The Public Prosecutor Read Online Free Page B

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.
    “Good morning, sir.”
    “Good morning, Miss Verdonck.” He used his subdued baritone voice. He never addressed subordinates by their first name and even used official titles for his colleagues, a habit inherited from his father-in-law, who abhorred the barbaric manners introduced by the Americans.
    “Anything out of the ordinary?” he enquired in his best “Queen’s Dutch”, the tone slightly elevated.
    “Nothing in particular, Public Prosecutor, sir.”
    “Good,” he replied, his chin tucked into his chest.
    She deposited the file on his desk and waited.
    “That will be all, Miss Verdonck,” he said without looking up. She disappeared.
    Albert opened the file and rubbed his eyes with extreme caution. Although he was long-sighted by heredity, he only wore glasses when he was reading a book, an activity he confined for the most part to his home life. According to psychiatrists, the obstinate refusal to wear glasses was a sign of narcissism, but after reading a fascinating article on the matter he had become convinced that narcissism was a characteristic of highly gifted individuals and was something to be sought after. In his opinion, there was only one vulgar variant, which he referred to as “secondary narcissism”. He was particularly proud of the expression, which was not to be found in the manuals because he had invented it himself, during the Glyndebourne Festival, no less. He hated classical music and only attended concerts when there was no alternative. People determined to identify themselves with one or another famous conductor, soloist or opera singer particularly irritated him. Amandine, on the other hand, was wild about the sophistication of such musical events. Every year she insisted he join her for an entire week at the Glyndebourne Festival, which had an international reputation for being among the most exclusive, and where she had friends among the English aristocracy (Lord and Lady Egremont, Edith and Noël Beiresford-Peirse and the Earl of Carnarvon) with whom she could gossip to her heart’s content in her poor English. One evening, after an opera during which he had fallen asleep, the public had applauded, shouted and stamped their feet for little short of fifteen uninterrupted minutes. The episode had angered him so much that he was unable to say a single word at the post-opera dinner. For the first time in his life, he noted something “non-juridical” on a piece of paper in his hotel room that night: secondary narcissism: hysterical projection of personal deficiency; read inanity .
    He fished his Mont Blanc Meisterstück 149, nicknamed “the cigar”, from his inside pocket, removed the cap and started to sign the letters in purple ink without reading them. He finished off his carefully placed signature with three elliptic full stops, designed to lead his addressee astray in one way or another: Catholics wondered which lodge he belonged to, and although the so-called “free-thinkers” knew better, they still had their doubts. The truth, however, was simple. Public Prosecutor Savelkoul did not belong to the Christian People’s Party nor was he attached to the Lodge, something quite unique in the politicized Belgian legal establishment.
    Having dealt with the day’s correspondence, he returned his fountain pen to its place, groaned and inspected the series of photographs hanging side by side