One Damn Thing After Another

by Nicolas Freeling

  “If you’ve finished typing out my deposition,” said Arthur, “I’ll have pleasure in signing it.”

  “You’ve nothing further to add?”

  “If you insist. You can put it on the record and welcome. Since you have insulted my wife here present in a singularly dirty way, any lapse of self-control on my part would lead to the blunt instrument flying your way, I’m afraid. Which would lead to a charge of violence against duly constituted authority. That would be deplorable. If you find me offensive, I’m sorry for it. Shall we agree to leave it all unsaid? Finish at the point where the ascertainable facts came to a stop?”

  “You take responsibility for your attitude, Mr Davidson,” unrolling the forms and pushing them across to sign.

  “So does Mrs Davidson,” colourlessly.

  “Mrs Davidson,” said Arlette, “has no comment at all of any kind to add to that last remark.”

  “Have we earned a drink?”

  “We have indeed. Does it occur to you that we may have discovered the motivation for the whole thing?” asked Arthur. “I mean that it appeared meaningless, which puzzled us. But if somebody wished to plunge us both into a barrel of shit. Suppose my fingerprints were on the blood-spattered marble paperweight. I could have lost my job and you, your career.”

  “I don’t think so. The mechanics of it don’t stand up. Even if you receive a highly needling and exasperating set of hints, nobody can guarantee your reaction. The hint wasn’t that if you popped round sharpish you’d catch the guilty pair in bed. Or was it?”

  “No, the trend was more I should go pin a black eye on you.”

  “Give it all no further thought,” said Arlette. “Malice is ever-present. If a dimension can be added to it by the crass imbecility of Dogberries, that’s putting whipped cream on it. Nobody can drive a wedge into our solidarity and malice is defeated.”

  “Irrational belief is a strange thing,” pronounced Arthur. “I mean how hard it can be to shake. Look at my daughter, Angelika. If I’d once caught my tummy on a barbed-wire fence we’d now be a headline in Graphik. That would add a dimension, wouldn’t it!” Arlette, laughing, moved to stop the telephone ringing.

  “Yes, this is Madame Davidson,” in an extraordinary high hawing soprano.

  “Subleyras,” said a voice also much changed from the last time she had heard it.

  “Well, well, fancy hearing from you. My favourite flic.”

  “Yes, perhaps it calls for some clarification, as the PR people say. I was going to ask whether a drink would find favour, after office hours. On neutral ground like. But judging by your voice, you’re good and mad at me.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, office hours are over right now. I’ve been having the loveliest time with cops all afternoon. I could say one more wouldn’t make any difference, and I could say one more was the drop that made the cup flow over.”

  “Want to find out? I’m out of the office myself.”

  “Then the pub is the place,” said Arlette. “The Elephant on the boulevard.”

  “A quarter of an hour, to allow for traffic?”

  “And be glad I’m a forgiving person.” Ringing off.

  “Boozy we are, these last days,” said Arthur.

  “God, yes, putting on pounds and pounds. Go on the wagon tomorrow or none of my poppers will fasten. You want to meet one of my prospective lovers?”

  “The prospect, as you put it, is attractive. In general, I think I’d better stay out of your affairs. And what I’m thinking of, you know, is a visit to the hospital. The wounded one. Two on one day might be a bit much.”

  “He might not want to see me. But if he does, I’ll go this evening.”

  “Will you be back before supper?” A way of asking whether she was going to make the supper.

  “If I’m not,” said Arlette, “raise the alarm.”

  “A cup of coffee, please, and a small Vittel water.”

  “And a pastis,” added Subleyras. He was dressed as she had last seen him, and looked no different. But was different.

