BOOTS, BOOTS…
He buzzed Richard’s line but there was no answer. He clicked the bar and got the switchboard.
"Raise the boss when you can and give him this message: I rang Deutz about the electricity death, and the medico-legal evidence says homicide. Got that?"
A sort of psychic chemistry took place with Vera. Her antennae were always sensitive, in these circumstances more so than usual. When you are in a maternity clinic, well protected from worrying or upsetting influences, and a cop of all people walks in, you sit up and take notice, because of all the sharp disquieting smells that come in with him. There are disturbing electric currents, to say the least. He did of course his best to be placid and emollient, and made things worse, because she knew at once that events judged unsuitable for the Nursing Mother were getting withheld. She became, quite naturally, cross, edgy and tired, with long jagged silences and sudden monosyllabic interjections. Brave flows of talk about flowers, weather or the book she was reading fell horribly flat. She summoned resources, to no avail.
"You’d better go home, darling. Whatever bothers you may have, they don’t have to include me. I hope that may be some small consolation. I am extremely peaceful and quiet, and concentrating on getting strong as soon as ever I can. I’m doing lots of leg exercises. They want as well to get me up on my feet. The old idea of lying like a log is greatly discouraged. I’ll be home very soon, and you can take your days off." He smiled, got up, kissed her, left. What was the use of making a fuss? He went to the supermarket on the way home, cooked himself some supper, watered the plants, went around solemnly with a duster, washed up the supper things, and that morning’s breakfast things, with plodding humourless exactitude. He took up the current book, with a ballpoint pen marking the place – he was a massacrer of books, one of those people who annotate in margins and leave lists of page references on the back endpaper – and fussed a good deal making himself comfortable. The television set, its face dusted but no further attention paid it, sneered at him silently from the corner with a hostile unwinking gaze. Stupid cop, it said; intellectual snob. Foolish little man.
There was a loud, peculiar, unusual ring at the front-door bell. He paid no attention to it. It was repeated, bossily. He sighed, got up, pressed the catch, stood waiting to hear whether the lift stopped at his floor. He stood staring vacantly at his door. Good solid door of an old house; thick old-fashioned hardwood. It wasn’t armour-plated or anything. Vera had a chain for it, for when she was alone.
The lift stopped; he opened the door. He was considerably taken aback. Of all people, Commissaire Richard had not been expected. Wreathed in a crooked social smile, looking – if it were possible – diffident.
"Hallo, Castang. I dropped in. My wife has gone out to some boring function." Richard never mentioned his wife. Come to that he never dropped in. This was all so wildly out of character as to be breathtaking, but he wasn’t going to be breathtaken. Richard, who had never been here before, looked about with approval at the high old room with vaguely Greek motives, acanthus leaves or something, in blackened stucco on the ceiling, at handmade rugs on the floor, at Vera’s drawing board and windowboxes, at pictures, most of them her drawings and some hung to hide bad bits in the tatty wallpaper. Finally he sat down and looked at Castang. "I got your message, incidentally." Yes, of course it was business that brought him here. He hadn’t brought any flowers…
He was dressed in his clerical dark grey suit, rather tight, a bit precious, generally a hint that he was in a fussy, niggly mood. The skin of his face was smooth and fine as usual, with a healthy colour and a slight tan on the bridge of the nose; his straight silvery hair, fine in texture, unruffled. Looked in fact much as usual. But the thin lines were sharper, deeper than ordinarily. And he had always an upright carriage: when he walked in had he been round-shouldered? Yes, undoubtedly. Richard was looking older than he did as a rule. In fact he looked like an old cop; to wit an old bastard. The word, certainly, was ‘unusual’. Monsieur le Commissaire Divisionnaire, who looked at all times like the brisk and mordant businessman of mature years and incisive judgement, was looking knocked about.
"You feel like a drink?"
"Yes. No. All right, yes." He was wearing his gold-wire reading glasses, over which the china-blue eyes stabbed shrewdly at Castang. He took them off and tucked them in his pocket: he’d done enough reading.
"Another day spent snuffling into municipal politics. I’ve done a lot of it. It doesn’t come new or anything. Mistake, to believe one might uncover complicated turpitudes. They exist, to be sure. Much like those you’ll find anywhere, but in no greater quantity or flagrancy.
"Corruption? It is now difficult to ascribe a precise meaning to this misused word. Marcel was no more corrupt than anybody else, on the whole.
