You who know, p.22
You Who Know, page 22
“Monsieur Castang, two days ago my son telephoned me. I heard his voice … No, I can see you don’t believe me. Nobody believes me. As I live and breathe that was my son.”
“What did he say?”
“I gave the number, we always give the number, he heard my voice. The child was trained to ring home if ever he was in any trouble. He said ‘Hallo, Mama, it’s me, it’s Maurice, I’m fine, don’t worry’ and then the phone went dead, cut off. They’re all saying I’ve imagined it. Will you believe me?”
“I have to say I’ll be slow to. There are people with crippled minds who use the phone to persecute, and to intimidate.”
“Yes I’ve heard all that too. A mother knows her child’s voice.”
“Think carefully. The voice as it was then? In four years might it have changed quite a lot?”
“It was a free, a happy voice. Under no constraint. And then it broke off. That was no tape, that was no fake, that was actual and alive.”
“Madame Rogier, assume that I believe, and of course I have the fullest sympathy, understanding. Ask yourself then what I could possibly do. The police have resources, human and mechanical, a wide complex network, powers of search and enquiry I don’t have. True, I was once part of all this but now I’m cut off from all official capacity. Further I’m rusted, outdated—in brief I’m now only an advisor; I’m happy to advise you but my only counsel could be to renew your effort in the right quarter. I have some friendly relations with the Central Commissaire in the CID here and I’ll gladly give him a call on your behalf.” He might as well not have wasted his breath. Her fine pale grey eyes, reddened on the rims, as though bruised in the orbits, stayed steady.
“Will you come and see my husband? That is all I ask. Chaussée de Groenendaal.” He did not see how he could well refuse. “Just tell me you’ll do that. This evening. When he gets back from work. I’ll call for you here. I’ll drive you home after. Here outside. Cream-coloured thing, a coupé, I think it’s a BMW.” And cutting through his hesitation she left, with decision and dignity; she didn’t let him fetch her coat.
Castang has habits of prudence too, to be sure. Check the phone.
“Three three one, seven five three one.”
“Good morning. Could I have Monsieur Rogier please, Arnold Rogier?”
“No I’m sorry, you could get him at the office.”
“Then perhaps Madame?”
“No luck I’m afraid, she went into the town.”
“Is this one of the family, at all?”
“Oh no sir, this is the cleaning lady. I could take a message.”
“Thanks, I won’t trouble you …”
He dialled another number. “Pass me Mertens if he’s there. Henri Castang … Good morning … Yes, quite so … Oh, you know, lounging round and suffering … She’s fine, thanks, sends her regards. No, it’s nothing naughty, leastways it is of course; my ear got bashed. Just tell me whether the name Rogier means anything to you at all? … Yes that’s right, I’ve had the woman swarming all over me … I quite agree; preposterous. No, of course not; blank faces and polite murmurs. What could one do but listen politely? What would you do? Come to that, what are you doing? … Right, you’d be upset too when it said suddenly this was your long-lost daughter from Singapore … no, of course I won’t be getting in your hair, it only occurs to me it’s been some time since we had lunch together … By the fishmarket? You make the reservation, you’ll get a better price … Lovely, see you.” Commissaire Mertens is a very sensible sort of man.
Behold; when he came out of the office (lacking in enthusiasm, hoping that at the least he would be offered a Sustaining sundowner because he was feeling the need right now) there she was, right in front of the door and what’s more sitting at the wheel of the car as though that would save time: in rush-hour Bruce!
“Don’t worry, I’ll bring you straight home.”
“No you won’t,” said Castang, a little tart. “You’ll be kind enough to bring me back here, because I have to pick up my bicycle.” This discouraged conversation.
