‘Mention what?’
‘The café.’
For the first time she seemed annoyed. ‘What do you mean, why?’
‘Well, you say the relationship between you isn’t entirely easy at the moment. So why does she tell you about a café where she goes to meet a man who, her mother thinks, is bad company for her? Do you know him yourself?’ I gave Valerie de Chavannes a friendly smile.
‘I, er, no …’ She leaned forward and put her teacup down on the low, cloud-shaped table between us. ‘Well, I saw him once by chance when he was bringing Marieke home in his car. We shook hands briefly.’
‘What kind of car does he drive?’
‘What kind of car …?’
Once again she hesitated. Maybe it was a matter of form, maybe she simply wasn’t used to being asked questions by someone she was paying. Or maybe she didn’t need a detective at all — at least, not one who found anything out.
‘No idea, I don’t know much about cars. Something flashy, showy, a jeep or an SUV or whatever they’re called, black, tinted windows — maybe it was a BMW. Yes, I think it was a BMW.’
‘You did well for someone who doesn’t know much about cars. Perhaps you don’t know much about number plates either?’
She stopped short, slightly parting her full glossed lips into a moist, narrow-slit smile, looking as if I had asked whether I could invite her sometime to a delicious frozen meal and women’s all-in-wrestling on TV. I decided to make her stop short like that as often as I could.
Smiling, I raised a hand. ‘A little joke, Frau de Chavannes, just a little joke. Tell me what the man looks like, please: size, hair colour and so on.’
This time her hatred of him brought me a prompt answer. ‘Medium height, what do I know, neither really short nor particularly tall. Lean build, fit, long curly black hair, in that greasy combed-back style, dark eyes, three-day stubble — good-looking if you like that type.’
‘And that type is …?’
‘Well, someone looking to pick up girls in a disco, that sort of character.’
‘You mean the slimy sort with the carnal stare, heels a little too high and an immigrant background?’
I smiled at her encouragingly.
‘If … if that’s how you’d describe it …’ For a moment she didn’t know where to look or what to do with her hands. Then she glanced up and looked at me, sceptical and curious at the same time. ‘Just so there’s no misunderstanding: no, I don’t think so.’
‘Of course not. It was only to get things clear: now I know what type you mean. And furthermore, that’s why you called me, isn’t it?’
‘That’s why I called you …?’
‘That’s why you called Kayankaya, not Müller or Meier. Because you thought a Kayankaya ought to know how to deal with an immigrant background. What’s the man’s name?’
She briefly wondered whether to refute what I’d said, and then replied, ‘I don’t know exactly. Erdem, Evren — Marieke mentioned it only once or twice.’
‘You have a certain amount of trouble with the names of your daughter’s boyfriends, don’t you?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Jack or Jeff, Erdem or Evren …’
‘What do you mean?’ She looked puzzled, then sat up straight in her chair and snapped at me, ‘What are you getting at, anyway? Why are you talking to me like that!’ All at once she got to her feet and walked quickly to a bookshelf at the other end of the living room. It was roughly fifteen metres away. I noticed her swaying her hips attractively in spite of her rage. From the back, she could easily have passed for a woman in her mid-twenties. With a rounded, taut behind like that, either she spent a lot of time in the gym or Edgar Hasselbaink had struck lucky with her genes.
‘I called you to get me my daughter back! I’m just about dead with worry, and you sit here grinning and asking me nonsensical questions!’
She reached into the bookshelf and brought out a pack of cigarettes.
‘Well, questions about the name of the man with whom your daughter is presumably involved, what kind of car he drives and where he lives aren’t as nonsensical as all that.’
‘You know exactly what I mean!’ She snapped her lighter, held the flame to her cigarette, inhaled the smoke and angrily blew it out again. ‘Have I heard of number plates! Insinuating that I don’t remember the names of my daughter’s boyfriends! Your manner as a whole …’
She took another drag. ‘All that silly sarcasm! And you’re probably just looking at my tits the whole time!’ She walked halfway across the room towards me, stopped abruptly and jabbed the fingers holding her cigarette in my direction. ‘Either you’ll work for me and do as I ask, or I’ll look for someone else!’
I let her tantrum blow itself out, watching her breasts, as if she had shown me an interesting detail in the living room furnishings. I thought it was rather funny. She took it sportingly well, shaking her head and laughing dryly as much to express ‘I don’t believe it!’ as ‘You’ve got some nerve!’
‘To be honest, I was just taking a look at your snake now and then. At least, I assume it’s a snake, but unfortunately the head is out of sight — oh, sorry, I mean the head is out of sight.’
She switched to looking at me as if I were an amiable madman: a friendly, sympathetic and slightly repelled look. She drew on her cigarette. ‘You don’t say so,’ and in her thoughts she was probably running through the list of private detectives in Frankfurt to decide which of them to call next.
‘Right.’ I put my cup of fish-skin broth down on the glass table and leaned back in my chair. ‘So you want me to do as you ask. I’d be happy to do that, Frau de Chavannes, although I’m not sure that you know exactly what you want me to do.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Look, this is how I see it, roughly: you met this man — Erdem or Evren — somewhere or other, in the gym, or at a private viewing, something of that nature. He made up to you, and you felt a little curious, maybe along these lines: immigrant background, gold chain, oily hair — you don’t meet that kind of person every day, you thought you’d like to hear what he had to say. And when it wasn’t just the stupid showing off that you expected — let’s suppose he was witty, charming, a little bold, and anyway he could tell stories that you don’t often hear at the upper end of Zeppelinallee — anyway, you thought something like: Let’s invite him to a party, won’t Frau von What’s-It and Consul Thingummy be surprised! See who Frau de Chavannes has come up with this time! And so all went well, Erdem or Evren was the original party sensation you hoped he’d be, he flirted with Frau von What’s-It, he let Consul Thingummy tell him about something of no interest to anyone else, and told crazy stories about his friends, women, cars, the wide world, a touch of the suggestive, a touch of the Oriental, until …’
I stopped for a moment. Nothing of Valerie de Chavannes was moving except the ash falling from her cigarette to the floor, but her eyes rested on me like the eyes of the fish whose skin I had just been drinking.
‘… your daughter came home. At her age, parties given by your parents are a good reason to go to bed early for once and conserve your strength for your own parties over the next few days. But then your daughter saw Erdem or Evren, and that was a refreshing change from one of those usually boring occasions with the What’s-Its and the Thingummies and Papa’s tipsy painter friends — and so on. I may not have the details right, but the general drift of where your problems are coming from must be something of that nature? Of course that’s the harmless version. There’s another possibility, no party, no husband …’
‘Shut up!’
Her cigarette had burnt down to the filter and gone out. All the same, she still held the butt as if she were smoking it.
‘I assume that’s the reason you don’t want me to talk to Marieke’s friends? I’d find out that Marieke was going around with one of her mother’s acquaintances. Marieke is sixteen, she has a right to do that, and if she’s enjoying the situation … she wouldn’t be the first daughter in the throes of puberty who wanted to show her mother a thing or two.’