The Public Prosecutor Read online

  He opened a drawer and took out a round Japanese black lacquered box adorned with a slender bird. It contained a worn-out pack of Johnnie Walker cards. He shuffled the pack and the third card he chose was the Queen of Spades. “Ha ha!” he said. “She heard my appeal.” He childishly identified two of the four queens with Louise and Amandine, the latter with the Queen of Diamonds, which he considered the least interesting. If the next card was the King of Hearts (Albert Savelkoul), his day would be made. He nervously selected three cards from the pack and flipped them over, but there was no sign of a king. At the last moment, when he had more or less given up hope, he flipped over the King of Diamonds. And the King of Hearts! “Ha ha!” he exclaimed for a second time. By the time he had placed the Queen of Spades on top of the King of Hearts he had lost interest in the game. His decision had been made: on Tuesday 25 May 1999, under the treacherous sign of Castor and Pollux, he was going to enjoy every moment without the slightest inkling of false modesty. He would show his face at the Prosecutor’s Office, peer over a few shoulders and make sure everyone had seen him.

  His official car would arrive at the front door as it did every day at nine o’clock sharp. He glanced at his watch. Twenty past eight. He rolled back his chair and reached for his mobile, which was concealed behind a table leg. He quickly keyed in her number. He let it ring twelve times but no one answered. Unusual, he thought, and hung up. She must be in the stables. He produced a scrap of paper from his kimono and read aloud: “Horse: koń, judge: se̜dzia, egg: jajko, coffee: kawa, milk: mleko.”

  He picked up his mobile a second time, but instead of calling her number he stared absently into space. If she didn’t pick up this time, that would be a bad sign, in spite of the Queen of Spades. He decided to wait a while. Tempting fate so early in the morning could ruin the rest of the day. He tried to reassure himself. She could only be with the horses at this hour. Was there something wrong with Yamma or Soliman? According to Albert, who had received a pony from his father fifty-seven years ago and was an experienced horseman, Louise was the only woman who knew how to treat horses properly. When they rode together through the Sint-Job-in-’t-Goor woods where she lived, he always admired her natural balance in the saddle and her perfectly coordinated instinctual reactions. He fantasized that they had once galloped across the Asian steppe together on sturdy Mongolian tarpans, centuries ago in the time of Genghis Khan, she screaming wildly, her hair unfettered, he with a bow over his shoulder. He had once told her about it while she was riding Yamma and she could barely stay in the saddle for laughing. He could be a romantic at times, and as he mused on their first encounter he became more and more convinced of it. Their relationship was the result of what he referred to as a chapter in a picaresque novel, the kind of thing that never happens to ordinary men and women. Seventeen years earlier, on Friday 5 March 1982 to be precise - he was still the public prosecutor’s first substitute in those days - he had intervened in a delicate case of adultery among Antwerp’s upper-crust, which a team of gormless criminal investigators had more or less botched up. While personal interventions in such matters were exceptional, he found himself in a privileged position at the time on account of the simple fact that the then public prosecutor was a political creation of his father-in-law, Justice de Vreux. He was free, for example, to enter the public prosecutor’s chambers unannounced, and the man even called him by his first name, something not done in those days.

  The official report of the case in question revealed a glaring procedural error: the team of inspectors had burst into the house of the defendant on 7 January 1982 “to ascertain the offence of adultery”, fifteen minutes before the prescribed time of five in the morning. The lady involved had fled stark naked into the garden, where the temperature was five below zero. This savoury detail is not mentioned in the report, nor the fact that she was left out in the freezing cold for more than half an hour. She wasted little time in submitting a complaint against the inspectors, with three witnesses to confirm her side of the story. He had summoned the woman to the Prosecutor’s Office in an effort to settle the matter out of court. His boss, the former public prosecutor, was on the point of being promoted to adjunct Barrister-General to the Council of State, and preferred to avoid such cases. The lady turned out to be a particularly attractive forty-year-old woman, accompanied at the time by her then sixteen-year-old daughter, the breathtakingly beautiful Louise. He was at the height of his midlife crisis in those days, which his circle of less-than-innocent friends called “the midday demon”. He also realized that his life up to that point had been a sexual flop of grandiose proportions. A little drama could do no harm.

