The Public Prosecutor (24 page)

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Authors: Jef Geeraerts

BOOK: The Public Prosecutor
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“What does that mean?”
“Content.”
“
Absolutnie
.”
“Aren’t you going to change?”
“You’re right. Let’s go upstairs.”
They climbed the stairs. When they passed the statue of Our Lady on the first landing he noticed fresh lilies.
“Fuck,” he snorted.
She quickly blessed herself.
“Why do you do that?” he asked bluntly.
“It’s not right to curse in front of Our Holy Mother.”
“Fuck.”
“Mr Albert, it’s not up to me.
Madame
insists on flowers. And tomorrow…”
“Stuff tomorrow,” he hissed.
“Stuff tomorrow?”
What he wanted to say was: “They can kiss my arse”, but he contained himself: “I couldn’t care less,” he translated.
She nodded, still not quite sure what he was talking about. “Madame also uses a word I don’t understand,” she said, looking him in the eye.
“What word?”
“En-cyc-lical,” she spelled.
He exploded with laughter and she stared at him in surprise.
“That’s from her father. If something annoyed him he would always say ‘
Encyclique
’, in French. Then he would tell his household
what
had annoyed him. It was usually something to do with leaving lights on, using too much toilet paper or forgetting to lock the door.”
“Was he a poor man?”
“No, Maria. The richer the tighter! Do you know what an ‘encyclical’ is?”
“No.”
“It’s a letter from the Pope to the Catholics of the world containing his infallible teaching.”
“Infallible?”
“Without the possibility of error.”
“Oh, I see,” she said, pursing her lips.
“Don’t you like the Pope? Isn’t he Polish?”
“No,” she replied, her eyes pinched.
He looked at her with a smile. You’re so cute, he thought.
“Priest, bishop, the Pope, they’re all
gówno
.”
“Mmm?”
“Shit?” she translated.
“And I thought you were such a good Catholic!”
“I know all about that sort. My mum was screwed by the local parish priest and when she got pregnant he dumped her.”
“And then?”
“Abortion,” she said, gesturing with her hand in front of her belly as if she were chasing a fly. “But she put a curse on him.
Rak
. Cancer. Dead.”
“Oh Maria…” He took her face in his hands and kissed her gently on the lips.
“Mr Albert,
ich liebe dich
,” she announced. “I don’t want to leave you.” She pressed herself against him with all her might.
Albert had to control his emotions. “You’re a good woman, Maria,” he said. “You’re type three according to Buddha.”
She closed her eyes and did not ask what he meant. She unbuttoned his shirt, ripped it open and kissed him again and again on his hair-covered chest. She then checked between his legs. Nothing.
“Tonight,” she said resignedly, and she tapped his nose with her index finger.
God preserve me, thought Albert. They had pushed out the boat the last three days and he needed a miracle to get him through the last night. If only he had met her twenty years ago, he thought, running his hand over her back.
She stood on the tips of her toes and held her breath, lifted her skirt, slipped her panties to one side and stretched her labia apart with two fingers to reveal her clitoris. He kneeled and started to talk to her pussy at first, telling it not to be naughty, that it was his “rascal”, his “honey pie”, his “ball of quicksilver”, his “sweet little party animal”. When he started to lick it, she stretched her back and squeezed her thighs together until they were hard as ivory. And she came quickly, violently, howling like a wolf.
She loosened her ponytail, knelt beside him and covered his neck and face with an abundance of fragrant hair.
“When I rode Soliman, I had the same… The same happened,” she said, and she started to laugh.
“You ride like a she-devil.”
“Soliman is a man-devil. Good horse… very good horse.”
“He’ll throw you off one of these days if you keep pulling at his mouth like that.”
“Pff…”
“How many times have you fallen from a horse?”
“Hundreds of times.”
They burst into a fit of laughter.
Out of the blue she said: “Come with me to Poland, Mr Albert. There’s so much countryside in Poland. You’re a farmer at heart…”
“That’s true. I was raised on a farm.”
“Poland has plenty of wild boar to shoot with your rifle.”
They walked arm in arm to the bedroom, where he put on a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt.
As they made their way downstairs, he asked her where she had learned to ride a horse.
“My uncle had horses. I learned bareback.”
“Really?”
She formed a saddle with her hands.
“Did you get the same… er… in those days?” he said, pointing to her lower belly.
“Sometimes,” she replied in perfect Antwerp dialect, her eyelids fluttering coquettishly.
He stopped in his tracks. “Feel this,” he said proudly.
She pressed her hand against the front of his jeans. “Hurrah!”
They rushed downstairs together.
She stood to attention next to the kitchen table like a soldier. “En-cyc-lical,” she said dramatically and saluted.
Albert looked on as she set the table. He had never felt so young, so delightfully indifferent to the consequences of his deeds.
“Maria, the fork with the teeth downwards! White wine glass right. Red wine glass left. Water glass to the rear! Oh, but what have you done, this is simply
ghastly
!” he said in French, imitating his wife’s high-pitched voice. “Don’t forget, Maria, Madame is a
baroness
…”
She looked at him enquiringly.
“People like her always call this sort of… crap
ghastly
. Serious matters are usually
unpleasant
or
bothersome
.” He gave a perfect imitation of the aristocratic gesture of the hand with which “people who don’t belong in our circles” tended to be dismissed.
“In Poland, the Russians shot every one of them,” she said. “Bang, bang, bang!”
“That’ll never happen here in Belgium,” he replied absently.
“Bah!” she yelled all of a sudden, lifting her dress and exposing her buttocks.
He gave them a sound slap.
She jumped forward in the direction of the fridge and took out a bottle of vodka.
“Dreenk?”
“Why not. Let’s get plastered.”
She returned to the fridge, took a five-ounce tin of caviar from the door, fetched a knife and opened the lid.
“Spoons!” he exclaimed, opening the sideboard drawer.
She poured two stiff vodkas. They drank and spooned caviar from the tin.
“Mr Albert…”
“Maria…”
“What are we going to do when Madame is here?”
“Encyclical,” he announced solemnly, throwing back his head and pouting his lips.
She was clearly taken aback.
“I’ll come… to your room.
Schluss!
”
“D’you mean it?”
He held his fingers to his mouth in a v-sign and licked.
They ate caviar and drank vodka.
“Mr Albert…”
“Yes, Maria…”
“Why am I type three?”
“Later, Maria. Later…”
16
 
