Tsing-Boum by Nicolas Freeling Read Free Book Online Page A

nobody – and who was very ill-treated. Dreadfully ill-treated. I’ll tell you about her. Do you want to see your mother?’
    â€˜No,’ said Ruth firmly. ‘I’ve said goodbye.’
    â€˜Would you like the car to take you home to Arlette? I have to go to work.’
    â€˜Yes, please.’ How perfect she was.
    As he stood up a voice blared at him from fifty centimetres away: ‘Going to go on keeping secrets, Commissaire?’
    Van der Valk brought his heel very hastily across this clown’s instep, said ‘Oh I am sorry’ and took the child’s hand. She had started to cry, which was the best thing she could do. He sat her next to the driver, and said, ‘Take her back to my wife, Joe, and pick me up here.’ Ruth did not want to say goodbye to Esther, but he did. It was time that Jean Valjean changed back into Colonel Stok.
    The pressman in the hall was holding his foot and looking both physically and morally pained.
    â€˜You,’ said Van der Valk. ‘You interrupt me when I’m working just once again and I’ll unfit you for fatherhood. Six o’clock at the bureau is when I have time for you.’
    Esther was in a sort of anteroom to the mortuary where they put relatives; they had screened a corner off. There was nobody there. They had arranged her quite nicely, with a pillow and a hospital nightdress; her hands lay quiet along her body. He didn’t want to look at her body; there would not be much left of it. He picked up her hand. A nurse’s hand, competent and muscular, with two or three fine white lines from old cuts, but well cared for, a little roughened by housework, veryclean, one nail slightly misshapen from being crushed at some time, no sign of her habitually wearing other rings. The forearm was strong and tanned; she had been out in the fresh air.
    The face was an empty shell, like all dead faces, but the marks of her character were there upon the smooth surface, a clear skin still youthful but with the lines of an older woman around the eyes and mouth. One could read resolution and courage – he wished he had seen her alive. She had not been a conventionally pretty woman but her looks had been striking, with a well modelled forehead, a wide and beautiful mouth, a long supple neck. Her hair was brown and straight, cut short, that of a woman caring nothing for fashion and knowing well what suits her. He looked at her with respect; Esther had known how to keep her secrets. He walked slowly back to his car.
    â€˜She just kept crying,’ said his driver. ‘She made no fuss. Went eagerly to your wife. Rough for a little girl. The father not want her? What will you do with her?’
    â€˜Keep her,’ said Van der Valk, surprising himself at sounding so natural.
    The office was very spry and brisk; with the national Press paying such close attention his staff appeared unnaturally bright and as though fresh from their New Year resolutions. He found it all slightly absurd – poor Esther. Had she had a talent for getting into theatrical situations? It didn’t look like it, but what could one read on that dead face with closed pages?
    His desk was full of paper; he glanced over it while picking up the telephone.
    â€˜Commissaire van der Valk – morning, Burgomaster. Yes, decidedly. No, certainly not. Likeliest, but it’s quite hypothetical. A job for the archaeologists – no, I mean we go digging in the past. Yes, naturally we’re checking all that but it’s all very quiet and decent and frankly I doubt it. Naturally, Burgomaster, you can rely on that. Right, sir, yes. I’ll do that, of course. Yes – ’bye.’
    They would not be too worried. Congratulating themselves on his experience, on his knowing how to handle the Press even if it turned nasty. He would get criticized on every side, andthere was a large and vocal group just dying to make trouble for him, but he was lucky in his