Those in Peril (Henri Castang Book 12)

  Those in Peril

  Nicolas Freeling

  © Nicolas Freeling 1990 *

  *Indicates the year of first publication.

  CONTENTS

  Those in Peril

  Scree, n. (Mountain slope covered with) small stones that slide down when trodden on…

  Thus far the Concise Oxford Dictionary. And thus far ourselves, for the most part. A definition; a conscientious teacher might dwell briefly upon the nature of erosion, for a class of schoolchildren.

  But who trod, and why? He, she? They? Slide, did they, along with the stones? Fall, perhaps? How far? One can hurt oneself; it is not at all uncommon. One can even get killed.

  A journalist at that point would begin to ask questions. The weather, the time of day, the visibility. What were they doing up there? A slide area is it, known to be treacherous? Officials may have more questions: doctor, lawyer, coroner, even a police officer maybe, and to some small local embarrassment: this sort of publicity doesn't do the village any good. A patter of falling scree turns once in a while into a dangerous landslide; a line in the dictionary into this book. So too with Castang.

  Definition, again: Police Judiciaire would read as a laconic line. 'Equivalent, in France, to Criminal Investigation Department.' Quite so, and personal 'Castang' references on, say, a Home Office computer would not take up a lot of space. High officials have minuted sometimes on the margins of a confidential dossier with – say – the Bundesnachrichten Dienst in Western Germany.

  The details of this career need not delay us. Present employment: attached Regional-service Lille. Present rank Principal Commissaire PJ. The middle of the three grades of commissaire, roughly equivalent to a Superintendent CID. Consult the civil-service handbook and you'd find that the emoluments are not too bad. Basic rate, not counting perks, indemnities, something over sixteen hundred pounds a month. But what with inflation and two small children, he doesn't count himself rich. The scale runs from five to thirty but that is naturally a pyramid. He's two-thirds of the way up and won't get much further.

  He would be in line for promotion to Divisionnaire; a Chief Supt. He'd get posted then to command of a district. Two thousand a month; big car. Right now, he's the chief of an 'antenna', a satellite of the big, thickly-populated Lille district. In an industrial job he'd earn a lot more, but plums of that sort – security chief to wealthy, secretive enterprises – are fairly rare and he wouldn't much like the work; a lot dirtier than anything he does now.

  As with the slip or incautious step upon the scree, this tale began banally, in that moderate-sized town of northern France where he lived and worked; centre of a largish administrative area, astride the ancient provinces of Artois and Picardy.

  It was late at night, and raining; the light greasy rain of anywhere in the Brest/Orkney/Hamburg triangle. Or anywhere else where one stands on the pavement and fumbles with keys, because the street lighting is wide-spaced and the locks get more and more complicated. There's a basement key, to the garage, and a front-door key (after you punch out a code), and two different apartment keys (bourgeois residence in a modern block). Wet fingers dropped them all on the deck and a voice said damn, but patiently and without emphasis. Vera, his wife, waited; a silent echo, still and quiet.

  The street was empty but for the row of parked cars glistening in the wet; and silent this late in a provincial town. The patter of running feet – like scree falling – was audible. Now the PJ is rarely spontaneous: its movement is laborious by definition, called into being by bureaucratic palaver; if so happen there's been a crime, perhaps there'll need to be some investigation. But it does sometimes happen that it improvises, and Castang did so now. It isn't really his business. A young woman running, at the limit of her endurance, may be in need of police, but it's Police-Secours she needs. Not the PJ.

  He didn't like the running, though; it had an irregular, hysterical sound. He held an arm out, commanding the pavement. Neither tall nor broad, he has the police trick of appearing massive.

  "Easy, then." She gasped to catch breath which came out in a yell.

  "Let me go!"

  "Now quieten down," said authority, "and where's the fire?"

  "I – I – I – I," shivering uncontrollably. Long dark hair and features in disorder.

  "You need some help, I'm it. Officer of police."

  An inaudible mutter; the lungs heaved. "I've been raped."

  "Ah," not at all surprised. He knows this particular statistic by heart: three-thousand one-hundred ninety-six the last notifiable year. Known, that is; since any cop will tell you the true figure is anywhere between fifteen and thirty.

