A Void (9 page)

shuts it again. It's dark out. Conson hails a passing cab - "To

our local commissariat, pronto" - and, worn out by his day's

probing, flops down on its baggy back cushion.

Waiting for hours in this commissariat, having to hang about

until past midnight, maniacally twiddling his thumbs, Conson

slowly starts going crazy. Finally, a dispiritingly doltish-looking

individual sits down in front of him, biting on, occasionally just

sucking on, with a horrid slurping sound, a gigantic ham sand-

wich, washing it down with a low-quality
Pinot blanc
drunk out

of a plastic cup and, whilst so doing, casually drawing blobs of

moist wax from his auditory canal with a toothpick and scouring

his flat, simian nostrils with his thumbs.

"Now now," says this typically stolid cop, through a mouthful

of York ham, "what I think is this. Your pal vows to blow his brains

out, and did blow his brains out. So that's that, isn't it? If not, why

would anybody say such a thing? Am I right or am I right?"

Amaury stubbornly sticks to his guns. "But, you idiot, I saw

his diary, I saw his flat! In addition to which, Anton did
not
vow

to blow his brains out, it was imagining his brains blown out by

an assassin that was making him shit his pants. You won't find

his body, you know! It's a kidnapping, an abduction!"

"An abduction? So your . . . hunch, shall I say," (this said with

an infuriatingly ironic smirk on his ugly mug) "is that it was an

abduction? But why, pray? This isn't Chicago, you know . . ."

Conson, at a loss for words, aghast at such crass buck-passing,

at last thinks to ring up a cousin of his, a Quai d'Orsay official,

who in his turn consults with an admiral who has a word with a

commandant who upbraids Conson's sandwich-munching ironist

and pulls strings to put a cop at his disposal, a Corsican, Ottavio

Ottaviani.

* * *

So Amaury calls on Ottaviani (who inhabits a top-floor maid's

room in a dingy block of flats adjoining a subway station,

Sablons, not far from Paris's Jardin d'Acclimatation) and finds

him, a fat, slobbish layabout, rocking to and fro in a rococo

rocking chair, lolling back on a cushion of soft kapok quilting

around which loops a braid as snakily sinuous as that on a hussar's

uniform, dunking a rollmop in a big bowl of dills and swallowing

it with a noisy smacking of his lips.

"All right," says this Ottaviani with a burp, "I was put at your

disposal. So what's it all about?"

"Just this," says Amaury: "Anton Vowl is missing. About 3

days ago I had a postcard from him announcing his flight. In my

opinion, though, it's actually a kidnapping."

"Why a kidnapping?" asks a civil but doubtful Ottaviani.

"Anton Vowl was on to. . ." murmurs Amaury in ominous

fashion.

"On to what?"

"Nobody knows what. . ."

"So?"

"In his diary I found 5 or 6 odd hints that you and I ought

to follow up. In it, notably, Vowl claims both to know and not

know; or, should I say, not know but also know . . ."

"If you want my opinion, this is all a bit of a - "

"His postcard," says Amaury, unflinching, "had a curious post-

script. It said: 'I ask all 10 of you, with a glass of whisky in your

hand - and not just any whisky but a top-notch brand - to drink

to that solicitor who is so boorish as to light up his cigar in a

zoo.' By that it was plainly his wish to tip us off and, in my

opinion, you and I should look into it and also study his diary,

which, mark my words, contains a lot of important

information . . ."

"Uh huh," says Ottaviani, though with a total lack of convic-

tion. "This affair is proving a tough nut to crack."

"First of all," submits Conson, ignoring his doubts, "you and

I might go for a stroll around a zoo."

5 2

"A zoo?" Our Corsican's jaw drops. "Why go to a zoo with a

Jardin d'Acclimatation just fifty yards away?"

"Think, Ottaviani! That solicitor so boorish as to light up his

cigar in a zoo'!"

"Okay, okay," says Ottaviani with a compliant sigh, "you go

to a zoo and I'll ask around at a handful of hospitals to find out

if anybody has brought him in."

"Good thinking," says Amaury. "I'll join up with you tonight

to discuss our findings. Midnight at Maxim's, what do you say?"