  “To clear up whatever left a bad smell,” he said, “I’ve handed my cards in. The authorities took a dim view. Whether or not they’re sorry to lose me is beside the point: they decided I’d regret this decision and I could start regretting it right now. It was suggested to me that any pretence of going through the motions – I asked, you see, for a private interview with the old man this morning – was sort of superfluous to requirements. When I said to you that the affair didn’t concern me, I was telling the truth strict and exact: I was asked to concern myself no longer with any current affairs, and hand my files over. Also, there were ears flapping in that office, because the grapevine in that building functions better than most electronics and not much slower.”

  “I see perfectly.”

  “Now I have some administrative demobbing to do, while they see how much of any gratuities and suchlike they can screw me out of. But as of now, my medal is dead. I better, you know, keep a comer of my eye well screwed on the Official Secrets Act. But my brains are my own.” Reaching into his pocket, producing a cigar, lighting it and blowing a smoke ring. “So I don’t know much about what happened to you. Still, if you give me an outline, I might be able to fill in gaps.” He listened, peacefully. He looked serious, then he grinned.

  “First, you’ve nothing to worry about. If there was any idea afoot of discrediting you or putting a spoke in your professional wheel, I’d know. Remember that before I came down to see you, I looked you up fairly thoroughly. You’ve a clean slate, and a couple of good friends. The boss over at the PJ, who took sort of a fancy to you, and you might say started you off, is being transferred. Up, not down. That will be official in a day or so or a week. There isn’t a formal review of all his little arrangements. There might be, if he were being sent sideways, but he isn’t. He’s getting Versailles, and that’s close to the ears and eyes up at the top. So nobody’s going to stab you. The new one’s been here before, in a less exalted role, but he knows all the ropes. So no boats get rocked. Don’t get lodged in his eye for a few months. As a man, incidentally, he bears a far resemblance to a human being. More than that I either can’t say, or couldn’t.

  “Second, the fellow who took your statement, I know him of course, he’s just a misbegotten oaf, but he has no importance. Reading it with my eye, I’d say he’d got told you were all right, and of course your husband is all right, and he just thought he’d throw a bit of bullshit up against the fan to keep you from getting uppity. You’ll never hear any more about this, but of course if they peg anybody, which I’ve no idea about at all because they know nothing, that’s clear, then you’ll just have the usual witnessing to do with whatever judge is on the job.

  “Third, just remember that anybody who’s like your husband and has friends in the European set-up is a sensitive subject among cops. Recall those Danes who had a turnup in a nightclub. Recall the Austrian Foreign Minister being mugged. Need say no more, I think.”

  “Correct my reading – if we did something blatant we’d get pegged loudly and with much self-righteous virtue, but they’d really make sure first they weren’t in any way vulnerable.”

  “A little crude, but it’ll pass. You have to bear in mind that they’re trying to push Strasbourg as the seat of European government, and that’s not by any means a foregone conclusion. Why not Brussels, where everyone, and not just cops, is housetrained and breaks no china?”

  “And is this going to be the seat of whatnot?”

  “Don’t ask me; I’m not the mayor. What’s more, I don’t care. All I know is things will fumble on a while, a longish while, neither one thing nor another, because when did you ever know a government, any government, that made its mind up about anything ticklish and having done so, said so? Do nothing, is their motto. The money’s coming in, right?”

  “Which, finally, is why you’ve decided to stop doing nothing, make your mind up, and say so.”

  “The dignity of my office,” said
Subleyras sounding exactly like Mr Ziegler of the good old Nixon days,” forbids my making the slightest comment on any insinuation that low. Anything I said would only give the scandal-rags an importance they don’t deserve.”

  “No comment is needed. Two cops got jugged yesterday for fifteen years, for raping a thirteen-year-old Arab.”

  “Which nearly,” now quite serious, “stopped me this morning. There’s good, you see, as well as bad. But finally, it’s like priests. Fewer means better, because you really got to make your mind up that this is what your life is for. But it’s got to be clearly defined. What are priests for? And what are cops for? A few priests become bishops, and a few cops become commissaires, and they better by God be good.”

