No part in your death, p.1
No Part in Your Death, page 1
Also by Nicolas Freeling
The Seacoast of Bohemia
You Who Know
Flanders Sky
Those in Peril
Sand Castles
Not As Far As Velma
Lady Macbeth
Cold Iron
A City Solitary
No Part in Your Death
The Back of the North Wind
Wolfnight
One Damn Thing After Another
Castang’s City
The Widow
The Night Lords
Gadget
Lake Isle
What Are the Bugles Blowing For?
Dressing of Diamond
A Long Silence
Over the High Side
Tsing-Boum
This Is the Castle
Strike Out Where Not Applicable
The Dresden Green
The King of the Rainy Country
Criminal Conversation
Double Barrel
Valparaiso
Gun Before Butter
Because of The Cats
Love in Amsterdam
No Part in Your Death
A Henri Castang Mystery
Nicolas Freeling
Part One
‘Me and Capablanca’
You and Capablanca, thought Castang; how did it go? Something about ‘beautiful creepy remorseless chess.’ Muddled somewhere in his memory with who?—Woody Allen?—catching sight of his face in the glass while cleaning his teeth, trying out a tough snarl, fleeing in terror from the resultant vision.
Perhaps he had bumped the driving mirror getting into the car: perhaps Vera had left it that way: it would take a cop to find out: it wasn’t supposed to be reflecting his face. Put it straight.
The one outside the window was crooked too. Were he an organised man he’d have done it all before starting: he wasn’t. Were it a slightly grander car one could straighten it from inside instead of waiting for a red light: it wasn’t. Cheap small car, as most of his things were, except for his hats, his shoes … but most of the Commissaire of Police felt cheap, was cheap. He wasn’t much good at beautiful creepy remorseless chess, neither.
A blowing equinoctial day in early October, with the side wind leaning on the car at street corners, the poplar trees streaming and losing their leaves, the willows yellowed and half bare already. A nice time of year and one he liked.
He himself was getting on for forty and feeling his age in traffic. He would still take his bicycle to go to work, but nowadays he looked out of the window first, at the weather.
The building where he worked was a massive and dreary block of the previous century, in the ponderous rectilinear architecture then thought suitable for schools, orphanages or madhouses; and suitably it housed some hundreds of functionaries supporting state bureaucracies of the sort whose purpose nobody can guess and whose meaning if they have one is carefully concealed. The Regional Service of Police Judiciaire is distinguishable from Youth and Sport next door by thick wire screens over all the windows on the street side, which trap all the available dust and send the lighting bill up. It is to be presumed that they also stop people jumping out of these windows.
As a Commissaire, and thus a senior official, Castang had an office on the courtyard side, where there are plane trees, older and rather decrepit horse-chestnuts, and a lot of parked cars. The offices are large and the windows can be made to open in fine weather. For no amount of promotion or money could he have been persuaded to work in the municipal services, who are housed in a modern block of minute boxes whose windows do not open at all.
The half-dozen department heads have supplemented officially provided furniture with objects to their taste and choice. Castang had a massive flat-topped desk of the same period as the building, in a wood said to be oak, and a bentwood Victorian hat-stand. Divisional Commissaire Adrien Richard, who commands the SRPJ, is both old and old-fashioned. He is also highly intelligent and has much force of character. When he retires, as he will be forced to any day now since he is past sixty, nobody knows what will happen. Castang does not like to think about it. Monsieur Richard has sought and encouraged a close personal friendship with this particular subordinate. Not very long ago, Castang, then a junior commissaire heading the Serious Crimes brigade, got fairly badly shot up. Richard managed to keep him on as chief of staff. He had learned to be patient and fairly efficient with the administrative detail.
Bits of the place are modern. The ground floor and much of the basement are full of electronics. We have learned from Germany that communications are the secret of modern police work. Mm, we have still a long way to go. There are numerous different police forces in France, and they all dislike one another intensely. Monsieur Richard believes (for himself) in a great deal of old-fashioned privacy and is guarded by a dragon called Fausta who had been startlingly pretty as a young girl and now—she must be approaching thirty—has matured into considerable and serene beauty.
He believes too in leaving department heads alone, facing their responsibilities. It is Castang’s job to pounce upon young inspectors who daydream of obscenities while picking their noses. But Richard likes to see all his senior staff every day, and face to face. Castang is first on this list. He opened his window, which the cleaning woman always shuts, turned the central heating down quite a lot, and spent a quarter of an hour with all the paper on his desk before going along the passage. He does not shake hands with Fausta: Richard has abolished this ridiculous French habit along with much else that is meaningless (one can do less with the quantities of paper from Paris, but one is a filter for the more preposterous instructions).
“Good morning,” said Richard, who was making his daily tour of the flowers.
