Lake Isle

by Nicolas Freeling

  ‘Woman. Dinner when you like.’

  ‘Yes, Castang.’

  ‘Are you the police inspector?’ Not Vera!

  ‘Himself and who are you?’

  ‘Martine,’ rapid and tense. ‘You know – horse, motorbike.’

  ‘Sure, but why the coy approach?’

  ‘Don’t fool; one never knows who’s listening.’

  ‘Somebody your end?’

  ‘No but – I don’t want to do a lot of explaining. Can I see you? Would you buy me a drink?’

  ‘With pleasure. Not here though.’

  ‘No, no, listen. D’you know the Rue des Remparts? In the old town. Behind the wall.’ All very important: young girls thought themselves so extremely important. He had to collect his scattered wits: she was getting impatient at his stupidity.

  ‘Ramparts, yes.’

  ‘There’s a little place called the Green Bay Tree. Two sort of tubs on the pavement. Meet me there. In half an hour.’

  ‘I’ve had nothing to eat yet.’ The sizzle of pork chops was making his stomach rumble.

  ‘Neither have I,’ irritably; when would these cops stop thinking about their stomachs? ‘One eats well there.’

  ‘All right, long as it’s not too dear.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll pay if that’s what worries you.’

  ‘We’ll manage.’

  Lucciani was staring at the dregs in his beer glass, hoping to get another bought him. Castang didn’t take the offer up. Not mean; just prudent.

  ‘Go eat your dinner. I’m going out.’

  ‘Office in a flap about something?’

  ‘A bit of possible business. Go see your sex movie; I won’t need you. Tomorrow morning around seven-thirty: be all bright and fresh then.’

  Foggy, a little chilly. The weather was changing. Minute beads of moisture formed on his eyebrows, not enough to wear a raincoat for.

  The Place d’Armes, with some economical floodlighting on the classical façade of the town hall, once the Hotel of the Military Governor. Not a cat to be seen. Small provincial town. But he was a small provincial cop.

  The Rue des Remparts was narrow and picturesque, with cobbles and antiquated street lamps, and seventeenth-century military architecture: low heavy arches with deep embrasures. Castang had a vision of vast ammunition-dumps left over from the Prussian War of 1870. All armies did this, squirrelling away immense quantities of expensive material, forgetting where they’d put it, and finding it again, much surprised, thirty years after it had become obsolete.

  In the embrasures were now little low shops selling goldfish or wicker baskets, and one of these was the Green Bay Tree, with a curtained window duskily orange.

  Somebody touched him on the shoulder and said ‘Hallo’ with a sort of friendly awkwardness. Martine was quite a big girl, or maybe he was too small. He wished he were one of those tall distinguished-looking cops like Richard. She still wore her scarlet suit, with a fine bottom inside it.

  ‘Rather nice, isn’t it? I like those heavy arches, and the casemates or whatever they’re called.’ Nervous, therefore talkative.

  ‘Must have been nice when it was a garrison in the colonial days. You know, Zouaves, and Spahis, and Senegalese. All with their own special brothel.’ Bourgeois girls were always fascinated by brothels.

  The Bay Tree was pleasant inside; a little bar and a few tables laid for eating. Smelling of old woodwork, but clean and friendly. A thin young woman in huge horn-rimmed glasses was sitting on a high chair behind her counter. Two men in overalls were having a glass of wine, and through the open kitchen door a fat comfortable woman was chopping parsley: there was nobody else.

  ‘Hallo Sophie,’ said Martine. ‘This is a friend of mine.’ Castang was glad to hear it. ‘We’ll sit down, shall we, at a table? There’ll be people to eat, later, but it’s quiet here. And discreet.’ Fine. He felt better, less like a soldier who had walked into the wrong camp.

  ‘Do you drink?’ he asked, ‘or are you a Coca-Cola girl?’

  ‘Whatever you like.’

  ‘The whisky’s nice today,’ said Sophie comically, as though it were the fish. ‘You know,’ apologetically, ‘it’s hard to get good ones.’

  So it was; not perhaps Monsieur Barde’s super single malt. But not bar Scotch either.

  ‘Sit down a sec and have a gossip,’ said Martine, manoeuvring to be at ease.

