The King of the Rainy Country (17 page)

Mr Wollek looked at him with a half smile.

‘Is it really technically all above board?' asked Van der Valk. ‘That wasn't just for poor old Thingummy's benefit?'

‘You find the death a little too pat, don't you?'

‘Gunshot suicides are so easy to fake.'

‘That's why we always check them ve-r-y carefully. That lieutenant wasn't happy either; that's why what you say doesn't surprise me.' The smile widened. ‘I didn't have any lunch – neither did the doctor. The technical crew might have had a few drinks out in Saverne – but they did a thorough job. No hankypanky. I'm quite genuine – I can pass these papers to the Procureur tomorrow morning and he'll sign them, and that poor old chap can take his daughter home.'

‘I'll take her out there, then. It's true enough – she has the right to see.'

‘I'll phone them to give you the keys. By the way I found a message here when we got back from the Institute. Our man in Paris. He says that he's seen one of the managerial types of the Sopex. Your pal Canisius was there too, by the way. They didn't appear very perturbed about this death, just oh how tragic, etcetera. One point of interest – the old man appears to have gone a bit gaga. It's being kept very dark, for the good of the firm and so on, but apparently old Marschal is getting very old, and in consequence they let him say what he pleases, but they don't pay much heed. He trots into the office every morning still and upsets things, but they have a whole façade erected for him to play with, to give him the illusion that he's still completely in command. Whereas in reality the inner ring makes all the decisions.'

‘There's certainly nothing left for me to do,' said Van der Valk with a laugh. ‘I can trot back home tomorrow. I'll probably have the pleasure of her company, back to Amsterdam. She inherits all that fortune, I imagine. You could perhaps send me on an extract of the relevant papers when it's all signed – I can turn that in with a written report. Be glad to get back. We had an American soldier on leave knifed in the harbour quarter the day I left – kind of thing where all the witnesses are perjured.'

Wollek smiled sourly.

‘I've had three hit-and-run auto accidents in three weeks. Depressing life, sometimes. Well, so long. If she seems to want to hang around here, let me know and I'll have an eye kept on her.'

‘So long and very many thanks. Any time you're ever our way …'

‘Only sorry I didn't get the chance to show you a bit of hospitality here. Well, I'm off home. My wife won't be too downmouthed – she's got a sister of hers staying with us. Quackquackquack, morning till night. Goodnight.' Van der Valk laughed, and ran quickly down the echoing staircase.

*

It was still that rented car, or if it wasn't it was one just like it; a faceless grey Opel like a hundred thousand more. Her skis were still strapped on the roof. She was sitting quietly smoking.

‘You have to drive.'

‘Huh?'

‘I don't know the way.'

‘Yes, of course.' The hired car was a better one than that he had had, but only because it was newer. It is a half-hour's drive to Saverne from Strasbourg and neither of them said a word the whole way, but he was conscious of her in a way so acutely sensitive as to be painful. She was sitting beside him in the small car in a loose, comfortable way, crowding in on him at corners; she had kicked off her high-heeled shoes and put on leather moccasins, and was sitting in a driving position, her knees apart and her skirt well above them. Her coat – it was the snobbish kind that has the mink on the inside instead of face to the world – was thrown open and instead of the disagreeable chemical smell that the insides of most German autos have there was a pleasurable scent of warm delightful woman. Every time they passed street-lamps – a light anything but kind – he had a glimpse of her profile. She had lost the hard, almost savage look she had kept throughout the time in Mr Wollek's office, and was looking young and vulnerable. He knew that just as in Innsbruck she was his for the taking
and not for the first time he felt defensive. There was a richness in the inconsistencies of the woman that he could not help admiring: whatever she was, she was not negligible.

Before Saverne they had to branch to the left and he had to drive slowly on the unfamiliar twisting road. There was nobody about, it was misty as well as cold and in the French countryside people are early abed. He stopped at the police post and a yawning gendarme gave him the keys as soon as he spoke his name: Mr Wollek had kept his word.

