The King of the Rainy Country by Nicolas Freeling Read Free Book Online

he had been told not to make official inquiries, but nothing had been said about the old-boy network. He picked up his telephone.
    â€˜Police Praesidium, Köln. Hallo? Any chance of finding Stösselin his office? May not be gone yet? – put me through anyway. Hallo? Heinz? How are all the cowboys?’
    A deep dramatic groan vibrated the diaphragm.
    â€˜Gets worse every year – dustbin men swore they’d go on strike, three taxi-drivers were attacked, we had one hundred and forty-seven auto thefts and the bill for broken glass is astronomical. The insurance people refuse all carnival claims on principle – they say it comes under civil war. Over now – I love Lent!’
    â€˜How’s your trade in missing persons?’
    There was a sudden silence.
    â€˜Why d’you ask? I have a very naughty one but it’s not on your teletype yet. You clairvoyant or something?’ The voice sharpened suddenly. ‘You haven’t found a girl, have you?’
    â€˜No. I’ve lost a man.’
    â€˜You’ve come to the wrong address, son. We’ve lost a girl – and the press got it before we did.’
    â€˜Yes, that’s the worst sort.’
    â€˜There’s worse still – we’ve just found her clothes in some woods. You can see the headline – Naked Beauty Disappears!’
    â€˜Any starting point?’
    â€˜Precious little – a barman saw her the night of Rose Monday with what is described as a handsome middle-aged man. Now you tell me your troubles. I haven’t seen any signal, but to be honest I’ve been too busy to look.’
    â€˜It isn’t on the teletype. It’s one of those confidential jobs. Man’s a millionaire.’
    A groan of disgust.
    â€˜And I suppose he’s handsome and middle-aged, is he?’
    â€˜I suppose he could be called that – by a barman. I’m not seriously suggesting it: I’ve got no pointer at all. But the name of Köln has come up three or four times in an oddly peculiar way. The thing is that just before he ducked my man was talking vaguely about the carnival.’
    â€˜So was everybody else.’
    â€˜Do you believe in coincidence, dad?’
    â€˜You got photos?’
    â€˜In my pocket.’
    â€˜Not much though, is it? Handsome middle-aged man. You might as well say he had a glass of beer and a cowboy costume.’
    â€˜I’m going to catch a plane.’
    â€˜Are you serious?’
    â€˜My expenses are guaranteed.’
    There wasn’t any need to tell anybody, even Heinz Stössel, who would understand. There were two things driving him. One was simply the wish to get off the ground: he had had a feeling already for twenty-four hours that he was going round and round and staying in the same place. The other was pure wishful thinking. Like a poker player, with a fistful of rubbish, who discards three and keeps two miserable small hearts; by wishing hard enough he feels certain that his three new cards, turning them cautiously, one by one, corner by corner, up towards his twitching nose, will be three more hearts. Occasionally, they are.
    He rang the airport; no space on the afternoon plane, but one at midday. He went home to pick up his bag, regretting the impulse a little already: it meant that instead of getting dinner from Arlette he would get a plastic tray with thingummybobs in aspic, and dry salad, and a huge piece of pastry with whipped cream that had gone slightly cardboardy from being kept in the fridge – he knew that airport food!
    He didn’t believe Mr Marschal was dead: he didn’t believe in any crime: he couldn’t accept that the man was any sort of criminal. Yet because he heard a nonsensical tale about a naked girl and a handsome middle-aged man he went haring off to Köln. I am like the man in the Bible, he told himself, who strained at a gnat but swallowed a camel. Or was that in the Bible? Not that it