FOURTEEN

Castang went to have a shower. Getting downstairs again he drank a mouthful of Lucciani’s beer and went out to buy a paperback thriller before the tobacconist closed. Evenings in a town this size…

     There was thinking to be done, but so little. One stayed still, let the day’s work sink in. Maybe a breeze would blow and give a direction to next day’s footsteps. What did the local people do in the evenings? Watched the television, heaven help them. The cinema. A beer at a café. Playing cards or studying racing form. The odd one might read a book. And many went away into little private worlds, rubbing an already well-cleaned shotgun, mending fishing tackle, watching a pigeon-loft or just ‘with the collection’. Or with simple fantasy, which cost least. A few would go out and defeat boredom with petty crime. Not much of that hereabouts, bar breaking the speed limit. And Castang would go to bed with a gangster thriller.

     Seven in the evening, when this already means nightfall, is the best time for looking at provincial towns in Europe. The animation is highest: the women who have worked all day are shopping: the street lamps hide the ugliness and the dreariness. Best of all when it rained, and each shop offered a glowing haven from the raw air, and faces were seen through the glass of these brightly lit aquariums, laughing. Tonight it was chill, as it is in October after sunset; a dusty draught blew along the ugly little faubourg. But one did not see the mean ramshackle façades, and the leaves on the chestnut trees were turning, not yet fallen, and he felt content.

     The Hotel Central was full by now of folk in for a quick one, as well as serious, heavy-footed billiards players, a smell of pork chops, and Lucciani reading that morning’s Paris paper, the local one an exhausted wreck beside him. There had been a little paragraph about ‘Judge calls in PJ’, but no hawk had been around yet for any hot news. The local hawk would be too experienced, and too lazy, and knew there wasn’t any hot news. Perhaps Peyrefitte was preparing some, but meanwhile the big story was the cracks that had appeared in the new swimming bath. ‘Enquiry ordered.’

     Castang pulled a chair out, asked for an Alsace beer and looked at it languidly.

     ‘We’d better eat here. Peyrefitte won’t arrest anybody this time of night. What you going to do?’

     ‘Oh, go to a movie. Sex films again – never anything else in a place this size. What you got there? Pass it me when you’ve read it.’

     ‘Phone for you, Monsieur Castang,’ called the patronne from the bar, poking at her over-elaborate provincial hairdo, being slightly coquettish with the cops. ‘Well,’ passing him the phone, ‘I’ll have to get you to enquire into what the laundry does with my towels.’

     ‘Man or woman?’ half-hearted. Peyrefitte fussing again, or Vera, having a housewifely check-up?

     ‘Woman. Dinner when you like.’

     ‘Yes, Castang.’

     ‘Are you the police inspector?’ Not Vera!

     ‘Himself and who are you?’

     ‘Martine,’ rapid and tense. ‘You know – horse, motorbike.’

     ‘Sure, but why the coy approach?’

     ‘Don’t fool; one never knows who’s listening.’

     ‘Somebody your end?’

     ‘No but – I don’t want to do a lot of explaining. Can I see you? Would you buy me a drink?’

     ‘With pleasure. Not here though.’

     ‘No, no, listen. D’you know the Rue des Remparts? In the old town. Behind the wall.’ All very important: young girls thought themselves so extremely important. He had to collect his scattered wits: she was getting impatient at his stupidity.

     ‘Ramparts, yes.’

     ‘There’s a little place called the Green Bay Tree. Two sort of tubs on the pavement. Meet me there. In half an hour.’

     ‘I’ve had nothing to eat yet.’ The sizzle of pork chops was making his stomach rumble.

     ‘Neither have I,’ irritably; when would these cops stop thinking about their stomachs? ‘One eats well there.’

     ‘All right, long as it’s not too dear.’

     ‘Oh, I’ll pay if that’s what worries you.’

     ‘We’ll manage.’

     Lucciani was staring at the dregs in his beer glass, hoping to get another bought him. Castang didn’t take the offer up. Not mean; just prudent.

