by Allan Massie
‘That’s what he looked like. They say a toad’s eyes are like jewels, don’t they? He looked at me as if I was dirt, you could see this wasn’t his sort of place, though I keep it as decent as I can. He told me to fetch Aurélien and when he appeared he spoke to him like he was dirt too, and told him to bring out the girl. He eyed her up and down like she was a young heifer in the market – I was brought up on a farm, though you mightn’t think so to see me now, and I know that look. Then they went off together, all three of them, and later Aurélien came back on his own and when I asked him about the girl he said it was no business of mine. That’s when I told him to leave, I didn’t like the sound of it all. He told me I was a fool and didn’t know what I was speaking of. But I saw him off all the same. That’s good liquor, I’ll have another spot if I may.’
‘Help yourself. Had you seen the toad before?’
‘Never in my life, and don’t want to see him again. But Aurélien said he was his lawyer, and that he was in his debt. That’s all I know and I tell you it’s more than I want to know, but if Aurélien’s in trouble with you lot it won’t be the first time as I expect you know, and I fear it won’t be the last. He’s my little brother that I cared for and brought up when our mother died and then my father was killed at Chemin-les-Dames in the last war. They wanted to put the boy in an orphanage but I wasn’t having that, so my husband and I became his legal guardians and a lot of trouble he brought us both. He’s always been trouble but he’s my brother nevertheless.’
Her voice tailed away. A tear trickled from her left eye and she dabbed at it with a dirty handkerchief. There was silence except for the slow tick of the clock. It was the dead hour of the afternoon and it was difficult to realise that when he stepped out of the pension, he would step into sunshine.
‘Do you know where he’ll have gone to?’
‘How should I? To his own kind perhaps.’
‘By which you mean?’
‘You know what I mean.’
She dabbed her eyes again, and lifted her glass.
‘He’s not a bad man, just weak and not half as clever as he’s always thought he is. And he’s always been soft, when he was only little the pigs we reared used to frighten him and he would run to me for protection. Protection from pigs, I ask you. It’s the girl you’re looking for, isn’t it? He won’t have harmed her, you can be sure of that. We did our best for him, my husband and me, and I’ve continued to do my best since I was widowed. But it’s no good, I know that. He’s no good, poor bugger.’
She pressed the glass to her flat breast as if it was a baby to be protected.
‘Do you have a photograph of him?’
She pulled a drawer in the desk open, shuffled around in it, and came up with a photograph.
‘It’s not recent. He used to be such a pretty boy.’
He heard pain in her voice, pain and the fear of more to come.
VIII
Outside in the street he felt soiled by her misery. He didn’t like the feeling, it wasn’t how you should respond to a woman who had been beaten down by life. But there it was. She deserved pity. Perhaps her brother did too, he didn’t know. But he was like so many who had come his way, a man who had gone from one failed venture to another, and this time, cultivating a girl who meant nothing to him under instructions he was sure of the lawyer – ‘the toad’ – who treated him with contempt, he hadn’t known where to take her except to the pension run by the sister who had been a mother to him. Had he at first pretended that he had changed his ways, and really was in love with the girl? If he had he couldn’t deceive her. Perhaps he was the sort of man who couldn’t deceive anyone, except, he supposed, that innocent and ignorant girl. He looked at the photograph. She had said it wasn’t recent and that he used to be such a pretty boy. His hair was receding and he had the kind of mouth that makes promises too easily. You can’t tell anything really from a face; it’s not an exact science. Still this wasn’t one he would ever trust; it was a face made for excuses.
And the toad – the lawyer – it must, given the priest’s warning, be Labiche. Well, he couldn’t approach him, and not only because too much had passed between them. You’ve been suspended, the lawyer would say, get out of my office, you’ve no right to be here. And indeed he wouldn’t have.
