The King of the Rainy Country (6 page)

Van der Valk didn't want beer, especially not on a cold and dirty day in March. He cast around the bar looking for something else. Schnapps, horrible sweet vermouth, the German imitation champagne called Sekt … He saw a dusty bottle on the shelf, of a shape he recognized. Gentian, by heaven. It suited his mood exactly.

‘How d'you serve it?' asked the barman dubiously.

‘Put some ice in an ordinary water glass. Now fill it half full.'

‘First time I've ever done one.'

Van der Valk sat in solitary state, with the headlines on the Naked Beauty, and waited for Inspector Stössel.

‘Ha. Beer?'

‘No beer. I've only just got up. Coffee.' Everybody was drinking coffee in Köln today – Ash Wednesday.

‘Pot of black coffee for two,' Van der Valk told the waitress, standing bored jingling the change in her apron pocket.

Heinz Stössel was like a large unsmoked ham, pale, solid, salted. Fat but firm and healthy. Without his reading glasses he looked dumb, which had deceived many; when he put them on, which he did to drink coffee with, he looked like a wicked and intelligent Roman senator. He stirred his coffee and looked at the Rhine with distaste.

‘She's not in there, anyway. Nor in the woods. How serious are you about this?'

‘She was seen with the man.'

‘Yes. Right here. Drinking sekt. She was in her costume. The barman looked, because she's pretty, you see. Man is much vaguer – thin, ordinary clothes, described as elegant. When a barman says elegant what do you read into it?'

‘Suppose that instead of being abducted and raped and maybe knocked off and shoved in a rabbit-hole somewhere she deliberately vanished.'

‘But what supports that? Nothing in her character or behaviour to suggest it. The rabbit-hole's a lot more likely, I'm afraid.'

‘Look. I have a man. Exceedingly rich. Eccentric. A nervous type. He has gone, just gone like that. There's a possibility of a rabbit-hole there too, but I can't get along with it. Supposing he were here. I've nothing to prove it but he might have been. The vanishing of my man and the vanishing of your girl might be connected. Too much of a coincidence.'

Stössel sipped his coffee. If he was contemptuous of this his face did not show it.

‘Yes, but what have we got to show any connexion? Where are your photos? That barman is the one right there – that's why I brought you to this dump.'

Van der Valk spread photos on the counter. The barman looked.

‘Well … I suppose it could have been. I didn't really look that
close at him. Like him, all right. I couldn't honestly say for sure though.'

‘What good is that?' asked Stössel heavily, back at the table.

‘None at all. Just a crazy notion. I'm quite prepared to admit it's crazy. There's something off key all the same about the way this girl vanishes.'

‘You mean she's not the type quite. Neither is she the type to go running off with your millionaire.'

‘No.'

‘Let's see those photos.'

He tossed the packet on the table; one slid, a little; the edge of the one above it cut the hairline off.

‘Looks like Jacques Anquetil,' said Heinz stolidly. Van der Valk leaned over, and gave a laugh and a shrug.

‘I knew it was like somebody. Couldn't think who.'

‘The hair changes the whole shape.'

‘And if you're thinking of a millionaire you don't think of a bicycle champion.'

The German got up and walked over towards the counter, still stolid.

‘It changes things, though … Listen,' to the barman. ‘You've heard of Jacques Anquetil?'

‘Of course.'

‘Think carefully. Take your time. Now tell me whether perhaps the man with the girl looked at all like that?'

There was a silence, a funny silence, Van der Valk thought. There is something ridiculous about three people standing frowning, thinking of a set of features as well known as any in Europe: plastered over every newspaper in Europe, on every television screen every day for three to four weeks, every summer. Five times the winner of the Tour de France – that bony, nervous racer's face above the handlebars is unforgettable.

‘Why yes,' said the barman. ‘He had that kind of hair, and that sort of face. Sort of long and sharp. Sort of hollow.'

‘Now look at the photo again.' A ham-like hand was covering the hair.

‘The hair changes it. It's certainly like. I wouldn't like to have to swear to it.'

‘No, we're not asking you to. Just like or not like.'

‘Like. Very like.'

‘Fair enough … It's not conclusive, of course.'

‘No, but smart. Of you.' They were back at the table.