     ‘Go eat your dinner. I’m going out.’

     ‘Office in a flap about something?’

     ‘A bit of possible business. Go see your sex movie; I won’t need you. Tomorrow morning around seven-thirty: be all bright and fresh then.’

     Foggy, a little chilly. The weather was changing. Minute beads of moisture formed on his eyebrows, not enough to wear a raincoat for.

     The Place d’Armes, with some economical floodlighting on the classical façade of the town hall, once the Hotel of the Military Governor. Not a cat to be seen. Small provincial town. But he was a small provincial cop.

     The Rue des Remparts was narrow and picturesque, with cobbles and antiquated street lamps, and seventeenth-century military architecture: low heavy arches with deep embrasures. Castang had a vision of vast ammunition-dumps left over from the Prussian War of 1870. All armies did this, squirrelling away immense quantities of expensive material, forgetting where they’d put it, and finding it again, much surprised, thirty years after it had become obsolete.

     In the embrasures were now little low shops selling goldfish or wicker baskets, and one of these was the Green Bay Tree, with a curtained window duskily orange.

     Somebody touched him on the shoulder and said ‘Hallo’ with a sort of friendly awkwardness. Martine was quite a big girl, or maybe he was too small. He wished he were one of those tall distinguished-looking cops like Richard. She still wore her scarlet suit, with a fine bottom inside it.

     ‘Rather nice, isn’t it? I like those heavy arches, and the casemates or whatever they’re called.’ Nervous, therefore talkative.

     ‘Must have been nice when it was a garrison in the colonial days. You know, Zouaves, and Spahis, and Senegalese. All with their own special brothel.’ Bourgeois girls were always fascinated by brothels.

     The Bay Tree was pleasant inside; a little bar and a few tables laid for eating. Smelling of old woodwork, but clean and friendly. A thin young woman in huge horn-rimmed glasses was sitting on a high chair behind her counter. Two men in overalls were having a glass of wine, and through the open kitchen door a fat comfortable woman was chopping parsley: there was nobody else.

     ‘Hallo Sophie,’ said Martine. ‘This is a friend of mine.’ Castang was glad to hear it. ‘We’ll sit down, shall we, at a table? There’ll be people to eat, later, but it’s quiet here. And discreet.’ Fine. He felt better, less like a soldier who had walked into the wrong camp.

     ‘Do you drink?’ he asked, ‘or are you a Coca-Cola girl?’

     ‘Whatever you like.’

     ‘The whisky’s nice today,’ said Sophie comically, as though it were the fish. ‘You know,’ apologetically, ‘it’s hard to get good ones.’

     So it was; not perhaps Monsieur Barde’s super single malt. But not bar Scotch either.

     ‘Sit down a sec and have a gossip,’ said Martine, manoeuvring to be at ease.

     ‘Have one with us,’ said Castang hospitably, already at his ease and wishing to dispel the accusation of being mean.

     ‘All right,’ said Sophie. A plain young woman, but behind the big glasses were huge luminous eyes, beautifully shaped. Close up, she was pretty.

     ‘There are no scandals. The coffee-machine is on the fritz again. I’m scrabbling in the till to pay the phone bill, as usual. I haven’t a penny – I will go playing those horses.’

     ‘Hey, Sophie,’ called one of the men from the bar, ‘what’ll you give me for fixing the machine?’

     ‘A drink a night, for a week.’

     ‘That’s a deal.’

     ‘What’s good to eat?’ asked Castang, who didn’t want his stomach to rumble in company with all these girls.

     ‘And not that revolting menu all out of the freezer,’ added Martine.

     ‘There’s a baby goat, with which Léonie has created a masterpiece, and there’s hare. Birds, but they’re rather dear. And a leek flan. And oysters.’

     ‘I don’t like hare,’ said Martine.

     ‘Green light for the baby goat,’ said Castang, finding it all a change from the pork chops of the Hotel Central. ‘And flan to begin with.’

