Fever (16 page)

“Have I already told you about Marie Cleman?” he asked. At that his wife laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks. She didn't even calm down when Studer asked irritatedly, “What's up now?”

“Nothing . . . nothing,” she gasped. “Give me a cigarette,” she said, when she had got her breath back. Like Marie Cleman, Hedy drew the smoke deep into her lungs.

“She's like you,” Studer said.

“Is she now?” And was he sweet on her? Frau Studer wanted to know.

Sweet on her?
Chabis
! Studer had gone red. No, he wasn't in love. He liked Marie Cleman, certainly, but like a daughter, and he was worried about her safety. Why had she rung up that evening? From the station in Basel? Was she going somewhere?

In the Studers' apartment the telephone was in the bedroom. That was necessary because of his work. How often had it rung during the night! And he'd had to get up and spend hours out in the cold keeping a house under surveillance . . . Studer went into the bedroom and looked up Cleman-Hornuss, Josepha in the telephone directory. There she was, 12 Spalenberg.

It took a good five minutes before he had the connection. Then he heard the monotonous buzz, rising, fading away, starting again. In his mind's eye Studer could see the empty apartment, the tiny kitchen, which was basically a passageway, and the yellowing enamel containers on the lopsided shelf: “Flour”, “Salt”, “Coffee”.

Slowly he replaced the receiver, pulled his handkerchief out from under the pillow and blew his nose. It echoed round the apartment. Then the doorbell in the hall rang.

Telegram:

Sûreté Paris Inspector Studer Thunstrasse Bern stop Giovanni Collani enlisted 20 Casablanca stop Training Bel-Abbès stop hospital orderly 21 to 23 stop 24 corporal 25 sergeant stop
downgraded to corporal 28 away 5 days without leave stop 29 quartermaster Géryville stop August 32 volunteered for mounted infantry Gourama Morocco stop deserted 28 September 32 stop disappeared without trace.

Madelin

“Disappeared without trace,” Studer repeated, with a look at his wife. “And the priest claims he saw Collani here in Bern, together with Marie Cleman in a car number BS 3437. The car was a Buick, from the Agence Américaine in Basel, where it had been hired by —”

Frau Studer put her hands over her ears. “Stop,” she begged. “It's enough to drive a person up the wall.”

But Studer carried on regardless, as if he were repeating a lesson he'd learnt off by heart, “by a man with a sallow complexion and a woollen scarf covering the lower part of his face. According to Ernst Rüfenacht's statement, the car was parked outside 44 Gerechtigkeitsgasse and a tall man was standing lookout beside it. And Madelin told me on the phone today that Jakob Koller, the stockbroker who took Marie to Paris and has since disappeared, was 6′2″. That's tall, isn't it, Hedy?”

“It certainly is.”

“Perhaps,” said Studer, scratching his forehead, “perhaps it was Jakob Koller laughing at me over the telephone in Basel. But what's Marie doing in all this? She doesn't fit into the case at all. I keep thinking she must be married to Koller . . . or perhaps she's distantly related to him? She lived in the same apartment with him in Paris. So what? Say what you like, but she's a nice girl is Marie, a nice girl,” Studer insisted.

He fell silent. Frau Studer was sitting in her chair under the lamp again. She kept her head bowed so
that the sergeant could not see the little smile playing round the corners of her mouth.

“If the girl was living together with Koller, Jakob Koller, I mean, then she'll have had a good reason. She may smoke, but that doesn't mean anything. You sometimes smoke too, Hedy . . .” he said, and it sounded like an accusation. He didn't drop his voice, but drew out the words, as if he were expecting her to protest.

But there was no protest, just a quiet enquiry. Frau Studer asked if the sergeant was sad he couldn't get his sweetheart on the telephone

“
Chabis
!” said Studer. But he couldn't stop himself blushing. He stood there, his big hands in the tiny pockets of his pyjamas, rocking on the balls of his feet, his Brissago jutting up like an aggressive gesture. “What, me? A grandfather?”

