TWENTY-NINE

Nice big quiet sunny morning. Early still. The judge hadn’t kept him long, whatever it seemed. And to finish his enquiry, he had twenty-four great big huge hours, like those big clouds, fluffy and a bit off-white, sheep needing washing. Be grateful for the sun; it won’t last long. Windows and doors open everywhere, smells of eau-de-javel and furniture polish, housewives snapping dusters as though they had a cage of tigers back there.

     Smell of coffee. Sophie in a disreputable dressing-gown, and peculiar slippers with pink candyfloss pompoms. Coping with a dishevelled Martine, who had been crying and would start again when she’d finished the present tirade.

     Sophie’s greeting of Castang: a bit summary.

     ‘You’re not too popular in some quarters. But as I keep telling this girl, more to it than meets the eye. Politics, no doubt. We’d like now to hear a bit of news, before the midday television bulletin. Want some coffee?’

     ‘Yes. Hardened up.’

     She brought him a big cup, black with a slosh of calva added. He drank it straight off: it helped that sideways-drifting feeling.

     ‘Better. I got a bumpy ride this morning from the judge. That’s one calculated indiscretion. And all right, Mademoiselle Martine, nobody’s getting arrested just yet. That’s two.

     ‘And I’ve done a bit of horsetrading, that’s three. And that’s all: professional etiquette forbids further.’

     ‘And that leaves you where?’ asked Sophie sarcastically.

     ‘I’ve got to do better. I’ve little time. Start now.’ Where, he wondered?

     ‘Do better?’ The girls stared at one another.

     ‘But we’ve told you absolutely everything,’ began Martine.

     ‘I suppose you have. All you knew or thought, anyhow. Have to find something now that hasn’t been thought of. Known of, maybe, but was thought unimportant.’

     ‘There’s not a single thing concealed, not a single thing. Like Papa told you last night, and I know he’s telling the truth.’

     ‘Look, Martine. I didn’t know I’d find you here, but it’s perhaps a good thing I did. I can say a few things to you in confidence – such as every time you open your mouth you put your foot in it. Have you learned that by now?’

     ‘Yes.’

     ‘Stop yapping and behave normally. That way you can help. You want to help? Well, when you can I’ll let you know, okay?’

     ‘You’re a foul fucker.’

     ‘Yes. I’ll explain something. As a man, and understand, I don’t myself think your father has committed crimes. It’s surely obvious: if I thought it I’d have pulled him in. I had grounds enough. As a cop I have areas of doubt. If the doubt persists it will weigh against him. So buzz off now: I want to talk to Sophie. I want you to go to the office, quite normally and not all red-eyed, and tell your father to come and join me here for lunch. I don’t want to go to the Place d’Armes: press is hanging about there. And go home then and read a book. I’m doing what I can.’

     ‘Very well,’ icily, being adult. Left all dignified: the two others had to grin.

     ‘And what in God’s name do you want from me?’ asked Sophie.

     ‘Lunch for me and Popaul all discreet in the corner there.’

     ‘Very well. What else?’

     ‘Gossip. Pillow talk.’

     ‘So?’ guarded.

     ‘I’ll be very frank.’

     ‘I ask nothing better.’

     ‘I’m in a hell of a difficult position. I heard a scrap of gossip, let’s call it, at the Palais this morning. Can’t verify it with the judge, or his pals: or the local cops much: compromising. Nor Thonon, though he said something that matches it. Tampering with a witness. His version of events is unreliable: I needn’t explain.’

     ‘He’d seize on anything to take pressure off him?’

     ‘Right, my girl.’

     ‘So you come to me. For pillow talk.’

     ‘Right, my girl.’

     ‘And you trust me not to give you away. If it could compromise others it could compromise you too.’

     ‘Right, girl.’

     ‘How much trouble is Thonon in? Really in?’

     ‘You’re asking something you know a cop won’t tell you.’

     ‘All right. You’re discreet. I am too; I bloody well have to be. You mean pillow talk from the judge or the commissaire. No. I don’t know them. Have they…? – no, they haven’t. Peyrefitte is straight enough with me. He leaves me alone. In return, as you guess without too much bother, I inform, on occasion. But anything shady about him? – no, I don’t know. Fair enough?’

     ‘The judge?’

     ‘No. Nor his friends. They don’t… frequent me.’

     ‘All right,’ said Castang. ‘Thonon’s in trouble as long as his affair’s not cleared up. Not big legal trouble – there’s no proof against him, and small chance of getting any. More like golf club trouble. Everybody will believe him guilty. And the typical mentality: you do a few shady tricks, and nobody minds. But get caught, and the whole club starts saying they knew all along that there was something fishy about that fellow.’

     ‘So as long as it’s unproved it’s him.’

     ‘Correct.’

     ‘I’ll do what I can.’

     ‘A suggestion got made that a local notable did something outside the law, and that the judge, to oblige a pal, kind of took no notice.’

     ‘But that’s an old story – you mean the mayor’s parking lot.’

