Tsing-Boum by Nicolas Freeling

keep calling you Sergeant; I’ll feel happier calling you Bill. To get it clear – everyone’s happy that you have no connection with your wife’s death.’
    Everyone but me, Zomerlust appeared to think; his fresh face was glum and drawn.
    â€˜We’d have preferred it to be you – we’re quite upset it isn’t you. Would have meant a sight less trouble.’ Van der Valk, hamming away, saw this sink in; he was given to crude remarks in downright bad taste and every now and again they helped. He went back to the offhand tone.
    â€˜More trouble for me means less for you, but some, none the less. Somebody killed your wife, somebody whose identity I don’t begin to guess at, about whom I know strictly nothing. I have to know a great deal more about Esther’s life. Yes – sort of familiar, calling her Esther, and it irritates you. But understand that I have to become familiar with her: as familiar as I can get. I have to ask you questions that will embarrass as well as irritate you, and you’ll just have to keep reminding yourself that I have one purpose only – to find the man who killed her. Better for you than its being thought that you’d killed your wife – in which case you’d be asked these questions anyway,’ dryly.
    â€˜Like what kind of questions?’ Honest and a bit puzzled.
    â€˜Like for instance why did Esther not give you a child?’
    The fair skin flushed at once, but he answered readily, woodenly: ‘We were against it.’
    â€˜We or she?’
    â€˜She – but I agreed. Too many – here – everywhere. What sort of world are they born into anywhere? – hunger, napalm, you name it and we’ve got it.’
    â€˜A man’s instinct is to found a family.’
    â€˜Less, when he’s seen something of the world.’
    â€˜Esther had seen a lot of the world?’
    â€˜My idea as much as hers,’ stubbornly.
    â€˜What made a bond between you, in the first place?’
    â€˜She nursed me when I got some grenade splinters and was in dock.’
    â€˜In France, yes. And you found her attractive and took her out – that’s straightforward.’
    â€˜She was lonely. She’d been played a dirty trick by some man.’
    â€˜Ruth’s father?’
    â€˜Maybe. I suppose so.’
    â€˜Don’t you know?’
    â€˜No,’ simply. ‘She never told me.’
    â€˜He’d deserted her? She was bitter?’
    â€˜I don’t know. She told me she was pregnant. I told her that made no difference to me. It didn’t and it hasn’t.’ Life had crept into his voice. ‘She was a good wife. If she was killed it wasn’ton account of anything she’d done and that’s something you’d better get clear.’
    â€˜A good wife,’ repeated Van der Valk ponderously. ‘How?’
    â€˜How, how?’
    â€˜Put it in military language – she was a passionate woman?’
    â€˜You mind your mouth.’
    â€˜I told you it wouldn’t be pleasant.’
    â€˜She was a good wife every way and that’s all I’ll tell you. She never cheated, never lied. She was a fine girl.’ The simple phrase had a dignity Van der Valk hated to attack.
    â€˜Did she drink when you knew her first?’
    â€˜She liked a drink. I never saw her drunk.’
    â€˜One couldn’t ask for a more loyal person than you.’ The man looked steadily, turning it over. A slow mind, but firm. He would take his time about making it up, and once he had there would be no budging him.
    â€˜Not more than she was, Mister.’
    â€˜She stuck to her loyalties?’
    â€˜Someone cheated her once, badly. I told you I don’t know who. Maybe it was that man. But I never heard her say an unjust word to the child.’
    â€˜I’d like nothing better than to leave things the way you did, and not even ask, believe