The Widow (31 page)

One had to realize that standard police procedure always does lead to frenzied irritation: they are like this. The air of never being quite human, and behaving as if you weren't either, is deliberate. It is part of a technique designed to shake you up thoroughly and then stand you on your head to drain. Keep you off balance, keep you guessing. The curt question-and-answer stuff, monosyllabic and bleak, is often followed by a talkative show of bonhomie, of pretended confidences. They will feign sympathy in one breath and hostility in the next, a blank stupidity and a sophisticated cunning, the back-slapping pally-pally and the frigidly indifferent. You end up by disbelieving everything, from your own identity to the accuracy of your own senses. You no longer trust the ground you walk on: at any moment a trapdoor will open under your feet.

How to avoid being tainted? Even the best and the brightest, who turn this sort of thing on and off like electric current, must surely be blunted and desensitized? Are they all no more than cynical timeservers from the ones with soft voices at the top to the coarse oafs at the bottom?

She knew that it was not so. The ‘compassionate cop' is not quite fictional, not altogether a contradiction in terms. But it takes a strong character.

And the women … She looked at Corinne; sturdy, unimaginative, tough: staring off into space with a deliberately cowlike expression while fiddling with her pencil, not wanting to exchange any glance of secret sympathy or female complicity.

‘All right,' said Papi suddenly. ‘That's all for today. We'll keep in touch, Madame.'

‘What about it all?' asked Arlette drearily, knowing the answer would be just like a doctor's: a bluff jolly air, but we've got to wait for the results of the tests, Missis.

He smiled though, brilliantly, eyes disappearing in crinkles.

‘Priority is to get that hand healed up. Just lead a normal life. And don't have any worries – you're under police protection.'

‘I'II be along to see you,' said Corinne.

You sleep well. Slightly doped. You complain a good deal about nasty pills. Chemotherapy is like
Ten-Sixty-Six-And-All-That
, vaguely a ‘good thing', combating inflations and inflammations and so forth. But leaves you so sick you'd really have preferred the original malady. Even that sensible and un-Anglo-Saxon invention the bomb in your behind, vulgarly known as a suppository, upsets your digestion much less but still leaves you listless and depressed.

You get up; you dress. It's only a wound. You are going to lead a normal existence. You have quite large hands. Arthur's hands, for a man, are small. You can borrow a soft leather glove. It doesn't look bad at all. You feel undeniably low and ill. It's reaction. Not much to be done about that. Arthur is suffering from it too. He has been so good, unwearyingly kind and patient. Today he is just barely keeping irritation in check.

Uncannily, the long settled spell of lovely weather, imperturbably still and sunny, was keeping up. But winter was advancing on stockinged feet. The heavy mist clung more obstinately each morning. Cold, wet, smelly, catching at your throat, like cottonwool drenched in ether. The sun struggled through at last, and shone then with surprising heat, so that you went to turn your thermostat down.

‘Look,' said Arthur in an abrupt way, smoking a small cigar and stabbing with it at the shopping list, ‘you leave all this to me, right? Housekeeping is a thing only one person can do efficiently at a time. I can do it, okay? I've told them straight I'm taking a few days off. I intend to see this through.'

‘I've really made a complete disaster of all this, haven't I?'

‘No. You haven't. It was my fault. Encouraging you with that silly game about Marlowe. Now we have to face the realities, as they are brought home to us. This is not a game for children.' She was saved from expressions of abjectness by the front doorbell.

‘You take that,' said Arthur, who was wearing her apron.

A middle-aged woman, looking round her with an expression of interest at the panelling and spotlights of the little waiting-room. A customer? A youngish woman with her. Both burdened with luggage. A big briefcase, and what looked like a typewriter.

‘Madame Davidson?' with a glance at her gloved hand. ‘I'm Madame Flavien. The judge of instruction. This is Madame Sellier, my clerk.' Arlette, flustered, led the way into ‘her office'.

‘Do please sit down. I thought you summoned people to your presence,' foolishly.

‘Oh no,' smiling. ‘We pop about all over the place. Can she put her machine there on your table? Tuck yourself in at the end there, Denise.' She opened the briefcase at her feet and shuffled with papers.

