The Public Prosecutor (22 page)
Read The Public Prosecutor Online
Authors: Jef Geeraerts
As a simple major, de Vreker could do no better than to secure his own position by exhibiting a degree of fair play towards Albert (keep his mouth shut in public about his girlfriend in Sint-Job-in-’t-Goor and avoid hasty conclusions about a possible connection with Opus Dei, the mysterious organization he planned to explore in the coming days out of simple curiosity). Both his identity and his future deserved priority. After all, thanks to his master’s degree in law, he stood a substantial chance of being transferred to the Operations Directorate and finishing his career as a full colonel. He was surprised that Albert had not contacted him in recent days and could find no explanation for the man’s silence, but he continued to keep a low profile.
Public Prosecutor Marc Keymeulen had had his suspicions about the Oude Baan affair from the outset. He was more or less familiar with “Cardinal Richelieu’s” amorous relationship, but he was a humanist and he detested irrational conclusions. The matter was officially in the hands of one of his substitutes, and he allowed the man to get on with business without saying a word about the ambiguous position the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which was under his leadership, now found itself in. On the one hand, it was a routine affair, which would probably result in a minor suspended sentence and the payment of damages for the loss of the horse. On the other hand, Albert had insisted on having access to the police report without making it official.
As public prosecutor, he had followed the only officially correct course of action possible: played dumb. It would have seemed a little suspicious if he had involved himself with the affair, even if only out of curiosity.
Although Marlowe & Co. had sacked Joost Voorhout, the director had lamented the loss of an excellent detective, in spite of the serious professional error related to the night of 26 May in Sint-Job-in-’t-Goor. A solution was found. Marlowe & Co. had a branch in Ghent, which was in a different judicial territory. Contact with police personnel who were familiar with the affair was virtually out of the question. He gave Voorhout a vigorous talking to, insisted this was his last chance, and then offered him a transfer to the Ghent office. Voorhout accepted and firmly resolved that he would keep his team under tight control in the future.
Jean Materne was recovering from a pelvis fracture in ward 3 on the second floor of Saint Luke’s hospital in Antwerp. His condition was reasonable: forty-eight hours after the operation, the doctors had given him permission to totter around the ward on crutches for thirty minutes a day. No one, not even the surgeon, was aware of the facts of the case. CID sergeant Vermeersch, who had pretended to be a family member on a visit, had interrogated Materne on 30 May from behind a screen in relation to the illegal weapon collection in his apartment in Schaarbeek. Vermeersch, an expert in “exhorting information without intimidation”, hit the jackpot in less than half an hour. He discovered a discrepancy between the first police report and the truth of the case: the police report contained nothing about the shooting of the pit bull by D’Hoog. Vermeersch was curious about the location of the weapon involved. He particularly wanted to question Louise Dubois on the matter, but if the substitute in charge of the investigation didn’t order an interrogation, he could hardly ignore him and do so without permission. It remained possible that she was still in contact with Public Prosecutor Savelkoul (he had managed to tickle some of the details from an IT friend at the gendarmerie in Brussels who had also been responsible for inputting the Opus Dei information into the computer database). Unfortunately, he didn’t know the substitute personally and was unable to call in any favours. His curiosity about the affair was driving him crazy.
Brecht gendarmes Verhaert and Ramael went about matters in a completely different way. Discretion was not their strong point and they hadn’t so much as a notion of professional secrecy. Verhaert got drunk in a café on Brecht’s market square after a provincial football match and spilled every detail, including names and places. It was the main point of conversation in the local shops the day after. The plot quickly evolved as the gossip machine invented and introduced new details. Within twenty-four hours “the tart with the horses… you know the one… hung herself from a beam in the garage because some rich bastard from Antwerp dumped her…” In some quarters, the “rich bastard” was a furniture manufacturer, in others a bigwig in the judiciary. Housewives cycling past the farmhouse on the Oude Baan stopped to peer through the windows. The empty buildings confirmed their theory that a terrible drama had taken place. Some versions were closer to the truth: D’Hoog, the vet from Brecht, regularly checked up on her horses and everybody knew he was a bit of a ladies’ man who wasn’t averse to settling his bills in bed. He had disappeared without a trace, and nobody believed the colleague who replaced him when he said that the man had been planning a trip to Africa for a long time. “Tell us another one…” was the usual reaction.
