Strike Out Where Not Applicable

by Nicolas Freeling

  ‘And what’s the charge?’ said Rob coolly. Janine stood biting her nails. ‘You want a drink or something?’

  ‘I’d like a glass of water if you have one.’

  ‘Evian all right?’

  ‘Anything. A charge … they haven’t any meaning. I could write down homicide without necessarily suspecting she killed him. I might write suspected guilty knowledge, even complicity. But the magistrate decides what charge is actually made, if any.’

  ‘Are you talking about Bernhard? But you can’t arrest her on any charge – she knows nothing whatever about it.’

  ‘I found her in the dunes, with a chap. I’m not accusing her of having a lover or anything – I think they were cooking up a tale together. The chap is the painter – you know, I think. I always did wonder where your interest in Stubbs came from.’

  Rob stared stubbornly, a flush growing on his face, but his eyes clear and firm, looking straight into Van der Valk’s.

  ‘She knows nothing about it,’ he repeated. ‘This painter – I’ve heard of him. So what? He doesn’t interest me. What Janine thought or did has no importance. If you want to arrest anyone, go ahead and arrest me. I’m more likely to have killed Fischer than she is; I know more about him than she does. You bloody police always arrest the wrong person, and you have to pick Janine – I’m not having that.’

  Van der Valk drank his water slowly – it was beautifully cold. He put the glass down carefully and wiped his mouth in a vulgar way on the back of his hand.

  ‘I’ll take you too, if you insist. The more the merrier. You might have something interesting to tell me, at that. But I have to take her, you can’t talk me out of that one, and that is my last word.’

  A vein showed in Rob’s forehead; he was getting very angry, and holding it under a thin thread of control.

  ‘I could break your neck.’

  ‘You could have broken Bernhard’s neck. You might have, but there are reasons why I don’t think you did. He might have been a blackmailer, and there’s some support for the opinion that he was, but did he blackmail you? I don’t think so. What for, money? He was in no particular need of money, and he would have had to account for it to his wife, who knew just what he made and what he had. And you would kill him on that account? Don’t mess things up; it can’t help. In the end, she may be called as a witness and no more.’

  ‘No,’ Janine broke in violently. ‘Not just a witness.’

  ‘You’re not going to tell me as well it was you killed Bernhard,’ deflatingly.

  ‘I knew, and I kept my mouth shut,’

  ‘Knew what? Who killed him?’

  ‘Knew – knew he’d been killed.’

  ‘Ah. Dickie told you, did he? And then twisted your arm to make you keep quiet? And how did he know?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And why did he tell you?’

  ‘I’d – slept with him.’ Neither of the two men believed any of this.

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Rob. ‘She’s saying any fantasy that comes into her head, and she’s saying it to protect me.’

  ‘Why?’ mildly.

  ‘Because she knows I killed him.’

  ‘Oh. You killed him, did you?’ Van der Valk seemed impressed with this admission, and as if thinking it over. ‘What with?’

  ‘I don’t even know. I didn’t stop to look. Whatever it was I just threw it away. Something I picked up – he was trying to blackmail Janine. I shut his dirty mouth and I’d do it again tomorrow. Now take me in and leave her alone.’

  ‘Very well, I’ll take you in,’ mild. ‘Since it’ll help her, I’ll agree. Means sitting on the back seat of a Volkswagen.’

  ‘You leave her here.’

  ‘No, you bloody idiot. Stop acting the goat.’

  ‘Rob, stop,’ said Janine, and this time she did burst into tears.

  Janine was left in the outside office, where the duty brigadier, at the sight of his superior officer, had slid his volume of cowboy stories under an impressive heap of forms. Van der Valk switched lights on in his office, pointed Rob to a chair, sat at the desk, opened a drawer to get paper out, and stopped suddenly dead, staring. His expensive cavalry ballpoint was sitting on the desk looking at him; some detective had recovered it from the street where it had fallen and lovingly returned it. He looked at it, put it back in his pocket, and got a cheap plastic one out of the drawer. This failed to write. He sighed and went back to the expensive one.

