Criminal Conversation Read online

  Criminal Conversation

  Nicolas Freeling

  Contents

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Part Two

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Part One

  One

  Van der Valk was tired and a little irritable. There seemed to have been, lately, at Central Recherche – the criminal investigations department in the city of Amsterdam – an unusual number of silly happenings. Time-wasting, fruitless, inconsequent. He could at least congratulate himself that they did not get fiscal frauds, which got sent to a special little squad headed by a chief inspector with an economics degree. The Economical gentlemen’ Commissaris Samson, the departmental chief, called them; he didn’t like them either. Technically, Chief Inspector Kan and Inspector Scholten were both senior to van der Valk, but secretly Mr Samson got on best with van der Valk because he wasn’t a gentleman either.

  They had all been pestered by an upheaval in what the papers persist in calling the underworld. The public adores reading about the underworld, which is so colourful, especially when the reporters put in the colourful nicknames: if there aren’t any they make them up. The police prefer things to be less colourful.

  Rita the Eyebrows, so called because she shaved hers off, had come in and denounced, for reasons of her own, a well-known ‘figure of the underworld’ as the man who had assaulted the Greek. It was all the Greek’s fault really; why had the blasted fellow been tedious enough to die of his injuries? Now, with an absolutely cut-and-dried formal accusation, they had to arrest Cross-eyed Janus. They confronted him with Rita, who promptly retracted everything. She explained that Kurt the Smouse, Janus’ great pal, would do her up if it was known that she had shopped a Comrade. It was explained patiently back a) that the lawyers disliked anonymous denunciations, and b) that Kurt was serving a two-year stretch, recently acquired for armed-assault-resulting-in-grave-bodily-harm. Subsidiary, as the lawyers say, possession-of-illegally-acquired-firearms. One incurrence incurs another, said the Officer of Justice wittily.

  After much tactful reasoning, Rita had been encouraged to build it all up again. Contrary to the sentimental imaginings of the public, prostitutes are not desperately unhappy, nor do they in the least grudge giving eighty per cent of their earnings to a protector. Rita had simply not forgiven Janus for telling everybody that it wasn’t only her eyebrows that were shaved.

  She’d repeated her story in front of the judge of instruction. Papers had gone to the prosecutor, a case had been prepared, Janus – grinning in his inimitable cross-eyed way – had been produced. And the bitch had gone right back on the whole lot in court, and Janus had had to be freed, for lack of full-and-convincing-establishment of the painstakingly prepared indictment.

  “And the next person who comes in here with a denunciation of anybody,” shouted a greatly annoyed van der Valk, “I’ll have pegged for indecent exposure.” He was not pleased when in the next morning’s mail a letter was found accusing Doctor Hubert van der Post of doing away with a certain Cabestan: an alcoholic elderly painter who had recently been found dead in his flat; cause of death, admittedly, seeming a bit vague.

  And Chief Inspector Kan was on leave again – sick leave too. With piles; adding insult to injury, that. Van der Valk liked Kan well enough, for he was a dry stick but a conscientious, loyal person, but he suspected him of making altogether too good a thing out of this. He read the letter twice and dragged unwillingly in to Mr Samson.

  Mr Samson was working; something of a rarity. He had sworn to get Cross-eyed Janus even if it gave him piles, too. For in the last two years the only thing they had ever really got pinned on the horrible fellow was three months – a flea-bite, since he had been sitting for two and a half of them in ‘antenatal clinic’ – for altering an auto number-plate with intent to defraud. The heat got so insistent that a lucrative business as importer of unroadworthy German motor-cars (religiously paying excise duties on scrap metal) had dried up. Mr Samson was searching for swingeing five-year indictments in his lawbook; van der Valk put the letter on the desk without comment. The commissaire came swimming up from his vengeful train of thought, pushed his glasses back up his nose, and moved his eyes enough to reach the corner of the desk. He didn’t react as van der Valk had hoped he would, with the stubby finger pointing at the waste-paper basket.

  “What are you doing right now?”