  "Where?" In shock they can only answer very simple questions. She pointed vaguely – back there.

  "Far?"

  "I don't know." Not helpful, but sounds genuine.

  "Very well. We'll walk quietly. This is my wife. Like to give her an arm? She's Vera, I'm Henri. Confidence – all right? We'll go talk to the police, that comes first."

  "You are – you said you were."

  "Off duty. Just a bit of help and comfort. It's not far." She nodded, and clutched at Vera, satisfied.

  The desk man on night duty saluted when he saw Castang, with no enthusiasm. Dogma: the PJ is an Enemy. And the State. Police-Secours is a local, a municipal body. But a Commissaire is a chief, must be treated with respect and handled with caution.

  They will no longer treat with mockery a young woman who has been the subject of sexual assault. Or says she has – this trade teaches scepticism.

  "All right, miss," hitching the typewriter towards him, "let's register your deposition." The unemotional manner has calmed her.

  Castang, disinclined anyhow to give orders to municipal agents, is wondering whether there's any point in sending a patrol car. Is one going to find any evidence?

  "Tear your clothes, did he? Burst any buttons or, uh?"

  "Better call a car in," interjecting. "It has to be verified. He can take her on up to the hospital." The transmitter is humming on standby; the cop picked up the microphone.

  "Whereabouts are you, Albert? Better come in. Job for you." He went back to the typing, mentally rehearsing the next phrase of the familiar jargon used.

  "He then…threat with knife…forced me to remove my underclothes… He then…"

  "All right, miss. Sign here please." Not difficult, but her hands were still shaking.

  Albert entered, rain-spotted. An Oh-oh face at sight of Castang. Who is careful to sound polite.

  "Need to verify a scene-of-crime. We've a rape here, likely." One has to say likely, because fabrications are frequent.

  Vera, who hadn't said a word, intervened.

  "I'll go with her to the hospital."

  "Very well. We both will."

  The Rue de la Loi. An archway to a courtyard. As described, which doesn't mean much. No traces remain.

  "Not got your knickers, miss?" asked Albert, apologetic. "Evidence, you know."

  Taken with him, thought Castang, like a trophy. She started shuddering again. No, she hadn't screamed. With a knife under her chin?

  Albert knows the way to the Service des Urgences – no one better.

  "You again?" said the night casualty nurse. "Another overdose? Oh, a rape. Gynaecology, miss, tomorrow morning." Bureaucratic obstruction. Just as well Castang came himself.

  "PJ, Sister. Better have the duty intern, don't you think?" Vera, with an arm round the now silently crying young woman, mouths a stony 'leave it to me'. But the staff nurse clacks her phone down, patters briskly with a pill and water, pulls the curtain on a cubicle.

  "Lie down here then – he'll be here in a minute."


  Castang stands wooden. Albert has gone for a smoke in the car. An aide is cleaning a nasty-looking facial wound on a man who sits dogged while she searches for tiny fragments of glass. An overdose is going Wah Wah Wah in a corner. A quiet night, so far…

  The intern came, gave Castang a quick glance and nodded. A young aide ducked in with her trolley behind the curtain. The staff nurse went back to writing her log; sotto voce mumbling was obscured by the yells of the girl with the overdose.

  The doctor came out and jerked his chin at Castang, who followed him in to the office where he scrawled morosely on his incident pad.

  "Frontally, some irritation and reddening, but no tearing or real bruising. So you've only her word for it – sorry, nothing that would count as evidence; still that's the way it is, four times out of five. No anal aggression, no fellation. Just as well – you get an aphasia sometimes; I'd one who threw all her food up, for days on end… Vaginal vault traces, I've a specimen for you, has to go to the lab, but a possible match if you get the chap. She's had a shot of sedative, is fairly stabilised by now. You going to take her home?"

  "What the police are for," with no apparent irony. "You can say though that she was forced, unprepared?"

  "Mm, yes. But no real violence, you know."

  "Man puts a knife under your ear, tells you open your legs, how d'you react?"

