Tsing-Boum (15 page)

‘But their comrade?'

‘Are you acquainted with the French insult
“faux frère”?'

‘Yes.'

‘Esther Marx was regarded as a comrade. You will recall,
since the Press gave it headlines, that Geneviève de Galard was decorated at Dien Bien Phu – with insignia borrowed from a paratroop officer? Esther was not there. But she had done the same job and was ready to do it again. She did her utmost to join her lover at Dien Bien Phu. There are legends on the subject. I have heard them, but I cannot vouch for their accuracy. I was not there, and I never knew Esther. She was certainly something of a wildcat. She was an expert parachutist. Myself – my Indochina was the bureaux of Saigon. I have never seen the High Region.' Was there a note almost of regret in the voice?

‘But – then Laforêt had committed some treachery? What was his crime?'

‘He deserted – in the face of the enemy. However, he was not shot for it.'

‘But she – she didn't have the child till two years after … Oh my God – you mean she hadn't known. And that she found out.'

‘You have hit it. Nobody knew. Certain strongpoints, particularly those on the perimeter of the camp, were overrun and never again recaptured. Officers and men were posted missing. It was not known till long after whether they were captured or killed. It was never known whether some died of wounds, or in enemy captivity. The probability is that virtually all fell facing the enemy. There was a legend that an officer of the Legion asked for quarter, on Beatrice. It has since been dismissed as Viet propaganda.'

‘Something in your voice, mon colonel, tells me that you are not totally happy with the legends of Dien Bien Phu.'

‘The remark is impertinent.'

‘In that case I beg your pardon.'

Voisin got up, walked over to the window and stood looking out for a moment before turning back towards Van der Valk. His face against the light gave nothing away.

‘I am a lawyer. I have studied the penal codes, but I am also aware of more recent thinking. Are you, for instance, aware of the concept known as the penal marriage? The idea that there are two parties to a crime, the perpetrator and the victim, and that the two are linked in what has been called a marriage? If,
for instance, a man goes to rob an old woman, and the old woman screams and agitates, so that the man takes fright, hits her with anything handy to silence her – kills her. A murder, is it not, and a crapulous murder into the bargain. Yet plainly it was the old woman's fault. I have taken the simplest example, involving two near-mentally-deficient persons. But most crimes of blood show the same strange bond between the murderer and his victim.' The voice had no especial warmth, but Van der Valk crossed his legs and got his behind more comfortable, aware that he was hearing two things from two people. A professional speaking on his own subject, and a man justifying himself.

‘We are men of formulas, of congealed and codified rigidities. Military law … you, Commissaire, meet many persons technically, perhaps, criminals. Courts readily admit the mitigating circumstances you yourself put forward. You are not blocked by phrases such as dereliction of duty and military honour, for society is looser knit, and more fragmented, keyed more to materialism, quicker touched by a little loss of liberty or a blow to the pocket. Whereas the mystique of military honour makes almost all punishments aleatory, save the two great sanctions, death and dismissal, both tantamount to dishonour.

‘He was heavily punished. Stripped of his decorations and dismissed from the army. But rightly punished.'

‘Nobody but Esther thought of shooting him?'

Voisin regarded him bleakly.

‘I dare say you have heard that Langlais at Dien Bien Phu considered turning the artillery on the crowd of deserters known as the rats of the Noum Yam. But he did not. I dare say that Esther Marx had some notion of pity when she shot him.'

‘She shot him before – or after his desertion became known?'

‘Before. I do not know the source of her information. It may have – must have – been Laforêt himself. Poor wretch – you see, he had got clean away with it. His fellow officers found him in Vietminh hands. The Viets themselves seem not to have realized. It seemed unthinkable that a paratroop officer should desert. Having told you so much,' his voice was unchanged, ‘I may as well tell you that I was urged by many to suppress the charge of desertion and substitute mutiny. I refused, naturally.
It was later that a perhaps unspoken agreement appeared to take effect, that Laforêt no longer existed.'

‘Then he didn't die?' said Van der Valk, startled.