‘You won't want me,' said the gendarme. It was warm and stuffy and there came a good smell from the apple he was eating. The house was only a hundred and odd metres further and all the houses around were dark and shuttered. There was no harm in leaving the auto on the street; to undo the gate and bring it in would only risk attracting curious eyes. He held the side door open for her and they went in.

It was miserable how the friendly little house had lost all warmth in that short space of time; it was icy cold, dishevelled by the police technicians, and already there was a coating of dust over everything. Anne-Marie looked about without curiosity.

‘And you came here this morning? And found them dead?'

‘Yes. Just too late. Everywhere I've been, it's been too late.'

‘How could a fool like you hope to understand?'

‘I'm very often a fool, and I've learned that sometimes situations make one look even more foolish than one is. It doesn't do to get upset on that account.'

‘What a fool you are,' she repeated cuttingly. ‘And how did you get to know he was here, you fool?'

‘I guessed how he had got out of Austria. By following my nose I stumbled on the man that helped him. The man was an old acquaintance. Jean-Claude had been a bit too clever. Asked him to ring up if any fools like me came sniffing about.'

‘Ring up? There's no phone here.'

‘Quite so, but how do you know that?'

‘Think you're clever or something? I see it. And I know it. Jean-Claude detested telephones. When he went to all the trouble of
making this hideaway he would certainly have seen to it there was no phone.'

‘The people in the village café have one, though.'

‘You utter incompetent, ignorant imbecile. I told you to stop. I warned you that you were doing something you couldn't see the consequences of. Stupid lout. You went on blundering along and now you see the result. I offered you money. You could have had more money than you've ever earned in your life, all in one hand. I offered you myself. Do you think that I'm the kind of woman to sleep with the first hayseed oaf she meets at a wintersport station? No. You had to play honest stupid copper, too virtuous to live. You had to fi-nd him, because that's what you were to-old to do. There never was such a fool.'

Van der Valk sat down. On the dusty window-seat the stones on their socles glimmered: a little dust did not affect them. He looked a little like the knight in a set of chessmen. He picked it up: he hoped this was a good move for a knight.

‘Your theory is that he killed himself because he knew I was after him, because he knew that he couldn't get away, because I would have barricades set up on all the main roads like after a bank holdup. So he killed himself just before I could get here?'

‘No – fool – I don't believe that. He didn't kill himself. He was killed.'

‘Really? Who by?' inquired Van der Valk politely. ‘You?'

‘Canisius, you blind imbecile. Canisius is sitting in Paris, finding it a fine joke.'

‘You don't believe, then, in Mr Wollek's hypothesis of suicide?'

‘I suppose I have to tell you,' she said in a suddenly dead, flat voice. ‘There's no other way for it, now.'

‘Please do. I need to have things spelt out. That's exactly what I've needed since this began. I'm tired of hints being dropped – I would like a few facts.'

‘Canisius has been looking for years for a good opportunity to blackmail him.' Her hair had a dry, feverish look, but her voice was low and contained. ‘It happened when we were only just married. Jean-Claude was much wilder then. He never thought that anything
could possibly happen to him. He was the lucky one, he won everything – whatever stood between him and what he wanted just melted when he looked at it. We had been to the winter sports. Here in France, and Jean-Claude had a win. He was very gay and had had a lot to drink. He wasn't drunk, because he never was, but he was near it. We had a new sports car – you remember the first three-hundred SL – with the gullwing doors. Outside the town is a straight stretch of road, a sort of avenue; it's bordered by big plane trees. Jean-Claude got the idea of making the auto slalom in and out of those trees. I had a stopwatch from that day's competitions; we made bets about the time he could make. I suppose you can guess what happened. It was night and the place was deserted, but there was a man walking there with a dog. We never saw him till too late. He must have got frightened, thought we were chasing him or something round the trees. Anyway he lost his head and stepped out suddenly into the road. The auto only just touched him but it threw him against the tree. It was the tree killed him really.' She paused for a long sobbing breath.

‘And what did the police do?'