  He wrote a few lines at the top of the paper. What a bore these things were. Name, christian name, date and place of birth, domicile and profession. He scrabbled in the drawer, looking for cigars; there weren’t any, and he lit a cigarette instead.

  ‘You want to make a statement?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You got some sort of story – something I’m likely to believe?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right. Unwind. The painter’s here, in a cell, thinking up lies to tell, like everybody else, but he’s safe in my pocket. He knew all right who killed Fischer. He heard or saw something or someone – he was in his shed affair he has there, working, about thirty metres away. And what he knows, he’ll tell me. Right? Don’t worry overmuch about protecting Janine. The worst that’s likely to be against her is that she didn’t know how to tell me what she knew.’

  ‘And that’s not too bad?’

  ‘Of course it’s not. But she was with this painter. Furtively, as though they’d agreed to meet to work out a good tale, since I was still hanging round the riding-school. I’ve been waiting for something of this sort.’

  ‘You’ve really got him?’

  ‘Since I tell you,’ impatiently.

  Then ask away. I’ll tell you what I can,’ dully. His voice struck the policeman.

  ‘You aren’t really thinking she slept with him, are you?’

  ‘I’d like to believe she wasn’t, but since you ask – I’m afraid yes – she might have been.’ Van der Valk was a good deal taken aback though he tried not to show it. It didn’t fit in with what he thought he knew of Janine! He thought about it, putting the point of the pen on the desk, sliding his thumb and finger down it, letting it turn in his hand, and doing it again. Thinking, calling himself a fool.

  ‘Remember when I met you first? – we were talking about the bikes. You’re a champion – you’ve got everything. Yet you aren’t quite happy with it all, might I be right? That it could have been better?’

  ‘I was as good as it was given me to be,’ blunt. ‘Never in the very top rank – you’ve got to win a Tour – you’ve got to win two. And how many got there? Coppi, Bobet – you can count them on one hand.’

  ‘I remember your using the word aristocracy – it struck me.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it? There’s isn’t any aristocracy – the real one is something you’re born in – you can’t make it any other way.’

  ‘Something your children can do but you can’t.’

  ‘Yes.’ A slow careful look. ‘I haven’t got any grudge against Janine, you know.’

  ‘You feel any grudges against someone like Francis La Touche, who is what you call born in it?’

  ‘Why should I? I belong on a bike – that’s where I look good. A few years ago I thought I’d like to play tennis, and joined a club. I just wanted to play tennis, but I got mixed up with more of these butchers that think tennis is a game for gentlemen. They wanted to get into the act. I was being lumped along with them so I gave it up.’

  ‘And the hotel?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘You aimed it at a wealthy, snobbish group of customers – the riding-school crowd.’ Rob looked at him almost pityingly for so much naïveté.

  ‘It’s a shop. As long as they’re paying you money they don’t find you getting above yourself. Just don’t mix with them on their own ground.’

  ‘And Janine? She was snubbed. She reacts her own way, putting on that act of “I’m only a Belgian peasant, and proud of it, and
I wave it like a flag and don’t care who sees it”. But she went on riding. That’s what one has to do, no? Pay no heed.’

  ‘She loves horses. She wanted a horse more than she did clothes or a fur or a car or anything. She’d give it all up to keep the horse.’

  ‘Like the painter.’

  Rob stared sullenly, leaning back in the chair, his hands pushed aggressively in his pockets.

  ‘What about the painter?’

  ‘They’ve that in common. The fellow’s a real artist – he loves horses more than anything. Like Francis says – horses don’t cheat. Horses can mean more than human beings. What I don’t understand is that Janine is a very loyal person – and not just to her horse.’

  Rob took a long time answering; Van der Valk lit another cigarette.