     ‘And a nice bordeaux,’ said Sophie. ‘Nobody ever heard its name, but a real one. I’ll tell Léonie.’ Her gestures behind the bar had been languid, but her walk was rapid and elastic. A plain young woman with messy hair and negligently dressed, but suddenly highly attractive. Perhaps that’s the whisky, thought Castang.

     The young man had fixed the coffee-machine, apparently with chewing gum. He poured himself a glass of wine, drank it, said ‘Good night, good appetite’ and walked out with his silent friend, leaving them to themselves.

     ‘She know who I am?’ asked Castang.

     ‘She may: I haven’t told her. She’ll behave as though she doesn’t. I brought you here because this is a good place. She’s honest. This is the only place in this filthy little town where you’re accepted for what you are. Nobody cares what job you do, or who your father is – or whether you might be in trouble with the cops.’ It was a high accolade.

     He liked it, even if it were only young girls’ romanticism. He took a good look at her, which she was unselfconscious about while helping herself to one of his cigarettes.

     Martine was a good choice to spend an evening with. A big tumble of clean shiny hair, a large frank forehead, wide eyes between grey and green, a spot from overeating at the corner of her nose, an unpainted mouth.

     Silence fell between them. Castang was thinking of the latest bent-cops scandal: a vice-squad commissaire, who having been surprised was now acting the astounded in front of a tribunal. He’d got on the wrong side of the press, which described him cattily in this morning’s paper as having ‘a dear little red mouth pursed up like a hen’s arse.’ Castang, who had small sympathy for his erring brother (a man wearing hand-made shirts) had guffawed.

     This mouth was as far from a hen’s arse as one could get. A big round chin too, and well-shaped ears. A young female straight as a young tree. Skin coloured by blood and autumn sun. He drank his whisky and made a sound of relief and satisfaction.

     ‘What’s the big sigh for?’

     ‘Pleasure. No wrinkles. Both are rare.’

     ‘Right. You’re a cop. PJ cop from the big town. So a bent bastard. But we can be friends, perhaps. I’d like that: the thing is, would you?’

     ‘Not altogether bent. Miserable bastards.’

     ‘Human, like anybody else.’

     ‘They start out that way. Like most people, they’re best when still children.’

     ‘I don’t want you to start fencing with me.’

     ‘All right. Let’s be straightforward: I ask nothing better. Why did you ring me up?’

     ‘I wanted to find out what all this is about. I thought you might tell me in private, if it was between us.’

     ‘I see. It’s simple. Elderly woman got assassinated. By an intruder, we’re assuming. Municipal cops make the usual enquiry, which is inconclusive. The judge instructing calls in the PJ. Which is me. That’s all. It’s ordinary enough.’

     ‘And you think you’re going to catch this burglar round here?’

     ‘We’re working on it all over. Back in the town too. I just happen to be here. You know anything about this burglar?’

     ‘Don’t be ridiculous: you don’t think I know any burglars?’

     ‘So you rang me up. Just out of curiosity. Never seen a PJ cop before, and you’re anxious to know how they behave. That it? We’re playing truth, remember?’

     ‘Partly. I’m curious, of course. And I’d like to know too why you’re spying on my father.’

     ‘Routine background. A query about title in the house the old lady owned. A detail. I reckoned he could tell me.’

     ‘Oh, don’t lie so stupidly,’ said Martine. ‘I saw you hanging around our house this afternoon. Spying about.’

     Castang shrugged. People insist on believing the cops are being crafty again. To talk about Monsieur Barde, and a stroll for fresh air and to look at the sunset – no, no explanations; nobody would believe them.

     ‘Your father wanted to make a property deal with this old lady. It’s not a secret, but he wanted to keep it quiet, as a matter of business tactics. I happened to learn this. I happened to be out your way this afternoon. Nothing sinister about all this; it needn’t worry you.’