Tuesday 1 June, 10.35 am. Dressed in a beige two-piece with milky nylons, black patent shoes, glasses hanging from a chain around her neck and the perfect Queen Paola hairdo, Baroness Amandine de Vreux emerged from exit two of the national airport, pushing a baggage trolley with a grey suitcase and a Louis Vuitton travel bag. Albert’s chauffeur caught sight of her and rushed to her assistance.
“Good morning, Madame,” he said stiffly, taking over the trolley. She glanced at him and nodded.
“The car is close by,” said the chauffeur.
She nodded again and looked in the opposite direction.
The chauffeur took the suitcase and travel bag and carried them towards the exit. It was chilly outside and rain had settled in the day before.
Baroness de Vreux looked at the sky as if it was to blame for everything. The chauffeur held open the passenger door of the black Opel and she stepped inside.
He loaded the baggage, hissed “arsehole”, settled down at the wheel and drove off.
 
The telephone rang at the Public Prosecutor’s Office at 11.05. A gentle, polite male voice asked to speak to the Public Prosecutor in person. The switchboard put him through to his secretary, who enquired as to the reason for his call.
“I would prefer to discuss the matter with the Public Prosecutor himself,” the man answered calmly.
“I’ll put you through, sir.”
She transferred the call to Albert’s office, where he was listening attentively to Barrister-General Bergé’s weekly briefing, a duty he found relatively interesting, all things considered.
“Yes,” he answered.
“I have someone on the line who wishes to talk to you in person, Public Prosecutor.”
“On the phone?”
“Yes.”
Albert had a hangover from the vodka and wine he had guzzled the evening before, but was nevertheless in the best of spirits. He had managed -
in extremis
- to satisfy Maria
completely
, and this had given him the energy to deal with the less pleasant prospects of the day ahead.
“Put him through,” he said, lifting the receiver. “Hello?”
“Is this Public Prosecutor Savelkoul?” a soft male voice enquired in standard Dutch with a hint of a French accent.
“Speaking.”
Barrister-General Bergé stood according to custom and enquired with a gesture if he should leave the room, but Albert waved him back to his seat.
“Would it be possible to meet?” the man asked.
“What about?”
“I would prefer to tell you in person.”
“But… with whom do I have the honour?”
“Jean Maraudy de Moretus.”
Not another aristocrat, Albert thought, but his curiosity had been aroused.
“Fine. When would you be free?” Albert enquired, pen and paper at the ready.
“This evening.”
“Where?”
“In front of the church in Kortenberg.”
“Kortenberg? That’s miles away!”
“Would you prefer to meet somewhere else?”
“No,” Albert snapped. “What time?”
“Would nine o’clock suit?”
“Nine is good for me. How will I recognize you?”
“I’ll be standing in front of the church door in Brouwerstraat. I’m small-built and a little chubby. I’ll be wearing glasses… and a hat.”
“Good. See you in Kortenberg at nine.”
Albert hung up and invited Barrister-General Bergé to continue his briefing with a nod.
Bergé was short, bald and corpulent, sixty-two going on seventy. His blue lips betrayed a heart problem. In addition to holding his own top-level position at the Public Prosecutor’s Office, he was also designated “the inquisitor”. His job was to deal with disciplinary matters relating to CID officers, the metropolitan police, the gendarmerie, court bailiffs, lawyers, notaries public and lower-ranking sitting magistrates. He did his job with painstaking accuracy, which basically meant he was absolutely unrelenting, especially when it came to the conduct and good name of the legal system. Bergé examined every anonymous letter in minute detail, and he worked hard and late whenever necessary to get to the bottom of the accusations they contained. His own conduct was unimpeachable. He had been a widower for six years and belonged to one of Antwerp’s most conservative Catholic families. In legal circles, however, he wasn’t the brightest. It was thanks primarily to the support of the right wing of the Christian People’s Party that he had been able to climb to the upper echelons and establish himself at the same time as a staunch defender of the Old Political Culture. He mocked Belgium’s New Political Culture as “an insecticide” and “interference”. He was an expert in the typically Belgian procedure of mixing unrelated conflicts in such a way that they neutralized one another. He thus gave the impression that he favoured change, but his real goal was to maintain the status quo, the only plausible stance an intelligent conservative could take, he insisted. Albert hated him with a vengeance but never let it show. He was a dirty old man, with liver spots on his scalp and a disgusting body odour. Bergé’s only positive side was that he kept Albert up to date with the gossip that was doing the rounds, most of which contained more than a grain of truth. In addition, the man reminded Albert Savelkoul of the fact that he was two years older, yet still had the look of a playboy. He gave him every due respect, following the adage of ex-president Lyndon B. Johnson about Edgar Hoover: it’s better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in. Bergé’s attitude to bourgeois society was nineteenth-century. He considered it a sort of insurance policy for the hereafter.

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