Tsing-Boum Read online

  Nicolas Freeling

  Tsing-Boum

  Tsing-Boum! Tsing-Boum!!

  Soldiers are lovely boys

  – Wozzeck (Alban Berg)

  References in this book to real persons are completely incidental. All the characters in the story itself are fictitious and are not intended to represent any actual persons living or dead.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  A Note on the Author

  Foreword

  In January 1968, sharing the news with earthquakes, fires, avalanches, and missing submarines, the Vietnamese People’s Army had encircled and was besieging a fortified camp of five thousand-odd American Marines. On Sunday the 28th, press reports were that the defence was being built up hurriedly to ten thousand men or more, that the fortress was being supplied by helicopter under great difficulty with considerable losses, and that a general assault was believed to be imminent. The report concluded with the words: ‘Dien Bien Phu is still a magic word in Vietnam.’

  General Giap was believed to be commanding in person. Back in 1953, press reports used to print the ‘General’ between inverted commas.

  American air superiority and firepower is, of course, so overwhelming that we are all quite confident in the American authorities who are quoted as saying, ‘A new Dien Bien Phu is utterly impossible.’ It is with no more than faint unease that we recall General Navarre’s omniscience and omnipotence in January 1954.

  *

  Since all but the name is now as good as forgotten, a short aide-mémoire is of some use. Dien Bien Phu is a wide shallow valley, possessing an airstrip, appearing to possess opportunity for manoeuvre, and supposed fifteen years ago to be of great strategic value. It is in the high plateau land of North-West Vietnam, near the Laos border.

  French troops occupied the valley. The Vietminh were allowed to invest all the surrounding hills. This had no importance, given the French power in artillery and aircraft. Indeed it was encouraged. The general idea was to attract large numbers of Vietminh troops to a point where they could be destroyed by superior firepower.

  Some fourteen thousand French Union troops passed through the valley. Vietminh troops were estimated at roughly thirty thousand.

  These French troops, unprepared and largely unprotected, were bombarded with artillery fire of extraordinary intensity. Few among them retained sufficient morale for counter-attack, and the defence of the camp, lasting from March 13th till May 8th 1954, was undertaken by roughly 2,500 élite troops, mostly paratroop units. Legend ran that these were mostly Germans of the Legion: in fact they were a very mixed lot, but largely Vietnamese with French officers, together with elements of Legion, Moroccan and Algerian units of the regular colonial army. The commanders of these bits and pieces came to be called the ‘paratroop mafia’.

  This group of relatively junior officers, headed by Lt Colonel Langlais with Commandant Bigeard as his second-in-command, conducted their defence with the utmost resolution. They were overrun only when they had no more ammunition to fire.

  *

  The main source book, for anyone interested, remains The Battle of Dien Bien Phu by Jules Roy. The aptly-named Hell in a Very Small Place by Bernard Fall contains the statistics much useful detail. Colonel Langlais, Dr Paul Grauwin and Captain Jean Pouget have written well on the subject. General Navarre, commander-in-chief in Saigon, General Cogny, theatre commander in Hanoi, and many other persons, have published long volumes of explanation and accusation.

  Even the shortest account of the battle would be too long and out of place here. But the following remarks which I have collected show buoyant confidence on the French side changing to total abandon. These quotations, printed in chronological order, are taken from press reports and eye-witness accounts.

  2nd January 1954: ‘The French Command is certain of inflicting a severe defeat upon the Vietminh at Dien Bien Phu.’ (General Cogny to the assembled Press.)

  5th January 1954: ‘Dien Bien Phu is not a fortified camp. It is a base for offensive operations.’ (Colonel Castries, the camp commander, to Mr Graham Greene.)

  11th March 1954: ‘The hour has come to pass to the attack … Dominate your fear and your suffering.’ (Vietnam People’s Army Order of the Day, signed: Vo nguyen Giap.)

  14th March 1954: ‘We go to disaster, and it is my fault.’ (Colonel Piroth, the one-armed camp artillery commander, to Langlais. Next day Piroth committed suicide.)

  8th May 1954: ‘No, no, mon vieux, no white flag. You are submerged: you do not surrender.’ (General Cogny, by radiotelephone from Hanoi, to Castries.)

  Chapter One

  Van der Valk was not best pleased: why did they have to go discovering crimes at dinnertime? That other people, too, had had their dinner interrupted – that someone, he had just heard, had got his life interrupted as well as his dinner … niggly old bastard, niggly old bastard, he repeated.

  Aubergines too, done in the oven with a delicious cheesy chewy top layer. He still had his fork in his hand when he put the phone down; his wife had sniggered, so that he banged the fork down crossly and did not see anything funny in his own behaviour until he was outside the street door buttoning his raincoat. Raw grey day with a cold wind and constant heavy showers. Not really astonishing since it was late in the autumn, but since this was Holland, and since one was in a bad mood because of the aubergines, he said ‘Typical August’ in a loud cross voice: nobody heard because nobody was there.

