The King of the Rainy Country (7 page)

Van der Valk was distracted momentarily. First by the stewardess, who had so much hair that he wondered for several moments how on earth she managed to keep her cap on, and then by the beer he asked for. It was perfectly good beer, but by the peculiar snobbish alchemy of airlines it was Danish. Because, he thought indignantly, we are flying at three or four thousand feet over the territory of the Federal Republic, German beer becomes immediately too proletarian for the likes of us – and I shell out four and sixpence for a gold-label Carlsberg as meek as Minnie Mouse. Indignation at this meekness had to simmer down before he could concentrate on Marschal.

Marschal must surely realize that the police hunt for persons reported missing. He might have reckoned on Anne-Marie making no fuss; she hadn't wanted any police – she'd made that clear enough. He must, too, have thought that Canisius would be unperturbed – and there he had made an error. He had known that his absence made no difference to the business, and he had known that as the heir to the Marschal fortune he was a person of importance in everyone's eyes. Conclusion was, surely, that to fall into the error of supposing that Canisius would take no steps towards having him found he must have imagined that Canisius would be glad to have him gone, out of the way, forgotten even.

Not only had Canisius taken steps – he had taken very drastic steps. An inspector of the criminal brigade had been detached, with wide powers and all expenses guaranteed. As though there had been a crime. Yet there had been no crime. Yes, persuading a
girl under age to run away from her home was a legal offence, but Marschal had not thought of that. Otherwise he must have known that the police would look for this girl, as well as for him. Had he thought that the girl would confuse everything, providing him with a kind of camouflage?

The beer tasted good. Van der Valk reflected that Canisius was paying for it, just as he was for the plane ticket, and cheered up.

Could Canisius have known or guessed something about this girl? That hardly seemed possible. Could he have known or guessed that Marschal might do something of the sort? Something wild, something unstable? Had they known of some secret, some inner flaw in the man? Was that why Canisius had insisted on an inspector of the criminal brigade? And if that was the case, why hadn't he been told?

Was Marschal unbalanced? Had he perhaps done something criminal in the past? Could this German girl be in any danger?

No no. He shook it off; that was worse than unsupported theorizing, that was senseless vaporizing. The Head Commissaris of Police in Amsterdam might be a nervous civil servant, but he would have satisfied himself that there was no crime. If there had been anything criminal, he would have followed the routine pattern, Interpol and all the rest, and he would not have departed from it for twenty millionaires. No, his Highness had behaved in a way that was plausible enough. A millionaire with amnesia, who must not be chased or harried, who must be looked for very quietly and discreetly by a responsible experienced officer – with all his expenses guaranteed – that magic phrase had been enough to quieten his Highness's conscience, no doubt!

It was a grave mistake to get himself hot and bothered about motives, thought Van der Valk. He was an inspector of the criminal brigade: very well, that simply meant that he was a policeman like any other, acting under orders, orders to look for a man, find him, and simply report his whereabouts to Canisius. These orders were not affected by anything he might not know: even if the man were a criminal, it was irrelevant. A little thread had brought him to Köln, where a friendly gesture had put a whole
country's police apparatus in movement for him – Van der Valk knew very well that Heinz Stössel had not, until the discovery of the second bank account with a Napoleonic name, been very convinced that Mr Marschal was responsible for the disappearance of little Dagmar Schwiewelbein. Out of goodwill he had summoned a monstrous expenditure of energy (with sufficient excuse to explain it to his superiors) and had got a positive result, a clue to Marschal's whereabouts, inside forty-eight hours.

The next little thread, in Austria, might take a bit longer, but Van der Valk knew well enough that he would find his man. The frontiers were being watched; Stössel had sent a signal about the missing girl to the police of Innsbruck. He would find him easily enough, and then he would make a phone call, and that would be the end of it. Canisius would come, or send a confidential minion, for a little chat with Jean-Claude. The German girl would be sent home, and any possible criminal charge concerning abduction would be politely forgotten. An incident … Jean-Claude Marschal was not a criminal. There had been no crime.

