Strike Out Where Not Applicable (24 page)

He found the motorbike easily enough, though it was hidden in a patch of fern. Getting through the wire was less easy; mustn't tear his breeches, for that would make Arlette cross.

There wasn't any question of flitting from leaf to leaf like an elf, either. He had to find patches of cover that gave a view, crouch down, and use the glasses to sweep the shadows. Somewhere was a moon, that had given wan light earlier after the twilight faded, but was now drowned in the cloud that flowed overhead in dark ragged masses. The sand was damnably cold, the fern damnably damp, the wind damnably chilly, and his leg was a pest. He was forty-five: to enjoy this performance one had to be young, active, and if possible in love. There was nothing, he supposed, incompatible between that and having an expensive sports car, a horse, and two mink coats.

He saw them before he found his inspector. Janine's hair had a glimmer, a paler shadow than that of the head beside her. He circled around, covered by wind and night sounds, making not
much more noise than a large lame rabbit that had to walk with a stick. Verbiest, the youngest of his staff, was well laid up in a tussock of dune-grass, nearer than he himself would have tried to get, but not near enough to overhear whispers. Verbiest was not startled, since he saw and heard Van der Valk over the last half-dozen metres, but he was surprised.

‘How did you know, sir?'

‘I've been sitting on that fellow's tail for the last fortnight,' getting his leg out from under him. ‘Where's her car?'

‘She came by bike.'

‘You'd better get back – I don't want a lot of police busybodies wondering who the cars belong to – mine's about half a kilometre up towards the coast. Did you hear his bike?'

‘Yes.'

‘See where he left it?'

‘Yes.'

It was an excuse. The most nosyparker of policemen would do no more than hover by a felonious car till its damned fornicating owner got back. But he felt embarrasment at Verbiest being there. One person lying there squinting through binoculars was business – two together was intolerable. He guessed that Verbiest was as glad to go as he was to see him go.

Not that they were making love or anything – they were arguing – but he had an ignominious feeling, and he wasn't going to sit shivering here waiting for it to paralyze him. As things were, it was not as wide as a barn door, but it would serve. He stood up, his leg painful, and walked forward. There was a startled movement and he stopped.

‘Very sorry,' in a normal voice, ‘but some explanations are owing here.'

They had got up at once, Janine standing stock-still, head hanging, caught with her hand in the jampot and much as though she had never expected anything better. The boy stood loose and in gear, like a boxer. It must have been recognition of Van der Valk – the chap with the gammy leg! – that made him lose his head and run. What use did he think that was? Not that the startled fawn lark would make Van der Valk blow any whistles – he hadn't any whistle, and didn't feel the least like yelling. He just hoped the boy would be panicked enough to run for his motorbike.

Poor Janine – she was quite numb. He took her arm gently.

‘Come. I'll give you a lift – we'll go and find Rob.'

Back on the road two figures were waiting, both breathing fast.

‘You take this character back to town, Verbiest. If he's obstreperous tie him up with a piece of string or something.'

‘I've a pair of cuffs in the car.' The things these young policemen carried about with them!

‘Very well. Lock him up; I'll see him in the morning.'

He walked down the road with Janine. She evidently expected to be handcuffed too, flung in a cell and shouted at, treated – not with brutality – certainly with callousness. She was even more scared by his quiet manner than she would have been by the handcuffs. She would have understood that – she deserved to be punished, and she was waiting for the punishments to start.

‘Does Rob know you're out?' opening the car door.

‘Yes.'

‘He wasn't curious?'

‘I often got out at night, walking, or on the bike. I've been in the dunes often at night.'

‘Yes, it's nice. When there are no people.' She hung her head.

A night porter in the hotel looked with no more than faint curiosity.

‘Rob will have gone to bed,' she said timidly.

‘That is what you call trust,' without sarcasm, but she winced. He thumped on the bedroom door like a fireman.

‘Rob? Come on out. Janine's here, nothing wrong with her, but a crisis has blown up. Van der Valk here.'

The man was startled out of deep sleep, but lost no time. He appeared almost at once, having taken just enough time to put his face under the cold tap. Not tousled, and with his mind collected. He looked from his wife to the policeman.

‘I can see this isn't a joke. Sit down; tell me quietly.'

