The Unknown Masterpiece

by John Brooke

  Other: All the best people do, monsieur. Eh, Max? Danke, dear. Keep the change and bring this one to Greta. And could you maybe whisper a little something in Addie’s ear? This music is very hard on Greta’s nerves.

  Max: Not a chance. It’s Klaus Nomi night. You knew that walking in.

  Other: Please? At least down to a dull roar… There’s a good boy.

  Max: He’ll just scream at me.

  Beppi: Mon Dieu! Nice ass! I been standing here for an hour and didn’t even notice.

  Other: One of the nicest, monsieur. Your Martin was a big fan…Yes, I’ve known Martin to let himself become involved with his heart when it should have been just his head. Too many times, Beppi. We’re almost starting to believe this is a French weakness.

  Beppi: Hey, monsieur meister, we know how to handle it. It’s our client I’m worried about.

  Other: Tell you what, Beppi. I gather you’re not a regular. Is there a message? If he comes in. A discreet message, of course. For R?

  Beppi: Well, I guess. You’re a nice old fag.

  Other: Old and wise, monsieur. So?

  Aliette Nouvelle struggled to hear. It was the noise of this Klaus Nomi — screaming.

  Lightning is striking again! And again and again and again…

  ‘God, that’s horrible…’ Bernadette Milhau was cringing with each beat. ‘How’s he doing?’

  ‘Making contact.’ Obviously. Beyond that, the inspector shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’

  When the song ended, she heard a voice — a different voice — ask Beppi if he wanted to earn one hundred Swiss francs. Beppi’s reply was in French and very obscene. But he didn’t say no.

  25

  SNAFU

  Allies, almost friends, it didn’t matter — after nearly three hours in the car Aliette and Bernadette were growing bored with each other, and listening to Beppi talking non-stop about the glory of himself while having sex somewhere in the back or upstairs was just not interesting. Time for a break. The inspector made sure Bernadette Milhau had a clear fix on their location, then, exiting the car, sent her off in search of coffee and buns. Aliette kept the receiver. And two shopping bags, for cover. The night was now quite nippy but it felt good to walk and get some air. She was adjusting the sound level as she shuffled up the tiny street, heading for the river. A couple emerged from Zup — stumbling away from the door as if blown out of it by a blast of that excruciating music. She noted in passing that it was that cross-dresser — what did she call herself? — and the man in the tux who’d chatted her up that first strange night at the club.

  Greta. That was it. Greta and her debonair friend. Who was he supposed to be?

  They were arguing.

  ‘It gives me a headache!’

  ‘Please!…You’re ruining a lovely evening.’

  Aliette hurried past, heading for the bus stop.

  The disputing couple hardly glanced at the woman in the beret with an armload full of packages on her lonely way home after an evening of shopping, perhaps a drink with a friend.

  Barely a glance. But enough of a glance —

  ‘Is that not Martin’s poor wife?’

  ‘I tell you, there are far too many French hanging around!’

  …before they went off the other way.

  ***

  Aliette Nouvelle sat on the bus stop bench and watched the inky river. She soon wished she’d worn wool slacks, warmer socks. She got up and paced along the promenade. The machine was working perfectly, but Beppi’s friend was not interested in Martin or the mysterious R. It was coming on half an hour when she walked back, past the club’s front door and around the block.

  Where was Bernadette Milhau? Well, it was a bit of a labyrinth around here…

  It seemed their man inside had returned to the bar. Aliette circled a block, staying within range of Beppi’s inane monologue. The annoyingly frantic music came and went as Beppi chatted on, with the occasional response from Max. She got the impression Beppi was getting quite drunk. She was getting cold. And worried about Bernadette. She’d promised till midnight. But if Beppi got past the point of walking, how would Max and Addie deal with that? If they tossed him in the street, the French cops would risk their cover… She walked to keep warm, distracted, impatient for the car. Turning into Morsbergerstrasse, there was the sudden sound of metal ripping the paving three steps from where she walked.

  Silenced or not, it was a sound she knew too well. She leapt for the safety of a doorway.