‘Oh no. She shot him. But he didn't die. He had the added punishment of a hospital staff making it clear they would have preferred not to save his life. And on top of that the spectacle of his former fellows perjuring themselves happily to give his mistress a self-defence plea.'

‘What happened to him?'

‘How should I know? He disappeared – as well he might.'

‘I wish I could go on allowing him to disappear,' with feeling.

‘You think he killed Esther Marx?'

‘I don't know. I have to go on turning stones over, finding things I would much prefer not to find. Raking up old enmities, bitterness – and injustice. There's not much doubt in my mind. But there's never certainty in police work. When there is, it's negative. If I know that her husband did not kill her it still does not allow me to say her lover did. I have to find the man and I think it probable that you can help me.'

Voisin flexed the fingers of his hand as though to get stiffness out of his system.

‘I am accustomed to unenviable situations,' he agreed. ‘But I am reluctant to relaunch a hunt against a man who has been hounded once.'

‘He's a civilian now, mon colonel. He will have a right to his mitigating circumstances.'

‘Vision,' said Voisin abruptly. ‘We have so little.' He wrote on a scrap of paper and handed it to Van der Valk. ‘You started with a general – I send you back to a general. A paratroop general.' The scrap of paper had a name and an address in the Rue Saint-Dominique in Paris. Well, anyway it was a step in the direction of home, he thought. It might well have been Pau …

As he crunched heavily down the last gritty stairs, the concierge stood beaming with his warmed dried raincoat.

‘Good appetite.'

‘Thanks. The same to you.'

And why not? Why not some warm and welcoming brasserie where he could eat solid Auvergnat food full of cabbage and
sausage? Shoulders sagging he plodded back towards the centre of the town through uneven antique streets that turned and wound as darkly as his thoughts.

A voice behind him said, ‘How about some lunch, Commissaire?' He turned around, furious. Not poxing DST again!

‘You know what Raymond Chandler said?'

That had him flummoxed!

‘Who?'

‘When you don't know what to do next have a man come in the door with a gun in his hand. And I wish one would … following me about like that. Shoot you my bloody self for two pins,' bellowed Van der Valk.

‘Oh Commissaire? Shoot a man who's just invited you to lunch?'

‘Yes.'

‘Very well then, I'll pay for the lunch.' He put his hand in his pocket, produced a handful of change, and started clowning. ‘One, two, three, oops, that's a Swiss franc, what's he doing here, four, four fifty, four seventy, wait a bit …' It was like punching somebody under water – or in a dream, where you hit out furiously but your fist stops humiliatingly, just short of its target … ‘Oh very well, very well. Come on and be tricky. Do you at least know a good place or do you have to buy a guidebook?'

He was a brown man, with a face like pale wood, eyes as brown and shiny as an Auvergne chestnut, a brown raincoat and hat, and well-polished but sadly splashed brown leather boots.

‘A lot of footwork,' said Van der Valk with his eye on these boots.

‘Yes,' smiling. He had sunburst wrinkles at the corners of simian eyes, that went right back to his ears. The face was studded with tiny scars as though he had had smallpox, and there was a whitish look of surgical repair about the chin.

‘Indochina?'

‘Algeria,' grinning as though it had been immensely funny. ‘Grenade fragments.'

‘Lucky to have your eyes.'

‘Very very lucky. Some hot wine, don't you think?'

‘Now I know,' said Van der Valk hanging his coat up, ‘why a kind friend warned me I was heading for a horrible great merdier. Why did I ever leave St Louis?'

‘You weren't to know,' said the brown man kindly, ‘that all officials would remember the name of Esther Marx and curse. But don't be mad at us – we didn't plan to make life a misery for you. Nor do we now. What you were told in Holland holds good here – you are helping us and we will help you. We wondered – I wondered – what Monsieur Marie could have been telling you. But he had the very good idea of ringing me up and asking what I knew about all this. He always wants to know a little more, you know – it's knowing a little more that makes him so successful.'

‘I don't see much sign of either of us helping the other much,' said Van der Valk with a very lumpish Dutch irony.

