The Public Prosecutor

by Jef Geeraerts

  What fascinated Albert most about the man was his face: Barrister-General Bergé’s face was an amalgamation of expressions that appeared to be divided into unconnected units, leaving him, at least so it seemed, completely faceless. He was incredibly meticulous and methodical, puzzlingly ambiguous, nitpicking and one-dimensional, making him particularly useful for certain tasks, such as prying into other people’s sex lives. Albert himself could not abide such business and only took pleasure in it during mundane meetings or get-togethers at his club.

  But he was finding it difficult to stay focused. Thoughts of the wonderful night with Maria and the imminent return of Amandine soured his mood, although he planned to make an adventure of the situation: the stupid nun, that sanctimonious bitch, was not going to prevent him from continuing a bloody satisfying relationship under the roof of the house she had received from her daddy to celebrate the tenth anniversary of her failed marriage. The opportunity was not to be missed.

  By 11.25 he had had enough. He looked at his watch and said he had to go. Out of politeness, he asked Bergé how far he was with the inaugural speech he was writing on Albert’s behalf, which was to be delivered at the opening of the judicial year in September. The presentation rejoiced in the title: ‘The Administration of Justice and Territorial Jurisdiction’.

  “It’ll be ready on time, Public Prosecutor,” Bergé answered with a contented grin, which made his chubby lips curl.

  Condescending little bastard, thought Albert, knowing full well he would have to adapt the style of everything but the footnote references, which, as ever, would be perfectly correct.

  When Bergé was gone he thought once again to himself: what a wreck! He had once scribbled an excellent description of “Old People” in a luxury desk diary he had received from the General Bank, which he used for the sole purpose of noting his thoughts and musings. He fished the diary from the drawer, surreptitiously slipped on his reading glasses and found the text almost immediately: “One should be on one’s guard when old people appear helpless. When they can no longer rely on their powers of persuasion, they’re reduced to bragging about their authority. Experience can help in this regard, but most of the time they’ve forgotten it. They talk incessantly, because they’re afraid of losing track of their thoughts. They resort to tyranny because they sense that others no longer respect them. They’re impatient because they know their life is coming to its end. They’re distrustful, because they can no longer check up on things, and irritable, because they know people are laughing at them behind their back.”

  Albert closed the diary pensively and was overwhelmed by a surge of melancholy. Am I irritable, he asked himself? Do I lose the thread sometimes in conversation? Am I authoritarian? Perhaps the latter was true, he conceded, recalling his enthusiasm for one of Napoleon’s adages: “Obedience is only for officers beneath the rank of general”.

  He looked at his watch and cursed. The nun was about to arrive at her ancestral abode and recite the first of many Salve Reginas in front of that infernal statue, he thought. Shit!

  At 11.30, the precise moment that Baroness Amandine de Vreux crossed the threshold of her town house on Amerikalei in Antwerp, the door having been opened by Maria Landowska dressed in a black below-the-knee dress with a white collar and cuffs, nylon stockings and cheap black moccasins, Paul Hersch telephoned Baron Hervé van Reyn and immediately came to the point: everything was “in the bag” for that evening at nine o’clock in front of the church in Kortenberg.

  “You’re kidding,” van Reyn responded with a nervous giggle. “Was it as easy as it sounds?”

  “You’ll see. I’ll call you again tomorrow. Cheers,” said Hersch and he hung up.

  He was still furious with himself for falling into van Reyn’s trap. The very idea that he had also given his word on the matter in a moment of rash haste simply infuriated him even more.

  After looking her servant girl up and down a couple of times, Baroness de Vreux’s first word was: “Encyclique.”

  Maria Landowska looked at her. Maria had bags under her eyes and appeared to have touched up her eyelashes.

  “In my house, the servants do not wear make-up,” Baroness Amandine snapped. She pointed to her suitcase and travel bag and slowly ascended the vestibule’s marble stairs. Maria Landowska followed with the baggage. She was reminded of the way Mr Albert had carried her up the same stairs the evening before and hissed: “Shit!”

