Tsing-Boum (21 page)

‘I believe you – every word. And when Joe gives his word it's his bond. Now this party – he's youngish mm? I wouldn't put him over forty. He's got blue eyes, and fair hair – he's a nice chap. I've run up against him a couple of times, I rather think, but it's a few months back. Likeable guy. Now of course my trust is just as solid as you've been describing it back there, and where we usually ask for the Dun and Bradstreet ratings, our mutual friends are the best of references. Cuts both directions, an introduction like that, to the mutual benefit of all, we may add. You ask me no questions and that is very handsome, yessir, very handsome. And I don't ask any questions but seeing as this is almost a friend and a really likeable guy I forget my conscience and we make it fifteen hundred right?'

‘Waiter … bill … many thanks. So you're going to the Folies Bergères? – may I wish you a very enjoyable evening? Please do excuse me, I have to make a phone call.'

‘Well sir, I see you're a business man and so am I and we'll make no more bones about it. Agreed agreed. Before nine tomorrow – no, I thank you, I never wear overcoats. I like the evening and I think I'll treat myself to a little stroll as far as the Saint-Germain crossing. You can rely on Joe, ask anyone who knows. That's settled then. A deal is a deal and a date is a date and if it should take a few hours longer I won't spare the time nor the trouble. Sleep well.'

Van der Valk had taken his time about putting on his overcoat and getting his stick organized. The cloakroom attendant called him a taxi and he said ‘Continental' in a stiff Swiss voice. A few hundred metres along the quay he saw the big light-grey shoulders moving with a slow easy swagger through a cloud of cigar-smoke down towards the Odéon. The driver crossed the river, tore down the Rue de Rivoli and stopped with a jerk outside the Continental.

‘Go round to the Castiglione side, would you?' He took
his time hunting in his trouser pocket for change, went into the hotel, straight through and out on the far side, crossed the road, had a little stroll around the Tuileries for his digestion, crossed the Solferino bridge, and was back in his hotel surprised to find that it was only nine thirty. A night porter as polite as the day one had been, but fatter and more confidential as befitted a night porter, promised to have Arlette on the telephone by the time he had got upstairs. He had not been followed – not, at least, since leaving the Continental and Mr. McLintock was welcome to that – he might even get to feel at home there.

Van der Valk made affectionate kissing noises at the telephone, put it down lovingly, rubbed his nose and started to ponder.

Arlette's big news – but it clicked, it fitted, it was alive, right …

This man – there was no news, and that was good news. Pointless to feel aggrieved about his habits, his accent or his cigars, which were all unimportant. The man was just a little informer like a hundred others who touched a hundred-franc note from DST from time to time. Reliability – complete. Trustworthiness – zero. He plainly did know Laforêt and in exchange for money – assuming anybody gave him money, sniggered Van der Valk, because it wouldn't be him – he would hand over some perfectly genuine information. The only thing was, it might be a little out of date. The fellow was perfectly capable of ringing up Laforêt, touching a few more francs for the news that somebody was asking questions, and keeping an eye on the bird's flight. He would then be most aggrieved at having been diddled, point to the nest still irrefutably warm, congratulate himself on being so close, apologize profusely for the naughty bird, and guarantee to mark its passage for just a bit more money.

Of course, he was too enslaved to DST for any big stuff double-cross. Any police informer knows that the day he sends the cops on a trip with a lump of sugar and a drop of eaude-Cologne he will be arrested for indecent exposure within thirty minutes.

One would like to know the little something with which
DST undoubtedly twisted such people's arms – there always was a little something … But the hint had been clear: ‘Handle him as you see fit'. In other words, officialdom considered that it had paid its debts, done him a good turn, and refastened its own shoelaces; it did not intend to bother any further. They had nothing whatever against Laforêt, and at this time of day their interest in him was academic. Borza-the-brown-man had been telling the truth: why not? Laforêt was a dusty and forgotten file, an ancient story about some hanky-panky cooked up in the Algerian time by paratroop commanders. Laforêt had been without active interest since 1960, and that was a long long time.

This McLintock – the way to deal with him might be to move suddenly.

Even if there were no private planes, there was one place one could always get to in a hurry these days and that was Brussels. One never knew when one might suddenly feel the need to be nasty to the Dutch about margarine or give Italians a rap on the knuckles about secret subsidies. He seized his telephone.

‘Is there a night plane to Brussels?'