‘You do, you know. The general wouldn't have told us anything. Kept in the family, you might say. But he can't stop you. I was astonished – and full of admiration – when you went up against him like that.'

‘Handy for you.'

‘I give you my word – I'd never even heard of Laforêt. It is perfectly true that our people in Holland were as puzzled as you were. It meant nothing to me at all. Then I check up in Paris just in case, and lo, we have a file on him. File with nothing in it. Dead.' The neat mouth mimicked someone blowing dust off a file, and dust was brushed fastidiously off the agile brown fingers. He took a swig of hot wine.

‘What the hell do you want a file for?' asked Van der Valk, taking a swig at his.

‘I completely agree but it's automatic, you know. Officer dismissed with ignominy – may harbour wicked thoughts. Nobody ever followed it up – we knew nothing whatever about Laforêt, in Paris or anywhere else.'

Van der Valk's grumbling, gloomy rage boiled over stickily, like porridge.

‘Five minutes ago I was telling myself that if I'd been five years younger I'd be taking a swing at you. Now you'd better get out of my sight, or call your judo expert – he can't be far away.' He felt like a bear being teased by little yapping dogs.

‘I see that you subscribe to the legends about us,' said the brown man. ‘Get this into your thick Dutch skull – we have our share of crass stupidity. By yourself, not knowing a damn thing, you have worked this out. With all our resources of judo experts, with bits of information sticking out all over the place, we failed to make the connection. The old story – the right hand not knowing about the left. Do I have to map it out? Your story interested them in Holland and they thought there was something there for us. They sent a signal asking us here to look it up. The name Esther Marx rang a vague bell. By pure coincidence old Marie gave me a ring, thinking of nothing but securing his own rear. Since then I've been panting along breathless, trying to catch up with you. When I got here it occurred to me that we'd better try to tune our violins to the same pitch.'

‘The file on Laforêt.'

‘I didn't know it existed an hour ago. Tidy little minds in Paris would like to see it closed and concluded that you'd make an excellent last entry. We don't know where he is or even that he's really alive. All I succeeded in finding out is that there was a charge of violence – he was wounded in a struggle with Esther Marx but it was his gun. The charge wasn't pushed at the time because he'd been hammered and they were rid of him.'

‘Charge of violence my arse,' said Van der Valk bleakly. ‘He was framed.'

The brown man put down the drink he was sipping.

‘The funny thing is that there's a note on the file suggesting just that, but it couldn't be proved. In fact you'd find it quite hard at this stage to prove Laforêt ever existed.' He looked at Van der Valk and gave a little laugh. ‘You – you've really got the military eating out of your hand.'

‘Now tell me,' said Van der Valk in a grating voice like a nineteen thirties gangster movie. ‘What is your real interest in this affair?'

‘Yes.' The man smoked a moment in silence, muttered ‘No very bad thing, telling the truth every six months', smoked a moment longer and decided to stop playing secret service.

‘We're a standing joke here, like the telephone system. The
seventeen different kinds of parallel police, and the little rivalries – each one determined to keep the others from knowing anything. Sacred tradition that the Sûreté Nationale came under Interior, and the PJ under the Prefect, and so on. All been changed now.'

‘Since the toss-potting that went on over Ben Barka.'

‘Just so – the right word. Didn't look good, did it? Two policemen getting bent – if ever I felt sorry it's for those two poor bastards – the chief gossip-centre at Orly blown sky high, did the principal witness fall or was he pushed? – talk about pigsticking … Well, it has small importance now, but ten years ago and more, at the time of Algeria, there was not an awful lot of love lost between these silly little intelligence organizations. Specifically, not exactly a warm friendship between DST and some army units. Paratroop formations, mostly – there was a fairly well-known instance where a para unit raided an office in Algiers and quietly swiped all the DST files as a small aid in organizing their own intelligence.'

‘I see,' said Van der Valk.

‘Our interest in Laforêt dates from then. At that time, I emphasize, the paratroop mafia cast a long shadow. Now all this means very little. I think, probably, that they would never have allowed him to survive if we hadn't been barking at their heels. In a sense, you see, what has now happened is our fault.'