  ‘It was my fault,’ at last, leadenly. ‘I didn’t see things her way. She used to come home at first and tell me about the stupid stiff women with their airs, talking all gracious and affected. I told her to stop it – it made me mad – to get out of that dump. She wouldn’t, said she didn’t care. That they looked on a horse like a witch on a broomstick, and she didn’t give threepence for them. I thought I’d make it easier for her: if she didn’t care why should I? I bought this place on the coast – a sort of challenge, see? And then she was furious I hadn’t told her – she wanted to go back to France – she’d always wanted that, she said. I would have liked that too – I didn’t have the nerve, and just out of obstinacy I stayed here then. I wanted to stick it out, to prove that this was my place where I belonged, that I could show them – all those ones that laughed and said I was just a peasant on a bike and would never be able to run a place like a restaurant. They liked my money, though – they rolled up their sleeves and moved in when they thought they saw how to take it away. That the money came from bikes – that didn’t worry them.’

  ‘Janine?’

  ‘She wouldn’t talk to me. Then she came – some months after. Said she’d changed her mind. Said she wanted to pack the riding-school up, sell the horse, everything. I was mad at her then – called her a coward. I was working like a bastard, and I wasn’t giving up then. They were waiting to pull my shirt, give me the elbow. If I’d sold this place then I wouldn’t even have got what I’d paid for it – they’d have seen to that. If I sold it now,’ drily, ‘I’d get double. I wouldn’t let Janine stop then. She kept saying she was fed up, didn’t want to go on – and she wouldn’t give any reason.’

  Light suddenly dawned.

  ‘She’d met the painter.’

  ‘I reckon so, yes. He turned up one day at the coast. Told me he’d got to know her, very silky. I never suspected a thing.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘To make a big portrait, Janine and the horse, for a fancy price. It’s his trick – he makes money that way.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I sent that notion overboard. But – well –’ defensively, angrily, ‘I like painting, I’ve even bought a couple. I wasn’t prejudiced against him – fellow has to earn his living. His stuff might be good. I gave him a drink, I said maybe I’d be interested in other stuff of his – how did you guess all this?’

  ‘I didn’t. I thought there’d been some meeting between you – a remark you made about Stubbs.’

  ‘He told me about Stubbs. I had thought of buying a small picture of a horse – even I could see it was good,’ bitterly. ‘To make it up with Janine.’

  ‘How does Bernhard the boor from Bavaria come into the picture?’

  ‘Don’t ask me.’

  ‘He never came near you?’

  ‘If he had I’d have broken his neck for him, big as he was – fat slob. I would, I tell you. If I’d just known. Janine never told me.’

  ‘The best thing you can possibly do,’ said Van der Valk, jabbing the cavalry ballpoint at the air in a schoolmasterly way, ‘is to go home and pretend you don’t know a damn thing.’

  ‘I stay here. I’ll stand by Janine no matter what. And if she killed him I’ll take whatever’s coming to her.’

  ‘You’ll do what you’re told,’ acidly. ‘This is quite enough of a ballsup without you making it worse. The moment you start hanging about, the press will draw conclusions.’

  ‘Can I see her?’

  ‘No.’

  Rob threw him a bitter look.

  ‘Being a champion means knowing when you’re beaten as well. And not throwing a little tantrum. Just stay quiet, act normal. No matter who asks you and what, know nothing. I’ll deal with any pressmen.’

  Rob stood up; he had dignity. He had more to say but he turned and went out. Van der Valk arranged a few fresh sheets of paper neatly on his desk and picked up his telephone.

  ‘Madame Zwemmer.’

  A policeman in uniform held the door for Janine looking absurdly young and vulnerable in her short furry jacket and black ski-trousers. Van der Valk stood up and went for a short walk around the furniture.

  ‘Can I sit down?’ She had forgotten her French and the exaggerated accent; she spoke in the natural voice of her childhood, soft and not unattractive. The only thing wrong with her, he thought, is that she is a little peasant girl who looks like a little princess and she doesn’t know how to deal with it.

  ‘Of course – I was rude, I’m sorry.’ He paced as far as the window. Nothing to be seen but darkness, a peaceful Dutch street, brick-paved, an old-fashioned ornate lamp-post of cast iron, painted a rather pretty pale blue – he had never noticed that before. So accustomed one got to the greys and greens of Holland.

  ‘Have a cigarette.’ She looked wan, poor little wretch.

  ‘Where’s Rob?’