"The stuff out of the code, corruptly inducing for gain or interest – knowingly uttering or accepting – uttering or altering the written word knowing it to be false – tja, what does everybody do, all the time? Little vanities or importances, that’s the fabric of municipal politics, the game of little clans and alliances, the preservation and promotion of self-interest. Just like everybody else…
"Well, we’ve uncovered nothing, Massip or I.
"Nonsense all this is. Obviously, the mayor didn’t have any choice. Neither did I. Fellow gets assassinated like that, you’re bound to look for scandals. Frightful big hole in the football club treasury; shameful feeling-up of choir-boys; illegal abortions of thirteen-year-old choirgirl, what. In short, something for the press.
"There isn’t, of course. Etienne Marcel was an astute and experienced official, who took pains not to get dipped in any scandals. And took pains that none of his associates should either.
"Of course there’s any amount of what makes the wheels go round. Semi-public or semi-private featherbedding and barrel-rolling. Incompetence winked at, nepotism indulged. A brisk trade in tiny items of knowledge. Pilferage of paperclips. I could go on for weeks tugging at who gave the order for sixteen hundred litres of paint flagrantly unsuitable for its designated use. Who altered the specification, who juggled procurement forms, how much paint was used, and where’s the rest?
"Petty dishonesty: but what we’re looking for is a man with a gun. Not a finger in a porkbarrel; a finger on a trigger. I couldn’t give a rap about the fellow having gold in a Swiss bank or shares in a holding company in Liechtenstein. Why the hell would there be any integrity in these ward-heeling affairs? Is there any integrity in national politics? No, of course there isn’t. Is there any difference between the seven sisters flogging oil to Rhodesia and a procurement form for three hundred and fifty wastepaper baskets? Less interest involved, so if Mr Veesohn didn’t get shot why the hell should Marcel?"
Since this was roughly twenty times as long as any speech Richard had ever been known to make, Castang was puzzled. If he made tirades, they were at Fausta, about telephone calls or his tea being cold. They lasted fifteen seconds.
"I’ve gone back," said Richard in his normal voice, "to the essential physical facts in this killing, to the technical inquiry carried out. None of it tells me much, and nothing’s come of it."
"Didn’t Cantoni find any terrorists, then?" tactfully.
"Found far too many; the word’s a meaningless platitude. We could fill Fresnes prison with what we’ve got. Officially there aren’t any: Special Branch will tell you blandly there are a few loony lefties. Doesn’t want attention drawn to them, on the perfectly sound grounds there’s nothing they like better than free publicity. The Minister isn’t keen on terrorists at all, having declared openly that this is not a French form of amusement. It’s as though they got turned back by the Customs, at the Italian end of the Mont Blanc tunnel. You see the hole I’m in? What they’re really afraid of is that machine-gunning politicians might become a popular sport, something like skate-boarding. Little notices would be going up: Assassinations on the Public Footway will be punished with a fine of fifty francs. Exactly like rinsing out oil tankers."
"You mean otherwise one would have to build gigantic concentration camps?"
"That’s it: a use found at last for the abattoirs of La Villette, the Lorraine steelworks, the Château de Rambouillet and numerous other monuments to national prestige."
Richard frustrated, Richard in his nutmeg-grater mood, launching sarcasm to ‘ginger up the peasantry’ was quite a common occurrence. A safety valve for both boredom and hazard: as he had been heard to say, the Royal Navy grew great on rum, buggery and the lash. Scurrilous pamphleteering in no way endangered governments, nor relaxed the bonds of discipline. It was indeed a carefully controlled performance, and trodden-down underlings could relieve their feelings by saying ‘Have you heard Richard’s latest?’ In much the same fashion, the Canard Enchainé is read, and quoted, with the most fervour by the employees of government departments.
What was new, unheard-of, not to be thought of in the office, and not to be tape-recorded, was Richard staying all evening, Richard drinking a lot, and between long silences Richard carrying on a long monologue, sprinkled with scraps of conversation with a subordinate who – or so Castang thought – wasn’t even there half the time.
"How old are you, Castang? Thirty-three, – four?… Good age to be, mm…
"Good age to retire. Like an athlete. Jacques Anquetil was thirty-four. How old I wonder is Gareth Edwards?
