The Widow by Nicolas Freeling Read Free Book Online

ministerial or municipal. Hamstrung by bureaucracy. The defeat-your-own-end syndrome of all governmental instances.
    â€˜Private ones? Have their own axe to grind, alcoholics, battered wives and so forth. Doctors or priests? – all right as far as they go. They give of course valuable and disinterested advice, when they find the time. Like cops, they’re all bodies of fine upstanding men, devoted to upholding the Ten Commandments and wondering why it doesn’t work. Wrong-footed at the start. All this talk about Justice … They’re like the fire brigade, they put out fires. But they’ve no more time for helping people than they have for catching bicycle thieves.’
    It all sounded like Piet talking. Arlette took a cigarette and held her peace.
    â€˜The ones where you pay – anything from psychiatry to tax-dodging. Most founded upon fear, greed and chicanery: squalid. And far too dear. Even when good obscured by cant, humbug and self-interest.
    â€˜I can see difficulties of course. We need patience and some skill. One puts up a board saying Expert? – anyone can, and what does it mean? How to avoid the money snag? I say; the sun’s come out – let’s go out too.’
    They crossed the Rue de Jura and walked along the canal where the barges tie up. Under the Churchill bridge past the Citadel park. Past the
Drakkar
which pretends to be a Viking ship, and sells beer. Past the mother-barge, piled with butane cylinders; surrounded by rusty junk and guarded by numerous dogs. The pleasure-steamers of the Cologne-Dusseldorf Line; ten days on the Rhine with nothing to do but overeat. The Pont d’Anvers and the coal harbour, painterly in the autumn sunshine: the nineteenth-century barracks where you can still, if minded, join the Foreign Legion, and the row of Belgian barges with enchanting names like
Praise God Barebones
. They walked down to the corner where the ship-lock joins the inner and outer harbours, Arthur arguing quietly and Arlette being obstinate.
    â€˜I don’t really grasp,’ she said, ‘what could one do that isn’t – I agree very badly – done already?’
    Arthur felt in his pockets, where he collected torn scraps of newspaper, raw material of sociology.
    â€˜These are random samples. Newspapers tell one nothing – the scrabble for perpetual novelty. Assize-court reports …
    â€˜First is an engineer of thirty, highly qualified. He left work one day; said nothing at home. Went on simulating work rhythms, leaving the house at the right time. Spent the day walking about, sitting in cafés, doing crosswords, brooding. After more than a year, think of it, he went home, assassinated his mistress and her daughter, who was not his. He washed and neatly dressed the two bodies; that’s quite common. He made then six different suicide attempts. Five days after, he walked into the cop shop, arguably just before they laid hands on him.’ Arlette made no comment. Familiar with these things; Piet used to ‘bring them back from the office’.
    â€˜Second is a teacher of thirty-five. Good teacher; model husband of a devoted wife, who was a childhood comrade. Excellent father of three little girls, thirteen, eleven and ten. Happy childhood in comfortable circumstances. Strangled a shopgirl in a perfumery who surprised him robbing thetill. Mystery; he had already robbed the same till twice and knew there was now no money kept in it.’
    â€˜No clue at all?’ asked Arlette startled.
    â€˜Oh yes: compulsive gambler. Tried several times to stop; was put on the casino blacklist at his own request. It is, as you know, one of the most tenacious of intoxications.’
    â€˜But these are classics for the shrink. The first is neuropath depressive and the second’s like alcoholism; he tries to compensate for a huge hole somewhere in the personality.’
    â€˜Sociopath if you accept the feeble-minded jargon. Quite