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

mattered.
    *
    In Köln there was a message from Heinz. He had gone home to get some sleep; he would meet Van der Valk this evening at six on the Rhine Terrace. Here, in the meanwhile, was a transcript of the meagre facts available.
    The girl was seventeen, rising eighteen. Her name was Dagmar Schwiewelbein – the kind of name a German sees nothing comic in. She was described as extremely pretty. There were photos available but they were misleading, apparently; the girl had shot up suddenly and changed her hairstyle, plucked her eyebrows, done all sorts of things the parents disapproved of. These parents were very quiet, simple honest folk. Father was clerk in an insurance office, a very nice chap, not conspicuous for brains. There was an elder brother in the army; the girl had lived at home with her parents. They were utterly distraught, of course. They had brought their daughter up simply, innocently; she had always been quiet and good, an honest little German girl wearing an apron with little pockets in the shape of hearts, and her hair in ringlets. Not an outstanding schoolgirl, not bright enough to go on to a higher school. She had taken a job in an expensive flashy shop as countergirl, selling sports clothes. She had never been away from home till last year, when she had gone with two other girls on a wintersport holiday; her hobby was gymnastics and she was mad on ski-ing. She had never had a regular boyfriend, though she had been to the cinema with various young hopefuls. A good, quiet, innocent girl.
    The parents had not liked the job: she had got hard and flashy, ‘like all the other girls nowadays’, and sometimes wilful and cheeky with her mum.
    Last month a big event had come to her life. She had been chosen for the Carnival as a Tanzmariechen.
    This is a German phenomenon: the Carnival Prince has a troop of attendants, among them a sort of bodyguard that he carts about with him. These are the tanzmariechen, twenty or so of the prettiest and longest-legged girls in the town. They wear a very fetching musical-comedy-military costume: a kind of hussar tunic, tights, high boots, and a Cossack fur hat. It is very becoming on a tall slim girl.
    I can’t think about her, thought Van der Valk, as Dagmar Schwiewelbein. I can think of her, though, as the tanzmariechen, which is a pretty name for a delightful phenomenon.
    They ride in the parade with the Carnival Prince, on RoseMonday, and they appear of course at the great ball and banquet. This one hadn’t; she had just disappeared. She had been seen that night having a drink with the famous ‘handsome man’ in a café; nobody had thought anything of it. Nobody had ever seen her again. The costume – recognized by the sobbing mother – had been found in a neat pile in some woods ten kilometres or so outside the town, that were being searched as a matter of routine. There was no sign at all of trampling or a struggle or anything else: just a little pile of clothes. A naked tanzmariechen had disappeared into the cold March wind, veering between north-west, when it inclined to be wet, and north-east, when it was just cold.
    Van der Valk trudged through Köln and got as far as the Rhine Terrace. Ash Wednesday – a carnival hangover: the streets seemed empty, the people slow and depressed. There were scarcely any people in the big glassed-in air-conditioned terrace. There was a view over a glaucous clouded-over Rhine, the huge heavy current even dirtier and more sullen than usual. The totally deserted outside terrace was decorated with flags of many countries, a few upside-down and almost all frayed by the wind and eaten by the Ruhr air. A vast poster announced that the Köln Football Club was host that Saturday to Borussia Dortmund. Banners advertised beer and fizzy lemonade. Another huge poster shouted the praises of the great ancient Roman Kennedy-visited Capital of the Rheinland. Everywhere one looked one saw the familiar twin