  In the same period, prompted by Amandine’s evident lack of interest in what she called “marital duties” (they had slept in separate rooms since the birth of their son Geoffroy in 1965), he made occasional use of the services of a prostitute in the district surrounding the central train station. But on one of his evening excursions, a plain clothes CID vice squad investigator had spotted him leaving an establishment on Van Wesenbekestraat, the curtains of which were still drawn. Although he had disguised himself with a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses, the investigator, alias “the Krul”, had clearly recognized him. He could be one hundred per cent certain that details of the incident would remain inscribed in the police database for ever and a day. He stopped visiting the area after that evening, aware that the investigator in question would probably have tipped off the CID commissioner general’s office, where details of his misdemeanour would be recorded, a fact that could prove embarrassing in certain circumstances. The Krul’s own sordid reputation made little if any difference. What the fuck was he to do to defend himself at the Prosecutor’s Office, where he was first substitute, nota bene, with a file running around full of testimony provided by “nightclub hostesses”, forced by the Krul to provide their services for free during his monthly visit to check their papers? Even the man’s reputation as a psychopath wasn’t likely to tip the balance in his favour. The Public Prosecutor could count his blessings nevertheless. The affair had not affected his career, the Krul had passed away, and Van Wesenbekestraat had been taken over by the gay community in 1990.

  His romance with Louise had started at that very moment. It was love at first sight on both sides and he could still remember every last detail. The only risk involved was her age, two years under the legal limit, but he was so madly in love with her he simply ignored it. She was still attending the Dames Chrétiennes Institute on Lange Nieuwstraat, Antwerp’s most exclusive school for girls, run by the female Jesuits. The first time he saw her with her mother, she was wearing the school uniform, which excited him intensely. Their first love nest was a friend’s flat. He had borrowed the keys and insisted she wear her school uniform to every rendezvous until she graduated in 1984.

  Their lovemaking was passionate but conservative. During their first seemingly endless kiss, he had slipped his hand slowly under her pleated skirt. He thought she would be satisfied with kissing and caressing at first, but the illusion he had been cherishing that Catholic schoolgirls in Antwerp knew nothing about love was quickly dismissed. Without mincing words she told him what she wanted. She had been taking the pill for two years and knew all about orgasms and the like. While he searched for her “honey pot”, she would unzip his fly and pull out his stiff cock. After she had reached her climax, he would slip her panties out of the way, slither inside, still standing upright, grab her muscular buttocks with both hands as she clung to him like an ailing bird, and when she shouted “Mate! Mate! ” he would come, howling like a wolf. They would collapse together on the bed and the kissing, touching and other foreplay would start again. The verb “to mate” had immediate success with her every time. Their lovemaking lasted the entire afternoon in the early days, but after a while the single act of penetration evolved into an episode of touching and fondling that raised them to an état de grâce so to speak, in which she would come with ease and he would pretend half the time. He calle
d this “the white-lie method”.

  Although she still had the sinuous snake-like body of her youth, the silky-smooth skin with the musky odour of faintly perfumed chamois leather, and luxuriant East-Indies hair in which he would bury his nose like a hound in search of prey, it didn’t make the slightest difference now in 1999; not even the discovery of brand-new variations on the verb “to mate” was of any help. To put it plainly, his virility had been on the decline for several years. It usually took at least a quarter of an hour before he succeeded in producing what he called a “sparrow’s orgasm”, and during their last encounter he had even had difficulty getting an erection. He tried to make up for it with expensive gifts.

  “Oh well,” he mumbled, audibly inhaling and looking at his watch. Eight thirty-five. He grabbed his mobile, but something stopped him from calling her. He groaned and gazed at a silver-framed sepia photo on his desk of a young boy on a pony, looking into the lens as if he was about to burst into tears. The pony was a Shetlander with a bushy mane and distrustful expression, waiting patiently for the opportunity to kick someone, if his stance was anything to go by. His name was Pieter. When the pony was found dead in his stable on a summer morning in 1944, Albert experienced grief for the first time.