He couldn’t think Labiche wanted the girl for himself, for he wouldn’t have used a creature like Mabire if that was the case. Moreover, as he’d already said, she was too old. He remembered that photograph of the advocate on a couch with a naked girl of eleven or twelve, and how Labiche had torn the print in pieces and the contempt in his voice as he said ‘this means nothing’. To be a good policeman you must be capable of inhabiting the Other. He couldn’t in Labiche’s case. He recognised the egoism which allowed men to lust for what is properly forbidden and dismiss the prohibition as something that didn’t apply to them. He’d encountered it too often in a certain type of criminal. Nevertheless it still puzzled him that men like Labiche could suppose they were entitled to whatever they wanted. He thought of Sigi – the old Comte de Grimaud’s bastard and, perhaps, murderer, Michel’s idol and mentor, damn him – and how he talked so complacently of the division of the world into Slaves and Masters – Herren-Moral und Sklaven-Moral – and of how he and Labiche … he banged his stick against a lamp-post and spat into the gutter. If Mabire was what his sister said he was it shouldn’t be too difficult to find out more about him …
***
There was a bead curtain hanging over the door of the bar that used to be called ‘The Wet Flag’ – in English – but had been renamed Chez Jules in the early days of the Occupation. He pushed his way through it, out of the sunshine.
Jules was at the bar, leaning on his elbows and, as so often, fingering the wart on his cheek. The place was otherwise deserted except for an elderly man in a creased and shabby grey linen suit who looked up as Lannes entered, but didn’t remove his arm from around the shoulders of a curly-headed boy, and a couple of other boys loitering by the pinball machines.
‘You’re quiet,’ Lannes said.
‘I like it that way.’
‘No Boches?’
‘I’m waiting for the Americans. Do you think they’ll come?’
‘How can I say?’
Jules sighed, took a bottle of Armagnac and two glasses from the shelf, poured out a couple of drinks, and passed one to Lannes.
‘If you’re looking for Karim … ’ he said.
‘What makes you think I might be?’
‘No offence meant. I know you’ve done him a good turn, more than one indeed. Not that I’m implying anything, you understand. But I’ve been keeping my nose clean as you recommended on a previous visit. So it’s natural to wonder if that was the reason for your call. He was grateful to you, you know, on his own account and that of his old bag of a mother. She’s dead, as it happens, at the end of last year, drink of course, and I’ve not seen the lad for weeks, months even … ’
‘I didn’t know,’ Lannes said. ‘He was fond of her, I think, in a way.’
‘There’s no accounting for tastes.’
‘Well, you’re in a position to know that.’
Lannes took the photograph of Aurélien Mabire from his pocket.
‘Know this chap?’
Jules fingered his wart again.
‘Can’t say I do. Not one of my customers. Far as I remember and my memory’s good, has to be in my line.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I don’t want trouble. That comes often enough without going to look for it. So when I say he’s not one of my customers, you can believe me. I stick my head out for nobody. All the same I won’t say that there may not be something familiar about him, and since you’ve come here to ask about him, it’s obvious that you think he is of what we politely call a certain persuasion. The doc over there might know, he’s got a wide acquaintance. Or of course the boy with him, though, as you can see, he’s not been about long. No more than sixteen I’d say to look
at him.’
Lannes turned towards the couple sitting under a cinema poster advertising Morocco with Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper.
‘What are they drinking?’ he said.
‘A plum brandy for the doc and orangeade for the boy.’
Lannes took out his wallet.
Jules said, ‘For you, superintendent , it’s on the house. Just to show willing, you understand. The first round anyway.’
‘Bring them over then, please.’
He approached the table, pulled out a chair and sat down.
‘Lannes,’ he said. ‘Superintendent in the PJ, currently suspended. Which means I’m not entitled to question you, but nevertheless hope you will be kind enough to answer me.’
‘How commendably frank. Naturally it will be a pleasure to oblige. I have always tried to be on good terms with the police. Allow me to introduce myself in turn: Alfred Solomons, doctor of medicine, retired.’ He passed Lannes a card. ‘Retired of my own choice, I may say, though, as you will understand, I would in any case in these unhappy times be prohibited from continuing to practise, on account of my family name. And this is Miki, of whose family name I am ignorant. Our acquaintance is recent, but won’t, I hope, prove brief.’