"Lipp isn't as pricy."

"Right. Lipp it is."

Thus Amaury trots off to Paris's world-famous zoo, photo-

graphs a Sahara lion and cautiously hands a candy bar to a chimp

that has thrown a twig at him. Pumas, cougars, stags, muskrats

and mountain goats. A lynx. A yak. And, without warning:

"You! Lord, what a small world it is!"

It's Olga, a distant cousin of a Canadian consul in Frankfurt,

and a woman who has always had a passion for Anton.

Olga starts crying. "Oh, Amaury, darling Amaury, do you

think Anton is . . . is . . . "

"No, Olga, I don't. Missing, I'm afraid so. But not .. . no,

no, not that."

"Did you also obtain a postcard from him advising you of his

going away for good?"

"I did. And didjyowr postcard also contain a PS about a solicitor

smoking in a zoo?"

'That's right. But you won't find any solicitor in this zoo."

"Who can say?" murmurs Amaury.

And, in fact, at that point, as if by magic, standing not far from

a pool simulating, with uncanny naturalism, a mini-Kamchatka, a

pool in which a host of birds, fish and mammals play as happily

as infants in a sandpit - frogs, squids, cormorants, basilisks,

dolphins, finbacks, cachalots, blackfish, lizards, dugongs and

narwhals - Amaury spots, and naturally accosts, a man just about

to light a cigar.

5 3

"Good morning," says this individual.

"Morning. Now, my good man,' Amaury asks him straight

out, 'do you know of any solicitors in this zoo?"

"I do. I am such a solicitor." (This is said with blunt, oddly

disarming candour.)

"Shhh," says Amaury, "not so loud. And did you know Anton

Vowl?"

"I got him to do occasional odd jobs."

"Do you think Vowl is still living?"

"Who knows?"

"And you? I didn't catch your . . ."

"Hassan Ibn Abbou, High Court Solicitor, 28 Quai Branly,

Alma 18-23."

"Did Anton also mail you a puzzling postcard similar to that

which both of us got prior to his vanishing?" Amaury pompously

asks him.

"I did."

"And do you know what its closing words signify?"

"I didn't at first. But now I think that Anton was making an

allusion to yours truly by writing about a cigar-smoking solicitor.

Which is why I instandy took a taxi to this zoo. As for his tots

of whisky, I had no notion of what it was all about until noticing

this morning in my
Figaro
that Longchamp's Grand Prix is just

3 days off."

"I don't follow."

"You will! For it has a trio of odds-on nominations: Scribouil-

lard III, Whisky 10 and Capharnaiim."

"So your hunch is that Anton was subtly hinting at this Grand

Prix?" says Olga, who, until that point, hadn't said a word.

Amaury cuts in. "Who can say? It's an indication worth follow-

ing up, though. You, Hassan and I will go to Longchamp this

coming Monday."

"Talking of which," says Hassan, "I got from Anton Vowl,

a month or so ago, 26 cartons containing all his labours, all

that hard, cryptic work that Vowl was carrying out in his flat. I

5 4

know of no surviving kinfolk of his who can claim familial,

suppositional, optional or subsidiary rights to this voluminous

body of work. So I think it normal that you hold it in trust,

particularly as it might contain all sorts of hints vital to our

inquiry."

"How soon can Olga and I study it?"

"Not until Monday, I'm afraid, as I'm just about to go off to

Aillant-sur-Tholon. But I'm coming back on Monday morning

and I'll contact you both. At that point you should know what

Anton Vowl was trying to say in his allusion to 'a glass of

whisky'."

Amaury laughs. "I'm willing to go as far as to put 10 francs

on that nag."

"So am I," adds Olga.

"Good," says Hassan, consulting his watch. "Gracious, I must

run! My train's at 4.50. So long! Till Monday night!"

"God go with you," murmurs Olga piously.

"Ciao," says Amaury.

Striding away, Hassan is soon out of sight. With Olga follow-

ing him, Amaury idly strolls from animal to animal; but, finding

nothing of any import, asks Olga out to a charming lunch.

Whilst Amaury is at Paris's zoo, Ottavio Ottaviani is paying a

visit to its hospitals, Broca, Foch, Saint-Louis and Rothschild;

and inquiring in many of its commissariats. Nobody has any

information for him about Anton Vowl.