  “Very very busy,” hopefully.

  “What with?”

  “A geezer let his auto fall in the canal. When the fire crane got it out they found six thousand pornographic magazines in the luggage compartment.”

  “You don’t call that being busy.”

  “You mean take this fellow up on his suggestion? You mean it?”

  “Why not?”

  “We’ll only look fools.”

  “We do anyway,” said Mr Samson disagreeably.

  There just wasn’t anything van der Valk could do to get out of it. It was Kan’s work really. Damn Kan. Get canned, Kan, if you can, Kan.

  Back in his office he read the letter again. It was a decidedly queer letter.

  ‘Dear Sir,

  I have no doubt that you attach little weight to anonymous denunciations. I would be ready to abandon anonymity if I can receive certain assurances. I will make these known, together with the conclusions I have reached regarding the death of a certain Cabestan, to a responsible police officer. If the department has no interest, I will trouble it no further. If on the other hand the police are interested to hear that the author of this death is certainly Dr Hubert van der Post, a responsible officer can meet me on the steps of the Arustel Hotel at ten fifteen in the morning precisely on the day this letter is received. He can identify himself by letting fall a copy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.’

  Van der Valk looked at his watch. It was nine fifteen. He toyed with the idea of having this ingenious gentleman picked up and shadowed to his home or place of business, so that his identity could be studied at leisure. Then he grinned. Talking about ‘the department’ in that toffee-nosed way…an anonymous letter in a discursive, elaborate self-important style that was rare. Faintly interested, van der Valk decided to do the job himself. The pornographic magazines were not all that amusing.

  He had ten minutes to wait, which he spent reading the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, his interest growing fainter. But at ten fifteen exactly an elderly thin man of distinguished appearance left the hotel abruptly, paused on the step and looked sharply about. He dropped his newspaper on the step obediently, hoping that somebody would give him a microfilm of the cornflakes the Supreme Commander of Nato had had for breakfast. The man walked straight up to him and said, “I have a taxi waiting,” in a frosty patrician voice.

  Van der Valk picked up his newspaper, trotted along, and got in meekly.

  “Javakade.” A decided tone; the taxi got into gear in a leisurely way. The man did not speak; he spent his time looking out
of the rear window. Van der Valk looked at him. Long bony face, greyish coloured. Expensive grey suit. Correct flat silver hair. Eyes, nose and mouth accustomed to oversee, preside over, and if need be dominate the Annual General Meeting. A man narrow perhaps, obstinate, opinionated, but with decision and intelligence.

  He had been wondering what on earth was to be found at the Javakade, a long, deserted-looking wharf in the docks where the East Indian trade had flourished in the days of Holland’s empire. Suddenly he tumbled to it; not bad. To reach the docks, an auto travelling from central Amsterdam has to cross a whole puzzle of waterways and inlets, over swing or bascule bridges, where traffic is slow and reduced to a single-line trickle. It is a simple matter to see whether any other auto on the road has business on the Javakade, where the dock forms a dead end.

  “That’ll do here, driver. Wait for me five minutes.” They got out, walked around a corner, and stood on the wharf.

  “Who are you?” asked the patrician voice.

  “My name is van der Valk; it so happened that I opened the mail this morning. This card identifies me.”

  A sharp look. “I suppose I can at least be grateful that you haven’t tried to have me followed. Are you ready to listen to me? To treat what I have to say in confidence at least until I have made myself clear? Very well. If you agree, we will go back into the town.”

  The taxi started again abruptly; if the driver was curious he wasn’t trying hard. They drove back as far as the station, where the grey man got out, paid the taxi, and without looking at van der Valk walked calmly, neither slow nor fast, over the bridge, where a row of autos stood parked along the water. He unlocked a prudish black Rover and motioned the policeman in. There was a good smell of blond leather. The sun slid out from behind a cloud, looked at Amsterdam without any great enthusiasm, and slid back in again.

  “That all seemed rather childish to me,” said van der Valk, indifferently. “Waste of a good taxi, I call it. The driver would recognise you, if called upon.”

