Van der Valk, who had been thinking for some time without its having brought him much further, was scribbling on a piece of paper. It seemed to be a draft for a telegram.
Department? – Tarn, Lozère, one of those.
‘Military Hospital. Pray write all known details known Marx, Esther, born one, six, thirty-four – no. Pray send urgentest all known. Victim homicide stop. Official inquiry opened stop.’
He scribbled it out.
‘Marx, Esther, born one, six, thirty-four, victim homicide assailant unknown. Official inquiry opened. Pray furnish all known life and service urgentest.’ He rang for his secretary. ‘Get this into officialese. Find out the Préfecture for that camp and the district. Copies to Police Judiciaire, the military hospital and anywhere else you think of that might be of some use.’
He took another piece of paper and scribbled some more: ‘Commissaire de Police. Personal. Parallel official request received,’ he had to make this a bit enigmatic, so that it would not arouse any curiosity in the wrong quarters, ‘would be pleased know your unofficial mind stop does bottle champagne interest you stop if desired phone home number after eight stop greetings downtrodden confrère.’
He had known such little letters succeed before now, childish as they were. Official messages advanced upon their appointed ways, through the bland and anaesthetized digestive systems of official bureaux, and in due course produced bland tasteless replies. It was lunchtime; he went home.
‘I don’t understand this message,’ said the post-office clerk, worried.
‘Where does it say you should? Just count the number of words, son, and spare the intellectual effort.’
‘There is bouillabaisse,’ said Ruth with open eyes; she had just learned the word and was pleased with the sound it made.
‘Good – I’ve been getting anti-French demonstrations the whole morning.’
‘I am delighted,’ said Arlette, beaming.
‘I know how it’s made – Arlette taught me.’
‘Very very good; we will exchange lessons. Words in ou make their plural with an s, except bijou caillou chou …’
‘Genou hibou joujou pou. May I tell you? One big onion, three tomatoes, six potatoes and six pieces of garlic.’
‘And a stone covered in seaweed,’ said Arlette with a straight face. The week before, she had come upon a recipe in an English Sunday paper, and laughed till she cried.
‘Where do you go to school, Ruth?’
‘On the corner of the Van Lennepweg and the Oosterkade.’
‘Would you like to change? There is a school where there are children from several different countries, and they do things in other languages.’
‘Oh yes. But it’s the middle of term.’
‘We will say you’ve just arrived from Madagascar.’
‘But then I’d be very cold and I wouldn’t speak Dutch.’
‘There you are – just think – you have an enormous advantage.’
‘Aren’t I going back then to the Van Lennepweg?’
‘If it’s all right by you, no. You stay here with Arlette.’
‘And have bouillabaisse every day?’
‘Except Saturday, when there is cassoulet, because of the rugby players.’
‘Official?’ asked Arlette.
‘No, not official – but from the horse’s mouth.’
‘What horse?’ asked Ruth, already alarmed by the rugby players, who sounded menacing.
‘Dinner, children. Ruth, take off your apron and wash your hands.’
Official channels being what they are he was surprised to have a telephone message before the office closed, giving him an answer to his inquiries. The answer had come on the telex, was very brief, and not very enlightening. It said, ‘Our representative will call upon you tomorrow morning,’ and was signed with a code number. Van der Valk studied this laconic phrase with interest. He felt as if he had thrown a fishing line into the Volga and come up with an enormous sturgeon, and got a colleague in the Hague on the phone.
‘I read you a code number.’
‘Aha.’
‘Am I right? – is this DST?’
‘It is. What have you been doing – joining the Secret Army?’
‘No no, I like the French.’
‘Be very quiet and very innocent,’ advised the colleague, who had dealings now and then with the French police. ‘They’re terrifyingly polite, like the General.’
The second message pleased him more, though it was equally laconic. It was a civilian telegram delivered by a bicycle-boy, and said ‘Stand by your phone Mazarel’.
Van der Valk was vague with the Press when they asked about progress.
‘Now let’s see,’ he said to Arlette when he got home again, ‘DST – that’s counter-espionage, hm?’
‘No that’s SDECE. DST is surveillance of territory, but I think it’s a question of not letting your left hand know about the right. What interest have you in them?’ She sounded a bit anxious.
‘I don’t know at all. They seem to have an interest in me. They propose to call tomorrow disguised as a traveller in groceries. The password is “How do you stand for cornflakes?”’
‘Very funny.’
At five minutes to nine the telephone rang.
‘France is calling you.’
‘Put them on.’ There were bangs and snaps, and the gabbling of exchange girls far away in the rugby players’ country – the medieval guts of the French telephone system. Van der Valk suspected them of doing it on purpose. They could build a variable-geometry jet fighter in half the time it took the Americans, but were not going to allow the population to be contaminated by advanced technology like telephones. Civilized of them, on the whole.