  Whenever he looked at the picture, pessimistic thoughts about the irreversible swiftness of time, growing old and the carefree days of his youth that were gone for ever, would flood his mind. This time was no exception. He envied Louise, only thirty-two and a couple of years younger than his eldest son, no less. In the glory years, he had derived enormous pleasure from reading Lolita, and that thrill, nowadays taboo, had played a considerable part in the gratification of his needs, but even sexual fetishes like Lolita were now beyond him.

  “Oh well,” he muttered a second time. He stared into space, his face washed out, listening to a mysterious electric motor start up somewhere deep in the foundations of the goddamned building, looked at his watch, resolutely straightened his back, concentrated on the Queen of Spades and punched in her number. She answered after a single ring.

  “Hello…”

  Her husky voice.

  Albert forgot the world around him. He took a deep breath and asked: “How’s that Black Lotus of mine?” They always spoke to one another in the dialect of Antwerp.

  “Mmm…”

  “And what’s my Black Lotus wearin’?”

  “Guess.”

  He leaned back in his chair, enjoying the moment. “Champagne-coloured… satin… undies… thigh length… where a man can take his time, slipping his hand…”

  “Well, well…”

  “And why would a man do that?” he said, anticipating her response.

  “You know why…”

  He felt a warmth in his eyes. “Love of my life…” he whispered, his lips close to the phone. He had called her that from the beginning.

  “Will I see you today?” she asked impersonally.

  “First a quick visit to the office, then I’m all yours. Should I bring anything special?”

  “Up to you. Shall I saddle the horses?”

  “Of course. By the way, were you in the stable half an hour ago?”

  “Nope, why?”

  “I phoned.”

  “I was in the house. Maybe the radio was too loud.”

  “Maybe…”

  “Cheerio. See you later…”

  He gave her a kiss through the phone.

  He hung up and calmly climbed the stairs to his bedroom, without deigning to look at the Virgin of Fatima. “Judge se̜dzia milk mleko coffee kawa horse koń egg jajko,” he crooned to the tune of Mozart’s ‘Que dirai-je maman?’, a melody he always had to play for his mother on the piano in the olden days.

  Maria Landowska had carefully arranged his shirt, ties and suit on a valet stand in the bedroom. He inspected the flawless, made-to-measure, dark-blue alpaca suit, the striped silk shirt and selection of ties. Without hesitation, he selected a flamboyant Versace number, flagrantly defying instructions “concerning the attire of magistrates and comparable functions”, which had circulated among the personnel on his advice six months earlier.

  An emblem of the Grand Cross in the Order of Leopold II decorated his left lapel. He examined it carefully to ensure it was correctly positioned in the buttonhole.

  3

  Albert had once thoroughly enjoyed reading the book Official and Confidential on the secret life of the legendary FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. The book contained sufficient and incontrovertible evidence that the man was a scoundrel of the first order, who hated the same vices in others that he himself possessed to a considerable degree. This did not diminish his admiration for Hoover in the slightest. He did not know why, but every time his chauffeur, provided full-time by the Prosecutor’s Office via the CID, opened the passenger door for him and said: “Good morning, Public Prosecutor, sir,” he couldn’t help thinking of Hoover. He had taken perverse pleasure in reading about the way the man had treated his chauffeur. He had apparently been fanatically demanding when it came to spatters on his blacked-out Cadillac, the precise size of the folded travelling blankets on the rear seat and even the shape of the ice cubes for the Jack Daniels he regularly enjoyed with his bosom friend Clyde Tolson, in spite of the FBI’s strict prohibitions against homosexuality and drinking alcohol on duty.

