Tsing-Boum (12 page)

‘I want to go a very small distance at a time,' said Van der Valk softly.

‘Come with me to the office in the morning and we'll see what we can hunt up.'

‘But I don't want to leave too much time between the times.'

Jean-Michel smiled.

‘I ought to know you by now, digging away like a solemn old badger. Let me think. You don't really want someone who was there. The odds are that he was in charge of one small
splinter like shoe polish and can think of nothing else. Somebody who was in Hanoi would be better.' He looked for the phone book, which was hidden inside a splendid leather cover with ‘The Complete Works of the New Novelists' on it in gold. He muttered and nodded over this for some time, before taking the top off a small fat leather pig which had been perplexing Van der Valk for some time.

‘When the bell rings his eyes light up – green to starboard and red to port … Monsieur Marie? Stressed Systems, in Toulon. Listen, Monsieur Marie, I'd like to ask a kindness, if you'd permit me. It concerns my brother-in-law, who is a commissaire of police, in Holland of all places, and who's here on a visit, well, business in a sense. He has an odd question, and since you're something of a specialist, I wondered if you'd consent to have a word with him … yes, of course; read it over … about seven thousand cubic metres, I'd say … no, of course they can't, that's out of the question … by all means, send the dossier along and I'll give you an opinion forty-eight hours from then. A pleasure … Yes? The bar? Yes, I know it. Right. And many thanks … Woof.' He was smoking furiously. ‘Nothing for nothing and not much for sixpence. Old bugger. But he'll see you.'

‘He can have seven thousand cubic metres of my fresh air too.'

‘You're not kidding; he'll take them. He's a funny old swine but he draws a lot of water in Marseilles. No don't worry, it's a thing I can do in ten minutes, the forty-eight hours is bullshit. As I was saying he knows everybody. Let's see now – you know Marseilles? Know Les Catalans? Know the coast boulevard from there? About two kilometres along there's a restaurant on the coastward side, sun-terrace affair called Le Clown Vert – be there at ten – little grey man. Was a logistics expert in Hanoi.'

Claudine, admirable woman, had said nothing for an hour.

Jean-Michel's DS left him among the palm trees and policemen of Toulon station, in nice time to catch a commuter train to Marseilles. There was heavy continuous rain the whole way, so that the landscape of Provence was reduced to muddy ruts and pools of water, and a forest fire looked about as likely as Winston Churchill on roller-skates. Marseilles when he got there had a resemblance to Nottingham, and he was reminded of an airline pilot he had known, looking at the ancient historic town of Haarlem, simply reeking of Franz Hals and William the Silent, and saying thoughtfully, ‘Very like Staines on a Sunday.' A taxi left him on the sea-boulevard; Le Clown Vert was a concrete blockhouse with Moorish leanings, one of a hundred such along the sea wall between the Vieux Port and the Prado beach. At the kitchen entrance a van was delivering potatoes; the front was shut and shuttered but a door surrounded by tourist-club emblems let him in grudgingly to a tiled floor being mopped by a cleaning woman.

‘'s closed,' she said, ‘'n mind m'floor.'

‘I know,' he said humbly, ‘but I've come to see Monsieur Marie.'

‘In the back – 'n mind my floor.'

‘Can't fly,' he said. He had a wish to add ‘no wings' like Mr Jellyby, but she might hit him with her mop.

‘The back' was carpeted, hushed, clean and neutral – a window had been opened facing the sea, to air out the clinging reek of anis and whisky. Piles of empty glasses stood on the bar, and a crate full of champagne bottles. Beyond the picture window was the dead concrete terrace, and beyond that the dark angry sea, a lot of rocks and islets, the Planier lighthouse, the Château d'If, a scruffy steamer plodding in towards the Joliette. On this side of the window, quietly drinking coffee, sat
an old man reading
Le Monde
and paying no attention for the moment to anything else. One thing at a time. Before, it had been a croissant, eaten carefully without making any crumbs. When Van der Valk padded over he got the old man's full attention; the paper was lowered, and a broad intellectual face all peaks and hollows, blanched like a skull, with fine dark eyes and a massive forehead, was lifted towards his. Monsieur Marie did not speak, but waited for him.

‘Ten o'clock,' said Van der Valk.

