Flanders sky, p.1
Flanders Sky, 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
Flanders Sky
A Henri Castang Mystery
Nicolas Freeling
For all my Europeans, and especially for Geneviève, Ursula, Sylvie
For Thucydides, as for any serious Greek thinker, moral issues and conflicts were an integral element in politics, and also what we should call social psychology.
The word for inquire in Greek is historein. A sustained inquiry, a historia.
from the Introduction to
The Peloponnesian War
by Dr M.I. Finley,
Professor of Ancient History,
Cambridge University
PROLOGUE
Henri castang
Before leaving Paris I was sent for.
I had been given to understand, and very clearly, thanks, that I was both promoted and sacked, simultaneously.
Promoted, that’s simple enough: my “step” up, and rather overdue, to the higher rank of Commissaire which is Divisional. An English reader will understand if I say Chief Superintendent; that’s the rough equivalent. But “sacked” needs explaining and so—especially—does “clearly”.
Because a senior Police Judiciaire officer isn’t sacked: he’s like a professor with tenure, irremovable without criminal misbehaviour and a resultant monstrous scandal. He is shifted sideways to what in French is called the garage ramp. He is unstuck. The official jargon says “detached upon special mission”. Which is why I have to emphasise the word “clearly”. Nothing is ever clear about official jargon, because they might want to contradict themselves later; telling the Press that the pronouncement has been misinterpreted.
But he keeps his rank and pay. The pay anyhow. I wouldn’t be using the rank; the Belgians might wonder why the Republic should feel the need to maintain a Divisional Commissaire of the PJ inside their kingdom. Officially I’m just an adviser to a committee working on the standardisation of judicial procedure within the Community. Police officer; pragmatic experience of criminal procedure. Okay: I can also speak some English, some German, even a little Flemish after a few years in the north-eastern corner of France. It’s felt to be an advantage. I also have a Czech wife. That’s a disadvantage, but once safely outside France, less of one.
While still in Paris I am on the establishment, and if a superior officer expresses a wish to see me—polish your shoes and get over there.
Not the PJ. This was RG. But don’t bother with acronyms, let alone their official titles. Even after reading so many spy books, how many English people know the difference between MI5 and 6? I’ll tell you: one’s home and the other’s abroad and each expends a lot of effort in placing banana skins for the other. Secret services, parallel police forces; they’re the same everywhere.
This was a vexatious experience. He was in plain clothes but in rank he’s a General, the sort that has never seen a shot fired in anger, and feels the need for a military manner as well as a skinhead haircut and an orderly to saddlesoap his boots. With me he was peremptory.
“Now Castang, they’re sending you to Bruxelles.” Pronouncing the x; like all the French he can’t be bothered to learn pronunciation of anything Foreign. But with a cunning intonation.
“We’re sending you to Bruxelles.” Oh. Or oho. But silent.
“You’re a patriot, Castang?” Yes, I’m exactly as patriotic as the President’s labrador dog, but there’s no reward for saying so.
“Germany!” Doing the hiss and the clenched teeth. “West or East”—for these were the days when there was still an East—“riddled through by the Stasi. I didn’t say you could smoke. Now Belgium—right here on our doorstep—that’s like their private garden.” This in French is called intoxication. As likely as not he was a Stasi man himself. Falsehood; it’s in their haemoglobin and their leucocytes, the way you and I have cholesterol. Speaking to the general rule, the most patriotic are on CIA retainers, are told to infiltrate the KGB, are manipulated by true-enough Stasi, and get some money to help with the patriotism. They start carrying handkerchiefs then in their sleeves, to show they’ve read the spy novels.
“You will use your eyes and your ears; your trained faculties. I want you permeating that nest of crypto-Marxists like the saffron in the rice.”
You should always be able to detect French spies; fussy about the food. There was no talk about money, patriotism being its own reward. The Stasi is known for meanness, but French parsimony will always go one better: if you have a meeting in the park, don’t imagine we’ll pay for the deckchairs.
I decided to say nothing about this and especially not to Vera. Czech Stapo has been sensible enough to see her as a poor prospect, but I’ve had occasional nightmares in which the French thought she should start being patriotic.
Ay de mí. I get out of the PJ, where I never thought about my country but did hope I was of some use to society, and now there’s a new crowd to make me shit. You find this scene ludicrous? I thought it so myself.
Later on, I was to find it less funny.
CHAPTER ONE
Henri Castang
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did.
I don’t know why there should be no capital letters. I think it’s an American poet, and he even spelt his name this way: e e cummings. Harold taught me the poem. He is literary, as jurists go. And I have been told, a good many times, that I’m too literary for an ex-policeman.
But this, he says is plainly the pretty how town. And we, the Functionaries of the European Community, are anyone. You notice the capital letters. As he remarks there are far too many around here, in far too many languages, and Mr cummings did well to abolish them. The town itself has too many names. Bruxelles, in French. The x is a very Belgian letter. Pronounced as a double-ess, which is pretty close (but not close enough for some) to the Flemish Brussel. And of course the English call it Brussels, pronounced like sprouts. We mostly call it Bruce. We—I mean my family, myself—have been living here for a few months now, and are just beginning to find our way about.