  ‘Have one with us,’ said Castang hospitably, already at his ease and wishing to dispel the accusation of being mean.

  ‘All right,’ said Sophie. A plain young woman, but behind the big glasses were huge luminous eyes, beautifully shaped. Close up, she was pretty.

  ‘There are no scandals. The coffee-machine is on the fritz again. I’m scrabbling in the till to pay the phone bill, as usual. I haven’t a penny – I will go playing those horses.’

  ‘Hey, Sophie,’ called one of the men from the bar, ‘what’ll you give me for fixing the machine?’

  ‘A drink a night, for a week.’

  ‘That’s a deal.’

  ‘What’s good to eat?’ asked Castang, who didn’t want his stomach to rumble in company with all these girls.

  ‘And not that revolting menu all out of the freezer,’ added Martine.

  ‘There’s a baby goat, with which Léonie has created a masterpiece, and there’s hare. Birds, but they’re rather dear. And a leek flan. And oysters.’

  ‘I don’t like hare,’ said Martine.

  ‘Green light for the baby goat,’ said Castang, finding it all a change from the pork chops of the Hotel Central. ‘And flan to begin with.’

  ‘And a nice bordeaux,’ said Sophie. ‘Nobody ever heard its name, but a real one. I’ll tell Léonie.’ Her gestures behind the bar had been languid, but her walk was rapid and elastic. A plain young woman with messy hair and negligently dressed, but suddenly highly attractive. Perhaps that’s the whisky, thought Castang.

  The young man had fixed the coffee-machine, apparently with chewing gum. He poured himself a glass of wine, drank it, said ‘Good night, good appetite’ and walked out with his silent friend, leaving them to themselves.

  ‘She know who I am?’ asked Castang.

  ‘She may: I haven’t told her. She’ll behave as though she doesn’t. I brought you here because this is a good place. She’s honest. This is the only place in this filthy little town where you’re accepted for what you are. Nobody cares what job you do, or who your father is – or whether you might be in trouble with the cops.’ It was a high accolade.

  He liked it, even if it were only young girls’ romanticism. He took a good look at her, which she was unselfconscious about while helping herself to one of his cigarettes.

  Martine was a good choice to spend an evening with. A big tumble of clean shiny hair, a large frank forehead, wide eyes between grey and green, a spot from overeating at the corner of her nose, an unpainted mouth.

  Silence fell between them. Castang was thinking of the latest bent-cops scandal: a vice-squad commissaire, who having been surprised was now acting the astounded in front of a tribunal. He’d got on the wrong side of the press, which described him cattily in this morning’s paper as having ‘a dear little red mouth pursed up like a hen’s arse.’ Castang, who had small sympathy for his erring brother (a man wearing hand-made shirts) had guffawed.

  This mouth was as far from a hen’s arse as one could get. A big round chin too, and well-shaped ears. A young female straight as a young tree. Skin coloured by blood and autumn sun. He drank his whisky and made a sound of relief and satisfaction.

  ‘What’s the big sigh for?’

  ‘Pleasure. No wrinkles. Both are rare.’

  ‘Right. You’re a cop. PJ cop from the big town. So a bent bastard. But we can be friends, perhaps. I’d like that: the thing is, would you?’

  ‘Not altogether bent. Miserable bastards.’

  ‘Human, like anybody else.’

  ‘They start out that way. Like most people, they’re best when still childre
n.’

  ‘I don’t want you to start fencing with me.’

  ‘All right. Let’s be straightforward: I ask nothing better. Why did you ring me up?’

  ‘I wanted to find out what all this is about. I thought you might tell me in private, if it was between us.’

  ‘I see. It’s simple. Elderly woman got assassinated. By an intruder, we’re assuming. Municipal cops make the usual enquiry, which is inconclusive. The judge instructing calls in the PJ. Which is me. That’s all. It’s ordinary enough.’

  ‘And you think you’re going to catch this burglar round here?’

  ‘We’re working on it all over. Back in the town too. I just happen to be here. You know anything about this burglar?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous: you don’t think I know any burglars?’

  ‘So you rang me up. Just out of curiosity. Never seen a PJ cop before, and you’re anxious to know how they behave. That it? We’re playing truth, remember?’

