Lake Isle

by Nicolas Freeling

  ‘Monsieur le Commissaire, this is distasteful, but I must ask you to call your subordinate to order. The suggestion, however frivolous, is unpardonable.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Peyrefitte simply.

  He had been an onlooker, sitting awkwardly in a chair too low and too soft, taking off his glasses to wipe them rather frequently. Castang understood that he was going to drive the engine from now on.

  Barde remained standing, bulky and Roman in his Paisley silk dressing-gown. He took another cigar, plainly determined to keep his self-control.

  ‘Because it is so patently ridiculous.’

  ‘Monsieur Barde,’ courteously, ‘I have left the conduct of this interview to Monsieur Castang, because he is the officer charged with the enquiry. He’s only technically my subordinate. But as you remind me I am an officer of law, with judicial powers and responsibilities.

  ‘So far, this has been an informal conversation. Monsieur Castang has put it to you that logically you can be asked – and no, it’s not ridiculous – to account for your actions on the night in question. I’ve just one further query. I’m obliged to say to you that it is not the continuation of a casual discussion, but may be the beginning of an interrogation in formal terms. Where were you that night, and can it be confirmed?’

  ‘Now look, man,’ irritably, ‘I’m telling you that where I was is my affair and needs no confirming.’

  ‘It would be a help if the parlour-maid could, and unfortunately she confirms that she can’t.’

  ‘How would you expect a silly little slut like that to remember a date weeks ago?’

  A pity, thought Castang, that he can’t show her the same loyalty that she had towards him.

  ‘It isn’t every day,’ dryly, ‘that we have a murder around here.’

  ‘This is preposterous.’

  ‘We have questioned her. She was not with you at the time. She remembers clearly that you left the house earlier. She is unable to state the hour of your return, since you yourself lock up. It is now for me to ask formally where you were between the hours of say twelve and two in the morning.’

  ‘But you can’t suggest that my movements have any bearing on the – on whatever happened over there.’

  ‘I suggest nothing. I ask whether you can provide confirmation.’

  ‘Let me get this straight. What idiotic suspicions do you two owls imagine you entertain?’

  ‘Let’s remain polite, shall we?’

  ‘Surely you can see how exasperating this is. I was with her, of course. In bed if you want to labour the point.’

  ‘There is then no point in pursuing this, since it is one word against another.’

  ‘Are you putting this girl’s tale forward as of equal value to my word?’

  ‘Has she a motive for lying?’

  ‘Very probably.’

  ‘That may be the function of a court to determine.’

  ‘I should like you to remember something, Peyrefitte, which is that the judge of instruction decides about courts. He might,’ in a humorous, tolerant tone, ‘have opinions which don’t altogether coincide with your own about the credibility of witnesses.’

  The policeman’s features twitched into a very small smile. It might have translated as ‘I thought it would come to that.’

  Barde took a different view of the twitch. He had regained his self-possession.

  ‘While I respect your zealous endeavours, too much zeal is sometimes the prelude to a fall from grace, shall I say?’

  ‘Mmhm. The judge might take a dim view. Or the Procureur might feel that there were insufficient grounds?’

  ‘That,’ tipping the ash neatly off his cigar, ‘seems to me worth consideration.’

  ‘Such a situation,’ colourless, ‘is foreseen by the code of criminal procedure. A magistrate with personal acquaintance is bound to step down in favour of a colleague. There being no other judge of instruction attached to this tribunal, the affair will doubtless be transferred to the city.’

  ‘But this is deplorable. You have no evidence whatsoever. This one point of doubt.’

  ‘I am not satisfied, Monsieur Barde,’ bleakly. ‘I would like you to dress. I wish you to accompany us to the Commissariat, where Monsieur Castang will ask you to make a statement in the form of an interrogation.’

  With an air of immense fatigue, he leaned back and put his glasses on.

  ‘With the Commissaire’s approval,’ said Castang formally, ‘I’m holding you overnight.’

  Barde’s large face sought to maintain a Roman calm. The large navy blue eyes stared stupidly. The hand came up and brushed vaguely at his moustache. The massive forehead under the thick hair – still more fair than grey – had a puzzled frown. The jaw twitched like a horse’s flank when a fly settles on it.