     ‘Worry – that’s a loaded word; it irritates me. Like a fussy old auntie. I don’t worry. I’m concerned. People ought to be concerned.’

     ‘About what?’

     ‘About you. I suppose you’re accustomed to everyone being hostile, or else going all servile because they’re terrified. Well, I’m neither. It’s so old-fashioned, all that. I mean cops, living in a sort of ghetto, friendly with all sorts of foul people and claiming it’s because they’re sources of valuable information. Like that ghastly man in the paper. Going to the same shirt-maker as the local gangsters, garaging the car where one gets such exceptionally good – and so cheap – service. Are you like that?’ Blunt. As the cliché says, bluntness is disarming.

     ‘Not all of us. There are always a few like that. Always will be. Anywhere.’

     ‘I can be friendly with anyone. I don’t care what they do. As long as they aren’t false, and incapable of being honest with themselves. I suppose you’ll say I’m very naïve. I should like to know why the truth always has automatically to be naïve.’

     Castang was saved answering by Sophie, who came pattering up with two plates, one chipped but both hot, and two big wedges of the leek tart. The pastry was tender, the underside not soggy. The leeks were not overdone, the cream sauce light and plain, there was not too much cheese. It was simple, natural, and tasted good, like this girl.

     Castang was very hungry. He hoped his underside wasn’t soggy, either.

     ‘I suppose your family don’t know you’re here – or even where you choose your friends.’

     ‘You expect me to be scornful about my family, I dare say. Petty commerce and that. I can understand people who are ashamed of their families, but I’m not. I may not always have a very high opinion of them, but I keep quiet about it. I’ll be going back to the university in a week or so, but while I’m here I try to avoid conflicts. And they don’t know where I am nor whom I’m with because they trust me, so I trust them back. Peculiar of me, but that’s the way I am.’

     Castang couldn’t stop grinning a bit. She didn’t notice, wolfing down tart. Healthy young appetite.

     ‘I’m not slumming in search of the picturesque, either,’ getting good and warmed up. ‘Not going ooh, you’re a cop, you’ve a gun, you shoot people, let’s play with the phallic symbol.’

     ‘I’m carrying a gun,’ said Castang peaceably, ‘and wouldn’t dream of letting you play with it.’ Aware that this wasn’t happily phrased. ‘We’re on terms of perfect equality.’

     ‘All right. Long as we don’t sit stupidly being suspicious of each other and reading motives into everything. More in existence than just imbecile sex.’

     ‘I’m not against it, though. Are you?’

     ‘No, but one gets vastly bored with the village cock, whose one idea is to steer one towards the nearest sofa. Nothing more resistible, did the preening cretin but grasp it.’

     ‘We’ll lay down the arms,’ said Castang. His gun was in a belt holster, pushed to the back when he sat to eat, so that it didn’t get in the way of his belly. He didn’t know what he needed yet to cope with this one, but it didn’t seem to be a gun.

     ‘Sorry,’ said Martine, ‘but that sniggering certainty that a girl thinks of nothing else, dreams about it at night – contemptible.’

     No guns, and no sex – what else did he have?

     ‘Oh, blow this corkscrew,’ said Sophie by his elbow.

     ‘I’ll do it,’ being male.

     ‘If I can’t make a tool work I throw it away and get another, not scream for help,’ scooting off.

     ‘I see why you like her,’ he said.

     ‘She stands on her two feet. She has a little boy; doesn’t parade the child looking for sympathy.’

     ‘Better,’ said Sophie wiping out the neck of the bottle and whisking the plates away. ‘Goat’ll be here in a sec.’

     He poured out the unheard-of bordeaux. She wanted something from him. Perhaps just information. He wanted something from her. He didn’t know what himself, yet. It was as simple as that.

     ‘You get on well with your father,’ he said, ‘as I saw this afternoon.’

     It was perhaps not very skilfully done.

     ‘We’re fond of each other. If he has worries I’ll try not to add to them.’

     ‘I’m not using this on you,’ picking up the despised corkscrew Sophie had left.

