The King of the Rainy Country

by Nicolas Freeling

  ‘No, but smart. Of you.’ They were back at the table.

  ‘I’ve seen it before,’ said Stössel calmly. ‘Witnesses can never identify a photograph. But they can see the likeness of both to a third person they know. The thing is to find that third person. Jacques Anquetil …’ He gave a short snort of laughter.

  ‘Why not, after all? Must be a millionaire himself.’

  ‘And we can hardly suspect him of the job, huh?’ said Heinz.

  ‘Come on,’ he added, drinking up some cold coffee. ‘Back to the shop.’

  *

  ‘Assuming you’re right …’ sitting down in an office a lot bigger, a chair more leather-padded, with a lot more ingenious machinery on the desk, than in Van der Valk’s office in Amsterdam, but with the same smell. ‘Why, would you say?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘It worries me. It seems so out of character.’

  Perhaps, thought Van der Valk. You haven’t seen that house; you haven’t talked with Anne-Marie.

  ‘Let’s see if we can work out how.’

  ‘True … Planes are out. Taxis are out. Car-hire is out. Train … maybe.’

  ‘Car buy, maybe.’

  ‘We’ll try,’ with a face. ‘What might he have had – traveller’s cheques, dollars, any idea?’

  ‘He’s not that dim. German cheque on a German bank, likeliest, according to the hint I got.’

  ‘In a German name?’

  ‘How many autos, though, are paid for cash down and driven away?’

  ‘We’ll make a composite photo and show it around. Come to that, if all this is sound, he might have bought all sorts of things. A house, even. Anything expensive, not in itself unusual, but perhaps seeming unorthodox … My god, I’d hate to hear what the Polizei President would say to this notion – I’msuppressing you in my report in any case; you’ve no official standing.’

  *

  Van der Valk, with no standing even to read electricity meters in the city of Koln, could not take part in the hawking of a prettily faked photo around the expensive shops where a man looking like Jacques Anquetil might have bought a car, or a house, or a caravan, or … damn it, what had he thought of? Where had he gone? Where could he be hidden? It was a difficult thing, to think oneself into the shoes of a very rich man who wanted to cover his tracks.

  He went to see the parents of the tanzmariechen. The mother was not much use – poor woman, she was a blur, like a water-colour left out in the rain, and whatever she could manage to tell about the girl was as bad. The father was more help. He was, thought Van der Valk, a man of surprising innocence; he did not even think of asking who this man was that spoke quite fluent German (but talked about das Zeit). A kind man, a man of goodness, simplicity, a man thinking evil of nobody: the girl, thought Van der Valk, had these characteristics too. Might that have struck Jean-Claude Marschal?

  *

  As they expected, a quite astonishing number of eccentric people had bought eccentric things and behaved in eccentric ways; it had, after all, been carnival time. Every policeman, in every shop, was regaled with tales that went, ‘That’s nothing, though. Why, I could tell you. There was a man that bought twelve nightdresses all different colours …’ It was exactly like the old ‘Believe it or not …’ column that had made Mr Ripley a household word when they were boys. But nobody recognized the photo, except the man in the garage, who thought it might have been a man he had sold a car just before carnival started, on the Friday: Carrera 1900: German racing silver: a Mr Alfred Kellermann. The man in the garage cared nothing for bikes though, and had never heard of Jacques Anquetil. If it had looked like Stirling Moss, now … It was all very vague.

  Mr Kellermann had spoken good German, but not like a Rhinelander; more like a South German or an Austrian. The cheque was on a big bank: no information was forthcoming about the account without a court order.

  Middle-aged handsome men in red, black, blue and white Porsche autos were reported all over Germany.

  ‘I can’t believe in it,’ said Heinz Stössel. ‘Where could they sleep? They must spend the night somewhere. You don’t sleep in a Porsche auto.’ He had the stubborn obstinacy, the refusal to be discouraged, that Van der Valk lacked.

  ‘They’re over the border long gone. Holed up somewhere in a wintersport village. He was a good skier. She worked in a sports shop and liked it too.’