  ‘You startle me.’

  They watched and said nothing. Looking guilty is no proof whatever that one is guilty. There was a long way to go.

  ‘You take me aback.’

  ‘We’d like to examine all this in closer detail. That’s all.’

  ‘I protest. This is late at night. I am tired. Your mixture of trickery and intimidation might succeed in showing me in a poor light, temporarily. It is meaningless. I warn you, I shall repudiate any admission wrung from me by such dubious methods.’

  They both knew, then, that there was no mistake.

  ‘There won’t be any dubious methods, Monsieur Barde.’

  Of course he’d repudiate it all, five times. Much good might it do him.

  ‘You’d like to get dressed now. We’ll accompany you, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘It won’t stand up in law, I tell you.’

  ‘All in good time,’ said Castang. The very words and voice of Commissaire Richard.

  THIRTY-THREE

  At about four, yawning uncontrollably, he got a few hours’ sleep. At eight-thirty, sunken but shaved, he drank some bitter coffee and told the press that the judge would give them all they needed for their next day’s edition in his own good time.

  At a quarter to nine he was walking jerkily up the steps of the Palace of Justice. His skin felt dry and harsh. Eyes watery. He had smoked too much. At five to nine he was using officialese. At nine the judge dropped his pen on his blotter and said, ‘Shocking,’ like an English governess in a Feydeau farce.

  ‘He collapsed completely.’

  ‘I am dismayed.’

  ‘Peyrefitte was present throughout. The rules were strictly observed. He’s sleeping now; we didn’t finish till half past three. This is the basic statement, signed by him. Peyrefitte will interrogate him formally at midday, and have it typed up. But this is it, in essence. He was quite docile. Later, no doubt, with a lawyer, he’ll repudiate. But it will all be confirmed, by interrogation of the girl.’

  ‘You mean this maid?’

  ‘No no, she played no part in any of this, save to abolish his alibi, which by the way she was quite formal about. No, the Lipschitz girl. Janet.’

  ‘Barde was playing bridge with me earlier that evening. I’ll be called upon to say at what time he left my house. I withdraw, thank God.’

  ‘I think it will be found that she was the moving spirit in all this. She saw Barde’s weaknesses, perhaps instinctively. She wouldn’t have slept with him or anything. She might well have hinted that she would,’ dryly. ‘I ought to have guessed as soon as she made such a terrific row at my poking at the boy’s teeth, which so outraged her virtue.’

  ‘But her motive…’

  ‘Simple plain money-hunger, I’ve no doubt. She’d go to any length just to squeeze the last drop from the inheritance. She must have heard something of Thonon’s plan from her husband. Barde claims she approached him. More likely she noticed him hanging around Sabine, and thought she’d get a better deal than through Thonon.’

  ‘And the boy?’

  ‘The enquiry will show, but I’d guess he knew nothing. He did I think have a genuine love for the old lady.’

  ‘Since Barde – good
God! – accuses this girl of inciting him – I suppose I can give you a warrant for her. They’ll go to the city under escort. I suppose there’ll have to be a press conference.’

  ‘It’s only fair that Thonon should be cleared. His misfortune was in trying the same trick. For technical reasons, meaning the building permit, he chose the boy as auxiliary. Barde, more astutely, chose the girl – or she chose him. Who actually hit the old lady is for a jury to decide; can’t say I envy them. Sabine must have seen through it and tried to chuck them both out, and threatened to make it all public. “I’ll tell the PJ inspector” – all my fault really. I’ll take a little bet that it was the girl who arranged things to look like a break-in. Barde wouldn’t have known about the crowbar in the woodshed, and anyway he had lost his head completely.’

  ‘But Castang…’ It sounded a little pathetic.

