One Damn Thing After Another (25 page)

As for Commissaire Casabianca, he was not watching this
house. The PJ had better things to do. The boy had come on a bike. There'd been no one in the hall.

The ocelot skin lay on the table. She shivered looking at it. Arthur looked at it, did not shiver, paced about like the panther, in a cold English fury.

“Bit too much elegant negligence. No business of mine what you do upon lawful occasions. I mean lawful, nothing to do with too many pink gins in the wardroom or dropping the sextant overboard. You can be as eccentric as you please, join the Rosicrucians or the Freemasons, join the Foreign Legion for all it bothers me. But abidance by the goddam law … You poor imbecile: the town swarms with cops and boy are they sensitive to any breath of scandal. They want the European Parliament in this town, and they hold their breath for fear of anyone acting the idiot. Cop slapped that Danish deputy who was being noisy in a nightclub, and his ass got posted to Tahiti so fast it charred. Austrian Foreign Minister got mugged by those two funnies who claimed he tried a homosexual pick-up – delayed and stilled out of sight. Dutch Minister got pissed and heaved massive ashtray through hotel's enormous window – oh sorry, just a bit of innocent horseplay. People are just waiting for a real scandal, like Giscard pocketing diamonds from that nigger gangster. And this is the moment you choose to knock over a black-market fur dealer.”

“Tomorrow morning,” Arthur had recovered his patient voice, “this man finds his shop broken open and a secret cupboard rifled. That would only rate three lines in the local paper. But he's going to make an infernal fuss. You thought that because he had a burglary before and shot a boy, he'd be ashamed and
intimidated? Now he's hit where it really hurts; he'll lash out with all he's got – money, and influence, plenty of both. There'll be a full-scale police enquiry. They won't just say ‘oh dear' and forget about it, like poor old Xavier getting bashed. They'll work on it.

“When they do, your Madame Chose is the first person they come to. You went the rounds as usual before locking up? You then locked up – demonstrate your routine. And while going through the routine you were accosted, and your attention distracted by a woman with a tale of wanting your sympathy: ain't that interesting. Hypothesis, you bent this woman to take her eyes off her keys for a sec., long enough for your accomplice to slip in. The judge of instruction will like this hypothesis.”

“Preposterous,” said Arlette, white but firm. “How would I do such a silly thing that would point so obviously to myself as well as to her?”

“They'll worry about that? All they want is a motivation and a plausible story that can't be disproved, and they've got both.”

“Then I go to jail,” said Arlette defiantly. “I won't let that boy be hammered. If he got ideas of that sort, it was my fault through loose talk to his mother. I got the silly ideas. I was ready to do something quite criminally irresponsible, and it was that woman Henriette, who with simple commonsense fidelity showed me how foolish I was. So I pay the price.”

“And I,” said Arthur soberly, “too. You think there's any job for me here after this? Or anywhere else, in a university? I can go and catch butterflies in Paraguay, beside good Doctor Mengele.”

“I did it, and I won't back down, and I'll make it absolutely clear that I was alone, and that Doctor Davidson had no knowledge whatsoever, either before or afterwards, of what was in my mind.”

“My poor silly girl. Is that all that being married means to me – to protect myself?”

“Then what are we to do?”

“We must get help from somewhere to cover this. If that
can't be managed – well … we can get both our bags packed for Argentina, my poppet.”

“I can eat crow.” slowly, “to Corinne Klein. Trust to God and Casabianca. I'd have to turn the Friend over, and I'd made my mind up not to. In fact promised him not to. And if I do … either way I'm finished in this job … But rather than have you penalized … I don't deserve anyhow to continue in work of this sort. I haven't maintained my own principles.”

“Casabianca,” flatly, “will not cover up for you. He has enough on his plate, what with that drugs plant that didn't come off, and the Turks that were beaten up by some of his slightly over-zealous subordinates. The Friend isn't important enough to him. The police isn't about to do anything, but protect its own sweet self. But I'm not sure that I haven't a better idea … Sergeant Subleyras.”