‘I've seen it before,' said Stössel calmly. ‘Witnesses can never identify a photograph. But they can see the likeness of both to a third person they know. The thing is to find that third person. Jacques Anquetil …' He gave a short snort of laughter.

‘Why not, after all? Must be a millionaire himself.'

‘And we can hardly suspect him of the job, huh?' said Heinz.

‘Come on,' he added, drinking up some cold coffee. ‘Back to the shop.'

*

‘Assuming you're right …' sitting down in an office a lot bigger, a chair more leather-padded, with a lot more ingenious machinery on the desk, than in Van der Valk's office in Amsterdam, but with the same smell. ‘Why, would you say?'

‘Does it matter?'

‘It worries me. It seems so out of character.'

Perhaps, thought Van der Valk. You haven't seen that house; you haven't talked with Anne-Marie.

‘Let's see if we can work out how.'

‘True … Planes are out. Taxis are out. Car-hire is out. Train … maybe.'

‘Car buy, maybe.'

‘We'll try,' with a face. ‘What might he have had – traveller's cheques, dollars, any idea?'

‘He's not that dim. German cheque on a German bank, likeliest, according to the hint I got.'

‘In a German name?'

‘How many autos, though, are paid for cash down and driven away?'

‘We'll make a composite photo and show it around. Come to
that, if all this is sound, he might have bought all sorts of things. A house, even. Anything expensive, not in itself unusual, but perhaps seeming unorthodox … My god, I'd hate to hear what the Polizei President would say to this notion – I'msuppressing you in my report in any case; you've no official standing.'

*

Van der Valk, with no standing even to read electricity meters in the city of Koln, could not take part in the hawking of a prettily faked photo around the expensive shops where a man looking like Jacques Anquetil might have bought a car, or a house, or a caravan, or … damn it, what had he thought of? Where had he gone? Where could he be hidden? It was a difficult thing, to think oneself into the shoes of a very rich man who wanted to cover his tracks.

He went to see the parents of the tanzmariechen. The mother was not much use – poor woman, she was a blur, like a water-colour left out in the rain, and whatever she could manage to tell about the girl was as bad. The father was more help. He was, thought Van der Valk, a man of surprising innocence; he did not even think of asking who this man was that spoke quite fluent German (but talked about das Zeit). A kind man, a man of goodness, simplicity, a man thinking evil of nobody: the girl, thought Van der Valk, had these characteristics too. Might that have struck Jean-Claude Marschal?

*

As they expected, a quite astonishing number of eccentric people had bought eccentric things and behaved in eccentric ways; it had, after all, been carnival time. Every policeman, in every shop, was regaled with tales that went, ‘That's nothing, though. Why, I could tell you. There was a man that bought twelve nightdresses all different colours …' It was exactly like the old ‘Believe it or not …' column that had made Mr Ripley a household word when they were boys. But nobody recognized the photo, except the man in the garage, who thought it might have been a man he had sold
a car just before carnival started, on the Friday: Carrera 1900: German racing silver: a Mr Alfred Kellermann. The man in the garage cared nothing for bikes though, and had never heard of Jacques Anquetil. If it had looked like Stirling Moss, now … It was all very vague.

Mr Kellermann had spoken good German, but not like a Rhinelander; more like a South German or an Austrian. The cheque was on a big bank: no information was forthcoming about the account without a court order.

Middle-aged handsome men in red, black, blue and white Porsche autos were reported all over Germany.

‘I can't believe in it,' said Heinz Stössel. ‘Where could they sleep? They must spend the night somewhere. You don't sleep in a Porsche auto.' He had the stubborn obstinacy, the refusal to be discouraged, that Van der Valk lacked.

‘They're over the border long gone. Holed up somewhere in a wintersport village. He was a good skier. She worked in a sports shop and liked it too.'

‘It's on the list,' said Heinz briefly. His theory was that you can find anything and anyone with a routine, if that routine is only well enough co-ordinated. Police departments are increasingly fragmented and where they fail is in faulty liaison. A man looked for by, for instance, the fraud squad for a very smooth savings' bank trick may be completely unknown to a murder squad, who would not know him even if they had him in the office as a witness. Heinz Stössel had fired arrows at every department in the organization. Faced with a man who, technically, had committed no crime at all (they had absolutely no pretext for looking up, for instance, the bank account) he had calmly assumed that the man was guilty of every crime in the penal code. He had made a list of everything he could imagine Mr Marschal doing, had virtually every policeman in Germany hunting for it, and had every report made put on his telex. Every hour, he went with his red pencil, line by line, through the reams of tape. He was looking, he said, for a co-ordinate.