He leant across and pinched the boy’s ear.
Jules brought over the drinks and, without a word, retired again behind the bar.
‘So how can I help you, superintendent?’
Lannes lit a cigarette, and laid the photograph of Mabire on the table. Dr Solomons glanced at it, took some coins from his pocket and handed them to the boy.
‘Go and play Babyfoot with one of your mates over there.’
He picked up the photograph, but his eyes followed the boy across the room.
‘I know something about you, superintendent,’ he said. ‘We have friends in common, acquaintances anyway. The old tailor, Ephraim Kurz, spoke of you as an honest man. And then there’s young Karim. I know something of what you have done for him, and would go so far as to say he is even fond of you.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t imply anything by that,’ he said. ‘Nevertheless it’s unusual, isn’t it, given what you both are.’
Lannes remembered how the boy, lying on his bed with only a towel wrapped round him in that filthy apartment with his drunken slattern of a mother in the next room, had offered himself to him, and when Lannes had said ‘don’t be silly’ or something like that, had laughed and said it was worth trying, ‘any time you change your mind’ – though both had known that day wouldn’t arrive.
‘The photograph?’ he said.
Dr Solomons put a nicotine-stained finger on it.
‘I’m not respectable, superintendent. I used to be, but … ’ He lifted his finger, spread his hand, palm upward, and, as it were, waved the past away. ‘And perhaps you yourself are no longer respectable either, in the opinion of your superiors anyway, seeing as you have been suspended. But then – again perhaps – given the times we live in – that is a mark of distinction, reason indeed for me to respect you. So it may be that I should trust you. I observe that Jules treats you with respect. Moreover, it’s unlike him to stand anyone a drink.’
‘He’s a cautious man.’
‘As we should all be things being as they are. But now I’m too old, seventy-six last month, to be careful. So … ’
He gestured towards the Babyfoot table and the boy Miki who was leaning over it presenting neatly-formed buttocks to his gaze.
‘So,’ he said again, ‘I’m old and all too aware of the cruel joke that God plays.’
‘And what’s that.’
‘Simply that sexual desire outlives one’s ability to inspire it in others. So one has to pay, in cash and the contempt of others.’
He put his finger on the photograph again.
‘Poor Aurélien,’ he said. ‘Such a pretty boy twenty years ago. What sort of mess has he got himself into now?’
Lannes explained. Dr Solomons smiled.
‘Have you considered that he might be sincere, or think himself sincere? Sincerely in love? Turning away, in disgust perhaps from what he is? His life has been a catastrophe. Why not change direction?’
‘Is that likely?’
‘How can I tell? We are all capable of the strangest developments or of course of the strangest self-deception.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Lannes said.
He paused and lit a cigarette.
There was silence but for the rattle from the Babyfoot table. Jules behind the bar wiped glasses that were already clean.
‘Do you know the advocate Labiche?’ Lannes said. ‘He’s involved in this, I don’t know just how.’
‘In that case … ’
He turned his thumb down, like a Roman emperor.
‘Poor Aurélien,’ he said again.
‘I need to speak to him. If you have the means of getting a message to him, I’d be grateful. And it would be in his best interest. You can understand that, I’m sure.’
‘You really are suspended, superintendent?’
‘I am. I have no powers of arrest. This truly is a private matter. As I told you, I’ve been asked to find the girl. By her grandmother. All she wants is to have Marie-Adelaide home. So I’d be grateful to you.’
Dr Solomons picked up his glass of plum brandy and drained it.
‘I’ll do as you ask,’ he said.
Lannes stubbed out his cigarette, lit another, looked the doctor in the face and saw that he was smiling. He read amusement, even irony, in the smile, and this encouraged him.