     ‘Stupid thing,’ said that lady, whisking it away and inserting the goat deftly between his elbows.

     ‘You used some corkscrew on him though,’ said Martine. ‘Probably most unfairly, and he’s bothered. He’s said nothing but I saw, and I’d seen you at the office. Fair and square now. If you suspect him of something, it’s ridiculous, and if you’re trying to pin something on him, it’s just abject. But maybe it’s a misunderstanding. If you’d tell me I might be able to help.’

     One couldn’t attack these nubbly bits with anything as stupid as a knife and fork. Castang put his down, deciding to eat baby goat with his fingers. It was done the ‘bonne femme’ way. Shallots and mushrooms and little cocotte potatoes. Pretty good.

     ‘I don’t have anything to suspect – or pin down,’ working away at the nubbly bits, ‘on anyone.’

     ‘Oh, do stop lying,’ crossly. ‘What’s an inspector doing hanging about here? Nobody believes in this vagabond tale.’

     ‘Your father doesn’t?’

     ‘But why should he know anything about it? He was trying to sell her house, and so what?’

     ‘He was there the night she was killed, though.’

     ‘Oh,’ much taken aback. ‘But that’s meaningless.’

     ‘Not all that meaningless. I see you thinking stupid cop. But it could be something more than superficial. Might be a causal connection, as well as spatial. Like whose book did it suit – or not suit – that Madame Lipschitz should sell her house?’

     ‘Are you really suggesting,’ enormously indignant, ‘that he might have killed her?’

     ‘Go on eating,’ said Castang. ‘Don’t let it get cold.’

     ‘You must be insane.’

     ‘I’m not in the least insane.’

     ‘But it’s preposterous.’

     ‘You asked me to be open: all right, I will be. If by “it” you mean some absurd scenario where the old lady refuses to sell and he gets mad and belts her with a hammer – yes, that’s pretty preposterous, though sillier things have been known than that. I’m trying to tell you that his being there may not be just a coincidence. I don’t know what it means, if anything, but maybe something consequential. I just have to be prudent about it. Now the idea of his killing her never entered your head, right?’

     ‘Of course not.’

     ‘So tell me what it was that worried you.’

     ‘Salad,’ said Sophie, bumping it down.

     Poor Martine, pink and sweaty, eating and drinking in a great hurry, deciding she just couldn’t eat any more. And she’d been so confident to start with. But what was it the girl had fixed in her head there?

     ‘Well, when I saw you hanging round the house like that…’ He ate salad with a blank patient face.

     ‘I thought…’ Sophie took away her plate; he poured out the last of the bottle. ‘I thought it must be some kind of tax thing.’

     ‘I see,’ surprised, amused, hoping he showed neither.

     ‘I mean I thought, when you found out that he was setting up this deal and it looked sort of surreptitious… And now his going there late at night… I thought maybe you suspected some kind of tax fraud. That you’d think, I mean, it might look phoney,’ getting more tangled every second.

     ‘And is there?’ She picked at her salad faint-heartedly. ‘Very serious offence, tax evasion,’ pompously. Filthy hypocrite.

     It all came in a flood now.

     ‘I’m serious,’ she said. ‘I don’t like this lousy capitalist society a bit, but just because I’m a student I don’t go for all that Marxist crap either. Anyway, I’ve learned the hard way that what you do isn’t always what you believe in.’

     I haven’t got much further, thought Castang.

     ‘So I’m appealing to you now as an honest man, which I think you are, even if you are part of a lousy corrupt government. My father is straight in business, even if most promoters are sharks. I’ve done things myself I’m ashamed of. So have you, and if you’re honest you’ll admit it.’ Simple, complicated, candid young woman.

     ‘Indeed I have.’

     ‘Well, what’s your answer?’

     ‘Are we talking ethics? I’ve got a bit muddled.’

     ‘If you are going to stir up trouble for my father with the tax people – well, I could find a lot of policemen who’d be hard put to it to account for every shirt they buy.’

