going home.’
Jef, stop crying like that in front of everybody. Shift your carcass, Jef. Mussels, Jef, and frites. And Moselle wine. And at Andrée’s, there are now girls. Come on Jef, it’s no longer the pavement – it’s getting like a cinema, here, with you crying.
It was only a false blonde, and three-quarters-whore at that.
‘Fernand…
Say he’s dead.
Say I’m alone behind.
Say you’re alone up front.
Fernand I’ll come to this whore of a cemetery
And we’ll drink silence
To the health of that Constance
Whose shadow meant as much to her as you did.’
And so much, so much.
The outrageous, glorious Jacky, selling boats full of opium, whisky made in Clermont-Ferrand, real old queens and false young virgins, and a bank on each finger, mate, and a finger in every country.
You were the poet, boy. A poet is for the people. Or to be polite, take Mr Eliot, stick him up his waste land. Real poets sing. They go round the world on an enormous kite. Shakespeare, tu connais? At the same time as they finish as broken-down tango-singers. For old biddies. In the rain, in Knocke-le-Zoute.
There are phoney ones. The phoney ones made more money. But they’re twisting slowly in the wind. While with what was left of your lungs you – you were bawling out a bawdy ditty.
Hands, stop trembling.
Remember them wet – you cried on them.
Hands, do not open.
Arms, do not stretch out.
You my hands and arms keep still.
You my girl Mathilde have come back.
Spit right back into the sky.
Mathilde has come back.
"I’m all right," said Vera, burying herself in the dishcloth.
"I’m all right, I’m all right, I’m all right I tell you," as he got down on the floor and held her. "Mathilde has come back."
There we leave them: he undoing one boot, she struggling with the tight, wet lace of the other.
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Nicolas Freeling was born in London but travelled widely, living in Brittany and Ireland throughout his childhood. He began writing during a three-week prison sentence, after being convicted of stealing some veal from an Amsterdam restaurant in which he worked; the street-wise detective who interrogated him provided the inspiration for Van der Valk, one of his most famous characters. Freeling was deported back to Britain with Dutch wife Renée in tow, and it was here that he finished Love in Amsterdam, his first novel – published in 1962; its success caused Freeling to return to the Netherlands to garner local colour for further stories.
Having tired of his Dutch protagonist, Freeling killed him off in 1972, to the outrage of his fans. He refused to bring the detective back to life and wrote two novels where his widow Arlette was the detective. Then he embarked upon his second detective series - featuring French inspector, Henri Castang - ostensibly to revive his failing income. Many critics came to consider Castang superior to Van der Valk. His works won him the French Grand Prix de Roman Policier, the American Edgar Allen Poe Award and the British Crime Writers’ Golden Dagger.
Freeling died 20 July 2003 at his long-standing home at Grandfontaine to the west of Strasbourg.
Also in the Henri Castang series
Dressing of Diamond
What are the Bugles Blowing For?
Lake Isle, aka Sabine
The Night Lords
Castang’s City
Wolfnight
The Back of the North Wind
No Part in Your Death
Cold Iron
Lady Macbeth
Not as Far as Velma
Those in Peril
Flanders Sky, aka The Pretty How Town
You Who Know
The Seacoast of Bohemia
A Dwarf Kingdom
Also by Nicholas Freeling
Van der Valk Series:
Love in Amsterdam aka Death in Amsterdam
Because of the Cats
Gun Before Butter aka Question of Loyalty
Double-Barrel
Criminal Conversation
The King of the Rainy Country
Strike Out Where Not Applicable
Tsing-Boum!
Over the High Side aka The Lovely Ladies
A Long Silence aka Auprès de ma Blonde
Sand Castles
Featuring Arlette Van der Valk:
The Widow
One Damn Thing After Another aka Arlette
Other Novels:
Valparaiso
The Dresden Green
This is the Castle
Gadget
A City Solitary
One More River
Some Day Tomorrow
The Janeites
This edition published in 2017 by Ipso Books
Ipso Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd
Drury House, 34-43 Russell Street, London WC2B 5HA
Copyright © Nicolas Freeling, 1980
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTHTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
Castang’s City Page 27