  ‘How the hell should I know? Sorry sir, that’s just fatigue; I beg your pardon. But Barde was a soft touch. I don’t mean just liking girls, but hard up. Self-indulgent person. His standing, prestige, comforts. A well-lined nest, and he couldn’t bear to lose it. The girl I don’t pretend to understand. But you’ve seen Mum! Girl was brought up accustomed to her own way, and having few scruples about how to get it. The boy is a feeble impressionable object. That attracted her perhaps. A violent turbulent personality, easy to manipulate. When anything went wrong, that was Sabine’s fault. When she married him, at a guess, she saw the potential in that property. But the novelty wore off. Stuck in boring countryside, two small children; precious little fun. The boy not earning much, and she must have known or guessed that sooner or later he’d be out of a job. Delalande was looking for a pretext to let him go. But Sabine stayed in obstinate good health, and pathetically unwilling to let her beloved house go. Unaccountably awkward about allowing herself to be plundered. The boy shilly-shallied, but the girl determined to head off Thonon, and get her fingers on a nice lump of capital. So she brought Barde into play. Putty in those capable little hands. I’m only theorising, of course. Haven’t talked to her. Don’t much wish to.’

  The judge nodded, bleakly.

  ‘Very well, Castang. I understand, I suppose. You, at least. You were over-anxious. I understand from Richard that this is your first independent enquiry. You wanted too to get your hands on it quickly – am I right? And you’ve done some questionable things too. Well, I won’t reproach you too much.

  ‘Barde! Mm: it’ll shake the Proc.’ A bit maliciously? ‘They were at school together. All right; I’ll see to the press.’

  Money-hunger? Was that all? Surely lake isles entered into it too. What wouldn’t people do, to acquire them, defend them, fight for their dreams of peace and security!

  Everybody was after one, starting with a small professional hold-up artist in the Rue d’Aboukir, who went after his with a gun.

  These lake isles; they glowed in the mind. Long years painfully worked for. Persistent mirage needing money, money, money. Always slipping out of reach. What would one not do, to grab and hold the magic dream? Clutch it tight, hanging on, tooth and nail.

  Anything. Yes. Murder.

  Go back home. Quick as you can. To Richard and the job. To Vera and the flat. And be contented with both. Don’t get led astray.

  People have offered you some cosy little arrangements in the past. And you’d always wondered, if somebody offered a big enough bribe, how you’d handle it.

  Well, now you know. The lake isle doesn’t exist.

  The Nights Lords

  Nicolas Freeling

  ONE

  SUNSET

  Henri Castang, at the end of the day, drunk with fatigue and with a tension too long maintained and too brutally released, was driving home through rush-hour traffic. The job was done: he had gone without free time for a fortnight: the one idea in his head was to get home to wife, shower, supper, bed. Then why stop? And what a place to stop in! It was forbidden to park on the bridge. A lot Castang cared for municipal police regulations…

  The bridge was a strung bow, a taut and graceful arc of stressed concrete crossing the railway. Castang bumped the scratched dusty police car up onto the pavement, gave the door a kick and leaned his elbows on the parapet. Below him forty shiny steel ribbons and the spider-web ladders of overhead cable showed the way to the freight yard; and Paris, some hundreds of kilometres further. Behind him a rushing stream of tin cans paid him no heed. Their jagged owners, if they glanced at him at all, thought he had had a heart attack – or the Renault had; much the same thing and no affair of theirs. But in front of him the sky was full of setting sun.

  A winterset: the huge sky was a hard bright blue. On one side, over the city, was a piled mass of white cloud, static, painted all over with pale gold. In the very centre, straight above the railway lines, was one stab of pure bright gold that scorched the eye. The left side, over the interminable suburbs, was scribbled over with fragile lace of a warm bluish grey: God smoking a huge beautiful cigar from Celestial Cuba. The thin veils broke as he looked at them: beyond, tiny islands of white and gold, high and far, promised silence, a glad peaceful tomorrow.

  Castang knew no cops who looked at sunsets. He couldn’t remember when he last did so himself. For nearly five minutes he leaned on the parapet and breathed in and out. When he got back into the car he kicked it straight out into the traffic without signalling, so that the onrushing queue of baa-black-sheep braked in frenzy, klaxonning furiously and hanging out of the window as they overtook to scream, ‘Crucify him.’ Again cop, he didn’t give a roger for the rats. At the red light he lounged back and stared ahead, languidly insolent like a chauffeur in a Rolls-Royce.