“Oh no,” hopelessly.

“Kindly shut up,” said Arthur. “You've caused damage enough for one night.” Arlette, subdued, went to the lavatory. When she got back, she heard Arthur's voice, saying, “Not something to talk about on the phone … All right.”

“What did he say?” hoping against hopelessness.

“That he'd be right over,” short in every sense.

“Like a doctor. Come quick, I've an awful pain. Very well, I'll be right over. But is it a genuine or a false angina?”

“Exactly like a doctor,” flat, without humour.

Time passed, nearly a quarter of an hour of it.

She could hear explanations in the hall. The two men had not met before; would they get on together? Subleyras placid as usual; Subleyras appearing, in the worndown clothes he kept for at-home.

“I considered shaving, but decided you were in a hurry.”

“A drink,” said Arthur, “and a brief outline of a most unpromising set of circumstances.”

“Both. But while you'll tell it much better, Madame will tell it much more revealingly.” Doctor is Here.

Humiliating or not a nice surprise: at the end of the brief outline Subleyras laughed. Not the loud English guffaw (in Arthur so disconcerting), nor the coarse Dutch humour (Pietvan
der Valk's first reaction to most unexpected happenings – to give him time to think). Simply, a big spontaneous laugh.

“As Robin Hood you're a fuckup.” But nicely; so kindly that she was instantly overcome with tears. “No, don't cry. You've done in fact quite well. But a Robin has to be a technician. Now you were watching while both the back and front doors were shut. Describe this process. As slowly and as accurately as you can recall. Every detail.”

“
Bon
,” when she had finished. “Technically speaking, this is feasible.” The ridiculous sense of relief. The surgeon has looked at the X-rays. The thing isn't inoperable. “As for your notions of subverting the Lady of the Keys … let me explain myself. I think your dotty notion there might to some extent be my fault. If I hadn't come worrying you about my excess of scruple, like the man who resigned from the C.I.A., I think this idea might not have entered your head.”

There was a small hard grain of truth in this.

“And you know, Madame–”

“Arlette.”

“All right, you know my name is Charley, it's in your little book. You did me a good turn. You showed me that it isn't what one does, but what one is. Twelve years I've thought I was a cop; I've found I was mistaken. Not too old, I hope, to do something else. I am still, while the habit lasts, a good police technician. I know most of what there is to know about security locks. More vital is the time factor. Boiling it down, we need to convey the notion first that this job was done a different way, second that it was done a great deal later; say in the middle of the night. You see? – that's the only way we can get you all off the hook – your Madame Henriette, yourself, and this boy of yours: smart boy that, I'd like to meet him.

“It'll take a while still,” looking at his watch, “speaking as a person who knows as well the little mechanisms of police patrols. If we then make a thoroughly convincing affair of breaking the front door – then there's never been any question of keys, or of an inside job, and no suspicion can possibly fall upon this woman. She will realize though that you or your friends are behind this break. Will she give you away? I think
that because you trusted her, and you respected her honour about the job she was trusted with, she'll pay you back. I think she won't say a word. But you're in her hands. And I'm in yours. If they bring this home to you – and you gave me away … an ex-cop breaking parole: wouldn't Mother be pleased!”

“My whole life,” said Arlette, “is built on trust.”

“Kid,” said Subleyras, “you're white as a sheet. You'll do. I'd like to take you with me, but it's necessary, just in case the point arises, that you stay in this house, and that you be able to prove it. With if need be, a respectable witness.”

“That's what I told the Bartholdi boy,” answered Arlette, with an effort at a grin.

“Good, then I've got to go home and pick up a couple of tools.”

“I'd better tell you – it's just possible there's somebody watching this house – nothing to do with this,” hastily. A garbled stammer about the Friend, to which Subleyras listened with a faint fixed smile.

“You do complicate existence,” he said patiently. “Might sound priggish – I'd say you acted sensibly and rightly. If I were you, I wouldn't worry. If there's anyone hanging round I'd smell them – I looked when I came. Casabianca's got no immediate interest; as well for you!” She felt herself blushing stupidly. “What you can do while I'm away is rout ol' Xavier out – he'll be a useful addition.”

