The house he was looking for had a wrought-iron gate, crazy pavements, and a gothic front door. Outside the garage, where a vertiginous ramp dived into the earth’s stressed-concrete bowels, a green Peugeot 404 was parked in a nosedive like a stuka. It was quite new-looking but much travel-stained; Van der Valk regarded it with affection. An aluminium plaque said ‘Serailler, Journalist’: he rang the bell.
‘I’ve an idea he’s still asleep but it’s high time he got up anyway. Who shall I say? OK.’ He could be a policeman from Amsterdam or from Timbuctoo; it was all in the day’s work and left a journalist’s wife indifferent. He was put in the living-room, offered a cigarette, and given time to look about.
Plenty of the usual paraphernalia – table with typewriter, shelves full of directories and reference dictionaries, rows of files with photos and cuttings, a tape recorder on the phone-table and an Italian majolica jar full of pencils. The big sunny room was untidy with souvenir dollies, more and more outrageous ashtrays, stuffed animals, and ski-ing trophies: there was a large and amazingly miscellaneous collection of books, and Van der Valk was glad he had come. Mr Serailler looked like an amusing person. He was saved further speculation by the door opening and the man himself appearing, no more bothered by the police at nine in the morning than his wife had been.
A muscular forty-five, with a splendid mountain tan and the characteristic long fine wrinkles at the eyes. Short hair gone grey early, still wet from a comb held under the tap and run through it. Tight blue trousers that looked like denim but had cost a lot more money; a Mégève sweater whose sleeves he had tucked up above the elbows and which had a little spatter of toothpaste on the front. Hand-knitted socks and no shoes. He padded over the smooth wooden floor and shook hands amiably.
‘Really was high time I got out of bed.’
‘Just back from Innsbruck?’
‘That’s it. Long drive but the roads weren’t bad. What can I do for you?’
‘You’ve been around the circuit a good few years – not many people you don’t know.’
‘Suppose not. Know most of them too well. Used to be a skier myself, but never all that good. Never got out of the business.’
‘Ever come across a man named Marschal?’
‘Probably, common name enough. Skier?’
‘Playboy style but pretty good I believe. Ten years ago or more like fifteen, might have been in the top twenty.’
‘Of course. Jean-Claude. Was fifth at Kitzbühel once when I was seventh. Well, well. Sure I remember. Didn’t practise enough, like so many more. Might have been a champion otherwise. Wonder what happened to him? Had lots of money – no need to work for his living like us.’
The story had gone on too long; Van der Valk smiled a bit, secretly. It was all a little too casual.
‘He was in Innsbruck last week.’
‘You don’t say. Wonder why I didn’t run into him.’
‘He was in Chamonix yesterday.’
‘Well well. Old stamping ground. Nostalgic pilgrimage, perhaps. Why the interest?’ It was too casual; there was no doubt about it.
‘I just wondered whether it was you that gave him the lift.’
The journalist did not change his easy smile. He felt in his trouser pocket, brought out a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, and put them on his nose, from where he pushed them up on his forehead like snowgoggles. Gentian-blue eyes looked at Van der Valk curiously.
‘Whose business is it that you’re making your business? – I’m not quite clear. Mine?’
‘No, his. I want to see him. I guessed he’d hitched a lift with the caravan.’
‘Is there anything illegal about that?’
‘I’m just catching up, or trying to, without getting out of breath.’
‘What goes on? You say you’re from the police. He hasn’t paid a parking fine or something?’
‘Oh, nobody’s worried about that helicopter.’
A broad grin appeared.
‘You don’t tell me it was Jean-Claude that pinched the helicopter? Ha – just like him.’ Bark of laughter. ‘Hardly an extraditable offence, though.’
‘You got children?’
‘One,’ startled. ‘Girl of twelve. Why?’
‘Does she ski?’
‘Sure. I’m sorry, you know, but I don’t get any of this.’
‘Suppose your girl had gone to Innsbruck, say, and was suddenly missing. Nowhere to be seen. What would you do?’
