21
The inspector’s Saturday evening was different from her Friday evening. Hans was not Rudi. Neither was he Claude (all that mattered at the moment). It was still very pleasurable. Suffice to say that before they parted Aliette had showed Hans how it was in the nature of the beast to be different things to different people in service of the job.
When she awoke to a greyish Sunday morning in Agent Josephina Perella’s bed, she felt like Goldilocks. She knew this was an image left over from Hans Grinnell’s snidely amusing attack on his famous compatriot Jung while in the process of venting over the never-ending and very costly therapy his wife had become addicted to and applied at every turn of her life — which meant his life too. So the inspector enjoyed it as she showered in Perella’s shower, then made coffee and boiled the last of Perella’s milk. Why waste good milk? Why waste steak or wine? She made a thorough search through Josephina’s drawers and laundry hamper, found several synthetic-based bluish items she would offer to IJ for analysis against the one found thread. She knew Hans was right, Josephina Perella probably hadn’t been to France a week ago Friday, but she took them anyway. To justify a fantasy weekend in Basel? The inspector felt no guilt at all as she tidied up and left, locking the door behind her. Was someone already listening? Hans had promised not to restart the surveillance till after ten that morning.
As she stepped into the wet street, the last traces of fantasy disappeared. It was the requisitioned car, waiting dutifully. The car would have to be returned — one could not simply drive away. To where? Deeper into the heart of Switzerland? In returning the car, she would in turn be delivering herself back to reality. Guilt would be waiting for her there. Likely several other painful emotions too. She knew this. But who can prepare for painful emotion?
The car that would bring her back to reality was parked opposite the building where Hans Grinnell had received information about a woman in a pink coat briefly visiting Perella’s flat the evening she was killed. A lady, in a housecoat tightly bundled against the cool and humid morning air, came out as Aliette approached the car. She asked something in Swiss German. Aliette caught the word ‘police.’ She begged her pardon. The woman switched to French.
‘Are you with the police?’
It was how Aliette’s mother would always say it. My daughter’s with the police. A corporate-like perspective. Really? My husband’s with the bank. But in that tiny twist of language there was a deep personal echo and the inspector sensed no harm in affirming that she was.
‘I saw her again last night,’ the woman whispered, though they were alone in the empty street. ‘The woman in that pink coat. She was just there,’ pointing to a spot below Josephina Perella’s salon. ‘She was watching the apartment. I was too afraid to go out. To come and tell you. You and the other detective. I’m sorry. I suppose I might have run.’
‘Yes?’
‘Then this man came along. He was watching too. The woman didn’t like it. She left.’
‘And the man?’
‘Left after you pulled the drape.’
‘You’re sure it was the same woman?’
She was sure. ‘That coat. Pink…too pink. From forty years ago.’
‘And the man?’
‘Wretched. All bloody, like he’d been in a fight. Or maybe drinking, fell on his face.’
‘Thank you, Frau…?’
She did not give her name. She looked into the French inspector’s Sunday morning face for an almost impolite duration. Then said, ‘You stayed up there a long time.’
‘All night,’ Aliette replied.
‘I know.’ Then whispering even lower. ‘You have a difficult job in such a horrid world.’
Aliette Nouvelle felt the woman’s curiosity. It flowed out of her. It had a desperate energy, made the more so by the pinching armour of Swiss tact. She felt a reflexive urge to tell the woman the truth — that it was a very difficult job seducing Basel Lands Inspector Hans Grinnell. But how to describe it to a curious lady? Like time-travel. Forward, backward? More like a sudden step sideways through a rip in the years to the life that might have been, an interlude in normality. Saturday night in Basel. Blasting through an emotional sound barrier, from Claude Néon to Hans Grinnell. Doppelgangers? Not physically. But the one liked Lucerne, the other Paris-Saint-Germain. There were even the children Claude so badly wanted — Hans was a very proud father. There was something almost heroic in compelling a man like that to take his own step sidewise and meet her in Josephina Perella’s bed, something infinitely more profound than a whimsical Friday night with Rudi. The fantasy of wretched Rudi, the reality of Hans. And for many, a doppelganger portends ill fate. But could this lady who spent Saturday evenings at her lonely window understand? Right now, Aliette expected Hans Grinnell would be at mass with his family, praying for equilibrium — leaving her to face this good citizen who was desperately wanting to know. Aliette thought that if she could tell the lady, she would, but of course she could not. The public cannot know these things. She said, ‘Yes, but citizens such as yourself (i.e., looking out windows, into other windows) are a great help.’
The woman stepped back, shocked, and Aliette knew the shield of propriety had been breached. Guilt or not, she had to get back home. The car. The car must be returned.
She handed the woman a card. ‘If you see that woman again, please call me.’
‘But this is in France.’
‘We’ll accept the charges.’
‘What about the man?’
‘The man is under control.’
Not really. Never really. Safely in the car and away, she punched a number into her cellphone. A woman answered. Rudi was in bed. Not well. But the French police were persistent, and eventually he came. When asked for a description of the woman in the pink coat, FedPol Agent Bucholtz breathed, ‘Stay the fuck away from me,’ and cut the line.
She probably deserved it. Maybe needed it too.
…But she needed Rudi. Or would.
Heading across the bridge and through the checkpoint back into France, the inspector tried to visualize the fifty or so works of art she had flipped through with such (unnecessarily) hurried disbelief four nights ago in the squalid pied-à-terre on Mulheimerstrasse. Perhaps she had looked at some Early Modern naïf representations, some ultra-metaphysical Romantic images as well. But she couldn’t really remember, and even if she could, she didn’t really know. In any event, she doubted a stolid Flemish shoemaker taking a break for tea fit either category.
Perhaps that was why he’d been so rudely treated. And Martin Bettelman killed.