‘Let's see – you've just missed that one – seven in the morning.'

‘Or a train?' It had struck him that that obnoxious McGuthrie – what was it he called himself? – might have notions about planes. ‘Oh yes, there's always a night train – you'd catch it easily; you've an hour to get to the Gare du Nord.' A pleasure: it was not perhaps among his very favourite railway stations, but it would serve.

Belgium: one never spoke quite the right French for the Belgians, nor quite the right Dutch for the Flemings, so that there was a feeling of being tactless either way and one followed the notice saying Sortie/Uitgang with a mixture of irritation and relief. He got a self-drive from that self-pitying firm which is forever telling everybody that it tries harder. He wished he knew the Russian for ‘Well, try harder still'. And by the time something like daylight appeared through an undecided mixture of fog, snow, and rain he was well into Baluka-Land. This was Arlette's name for the backwoods of Flanders, those gloomy stretches which seem neither properly Holland nor really Belgium, and perhaps the best solution would be to incorporate them into the Grand Duchy of Courland, lying in equally bleak indecision between Lithuania and Estonia.

Poor old Laforêt. Grievances collected in this corner, which thought of itself as being heartily loathed by Holland and
Belgium alike – with some justification. Had he any skills, apart from being a soldier? What had his family been like – his home? What had brought him to this hole? An idea of growing mushrooms or some such little business: running perhaps a garage or a small hotel – the kind of job learned from a teach-yourself-bookkeeping paperback in the Home Economics Series?

He had not seen any photograph of Laforêt, but he had two or three descriptions to match together. Ability, charm, good looks, and plenty of brains – how much of that had the years blurred or obliterated? Fair hair, slightly wavy: he might be grey, mudbrown, bald or wear a toupée by this time. Such photos as existed, in files in Paris or elsewhere, were bound to be misleading. In them all he wore a uniform, which he wore well. Square jaw, square shoulders. A fresh healthy face, the kind that never looks tired or yellow. The kind of face that would go unnoticed in any Dutch street. What had he done here in the wilds of Limburg, among villages with names like Opoeteren and Neerglabbeek, in this landscape from an early novel by Georges Simenon? Taken to drink? Van der Valk would have quite understood and been profoundly sympathetic.

Somewhere near Hasselt – a long way. A child's description that was not easy to pin down. Road to Hasselt? Coming out of Western Holland, that could be any of the roads winding southward from half a dozen little Dutch towns – Bergen, Breda, or Tilburg. An airfield – there could not be many. He headed for one of the frontier posts, where he had an acquaintance in the Customs.

‘A little airfield – with a parachute school? Most flying clubs have one. Any amount – let's look at the map. I know them all, more or less. A Frenchman with fair hair? My poor boy, we have no Frenchmen round here! The people who work on these places – yes, I have a nodding acquaintanceship. Ask my opposite number, at Turnhout perhaps. Yes, they most of them have Customs posts – one doesn't know what these little planes might be getting up to, but of course their movements are easily enough controlled. Within the drainage areas, as we call them, of the big towns there are generally a few business men flying private planes, and they hop across to England,
Germany, lord knows where. But what are you doing running around the countryside? Surely you could get all this with a few phone calls back in the office.'

‘It's all very vague and unofficial,' said Van der Valk negligently. ‘Sort of obscure hunch I had last night – and I happened to be in Brussels anyway.'

‘Well, d'you want me to ring my colleague in Turnhout? He'd be better placed, if it's on the Belgian side.'

‘I have an obscure feeling that it is on the Belgian side.'

‘The thing is to distinguish clearly between a commercial airport properly speaking, of which there are only a few, and little private fields – dozens of those, naturally; we don't lack strips of grass round hereabouts that are good for not much else, hm.'

‘Ring him up – I'd like to talk to him.'

‘… Extension seven, please … Van Ryseghem? – put him on, would you … out on the field? … ah, in that case I'll hold on … Hallo Johnny, how's tricks? I bet it's slack, there's hardly any visibility here either. So you've got a few minutes? I've a friend here who has a police inquiry. No, no, quite unofficial – shall I put him on?'

‘This is extremely tangential,' said Van der Valk softly. ‘A man I think of as having an administrative job, perhaps, on what is probably a private field. French in origin and has perhaps an accent. Around forty, medium build, fair hair, fresh complexion.'