  None too soon. Another bullet grazed the wall where she’d been walking.

  She dared to peek. A man, a black balaclava shielding his face. Aiming. Another zippy ricochet off the wall above her. Was he trying to scare her? Or missing because he was a lousy shot? Yes to either still left her only one choice. She tossed Bernadette’s packages containing an expensive new bra and Basel leckerli into the far side of the street. It cracked against the far curb, prompting another shot from the silenced gun. Hugging the near wall, she ran for the corner, fortunately only ten steps from the doorway. Another shot. Too close. She felt it brush her calf, and dove for the shelter of the corner. Steps approaching. She scrambled to her feet and ran, moving in and out of doorways, heading for the open space of the Rheinweg and the bridge.

  No! Stupid, Aliette…stupid, stupid. stupid. She turned sharp left, risked a dash across the open street and sprinted down another tightly curved medieval gasse. She pounded on a door.

  …and on the next and the next and the next, calling ‘Au secours!…au secours! Help! Police! Call the police!’ The German for these words was just not there. She had no time to see if she had succeeded in rousing anyone before turning another corner into another small street. A lane that appeared to go behind the main block. She stopped. Considered it. A cul-de-sac?

  Another bullet! More steps. He was keeping pace.

  Aliette ran on. A steady barrage of silent shots poked holes in the night behind her. Several corners on, totally lost, she came out of the quarter, raced across the river road and sprinted down the promenade. More than lost, she now was on the far side of Dreiorsen Bridge, in the beginnings of the port area. All traffic off the bridge was heading the other way, south to the centre of Klein Basel, where Friday night was still in progress. She was alone on open ground.

  Another bullet ripped the ground a metre behind her. He came across from the shadows.

  She could try for shelter among the stacks of bins in the yards. She had to. She ran.

  More bullets… Suddenly lots more, another gun, the second not at all silent.

  The river was twenty paces to her left. She was tempted to swim. But it had to be icy cold.

  Then a car drew up beside her and slowed. The driver’s window came down. He took aim.

  Aliette took desperate steps left and dove.

  …It was dark. But not so frigid. Not immediately. She managed to free herself of her mac while still inside the fluid darkness. Managed to stuff her blonde hair into her beret before slowly pulling her way toward lighter darkness and much needed air. Just her face. A breath. Split-second orientation. And a voice, alerting someone. Another large gulp of oily air, she let herself sink again. A bullet sounded against the surface. Another. And another, closer. They were tracking her without much problem — because she stayed within sight of the wall. She had to, she could not allow herself to head for midstream. The chill in her limbs was quickly growing equal to the adrenaline that kept her moving.

  Is the mind working at a moment like this? Or are we on instinctive auto-pilot? Most likely the latter. Adrenaline creates a mode of thinking that is sub-conscious. All we can really hope for is a series of useful actions as opposed to the counterproductive kind (like those drowning souls who struggle when help is literally at hand, often inducing double desperation, double tragedy). It’s hard to know which part of the mind understands the useful from the destructive. The inspector’s hands were clawing along a slimy metal surface, whether the hull of a boat or the steel plating rein
forcing the concrete quai, she didn’t know, but her body knew it had to get free of the water and her hands and arms worked in a deliriously methodical series of clutch and reject motions doing whatever they could to respond to her need. The thought of pulling herself free to face the barrel of a pistol did not enter into the equation. Survival first. Then death. If —

  A rung. She clutched it. And the one above it. She went up into the night air.

  The sound that came from her inner reaches was something she could not have imagined producing. She did not truly hear herself moan, not as a human does — she only felt the air fill her lungs, only wanted more of it as her hands pulled her up another rung, her foot and leg now contributing to the project of moving up into the air…air! getting more of it, more of it…

  Till a hand clasped her wrist, pulling her so forcefully her body agreed to let go of those cold but blessed rungs and rise. Then collapse on wet concrete, face down.

  And yet more of this utterly foreign sound flooding out from inside her heaving guts. Her body, having done its work, was wanting to shake itself into a thousand pieces.

