One Damn Thing After Another
Read One Damn Thing After Another Online
Authors: Nicolas Freeling
NICOLAS FREELING
Chapter 1. A Man from Somewhere
Chapter 2. Widow, and widow-maker
Chapter 3. The last day of the holidays
Chapter 7. Watch the cat out of the tree
Chapter 9. The power of the press
Chapter 10. Tea and small sympathy
Chapter 11. Alarms too loud, and excursions too numerous
Chapter 12. Up to here in cops
Chapter 13. The gaudy coral dawn
Chapter 14. GO-O-O-o-o-ooooal, goal por AR-gen-TI-na
Chapter 15. Indian summer of a sociologist
Chapter 17. Plainly police business
Chapter 18. The boy who stood on the burning deck
Chapter 21. Professional advice
Chapter 22. Bribery and corruption
Chapter 23. Friendly supermarket
Chapter 26. ¡Que se las arregle!
Chapter 29. De la sartén, en las brasas
Chapter 30. Don Juan's advice to the widow
Chapter 31. How to keep the city in peace
Chapter 32. Que tiene capa, escapa
A Man from Somewhere
Arlette van der Valk was having lunch with a commissaire of police. He addressed her as Madame Davidson, which was the name of her second husband. That is my real name? â she asked herself. Should I say my correct name?
Her first husband had been dead for nine years. And it will soon be ten, she thought, with a small sharp pinch at the heart. She kept his name for professional use: it was what she had printed on business cards. He, too, had been a commissaire of police. Cosy; keeping things in the family, as it were.
Arlette van der Valk, counsellor in personal problems. It was easier to define what she didn't than what she did. Not legal, financial, or medical problems. And certainly not police problems. Whatever she was, it was not a Private Eye. The Commissaire â there are several in a town of the size and importance of Strasbourg, the capital of a region â was there to ensure that Arlette did not make police business her own. However, there are a lot of things ill-defined by the Penal Code which for excellent reasons do not interest the police. To give her an unofficial and largely spurious standing, she had a card stating that her activities were known to and had the approval of the undersigned Officer of Judicial Police. From the same authority she had a licence to possess a pistol, which she was supposed to carry, but very seldom did, when mixing with dubious company.
All of this was the fruit of a conspiracy fomented by her husband; one Arthur Davidson, sociologist by profession, one of the numerous resident experts revolving in the orbit of the Council of Europe, which has its home in Strasbourg. He disliked the term criminology. Society, exactly like the human body, has its pathological aspect.
These lunches were becoming a ritual: this was the second such. At six-monthly intervals, more or less, the Commissaire, who maintained a bland official disregard of her existence, would invite her out for small-talk about rain and fine weather; in reality, a shrewd little cross-examination into her states of mind. It was the end of August and the town was empty â full that is to say of tourists. Pretext for a phonecall, saying it was a relatively quiet moment for himself also and would lunch be nice? He would have seen that her little advertisement, which she placed three times a week in the local press, announced that she proposed being away on holiday for the coming month.
He was an urbane person with formal manners, who took her to an expensive restaurant with large tables, and space between them; pink tablecloths, and real flowers in imitation-silver vases. They got an adulterous little alcove, with no neighbours hanging their ear out. The food here was elaborate, occasionally eatable. He gave her a good bottle of wine. Probably they gave him a reduction.
With the second glass a slight vivacity crept into the polite kindliness of his questions about her affairs.
“One chooses between idealism, at the peril of sentimentalizing, and a realism that too frequently becomes a mask for cynicism.” Very true.
“Well, you've had a year. Only experience can teach you the course to steer, and it is hard-bought.”
“Yes, indeed. A woman the other day ⦠I'd have been ready to put my hand in the fire for her; I swallowed her whole. Turned out to be a pathological liar, and alcoholic into the bargain â no visible sign at all.”
“What on?”
“Cinzano.” A smile.
“You'd be less shocked, nowadays, by a few of our professional attitudes.”
“Less shocked, yes. More understanding â I certainly hope so. It doesn't always have to make me more tolerant, I believe.”
“No ⦠no.” The bit about government service was left un
said: he twiddled his glass, “This morning â it's an anecdote â a man was brought to my notice. I know him quite well, which is to say a good deal of him, not much about him. Under different circumstances, it could have been your work; to know about him. Not much you could have done about it. The Prosecutor calls him a nasty piece of work.”
“And what do you call him?”
“Oh, I don't call him anything at all. He's a professional assassin â no, that sounds dramatic. He's not a public enemy. He's uninteresting, unobtrusive. Small intelligence, no character. A speciality of violence; menaces, blows and wounds. He has killed people. There exist hired hit men. They rarely go as far as assassination. It happens. They're small squalid people. Sly; there's never been sufficient proof, to put him on trial I mean, for anything of that sort.” Arlette wondered where he was leading her.
“Murders, and murderers, don't interest me much. There are so many crimes so much worse, and even more frequent.”