‘I have to take her in, I'm afraid. I don't know how long for. My report will go tomorrow to the Officer of Justice, and the day after he'll want to see her himself. It depends on him what will happen to her – he might decide she has to be kept.'

‘And what's the charge?' said Rob coolly. Janine stood biting her nails. ‘You want a drink or something?'

‘I'd like a glass of water if you have one.'

‘Evian all right?'

‘Anything. A charge … they haven't any meaning. I could write
down homicide without necessarily suspecting she killed him. I might write suspected guilty knowledge, even complicity. But the magistrate decides what charge is actually made, if any.'

‘Are you talking about Bernhard? But you can't arrest her on any charge – she knows nothing whatever about it.'

‘I found her in the dunes, with a chap. I'm not accusing her of having a lover or anything – I think they were cooking up a tale together. The chap is the painter – you know, I think. I always did wonder where your interest in Stubbs came from.'

Rob stared stubbornly, a flush growing on his face, but his eyes clear and firm, looking straight into Van der Valk's.

‘She knows nothing about it,' he repeated. ‘This painter – I've heard of him. So what? He doesn't interest me. What Janine thought or did has no importance. If you want to arrest anyone, go ahead and arrest me. I'm more likely to have killed Fischer than she is; I know more about him than she does. You bloody police always arrest the wrong person, and you have to pick Janine – I'm not having that.'

Van der Valk drank his water slowly – it was beautifully cold. He put the glass down carefully and wiped his mouth in a vulgar way on the back of his hand.

‘I'll take you too, if you insist. The more the merrier. You might have something interesting to tell me, at that. But I have to take her, you can't talk me out of that one, and that is my last word.'

A vein showed in Rob's forehead; he was getting very angry, and holding it under a thin thread of control.

‘I could break your neck.'

‘You could have broken Bernhard's neck. You might have, but there are reasons why I don't think you did. He might have been a blackmailer, and there's some support for the opinion that he was, but did he blackmail you? I don't think so. What for, money? He was in no particular need of money, and he would have had to account for it to his wife, who knew just what he made and what he had. And you would kill him on that account? Don't mess things up; it can't help. In the end, she may be called as a witness and no more.'

‘No,' Janine broke in violently. ‘Not just a witness.'

‘You're not going to tell me as well it was you killed Bernhard,' deflatingly.

‘I knew, and I kept my mouth shut,'

‘Knew what? Who killed him?'

‘Knew – knew he'd been killed.'

‘Ah. Dickie told you, did he? And then twisted your arm to make you keep quiet? And how did he know?'

‘I don't know.'

‘And why did he tell you?'

‘I'd – slept with him.' Neither of the two men believed any of this.

‘Rubbish,' said Rob. ‘She's saying any fantasy that comes into her head, and she's saying it to protect me.'

‘Why?' mildly.

‘Because she knows I killed him.'

‘Oh. You killed him, did you?' Van der Valk seemed impressed with this admission, and as if thinking it over. ‘What with?'

‘I don't even know. I didn't stop to look. Whatever it was I just threw it away. Something I picked up – he was trying to blackmail Janine. I shut his dirty mouth and I'd do it again tomorrow. Now take me in and leave her alone.'

‘Very well, I'll take you in,' mild. ‘Since it'll help her, I'll agree. Means sitting on the back seat of a Volkswagen.'

‘You leave her here.'

‘No, you bloody idiot. Stop acting the goat.'

‘Rob, stop,' said Janine, and this time she did burst into tears.

Janine was left in the outside office, where the duty brigadier, at the sight of his superior officer, had slid his volume of cowboy stories under an impressive heap of forms. Van der Valk switched lights on in his office, pointed Rob to a chair, sat at the desk, opened a drawer to get paper out, and stopped suddenly dead, staring. His expensive cavalry ballpoint was sitting on the desk looking at him; some detective had recovered it from the street where it had fallen and lovingly returned it. He looked at it, put it back in his pocket, and got a cheap plastic one out of the drawer. This failed to write. He sighed and went back to the expensive one.

He wrote a few lines at the top of the paper. What a bore these things were. Name, christian name, date and place of birth, domicile and profession. He scrabbled in the drawer, looking for cigars; there weren't any, and he lit a cigarette instead.

‘You want to make a statement?'