     ‘I’m not proud of it. In fact society can’t get on without a police force, even a bad one, but we’re not going to swap arguments about corruption, like what does an hour on your horse cost? It’s irrelevant. If I’m corrupt and so are you, where do we go from there?’

     ‘I thought I’d offer you a bribe.’

     ‘You don’t cease to surprise me,’ meaning it. ‘For forgetting about tax fiddles?’

     ‘Yes, look, I can tell you with truth and certainty that there was nothing at all queer in this deal. There may have been a bit of finagling at times, and that’s my fault. I cost him a lot of money.’

     The way these children’s minds worked!

     ‘What’s the bribe?’ he asked bluntly.

     ‘Me,’ likewise.

     All was now clear. But his existence was getting complicated.

     Being offered bribes was a familiar situation. Sometimes one pretended to accept them. One of the little professional dishonesties of existence. Much like pretending to believe something, in order to get information about something else.

     Being offered young girls was trickier, because one was tempted to take them.

     ‘That’s an honest deal,’ said Martine. ‘Nothing to do with your homicide thing, because I know my father isn’t involved in that. Just to forget about technical finance stuff, right?’

     ‘Very well,’ said Castang calmly.

     And if he didn’t keep his bargain, her idea would be Sophie as a witness?

     ‘Fruit?’ said Sophie with a dish. ‘The pears are rather hard. There’s cheese. And a chocolate cake.’

     He’d better do a bit of police work.

     ‘You’ll excuse me a minute.’

     ‘Through there and up the stairs. Cake for you, Martine?’

     There were a dozen people in the little restaurant, now. The stairs were steep and crooked. An old house, built into the back of the city wall. A bathroom next to the lavatory, a little landing with three rooms, marked one, two, and private. Mm. He had an idea that Sophie knew about this brilliant notion of Martine’s.

     He found her smoking a cigarette, and looked at her with affection. Pale and meditative.

     Sophie was cleaning her glasses on the corner of the tablecloth; looked at him with the blank beautiful gaze of myopia.

     ‘Coffee when you like,’ said Castang.

     ‘Can we stay, Sophie?’ with a show of being colourless.

     ‘Sure,’ indifferently. ‘So coffee, and a drink.’ She went to sit on her stool behind the bar to write bills, sucking her pencil and concentrating, gazing at the horizon.

     ‘Nice girl, that.’

     ‘She’s a good friend.’

     ‘She stays the night too, sometimes?’

     ‘It isn’t my affair,’ said Martine sharply. ‘I don’t ask.’

     Coffee and a drink, a nice one for young girls, a delicious summery smell of sunshine on ripe greengages. Sophie’s face as impassive as a policeman’s.

     Castang’s face had a look of several pieces of leather, cut in a complicated fashion and painstakingly stitched together; some salients blurred and effaced; some shadows and hollows more deeply hatched. Corrosion and oxidisation had played a part. Disciplines, pains and constraints had cut profiles deeper, and being much out of doors had cleaned the face as though with acids.

     This look, that of an old coin, can be seen in most policemen of experience.

     In repose it looked severe. But if one watched him for any length of time there was a phenomenon of much charm; a sunny smile. Vera had much pleasure in these moments when an old, much tilled, eroded landscape was lit by errant sunlight.

     Martine noticed it and was pleased, opened her mouth to say so, found no words, was overcome by shyness.

     Her own face, round and open, conventional and a little boring, became delicate: Castang was touched. The expression of the obstinate little horse, that has made its bed and is going to lie on it however thistly, had become something more adult, and much more interesting.

     ‘You are good,’ he said. ‘And patient.’

     The sulky blush, at once, of the snubbed schoolgirl. She saw that he had wanted her, and no longer did. But not going to be tearful, whatever happened.

     ‘You’re laughing at me.’

     ‘No.’ He felt clumsy himself, looking for a word that would not sound insulting, or diminishing. Couldn’t just pat her head and say good dog.