CID sergeant Vermeersch picked up on some of the gossip, but simply shrugged his shoulders. During a phone call with his friend Verhaert he said in his best Antwerp dialect: “Charley boy, what do women get up to when they’ve nothing gossip about? Ha, no idea? They look for something else to do!” At that point both men roared with laughter.
Soliman was stabled at the Black Stallion, a classy riding club in Schilde. He had a spacious box, received biologically balanced feed and fresh straw every evening, but he missed the calm of his old surroundings, Yamma his mother and the paddock where he was free to run and where every smell was familiar to him. The to-ing and fro-ing of stable boys and perfumed ladies who couldn’t resist rubbing his nose made him nervous. And to top it all, he hadn’t been introduced to any of the other horses! Two days after they brought him to the club in that bloody trailer, his boss had visited in the company of an unfamiliar woman, who did nice things and whispered strange words in his ear in a language his boss had never used. His boss had saddled him and they had done some dressage training in the manège, which smelled of unfamiliar sand and where a bunch of jabbering girls had taken lessons on horses that had flattened their ears when he got too close. His boss had lead him outside at that point to let him run loose in an open pen. He was able to fool around for a while before his boss dismounted to give the strange woman a ride. She had a much firmer hand than his boss and her movements were fairly abrupt, but she kept talking to him and when she had finally worked him into a gallop, he had reared up with vigour - just to free his mouth - and broken into a sprint with her, slinging his head from side to side and turning sharply, but he had not been able to shake her off. At that point, his boss did something he had never done before: clap hard with his hands. She then urged him into a comfortable trot, a gait he utterly detested, and her movements became gentler. The boss took over at the end and the woman clapped her hands as he had done.
For the first time since his ordination in 1974, in the cathedral of Toledo, where his grand-uncle had once been archbishop, Joaquín Pla y Daniel gave in to regression, something psychiatrists consider to be a natural defence mechanism against one of the most dangerous neuroses in existence, namely fixation. The focal point of his fixation had appeared thirty years earlier when he was studying philosophy at the University of Navarra, an Opus Dei institution in Pamplona: El Padre himself, the blessed Josemaría Escrivá. During a visit to the university, the extremely gifted student Pla y Daniel was introduced to Escrivá and given permission to kneel and receive his blessing, something he considered a great honour. From that moment onwards, something changed for ever in Pla y Daniel. His experience was like that of Saint Paul, who, according to Acts of the Apostles, was struck to the ground by a bolt of lightning. Pla y Daniel’s youth had been marked by endless frustration at his heartless mother, which lead to his hatred of all women, and he became obsessed, with baroque Spanish fanaticism, with the figure of El Padre, pledging privately to live according to the letter of his writings and teachings. The second fixation, which appeared five years later, was a logical consequence of the first: he was appointed as mentor in the formation of a group of students who were in the preparatory phase of training to become numeraries, the highest grade of membership. His uncompromising character occasionally took him too far, and after the suicide of one of the candidates he was advised to soften his approach. His reaction was to do a nine-day retreat, fast completely, drink only water, wear the cilice throughout and endure the excruciating thigh cramps it caused, and subject himself to the discipline three times a day while reciting the
Salve Regina
at the top of his voice. After the retreat he continued his Spartan approach to formation unmitigated, as if nothing had happened. When one of the candidate numeraries flew at his throat in a bout of sudden rage, he was invited to an audience with El Padre himself, who admonished him paternally, transferred him to Rome and promoted him to procurator of the Institution, third in line to the top. His career had taken a considerably positive turn. Every door in the Vatican was now open to him, even that of John Paul II.
Salve Regina
at the top of his voice. After the retreat he continued his Spartan approach to formation unmitigated, as if nothing had happened. When one of the candidate numeraries flew at his throat in a bout of sudden rage, he was invited to an audience with El Padre himself, who admonished him paternally, transferred him to Rome and promoted him to procurator of the Institution, third in line to the top. His career had taken a considerably positive turn. Every door in the Vatican was now open to him, even that of John Paul II.