‘Can't think of anybody like that,' said a dubious voice. ‘Of course there are lots of these little fields – what? Oh yes, a parachute school is a common feature – anything to turn a few extra pennies. Flying lessons for a single-engine licence – popular hobby. Gliding, of course. Here we used to have a lot of that, but with the increase in commercial movement involving Antwerp most of that stuff has moved further east. Over towards Hasselt? Yes, two or three – couldn't really say: try Bilsen or Maaseyck.' Van der Valk had been saving his high card, but now was the time to show it.

‘I've another description, much more precise, which may ring a bell. It is of a big man, heavily built, showy dresser. Thick silver hair, tanned face. Looks about fifty, perhaps
because of the hair, and describes himself as to do with aviation. Has an act of being Canadian.'

‘Sounds like Conny Desmet – except he's not Canadian; Belgian as you could wish: had his passport in my hands a dozen times; he's always in and out.'

‘Profession?'

‘Company director or something like that – I don't recall. Comes from Liège I do believe. But he's a pilot if that's what you mean by aviation – single-engine of course.'

‘You've helped me a great deal.'

‘Pleased to hear it,' said the voice, surprised.

Snow had fallen. Not enough to mask the lowering country with innocence, but just enough to make the blackened fields look blacker. More would fall, but still not enough. The sky was dour, but had not the yellowish glare of a real snow sky. A day for the electric light to burn even at midday, for cobblestones to be greasy and treacherous, for the depressing bray of the ambulance to sound in all the city streets.

Van der Valk stopped on the Hasselt road at a pull-in café. A failure. The look of the bottle put him off rum, the coffee was greasy and black as the road, and people shook their glum dirty hair at him and couldn't tell him anything – or just wouldn't, more likely. Peasants … But he had more luck with a filling-station, where he got a pasty girl with a flat chest but a friendly heart, bless her.

The place was still hard to find. These side roads running crookedly through fields that had been quarrelled over in endless lawsuits, these tiny hamlets all with the same uncouth name. Overcheeserind and Undercheeserind were followed inevitably by Nethercheeserind, and he had already taken the wrong crossroad three times when he came plump on the place – as usual, one didn't notice it till one was grinding one's nose up against it.

Didn't look much. Could have been any of the obscure little factories, with twenty girls making bicycle repair outfits, that are to be found in this kind of countryside. Same air of a few old farm buildings tarted up cheap and not much money being made. The cheap metal gate was flimsy and rusting, badly hung on wood that had warped; a wooden board said ‘Aeroclub
Polygon'. A roughly metalled track led to a group of buildings that looked just the cowshed-and-haybarn they had undoubtedly been. He turned the corner and was surprised. It still had a pathetic aspect when one looked at the wide patch of bumpy puddled concrete, the frayed farm-buildings and the three or four workhouse-wagon cars with rusty mudguards, but across this fifty-metre-square patch, unseen from the road he had been following, was a largish, newish, one-storey concrete block with big clean-looking windows, some showing bits of bright-coloured curtain and green climbing plants. Another board, but this one glossy and smartly painted with gold lettering on pale blue. ‘Polygon Aeroclub and Parachute Training School'. At the far side, forming an L, was the end of a biggish hangar. He crossed to where a shiny new Daf was parked next to a Fiat saloon, and pushed the glass swing door. Wide passage with matting. Smell of paint and stuffiness of oil central heating. Ahead, a door saying ‘Flying' and a door on each side saying ‘Ladies' and ‘Gents'. To the right it said ‘Members Only' and to the left ‘Office', both flanked by notice boards. In the corner was a public telephone booth. He pushed the door that said ‘Flying' and found himself on a concrete apron with rough grass beyond. In front of the hangar were oilstains and one of those planes that reminded him vaguely of his boyhood and Amy Johnson flying to Australia. The hangar was shut. To the left was a glass box with a cluster of radio antennae and a depressed windsock on a pole: flying control, no doubt. There wasn't a soul to be seen but it all seemed less pathetic than at first sight. At the end of the building was what might be a small flat; at the other, where it had said ‘Members Only', the windows of an obvious clubhouse bar, which at fine weekends would be full, no doubt, of hearty male voices and a smell of whisky mixing with that of sweaty locker-room. He went back and tried ‘Office'. Plastic tiles, steel-tube and imitation-leather chairs, a fluorescent strip light, and a woman sitting behind a typewriter, but doing her nails.