  “That does not interest me,” levelly. “I wished to see whether you would have me followed, which would have shown a police mentality, which I would have found a kind of bad faith. If you had wished, without listening to me, to know who I was and all about me, I should have refused to speak to you. Sharing my taxi has no legal meaning whatever.”

  “These legal tricks bore me. You ask me to keep an appointment; I keep it. Of course I want to know who you are and why you write me a peculiar letter; otherwise I would not be here. It would have been quite normal if I had detailed a man to follow you. Since you ask for my interest, why be surprised at my taking an interest? Why pretend that you didn’t write the letter? If you won’t go further with the accusations you hint at being able to support, why write it at all? Why waste my time and yours?”

  The grey man gave a very thin smile indeed.

  “I am a businessman, Mr van der Valk. I am proud of the fact that in all my career I have never done anything unethical, or even questionable. It has, however, frequently been my experience to meet unethical persons, even to do business with them. I am a cautious person; perhaps that is why I am successful. Both the letter and the taxi were a kind of test. I was prepared at any time to break off my overtures. I still am.”

  “I will listen to what you say. I will receive it in confidence until I know exactly what is being asked of me. I will then give you an honest opinion. Is that what you want?”

  “Yes, Mr van der Valk. I do not impute a lack of ethics to you, but this is, if I may call it so, a case of conscience. What do you do when you know that a person is a criminal, when you have, even, absolute certainty, but when you lack effective proof?”

  Sadly, van der Valk thought about Cross-eyed Janus. This was what you might call a slightly different milieu, but the results seemed to be the same.

  “We use patience. Proof is a thing that may be furnished in unlikely ways.”

  “Just so. I have no proof of whatever I can allege.”

  “But you have certainty, if I have understood you?”

  “You may judge of that. I will not lay myself open to any charge of malicious falsehood. My word has never been questioned; it is not going to be now. You may act or not, as you think fit, on what I have to say, but I will make no formal accusation, I will not have my name brought forward. If proof is supplied, it is for you to supply it. Are you so surprised that I should have scruples, that I should hesitate to give my name, before being satisfied that a man of responsibility and intelligence was prepared to respect my words? Do you think that a man like me is going to walk up the steps of a police bureau, give his card to the first man he sees in a uniform, and blurt out a damaging tale, that carries weight simply because it comes from a man accustomed to weigh his words, to the first nonentity with sufficient years’ service to give him a seat behind a desk? I wrote my anonymous letter deliberately, doubtful whether you would react at all. Since you have, it encourages me to believe I may be able to go a step further, but it is not too late, Mr van der Valk, to remain strangers to one another.”

  Van der Valk, impassive during all this, took out a cigarette, lit it, turned a little towards the man next to him, and leaned his elbow on the leather back-rest.

  “You are a tortuous person. You wish to make an accusation, but wish not to be responsible for making it. So you think up all this, wishing and hoping, I have no doubt, to excite my curiosity and thereby secure my interest. That was, I think, the real purpose of this taxi game. Very well, I can understand that. You are not happy because you think your accusation may have no value, even that I might think you activated by malice. Let’s cut this through. If I think there is nothing in what you may think or know, I will forget this conversation. I will not even try to pierce your identity. If I think action is needed, I will take the responsibility of acting, and your name will not be disclosed till proof is found – if it is found. Will that satisfy you of my good faith?”

  “Yes. You are obviously an intelligent person.”

  “If you had chosen, you could have told me all that you knew in a letter, and still remained anonymous. Leaving me the decision whether to act or no.”

  “The tale involves members of my family. But aside from that incidental fact, this is a grave allegation. If I make it, I make it in person. I am not a street-corner informer.” Where, wondered van der Valk, does pomposity become dignity?

  “You know,” he said heavily, “you are asking a great deal of me.”

  “That is true. You will also see that I am asking a lot of myself. It would have been a great deal more in my interest to have kept silence. That silence would, however, have been guilty. I would have become a conniver.”