  He had to wait a good minute on his doorstep, getting himself into a more professional state of mind. Somebody was dead – who had not had dinner. The medical examiner would be putting his fork down too with deep regret (bet you he wasn’t eating aubergines, though). And what about the carpatrol police? He was commissaire in charge of the criminal brigade, and there could not be too many buffers between him and a violent death.

  He looked at his watch – two minutes to one and what was holding up the car? Where there is no vision the people perish, thought Van der Valk sententiously, taking his hat off and wedging it more firmly against gusts. A sodden cardboard box with gay liquorice allsorts printed all over it skittered along the pavement and came to rest at his feet. A Peugeot station wagon with its little lighthouse winking on the roof did the same thing and he got in just as it began to rain again.

  ‘Whereabouts?’ The telephone message had said it already but it had not stayed in his mind: getting a silly old bastard as well as bad-tempered.

  ‘Van Lennepweg.’ Of course. A dusty, wide, dreary boulevard on the outskirts of the town. New quarter, endless blocks of municipal flats, palaces of the people. A municipal murder.

  No use asking the driver for any details; he was simply another man who had had to put down his knife and fork to answer the phone while his mouth was still full. The Peugeot turned into the Van Lennepweg; detestably dead: a ramshackle, cheap, unfinished look. Draughty bus-stops on paveme
nts that were far too wide, an excuse to block them with carelessly parked cars, metal bicycle stands, tinny publicity hoardings. Hero lemonade, Caballero cigarettes, Wolf lawnmowers and Pressing – One Hour filed before his eye as the auto slowed.

  ‘There it is.’ In front of Aspro stood an ambulance. A group of some fifty ghouls of all sexes and age groups were enjoying life, held in check by a uniformed policeman. Muttering and elbow-joggling broke out as Van der Valk arrived; he gave the front row a look of deep distaste. When younger he had often got irritated enough to hustle them off: quite useless – back they seeped like water next moment. The people, getting a real sensual pleasure. Not – do them justice – from the sufferings of others, not even from their sudden skill at hindering the professionals. Just from being there, near enough to catch a word – good as appearing on television. The people – he had known them stand there watching a man bleed to death, apparently incapable of movement or emotion. They perished so easily and there was so little he could do about it.

  It made Arlette, his wife, so angry and wretched that he recalled her shaking one of the boys, about ten years old, shaking the child till his head was ready to come off, white with disgusted fury, hissing, ‘Let me catch you once again staring at people in trouble and I’ll kill you, you hear me.’ The child had been watching a fire …

  He banged straight through and they shuffled back a step. ‘Fourth floor,’ said the policeman. There was no lift; it was one of the low blocks and the fourth floor was the top. On the landings were more people standing in open doorways, with the television ranting unheeded behind them. Chewing still, some of them. Van der Valk’s leg hurt, as it always did on stairs. He ploughed on through a smell of frying margarine and tinned peas. Dutch beehive – no smell of dust; all the housewives kept their bit of passage clean, and any backsliders would be dealt with by the Good Neighbours’ Association.

  On the fourth floor the doors were shut, dull little doors of plywood and pale grey paint. A policeman stood in the passage. ‘In here.’ The technical squad was already there, three or four of them with their bits of string and chalk and plastic bags, the cameraman flitting busily away. Ordinary municipal flat: tiny hallway with kitchen and lavatory, a fair-sized living-room on the Dutch pattern, half for sitting and half for eating. Passage to what would be either two or three bedrooms and a bathroom. There was plenty of light, for the big window ran the whole length, and in the kitchen a glass door led to a tiny balcony with a few clothes pinned to a washing line. The floor was woven fibre matting and everybody was looking at a scatter of bright metal shells. The sergeant straightened up as he came in.

  ‘No footprints – wiped his feet very carefully before coming in. Cool you’d say. But he fired seven shots. Seven! What d’you think of that, chief?’

  Van der Valk got the point. Even one gunshot is a rarity in Holland. Seven is exaggerating.

  ‘Who’s dead?’

  ‘Housewife.’

  ‘Where’s the husband?’

  ‘Don’t know, sir; haven’t had time. She’s there behind the armchair.’

  The young woman lay raggedly, blood coming out of her mouth. Pretty young woman but one couldn’t tell; dead faces told one so little.

  There was a strong smell of burning.

  ‘What caught fire?’

  ‘The potatoes boiled dry,’ said the sergeant, almost apologetically.

  Van der Valk touched the huddled face.

  ‘Happened about half an hour ago – why all the delay? Did nobody hear? Seven shots!’

  ‘Television going – and it’s a noisy building at lunchtime. People coming home, doors opening and shutting. There’s a child – neighbours are looking after it. The neighbour that gave the alarm.’

  ‘Have those shells sent to Ballistics in Amsterdam. Seven shots – must be some kind of automatic weapon. Looks like sheer hysteria – and the fellow just walked out calmly, huh? Nobody saw anything either?’

  ‘Not as far as we know now, sir,’ said the policeman stolidly. He’d had enough to do keeping the mob quiet!

  The medical examiner came in, looked briefly, and said, ‘Good God!’ He straightened the body out.

  ‘Heaven help us. Literally shot to pieces. Died within seconds. You’d think she’d been machine-gunned.’