‘I know nothing about any girl missing.’
‘But that girl with Jean-Claude is missing, for all that. Her parents are terribly worried – would you blame them?’
‘Of course not, but I don’t see what all this has to do with me.’
‘Simply that if you’d known you might not have been so quick to agree.’
‘Agree to what?’
‘Giving Jean-Claude a lift. He must have said he wished to avoid anything looking like police. The frontier guards, for instance.’
‘Who said anything about my giving Jean-Claude or any girl a lift?’
‘Ach man, don’t be childish. I don’t care whether you did or not. You couldn’t have known about anything serious. Quite likely he said the Austrian police were narked with him about the helicopter. But you were all together. If you gave him the lift someone else will have noticed it, and if someone else did you would have noticed it. Just tell me straight out and save everybody trouble.’
The wife came in and dumped coffee on the table in front of Serailler. He sat down with his eyebrows knitted and stirred thoughtfully.
‘Want some?’
‘No thanks, I had some at the station.’
‘Look. Jean-Claude is an old friend. We used to compete together. Once I was third in the national champs and he was fourth, only one point behind me. I gave him and his friend a lift – you can find that out easily enough, I suppose. And further than that I’ve nothing to say, not without rather better reasons than you’ve given me so far.’
‘Why d’you think he pinched the helicopter?’
‘In the years when I knew him he was a wild boy. Doing something like that wouldn’t be unlike him. I never gave it a thought.’
‘One does things like that at twenty. One doesn’t do them at forty.’
‘That’s true.’
‘It surprised me. I’ll tell you frankly, there is something in all this that may be serious.’
‘You mean the girl?’
‘I mean him. The girl’s disappearance isn’t particularly serious. It could be made out technically to look like a crime, but there’s nothing to show he offered her any violence or did anything vicious with her. There’s more to it. The man is missing from his home and there’s nothing to show why. Why does he vanish from his own home and persuade some girl to vanish from hers? How well do you know him?’
‘Like you say, fifteen years ago – hell, it’s nearer twenty – I knew him pretty well. I’ve seen him since a couple of times winter-sporting. Didn’t he marry a girl that was a skier too? Belgian girl –I’ve forgotten her name.’
‘Yes. Did you ever see anything in him out of the ordinary?’
‘Everybody’s out of the ordinary if you look deep enough,’ dry.
‘Sure. How was he on the road?’
‘Ordinary. Nothing unusual. We hardly talked though. While I was driving he was asleep, and when he drove it was my turn. We’d both been at the party.’ Dear lord, thought Van der Valk: he was under my nose there the whole time. ‘Said he’d been doing some ski-ing, said he was pretty tired, said he had no auto and would I give him a lift home? I agreed, naturally.’
‘The girl?’
‘She was very quiet. To be honest I hardly noticed her. They were very affectionate with each other. Jean-Claude was gay and happy.’
‘Maybe because he was being clever and doing something exciting. The police of three countries are looking for him. I was looking for him in Holland, the German police are looking for their girl and know she’s with him, and the Austrians a
ren’t bothered much about their helicopter but would like to kick his arse for him. All the frontier posts were after him.’
‘I had no idea … I was driving. I just showed the auto papers and my pass. They know us all, of course.’
‘That was just what he was counting on.’
‘I’ll be damned.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘I asked him back here. He said no, he was going to catch a train.’
‘Where would the train be going, that hour?’
‘Besançon and points north.’
‘You know where he was headed for?’
The gentian-blue eyes looked at Van der Valk for a long time before Serailler answered. Van der Valk hoped he would answer, because he hadn’t any way of making him.
‘I have an idea,’ slowly, ‘that he has a cottage or something in the Vosges.’
‘Know the address?’
‘No.’
‘Phone number?’
‘There isn’t any phone.’
‘Whereabouts is it?’
‘Fraid I don’t know.’
Van der Valk gave him the big homely grin.
‘How d’you know there’s no phone then.’
‘You think he’s a bit off the rails, do you?’ suddenly.