  On the quay, bordering a disused canal and pretty with poplar trees, where he lived (a Good, Bourgeois, Frightened district) he locked the car and gazed again for a moment. The sky had gone pale. A lame-brained huge jet plane, like a bewildered pterosaur, lumbered sadly down towards the airport. Poor thing! In its belly, more poor things. There was a silver thumbnail of new moon. Castang felt insanely happy at this new manifestation of good fortune, as though he had drunk the goldfish bowl full to the brim with champagne and then swallowed the goldfish out of sheer insolence. He turned to go into his house; got the fright of his life. The vast, serene pile of cloud seen ten minutes before, whitey-gold as the Pope’s triple tiara, was marching dread and mighty across the eastern sky; one immense incandescent flame of pale orange. As the population of France goes, Castang was highly unsuperstitious, but he shuddered and his hand feeling for latchkeys in the pocket made an instinctive sign against the evil eye.

  Vera, his wife, who was peacefully reading a magazine, looked up keenly.

  ‘Finished at last? Hallo! Have you met somebody you thought was dead?’

  ‘It’s finished,’ sitting down and kicking his shoes off. ‘Something like that. I’m tired, I suppose. I saw heaven and I saw hell. I saw God in the middle, come to judge the living and the dead.’

  ‘There’s nothing very odd about that,’ said Vera who had a theological cast of thought.

  ‘I suppose not. God was smoking a very big Cuban cigar.’

  ‘You saw the sunset,’ said the woman of rapid understanding. ‘I was studying it too. You’ve had a hard time. Are you getting your days off now?’

  ‘Yes, unless some idiot holds up a bank.’

  ‘Let’s go somewhere with no telephone. There’s potato soup.’ Vera’s potato soup was Slav, like her. One got a big bowl, and three little bowls, with chopped chives, and little soldiers of fried bread, and rashers of bacon, grilled crisp and crumbled up. It put heart back into Castang. He wished he’d had a shower. Vera sniffed rather, and it was probably his socks, but she was too polite to say so.

  ‘How’s your baby?’ he asked.

  For she had been paraplegic for three years after an accident. She had re-educated herself, helped by much female bloody-mindedness, into walking; could manage now short distances without crutches, and as though in celebration had managed to get herself
pregnant for the first time. Now in the third month. It had given Castang a whole new sense of responsibilities and a different awareness: he was not ordinarily given to looking at sunsets.

  ‘It’s quiet, and comfortable.’ She would not be ostentatious. She was knitting a lot, but there was no display of tiny garments. Not going to lever a vast belly all over the place, either. Everything was going to be undramatic. Breath-control exercises, a nice change from birth-control; there would be no sweaty groaning or clutching of bedposts. Plainly, it was Castang that would create all the uproar. Life as a cop was not yet reconciled to the blushing-father bit.

  They would sort it out, the way they handled all their problems; together. There were things about being a cop that he did not tell her; mostly she guessed at them, and passed them over in a tacit agreement. Most of what had happened in the last ten days she knew. She knew the two sides of a policeman’s existence; the arrow that flies by day, and the quieter, more sinister knife in the dark.

  There was not much to tell her about the English family: she knew all about that, understood it perhaps better than anyone, had been instrumental, perhaps, in disentangling it. She knew all about the property speculator too. She knew about the last brush – too close – with violence. It was best so. This was what being married meant. Indeed without this confidence in each other, they could not have stayed married.

  ‘I’ll have a shower,’ taking the gunbelt off, carrying his trousers into the bedroom to put on a hanger. Castang the meticulous. Won’t last much longer, he thought. Place will be full of babies and nappies and whatnot. An end, finally, to a tidy, careful, egoist existence.

  He sat on the bed to peel plaster strapping off his body; the itch was driving him dippy.

  ‘Healing,’ said Vera, studying the angry red scar just above his liver. It was; he knew from the itch, and had looked when Fausta changed the strapping: no, he wasn’t going to tell Vera about that detail.

  ‘It needs a day or two’s rest,’ he said. ‘We’re going out tomorrow night, to celebrate.’