  ‘It’s on the list,’ said Heinz briefly. His theory was that you can find anything and anyone with a routine, if that routine is only well enough co-ordinated. Police departments are increasingly fragmented and where they fail is in faulty liaison. A man looked for by, for instance, the fraud squad for a very smooth savings’ bank trick may be completely unknown to a murder squad, who would not know him even if they had him in the office as a witness. Heinz Stössel had fired arrows at every department in the organization. Faced with a man who, technically, had committed no crime at all (they had absolutely no pretext for looking up, for instance, the bank account) he had calmly assumed that the man was guilty of every crime in the penal code. He had made a list of everything he could imagine Mr Marschal doing, had virtually every policeman in Germany hunting for it, and had every report made put on his telex. Every hour, he went with his red pencil, line by line, through the reams of tape. He was looking, he said, for a co-ordinate.

  ‘I think there might be something here. It’s inconclusive, though. A large quantity of ski equipment and clothes, including some for a woman, was bought in München. The man does not follow our description particularly, but was tall, thin and assured. Knew all about what he wanted. The only thing that really struck them was that at the end he signed a very large cheque without even checking the number of items on the bill. When questioned they said that another thing that struck them was being told to deliver everything to the luggage office at the station. Cheque on a local bank. München looked for any more cheques in the same name. They found one at a travel agency – two first-class tickets to Innsbruck.’

  ‘What’s the name on the cheque?’

  ‘Funny name. Nay.’

  ‘Nay?’ said Van der Valk. ‘Nay?’

  “That’s what it says on the tape. Nay.’

  ‘Ring them up, Heinz. I am a fool, ring them up, tell them to check the spelling.’

  Slightly astonished at this vehemence, Stössel picked his phone up. ‘München … one six seven, miss, please … hallo? … hallo? Schneegans? Stössel here in Köln. This cheque in the ski-shop. Did the operator get the name right? Nay, yes. Check it will you? … yes? … OK, thanks.’ He put the phone down. ‘Yes, but how did you know? Easy slip to make, can’t blame them really. An e instead of an a. Ney. I don’t see it.’

  ‘Ney,’ said Van der Valk, grinning, ‘is the name – it’s absurdly childish – one of Napoleon’s marshals. Born German – in the Saar. Kellermann is one too. I’ve kept thinking and thinking what it was that was memorable about it.’

  ‘You mean this is him?’

  ‘Can’t be anyone else.’

  ‘Gone to Innsbruck. Looks like a risk but it was safe really. München to Innsbruck! Well … what can have happened to the auto?’

  ‘That damn routine of yours,’ said Van der Valk, still grinning.

  ‘I had every auto checked,’ indignantly. ‘Bought, hired, borrowed or stolen.’

  ‘You don’t know an auto’s stolen, though, till someone reports it stolen.’

  ‘Yes, but … ’

  ‘What better way would there be of getting rid of an auto you think might be recognized? Leave it on the street unlocked in a town that size – it’ll be gone without trace in three hours. You simply never report its loss.’

  ‘What – a brand new Porsche?’

  ‘We just haven’t been keeping pace with this kind of mind. That brand new Porsche means about as much to a fellow like this as a Dinky toy.’

  ‘I see. No wonder we missed him … Anyway, we’ve got the two linked. We know now that he went off with the girl. Fin
d him, and we find the girl. Or the other way round. I need to get the President, now, to ring up Innsbruck.’

  ‘No need. I’m going to go there myself.’

  ‘You’ve no authority, though.’

  ‘I don’t need it. All I have to do is walk up to him and say the party’s over. The whole drama will collapse and the girl will just come home. What can it be, after all? Just a whim of a rich man. A romantic escapade. She’ll have come to no harm. But he’ll be watching the German papers, Heinz, amusing himself, I’ve no doubt. Don’t let the press get it.’