A strange noise came from the table. To his astonishment, Studer saw his wife's shoulders shaking. Had Hedy taken the matter so much to heart? he wondered, full of concern. Was she perhaps crying because she sensed her husband was about to go away, a long way away, exposing himself to dangers that . . .? Studer went over to the table, placed a comforting hand on her quivering shoulders and told her there was no cause to be sad. Millions, he said, millions were at stake, and he couldn't leave Marie on her own.

At that Frau Studer looked up and the sergeant realized, much to his annoyance, that Hedy was laughing again. She was laughing so unreservedly that it was only with great difficulty that she managed to get out the words, which struck the sergeant like a slap in the face.

“Oh Köbu,” she cried, as she got her breath back, “you are stupid.”

She wrapped up the romper suit in tissue paper. Her shoulders were still twitching as she explained in a matter-of-fact voice: “So you want to go and look for Collani, to see if the clairvoyant corporal is Cleman-Koller, the geologist. That's right, isn't it? You hope you might find Marie while you're at it – but only after you've secured the millions. You know now where they are: Gourama SSE cork-oak rock red man. And I'll tell you something else for free: the treasure is two kilometres south-south-east of Gourama. And you've asked to see the Old Man about it, haven't you? Should I pack your suitcase? If you're going tomorrow afternoon, you can come back for lunch beforehand. I'll make you grilled sausage with potato salad and some onion soup. You like that.”

Studer muttered something incomprehensible. He was happy with the proposed menu, but it rankled that his wife did not take him seriously, so he maintained a dignified silence and withdrew to the bedroom.

“Good night,
Vatti
,” Frau Studer called out.

Vatti
! That was too much!

His felt slippers flew into two different corners of the room. Then Studer turned out the light. Let the woman see how she managed in the dark . . .

Commissaire Madelin goes to ground

The chief of police was a quiet man who did not look at all like a man who spent his time indoors. His face was tanned because he went climbing in the mountains summer and winter. He also bred dogs, and that morning he was in a good mood because one of his bitches, Mayfair III, had had a litter of four pups. Studer had to listen in reverent silence for a quarter of an hour to the chief discoursing on the difference between various pedigrees.

Then the sergeant told him his clairvoyant story.

In every public organization there is at least one man whom one might call the salt of the whole organization. He's looked on as a bit of an outsider and not too much routine work is demanded of him; the hum-drum, everyday business is kept away from him, or, rather, he sees to it himself that it's kept away from him. This man only comes into his own – and this is his value – when there's something out of the ordinary to be done. Then he is needed, then he's indispensable. When things are slack and he lounges around or goes for a stroll, his bosses turn a blind eye, since they know that the time will come when the man will be indispensable: he'll find ways of unravelling a tangled situation, he'll know how to put another organization, that has got a bit above itself, in its place; in a couple of hours this outsider will clear up a piece of urgent business a plodding pen-pusher would not be able to sort out in two weeks.

Sergeant Studer was the salt of the Bern cantonal police, and that was presumably one of the reasons why the chief of police raised no objection to the his planned trip. The other was not difficult to guess: Chief Inspector Gisler of the city police had prepared the ground. For a moment Studer had the feeling he could read the thoughts making their sluggish way through his boss's mind. Millions! was one of them. Another was: Studer's always been a bit round the bend. If he finds the money, I'll get the glory; if he doesn't, we can always pension him off. And the third: it makes no difference whether Studer's lounging around here or goes off on holiday and makes the Basel force look fools. But not one
rappen
expenses.

It was this final thought Studer took up when, after he had finished explaining the case, he said, “There's nothing more I can do here. I could have stopped the priest leaving, but then I'd have had to lock him up, and I didn't want to do that.” He repeated his joke about the Vatican, that he didn't want to get into an argument with the Pope. “The others I don't know. I can't sort things out over the phone, I have to go to Paris, perhaps even further. I need to find the geologist's secretary, Koller, and the clairvoyant corporal. As you yourself well know, Herr Direktor, you can only solve this kind of thing on the spot. I know where the millions are buried – if those millions really exist.”