     ‘You’re too good to treat frivolously.’ It crossed the cop’s mind that Sophie might have a tricky relationship with the local cops, and that it might have been a help, having a PJ inspector around who took girls upstairs.

     ‘Not that easy,’ he said. ‘But first rule when posted to Russia is don’t get caught in bed with the girls.’

     ‘Shove it,’ said Martine, humiliated. ‘Shit; I suppose you’re right.’

     ‘It has to be spontaneous. Like having a leg amputated on the battlefield. Go ahead and cut, you bastards: give me another drink.’

     She laughed a little.

     ‘You know what Bismarck said would happen, if the English army invaded Germany?’

     ‘Huh?’

     ‘That they’d be arrested by the police, if they did.’

     Good, he’d turned a difficult corner: she put her head back and laughed. Splendid throat like a pillar; splendid tit. See what you’re missing.

     ‘On what grounds?’

     ‘Disturbing the peace, what else?’ But oh, what a dose of castor oil he’d have had to take, next morning.

     ‘Then say something spontaneous.’

     ‘Very well. Tell your father from me that a thing like tax doesn’t interest me. I’m not the fraud squad. But that anything to do with a homicide does. Any information he has for me I’ll keep discreet. The examining magistrate doesn’t have to know where it comes from.’

     ‘You’re looking for an informer.’ Lip curling, somewhat.

     ‘That’s right,’ said Castang dryly. ‘And contrary to belief, we pay informers very little. Generally they get paid in terms of their own immunity. A bad system, but the administration is extremely parsimonious.’

     ‘I’ve understood.’

     ‘You’d like me to take you home?’

     ‘No thank you.’ But she didn’t say it nastily. He asked Sophie for the bill.

     ‘Oh, you can pay in the morning.’

     ‘I’m having another drink instead.’

     ‘As you wish,’ she said tranquilly.

     ‘Ever come across Madame Lipschitz’s son?’ he asked Martine.

     ‘No.’

     ‘It’s a small town.’

     ‘Oh, I may have seen him, but I wouldn’t know him if I did.’

     ‘What about your neighbour, Monsieur Barde?’ A busy little bee, taking in any flowers along the way.

     ‘Barde? Oh yes, I know him.’ No great interest.

     ‘Character sketch.’ She was pleased to be off the hook at last, on to something that was just gossip.

     ‘But what’s your interest in that old phoney?’

     ‘Not much. He’s an old friend of the Lipschitz family. And that, incidentally, was what I was doing out your way this afternoon. Drinking tea with Monsieur Barde.’

     ‘I don’t know him much. Wouldn’t want to; he makes faces of odious politeness when he meets me out on the horse. Beds his maids.’

     ‘Oh, anybody can see that.’

     ‘Well, let’s see. Calls himself a writer. Can’t write, but does twee little bits about people who can.’

     The unforgiving judgements of a girl of twenty. What would she say about himself?

     ‘Plays the wealthy landowner. Big swagger, but not much behind it.’

     ‘How do you know?’

     ‘Oh, he sold a lot of land. Dad got some, and cheap. Did well out of it, too: we got Green Gables that way. We were putting margarine on our bread before, in a flat. Barde wouldn’t like doing without butter. He likes exterior signs of wealth, as the Finance Ministry calls it. Yachts and racehorses and stuff.’

     ‘Has he racehorses?’ Castang was amused at these youthful cruelties.

     ‘That old nag? Don’t make me laugh. No, but a dinky girlfriend dressed up as parlour-maid. So he supplements the wherewithal with bits of literature and other crafty little combinations. Pawnbroker.’

     ‘Ouf,’ said Sophie, sitting down and kicking her shoes off. ‘Rush is over. Here’s your bill. Being a cop, I’m sure you want it for the expense account.’ Not too maliciously.

     Quite a little family party they made. It was only ten, but the day had been a long one. Castang felt like kicking his shoes off, too.