This isn’t at all French either: they hate flowers. German and of course Dutch policemen are strong on horticulture. Richard’s wife Judith, who most illogically is Spanish, is a tremendous gardener. For years and years Richard threw out all the plants with which she sought to humanise PJ offices. But he has learned at last to throw out the abstractions that e French thought, instead. Like all middle-aged converts to a new creed he is even more Catholic than the Pope. Fausta says he now talks to the plants, but she may have invented this. He is meticulous though with his little scissors. A tall and quite elegant man, with that smooth kind of silver hair and a tendency to bow ties, he looks ludicrous pottering at those damned-geraniums-again. Do not think, however, that he listens with only half an ear. He knows all about the paperwork on Castang’s desk; is adept at the difference between making a verbal précis and gliding over the surface. At sixty-two he is in excellent health and offensively spry. Castang does not know whether Paris regards this as an argument against retirement.
They went over current affairs in the usual way together, exchanged a variety of reports and dossiers. Richard saves up any surprises—mostly unpleasant—there may be, to drop them casually at blank moments. He calls this ‘gingering up the soldiery.’ Castang calls it self-indulgent dramatisation, but he’d better not say so in office hours.
“Paris has a new, and tedious, invention.” Pause for coat-trailing, which one knows better than to interrupt. “We’re going to join another club.”
Paris is always doing this. There are plenty of fairly futile inventions like the Common Agricultural Policy, made more or less respectable by long usage. Ministers get together to chat about finance or fish, and there are interminable proposals to unify and codify one’s attitude towards bombs or sulphur dioxide, instantly torpedoed by chauvinism and umbrage-taking. Recently, because of terrorists, there’s been a lot on the judicial level. Ministers sign agreements: all the countries then refuse to ratify them, because of surrendering sovereignty. There’s not one of us that has sovereignty over the seat of his own trousers, but simultaneous with umbrage-taken it’s a thing they go on about. Democratically elected representatives of the people have this in common with elderly bigots: the less their virtue is threatened the more prudishly do they defend it.
“What’s it now?”
“There’s an Alpine Club for flatfeet. Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Italy. We’ve been hoity-toiting this for some time, but the place has got so full of gangsters claiming political asylum that Paris had their arm twisted. Dragging flatfeet suddenly full of enthusiasm.”
“So the Quai des Orfèvres goes climbing Alps, and so what?”
“Totally mistaken, boy, this is you: don’t waste your breath saying no: it’s a decision.”
“No.”
“Out of my hands: I got designated myself, the sous-chef said I was too old, there was a wrangle, I was told abruptly to find a suitable substitute among the more intelligent of my senior staff; you’re the most suitably moronic and that’s it.”
“Why here, dear God, why not Dijon, Lyon? Trust that old bastard not to pick Marseille, but—”
“Stuck a pin, no doubt; save your breath for the address you will be expected to deliver to the congress.”
“About what for gossake?”
“Anything you like as long as it’s not terrorism.” This entry into international limelight gave Castang no joy.
“My work.”
“Nonsense, you’ll only be away a week. You do no work anyhow.” This is called hardening the attitude, or sometimes heightening the tone; mulish or m utinous faces having been perceived. “And what there is, I’ll do. You’d prefer that to staying here and doing mine.”
“Do understand, you silly thing; I’m looking for some promotion for you and this is fertile terrain for acquiring merit.”
“Grease marks.”
“Rubbish, there’ll certainly be some senior medulla oblongata from the Quai, with a watching brief for Paris, but nobody’s asking you to carry his coffee cups for him, and now you will kindly put a stop to this arguing.”
“Getting sent like a bloody parcel and I don’t even know where to.” Oh well, the police is supposed to be disciplined.
A couple of weeks later, and Castang found himself in München, a city called Munich by the French. It took a couple of weeks for oracles to pronounce and wheels to turn in Paris. Also for a German talent, that of organising details, to express itself in some beautifully polished paperwork with translations in several languages, like the Operating Instructions on a new coffee machine.
It had also to be later because of the Oktoberfest: nobody goes then, because far too many people do go then. It is the most colossal piss-up known to the human species. This conference would be a piss-up too, because as Richard remarked they always are, but there would be less folk, less noise, and less Bavarian bonhomie. Not quite so many ambulances in the street: the best thing that can be said for the Oktoberfest is that it kills fewer people than the Carnival at Rio.
Castang had also time to organise some sordid details of his own. It is all very well being invited to a piss-up and having your expenses paid, but when your wife wants to come too … These official or functionary kind of get-togethers are very old-fashioned, with a clubby atmosphere. There can easily be hearty laughter of a greasy kind; a perfume of the nightclub and the bordel in the cigarsmoke. Vera wasn’t having any of this nonsense.
In the first place she is Czech, and Bavaria is more than halfway home: in fact it has a common border with home. Vera has not been home in over ten years now: it is no longer ‘home.’ She had a very strong family feeling, and the brutality of the break was to her exceedingly painful. She had said to Castang, immediately after the ‘desertion’ “You are my family now.” Not being a total imbecile and having moreover no family of his own he has not done too badly, but that this has been a very traumatic affair indeed there is no doubt. Shrinks indeed had said—he hated shrinks and so did she—that her semi-paralysis, lasting some years, was hysterical in origin. Fell off the bars and hurt her spine? Yes of course, but guilt plays a rôle in this, you know. Leaving her half t’ other side of the Curtain. She has cured herself. She walks, particularly since having a baby, as near as possible to normally: there is a slight limp. She had told all the shrinks to fuck off: there is fear of them as well as contempt for them. But never, never does she speak of this.