  “So, celibate cops from now on,” getting unworthy giggles at the splendid thought. Ex-sergeant Subleyras had perhaps a sense of humour as well as of wit; it is a quality not so many policemen, perhaps, have, or, she reasoned, they would not be cops.

  “I would have had fewer problems,” he grinned, “in a celibate state.”

  “Or if you’d had a doormat wife.” The police when off duty tends to be disciplinarian and to make a big thing of domestic authority, not to say tyranny. Arlette had even known a police wife marked downright battered. Marked was the word; shown her ‘here in this room’, back and thighs flogged with a leather belt. She suspected there were a lot more. But she wasn’t ‘here in this room’: she was in the pub, pleasantly off-duty, and didn’t want to get wound up in Subleyras’ cases of conscience. He seemed to have solved them, without any intervention from her, and that was as it should be.

  “One thing.” He was feeling in his pockets, fished a piece of paper. “I pulled that file you asked me to look up. I’m not breaking any confidences, nor any frigging official secrets neither. Don’t even have to worry about loyalties to ex-colleagues, because there was nothing hairy about it. The procedure of the gendarmerie brigade, out in the country, is perfectly correct. Scrupulous, I’d say, even. No skeletons in cupboards there. The older brother, here in the town – I read through the transcripts. There’s nothing untoward. You could say clumsy, you could say heavy-handed I’m not employing police euphemisms, okay? I’m not hinting he was knocked about because he wasn’t. I’m saying verbal brutality, grossness, couldn’t-care-lessness. To think of that as anything but common form would be a mistake. Say alas, yes, but keep your sense of realities. Boy is marked as sullen, insolent and hostile. No reason to disbelieve that, you know. It’ll take a lot to change these attitudes – on both sides.

  “Regarding the judicial end – the boy was harshly treated, seeing there was no evidence against him. Again, not unduly so. On both angles you might disagree with me over the definition of the phrase ‘unduly harsh’. Can’t help that, but it’s an honest opinion I’m giving you.

  “Oh yes, and the complainant, who benefited by a nolle prosequi over the unlawful use of weapons … Pretty moot point that. There was a shutter broken, which constitutes a felony. It’s robbery with violence all right. Not to bother with legalisms, he’s a Monsieur William Thibault. No marks against him in the office: I don’t mean a ‘record’, but there seems nothing fishy about him. Or not that I could find, at – how to call this? – level of information normally available to my sort of rank. He could have gone to school with somebody, done military service with somebody. Best I could do; okay?”

  “On the contrary, I’m really grateful.” Arlette was wondering whether this afternoon could be classed as verbal brutality, grossness, in a Subleyras sense. Probably, but it was common-form all right.

  “What are you going to do, or haven’t you made up your mind yet?”

  “I’m a pretty fair metalworker, and I’ve other talents, like picking locks and such,” grinning on one side of his mouth, “it remains to be seen if this’ll be enough. It had better.”

  She’d suddenly had enough of cops, and even ex-cops. Been up to her neck in them, it felt like longer than all day. She looked at her watch and stood up.

  “Got to cook supper for the man.”

  “Common ailment that, among wives.”

  “I’d like to meet yours.”

  “Be mutual I think. She doesn’t get out much.” He took out his wallet, fished a card, crossed out one phone number, and wrote in another, and an address under, in neat schoolmaster’s writing. “Here.”

  “Thanks. And shall I say – hope to be seeing you?”

  “Around and about,” he returned, loose and comfortable.

  Chapter 13

  The gaudy coral dawn

  On her tape was a girl, sounding like a fairly frequent kind of girl, wanting an abortion, or thinking she wanted one. Arlette didn’t do anything about the first kind. With the second kind she made an effort, though too often it was the sort of effort judges – junior judges – are legally bound to make in divorce cases; the interview in chambers known as the Attempt at Reconciliation: as a general rule a pretty forlorn effort. Sometimes the girls decided they didn’t want an abortion after all. Not that that was automatically good news either. Arlette felt strongly on the subject, but had learned that the tone of voice known as a good talking-to produced backlash.