  ‘It’s all right…Ça va, ça va…’ French words. Hands on her shoulders, turning her over, sitting her up, now enfolding her in a strong embrace, rubbing her heaving back, a vaguely warm rhythm against the shuddering coldness that threatened to spilt her. ‘It’s fine, just breathe calmly, calm…calm…calm, it’s fine.’ Her mind began to register. It showed her Bernadette.

  ‘Ça va?’

  ‘Ça va, ça va…’ Fine. Fine, over and over, as Bernadette Milhau worked to warm her up and calm her down, till the large southerner eased her stroking motion and gently released her from the hug that had kept her senses from exploding. ‘Can you stand?’

  ‘Of course I can.’ When Bernadette hauled her up, she collapsed. One leg was not doing its job. The pain she felt when she insisted on trying again brought another unrecognizable cry.

  Bernadette held her vertical. ‘Just use your left.’

  Aliette obeyed. She was still soaking, but now realized the upper part of her right leg was warm, not cold. She had been hit.

  Arm in arm, just as they had started out that evening, the two women made halting progress across the storage yard and up the lane to the street. Inspector Milhau wielded her gun in her free hand, at the ready. The port was deserted — but a car could emerge at any moment. There was only a thrumming sound. Machines somewhere. The sparse lights of a factory fifty paces across the tarmac appeared like a picture of finality, a dull castle at the end of everything.

  ‘I’m sorry. I got lost…I was out on the river road trying to get my bearings. I saw someone race across and head for the yards. And someone else shooting. I felt I should help.’

  ‘Good instincts,’ breathed Aliette.

  The car was waiting. The coffee was cold.

  ‘We should get you to a hospital.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You’re losing blood.’

  ‘No…It’s not that bad. I wouldn’t be here talking if it was.’

  ‘But it’s an hour back home.’

  ‘We’re not going home.’ Inspector Nouvelle forced herself to focus. Ordered Bernadette to drive them back to where she’d found the coffee. Concentrated against the onslaught of shock while her partner bought more coffee, lots of sweet things, a large pizza. Then directed her to the address on Mulheimer, where Bernadette retrieved the police first-aid kit from the boot of their requisitioned car and they went up, five flights, the hardest part of the journey, intending to dress the wound, get dry, filled with food, then drive home.

  The wound to the inspector’s thigh was ugly but it was just a frightful graze and it eventually stopped bleeding. Bernadette had sure but gentle hands as she applied a dressing. Lucky.

  And a bonus: There were still five bottles of Boxer beer in Martin Bettelman’s fridge.

  Somehow two French cops were still there in the morning, together, well wrapped in coats on Martin Bettelman’s secret bed. Aliette awoke with an aching leg, became aware of shivery aches in every part of her as she tried to piece the thing back together, but found herself frustrated by a shock-scattered memory. Bernadette was lying there staring at the ceiling.

  ‘Did they return fire?’

  ‘The first one. We had a little battle along the quai while the other kept trying for you from his car. Whoever he is, he knows how to work an area. Maybe in the military? But I got him.’

  Aliette said, ‘You sure?’

  ‘Pretty sure. He fell. His friend put the car in front of him, he got in and they left. I got myself to where you seemed to be and luckily — ’

  Aliette touched her arm. ‘Merci.’

  Two French cops put themselves together and went down, Nouvelle more or less carried by Milhau. Although she’d eaten the best part of a huge pizza, Aliette was starving for something sweet and lots more of that excellent Swiss coffee. But first they returned to the area near Zup. They knocked, then pounded on the door. A passing local said there was rarely anyone there till mid-afternoon. By some Swiss miracle, the bags containing Bernadette’s new bra and cookies were waiting, sodden but untouched in the gutter in the street around the corner from the club.

  Bernadette picked up a shell. Then three more.

  They discussed their position over breakfast. No way they would take what happened to the Basel City force. ‘They don’t like the French police,’ Aliette said.

  Bernadette did not argue. She asked, ‘But do you think someone is on to the French police?’