  ‘Partly. I’m curious, of course. And I’d like to know too why you’re spying on my father.’

  ‘Routine background. A query about title in the house the old lady owned. A detail. I reckoned he could tell me.’

  ‘Oh, don’t lie so stupidly,’ said Martine. ‘I saw you hanging around our house this afternoon. Spying about.’

  Castang shrugged. People insist on believing the cops are being crafty again. To talk about Monsieur Barde, and a stroll for fresh air and to look at the sunset – no, no explanations; nobody would believe them.

  ‘Your father wanted to make a property deal with this old lady. It’s not a secret, but he wanted to keep it quiet, as a matter of business tactics. I happened to learn this. I happened to be out your way this afternoon. Nothing sinister about all this; it needn’t worry you.’

  ‘Worry – that’s a loaded word; it irritates me. Like a fussy old auntie. I don’t worry. I’m concerned. People ought to be concerned.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About you. I suppose you’re accustomed to everyone being hostile, or else going all servile because they’re terrified. Well, I’m neither. It’s so old-fashioned, all that. I mean cops, living in a sort of ghetto, friendly with all sorts of foul people and claiming it’s because they’re sources of valuable information. Like that ghastly man in the paper. Going to the same shirt-maker as the local gangsters, garaging the car where one gets such exceptionally good – and so cheap – service. Are you like that?’ Blunt. As the cliché says, bluntness is disarming.

  ‘Not all of us. There are always a few like that. Always will be. Anywhere.’

  ‘I can be friendly with anyone. I don’t care what they do. As long as they aren’t false, and incapable of being honest with themselves. I suppose you’ll say I’m very naïve. I should like to know why the truth always has automatically to be naïve.’

  Castang was saved answering by Sophie, who came pattering up with two plates, one chipped but both hot, and two big wedges of the leek tart. The pastry was tender, the underside not soggy. The leeks were not overdone, the cream sauce light and plain, there was not too much cheese. It was simple, natural, and tasted good, like this girl.

  Castang was very hungry. He hoped his underside wasn’t soggy, either.

  ‘I suppose your family don’t know you’re here – or even where you choose your friends.’

  ‘You expect me to be scornful about my family, I dare say. Petty commerce and that. I can understand people who are ashamed of their families, but I’m not. I may not always have a very high opinion of them, but I keep quiet about it. I’ll be going back to the university in a week or so, but while I’m here I try to avoid conflicts. And they don’t know where I am nor whom I’m with because they trust me, so I trust them back. Peculiar of me, but that’s the way I am.’

  Castang couldn’t stop grinning a bit. She didn’t notice, wolfing down tart. Healthy young appetite.

  ‘I’m not slumming in search of the picturesque, either,’ getting good and warmed up. ‘Not going ooh, you’re a cop, you’ve a gun, you shoot people, let’s play with the phallic symbol.’

  ‘I’m carrying a gun,’ said Castang peaceably, ‘and wouldn’t dream of letting you play with it.’ Aware that this wasn’t happily phrased. ‘We’re on terms of perfect equality.’

  ‘All right. Long as we don’t sit stupidly being suspicious of each other and reading motives into everything. More in existence than just imbecile sex.’

  ‘I’m not against it, though. Are you?’

  ‘No, but one gets vastly bored with the village cock, whose one idea is to steer one towards the nearest sofa. Nothing more resistible, did the preening cretin but grasp it.’

  ‘We’ll lay down the arms,’ said Castang. His gun was in a belt holster, pushed to the back when he sat to eat, so that it didn’t get in the way of his belly. He didn’t know what he needed yet to cope with this one, but it didn’t seem to be a gun.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Martine, ‘but that sniggering certainty that a girl thinks of nothing else, dreams about it at night – contemptible.’

  No guns, and no sex – what else did he have?

  ‘Oh, blow this corkscrew,’ said Sophie by his elbow.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ being male.

  ‘If I can’t make a tool work I throw it away and get another, not scream for help,’ scooting off.

  ‘I see why you like her,’ he said.

  ‘She stands on her two feet. She has a little boy; doesn’t parade the child looking for sympathy.’