Was it then not a bit odd to want to go to Munich? Even a bit ominous?—sort of tempting providence a wee bit? She is robust about this.
“I like it, that’s all. I’d like to see it again. Beer, and music, and the waitresses wearing boots, and baroque churches. They say the Orient starts at Vienna: well, Central Europe starts at Munich. I’ll feel at home.”
“Home is supposed to be where I am,” jealously.
“Well, you’ll be there too, won’t you?” Childish answer to a childish remark. There is no more to be said. She is not jealous in any crude sense. She does not wish to keep him under her eye: she does not suspect him of wanting to sneak off and fumble flesh, overstimulated by fleisch in pots, or beer in more pots. She shows perfect trust because she is perfectly trustworthy. Whoever’s tit gets lecherously eyed, it isn’t Vera’s. She manages this without any shadow of prudery. Strength of character, something seldom encountered in reality.
Financial fiddling has been called for. The plane ticket allowed by the administration has been turned into a train: the expensive hotel room laid on by the Germans bargained for a much cheaper one with no bath, and the Commissaire’s bank account will have to be stretched. However, trust Vera, who in these circumstances isn’t artistic a bit: hardheaded Central European housewife, all the way.
Strangely, he has never been in Munich before. A comment perhaps upon French provincialism, since it is no further from Paris than Marseille. A comment upon antique associations of thought, since after efforts at recollection he said ‘Daladier and Chamberlain: François-Ponçet. The Men of Munich.’ He will be charmed by the Feldherrnhalle, where those psychopaths had removed statues of rather un-martial-seeming generals and replaced them with utterly ludicrous SS iron men. This episode in Bavarian history will strike him as being more farcical than anything else. The inhabitants could say, like Evelyn Waugh after writing Gilbert Pinfold, “This was the time that we went mad”: it is what happens when you put dangerous drugs on top of drinking too much. Paranoid hallucinations take one utterly over. The beautiful square is drenched in sunlight even when it rains: the sun of the Wittelsbachs, a generous tyranny.
We can’t efface the twelve years of horrible abomination and we would not want to try. But Castang knows that when insane the human species commits appalling crimes. We can see them every day. The twelve years of insanity can be understood better in the perspective of several hundred years in the history of a city where the flowering of European civilisation can be studied with advantage; because it isn’t any better anywhere.
There is another thing a policeman knows: it is always the people who have suffered least from a criminal action who are the longest rancorous and the least generous. A Munich beer-cellar is the best place in the world for telling Jewish jokes.
A bit of sleight of hand takes place in the Europäischer Hof, pompous hotel where Castang has been booked in; full as usual of Japanese Congressists wearing little plastic labels, and the loud voices of Conservative Members of Parliament, draped in the Union Jack and audible above all else. He picked up some literature, and a handy little map of the city. Walking back, he found Vera happily installed opposite the world’s biggest beer hall. “I hope we get some sleep,” he said. The music will in fact be rather pleasant and if anything, soporific.
They have arrived at five in the afternoon. There is time for Castang to change into his go-to-meeting suit and the most urbane of his hats, since the first get-acquainted session is at half past seven, and informal. Dinner an hour later, rather more formal. Time for a stroll, and to orient oneselves.
Can we come with you? asks Vera. Just to see your grand hotel, and to know where you are: humbly. Of course, says Castang amused: did you think I’d be ashamed? He has already formed a mental picture of several senior police officials in their Sunday suits, trooping pompously about, aghast at meeting their colleague on the pavement in the company of a limping young woman with a large straw shopping bag and a small child in a pram. For Vera with immoveable obstinacy has refused to leave Lydia behind. Judith (suggested Castang) would look after her while we’re away; it’s ‘only a week.’ Vera turned to marble instantly and said, ‘Out of the question.’ All those pavements—Munich is a large and spacious city—will tire a child of three, and the folding push-chair is added to the luggage. Leave all this to me, said Vera a little snappishly; only women know how to organise things, while men stand about helpless being embarrassed.
Lydia of course who has had an enormous sleep on the train is as fresh as a daisy and quite ready for explorations.
“Now just see to it,” said Castang, being the captain-of-the-ship, “that you’ve plenty of money and enjoy yourselves. We aren’t short so don’t begin the economising lark. If she wants an ice-cream give her one.”
“Yes, Master,” says Vera snidely, “we’ll both get pissed.” She was in fact looking forward to delicious dark beer.
The Central Station side of the Karlsplatz is horrible, nothing but sexshops and hamburgers. On the other side an immense and hideous fountain forms the frontier to pleasure, because all the streets are eminently walkable.
Fortune certainly smiled upon Vera since the climate hereabouts can be abominable and instead there was an Indian summer. This is a southern, indeed very Italianate town, one can stroll till midnight as in Spain: Vera stuffed her woolly in the shopping bag and hung the shopping bag on the push-chair, and stopped for all the street musicians. Castang escorted his family as far as the Isar and then it was time to go to that dread palace, parting under one of the numerous statues of the numerous Maximilians.