But she was an excellent driver, agile as a jack-rabbit in the hummocky tussocky hazards of heavy traffic. He admired this gift, since a gift it is, to anticipate which file will be the first to move and be at the head of it. Would that be proleptic thinking? (He had looked up this word in the dictionary.) The gift of getting lights to go green for one is something else. This (Castang’s lights go red, which is one good reason for the bicycle) is akin to the gift some people possess for winning money: why is it always the same people who gain lotteries and for whom silver dollars come spewing out of slot machines? Good, the little coupé was an eager, even fierce piece of mechanism. But it’s like a computer; without talent behind it the thing stays dead stupid.
So that he didn’t try to talk. Most of the time indeed he was wondering whether jack-rabbits existed outside the North American continent (perhaps in Siberia?) and is it the same as a hare?
And then they were whipping in at the gateway of a large square ugly villa. About 1910. Only ten metres back from the roadway but standing in a respectably large piece of ground with grass and trees. (These people had money: had a ransom demand been intended?) Come on; it is time to wake up. Amazingly ugly house with balconies and shutters painted a horrible crimson colour; but covered largely with wisteria.
She noticed this police eye. It is not of course a normal police eye; a fat lot they care about aesthetics. It is that across a lot of years now, Vera has made him look at such things. A year in ‘Fine Arts’ with as teacher that very bright young woman Carlotta Salès had done more. He had, he supposed, some natural sensibilities to begin with. But he has never been tempted to write any poetry.
“It was my father’s house,” she said abruptly. “My grandfather built it. I agree it’s pretty dreadful. I’m used to it.”
Inside were more monuments to bad taste, the sort one can never quite get rid of in a house like this. A hallway floor of chequered black and white marble, in winter impossible to warm—but it was very warm; had they gone underneath with electric wiring? Immense curtains of plum-coloured velvet, such good quality that a hundred years later one could not bear to throw them away. Enormous cast-iron radiators. Massive chimney-pieces like the bishop’s tomb in St Praxed’s Church. But she led him through to a back room furnished in a lighter, clearer style, yellow and white and early daffodils in a vase.
And then he understood things better because she opened big double mahogany doors and a man came in propelling himself in a wheelchair. Explanations were made. Monsieur Arnold Rogier was paraplegic, and this sort of house is very suitable for wheelchairs. One can move around freely and there is a chairlift on the big easy-paced generously curved staircase. The heating bill here must be something shocking. But Monsieur Rogier is a computer engineer of great talent (analeptic thinker?) and the firm pays a lot of money, and contributes towards the special car which brings him to work; various gadgets that will help ease the strain.
Looking at this man, Castang knew he would have to go through with this. It was not—not so much—the worn look on the face; the look of much suffering patiently born, for the most part patiently and cheerfully accepted. Afterwards Castang would know that it was the very slight smell, so slight that he would not have noticed it and probably not have recognised it. But twenty years ago Vera had been in the same boat. Not a true paraplegic thank heaven, but chairbound for two years with a spinal injury. So that he knows the bland smell of talcum powder and rubbing alcohol. (The French say ‘fade’, a word for which there is no satisfactory translation.) If one has not total control over the bladder, even when one is very scrupulous there can be a slight taint of urine. There is the smell one notices in hospitals, of pains taken to overcome the hospital smell.
Castang remembers the thin boy’s buttocks (she had been very slim) that were so difficult to keep from getting sore; the wasted legs she exercised with such a concentration of effort: the contraptions of weights and pulleys and springs. Lubricating oil. Embrocation. The ‘manila’ smells of the ropes fixed for her to hold to, when she began again to walk, just a little.
She walks freely now. A little limp when tired. Remember the car. She said ‘I’m going to learn to drive that’—a Renault mechanic fixed an automatic gearbox.
There was some conversation. Formal at first, with a lot of polite phrases, some bourgeois formulae. But then Castang got down to brass tacks: odd phrase. An upholsterer uses brass tacks, but how did this metaphor come to be widespread?
“I’m going to say, bluntly, I accept it all. So just remember I’m a cop, will you?” He had had a drink, a good solid Scotch even though the woman had—without asking—put in iceblocks, which he detests. But Arnold (‘Never mind about Monsieur Rogier; just say Arnold’) had said “Come on dear; open a bottle of champagne for your guest.”