  At the stroke of twelve, Baron Hervé van Reyn telephoned the detective agency Marlowe & Co. and was immediately put through to the director.

  “Perálta,” he said.

  “I’m listening,” said the director.

  “Can you send one of your men to the church in Kortenberg this evening at nine sharp?”

  “What would he be expected to do?”

  “Shadow the same… er… target as in Antwerp. Someone is expecting him at the church door. Only the target is to be shadowed.”

  “Should we take photos?”

  “No! No unnecessary risks.”

  “We never take unnecessary risks, Perálta,” was the director’s uppish response.

  “I should hope so. I’ll call back tomorrow at nine.”

  “Ten would be better.”

  “Shadow the man, Mr Marlowe, nothing else.”

  “Bye bye, Perálta.”

  Hervé van Reyn returned the receiver to the cradle, looked at his watch and realized he was fifteen minutes late for the Angelus in the chapel. He pulled the same face as that of his great-grandfather, whose portrait still graced the walls of “Beukenloo”, the family castle in ’s-Gravenwezel, picked up the wooden figureless cross that enjoyed a permanent place on his desk next to his right hand, kissed it, held it tight and thought of Josemaría Escrivá’s Saying 82: “First prayer; then, atonement; in the third place - very much in the third place - action.”

  “Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae,” he prayed, his eyes closed, cross in hand.

  After five Salve Reginas, he meditated for a time on penance and atonement. He would wear the cilice after lunch. After thirty minutes the pain would be unbearable. He preferred not to think about “action” for the time being.

  At two thirty, Baroness Amandine de Vreux was opening her mail, her glasses perched on the end of her nose. She arranged the letters into two piles: reply and file. The second pile consisted of worthless junk mail and advertising material, which she collected, nevertheless, in a sturdy cardboard folder held shut with an elastic band. It was an obsession she had inherited from her mother: never throw anything away. A row of cupboards in the house was filled to bursting with things she had been keeping for years. Her grandmother’s evening dresses, military uniforms of family members who had fought during the war, toys belonging to her parents, her sons and herself, school books, piles of newspapers and magazines tied together with string, boxes, wrapping paper, bed linen, etc., everything neatly arranged and folded, each cupboard with a list of contents on the inside of the door. Every now and then she would walk through the rooms, open one of the cupboards, gaze at its contents and savour the enormous satisfaction it brought her.

  After dealing with her correspondence, she studied the list of telephone messages Maria had scribbled in her crooked handwriting. There was only one worth answering immediately, from Thérèse de Montignac, old French aristocracy and married, like herself, to a commoner. Thérèse loved gossip. Amandine returned the call.

  “Ma chère Amandine…”

  “Quelles nouvelles, ma chère Thérèse?”

  “You were away last week.”

  “Yes, I was in England looking at gardens.”

  “Where did you stay, if it’s not indiscreet of me to ask?”

  “With Edith and Noël Beiresford-Peirse.”

  “Mmm… Do they still have that sublime estate?”

  “Yes, it’s truly incredible. And the weather was magnifique.”

  “Just like here. Insanely beautiful, all last week, until yesterday in fact.”


  “You called when I was away?”

  “Mmm…”

  “Do I get to know why?” Amandine tested the water with a nervous chuckle.

  “But of course, ma chère; but it’s… eh… a little delicate… if you get my drift. Are you alone?”

  “I’m alone.”

  “Eh bien, ma chère, I’m duty bound to keep you informed… let me see… on Saturday 29 May around seven in the evening, I was at the Zwarte Hengst in Schilde, you know, where I keep my horse…”

  “Mmm…”

  “And I saw your husband there.”

  “…”

  “Hello?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Eh bien, he was horse-riding in the company of another woman.”

  “Nothing new.”