  “Good morning, Public Prosecutor,” said the chauffeur as he held open the rear passenger door of the brand-new, black Opel Omega. The Peugeot had been passed on to a district prosecutor two months earlier. Amandine preferred the Peugeot, and he knew why: Peugeot was the model preferred by Antwerp’s French-speaking elite, or what passed for French, a custom dating back to the War, when Dufour’s - the best yachts money could buy - still attended to its clients in the language.

  “Good morning,” he answered in a neutral tone, briefly looking him up and down. J. Edgar Hoover only spoke to his chauffeur to tell him off or accuse him of things of which he was entirely innocent.

  “The Kaai,” said Albert when the chauffeur had taken his place behind the wheel.

  The distance from his house, a desirable residence on Amerikalei, given to his wife by her father Justice de Vreux on the tenth anniversary of their wedding, to the Court of Appeal on the Waalse Kaai was a little less than a mile. Albert considered it the height of luxury, which probably explains why he enjoyed it so much. “Completely absurd,” said Jokke Weyler one morning, having gone along for the ride. “Luxury is always absurd, Jokke,” he had replied. “But the classes are God’s creation, are they not?” One of their more affected expressions.

  Antwerp’s Court of Appeal on the Waalse Kaai was located next to a tarmac surface littered with garbage bags, which was supposed to pass for a car park. The building itself had seven stories and was a prime example of the ugliness that characterized third-rate Seventies postmodernism. The first floor had hexagonal windows that looked like the wide-open gullets of North Sea cod. Faulty drainage had left the frames discoloured and stained. The building was about twenty-five years old, but wear and tear was visible wherever you looked. Inferior building material and poor maintenance were to blame, an excellent example of what had become known as “Belgian laxity”. Albert avoided the Court’s public entrance at all times. At the rear of the building, near the Cockerill Kaai, there was an inconspicuous rusty metal door, which was always locked. Only he and the janitor had a key. The door opened into a gloomy corridor with coarse concrete walls leading to a elevator, which stopped only at his offices on the seventh floor. He considered himself a public figure and was not shy of the media, but starting the day in mystery was an exclusive privilege he reserved for himself. He deemed the hard-working diligence of the office staff on his arrival to be evidence that the Antwerp Public Prosecutor’s Office was running like clockwork. But he was unaware of the fact that the moment he pushed the button in the elevator, a red light flickered on the seventh floor, announcing to an attentive clerk that “Cardinal Richelieu” was on his way. The remainder of
the staff were thus forewarned. He had acquired the nickname on account of the Roman elegance with which he wore his red toga and genuine ermine cape. At the Court of First Instance, they used to call him “line of least resistance”, which he put down with a fake smile to his talent for “appropriate delegation”. He preferred to limit the latter, aware that his subordinates might imagine they had achieved something while they were only entertaining themselves.

  He opened the elevator door, looked left and right into the empty corridor, frowned at the absence of activity and made his way pensively past a row of portraits, former public prosecutors, posing self-importantly like Renaissance prelates with white lace ruffles and ermine collars, draped with medals of honour. This illustrious gallery would include his own portrait in three years time, he thought. His soundproof, studded-leather office door was open. He headed directly towards his impressive Italian desk, with matching designer cabinets in solid rosewood. The interior had devoured a significant portion of the 1996 budget entry for “fixtures and fittings”. He sat down in his chair, the leather of which had an unfamiliar odour, vaguely reminiscent of some exotic aromatic plant. He cast a contemptuous glance at the bundle of exposed cables running at floor level along the wall. The computers acquired by the Court of Appeal in 1995 were yet to communicate with one another. Links to the other prosecutors’ offices and courts of the land were still impossible, in spite of police reforms. The keyboards were little more than glorified typewriters.

  “Hmm…”

  He looked up. His secretary was standing in the doorway with a file under her arm. She was close to fifty, a resigned expression on her face, small, pale and chubby, with short grey hair. She was wearing a dark-blue skirt, a beige blouse with a turnover collar and a string of artificial pearls. She was unmarried, took care of her mother, and was completely dedicated to her job as secretary. Albert, to whom she exhibited the devotion of a nineteenth-century maid, saw her as part of a dying race.