‘I don't know whether they did anything much. They must have taken it for pure accident. As I say it's a broad straight strip. Autos go fast along there, especially at night. The row of trees sets up a sort of chain reflection of the lights, and one couldn't see anybody who stepped out suddenly. I don't know even if they looked under the trees. It was dry, and there are tyre marks there anyway, because people park their autos under the trees in the daytime. But the man left a widow, you see. His name was in the paper. Jean-Claude was a very honest, impulsive person, and he got the idea fixed in his head that he would go to her, admit frankly that it had been him, say it was pure accident, ask her to understand and give her a lot of money to live on. Well I was horrified at that because I thought she would just blackmail him. I was very foolish myself, because I went to Canisius. He rushed straight to Jean-Claude of course, told him he mustn't do anything so foolish, and that he himself would pay the woman off without ever letting
her know where the money came from or even that it was blood money at all.'

‘I see. And why did the time come now several years later to use this piece of knowledge?'

‘They've been fighting and plotting for years to get control of the business away from the Marschals. Well, they've succeeded. The old man is old, and has been getting potty. I don't believe he's really potty, but they're very clever at showing up eccentric things in the right light. They can get him declared incompetent by a court. But the money all belongs to Jean-Claude, and there's a huge amount. Even the old man didn't know how much there was. They want desperately to get their hands on all that. Yes, you can say, they control huge assets, and an enormous investment empire. But I happen to know they're not very liquid. They're hard up for ready cash, and this is how they planned to lay their hands on it.'

‘Aha. Most interesting. So Canisius puts the screw on Jean-Claude, who loses his head and does a bunk. Canisius sends the police after him, thinking to harry him, make him lose his head, imagine that the police are actually after him on the old homicide charge. That's it, then?'

‘But yes. Can't you see? That's why he ran away, in Innsbruck.'

‘And that's why you called after him, in Innsbruck? To warn him?'

‘Now you're beginning to understand.'

‘You didn't know where he was yourself, so when you heard – from Canisius – that he was somewhere in Austria you thought that you'd tag along and by sticking to me find out where he was. When you saw that I was determined to get hold of him to find out myself what it was all about you tried to seduce me. When that didn't work all you could do was stay with me until I did find him and then hope to be able to warn him before I could talk to him. Huh?'

‘Yes, that's right.'

‘You know what I think?'

‘Is that very important?'

‘Not to him any more. To me it is. And to you maybe. I think you're a liar. Even a pretty bad liar, though quite a good actress.'

She glared. She opened her mouth and made a sort of spitting sound, then she thought better of it: she closed it again firmly, and controlled herself into complete stillness.

‘Perhaps you're quite a fair liar in the sense that there's quite an adroit mixture of fact and fiction in this ridiculous tale you've been telling me so convincingly. I think it's true that old Marschal is gaga. Mr Wollek found that out this afternoon. I think it's true that Canisius and his pals would like to get hold of the money. About that liquidity story I wouldn't know and I doubt if you would either. I think it simply burns them to know that a huge sum of money is there and they can't get at it. I thought in the beginning of all this that Jean-Claude was simply a weak unstable kind of person with a flawed character, who ran away because he couldn't stand up to Canisius. Finding out, maybe, that his father was no longer in effective control of that gang of sharks might have pushed him into running away. But I'm no longer convinced of that line of reasoning. I think money just didn't have any proper hold on him. I think that he just got sick of the squalid squabble. That he's been sick of it for years, but that he stuck to his life there in Amsterdam out of loyalty to you and a sort of loyalty to his name. I think maybe that when you found out about your father-in-law you put a lot of pressure on your husband. To fight, to take his proper place, to get back control of the business, to be worthy of his father, to be worthy of you, and so on; I think that just disgusted him. He's always wanted to be free of the whole thing. He had bought this house several years ago. Every so often, when he could get away, after a trip and a business deal and some entertaining of important overseas customers and suppliers and so on, he came here, and pretended he was someone else for a few days. No more money talk, no more political manoeuvring, no more crap about the western alliance and doing business with the Russians or the Cubans or whatever. How he felt towards you I don't know. I find you a very attractive woman. Perhaps you're