At midnight, though, hurrying on towards Lipp, at that busy

Vavin-Raspail roundabout, who should our Corsican run into

but Amaury, who quickly grasps his arm and mouths at him in

a vivid dumb-show, "Don't go in, Lipp is simply crawling with

cops!"

"Not too far off," says Ottaviani, who occasionally had a habit

of confiding information not normally for public consumption,

"not too far off is an individual whom this country's top brass

want, shall I say . . . to go missing."

5 5

"Missing?" Amaury, thinking to catch a whiff of his quarry,

practically jumps out of his skin.

"Damn it!" says Ottaviani, cursing his stupidity at passing on

such hush-hush information to a layman.

"Now, now, Ottaviani, out with it! Vowl is also missing!"

"This affair has nothing to do with him," affirms Ottaviani.

"How do you know?" says Amaury, adding, with an authority

that allows no pussyfooting on Ottaviani's part, "Who is this

individual?"

"A Moroccan," admits Ottaviani.

"A Moroccan!" shouts Amaury.

"Shhh," murmurs Ottaviani, looking around anxiously. 'That's

right, a Moroccan. A Moroccan solicitor . . . "

"Hassan Ibn Abbou!" Amaury proclaims in triumph.

5 6

1

In which an unknown individual has it in for

Moroccan solicitors

"No," says Ottaviani with his usual sang-froid, "it isn't Ibn Abbou

but Ibn Barka."

"Oh, thank God, that's a load off my mind," says Amaury with

a sigh, afraid, without knowing why, first for Hassan Ibn Abbou,

and,
a fortiori
, if almost subliminally, for his own skin. For if

Anton Vowl falls victim to an abductor (or abductors), who's to

say that this abductor (or abductors) won't now try to lay a hand

on his faithful companions, Olga, Hassan and so forth?

Conson, with Ottaviani dogging him, walks off to Harry's Bar,

sits down (in a dark ill-lit booth so as to avoid gossip), signals

to a barman and asks for a whisky, a Chivas, straight. Ottaviani's

fancy is for a Baron but without any thick, sudsy collar of froth

on top. Munich or stout? Our Corsican hums and haws for an

instant, saying at last "Oh, Munich'll do," simply as a way of

dismissing a barman who visibly cannot wait to chat up a pair

of young girls in an adjoining booth and is sarcastically, not to

say "smart-asstically", humming "Why am I waiting?".

Without choosing to go into all its various ins and outs,

Ottaviani sums up what was most scandalous about Ibn Barka's

kidnapping. It was a total cock-up from start to finish.
Paris-Soir,

a right-wing rag that was normally of a rampantly colonialist

bias, sought to stir things up by publishing a lot of juicy, malici-

ous rumours. Public indignation was at boiling point. Diplomats

would go to ground, politicians usually avid for publicity would

5 7

abruptly drop out of sight. Papon took an oath that it had noth-

ing to do with him. Souchon, though, at last had to own up to

it, as did Voitot. All Matignon took fright at a diary by Figon

incriminating a high-court dignitary, which was finally, if not

without difficulty, shown up as a fabrication. Oufkir had an alibi

- if you could call so ridiculous a story an alibi! Nor, following

Fugon's hara-kiri
a la
Mishima (in fact, so rumour had it, this

was not a totally voluntary affair, for, calmly placing a sword in

front of him, and saying only, in an odd transatlantic twang, that

"a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do", his boss at Matignon

had no doubt in his mind what would occur) — nor, I say, did

any inquiry gain much ground. With an accumulation of damning

data, opposition politicians saw an opportunity of indicting a

form of tyranny guilty of an act so arrandy criminal as to go as

far as confiscating a tract that sought to point up a shadowy

conspiracy linking this abduction of Ibn Barka with that, six

months prior to it, of Argoud in Zurich. Talk was of a contract

going out to a commando of informants, outcasts of all kinds,

all of whom had criminal pasts as long as your arm (mosdy bank

jobs) and who had also had payoffs from Matignon for having

brought off 5 or 6 political "liquidations": an antagonist of Bour-