‘I think there might be something here. It's inconclusive, though.
A large quantity of ski equipment and clothes, including some for a woman, was bought in München. The man does not follow our description particularly, but was tall, thin and assured. Knew all about what he wanted. The only thing that really struck them was that at the end he signed a very large cheque without even checking the number of items on the bill. When questioned they said that another thing that struck them was being told to deliver everything to the luggage office at the station. Cheque on a local bank. München looked for any more cheques in the same name. They found one at a travel agency – two first-class tickets to Innsbruck.'

‘What's the name on the cheque?'

‘Funny name. Nay.'

‘Nay?' said Van der Valk. ‘Nay?'

“That's what it says on the tape. Nay.'

‘Ring them up, Heinz. I am a fool, ring them up, tell them to check the spelling.'

Slightly astonished at this vehemence, Stössel picked his phone up. ‘München … one six seven, miss, please … hallo? … hallo? Schneegans? Stössel here in Köln. This cheque in the ski-shop. Did the operator get the name right? Nay, yes. Check it will you? … yes? … OK, thanks.' He put the phone down. ‘Yes, but how did you know? Easy slip to make, can't blame them really. An e instead of an a. Ney. I don't see it.'

‘Ney,' said Van der Valk, grinning, ‘is the name – it's absurdly childish – one of Napoleon's marshals. Born German – in the Saar. Kellermann is one too. I've kept thinking and thinking what it was that was memorable about it.'

‘You mean this is him?'

‘Can't be anyone else.'

‘Gone to Innsbruck. Looks like a risk but it was safe really. München to Innsbruck! Well … what can have happened to the auto?'

‘That damn routine of yours,' said Van der Valk, still grinning.

‘I had every auto checked,' indignantly. ‘Bought, hired, borrowed or stolen.'

‘You don't know an auto's stolen, though, till someone reports it stolen.'

‘Yes, but … '

‘What better way would there be of getting rid of an auto you think might be recognized? Leave it on the street unlocked in a town that size – it'll be gone without trace in three hours. You simply never report its loss.'

‘What – a brand new Porsche?'

‘We just haven't been keeping pace with this kind of mind. That brand new Porsche means about as much to a fellow like this as a Dinky toy.'

‘I see. No wonder we missed him … Anyway, we've got the two linked. We know now that he went off with the girl. Find him, and we find the girl. Or the other way round. I need to get the President, now, to ring up Innsbruck.'

‘No need. I'm going to go there myself.'

‘You've no authority, though.'

‘I don't need it. All I have to do is walk up to him and say the party's over. The whole drama will collapse and the girl will just come home. What can it be, after all? Just a whim of a rich man. A romantic escapade. She'll have come to no harm. But he'll be watching the German papers, Heinz, amusing himself, I've no doubt. Don't let the press get it.'

*

It was like passing from one world into another, he thought, in the plane. He hadn't been able to tell Heinz, but everything there had been out of key, the scenery and lighting false and melodramatic, the shadows exaggerated and distorted, the feeling of the whole atmosphere wrong. If a girl disappears, there is a possible crime; if the girl is not raped, or murdered, or sold into slavery, or something, well, there remains an abduction. The distraught parents, the screaming press, the hundreds of policemen and firemen and soldiers in high boots peering under bramble bushes – everything gets out of hand. Jean-Claude Marschal had committed no crime. He had to keep reminding himself of that, but he was sure it was
true; Jean-Claude had quite likely never even realized that the German police would take it all so seriously. To him getting a girl to run away with you was a new sensation, a new thing, a new experience. That was how it looked; he didn't know, himself. Jean-Claude had run away; he had known or guessed that he would be searched for. Really searched for? By the police? He had hidden himself cunningly; it had taken Heinz Stössel's fantastic routine, with threads from the whole of the Federal Republic twisted into a lasso by a teletype, to find him. It hadn't caught him.