‘I don’t know any damn thing. I’m a bit worried though. I’d like to see this girl’s parents knowing she was safe and happy. I’d like to talk to Marschal. There’s nothing criminal against him. I’m not going to arrest him or anything. He has a right to leave home any time he wishes. But there are other people involved. He left his wife – she’s anxious. He left his job – they’re anxious. Obviously you thought it all a scrap queer too or you wouldn’t have been so leery of me. It’s better that you tell me.’
‘I have the phone number of a café,’ said Serailler slowly. ‘He said they could give him a message.’
‘He hasn’t called you.’
‘No.’
‘But he gave you the number to call in case any body came nosing round here after him.’
‘I guess so,’ said Serailler a little unhappily.
‘You see? Don’t call the number – it might make things a lot worse. You notice I’m not threatening you with anything, but if a criminal charge ever came out of this and the lawyers discovered that you’d helped him twice, once after I’d warned you, they might take a dim view. That’s just a friendly remark.’
Serailler got up, walked over to his table, and picked a notebook out of a drawer. He fluttered the leaves, tore one out, did not look at it further, walked back, and gave it to Van der Valk.
‘There you are. You may be right. I don’t know what it is nor where it is. What you do with it’s your affair. Jean-Claude can’t complain I’ve shopped him. He should have told me I was taking a risk in taking him over the border.’
‘What did the guard say at the frontier?’
‘He asked who they were, and I just said two friends, of course, and did he want me to give them a poke, and he just laughed and said let the sleepers sleep, as long as I knew them it was all right.’
‘If he had woken them up you’d have been carrying the ball.’
‘That’s what has occurred to me. I forget it again, because that’s for a friend, but I’m not dipping myself any further.’
*
The telephone number was written hurriedly, slantwise, the way one might while holding the paper across the steering wheel while sitting in an auto. Somewhere in the Vosges … He went to the post office with it, for French telephone numbers depend on a system of numeral prefixes that are a trap to the unwary, since they are sometimes, but by no means always, the same as the departmental numerals on auto plates…
Half an hour later he was in a café, drinking gentian: like Maigret he had got stuck on the same drink. It was a good choice, he thought, because it is a mountain drink, and this is a mountain story. He had bought the Michelin map of the Vosges, and after a bit of searching he found the village, tucked up in the foothills, between the high ground and the Alsace plain, not far from Saverne and the pass of the Zorn. It would be nice there, he thought; the Vosges get steadily lower as one goes north, and indeed beyond the Zorn there is nothing above six hundred metres: one is well away from the picturesque tourist country and the wine district, and the over-closely bunched villages of the plain have straggled out into the beech and pine woods and the short slippery grass.
It would be characteristic, of course, of Marschal to have a hideout and for it to be in a place like that. He could easily believe that the man had even kept it secret from his wife. He might have had it some time, perhaps years. A typical piece of northern romanticism, that, in keeping with the Napoleonic bank accounts and the rest of this boy scout side to Marschal’s nature. Well, the man had a right to do it. It would be a pleasant antidote to Can-isius, and the Sopex, and public relations, and maybe to Anne-Marie as well. No, he wasn’t going to phone Canisius; there were altogether too many things he didn’t know. The part Canisius had played in this was obscure; he felt almost ready to bet that Canisius had known – or at least guessed – a lot more of what Jean-Claude was up to than he had told the police.
The train north from Chamonix to Strasbourg is a longish ride, but not dull, since the Alps give way to the Jura, and the Jura to the Belfort gap, and from Belfort onwards there are the Vosges on one’s left, and Van der Valk, watching the sunset, felt peaceful. It was all a lot of much-ado-about-nothing when all was said. If Mr Marschal had not had a great deal of money it would have been both more difficult and less of a holiday, but the money had left a blazed trail, and he had had an amusing ride about the Alps, and what did it all amount to? A neurotic man with too much money, at once too old and too young for his age, who had never been in want or need, who had never learned the lessons of tenacity and patience that are learned by having to fight for one’s footing: a poor chap. If he had had no money he would be pathetic and if he had too much it was equally pathetic. It wasn’t anything to get hysterical about; he would catch up with the fellow here at his little hideaway, and give him a talking to, and get this girl back, and what Marschal did then was his affair. Let Canisius worry about that: it wasn’t police business. He had something to eat, and got a rather squashed suit out of his case, for he was still in mountain fancy-dress, and settled down to read the book he had bought, Albert Simonin’s Paws off the Cake, which is extremely amusing because it is written in gangster slang, and passed happy hours trying to imagine how Raymond Chandler would have put it into American.