And Anne-Marie? Would she thank him for all that? She had not been any too enthusiastic at a policeman, however responsible, however experienced, however tactful and discreet, running after her husband. She had yielded eventually, become more open, but she had not lost all suspicion. She had agreed that Marschal should be followed up, but she had made a clear hint that Jean-Claude was not an ordinary person, and a clear appeal to him to make an effort to understand, not to accept everything he was told. Just because he had had some vague clue about those statues, some vague notion about the famous Hepplewhite furniture? Of course not, but she had thought him a little more able than most to realize that this was a peculiar bird. ‘I really do believe …' she had said … What was it exactly that she really did believe?

Was it possible that …? Why, exactly, had Canisius sent an inspector of the criminal brigade? Could there be something more to all this than met the eye?

No, no, and no. He knew nothing, he was simply going to obey orders, follow instructions, Jean-Claude Marschal has not
committed any crime, not even that of abduction; Marschal was not a criminal.

Jean-Claude Marschal has committed no crime … It was a bit like the famous phrase in
Liberty Bar
. William Brown was murdered …

The plane bumped very slightly on concrete, taxied, turned, roared its engines, and relapsed into silence; everybody hustled for the door. The air was stinging cold and there were mountains all around. This was Innsbruck.

*

First of all, Innsbruck was a great deal fuller than he had thought. He got a hotel room, but not without a struggle. Next week, apparently, there would be the final big international competition of the ski season, and the whole of the ‘white circus' would be on parade. The place would swarm with lookers-on and hangers-on, there would be journalists and photographers. And there were, still, any amount of holidaymakers. March or no March, there were forty centimetres of snow right here, and a hundred and twenty on the slopes …

There he was, too, deep in the forty centimetres, with town shoes, and a silly light overcoat that had looked perfectly all right in Köln, but here was absurd. Very well, the Sopex was paying the expenses. He was supposed to find Mr Marschal, but nobody had warned him that he might have to paddle in the snow. He went into the first shop he came to in the Maximilianstrasse, and bought himself a mighty pair of boots, and a lovely loden ‘canadienne' jacket. They tried to sell him the whole damn shop, scenting a novice.

‘I could do with a St Bernard dog.' That shut them up.

Once equipped he had to make his routine call on the police. They weren't a bit interested.

‘Fine place you've picked. We've got all the hotel registrations, naturally, but the valley's full of chalets and houses that would take a year to check. You don't see that, but all these mountain districts are the same. People own a house, good. We know their
name. They let it for a month, the tenants sublet, the subletter camps a dozen pals in the kitchen – do you think we know their names? We don't even get the tourist tax half the time.'

The commissaire's name was Bratfisch. He was rough and tough; rough blond hair, a rough tweed jacket, a pair of shoulders made to burst in doors, and boots like Van der Valk's, made to kick people out of them. Van der Valk leant back in his chair, with his hands in his pockets, and chewed on a matchstick. It was just the fellow's manner, he thought. Plus a message. You damned policemen from the towns in your clean white shirts may think yourselves clever, but don't think that we bow down before you. We are mountaineers.

‘It isn't really my fault that they came here, though,' softly.

‘Ach, of course not. Just that this can't be done one-two-three. Firstly, your birds could be in the Vorarlberg by now, or in the Engadine. Second, they can get very worked up in Köln about a girl that's disappeared but here, one has to realize, these things are a daily occurrence. You know how many girls reported missing I've had here since the season started? I'll tell you – eighteen. The air goes to their heads. They get seduced by beach boys and fall off the tree like cherries. Six weeks later they turn up at their consulates without a sou asking for a ticket home.'

Van der Valk did not mention Jean-Claude Marschal. He knew what answer he would get. That a missing millionaire might be a horrible great headache to some finance company but that all the millions wouldn't put more than twenty-four hours in the day.

Bratfisch obviously felt he had been a little too uncooperative.

‘I'll help you all I can, naturally. Next week it'll be different. This last few days is the worst. Last classic of the season. Blame it on the mountain air. The old women are the worst. They dress up as though they were twenty, leave money and jewels all over their hotel rooms, walk off a terrace leaving mink jackets on the backs of chairs – you know how many people come each year new to the winter sports? Twenty per cent over the year before. And you know what it is here, since the Olympics? Forty per cent. Every man I have is up to the ears and short of sleep. Next Monday
the circus will be gone. Try me then, if you haven't found them. Servus.'