“What do you make of this tale?” Rogier’s voice was quiet, the tone level and composed, that of a business man, determined to keep his detachment.
“There’s no pattern to it,” answered Castang. “Commissaire Mertens tells me they could find nothing sequential, nothing to suggest a line of enquiry. You know this, it’s what they told you at the time. You didn’t accept it, you suspected laziness and inefficiency, and that’s very often the truth. But the police aren’t magicians; they’re overworked and at best it’s a heavy-handed bureaucracy, tends to lumber to a standstill without the stimulus of something to go on. Nothing to do but wait, one concludes, for something to surface. I’ve been in this position,” apologetically.
“Something has surfaced,” said the wife, crisp and acid.
“But they’re not very likely,” suggested Rogier, “to reopen a dossier this old on the base of an unsupported statement. Which is why we turn to you, Monsieur Castang. A fresh mind.”
“I don’t have much to offer. It was thought an insanity, a pathological compulsion, mm?—women who steal babies outside supermarkets. A criminal kidnapping of the usual crapulous kind was dismissed since there was no message, no ransom demand. But now … I can dismiss the sex maniac, I can speak of that now knowing you’ve faced that, lived with it, these long years, because of the phone call.” Castang is studying ‘the pattern of the carpet’. There is no very good way of saying that Mertens had only made a face: ‘Come on Castang, you’re not swallowing that.’
“Let’s just say,” looking up, “that I accept the phone call. I’m assuming your boy alive—well-cared for—can I even say happy? Something must have been told him that he could accept. A child has trust.” The woman covered her eyes. Rogier fingered his jaw.
“I’d look, still, for an insanity factor—how else are we to account for this? You ask for my opinion and I’d look for a missing wheel, and if it’s to be found it would be among people who know you well; close friends, family alliances.”
“But they looked,” said the woman. “They investigated us. They found nothing.”
“I’d still suggest that you searched in your family circle. Cousins? Knowing you well.” He was stumbling, awkwardly, with two pairs of eyes on him, sharp and steady. “Families have secrets. Things concealed, obscured or obliterated because something caused shame. A piece of family history perhaps, buried, and the police did not know of it. I’ve met cases like this. Some grievance behind an obscure happening. I think you might find something. If you decide not to tell me about it, then there’s no more to be said. It might be something painful, to you both. You’d have to make up your minds whether you can trust me. But if I’m to get anywhere, it’s what I’d have to know.”
There was a silence, oppressive, so that he had to make another effort.
“I used the word insanity. If a child is kidnapped, and the obvious answers don’t fit, one must look for something motivated by a piece of logic, however perverted or dotty it might appear.”
Silence, still. Now he had to extricate himself.
“My wife will be looking for me.”
Rogier looked up at him. “You are helpful, and I am grateful.”
The wife busied herself. “Did you have a coat? I’ll drive you back. My husband has a driver, but I don’t like to ask him this late. And this is personal—I hope it will stay between us.”
“I can give advice,” said Castang, “and forget I gave it.”
Chapter 2
A few days passed. Ten, perhaps; he hadn’t counted; he hadn’t forgotten but he’d pushed it out of his mind. Excuses made to himself: there was much to preoccupy and much to distract him: he had—he still had—no wish whatever to get involved. One didn’t regret a moment of generous spontaneity but one had a sneaking sort of hope it would come to nothing. What could it be but a lot of grief, meaning bother, to himself, and more, real grief and prolonged suffering to a family with a bad wound, slow to heal.
For it was not a clean wound from knife or bullet. Those he knows about, and ‘modern surgery is wonderful’. Marvellously skilled, since a bullet has a small entry but a big horrible exit, taking with it the pound of flesh exacted; of bowel and bone and muscle all smashed into a paste of catfood. Even these you can recuperate from, they can shortcut you, hitch the wagons up closer to the locomotive and you carry on, almost as before.