  *

  It was like passing from one world into another, he thought, in the plane. He hadn’t been able to tell Heinz, but everything there had been out of key, the scenery and lighting false and melodramatic, the shadows exaggerated and distorted, the feeling of the whole atmosphere wrong. If a girl disappears, there is a possible crime; if the girl is not raped, or murdered, or sold into slavery, or something, well, there remains an abduction. The distraught parents, the screaming press, the hundreds of policemen and firemen and soldiers in high boots peering under bramble bushes – everything gets out of hand. Jean-Claude Marschal had committed no crime. He had to keep reminding himself of that, but he was sure it was true; Jean-Claude had quite likely never even realized that the German police would take it all so seriously. To him getting a girl to run away with you was a new sensation, a new thing, a new experience. That was how it looked; he didn’t know, himself. Jean-Claude had run away; he had known or guessed that he would be searched for. Really searched for? By the police? He had hidden himself cunningly; it had taken Heinz Stössel’s fantastic routine, with threads from the whole of the Federal Republic twisted into a lasso by a teletype, to find him. It hadn’t caught him.

  Van der Valk was distracted momentarily. First by the stewardess, who had so much hair that he wondered for several moments how on earth she managed to keep her cap on, and then by the beer he asked for. It was perfectly good beer, but by the peculiar snobbish alchemy of airlines it was Danish. Because, he thought indignantly, we are flying at three or four thousand feet over the territory of the Federal Republic, German beer becomes immediately too proletarian for the likes of us – and I shell out four and sixpence for a gold-label Carlsberg as meek as Minnie Mouse. Indignation at this meekness had to simmer down before he could concentrate on Marschal.

  Marschal must surely realize that the police hunt for persons reported missing. He might have reckoned on Anne-Marie making no fuss; she hadn’t wanted any police – she’d made that clear enough. He must, too, have thought that Canisius would be unperturbed – and there he had made an error. He had known that his absence made no difference to the business, and he had known that as the heir to the Marschal fortune he was a person of importance in everyone’s eyes. Conclusion was, surely, that to fall into the error of supposing that Canisius would take no steps towards having him found he must have imagined that Canisius would be glad to have him gone, out of the way, forgotten even.

  Not only had Canisius taken steps – he had taken very drastic steps. An inspector of the criminal brigade had been detached, with wide powers and all expenses guaranteed. As though there had been a crime. Yet there had been no crime. Yes, persuading a girl under age to run away from her home was a legal offence, but Marschal had not thought of that. Otherwise he must have known that the police would look for this girl, as well as for him. Had he thought that the girl would confuse everything, providing him with a kind of camouflage?

  The beer tasted good. Van der Valk reflected that Canisius was paying for it, just as he was for the plane ticket, and cheered up.

  Could Canisius have known or guessed something about this girl? That hardly seemed possible. Could he have known or guessed that Marschal might do something of the sort? Something wild, something unstable? Had they known of some secret, some inner flaw in the man? Was that why Canisius had insisted on an inspector of the criminal brigade? And if that was the case, why hadn’t he been told?

  Was Marschal unbalanced? Had he perhaps done something criminal in the past? Could this German girl be in any danger?

  No no. He shook it off; that was worse than unsupported theorizing, that was senseless vaporizing. The Head Commissaris of Police in Amsterdam might be a nervous civil servant, but he would have satisfied himself that there was no crime. If there had been anything criminal, he would have followed the routine pattern, Interpol and all the rest, and he would not have departed from it for twenty millionaires. No, his Highness had behaved in a way that was plausible enough. A millionaire with amnesia, who must not be chased or harried, who must be looked for very quietly and discreetly by a responsible experienced officer – with all his expenses guaranteed – that magic phrase had been enough to quieten his Highness’s conscience, no doubt!

  It was a grave mistake to get himself hot and bothered about motives, thought Van der Valk. He was an inspector of the criminal brigade: very well, that simply meant that he was a policeman like any other, acting under orders, orders to look for a man, find him, and simply report his whereabouts to Canisius. These orders were not affected by anything he might not know: even if the man were a criminal, it was irrelevant. A little thread had brought him to Köln, where a friendly gesture had put a whole country’s police apparatus in movement for him – Van der Valk knew very well that Heinz Stössel had not, until the discovery of the second bank account with a Napoleonic name, been very convinced that Mr Marschal was responsible for the disappearance of little Dagmar Schwiewelbein. Out of goodwill he had summoned a monstrous expenditure of energy (with sufficient excuse to explain it to his superiors) and had got a positive result, a clue to Marschal’s whereabouts, inside forty-eight hours.