‘Servus,' said Van der Valk. He wasn't particularly bothered.

*

They weren't being disagreeable; it was all perfectly true.

Look at those old women in the tea-room there, gorging on whipped cream. And as for handsome middle-aged men – even if they weren't handsome they looked it in brilliant sweaters and tight ski-trousers: you couldn't see their hair under knitted ski-caps, and you couldn't tell whether they were thirty or fifty; and if they hadn't had girls when they came they had now. German girls, English, Danish, Finnish girls: the Innsbruck Anschluss was as classic as the Kandahar Run.

The wonderful new snowboots were hurting his unaccustomed feet; he hobbled rather over the creaky snow. ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' he muttered, catching sight of his reflection in a round knitted cap with a bobble on the top. But at least he no longer stuck out in this crowd like Miss Bikini-Bust.

The reception desk was full of people writing picture postcards. He asked for a telephone line to Amsterdam, was told there would be an hour's delay, and went into the bar, where he drank gentian and took his boots off surreptitiously in the dim light under the table.

‘Mr Canisius? Van der Valk here. Speaking from the Hotel Kandahar at Innsbruck. He's around here somewhere. He was in Germany. He went off with a girl. Yes, just picked up a young girl and seemingly talked her into leaving home without a word of warning. That got signalled, of course, by the German Police. The two are here now. They'll find it very difficult to leave now, because all the borders are on the lookout. I've no doubt I'll find them, but it's still very crowded with holidaymakers here, and it may take some days. Does this news surprise you?'

‘Not at all,' came Canisius' voice, dry, level, practised at speaking over long-distance telephones. The line was astonishingly good: mountains or not, he could have been in the next room. ‘It
is exactly the kind of unbalanced act I had feared. A possible scandal looming. Now you know why I was emphatic about discretion. Do the local police know all this?'

‘They know about the girl. That is the pretext for my inquiries. Nobody knows about him yet, though the German police know something, naturally, since I had to tell them. They haven't released anything to the press, though.'

‘Good, good. Excellent. I have no doubt that you can find a pretext for keeping Mr Marschal from any further escapades until I can be notified. I will know then what steps to take. I am very pleased that you have got on his traces so quickly; congratulations. Remember, Mr Van de Valk – discretion. He may do something unexpected if he finds himself cornered.'

‘You think that he is unbalanced, do you?'

‘Don't concern yourself about that, my dear inspector,' the voice was silky. ‘Remember that we are all acting for the protection of himself as well as of very considerable interests. Ring me again the moment you have any news. Goodbye now.'

He went and had dinner. He was extremely sleepy from the mountain air, and his leg muscles were aching: he got some stuff from the porter to grease the stiff newness out of the famous snow-boots, and put his legs in hot and cold water. But he was a little overtired and overtense.

He had left his gloves somewhere, and would have to buy some more, and snowglasses. He was beginning to understand Mr Bratfisch, especially after reading the local paper.

He could speak and understand German well enough, but this mountain dialect was a bit beyond him; they had all sorts of words for things that foxed him. He was a bit of a fish out of water here: he had never been on skis in his life, and didn't intend to start, thanks, and get shipped home with plaster on his leg. He would have to do a lot of walking, he could see that. In the snow; on the slopes – those poor leg muscles were going to suffer. Too bad about them.

He didn't understand a thing about Jean-Claude Marschal. To talk about being unbalanced … Running away suddenly with
the tanzmariechen – he was sure there was nothing premeditated about it – was that really unbalanced? Mr Canisius was very quck to say it was. Anne-Marie had remarked that it didn't do to take the word of a Canisius as an infallible guide to understanding Marschal. What sort of a fellow was he? Romantic, impetuous, contemptuous of consequence. There was something paradoxically schoolboyish about a millionaire who has private bank accounts in half the major towns in Europe, keeping them under the names of Napoleonic Marshals. He was giving a romantic dash and sheen to that prosaic money. What was the point? Yes, he thought, he would have to go to the library and get a list of all those Napoleonic characters. Likely as not there was an account here in Innsbruck: he recalled vaguely that there were several Alsatian ones – Strasbourg was a great breeding-ground of marshals – with Germanic names.