"No, the point is that if you go on longer than that you risk becoming pathetic. You know too much but you’ve no punch left. And the government sends you back to school, to be recycled. And of course indoctrinated. Renew your vaccinations, lest you catch the very fatal disease of thinking for yourself. Mm, dangerous age…
"I haven’t pulled your file in a long while. Full of stuff about your small arms proficiency, your tendencies to paranoia. Let’s see though, you’ve a master’s certificate, right? And you’re still second mate, on the good clipper ship under Master Mariner Richard. And you’re not anxious for command of a coasting steamer carrying coal between Fishguard and Rosslare: well, I understand…
"But you want more. And you’re a family man now.
"I’d not recommend any son of mine to become a cop, now. What, if you’re really anxious to work evenings, weekends, and other people’s holidays become a cook. In Switzerland, naturally. It’s airy now, and hygienic. Not even as hot any more. You’ve seen these magic stoves that don’t give out any heat? And the money’s excellent. Somebody asks your profession, you say Gourmet. Kiss enough behinds and get your prices up high enough you might get asked to lunch with the President of the Republic. That’s a thing never happened to a cop yet. You have that perfume of money being made. Whereas a cop of course, the day a Minister comes to lunch is the day you’re laid out in your coffin.
"So that in five years’ time, when I’m gone, you’ll still be under forty.
"Stay till then and you’re up shit creek. Too young on the one side and too old on the other. Though you needn’t think you’ll be stuck with Lasserre. He’ll get his step, and he’ll be sent to command the convict hulks at the Ile de Ré.
"You assume that I keep him and cherish him because every department head needs a real bastard as his enforcer, and childish as it may seem, you’re quite right. Lasserre is my Haldeman and my Ehrlichman. One also needs several Gordon Liddys: you’re well acquainted with them.
"With money, of course, you can do anything you like with the French.
"When I was a boy I wanted to go to Spain. We had a Popular Front Government then. Great, I thought: we’ll whip in there. We didn’t, as you know. Non-intervention has been the name of the game for too much of my life. My generation, Castang, is like the SS, we have a tattoo on our armpit we never get rid of, and ours says ‘Munich’. And the police commissaire of Munich, that’s me.
"Oddly enough I met the real one once. Interesting man…
"Spain was the country to belong to. Still is, oddly enough. It would be sentimental to say that they at least don’t get down on their knees for half a crown. It is fair though that there are some who don’t."
Bemused, Castang still understood several things about Richard’s house, and about the mysterious Madame Richard, who was never seen and was reputed not to speak French after thirty years in the country.
Most shattering of all; was Richard getting coolly drunk?
"In its natural resources, Castang, this is the richest country in Europe. The most varied, the most beautiful, the most balanced. The ideal marriage between north and south. Is it on that account that we are the most mediocre?
"The curse of futility is upon us. The General knew that, secretly. It’s the explanation, I believe, of the strain of hysteria in him. He needed badly to believe that we were worth something, and he had such contempt for us, and so justified.
"In fact we have plenty of talents, including some very good ones, if we were allowed to settle into our component parts. That’s right; our antique provinces. We haven’t been allowed to do anything worth doing, for five hundred years now.
"But take a look, Castang, at some of our best-known Patriots, hammering and screaming with their veins standing out about the Nation, and notice how hard they have to scream, because it sounds thinner and more unconvincing with every month that passes.
"It’s argued that Germany or England rival us in mediocrity. Don’t believe it.
"Our twin qualities, of vanity and avarice – they’re very unattractive you know.
"This town – of course it’s far too big. Anything this size, anywhere, it’s the pest and the cholera combined, in permanent, endemic state. But it’s a natural, old, good provincial capital. I wish there was something I could do for it. Our tragedy, in the PJ, is that we’re nothing. We’re the agents and slaves of a centralised apparatus. The Nation. Which doesn’t deserve to exist, and doesn’t in fact exist. We’re nobody. Hated by the people, as we deserve, treated with contempt by Paris, as we deserve, underpaid little informers, dressed in shoddy clothes, armed with shoddy guns, with shoddy little minds. We do nothing, Castang, but keep in power a crew that isn’t worth powder and shot.
"We’re the Guardia Civil, and that’s just our speed. We’re – just barely possibly – less bad than we were.
"Keep that in mind, boy. That’s your job. Try to leave things less bad than they were.
"Well, thanks for the drinks. A pleasant evening that: a gossip from time to time."
Castang watched him go, strolling loosely along the street to where he had left his car. Drunk? Not a bit of it. Monsieur Richard was as always; perfectly self-possessed.