Harold, officially Mr Claverhouse and my chief, heads one of the Juridical Services in one of the numerous departments of the over-many European Institutions. You see? No, I’m not going to try to explain. It is too complicated, and it is far too dotty. We can’t even talk about our part of the town. It does not belong to us, we pay very high rents for it, officially we’re only here on sufferance and some would claim that we aren’t even here at all: that the whole thing’s an illusion. It explains the surrealist cast of the poem.
Women and men (both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they saved their isn’t they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain
You are, I hope, beginning to get the picture. No punctuation but “If you are going to understand,” said Harold … because Community prose, in whatever language, is just like this. A skill is called for in the reading; and in the interpretation.
He had invited us (colleague and colleague’s wife) to a Christmassy party at his home. Vague, fairly cynical; notoriously Harold is clearing off people to whom he owns hospitality, but I can remember this particular Christmas and so will you. It was the moment when Ceausescu, Genius of the Carpathians, got his come-uppance in Roumania. And when the Brandenburger Tor was thrown open between East and West Berlin: hooligans, mostly British, climbed on top and damaged the Quadriga: police and firemen from both Berlins spent the next day clearing up the beer bottles: HistoryBeingMade.
Lots of the funcs huddle together in a classy ghetto called Off-Louise. So-called because the Porte Louise is the city’s grandest gateway and the Avenue (full of banks and posh shops) leads away southward towards the forest country, now all autoroute-exchange and flossy suburb: there are a few trees left. We do not live Off-Louise. The rents are too high and Vera dislikes the quarter; too many funcholes. Nor does Harold. We live eastwardly (most func offices are on the southeast side) and Harold lives further south, in quite a large and decidedly grand villa, with a garden. Around Christmas it was not garden weather and in the house was a monstrous scrum of funcs and wives, drinking hard. Iris floated about hostessing, in a n expensive black frock, looking very fine.
We have not been here before. One couldn’t tell much from looking since at this kind of party you clear away anything that’s pretty or valuable, if you’ve any sense. A nice house. He must pay a hell of a rent. But Harold is a senior func, and very well paid himself, besides the generous allowances for ‘abroad’, which to most of them is a frightful fate, demanding heavy compensations. We mingled, as is expected of us: plenty of house champagne to help it along. Some dottiness is observable. Soap in the downstairs lav was Roger & Gallet. Upstairs, reported Vera, was kitchen-Marseille. So I sank a barb, next day. Which is what Harold likes; does it himself continually: it’s his style, to promote outrage.
“Yes. Thinking about it. Important point. Marseille’s soapier. Olive oil in it? Or maybe Jews?” Now this is downright offensive, since Harold is not Jewish, but I know better than to react. Part of his “abrasive” side, and makes him a lot of enemies, which he enjoys. It was displayed on my very first day, when he invited me to lunch: there were out-of-season green beans.
“Where do these come from? Senegal, is it? Thought so. Smell of nigger sweat.” He rubs your nose in it. The best defence is attack. Like his big Cuban cigars; he’ll blow the smoke in your face. Or his braces, all outrageous and much displayed. His fearful rudeness to secretaries; they laugh, and some thrive on it, and others perhaps don’t. “Who have they given you? Brigitte? Is that the one with the cocksucking mouth?” Oh, says his own secretary, Miss Hunted-Down, it’s just Harold being Evelyn Waugh again. I have a lot to learn, and all this literature, too.
That ghastly party! Vera, who is Czech, was in a stew about her abandoned, unforgotten Heimatland, not showing it—she is shy at parties; determined not to let me down. Conversation, in the usual mix of Bruce-French and slightly Germanic English, with some ringing British voices ruling the hubbub; everybody was telling everyone else what the Czechs ought to be doing. And the question that comes up new at every party: where on earth do they get those clothes?
Harold has a smile and a witty phrase for all. His electricity is such that you look up expecting him beside you, when he’s at the other end of the room. No cigar, for he is more disciplined than he likes to appear. His suit is extravagant in both cut and material—and he is a big man, a robust presence—but it is his face which dominates, massive and Roman. A portrait bust off a triumphal arch, and even his hair is in keeping. Thick and it waves. No need of a laurel wreath to hide a bald spot, and it’s fair, neither dusty nor sandy. It can’t be a piece because it grows, and can’t be dyed because there are silver threads, if few for a man in his middle fifties. The cop which I still am (there are habits one does not shake off) notices the big flat ears and heavy lobes, the wide mobile mouth, even more than the nose which waves at one, menacingly, or the tiny glinty eyes. Perhaps when young he’d been a baby elephant, but is so no longer: too mobile, and too damn quick on his feet. No doubt he’d be florid if exposed to the sun. The colouring is very northerly. Harold Fairhair, but the secretaries call him ‘Beaumains’ for his beautifully shaped hands. Surely he would have made a formidable counsel, and any moment now an alarming judge? No doubt. Chose not to, it would seem.