The regression that he was presently indulging took shape in his approach to the Belgian “girl” who was on retreat in the House. He had decided arbitrarily to “guide” her though the process, taking the Trident as his point of departure: penance; complete subjection to the mentor; strict and unremitting devotion. He intended to persevere until the goal of the Trident had been achieved: render the subject infantile, depersonalized and culpable (the condition of an innocent child bursting with feelings of guilt). Years of experience in Spain had taught him that the human spirit could be destabilized with relative ease using isolation, repetition and exhaustion. He chose the food she would eat, for example, limiting her to dry bread with a glass of Roman tap water, which tasted of chlorine. The isolation process consisted of a prohibition against conversation with others and the requirement to perform a series of duties, including the submission of a two-hourly written report to the mentor of the entire group, a Basque by the name of Pedro Ruiz Arcaute, who hailed from the same region as blessed Josemaría and was equal to Pla y Daniel in zealous piety. Lectures were given every day that paid little attention to the end of the Cold War and warned against three dangers: crypto-Marxism and Freemasonry, which destroy religion; sexuality, which turns humans into animals; and subjectivism, which leads to tolerance. According to the
amalgama
method, the said three dangers were always referred to in a single breath, as if they were one and the same.
amalgama
method, the said three dangers were always referred to in a single breath, as if they were one and the same.
Every day, lengthy talks and meditations were given on one’s duty to be an instrument in the hands of God, according to the magisterium of the Catholic Church, which would ultimately be taken over by Opus Dei with world domination as the final goal.
If there was anything wrong in the written reports, the “girls” were collectively humiliated with one of El Padre’s sayings:
Don’t fly like a barnyard hen when you can soar like an eagle
. Amandine had dared to say that she did not understand the connection. She was ridiculed: a woman did not have to
understand
, she had to
function
within the role pattern ascribed to her. She needed time to discuss the matter with God in prayer, was her retort. Ruiz snapped that it was inappropriate to make reference to God in public. When she replied with tears in her eyes that she wanted to dedicate her life to Him alone, she was advised with a snigger to dedicate herself to the “Apostolate of Not-Giving”, leaving her even more confused than ever.
Don’t fly like a barnyard hen when you can soar like an eagle
. Amandine had dared to say that she did not understand the connection. She was ridiculed: a woman did not have to
understand
, she had to
function
within the role pattern ascribed to her. She needed time to discuss the matter with God in prayer, was her retort. Ruiz snapped that it was inappropriate to make reference to God in public. When she replied with tears in her eyes that she wanted to dedicate her life to Him alone, she was advised with a snigger to dedicate herself to the “Apostolate of Not-Giving”, leaving her even more confused than ever.
At a certain moment, her room was cleared of furniture and the showers were closed. Ruiz dismissed her concerns and gave her orders to write a commentary on the subject “Detachment from whatever is not of God”: objects, persons, the self, one’s own ideas, health, time, leisure, study, work, family, money, self-satisfaction…
Her concern about being unable to talk to her eldest son in Leuven (she had made several attempts but the line was dead) was met with an admonition to avoid the people she loved, because feelings of attachment were inclined to encourage time-wasting. In addition to this, it was forbidden to examine the origins of one’s own uneasiness in this regard. An infamous Jesuit humiliation, employed on occasion by Paul Hersch, was similarly part of Ruiz’s drill: the use of “spiritual
eleemosynae
”, an Opus Dei expression for public humiliation by the other group members, who exposed one’s shortcomings in a feigned effort to encourage a change of ways. Amandine was accused of being pretentious. She was devastated, but managed to contain herself with difficulty. She lost several nights’ sleep over the remark, and even the silent recitation of the
Salve Regina
lying on the hard floor (according to the regulations, the night silence prohibited praying out loud) did not help.
eleemosynae
”, an Opus Dei expression for public humiliation by the other group members, who exposed one’s shortcomings in a feigned effort to encourage a change of ways. Amandine was accused of being pretentious. She was devastated, but managed to contain herself with difficulty. She lost several nights’ sleep over the remark, and even the silent recitation of the
Salve Regina
lying on the hard floor (according to the regulations, the night silence prohibited praying out loud) did not help.
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