  “Perhaps, but they were in jeans and T-shirts with those vulgar training shoes, you know the sort. And the woman was like a savage on horseback…”

  “Well, well. And what did she look like?”

  “Sturdy. Well endowed. A red ponytail… a real floozy. And they were so sweet to one another. I was struck by one particular detail: when I passed them in the bar, I noticed she had a row of metal teeth… a ghastly sight…”

  Baroness Amandine de Vreux turned pale, closed her eyes and was unable to speak. “Un grand merci, Thérèse,” she squeaked. “I’ll call you back later, au revoir.”

  She slowly returned the receiver to its cradle, removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. She dragged herself to her feet, shuffled step by step to the corner of the room, where a tiny statue of Our Lady was perched on a plinth against the wall, folded her hands and started to pray.

  17

  Albert parked his car on Brouwerstraat, which opened out onto the Church of Our Lady in Kortenberg. He got out, closed the door and looked around. Little traffic, empty streets. Typically Belgian, he thought, everyone’s glued to the box. He made his way towards the church, its ridiculous tower peeking out above the rooftops. The man was standing next to a larger-than-life statue of the Sacred Heart carved in stone. He was wearing a dark raincoat and hat, and was, as expected, short and rotund.

  Albert approached the man with confidence, stopping about fifteen yards from where he was standing. He was sure the man had seen him, but without some sign of recognition he couldn’t be certain.

  Albert marched over to him and said unabashedly: “Didn’t we have an appointment?”

  “Indeed.”

  He had the same voice as the man on the phone, but he didn’t look the least bit aristocratic. Albert had consulted a list of aristocratic families, the Gotha Almanac, at home and the name Maraudy de Moretus was not mentioned.

  “What should we do?” Albert asked curtly.

  “Shall we go to my car?”

  “Do we have to?”

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  “Depends on you.”

  Albert had a canister of CS spray in his Burberry raincoat pocket and was determined to use it if he had to. He broke into a sweat.

  “It’s parked close by,” the man said.

  “On condition that you don’t put the key in the ignition.”

  The man smiled briefly. His broad, flat face had something Tartar about it.

  “Don’t be nervous, Mr Savelkoul, I’m not planning to kidnap you.”

  When he heard the man say his name, he suddenly regretted having agreed to the meeting in the first place. His mood had deteriorated in the course of the afternoon, after reading a message from Amandine, in which she informed him of her agenda for the next two days. The following evening, there was a charity function organized by the Neckerspoel de Dickpus family to collect money for gifted yet needy children. The proceeds would allow their parents to send them to an exclusive school in Lima. He wasn’t sure it was a worthy cause. He remembered a similar function organized by the same family to collect money for a school, the Villa Madero in Buenos Aires, to which the crown prince himself was later invited for the opening ceremony. It later turned out to be an Opus Dei institution. Scandalized readers sent letters to the press but the case fizzled out. He would have to come up with “something urgent” to get out of it. It made no difference to him that she insisted on being chauffeured to the event in his official car.

  “Let’s get a move on then, I don’t have much time,” he said bluntly.

  The man smiled yet again. “This won’t take long, Mr Savelkoul.”

  Albert noted that the man’s French inflection had disappeared and detected a hint of a Flemish accent, perhaps Mechelen.

  They entered a side street. The fact that he was head and shoulders taller than the other gave Albert a degree of self-confidence.

  The man stopped a hundred yards or so into the street next to a wine-red Ford Scorpio. Albert took a mental note of the registration number: 7RS 225.

  The man unlocked the car with the remote. Albert opened the car door and got into the passenger seat, still holding tight to the CS spray in his raincoat pocket.

  The man glanced at Albert, drew in his chin, produced an envelope from his inside pocket and handed it over. It was open.

  The envelope contained a letter. He started to read its contents with his heart in his throat. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. When he opened his eyes again, the street outside seemed blurred, as if seen through an out-of-focus camera. He had difficulty breathing and his mouth was dry as a bone.

  The man stared ahead in silence.