  ‘I sent him home.’

  ‘I wanted to tell him – how mean I’ve been.’

  ‘I know?’

  ‘You know?’

  ‘A bit – not enough. You’re going to help me understand. I can see why you got friendly with Dickie in the first place. But what made you see him tonight?’

  ‘I was scared he’d tell Rob.’

  ‘That you’d slept with him? Rob wouldn’t have believed it.’

  ‘He’d have had to. He could have proved it.’

  ‘Prove it? How?’

  ‘I have a tattoo. On my hip – I can’t wear a bikini. Nobody knows, except Rob, and … it’s a rose. In blue. It was done when I was young. I mean I had it done.’

  ‘I see. Dickie threatened to do that?’

  ‘I thought he might.’

  ‘You mean he asked to see you? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. He asked had you been on to me, and if I knew had you been on to Rob?’

  ‘He’s a bit of a hard boy.’

  ‘Yes.’ Simply.

  ‘How did Bernhard find out?’

  ‘We were in the White Horse. I was alone and I couldn’t speak to Dick – he was with a whole group, chatting them up – the way he knew how.… I was very lonely and unhappy, and I suppose a bit jealous. I couldn’t think how to approach him. Then I saw him look at me, and I wrote a note and screwed it up, and was going to just pass and slip it him, and then those women came back from the powder room and I flicked it, pretending it was a joke. But he let it fall – I don’t know why. I think he was just being cruel – he is cruel, you know. I didn’t dare pick it up – it would just have drawn attention. I let it lie. I thought the girls would sweep it up or drop it in an ashtray. Bernhard must have been watching. I suppose he must have picked it up.’

  ‘He told you.’

  ‘He came over at the manège and said he’d keep any date I cared to make – in such a greasy way – I was disgusted. I knew he must have found it.’

  ‘He said he’d tell Rob?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He just left you to draw conclusions?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Why not tell Rob anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know. I half thought of it. I would have. He was being awfully nice to me too, after I’d been bitchy to him. That was why I didn’
t, I suppose. To tell him then, that I’d got into trouble – that was all it needed, I thought. So 1 did nothing. I thought of telling Arlette.’

  ‘I wish you had.’

  ‘After ’ I realized that you were whatdyoucallem, investigating, I was scared to.’

  ‘You told Dick?’

  ‘No – I was ashamed to.’

  ‘Did he make any reference to Bernhard having got on to him?’

  ‘Not to me he never said a word.’

  ‘Had you seen him – before tonight – since Bernhard was killed?’

  ‘No. I thought it was an accident like everyone else. Then I heard some people talking, and I was frightened. I stayed away. I knew you were looking too, then. I thought I’d better be very careful. I was paralysed when you talked to me. Then I thought that was dim, and I’d better be friendly or you’d think it fishy.’

  ‘I’d like very much to know who started the talk about it’s not being an accident.’

  ‘I don’t know. I heard them whispering together. Mrs Sebregt and Mrs Elsenschot. Something like he’d been asking for a fall and the other laughed and said yes, but not just being too fat, but being too inquisitive – something like that. I was terribly frightened, I pretended I heard nothing.’

  ‘Did it strike you that he might have picked up other notes – or overheard things – that he might have tried the same trick on with others?’

  ‘I don’t know. No, I don’t think so. I thought they were talking just to be nasty to me. They were always saying little things that sounded harmless but I knew were meant for me. They are like that.’

  ‘I know. Who did you think killed Fischer? Did you think it was Dick?’

  ‘I thought it might have been – Rob – I thought he might have hit him, not meaning to kill him – he can be fierce, when something – when he feels he’s attacked.’

  ‘Has he ever been to the manège?’

  ‘Not that I know of. He knew where it was.’

  ‘The place – where Fischer got it – would seem pretty public to a stranger, wouldn’t you think?’

  ‘I suppose so, yes.’

  ‘A dozen people might see you. You would need to know the routine of the place well to realize is was pretty safe – it isn’t overlooked by a window – it’s easy to come and go unnoticed. Rob wouldn’t know that.’