‘I don't know.'

‘You got some sort of story – something I'm likely to believe?'

‘No.'

‘All right. Unwind. The painter's here, in a cell, thinking up lies to tell, like everybody else, but he's safe in my pocket. He knew all right who killed Fischer. He heard or saw something or someone – he was in his shed affair he has there, working, about thirty metres away. And what he knows, he'll tell me. Right? Don't worry overmuch about protecting Janine. The worst that's likely to be against her is that she didn't know how to tell me what she knew.'

‘And that's not too bad?'

‘Of course it's not. But she was with this painter. Furtively, as though they'd agreed to meet to work out a good tale, since I was still hanging round the riding-school. I've been waiting for something of this sort.'

‘You've really got him?'

‘Since I tell you,' impatiently.

Then ask away. I'll tell you what I can,' dully. His voice struck the policeman.

‘You aren't really thinking she slept with him, are you?'

‘I'd like to believe she wasn't, but since you ask – I'm afraid yes – she might have been.' Van der Valk was a good deal taken aback though he tried not to show it. It didn't fit in with what he thought he knew of Janine! He thought about it, putting the point of the pen on the desk, sliding his thumb and finger down it, letting it turn in his hand, and doing it again. Thinking, calling himself a fool.

‘Remember when I met you first? – we were talking about the bikes. You're a champion – you've got everything. Yet you aren't quite happy with it all, might I be right? That it could have been better?'

‘I was as good as it was given me to be,' blunt. ‘Never in the very top rank – you've got to win a Tour – you've got to win two. And how many got there? Coppi, Bobet – you can count them on one hand.'

‘I remember your using the word aristocracy – it struck me.'

‘What's that got to do with it? There's isn't any aristocracy – the real one is something you're born in – you can't make it any other way.'

‘Something your children can do but you can't.'

‘Yes.' A slow careful look. ‘I haven't got any grudge against Janine, you know.'

‘You feel any grudges against someone like Francis La Touche, who is what you call born in it?'

‘Why should I? I belong on a bike – that's where I look good. A few years ago I thought I'd like to play tennis, and joined a club. I just wanted to play tennis, but I got mixed up with more of these butchers that think tennis is a game for gentlemen. They wanted to get into the act. I was being lumped along with them so I gave it up.'

‘And the hotel?'

‘What about it?'

‘You aimed it at a wealthy, snobbish group of customers – the riding-school crowd.' Rob looked at him almost pityingly for so much naïveté.

‘It's a shop. As long as they're paying you money they don't find you getting above yourself. Just don't mix with them on their own ground.'

‘And Janine? She was snubbed. She reacts her own way, putting on that act of “I'm only a Belgian peasant, and proud of it, and I wave it like a flag and don't care who sees it”. But she went on riding. That's what one has to do, no? Pay no heed.'

‘She loves horses. She wanted a horse more than she did clothes or a fur or a car or anything. She'd give it all up to keep the horse.'

‘Like the painter.'

Rob stared sullenly, leaning back in the chair, his hands pushed aggressively in his pockets.

‘What about the painter?'

‘They've that in common. The fellow's a real artist – he loves horses more than anything. Like Francis says – horses don't cheat. Horses can mean more than human beings. What I don't understand is that Janine is a very loyal person – and not just to her horse.'

Rob took a long time answering; Van der Valk lit another cigarette.

‘It was my fault,' at last, leadenly. ‘I didn't see things her way. She used to come home at first and tell me about the stupid stiff women with their airs, talking all gracious and affected. I told her to stop it – it made me mad – to get out of that dump. She wouldn't, said she didn't care. That they looked on a horse like a witch on a
broomstick, and she didn't give threepence for them. I thought I'd make it easier for her: if she didn't care why should I? I bought this place on the coast – a sort of challenge, see? And then she was furious I hadn't told her – she wanted to go back to France – she'd always wanted that, she said. I would have liked that too – I didn't have the nerve, and just out of obstinacy I stayed here then. I wanted to stick it out, to prove that this was my place where I belonged, that I could show them – all those ones that laughed and said I was just a peasant on a bike and would never be able to run a place like a restaurant. They liked my money, though – they rolled up their sleeves and moved in when they thought they saw how to take it away. That the money came from bikes – that didn't worry them.'