‘You say you no longer practise medicine.’
‘But naturally. Even if I was ten years younger, I couldn’t. It would be forbidden as you know.’
‘Sometimes what’s forbidden can still be done.’
‘If you say so.’
Lannes drew in smoke, got up and crossed to the bar for an Armagnac for himself and a plum brandy for the doctor. This time he paid for the drinks and brought them back to the table.
‘Strange world,’ he said. ‘You’re forbidden to practise medicine, and I’m forbidden to be a policeman. Nevertheless I’m investigating a case and … I’m going to trust you, doctor. Trust you as a man and a doctor.’
Lannes fingered his glass. Dr Solomons raised his and took a little sip.
‘Trust?’ he said. ‘There’s a word that’s out of fashion.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Lannes said again. ‘I’ve a friend, a Jewish woman. She’s in hiding, needless to say. She’s also very ill, perhaps dying. I’m afraid it’s cancer, though of course I’m not competent to say. That’s just my suspicion, you understand. The friend in whose apartment she is staying hasn’t been able to find a doctor, hasn’t dared indeed, for reasons you’ll appreciate. Would you see her? Possibly give her something at least to alleviate the pain. Morphine, I suppose?’
Dr Solomons smiled.
‘You ask a lot, superintendent, superintendent suspended.’
‘You may even know her,’ Lannes said. ‘Since you mentioned the old tailor. She’s some sort of connection, I can’t recall what exactly.’
The bead curtain was swung aside. Three young men entered. They wore the uniform of the Milice, the paramilitary police auxiliary force recruited by the dying regime to counter the Resistance. One with the insignia of an officer marched up to the bar and struck Jules hard on the face.
‘Scum,’ he said, ‘corrupter of French youth.’
He turned round, pointed at Miki and said, ‘That’s the one. Grab him.’
The boy tried to make a run for it, was seized by one of the miliciens who twisted his arm behind his back so violently that Miki yelped in pain. The other milicien punched him in the mouth and blood spurted from his lips.
Jules ducked behind the bar and came up pointing a Luger at the officer.
‘Tell your men to let the boy alone and get out all three of you before I blow a hole in your face.’
Lannes got up, very slowly, and approached the bar.
‘Put it awa
y, Jules. We don’t want any shooting. It’s not necessary.’
Jules lowered the gun but kept hold of it.
‘I don’t allow trouble here,’ he said.
‘No,’ Lannes said. ‘There’ll be no need for trouble.’
He turned to the officer who, he now saw, was little more than a boy himself, no older that Dominique. He produced his badge.
‘Lannes,’ he said. ‘Superintendent in the police judiciaire. I think there’s some misunderstanding. What do you want with the boy?’
‘The little rat’s been running messages for those swine of the Resistance.’
Lannes took him by the elbow and shepherded him to the corner of the room.
‘As I said, a misunderstanding. Not your fault of course. You’ve been misled. Well, that’s not surprising. We live in confusing times. As it happens, however, the boy is one of my agents, an informer spying on a Resistance group on my instructions. They’ve come to trust him and the proof that they do is the information – the inaccurate information – that has been laid against him and brought you here.’
‘You use creatures like that, degenerates that prostitute themselves for money?’
‘It’s a wicked world, my friend. We use all sorts. How do you think he made the acquaintance of a particular Resistance leader and was able to supply us with information? Pillow-talk, it’s called. So, be a good chap, tell your boys to let him go, and we’ll all have a drink and pretend that this little incident never happened. You wouldn’t want me to have to lay a complaint against you for interfering with an officer of the French State in the pursuit of his duty, would you? And I’ve no desire to have to do that. As proof of my good intentions, I don’t know your name and I’m not even going to ask what it is.’
The officer hesitated, looked Lannes in the eye, then saluted.
‘Paul Lagisquon, lieutenant in the Milice, at your service, sir. I’m not ashamed to have my name known.’
‘And why should you be? You have my respect, lieutenant.’