  ‘Yes.’ Obviously. The question rankled worse than the ache in her leg. Was it Beppi Crerar or herself who’d showed their hand? ‘God knows where he ended up.’

  ‘He knows the deal’s not done till he reports back in,’ Bernadette noted.

  ‘Probably not the smartest move on my part,’ Aliette said, more to herself than her friend.

  Crossing the bridge on their way out of Basel, Aliette looked down at the grey-coloured flow of the Rhine. ‘That was my first time.’

  ‘First time for what?’

  ‘In ten years I never once even put my toe in that filthy river.’

  ‘Apparently they’re cleaning it up.’

  ‘I don’t like rivers. I prefer the sea.’

  ‘I lost my virginity on the banks of the Orb,’ Bernadette reflected…a river flowing through the wine lands where she’d been raised.

  ‘Salt water,’ mused the inspector. ‘Cleans you.’

  Rolling home, Aliette Nouvelle could not stop thinking about bad judgment.

  Stupid sending someone like Beppi Crerar into a place like Zup to do a job.

  She kept telling herself, I should leave this place, I should go back to the sea.

  26

  Effects of Bad Judgment

  They patched her up at Hôtel Dieu and gave her a cane. She returned to the flat by the park and lay in bed all Sunday. On Monday morning she limped to her desk.

  Claude watched. Did not request a briefing, didn’t say a word.

  Identité Judiciaire used the Aebischer/Bettelman ballistics profile to establish that the shells they’d recovered from the streets of Klein Basel were from the same general batch — numbers filed by the same hand, even with the same tool. But where did that point? Neither of the two men who’d sent a French cop diving into the chilly Rhine could be R — not according to her own sighting of a delicate boyish figure naked on a rock, much less the slight, sloppily dressed man contemplating art for hours on the Kunstmuseum security log.

  She made a call to VigiTec. ‘For the record, the ordnance you purchase for your people: it’s numbered and logged?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Some of your people are good with guns, beyond shooting? Maintenance, and the like?’

  ‘We have many ex-military. They fit right in.’

  ‘Can you send a list?’

  ‘I suppose I could. Progress, madame Inspector?’

  ‘Perhaps. Our shoemaker’s almos
t ready.’

  ‘Keep me informed.’

  ‘I will, Herr Taub.’

  She sat there. Waiting. But Beppi Crerar failed to report.

  Beppi’s recorded chat with an unknown man at Max’s bar pointed to the elusive R at Zup with Martin Bettelman. That was progress. But the recorder and anything of forensic value it might contain was lost in the Rhine, in the pocket of the inspector’s beloved blue mac.

  Come on, Beppi!… They needed to know more about the unknown man who promised to pass a message along to R.

  ‘Immoral bastard.’ Instructing Judge Gérard Richand deeply resented Beppi’s blatant breach of trust. He would write an order for Beppi Crerar to be collected and placed in garde à vue.

  When, later that day, they received word from Basel City police that a Bernard Crerar had been fished out of the Rhine on Sunday morning, it touched the inspector’s fragile spirit. Befuddled with guilt and creeping desperation, Aliette picked up the phone. The ID was confirmed — one very defining physical characteristic left her in no doubt. Did she know him?

  ‘He’s on our books, yes…’ They asked her to hold.

  The next Swiss voice was not so polite. ‘Inspector Nouvelle, is it? Inspector Morenz, Basel City. What was he up to?’

  Automatically, she lied. ‘I wouldn’t know, Inspector. The name came up from downstairs. He’s one of our contacts. I called to find out for sure…What? Out of his mind from a night on the town and straight into the river? That’s poor Beppi, all right.’

  A pause. No doubt Inspector Morenz was trained to hear an automatic lie. He decided to challenge. ‘That, and minus an ear. Someone sliced his ear clean off, then threw him in. Any thoughts on that, Inspector?’

  A pause — to squelch a rush of horrified bile. Then, ‘None, Inspector. No idea.’

  ‘I’m sure. Well, Inspector, we’ll be looking into it. If you can find anything that might place your poor Beppi here last weekend, we’d be very glad to know.’