  ‘Perhaps she was.’

  ‘Professionally killed is all I can say.’

  ‘Some professional,’ muttered the sergeant.

  ‘A professional …’ said Van der Valk lumpishly. He pulled himself together.

  ‘Camera finished?’

  ‘Blanket job, chief. Top to toe – but it won’t take long in a place like this.’

  ‘I want the keys, and all identity stuff – look in her bag. I’m going to see this neighbour.’ He looked across the room at his own sergeant. ‘Half an hour. Who has seen a stranger in the building?’

  ‘Have you seen a man carrying a machine-gun?’ muttered the technical sergeant.

  ‘Have you seen the fingerprints on the lavatory flush?’ returned the other, stung.

  ‘Who gave the alarm?’ asked Van der Valk.

  ‘Concierge.’

  Chapter Two

  The plastic tiles of the passage were by now marked with so many muddy footprints as to have become very dirty. Two ambulance men passed him, wearing downtrodden looks at having to carry a dead body down four flights. He knocked at the door opposite, which was opened at once by a pale worried-looking man with a sensible artisan’s face. Van der Valk showed his badge and put his finger across his lips.

  ‘Child here?’ he said softly. ‘She know yet?’ The man nodded first and shook his head after. He beckoned Van der Valk in with a relieved look: somebody who would tell him what to do.

  Around the table sat a woman and three children. Two were fair-haired and one was dark, a girl of around ten. A plate of food was in front of her but she was not eating. The atmosphere stank of strain.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt.’ He pulled up a chair and sat down. His driver appeared in the doorway.

  ‘I phoned for a few extra hands.’

  Van der Valk nodded and turned to the man.

  ‘If you’ve finished eating be kind and tell him what he wants to know – name, where you work, that stuff.’ He turned back and found the child’s eyes looking squarely into his.

  ‘So. You’re having dinner with the neighbours today because your mamma is ill. We’ve taken her to the hospital. And now we have to look after you, don’t we? I’m a policeman, here to look after everything. Have you just come home from school?’

  ‘Is Mamma dead?’ bluntly, in a small firm voice.

  ‘The doctor is busy with her and I mustn’t bother him yet awhile, because she’s certainly badly hurt. Have you more brothers and sisters?’ The woman opened her mouth and he held up a finger.

  ‘One moment, Mevrouw.’

  ‘No. I came home from school and Mevrouw Paap told me Mamma wasn’t home but I knew something had happened.’

  ‘We none of us know yet exactly what happened.’

  ‘We will work that out – that’s my job. Now you eat some dinner at least because otherwise it’s not polite, while I talk to Mevrouw, right?’

  ‘Don’t play with your food,’ she said sternly to her own children, ‘eat up and then show Ruth your toys; I’ll give you your pudding when I’m ready.’

  He followed her to the bedroom, where she turned to him in consternation.

  ‘It was ever so queer …’ she began breathlessly.

  ‘A second. It’s easier if I ask and you answer. Do you know who found her?’

  ‘I did. I heard such a crashing noise and I thought – I don’t know – that somebody had fallen off a stepladder or something. Well … I hardly know her – knew her …’ She broke off confused.

  ‘Yes. You saw her?’

  ‘There was nobody in the passage but I couldn’t get it out of my head – I fell off the stepladder once – or down the stairs carrying a tray of crockery … So I
thought I’d ring at her door in case she’d hurt herself.’

  ‘Who opened the door?’

  ‘But that’s what is so queer, the door opened and there was nobody there, well one doesn’t just plunge in so I called out “Mevrouw Marks” and then again louder, and there was no answer and there was such a funny smell, a bit like fireworks, and I went on into the living-room, and I saw her lying there, and I got such a turn, and I was so frightened I ran back here and locked myself in, and then I was worried …’

  ‘You saw nobody?’

  ‘Not a soul.’

  ‘What time was it?’

  ‘About quarter past twelve. Well I thought there’s that child coming home from school, and mine too, and I can’t let her see that, I have to catch her, and then luckily my husband came back. He works only in the next street. I told him there’s something horrible happened and he ran and told the concierge to phone the police quick and they were here quite fast. They just walked in.’

  ‘You’d left the door there open then?’

  ‘Yes, but I shut mine because of the children – she’s seen nothing, thank God.’

  ‘You said you hardly knew Mevrouw Marks – you know her husband?’

  ‘Well – I’ll try and explain – you see she isn’t Mevrouw Marks – or at least I don’t know. He’s called Zomerlust – he’s a soldier. He’s away mostly, but he’s generally back at weekends. But I remember asking the child her name when she was – when they came here, and she said “Ruth Marks” so I said, you know, Good morning Mevrouw Marks, but she never made any remark, but she didn’t talk to people. Like I say I hardly knew her, just to say good morning.’

  ‘Was she friendly with anyone else – that you know of?’

  ‘I don’t think she was friendly with anyone much. Very reserved. I mean she’d always smile and speak a word, not impolite, but you never got any further. Commissaire, what am I going to do with the child? I mean, I can look after her of course, but … her clothes and everything … I mean to say …’