‘Arlette, wife Davidson, widow Van der Valk, that's right? Born when and where?' The usual routine, what.

Fortyish. A blonde, fairly considerably faded, lined, wrinkled, not to say battered by years of her profession. Good, pretty, steady blue eyes, short-sighted behind strong lenses and pinkish shell frame. Earrings. An elaborate, bouffant hairdo, recently and professionally done, the hair skilfully touched up and freshened. Too much lipstick. Too much make-up. The clothes too feminine – no, just a bit too fussy: the pleated navy blue skirt was fine and so was the opencollared
blouse, but the silk scarf was too brightly coloured, too casually knotted, too fussily displayed and drew attention to the throat. Square competent hands with colourless varnish, a trace of suntan. Very good voice, professionally pitched and paced just right, a clear soprano that carried without penetrating. Nothing in the least legal; she could have been a journalist, an editor – a business executive in pretty nearly anything.

Arlette knew she must repeat everything, whether she had told it ten times or not. And must not tell lies: this woman was intelligent, experienced, and had done her homework thoroughly. And she was thorough now: very.

The girl Denise was what you would expect, good at her job. This judge would be a taskmaster, and peppery upon occasion. Well trained, she sat still and unfidgety, her forearms relaxed. When she had to type she did so rapidly and accurately. Occasionally with a tangled bit she would ask, ‘How am I to word that?' At which moment one saw the judge as editor, dictating in spare brief sentences, saying, ‘Semicolon … stop. Paragraph.'

‘Good. That will do. See that that's neat, Denise. That was well told, and lucidly. To make it brief, the Prosecutor has laid charges against X for this affair of yours. Kidnapping, physical violence, blows and wounds; that'll do to go on with. You are well enough acquainted with legal procedure to realize that I have been designated as instructing judge, that I am putting a dossier together – good now, let's leave that. I issue a rogatory commission to the Police Judiciaire, tra la, we leave aside for the moment this presumption of narcotics traffic and all the rest; that need not concern you. We'll stick to this, as contained in the deposition which you'll sign when Denise has it ready for you. May I smoke?' with abrupt politeness. ‘Stupid things,' apologetically, holding out the packet. Arlette took one. Madame le Juge took her glasses off, stared unseeingly at the light from the window put them back on and came back to business.

‘Let's understand one another, Madame Davidson. You're a witness, the principal witness. No more. I don't want you
playing any role, active or otherwise. To wit the private detective. Clear?'

‘I have the clearest understanding that I know where police business begins.'

‘Yes, I know, Monsieur le Commissaire told me. I've no reproach to make you.' She looked around at the office. ‘You can do useful work, I have no doubt of that. I've no hostility towards these activities, quite the contrary. I'm a woman. As long as you keep the definitions sharp in your mind.'

‘I'm capable of that, you know.'

‘Yes, from what I've seen of you I think you are. You got badly hurt, I'm afraid. I hope it's not giving you pain.'

‘It's nothing much. It's clean – I think it will heal quickly.'

‘And the psychological shock – make no mistake, that can be severe. Even when you think you're over it. I don't wish to be personal. It can go on, creating unforeseen ripples.'

‘I think you're right. I have to learn to cope with it.'

‘I'm not sure that it's a good idea to work at home. One has to keep one's private life from getting contaminated by – call it professional preoccupation. You've children?'

‘They're grown up. I don't think I agree, you know, about keeping things separate. I don't want only comprehension and support from my husband. I want him very closely involved I think, every minute.'

‘You do? Well, it's a viewpoint. There are others. Come on Denise, hurry up.'

‘Ready. Can I have your signature, Madame? Fine, thanks.'

Madame le Juge stabbed out her cigarette, rose swiftly, held out her hand, realized that didn't work, grinned.

‘I'll want you in the office eventually. When they catch these birds. I'm fairly confident. You may be able to make identifications. You find me insensitive? This job,' with a small shrug.

‘I find you professional … which is as it should be.'

‘Good luck with the hand … And thank you; that was useful.'

It was? One couldn't help wondering how.