  She had her apron on when the bell rang. On her doorstep was another girl, at first glance another in the abortion-category, or the run-away-from-home category equally frequent, but at second glance was that girl she had glanced at superficially, judged not very sympathetic: the daughter of the Consul’s Wife – and presumably of the Consul … Sister of that rather ruinous-sounding boy who’d been caught in a heroin fiddle and hammered, and disappeared to Buenos Aires: good luck one rather felt if not good riddance, because what could one do, but say bonjour? Ghislaine was it? – Arlette looked pointedly at her watch, and pointed at her apron while she was at it.

  “I don’t work this late you know – I’m a housewife at this time of day.”

  “Only a minute – please.”

  “A minute …” shrugging. “Look, I’ll give you five; but That is All. Come in then.” She didn’t take her apron off, sat on the edge of her table, picked a cigarette off the table, offered it, lit both, pointed to them meaning ‘that length of time’ and said, “I can’t really add much, to what I told your mother.”

  “You didn’t like my mother, did you much? Or me?”

  “Even if that were the case, it would be irrelevant. That’s not what brought you.”

  “You turned us down. Not that I blame you.”

  “But you’re forcing me to repeat myself. What could I do? It’s a police problem.”

  “Argentinian police?”

  “I take your point. But that, forgive me if I’m being ingenuous, is what consuls are for, no?”

  “What consuls are for no, repeat no.”

  “Oh, I realize – they get hundreds of these missing-person things and don’t at all like that Rescue the Girl role. But again, this one is in the huh, consular family, surely?”

  “Yes in one sense, no in the one that counts. My father won’t – can’t” – hurriedly – “work that way.”

  “That’s for him to decide. I don’t follow. If you mean prodigal son attitudes, darken my door no more, I wash my hands of you, then I sympathize with both sides, but I am thoroughly shy of any intervention even where that is possible.”

  “I want to ask you please to reconsider.”

  “But my dear girl – sorry, don’t want to sound patronizing – what grounds do, I have?”

  “None I suppose. I ask – I beg.”

  “Look, I’m sensitive to that, but I ask myself seriously what I could possibly do, and find nothing.”

  “You hate us. Everybody hates us. I understand more than my mother. She only sees her little clique, on what’s called the right social level. Our kind of people, what. Everybody terribly gushing and sympathetic. In reality they’re all delighted. If you’re on the way up everything is fine. The smallest little crack and they’re eyeing you askance, and ready to put a distance.
” Yes; it was much like Xavier talking about ‘the plague victim’.

  “My – my brother walked out on it. I thought he was stupid, and I hated him for being so, well, obvious and noisy about it. And now – it sounds so silly, but I want him back. My mother puts on that exaggerated social act, and I could see you hated that. Lot of snobs, you were thinking. She’s – just not able to put it into words. Neither am I, I suppose. One gets frozen up. I’ve been, well, call it in a wider circle. I know how they hate us.” Air of sophistication, at nineteen. Which was touching. And despite the whining, self-pitying voice there would be much that was good, no doubt. And of course that terrible little Foreign Office clique was pathetic, and when a crack appeared in the protective varnish it was painful for them. But what on earth could she do? Xavier was a wet, and this lot was much more wet, and she was tired, and she’d had enough of it all, and in general Oh, Knickers, as Arthur said when exasperated. She stabbed her cigarette out with a notion of wanting, on the whole, to be ruthless about pinching this off.

  “I can’t, I’m afraid, see my way to changing my mind.” Stood up. Got a concentrated look of cold hatred.

  “You’re obtuse, and you’re no goddamed good to anybody, and I’m just sorry I came.” At the door she turned round again. “I’m sorry I said that.” The look had melted from the desolate eyes.

  “I deserve it, often. But do I now? Ask yourself objectively – what in cold reality could I usefully do? Not now: sleep on it, ask yourself then.”