Because of the Cats by Nicolas Freeling

Author:Nicolas Freeling [Freeling, Nicolas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780575035263
Amazon: 1531838308
Publisher: Littlehampton Book Services Ltd
Published: 1984-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

The first time he saw Lucienne was six months before this moment. Soberly, he had been driving along outside Utrecht. There was a notorious fork ahead, and he thought, vaguely, that the grey DS passed him going much too fast. When the Volkswagen van, with its moronic butcher’s boy, tripped out all feminine and casual, paused, and then dithered, and then dynamited the grey Citroèn full in its shark nose, he had time to tell himself as he braked that he was not surprised.

The girl was cut across the hairline and bleeding slowly, semiconscious—but not badly hurt, he thought. The butcher’s boy was sausage, simply. The man, crumpled under the steering-wheel of the Citroèn like an old sack—was there anything he could do there? He doubted it. Severe chest injuries. Pulse bad, colour bad, breathing very bad. Reflex-to-light poor. Not to be moved. But while waiting for the ambulance, and the fast wagon of the state police, Van der Valk did his best. The man’s wallet told him a name: Arnolf Englebert. And he knew it, as he should have seen that he knew the face, which had looked at him many times from the sleeves of gramophone records. A conductor. Very good with Mahler. Will I ever enjoy those records again? Fine style, rather like Walter.

Unexpectedly, the eyes opened and managed a blurry focus. Gradually they tried a little movement out. Throat muscles still functioning. Larynx, pharynx, even lips. Even brain still does something.

“I’ve crashed,” said the lips in German, thin and small, but clear. The tone was unsurprised, unindignant.

“Yes.”

“And I’m dying.”

“Yes.”

“You’d better forgive me my sins.” No irony in the voice.

“We’ll do our best. On their way by now.”

“My daughter?”

“She’s all right. Just a bit cut, that’s all.”

“Ah. Doesn’t matter. We all die. Doesn’t hurt.”

“I’m a policeman. Can I take any message, do anything for you?”

The eyes thought.

“No. But thank you.” There was a flicker of humour suddenly. “Be absolute for death,” the voice told him, in English. The words were familiar somehow; where had he heard them? But the voice said nothing more; the man had slipped into a quiet thought of memory and contrition, perhaps.

“Waste of time,” said the state policeman, leaning across the bonnet of his little Porsche and staring with a professional trades-union eye at Van der Valk. “Can’t cut him out of there without killing him.”

“Finished,” said the ambulance man. “Ribs caved in, all sorts of abdominal injuries too. Ruptured spleen, liver too maybe. Hopeless.”

And indeed he died, still in quiet thought, a quarter of an hour later.

They brought the girl to the Academic Hospital in Utrecht. Only shock, bruises, and slight concussion. The cut needed three stitches.

When he got home Van der Valk looked up the reference, though it took him some time to run it home. Measure for Measure.

“ ‘Either death or life shall thereby be the sweeter.’ Very sensible,” he told his wife, coming in with herrings in oatmeal.

“Isn’t there a translation of Shakespeare?” Arlette’s English was good, but not very literary; Shakespeare defeated her.

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