  "True. This'll be typed up in the morning, okay?"

  "As long as she gets a copy, without that gook talk about its being confidential." They aren't really callous. Just overworked.

  "Thank you!" she said to Vera. "The humiliation is the worst."

  Castang took her hand; sat her on a grey plastic chair.

  "Listen, come in and see me; here's my card. Tomorrow if you can; it may be a help. Gave you a chit, did he – day off? Good, Albert will see you home. He'll drop us off." She hasn't realised that being raped is only the first of the humiliations.

  "Glad you went with her," he said to Vera, getting the keys right this time.

  "It's never nice," she said gravely. "Turn over then. Knee – elbow. Spread. A woman is so vulnerable. Suppose it happened to me?"

  She came, though, and she sat in his office, tidy with her hair done, collected, and said that yes, she would go through with her complaint. Yes, she realised she'd been imprudent, wandering about alone, late, but she'd never thought that right there, in the centre of the town… She spoke quietly and behaved modestly, and Castang thought that she'd better have the 'lecture'.

  "I'm afraid it will go on being unpleasant, and you'll need courage. You can go to any of the women's help organisations and they'll tell you the same.

  "You'll have to persevere. It was a stroke of luck – not meeting me, but you've got your complaint in, and you've had your medical. Things it's better to have done with. But know anything about judicial process? No, most people don't.

  "All complaints go to the Procureur, but rape is a serious business. Not like a tail-light on a bicycle: this is Court of Assize. He'll name a judge of instruction, a magistrate who'll call you in to his office. Instructing means examining, questioning you; and quite sharply, on what you did or didn't and why. It might seem hostile, because you have to convince him – or her – that you're not putting on an act." Seeing her look puzzled – "That you weren't willing or even semi-acquiescent in a sexual – don't boil over; it can be quite hard to prove. That's why I say it's fortunate that you had a medical straight away. You've also a lawyer to advise you, free and a woman if you prefer it.

  "The magistrate will always call for a police enquiry, which might come my way as local PJ; and quite likely a psychiatric report too. It means telling your story, in detail, again and again. A check on you at home, at work. A morality enquiry. Somebody might claim that you were a promiscuous woman.

  "But this has to be, you see. If they find the man…good, you have a sperm test as evidence. But you'd still have to repeat it all again in court.

  "Because think of this: if the man is convicted he faces several years in prison and that's a lot. His defence will fight for him and that can mean attacking you, your dignity and your privacy. So I warn you at the start, it'll be rough, and for some months."

  Why go to so much trouble? He has not exaggerated, painted nothing unduly black. The young woman sitting there nods and thanks him, and says she has understood, and gets up and leaves. Why bother? Certainly it was not sentiment; he wasn't 'sorry for her'. In fact a tiresome young woman who has given him unneeded extra work, and will probably give more.

  We-ell, it is a corner of his job. When he can, he warns victims that legal procedure punishes too; and not just the malefactor. And by coincidence, with this one he'd had a personal involvement: he was 'a witness'. He smiled a little, lighting a cigarette. A really punctilious magistrate, going by the strict letter of the law, could disqualify him from any further investigation of the affair. Confide the enquiry to the Gendarmerie…

  It is part of this tale. As in olden times, when Mr Jumble so kindly consented to give his interesting talk to the village, all about his travels in the Holy Land, and illustrated it with a Magic Lantern. Tap-tap, upon the lectern. Next slide, please.

  Because his secretary came popping in. And he never saw the young woman again. A month later he dictated a short statement for her lawyer, about the circumstances in which he had found her on the street, in dishevelled state and disturbed mind. Six months later, Vera went to court for her as a witness.

  "There's a man asking to see you. Been some time in the waiting room. Says it has to be you, and no one else. Business gent; oldish, respectable."

  "Very well. Give me just a minute."

  He is thinking, simply, how he hates rape cases. Vera is right; women are so vulnerable. Men don't get hoisted upon the 'camel' with their legs spread wide. The medical students, heading for the gynaecological block, have a repulsive way of putting it. Gyne is simply Greek for 'woman', but what they say is 'Got the Gyneys this week'.