Castang knows, and from direct experience. A police pistol took his elbow out and in the old days he’d have lost the arm; no two ways about it. Now it has metal and plastic pieces, and he can use it. ‘Silicone’ is the police joke-word for this. You can do anything with silicone (they say) from a new elbow to the ten million francs so unaccountably missing from the trust funds: you ‘silicone the gap in the accounts’.
But to lose a child, not even knowing what has happened, that is a dirty wound. A jagged shell splinter that tears its way through your flesh and bone, and also your spirit and soul, your memories of a past and your hopes of a future. It leaves an unmendable trail of destruction.
Do not think Castang is sentimentalising his sympathies. Looking at Monsieur Rogier in the wheelchair, even while remembering Vera determined that not only would she walk but that she’d become pregnant and carry the baby to term, he had wondered whether the man was or could be the father of his wife’s child. An obvious line of police enquiry. Even if one had to ask nasty questions. But ‘We went into that,’ said Commissaire Mertens. And so did private enquiry agents hired by the man himself. The real as opposed to the putative father—‘First thing anybody thought of. But the car accident came after the child was conceived. Oh we’ve been into it all thoroughly, I’m afraid.’
Now—sitting here with her opposite, in his own livingroom—he says suddenly, “Madame Rogier, what is your name?”
She was taken aback, went red and then pale again, and unsmiling said, “Anita.”
“You see, I have to get to know you better.”
“Yes … I agree.” He is listening to her carefully but his mind is in three places. Here in Bruce, and also in New York where Lydia has found a job as a secretary. And in Berlin where Emma is a student. One can go hot and cold thinking of those streets. Lydia of course is a fussy and a careful girl for all her affectation of casual negligence, and Emma is unusually hardheaded. But does one ever know? And what could one do? Nothing, Castang, nothing. Concentrate upon this woman; it cost her a lot to come here.
The air is full of violence.
Violence is not just Dirty Harry on the television, the innumerable versions of the perverted cop chasing the crooks through every aspect of the Robin Hood Syndrome (the Law is no good, so I can take it into my own hands, disregarding all rules).
Violence has been done to this woman and violence is in her. She has come here to sit down in front of him (and of Vera too) and spit out a further and more deeply infolded area of her fear.
“It cost me a lot to come to your office, and more to come here.”
“I can see.”
“I’ve thought a lot about what you said that evening.”
“I hadn’t wished to push you.”
“I realise that and I’m grateful. God knows there’s enough pressure on me already—can I have another drink?” And good Vera gets up, knowing he has to keep his eyes on the woman, holding her. Like the trainer watching a tennis player. Only eye movements are allowed from the side of the court; you may not speak to the player. But there are codes, of course.
“I didn’t believe it. I don’t think it’s true. I’m still refusing to believe that it might be true.”
Violence.
“Call him Arnold since you now know my name—he has pushed me. He has the computer mind. Linear, perfectly logical.”
“Legal.” Ghost of smile.
“Women’s minds just don’t work like this.” (Vera coughing in the background.) “And family loyalties—with us these are very strong. Very close-knit.” The capacity to do herself violence. “Ever since you came, saying we should look further into ourselves, Arnold has been hammering at me. Saying ‘Old Klaas’ but I’ve been refusing—it’s my father. Easy for Arnold. But my blood and bone, he made me.” Silence.
“I see,” said Castang gently.
“My father was an SS man.”
“Is he still alive?” mild.
“Very much so.” Strained, artificial smile. “He’s seventy-three. Tough old boy … It’s all so long ago,” desolate.
Pride, and shame, and obstinacy. Blood … One had thought that all this had at last been allowed to sink into oblivion. And then this stinking policeman comes and drags it all out.
She is dabbing at words now, barefoot on surprisingly hot bricks.
“I suppose you know that in Flanders … Hitler was popular.”
“Words to this effect have reached me.”
“He was no murderer. He is no foul person. They were Waffen-SS. They had clean hands.”