Arthur brought her a cup of coffee which she didn't really
want. And he had absent-mindedly put sugar in it, so that it was disgusting. She did so wish he wouldn't be helpful. It would be infinitely easier if he had gone off to work as usual and eaten in the canteen. But one would never dare suggest that: according to him the place was infested with every bacteriological hazard known to the human race. Bilharzia, he would mutter darkly. Nothing would stop him hanging about protecting her, simply because he felt guilty. She would be perfectly capable of scrambling an egg or something one-handed by ingenious means. Would rather enjoy it. But it was ‘not allowed'.

She threw the coffee surreptitiously down the washbasin and brought the cup back, about to say, ‘There are lots of things I can do,' but was quelled by the air of patience tightly held in.

‘The worst thing you can possibly do is roam around like this, working yourself up and not even giving it a chance to heal. Why on earth can't you lie down quietly and read a book? Everything's under control.' Yes, that was just the trouble.

She retreated to the living-room, which was tidied and hoovered and God knew what so that she didn't dare move for fear of getting ash in a clean ashtray. Arthur indulging his passion for being meticulous. In this mood he was capable of every folly; washing the kitchen curtains or something. She was supposed to stay quiet and listen to soothing Schubert, whereas what she needed was something as horrible as possible gyrating and writhing in sweaty black satin under a purple spot. She uncorked a bottle with her teeth: the cork squeaked and she looked round guiltily lest Arthur catch her and deliver a lecture about how bad alcohol was for you when you'd been cut with a razor.

The worst had occurred and he'd decided to have a good turn out in the kitchen to help poor disorganized Arlette. She was of course the classic dirty housewife. Rubbish collected on shelves and attracted greasy dust. Rinds of cheese turned up in unexpected places. There were innumerable half-empty packets; one-eyed and one-legged veterans everywhere, stragglers from campaigns in Russia or the Peninsula, three
kinds of stale curry powder and horrible sticky bottles which had lost their labels. Arthur was having a simply glorious time and she would never find anything again. To go and say, ‘Look – I've been a housewife for thirty years; I know my job,' would be fatal. She knew he had reached the stage of talking to himself.

‘How long have we been here – a couple of months. How is it conceivable that anyone could create a bordel like that in that space' forgetting the lorryload of junk brought from the Krutenau, which she had promised herself to look at and never had. ‘Would you believe it; jam three years old, pickled pears left behind by Frankenstein, the thyroid and the thalamus.' Had he but known – stuff made by Ruth during an adolescent passion for vinegar, five years ago out in the country … ‘The Little Grey Home in the West' as Piet called it sarcastically. And I wish I were there now, thought Arlette oozing tears of self-pity, forgetting much coarse Dutch humour about pea soup heavily laced with penicillin.

Now she was going to start as well, muttering to herself.

It brewed steadily for a couple of hours, before exploding. One uses a razor too to lance an abscess.

The row when it came was something frightful.

‘Like a fucking old maid there in the apron. Sociologist – what's that? It doesn't exist. English Amateur.'

‘Ah yes, now we're going to hear some more about Piet The Professional.'

‘Fiddling at people. Going on about the French. The most barbaric and backward women in Europe, we heard it all. The great lazy useless mare. All her brains between her legs and even that gone desiccated.'

‘Wasting your entire existence, the moment their biological function ceases to be the centre they sit idly back and wait to be granny. Knit and make pickles and quarrel with their daughters about child upbringing.'

‘I didn't want in the least to get remarried. You pushed and pushed, to conceal your own utter sterility, insisting on this idiotic activity, crapping about meddling with things that
should be left to proper cops, and the second it gets a bit tough, oh, the hullabaloo about the little woman. Me! Me who had a man shot dead in the street, a man who'd gone on for years with a hip smashed up by a huge rifle bullet that dotty Belgian cow fired at him. Do you think I know nothing about violence? I lived with it twenty years, day by day. While you were snivelling in your pram worrying about your anal satisfactions.' This simply glorious picture of Arthur aged eighteen months in a romper suit reading Freud and viewing Mum with the darkest suspicion brought on howls, hiccups, hysterical laughter. Finally she hit her hand on the table and rocked to and fro silently, corkscrewing pain in and out. Arthur poured out two socking glasses of whisky.