The Only Problem

‘You want to capture these members of the FLE before they do more damage.’

‘Yes, we do. And of course, we will. Now that a member of the police has been killed … You appreciate, his wife was shopping in a supermarket with her son of twelve, who had a transistor radio. She was taking no interest in the programme. At one point the boy said —’

‘Are you sure it was a boy?’ Harvey said.

‘It was a girl. How do you know?’

‘The scene has been described to me by your colleague.’

‘You’re very observant,’ Pomfret smiled, quite nicely.

‘Well, of course I’m observant in a case like this,’ said Harvey. ‘I’m hanging on your lips.’

‘Why?’

‘To hear if you have any evidence that my wife is involved with a terrorist gang.’

‘We have a warrant for her arrest,’ said Pomfret.

‘That’s not evidence.’

‘I know. But we don’t put out warrants without reason. Your wife was arrested in Trieste. She was definitely lodging there with a group which has since been identified as members of the FLE gang. When the police photograph from the incident at Trieste noticeably resembled the photograph we obtained from you, and also resembled the identikit made up from eyewitnesses of the bombings and incursions here in France, we call that sufficient evidence to regard your wife as a suspect.’

‘I would like to see the photograph from Trieste,’ said Harvey. ‘Why haven’t I been shown it?’

‘You are not investigating the case. We are.’

‘But I’m interested in her whereabouts,’ Harvey said. ‘What does this photograph from the police at Trieste look like?’

‘It’s an ordinary routine photograph that’s taken of all people under arrest. Plain and flat, like a passport photograph. It looks like your wife. It’s of no account to you.

‘Why wasn’t I shown it, told about it?’

‘I think you can see it if you want.’

‘Your people at the commissariat evidently don’t believe me when I say I don’t know where Effie is.’

‘Well, I suppose that’s why you’ve been questioned. You’ve never been officially convoked.’

‘The English word is summoned.’

‘Summoned; I apologise.’

‘Lousy wine,’ said Harvey.

‘It’s what you get in a cheap cafe,’ said Pomfret.

‘They had better when I ate here before,’ said Harvey. ‘Look, all you’ve got to go on is an identikit made in France which resembles two photographs of my wife.’

‘And the address she was residing at in Trieste. That’s most important of all.’

‘She is inclined to take up with unconventional people,’ said Harvey.

‘Evidently, since she married yourself.’

‘Do you know,’ said Harvey, ‘I’m very conventional, believe it or not.’

‘I don’t believe it, of course.’

‘Why?’

‘Your mode of life in France. For an affluent man to establish himself in a cottage and study the Book of Job is not conventional.’

‘Job was an affluent man. He sat among the ashes. Some say, on a dung-heap outside the city. He was very conventional. So much so that God was bored with him.’

‘Is that in the scriptures?’ said the policeman.

‘No, it’s in my mind.’

‘You’ve actually written it down. They took photocopies of some of your pages.

‘I object to that. They had no right.’

‘It’s possible they had no right. Why have you never brought in a lawyer?’

‘What for?’

‘Exactly. But it would be the conventional thing to do.’

‘I hope you’re impressed,’ said Harvey. ‘You see, if I were writing a film-script or a pornographic novel, you wouldn’t find it so strange that I came to an out-of-the way place to work. It’s the subject of Job you can’t understand my giving my time to.’

‘More or less. I think, perhaps, you’ve been trying to put yourself in the conditions of Job. Is that right?’

‘One can’t write an essay on Job sitting round a swimming pool in a ten-acre park, with all that goes with it. But I could just as well study the subject in a quiet apartment in some city. I came to