     ‘No no. That was public like you say. Even in the Paris papers. This would be something private. A favour done. Not generally known. Known to you, maybe, but thought part of the usual small-town act, and shrugged at; half-forgotten.’

     ‘This notable of yours got a name?’

     ‘No – a guess. The judge is quoting Dickens, but hasn’t ever read him. Our pal Barde, maybe.’

     ‘You asked about him before.’

     ‘Just that I’d met him and was interested in a separate opinion. Now I want to look closer.’

     ‘I told you my opinion. Not high. I haven’t anything to add to it. I think he’s a stinker, but that’s not evidence.’

     ‘You got any ideas about where I could learn more?’

     ‘A cop wanting information goes to another cop.’

     ‘I told you – that’s liable to embarrass two cops.’

     ‘I don’t think so. I think Peyrefitte’s straight enough. I think maybe if he’d been mixed up in some dirty deal like that – well, I think I’d have heard about it.’

     ‘Thanks,’ said Castang.

Monsieur Peyrefitte, not one of these damn zealous cops who run about the shop, was sitting placid in his office. Seemed happy.

     ‘Oho,’ just jovially enough, ‘what pigeons have you been fluttering?’

     ‘Well, I lost a lot of feathers.’

     ‘He was on the phone. Wants the technical dossier reopened and checked. Don’t know what you’ve been up to but I hope,’ a little too casually, ‘that we’ll get let in on it.’

     ‘What I came for,’ said Castang innocently. ‘Nothing to worry about for a start; that’s just a show of zeal.’

     ‘He’s worried though. Too many presumptions and none of them any good.’

     ‘He’s not a bit pleased with me,’ making a face, ‘but he’s given me a bit more time. What I’m to do with it is something else again. Fancy a drink? I’ve got a bit of gossip.’

     Whetted, Monsieur Peyrefitte led the way to the pub.

     ‘Morning Ernest. Two pastis then; make them good and firm… Well, what’s your gossip?’

     ‘You know a man called Barde? Like officially, I was thinking of, more than socially.’

     ‘You’re interested?’

     ‘Tangentially. There was a thing which puzzled me, and I wondered whether we owed him any favours – for instance. After all, I don’t live here.’

     ‘No… on the whole, no… Personally, that is. If you were thinking, might he be a friend of mine and might that be a bother to you, no need to worry.’

     ‘You know how it sometimes happens. Like Ernest might be making his own pastis, but one wouldn’t really want to drop on him, because his is better than most.’

     ‘I wish I did,’ said the barman. ‘A bit more ice?’

     ‘I’ve enough to skate on.’ Monsieur Peyrefitte rattled his blocks and Ernest withdrew, tactfully.

     ‘He has enough to skate on,’ said Peyrefitte. ‘We had him once on a morals charge.’

     ‘Ah?’

     ‘Oh, nothing much. He beat a girl up. Just a bar-girl, you understand. Poor moral character. Not a local. We moved her on – she didn’t really feel at home here. It didn’t amount to much. But the girl complained.

     ‘I asked Monsieur Barde to come and see me, you know? Give him a chance to explain, so to speak? Walked into the office like I was the poste restante. A gentleman, you see. Shakes hands with the tips of his fingers. I wasn’t all that happy, because the girl needed a bit of treatment in the hospital, and the doctor put a report in. But Monsieur Barde didn’t think it very important. He’s been to the right school, you see. And sure enough, the Proc didn’t think it worth a fuss. Said the girl was asking for trouble, and was lucky not to have charges laid against her. So he thought he wouldn’t press it either way. But he’d be happier not to hear of her any further.’

     ‘That’s more or less what I expected,’ said Castang slowly.

     ‘One scrap of gossip deserves another.’

     ‘Thonon, these two Lipschitz kids, what have we on any of them? The whole central problem’s not touched. We’re bouncing off it all the time.

     ‘My gossip – oh, just a thing Thonon said. About Barde dabbling in estate deals. Turn himself a penny, under the commission a professional would charge. “I’m just an honest broker”. A kickback on the price, and nobody knows anything about it.’

     ‘It’s pretty difficult to prove.’

     ‘Yes. Thonon felt a bit bitter about that. And no estate agent would make a complaint. Even if he did, it would be liable not to stick. Unless one had irrefutable evidence.’

     ‘Are you thinking…? Man – that’s pretty tenuous.’

     ‘Yes, but it would fit. Thonon had his little personal scheme, and kept quiet about it. Slipping over to see old lady Lipschitz late at night, and so on. Possibly in collusion with the children. Now we get this scrap of information that Barde liked to get into that sort of act. It’s admitted that he knew the house, knew Sabine in the old days. It isn’t impossible that he should have cooked up a scheme of his own.’

     ‘No,’ said Peyrefitte, ‘but do you see yourself going to the judge with a rambling supposition like that?’

     ‘He’d quote Dickens at me.’

     ‘And as for finding any evidence…’

     ‘I’m quite interested in this morals charge of yours,’ said Castang. ‘Ernest… Two more of the same.’