It was evening, and dusk on a chilly March evening, in Strasbourg. He had never been there, and had a peaceful walk to taste the atmosphere, which he liked very much. Pity he would not be staying; he would have enjoyed a few days here. No, he had had enough running around. He was in the mood to go home, to taste again the flavour of his own house, to hear the tones of his wife’s voice, to eat familiar food, look with love at familiar objects, tell himself he was home, and that next day he would get up and bicycle as usual to police headquarters. He had really had enough of mountains, and picturesque scenery, and the sharp delicate pleasure of watching a top-class girl skier slaloming. He had a fairly unexciting dinner in an unexciting hotel near the station, and phoned Arlette before going virtuously to bed.
‘I’m in Strasbourg. Nice, here: we’ll go together some time.’
‘You’re getting around, aren’t you? How’s the ski-ing coming along?’
‘Shut up about the ski-ing; my shoulder still hurts. There’s nothing at the moment I want to see more than Amsterdam on a rainy day. Nice and flat!’
‘When d’you think you’ll be home?’
‘I might get finished tomorrow with any luck. Storm in a teacup. Just that this fellow I’m supposed to be hunting for runs round like a rabbit. I’ve found out where the hole is, now. I’ll have a scene with this girl, no doubt, but that’s only to be expected. All this has given me a strong taste for domesticity. You all right?’
‘Yes, but getting sick as well of being widowed.’
‘Ha. I’ll ring you tomorrow: I ought to know something by then.’
*
It was different again next morning; wet snow was falling heavily. It was not sticking on the streets of Strasbourg, but he had had enough of snow. He did not put on his suit, but the serge trousers and the canadienne jacket he had bought – on expenses – in Innsbruck, and the mountain boots, and the sweater Anne-Marie had bought. It brought him back with a jolt. Why had Anne-Marie tried to seduce him? Why had she given that shriek of warning to Jean-Claude? He had passed it off as a whim of a spoiled woman who is too rich and can indulge her caprice. He stamped out rather ruffled after his dreams of peace from the day before, not so sure that he was done with mountains, and rented a car, which was a bitch like all rented cars. The gearbox was anything but sweet, the visibility was lousy, the heating was too hot, as it always is, he made several false turnings – no, he had to clamp the teeth of patience on the bullet of chagrin still.
He could not see the Vosges through the drizzling mass of low cloud, till he was right on top of them. They were only hills here. He lurched up a narrow foothill road off the auto-route, and found his village, no more than a cluster round the four angles of a crossroad, a Romanesque church, a school, a real French country mairie with grandiose pillars outside to support the dignity of the Republic.
The café whose telephone number had been written on a scrap of paper in Chamonix was no trouble either. There it was with farm buildings clumped behind it, and inside a powerful French rural smell a hundred years old. Polished pitchpine, and a tiled floor scrubbed with eau-de-Javel. Straw, denim overalls, and dog, white wine and vegetable soup, onions, smoked bacon, and ironing. As usual, there was the mixture of the very old and the very new: that dented zinc certainly dated from Napoleon the Third, and the espresso machine that glittered with chrome and little magic handles and winking red lights standing alongside … A huge television set, gaudy as only the French make them, was flanked by classic decorative themes: a large china shepherd dog and a stuffed otter with a stuffed trout in his mouth. There was a beefy man drinking vino, in blue overalls, a thin man in a cap, and a stringy woman peeling carrots.
The King of the Rainy Country Page 10