  The next little thread, in Austria, might take a bit longer, but Van der Valk knew well enough that he would find his man. The frontiers were being watched; Stössel had sent a signal about the missing girl to the police of Innsbruck. He would find him easily enough, and then he would make a phone call, and that would be the end of it. Canisius would come, or send a confidential minion, for a little chat with Jean-Claude. The German girl would be sent home, and any possible criminal charge concerning abduction would be politely forgotten. An incident … Jean-Claude Marschal was not a criminal. There had been no crime.

  And Anne-Marie? Would she thank him for all that? She had not been any too enthusiastic at a policeman, however responsible, however experienced, however tactful and discreet, running after her husband. She had yielded eventually, become more open, but she had not lost all suspicion. She had agreed that Marschal should be followed up, but she had made a clear hint that Jean-Claude was not an ordinary person, and a clear appeal to him to make an effort to understand, not to accept everything he was told. Just because he had had some vague clue about those statues, some vague notion about the famous Hepplewhite furniture? Of course not, but she had thought him a little more able than most to realize that this was a peculiar bird. ‘I really do believe …’ she had said … What was it exactly that she really did believe?

  Was it possible that …? Why, exactly, had Canisius sent an inspector of the criminal brigade? Could there be something more to all this than met the eye?

  No, no, and no. He knew nothing, he was simply going to obey orders, follow instructions, Jean-Claude Marschal has not committed any crime, not even that of abduction; Marschal was not a criminal.

  Jean-Claude Marschal has committed no crime … It was a bit like the famous phrase in Liberty Bar. William Brown was murdered …

  The plane bumped very slightly on concrete, taxied, turned, roared its engines, and relapsed into silence; everybody hustled for the door. The air was stinging cold and there were mountains all around. This was Innsbruck.

  *

  First of all, Innsbruck was a great deal fuller than he had thought. He got a hotel room, but not without a struggle. Next week, apparently, there would be the final big international competition of the ski season, and the whole of the ‘white ci
rcus’ would be on parade. The place would swarm with lookers-on and hangers-on, there would be journalists and photographers. And there were, still, any amount of holidaymakers. March or no March, there were forty centimetres of snow right here, and a hundred and twenty on the slopes …

  There he was, too, deep in the forty centimetres, with town shoes, and a silly light overcoat that had looked perfectly all right in Köln, but here was absurd. Very well, the Sopex was paying the expenses. He was supposed to find Mr Marschal, but nobody had warned him that he might have to paddle in the snow. He went into the first shop he came to in the Maximilianstrasse, and bought himself a mighty pair of boots, and a lovely loden ‘canadienne’ jacket. They tried to sell him the whole damn shop, scenting a novice.

  ‘I could do with a St Bernard dog.’ That shut them up.

  Once equipped he had to make his routine call on the police. They weren’t a bit interested.

  ‘Fine place you’ve picked. We’ve got all the hotel registrations, naturally, but the valley’s full of chalets and houses that would take a year to check. You don’t see that, but all these mountain districts are the same. People own a house, good. We know their name. They let it for a month, the tenants sublet, the subletter camps a dozen pals in the kitchen – do you think we know their names? We don’t even get the tourist tax half the time.’

  The commissaire’s name was Bratfisch. He was rough and tough; rough blond hair, a rough tweed jacket, a pair of shoulders made to burst in doors, and boots like Van der Valk’s, made to kick people out of them. Van der Valk leant back in his chair, with his hands in his pockets, and chewed on a matchstick. It was just the fellow’s manner, he thought. Plus a message. You damned policemen from the towns in your clean white shirts may think yourselves clever, but don’t think that we bow down before you. We are mountaineers.

  ‘It isn’t really my fault that they came here, though,’ softly.

  ‘Ach, of course not. Just that this can’t be done one-two-three. Firstly, your birds could be in the Vorarlberg by now, or in the Engadine. Second, they can get very worked up in Köln about a girl that’s disappeared but here, one has to realize, these things are a daily occurrence. You know how many girls reported missing I’ve had here since the season started? I’ll tell you – eighteen. The air goes to their heads. They get seduced by beach boys and fall off the tree like cherries. Six weeks later they turn up at their consulates without a sou asking for a ticket home.’