The Public Prosecutor Read Online Free

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