One Damn Thing After Another by Nicolas Freeling Read Free Book Online Page A

just a touch of the accent. I have it myself.”
    â€œNîmes; It’s of no importance. Thirty-three years old. Married. Three little girls. And that’s the whole point really.”
    â€œAh. I begin to get a glimmer. This really is a personal thing. Sorry – go on.”
    â€œProfession, cop. Never had any other. Not an officer – no baccalaureate.”
    â€œCan you give me your definition of the word ‘profession’?”
    â€œFor me, Madame, it’s something one works at professionally, meaning you put your back into it and your brains: if the job isn’t well done, it isn’t professional.”
    â€œRevealing answer.” Subleyras had a grin; tight without being pinched, crooked without being false. Not Sunny Jim, thank God, but far from a cold fish. He lit a cigarette from the butt of the last and shook one loose for her.
    â€œI didn’t come here to fence with you,” he said. “There isn’t any story. The background is the story. I’ve done this job for fifteen years. Well, or less well, but professionally. I’ve come to a point where I’m no longer able, or allowed maybe, to do this work the way I see it. I’m not talking about justice. There’s more rough than smooth to this job and that’s a fact. I accept that – if you don’t, you don’t last one year, let alone ten. I’ve no fancy philosophies; don’t pretend to be an educated man. I’m talking about common sense.”
    â€œI don’t have anything written on the door,” said Arlette, choosing her words slowly. “Those adverts I put in the paper say Counsel. Are you asking my advice, or my opinion? Have you really made your own mind up, but you’re sticking a bit over the decision, and perhaps you’re looking for something to push you into it? I wouldn’t have the nerve, you know, to go advising a man like you what he should do with his life.”
    â€œAll right,” he said placidly. “I’ll say only that I haven’t altogether made my mind up, and all the light I can get, I can use.”
    â€œSo you come to a perfect stranger,” said Arlette, “to push the pendulum one way or the other.”
    â€œI can go on splitting hairs. When you talk about common sense – give me a concrete example.”
    He threw away the cigarette, crossed his arms and looked at Arlette.
    â€œOne that seems unimportant, but – illustrates?”
    â€œSymptomatic?”
    â€œRight. I’m off duty, near midnight, the ring boulevard,couple of hundred metres past the station, not many people about. I’m in plain clothes, my own car, alone, at a red light. I see a girl walking – not loitering. A few paces behind her, a black man. I’m not sure I recognize him – not much light – but I don’t care for the look of him. Cop instinct, if you like. Sidling up on her. I stop the car, cross the street, show my card, ask for his papers. He gives me lip in a loud voice, the girl stops and turns round, asks what I think I’m doing, pretty aggressive. I say I don’t like the way he’s marking her steps. He goes on backchatting, she calls me a fucking fascist. I’m a wee bit irritated, I pin him and say Up against the wall, boy.”
    â€œWith a gun?”
    â€œOff duty I don’t carry one; I’m bigger,” bleakly, “than I look.”
    â€œSorry I interrupted.”
    â€œHe doesn’t resist. I tap his pockets, come up with a blade fifteen centimetres long. Ask what he’s doing with that, he says it’s for cleaning his nails with. I show it the girl and say See that? She just looks, shrugs her shoulders, says to me, quite indifferent, ‘Stick it in your tripes,’ like that, turns round, walks off. As dry and as cool as yesterday’s pizza. So? I tell Billyboy he made no attack, so I press no charge against him: he’s carrying a