  Without thinking, one goes through the twitches of convention; the standing up and holding out a hand, the murmur of apology and the 'Well, what brings you here?' One hears how other people were doing just the same when lo, the touch of a hand sends them headlong through the looking-glass. A criminal-brigade officer would use the word 'fairy-story' in the sense of an invented tale, rather than with capital letters, as in Alice's Adventures. But he must understand that to the subjects the adventure has a fairy-tale quality. This is what the wife means, when she uses the word 'surreal'.

  Here were three criminal-brigade officers, and they agreed that the story was not invented. Too many little details ring out truth.

  For Castang was thorough, putting on his two senior inspectors besides himself: experienced men, and hardheaded. The classic PJ technique with any tale thought to be a fabrication, the 'recoupage' whereby three stories are taken separately by three men, and then compared for consistency. He himself questioned all three, and was impressed. When Divisional Inspector Campbell, who is ten years older than Castang, and should have been a Commissaire years ago, said 'What's that – American phrase? – we had better believe it' – they did.

  Not without reluctance, for the story is so stagey. Luckily there is no great hurry now. We compile an impeccable dossier, send it to Lille, send it to Paris. They won't want to believe it either, complaining that it stinks of set-up.

  Take the narrative first, the initial As-told-to. Between seven and eight last night (Castang was having supper, thinking about going to the cinema) a bourgeois family of Pa, Ma and youngest daughter of nineteen were getting ready for the theatre; the women at home: the man will pass by to pick them up. When the bell rings in a nice third-floor flat (much nicer than Castang's) in a quiet, expensive block, the daughter supposes simply that he has forgotten his keys. Two polite men announce themselves as police, say there's been a hold-up to which Monsieur Brun was witness, and may they come in to wait for him? The moment they are in two more appear, and in a twinkling the w
omen are bound, gagged, blindfolded – 'they had simply reams and reams of sticking-plaster' – and dumped on a bed. No violence is offered, which sounds professional. 'Are you comfortable? Would you like another pillow?'

  Brun arrives, within five minutes. 'They had a driver outside on the watch.' He is tied up, pushed into a chair, and told to speak up smartly. The keys to his office and instructions how to open the safe. For Monsieur Brun is a well-known dealer in postage stamps. His father before him, in business for forty years: of course, the little shop on the corner of the Place d'Armes.

  To ensure that he is compliant they show just enough brutality. A revolver barrel is jabbed into his throat, and once he is tapped with the butt. (Scalp laceration, throat bruises, entirely consistent.) He is lucid, nowise inclined to panic, and applies his common sense. Two set off to the office. City-centre, about a mile. And are soon back, cross, with the message the safe won't open. A bit of cinema, here. 'Wise up quick, mate. I've killed two men and won't hesitate.'

  Brun kept his head. 'You silly clowns, the safe's open and you don't know it.' That doesn't sound very professional? No, but it's an old safe though a good one; the size of this room, the door makes a sort of suction effect, vacuum-like? So that this time he is brought to the office to show them. It is decided to take his wife's small, battered car. Some comedy, hereabout.

  'They complained a good deal – almost out of petrol, tyres a bit bald – not nice that, not kind! Driver must have been on some dope, missed a big Mercedes by a hairsbreadth turning, didn't know the way, slap through a red light at ninety. I kept saying look I don't want to get Killed, here. In the office I only had to pull the door. There are literally hundreds of albums but The Sheets, they kept saying, we want the sheets. We don't call them sheets; in the jargon we say Planches, but it was clear enough, they were acting under orders. They'd been told what to get, knew nothing of the subject; these sheets are where we keep the good, the collection stuff.

  'But the other two back at the flat must have got bored. My wife can tell you about this but they turned the place upside-down for anything to pick up. Come on, they kept saying, you're Bourgeois, we know you, where's the gold, the dollars, the jewellery? Didn't exactly vandalise, but the most appalling mess. I still don't understand, I've nothing much and the few small pieces that are any good they didn't even recognise. They'd nothing better to do, I suppose. Not fine-art specialists. Just a break-and-enter gang. Been told to get the stamps, and take in any unconsidered trifles.'