‘Sit down then, Monsieur Brother-in-Law.'

‘I'm disturbing your breakfast.'

‘No.' A half-empty cup of coffee was pushed aside and the paper went after it. The old man took a long filtertip Française from the breast pocket of a plaid woollen shirt which he wore open-necked under a blackish-brown corduroy jacket, and put it carefully between firm yellowish front teeth which were his own.

‘I haven't presented myself properly. Van der Valk, Commissaire of Police.'

The weary experienced eyes showed no curiosity. He struck a match and lit the cigarette carefully.

‘I am in the dark, Monsieur Fanfan. What can I do to be of service to you?'

‘I am anxious to find out something of the past life of a former military nurse named Esther Marx, who was serving in Hanoi at the time of Dien Bien Phu.' And he had thought of being oblique! Pat, his question had flapped out on the plate like a fried egg slid out of the omelette pan. Did it matter? This man could answer the question or he couldn't. If he could he would or he wouldn't.

‘Ah. Dien Bien Phu. A place of phantoms and chimeras and unmarked graves. The nest from which the eggs were stolen before the illusions hatched.' A very short, abrupt, noiseless laugh. ‘Why do you come to me?'

‘She was killed – in Holland. It is reasonable to suppose that in coming to Holland she left her past behind her, and that some shadow of that past came again to touch her. She wanted nothing, you see, but to be left in peace.'

‘So you come to Marseilles. It seems a long way round.'

‘Oh, you know, I think – better than most if I am any judge – that official sources of information tend to have one thing in common, which is to inform no one.'

Monsieur Marie took his time. He looked for some time at the sea by his right hand, said ‘Nobody any longer cares', and again studied the outline of the Château d'If as though he might be thinking of making a bid for it. Van der Valk decided he had better not interrupt. Finally the eyes came back to Van der Valk and the voice came dragging up out of the leathery throat.

‘Back along the boulevard is a monument, of no great artistic value to be sure. Marianne in a helmet, soldiers, cannon, wreaths of corn and laurel leaves. And a dedication – to all who served the colonial cause. Those who left their bones in the empire. How many left Marseilles wondering whether they would again see these rocks, this water that we hear and smell as we sit? A lot of blood, a great deal of blood.'

Seven thousand cubic metres, thought Van der Valk.

‘A half-hearted monument in a dreary, dusty corner. It is of no importance, now, how many died. One more – and in Holland.'

‘People still care sufficiently, it seems, to prefer me not to come rooting about among the souvenirs – just as somebody cared enough to kill.'

‘Somebody in a subordinate position,' suggested the old gentleman dryly. ‘I offer you a piece of sound advice – always go to the top.'

‘Like you.'

‘Yes, like me.'

‘Did you know Esther Marx?' He was rewarded again with that abrupt, noiseless cough of laughter.

‘I recall her well. Not a pretty girl but vivid.'

‘What kind of a girl? I only saw her dead.'

‘Caring for no opinion, counting no cost – the right one for an empire. A nice girl.'
Fille bien gentille
– in the old man's mouth the banal phrase had unexpected weight.

‘And what happened to her?'

‘How should I know? Our Indochinese adventure finished shortly afterwards.'

‘You never saw her again?'

The old man shrugged.

‘I took up other interests. I entered politics. I re-entered politics,' he amended, so that it should all be quite clear.

‘And did you know Esther's lover?'

The answer was so direct and so simple that he wondered whether Monsieur Marie had decided to rock him to sleep.

‘Lieutenant Laforêt. A pleasant boy. You are interested? I do not think he was very interesting. Good-looking, dashing, brave – a little noisy. Like many other gallant and picturesque young men whom one got accustomed to not seeing again.'

‘He was at Dien Bien Phu? And got killed?'

‘He was taken prisoner, if I am not mistaken. He used to write poems, I believe. One of these young men who have visions.'

Monsieur Marie gave way to a harsh little cackle of laughter. Having visions was plainly an undesirable trait.

‘He survived the prison camp?'

‘I think he died,' with no great interest. ‘You understand that I took my place in a different world, somewhat more demanding. I ceased to have the time for sitting in bars and noticing the antics of young officers,' indulgently.

‘Some of these young officers later took an interest in politics.'

The old man looked amused. ‘Not politics, Monsieur Fanfan, not politics.'