Oh dear. Funcs cover every imaginable political opinion, but I have been trapped among the right-wingers, and the wives are worse. Seized by the Pudding Bore (who is forever telling one new recipes) and the Social Bore (armed with the very latest statistics about alcoholism and the criminal tolerance of the French government towards smoking). I couldn’t care less about the French government. Where the hell is Vera? Oh, these Englishwomen who rule everything by divine right—for the memsahib is still quite convinced that her Empire is here and now. Why can one not ship them to Sicily? I am myself contemplating permanent exile in Pantelleria (the Pudding Bore’s husband is a decent man, alarmingly knowledgeable about restaurants but quite sound on pesticides) … There is Vera, miles away, and very thick with Iris.
I have not met Iris before, though Harold talks about her a lot and in an oddly public way. “Iris would be appalled.” As though she were present—“mustn’t say things like that, you’ll shock Iris,” as well as commands to secretaries; “Ring my wife, would you, and make sure she hasn’t forgotten the cheese.” One had somehow expected her to be not quite presentable; hideous or gross. Quite the contrary is the case. Her electricity is like that of French country districts at the end of a line which fades suddenly: why is this toaster taking such a time to pop up? Here she greeted me with warmth, and then wasn’t there any more, until one noticed her standing there beside one, but neither uttering nor, I am sure, listening, though her manners are perfect in an old-fashioned ‘ladylike’ style.
Things the men notice: she is tall and appears taller because very slim. Nicely dressed. Vera when we were in Paris used to get couturier frocks secondhand, and showed skill in making them fit her own rather meagre figure; this looks like the real thing. Iris’ figure can be seen, and is finely proportioned. Hard to say whether she’s really pretty. Huge magnificent eyes set wide apart. Harold’s, when you can see them at all, are a bright hard china blue: these are deep, deep sapphires. And an immense full-lipped mouth, but inbetween the nose looks insignificant and shapeless. She makes the most of these good features, for the frock is cut high and she has dark shaggy hair cut ‘urchin’, close to the head framing a delicate oval face, and with a ragged fringe deep all around the forehead, to show up those amazing eyes. In a black rollneck pullover and diamond earrings she’d be as sexy as all hell. Which doesn’t mean much, as any man knows. But if the hair were that real Spanish blue-black instead of this ordinary brown-black …
Vera would laugh at me. Or be sarcastic. But really it’s so as not to listen to the Social Bore who is still being vehement about the extreme wickedness of what she calls my President. The frock fits tight but Iris holds herself straight. No midriff bulge, no ‘riding-breeches’ around hip or upper thigh; impeccable bottom (and the frock is lined; unlike all these other women, no unseemly display of knickers). At worst a softness of the flesh under the jaw, though she must be fifty and from scraps of information let fall by Harold there are two or three children already grown up; in England somewhere. Enviable, indeed.
Even if laughable—oh, Vera will say, how Susceptible—remember that I was trained this way. “Mark you, when a boy starves in the street”—all right, that is Robert Browning, one of Vera’s pet poets, and if over-dramatic, that is the way the painter trains himself to observe and to register, and I was the antique kind of cop. In my day we had lots of street duty, less sitting-on-the-bench, and getting a law degree took much midnight-oil. I did not exactly starve on Paris streets, but I came to understand—later, much later—this Filippo Lippi act.
Indeed, a year or two more with Carlotta, in the Fine Arts section of the Fraud Squad, and I might have learned something about Florentine painters. I wasn’t there long enough, and frankly, I wasn’t good enough: as Carlotta said truly, I should have begun twenty years before. But I did get taught as a young cop to use my eyes. Other senses, and “the touch”, I’ve largely lost: like a pianist one needs daily practice. The streetwise cop is younger, and a long sight sharper.
People are following me about. Streetwise I am no longer, but a PJ cop, however ex, doesn’t miss this. We are like lobsters, we whizz out of rocky holes and pounce. We’ve had to grow an armoured carapace because there are plenty of predators who think we taste good, so that we scuttle back quick, and glare about, and have also these long sensitive antennae which we wave around. I haven’t lost this equipment, which took a long time to evolve.
Who are these people? I don’t think they are French. Those would sidle up to my crack in the rock with a coy murmur, “’nother lobster; pay no attention”.
But could they be Czech? Chaps who’d be discreet in France, or at least offering professional rates to fellow members of the parallel police … They’d be less inhibited with me here.
For the word out of Prague is that at the first breath of revolution they all disappeared into their cracks like Jack Robinson. Havel put a good friend into the Ministry of the Interior, but he’s pretty worried. Where have they all got to, then? Equally to the point, where’s all the money then? They were well supplied. Here’s this great big castle and it’s full of empty cupboards. Where are all the files? All the gold coins? And all the weapons … There could be plenty of all three handily stashed right here.