  When Albert had recovered from his initial shock, he croaked: “What do you plan to do with this?” He was finding it hard to maintain his composure.

  “What do you think?”

  Albert stifled an outburst of rage. “I asked you a question,” he growled, barely able to control his voice.

  The man made a sort of hissing noise and started to stroke the steering wheel. “Look, Mr Savelkoul,” he began, as if he was about to make some kind of reasonable proposal. “I would like the sum… in the er… bank account… to be transferred… er… to my bank account.”

  Albert took a deep breath, doing all he could to refrain from emptying the CS spray in the ugly little bastard’s face. “And if I refuse?”

  They faced one another.

  “Then the press will hear about it.”

  Albert closed his eyes again and thought about the situation. As ever in such critical situations, his mind was working at full tilt. The procedure was too obvious. He knew from years of studying blackmail cases that this sort of unprofessionalism rarely achieved the desired goal. He was relieved, in a sense. He was more or less convinced that the man was bluffing, but he still found it difficult to understand how he had managed to get hold of his secret bank account number and details of his account. He decided to put him to the test.

  “Did you say transfer?” he enquired with caution.

  “No, no… I meant cash.”

  “I see. And what makes you think I can lay my hands on that kind of cash at short notice?”

  “How much time do you need?”

  “Where can I reach you?”

  The man snorted with laughter. Albert noticed his bad breath.

  “Mr Savelkoul, do you honestly think I’m that crazy?”

  “Mr Maraudy de Moretus, call me tomorrow morning at ten o’clock sharp,” said Albert in an authoritarian tone. He noticed that the man shuffled uncomfortably, probably realizing how stupid he had been to use an aristocratic family name that didn’t exist.

  Albert’s plan was taking shape in the meantime. His heart was beating normally, but his forehead was still clammy with sweat.

  “So you agree…” the man said, as if surprised that it had all been so easy.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “You’ll hear from me tomorrow at ten. Same number?”

  “Of course,” Albert snapped. He opened the passenger door, stepped out and slammed the door behind him. He made his way towards his own car, his head held high, without looking back.

  He cursed an
d cursed under his breath in an effort to calm himself. He walked as quickly as he could, which helped him to think and give shape to his plan. He knew from experience that repetitive action was the only way to get the better of his nerves. Once back in his car, he scribbled the registration number 7RS 226 in his pocket diary, grabbed his mobile and called a number.

  “Hello!” a deep baritone barked.

  “Walter? Albert here…”

  “Ah, how are you, my friend?” Walter de Ceuleneer enquired in his inimitable West Flanders accent.

  “Good. Do you have a moment?”

  “You’re in luck, man. This is the only evening in the week I’m at home. Come on over. I’ll see if there’s a bottle or two of Le Pin in the cellar. Good choice?”

  “Excellent. I’ll be there in about an hour.”

  Albert switched off his mobile, started the car and drove slowly out of Brouwerstraat and onto Leuvensesteenweg. He turned right at the lights towards Brussels’s ring road and stepped on the gas. Determination was written all over his face and he was able to think clearly without the slightest effort. He was hypersensitive to the world around him, which enabled him to trust fully in his sixth sense (survival whatever the cost).

  He put his foot down as he took the on-ramp for Brussels. The powerful six-cylinder motor purred with ease. An unfamiliar feeling took him by surprise - the conviction that revenge was his only remedy.

  He had not noticed the car that had followed him from the church in Kortenberg. The driver of the VW Passat had employed the “hare” technique, driving one car behind the target for a while and maintaining full eye contact.

  Albert didn’t need to get out of his car to ring the bell. The ten-foot-high gate made of high-grade steel glided open as he stopped in front of ‘Evergreen House’ on Baillet-Latroulei, one of the most exclusive residential enclaves of Antwerp’s leafy Brasschaat. He knew that the concrete pillars supporting the gate had scanner cameras attached, which registered the presence of vehicles stopping at the drive and sent video images to the house.