TWO

At Police Headquarters there was a long boring wait. Most police work is a problem of disposal. Arresting somebody takes a second; the paperwork following takes hours. Castang thought, now, about nothing at all.

     Of everyone present the gunman was the least bored. He was a professional: he had been here before and knew all about it. He sat on a wooden chair and watched the coming and going, and fussing with papers, with no curiosity but with a kind of interest. It was a distraction: from now on he would have a lot of time on his hands, and this was as good a way of passing it as any that would be proposed. One plans little recreations in advance, rationing them to fill the hours getting something to eat or to drink, going to the lavatory under escort and cadging a cigarette on the way. Nobody worried him: he might have been on a little island surrounded by peace, with tiny waves lapping round the wooden chair.

     Paris was in no hurry. This was a provincial affair, and Paris had disposal problems enough of its own. Nobody bothered about Castang’s time, for he was only a provincial police officer. Nobody was even interested in the boring crimes – a matter of thirty-five robberies committed ‘with offensive weapons’. All this had to be written down in lifeless formulae. Eventually, this man would be tried down where he, and Castang, came from. Paris was only acting on an interrogatory commission, issued by a provincial magistrate. In a few weeks – there was no hurry – a couple of yawning gendarmes would ferry him down like a parcel in a railway compartment.

     Just as Castang and his gunman were both falling into a coma, from sitting on wooden chairs staring at their toes, a judge of instruction was found who unaccountably was not in a coma; who had even read the interrogatory commission, which nobody else had. Who was impatient with disposal problems, and even sensitive about a waste of public funds. Castang was going home, wasn’t he? And this man would go too, to be judged? What did a robbery more or less in Paris matter? The judge signed a form turning him over to a different jurisdiction, and Castang had to sign several more. Accepting responsibility for a body, for its possessions, for a shopping-bag with a gun and a few other legal exhibits. Goodbye shower, not to speak of a possible pleasant meal. Police car, grim little railway-police waiting-room, snack-bar sandwich. And a few hours to spend in a train being sorry for himself.

     He had to keep awake too. His gunman was overcome by apathy, and they were handcuffed together, but even if prudence was maintained he needed to stay alert.

     The gunman had some money, luckily. Professional criminals take care to be provided with money when facing a longish stretch in the jug. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof, and this is the cops’ motto too. The gunman was agreeable to Castang making a small investment for him, in cigarettes, chewing gum and comics. For himself he bought a crossword-puzzle book. All he really wanted was peace, but you couldn’t buy that at the bookstall.

     He had time in front of him, to think. Of something professional, and not the thirty-five armed robberies, which were boring as hell. To pass a few hours in a train, without losing sight of his Siamese twin, who lacked imagination, but mustn’t be allowed to get ideas contrary to the regulations of the railway company.