  ‘Better,’ said Sophie wiping out the neck of the bottle and whisking the plates away. ‘Goat’ll be here in a sec.’

  He poured out the unheard-of bordeaux. She wanted something from him. Perhaps just information. He wanted something from her. He didn’t know what himself, yet. It was as simple as that.

  ‘You get on well with your father,’ he said, ‘as I saw this afternoon.’

  It was perhaps not very skilfully done.

  ‘We’re fond of each other. If he has worries I’ll try not to add to them.’

  ‘I’m not using this on you,’ picking up the despised corkscrew Sophie had left.

  ‘Stupid thing,’ said that lady, whisking it away and inserting the goat deftly between his elbows.

  ‘You used some corkscrew on him though,’ said Martine. ‘Probably most unfairly, and he’s bothered. He’s said nothing but I saw, and I’d seen you at the office. Fair and square now. If you suspect him of something, it’s ridiculous, and if you’re trying to pin something on him, it’s just abject. But maybe it’s a misunderstanding. If you’d tell me I might be able to help.’

  One couldn’t attack these nubbly bits with anything as stupid as a knife and fork. Castang put his down, deciding to eat baby goat with his fingers. It was done the ‘bonne femme’ way. Shallots and mushrooms and little cocotte potatoes. Pretty good.

  ‘I don’t have anything to suspect – or pin down,’ working away at the nubbly bits, ‘on anyone.’

  ‘Oh, do stop lying,’ crossly. ‘What’s an inspector doing hanging about here? Nobody believes in this vagabond tale.’

  ‘Your father doesn’t?’

  ‘But why should he know anything about it? He was trying to sell her house, and so what?’

  ‘He was there the night she was killed, though.’

  ‘Oh,’ much taken aback. ‘But that’s meaningless.’

  ‘Not all that meaningless. I see you thinking stupid cop. But it could be something more than superficial. Might be a causal connection, as well as spatial. Like whose book did it suit – or not suit – that Madame Lipschitz should sell her house?’

  ‘Are you really suggesting,’ enormously indignant, ‘that he might have killed her?’

  ‘Go on eating,’ said Castang. ‘Don’t let it get cold.’

  ‘You must be insane.’

  ‘I’m not in the least insane.’

  ‘But it’s preposterous.’

  ‘You asked me to be open: all right, I will b
e. If by “it” you mean some absurd scenario where the old lady refuses to sell and he gets mad and belts her with a hammer – yes, that’s pretty preposterous, though sillier things have been known than that. I’m trying to tell you that his being there may not be just a coincidence. I don’t know what it means, if anything, but maybe something consequential. I just have to be prudent about it. Now the idea of his killing her never entered your head, right?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘So tell me what it was that worried you.’

  ‘Salad,’ said Sophie, bumping it down.

  Poor Martine, pink and sweaty, eating and drinking in a great hurry, deciding she just couldn’t eat any more. And she’d been so confident to start with. But what was it the girl had fixed in her head there?

  ‘Well, when I saw you hanging round the house like that…’ He ate salad with a blank patient face.

  ‘I thought…’ Sophie took away her plate; he poured out the last of the bottle. ‘I thought it must be some kind of tax thing.’

  ‘I see,’ surprised, amused, hoping he showed neither.

  ‘I mean I thought, when you found out that he was setting up this deal and it looked sort of surreptitious… And now his going there late at night… I thought maybe you suspected some kind of tax fraud. That you’d think, I mean, it might look phoney,’ getting more tangled every second.

  ‘And is there?’ She picked at her salad faint-heartedly. ‘Very serious offence, tax evasion,’ pompously. Filthy hypocrite.

  It all came in a flood now.

  ‘I’m serious,’ she said. ‘I don’t like this lousy capitalist society a bit, but just because I’m a student I don’t go for all that Marxist crap either. Anyway, I’ve learned the hard way that what you do isn’t always what you believe in.’

  I haven’t got much further, thought Castang.

  ‘So I’m appealing to you now as an honest man, which I think you are, even if you are part of a lousy corrupt government. My father is straight in business, even if most promoters are sharks. I’ve done things myself I’m ashamed of. So have you, and if you’re honest you’ll admit it.’ Simple, complicated, candid young woman.