  “I think the time has come when I should know your name.”

  Curious, he was thinking – even comic. A bond exists between this very stiff, very rich, very careful character and Shaved Rita.

  “My name is Carl Merckel. I am a merchant banker. I am the managing director of the firm of Lutz Brothers.”

  This short sentence irritated van der Valk very much indeed. He realised instantly that he was on treacherous ground. This man was one of the half-dozen most important men in Holland; fingers in all the important affairs, financing numerous state projects, with a whole portfolio of twopenny ministers and threeha’penny state secretaries in his left trouser pocket. He could, if he had wished, have put the whole police apparatus in motion without his name ever appearing at all. He had not done so. Van der Valk respected this man, but that did not check his irritation. A man who, last night, at the Amstel Hotel, had sat at table at a formal dinner with the Minister of Justice, a Royal Highness, two directors of the Netherlands Trading Company, and the burgomaster of Amsterdam…

  “I know your name,” he said. “I know your friends. Why did you not go to them with your story?”

  Mr Merckel disregarded this without moving his face. Cold eyes bored into the highly polished wood that panelled his dashboard.

  “
I am talking to you in a parked auto,” he said curtly. “I have not asked you to come to my house nor to my office, and I should be grateful if you will not at any time come to see me at either. I will give you a telephone number. Now: to the point.”

  Van der Valk lit another cigarette and leaned back. Inside the range of his eye and ear trams clanked and autos tooted, bicycles clattered and people chattered – the New Side Voorburgwal, one of Amsterdam’s dreariest, dustiest streets. It is devoted to newspaper offices and advertising agencies, second-hand bookshops that look seedy and cafés that seem always to be empty. All the doors seemed covered with dust and peeling paint; the pavement was littered with dustbins that still had not been taken in, and the access to the public lavatory was completely blocked by bicycles in varying stages of decay. Locked in a smell of expensive leather and fine machinery, he felt a strong sense of unreality.

  “A man came to see me not long ago, whom I once knew slightly because many years ago, at a time when he was a fashionable painter, I had commissioned him to do a portrait of my first wife. This man was called or called himself Casimir Cabestan. He wished, he said, to paint my second wife, who is a very good-looking woman. I refused. He then came out with a most confused tale, full of vague hints and veiled threats, which I judged to be an effort at blackmail. I spoke to him sharply.”

  Ah, thought van der Valk; I can well believe it.

  “He claimed that my wife was conducting an affair of pleasure with a doctor she has consulted, that he had found this out, how he did not say, and that he deserved, he seemed to think, a reward for telling me. I told him that I would not hesitate to sue him: I should judge that I frightened him sufficiently.”

  His eyes, for the first time, turned towards van der Valk with something more behind them. A shade of warmth coloured his voice when he again began speaking.

  “I am very fond indeed of my wife. If I looked into this scrap of malice any further it was to ensure that I would be able to protect her from the consequences of any indiscreet word or impulse. The man Cabestan, I found, lived in a sort of apartment under the eaves of a house occupied by a doctor that my wife has indeed consulted. I have consulted him myself. He is an excellent doctor, skilful and sensitive. He is, I believe, well known in his profession as unorthodox, possibly, in his methods, but as a man who cures his patients. I had, in short, no reason whatever to wish him ill or to suspect him of ill. I concluded that the whole tale was a piece of malicious invention. For I had enquiries made about this Cabestan. He has lost his reputation – had, I should say. He drank too much, was reduced to all sorts of shifts to make ends meet. Then - I learned it accidentally while glancing at the newspaper; it was the usual three-line item in a column of fatal accidents – the man had died suddenly, the cause of death, seemingly, a trifle obscure. It attracted my attention. I have not much experience of blackmailers” – the words were spoken quite without irony – “but it did engage my thought that if such a one had a stronger hold than that which this man had upon me, and if he tried to exert pressure upon a person with a certain public life, as I have, he would then run a risk of an attack. Your experience will know how much weight to give to this point. I come to the kernel of my tale.