“Yes, indeed. I agree ⦠no, no pudding for me â do any of these delectable things tempt you at all, Madame? Then coffee, please. And a cigar ⦠I don't have a lot of interest in him. So that when I saw him, which was more or less accidental, I said, âMy lad, that gun of yours is sticking out; I don't want to see you any more. In fact, France doesn't want to see you any more. In fact, if I hear of you anywhere at all in my territory I'll make difficulties for you.'” He broke off, chose a cigar, handed it to be clipped, and leaned towards the match.
“As with Basque terrorists,” said Arlette. “Go away. Pester somebody else. But they come back. You'd fake something against him, if necessary. Possession of drugs, something like that.” He smiled at this female naïveté and obstinacy.
“You still find my behaviour outrageous?” Placid, tasting the cigar.
“Of course I do, personally, but I realize that your work has very little to do with justice. Administration is what concerns you. He's a man from nowhere: you send him back to nowhere.”
“Not quite nowhere. His name is Henkie and he's from Holland. He's a cook on a river tug, on the Rhine here.”
“Aren't you depriving him, then, of an honest livelihood?”
“I dare say I am. But I dare say the Dutch can afford to give him social-security payments and keep him at home.”
A headwaiter came sidling up.
“Forgive me, Monsieur le Commissaire â telephone.” He frowned at this, drew on his cigar, drank his coffee leisurely.
“Will you excuse me an instant?” When he came back, he sat silent awhile: he accepted a second cup of coffee.
“Would a short drive tempt you at all? If, that is, you are in no great hurry. It is not of any great interest â as you say â and what's more, it's none of your business. But by one of the coincidences that occur in this trade,” drawing at the cigar, “âwhich aren't coincidences â it becomes, in a sense, your business as well as my own. The identical man has just been found drowned.”
“Good heavens.”
“As you say. It's the concern of the River Police, really. I could send an understrapper, for liaison and information. It occurs to me now to go myself, and to suggest your accompanying me. If you've finished your meal â shall we?”
“I'd be very glad to.” Her instinct had been to refuse. But it was a lesson, plainly, he wished her to learn. Furthermore, it was a privilege. The police dislike amateurs anywhere near scenes of crime. Even languid members of the English upper classes. It always did.
She had no curiosity either, morbid or otherwise. But for Arthur's sake â amusement at this Dickensian situation. He would be much entertained. Mr Mortimer Lightwood, he would say. In a silk top hat. The Man from Nowhere â found drowned â¦
Perhaps, too, the Commissaire saw a professional moment too good to pass up. He might think, being Dickensian too, that a demd moist unpleasant body would be just the thing to cure the sentimentalities of bourgeois ladies.
They went in his personal car, a grey Peugeot two-litre with a diesel motor, so anonymous as to be impersonal; virtually a taxi. Clean, tidy and empty: so unlike her own small Lancia
full of shoes and lipsticks, the ashtrays always full of revolting debris from Arthur's pipe.
Lauterbourg is a small town on the Rhine on the northeastern skirt of Alsace and at the extreme limit of French territory. An unimportant frontier crossing. Various administrations are found there dealing with technical aspects of the important river traffic, and a post of the River Police. This he explained as he drove, which was the way he spoke; quietly, with prudence, and decision.
The Rhine hereabouts is the frontier between France and Germany. Where there is a bridge, at each end will be a customs and police post. Across open water, well now, your line drawn down the middle is a legal fiction. One cannot speak hereabouts of having a foot in France and the other in the Federal Republic of Germany, can one now? Technically thus, the Rhine is considered as international waters. A nice excuse for everyone to have a good conscience about polluting it.
The River Police comprises mostly German river patrols, since below Lauterbourg both banks are theirs. Up as far as the Swiss frontier at Basel the French maintain patrols. The two forces live in an amicable, collegiate spirit of co-operation.
Arlette received an impression that the man from nowhere had shown bad taste in getting himself drowned upstream of Lauterbourg.
“Suppose something happens which concerns the courts â what then?”
“Unless things happen,” approaching a crossroads carefully, “more or less flagrantly,” shifting gear, “on the French bank it would concern â in principle â the German courts. Things happen in midstream ⦠this waterway is a good deal more dangerous, and a great deal trickier, than people give it credit for.” He launched into a voluble anecdote, about a barge convoy and a tug â French tug, and French skipper â which ran over an unlucky, but foolish, boy â German boy â acting the goat in a kayak, and what was worse, in the dark. Tug did its best to stop and search: you can't, you know, stop a barge convoy at all easily. Reported the accident to the River Police and continued on his way. Slightly over-zealous patrol commander
pegs the skipper for failure to assist persons-in-danger. Criminal offence, as you know, under the code.
Comes up before the tribunal in Mannheim, or somewhere. Skipper pleads with some indignation that his over-riding responsibility was the safety of his convoy and security of river traffic. Court upholds this argument. Police officer reprimanded.
“And was there any sequel?”