“On the one hand there's the millions . . .” said the chief of police. He liked saying “On the one hand – on the other hand”. Studer grinned to himself because he could see the desperate efforts his superior was making to find the second part of the sentence. Finally it came: “ . . . on the other the Basel police. We'll show them what we Bernese are made of.” He cleared his throat with a dry cough.

“Exactly, Herr Direktor. Basel, the force that sends a defective instead of a detective.”

“Right, then, Studer,” said the chief of police, getting up. “All the best. You can go – but at your own expense. If it's a success, you'll be reimbursed. If you make a fool of yourself, it'll just have to come out of your own pocket. Agreed?”

Studer nodded. “Agreed.” The proposal was not unexpected. During the night he'd worked out that his savings would just about cover the trip.

“Fine,” said the chief of police, gently propelling Studer towards the door. “And if you should happen across a new breed of dogs – perhaps the Kabyle have mountain sheepdogs – bring me a couple of pups. Pedigree pups, of course!”

Moroccan sheepdogs! Studer thought. With a pedigree! But he did not protest, he merely said goodbye to the chief of police, who, in Studer's humble opinion, was also one pup short of a full litter.

Studer had decided not to stay with Madelin this time. He needed some elbow room, so he went to a small hotel with the poetic name of Au Bouquet de Montmartre. It was close to Pigalle station.

Then he took the Métro. As ever when, after even a short absence, he breathed in the air with its smell of dust, hot metal and disinfectant, his heart beat faster. There was always something stimulating about Paris, even when you knew you were not interested in the kind of stimulation respectable citizens associated with Paris.

At the Police Judiciaire Commissaire Madelin greeted his Swiss colleague with, “Hey, it's you!” and “How's things?” and “Playing truant?”, immediately
sending the office boy to a nearby café for a bottle of Vouvray – it was half past eight in the morning. Then he asked Studer what all this business with telephones and telegrams and trips to Paris was about.

Studer had to tell him the whole story. He did this with such a guileless air that it never even occurred to Madelin that he might be concealing something from him. The simple sergeant from Bern told him about Father Matthias, who had run off, about Marie Cleman, about the two old women who had been gassed, just as the clairvoyant corporal had prophesied. But he did not tell him about the temperature chart he had found and deciphered. Careful, he told himself, careful. Otherwise the French will snatch the treasure from under your nose.

Madelin listened, occasionally interrupting with exclamations such as, “That's not possible!” – in imitation of Grock, the clown – and “You don't say!” And when Studer told him of the foiled attack on him, Madelin nodded his gaunt head in appreciation: “Bravo, Studère. Quiet little Switzerland! Perhaps it'll eventually reach international level – as far as crime is concerned, I mean. You've obviously made a start.”

Very amusing, very amiable, very condescending of Madelin, the divisional head whom the dozen or so inspectors at his beck and call addressed, with respectful familiarity, as
patron
. For he was a power in the land, was Commissaire Madelin, tall and lean and grey, like a stone statue on the portal of a Gothic cathedral – a statue that drank Vouvray for preference.

“And what can I do for you?” he asked. Studer thought for a moment. All sorts of things occurred to him, but they were not the kind of thing that could be easily translated into precise questions. Before he left he had checked at the registry office in Bern,
more out of conscientiousness than in the hope of discovering anything new. The marriage between Cleman, Victor Alois and Hornuss, Sophie had been duly recorded. The geologist had given Frutigen in the Bernese Oberland as his place of residence. When Studer telephoned the council offices in Frutigen, the clerk told him Cleman had settled there in 1905 and made the usual arrangements with the tax authorities; he had produced Belgian papers. There was no record of a brother . . .

“What I wanted to ask,” said Studer, “was how do you get on with the War Ministry?”