‘Visions, if you like. But you think Laforêt died? He didn't, to your knowledge, serve in Algeria?'

‘I fear there is no more I can tell you. These people dropped – out of my sight.' He stood up, neat and trim in the shabby jacket. ‘I regret that there are other calls upon my time.'

‘
Je vous en prie
,' said Van der Valk with the same formal politeness.

The old boy walked with a brittle step, as though his legs were getting fragile, but the shoulders in the rough jacket were broad and resolute. He shuffled across the room; he was wearing woolly bedroom slippers. He took a warm-looking beige overcoat that might have been camel down from a hanger, a white silk scarf, and a black trilby hat. As he turned
to say goodbye Van der Valk saw that the coat had a mink lining. Suddenly Monsieur Marie looked quite another person.

‘Good morning to you. I hope you catch your murderer,' he said very civilly. Van der Valk opened the door for him. On the pavement outside was parked an official-looking DS, black and shiny. It had not as many gadgets as Jean-Michel's but was even grander because a uniformed chauffeur was holding the door open. It went off down the boulevard like a rocket, reaching a shocking speed in five seconds. Van der Valk blinked. When he stopped blinking it had vanished. Perhaps Monsieur Marie did not exist at all but was simply a figment of his imagination.

The cleaning woman had gone. He walked back to the bar, where heavy silence greeted him. He felt like a drink, a cup of coffee, anything, but there was not a soul to be seen. He pushed the swing door through to the kitchen; a basket of mussels stood on a table and a pleasant steam came from a soup pot on the stove, but there were no human beings. He went through to a scullery full of vegetable boxes, a yard where empty bottles were stacked, past the dustbins to where he had seen the van unloading potatoes and still there was nobody. It was uncanny. Monsieur Marie was a little uncanny too. He went back in again through the front. Everything was as he had seen it; no spectral hand had cleared away the coffee-cup. He looked around. The bar was curtained halfway down: a little dance floor and a platform for musicians at the far end. Behind the curtains, doubtless, were Corsican gangsters called Fernand and Dédé, feeling their knifeblades with nicotine-stained thumbs. Enter those lavatories and you will never leave them alive, son. Still, one was only a human being and one had to do pipi from time to time. He fixed his hat to tilt against the direction the wind was blowing from, turned his raincoat collar up, and set out to have a nice walk back into Marseilles. He would find another horrid little bar, even if it were full of Corsican gangsters.

When he reached a café where there were quite real-looking persons standing dejectedly around a pinball table he had a nasty cup of espresso coffee in a smell of pizza and pastis and wondered what he was supposed to do next …

It was not worth the trouble of phoning for a taxi; he would go on walking. His leg, despite the perfectly vile weather, was giving him no pain at all – was that a sign of something? It was comic that a supposedly reasonable, logical person like a policeman – and he was a Dutch policeman, feet planted firmly on the ground – should get superstitious. But like Commissaire Maigret, repeating the same drink throughout a whole book, Van der Valk sometimes felt ‘obligations'. Hostages to fortune. Thus, sometimes, one had to accept things, submit to a sort of ordained pattern. Accept little trials and discomforts as so many lessons in patience, humility, fortitude. Rain poured down upon Marseilles – so be it. And there was a violent wind, but not the mistral blowing away the clouds and the cobwebs, making the boats dance on sparkling diamonds of sunlight. A nasty Dutch wind, waiting to pounce on one at street corners, throwing one's hat into the harbour with the ignorant wastefulness of a jolly jolly drunk. Very good; so be it. And somehow he had to walk up all these lovely steep hills, and he didn't understand a damn thing: all right, all right. He plodded steadily back, past tall yellowing apartment houses, their skin squalidly peeling, past a little park, cramped and draughty, where in a gloomy pile the Faculty of Medicine trained budding dentists, apparently, to look out to sea with a keen windswept gaze – nice change from teeth. Past a deflated Foreign Legion barracks where a sentry yawned horribly, past the old fort and the new tunnel, past the ragged fishing boats the whole length of the Vieux Port, as far as the corner of the quay, where his leg flatly refused to go further without nourishment. He flopped into a chair in a dimly lit bar that after midday would be full of whores but was now pleasantly empty, put his feet up, and had a hot rum and lemon.