‘You’re through,’ quacked several ducks.
‘Through what?’ said a male voice suddenly in his ear.
‘The Mont Blanc Tunnel probably,’ he said politely.
‘Go on,’ said a duck impatiently.
‘Come and give me lessons,’ went the male voice. ‘Am I really talking to you?’ in a voice without the sweet reasonable tone.
‘Myself, confrère, to my pleasure.’
‘Good. The champagne is a good idea.’
‘It’s a promise – I have a feeling I’ll be in your district shortly.’
‘I’m not going to talk on an open line, of course. This may not interest you, but I’m doubtful, you know, whether your official inquiries will meet with much enthusiasm.’ Van der Valk digested this news for a minute.
‘You think I’m going to hit a big dull echoing silence, do you?’
‘I just thought of giving you a bit of a hint. So you wouldn’t think I was just being obstructive.’ That, thought Van der Valk, is reasonably clear and certainly familiar, but one would like to know what he was talking about, even so.
‘My customer’s name rings a little bell, does it?’
‘Oh yes. No particular surprise will greet your news. Nothing’s known of course. I have nothing on paper. In fact I don’t have anything for you at all.’
‘I didn’t suppose you had. Would have been a great deal too much to hope for.’
‘It might strike sensitive ears in some quarters,’ went on the voice in a do-you-understand-me way, ‘turn them a bit red.’
‘I see.’ He didn’t but hoped he might, with perseverance.
‘That’s all, really.’
‘Give me a clue to the crossword, though.’
‘Yes, of course – you couldn’t possibly be expected to grasp it. Let’s see – you talk any English?’
‘Some.’
‘Think about a dee, a bee, and a pee, and then use your memory.’
‘When I get a tiercé in the right order I’ll order two bottles of champagne.’ Chuckles sounded.
‘Drop by any time. Yes, mademoiselle, but don’t panic me.’
‘Are you finished with your correspondent?’ asked a prim Dutch voice.
‘Yes, miss, thanks.’ A dee, a bee, a pee? His mind was a perfect blank. ‘Di, bi, pi, and do I understand English?’
‘What?’ said Arlette.
‘It’s the police boss where Esther used to work in the military hospital. I sent a routine wire for anything known – I mean she might have a police record or something. I sent a civilian wire just asking casually whether he knew of anything that wasn’t official. He goes extremely enigmatic, hints that my request may prove an embarrassment to persons unknown – I have no clue whatever who or why – and ends up giving me something and do I know English? Di, bi, pi – now what can that mean, in English?’
‘Why English?’ asked Arlette, puzzled.
‘Well he’s spelling something out so he does it in English to throw the phone girls off – they use that Lucien Arthur jargon.’
‘And you don’t understand?’ asked Arlette, in such an odd voice that he looked sharply at her.
‘You mean you do?’
‘Certainly I do,’ in a dry curt way. A red light, he thought. She’s not going to say any more. It’s something that affects her, which she refuses to talk about. After a minute’s thought he looked at her but she was deep in her book. He thought he understood but he was still no nearer the meaning of the, dibipi.
Arlette was a handicap to him. A policeman, more particularly an officer in the detective branch, is in a sensitive profession. Just as a diplomat who marries a Russian wife runs a considerable risk of being sent to the Bahama Islands and left there, a policeman who makes an unconventional marriage stands an excellent chance of having thirty years in which to look at the four walls of the Bureau of Records. Van der Valk, who had occasionally brought off showy, nearly brilliant performances which had attracted the notice of his superiors, had been noted down as a useful tool, but he would never be thought altogether sound. He knew this and had accepted it. In more recent years there had been graver troubles. Arlette knew of this, and it burned her. She had done her best, but had never forgiven herself. She was still bitter, whereas he was no more than faintly cynical.
It had been a humiliating episode, with characters from the security police asking questions. Arlette had shown one the door and he had been very nasty indeed. When Van der Valk came home to find her crying and trembling but still refusing to be bullied he had gone straight back to the office and slammed his resignation on the table. He had waited three weeks – suspended – to learn whether it had been accepted or not. He had some reason to believe that the refusal to accept it came from high up, higher than political police riffraff, at least. Arlette had been suspected of OAS sympathies, and the sad thing about this was that she did have OAS sympathies. She came from southern France, from the Department of the Var, had a brother in Algiers, and had, very naturally, been as vociferous as most about ‘Algérie française’.
When the Armée Secrète proper was formed, when plastic explosive got stuck to the houses of doctors, lawyers and liberal administrators, and when she understood – before the day of the barricades – that Algeria belonged to the Arabs after all, she fought a battle between her emotions and her conscience and her conscience won.
It had no importance now. She no longer had any illusions about the admirers of General Salan, but she knew that a few years ago she had blocked her husband’s promotion and had been close – within the thinness of her skin – to destroying his career. It had left scars.