“You met him then?” stupidly.

“I did indeed,” grinning.

The ‘tools' made a striking contrast. One was simply a massive cold chisel with an unusually long shaft. “More leverage that way,” said Subleyras, becoming less sergeant-like by the second. The other was a flimsy plastic pistolgrip, battery-powered, like those sold to housewives for liquidizing soup or whipping egg whites.

“Like one of those indecent vibrators?”

“You mean a clit-tickler,” suggested Arthur.

“Really!”

“Hallo Xavier,” said Subleyras tactfully.

“What can it be for?”

“Skeleton keys,” with patience, “went out with Inspector Lestrade and this is a picklock, as supplied to the C.I.A. You clip in a little thingy according to the type of lock and you wiggle it. Rather like drilling teeth and about as fascinating.”

“Why does it vibrate?”

“Woman's question,” said Arthur. “Because locks are complicated inside, dear child.”

“You can't even open a condensed milk can, so you can stop being male and technical,” crushingly.

“Can I drive the Getaway Car?” asked Xavier, enjoying it.

“If you don't mind ten minutes' walk first. You're going to be lookout, and you Arthur are the other, up the other end. There'll be about five minutes of totally undramatic fiddle about two hours from now, while the night shift cops are enjoying their coffee break.”

“Here's some grub,” said Arlette, “and what am I, apart from cook, and Imbecile of the Year?”

“You stop pitying yourself and imagining things – and you meditate upon your sins. Because if we were pinched on this job … don't worry, we won't be.”

“But I realize.”

“I think you do, and that you won't pull a gag like this in a hurry again – stop it now, girl. If you didn't trust me, and I you, what would be the point of either of us existing?”

“Yes – that more or less is what I was trying to make Friend understand. What people like Casabianca never will understand. Not being able to trust people is what made the Minister kill himself.”

“If we've two hours to kill,” remarked Arthur lighting his pipe, “conversation will get more and more like that on the departure platform of the Gare de Lyon. We must give ourselves something to concentrate upon. Extremely banal though the suggestion is, mine is that we play cards.”

Subleyras played cards the way one does when in the habit of night shifts. Arthur slowly, with a professional concentration of memory and observation, and the English love of a dotty gamble at rather long odds. Xavier – which nobody had
expected – brilliantly; uncanny at guessing what card was in which hand.

“Janey,” said Subleyras, disconcerted, “you ought to be in Las Vegas.”

Arlette, who hated cards, relapsed into a female role of supplying drinks. She had to ransack her cupboards – there wasn't any whisky left.

While the men were all away – Leathergating – Arlette was at last losing herself in an extremely intricate and beautiful piece by Bartók. She had established a bit of an alibi by taking Truedog on his DST act (Surveillance of the Territory) of the Observatory railings. She had to hang around a long time before meeting anyone on the same errand, because of being Belated, but met at last the gentleman in the Rue de l'Université, with the nice labrador whose manners put Dog (first growling then cringing against her leg) to such shame. She was getting hooked on Bartók when the telephone rang. It is supposed to be a harmless thing, the telephone.

The wrench was dreadful. She put both hands to her stomach and pressed hard with her fingertips. Then she had to get up to stop the pick-up, with time to get frightened again. The phone in the silence was like a pneumatic drill.

“Yes.”

“Oh. I've been trying to get hold of you all day.” Rubbish: in a thin, complaining voice. Voice of that deadly cow, Estelle Laboisserie. Of all people … True, she had left her office phone on record, hadn't lifted the tape, and heaven knew what was on it. But she loathed anybody who rang out of office time. Doctors have to answer phones, and successful criminal
lawyers, and Ministers. But those are all awful people. She also hated people who interrupted music. And most she detested Estelle Laboisserie – skinny bitch – and Ghislaine – fat spotty bitch – and Thing who rang-up-from-Australia (also in the middle of the night): oh, the entire tribe. Alas, she had a promise to keep.