Over the High Side Page 5

  ‘You’ve met the present wife?’

  ‘Sure, little Anna, when was it now – we had dinner together – year ago? I’ve no idea any more. Quiet little girl, no harm in her. Very devoted. Old boy very deferential to her in public, holdin’ her chair, that sort of thing, very courtly. Bit of a tyrant at home, I believe. Notable coxswain right up to his last years. Poor old boy, whatever could have happened to him? Got assassinated by one of these maniacs we have about the place now – what is it they do? – inject themselves with peanut butter or something. Go mataglap. Old boy pushes young ruffian off the pavement and gets killed for his pains. Big crowd, ruffian runs away – never catch ’em. Police no good, no disrespect to you intended my dear feller.’

  ‘Might there have been a new little girl?’

  ‘I doubt it, doubt it very much. Didn’t have hole’n’corner affairs, not his style. If he had a girl he had to show her off, display her in public, and above all create a whole system to prove the old one was all wrong. No hypocrisy – understand me – made me laugh, in the past. Convince himself it had been a big disaster, that he was making her suffer, it should never have happened and the only thing was to pretend it had never taken place – and all this in affection and respect, etcetera.’ A lot of moist chuckling, another massive belch. He swallowed a bit of smoke and had to cough, which made his eyes water. He rolled about and slapped his massive stomach.

  ‘My girlie days are over,’ he said regretfully, ‘eatin’s what I enjoy most, nowadays. No no, I would have known. Capable of it – wonderful man for undiminished virility an’ all that. But he would have shown her off. We saw one another frequently enough, in restaurants and so on – we’re creatures of habit at our age, y’know, go where the waiter knows you. Not at all, Commissaire, not at all. Only sorry can’t be more help. Something illegal? Good heavens man, you don’t know what you’re saying. The type to pay a bill twice rather than be thought close-fisted – his downfall in one way. Always was over-free. Breedin’ perhaps – old Dutch family, distinguished, none left now. Never had a son, kept tryin’. This girl never gave him a child, I do believe – can’t have been his fault, that. Can you find your own way out?’

  Van der Valk went back to his office to meditate.

  *

  He didn’t believe in the long-haired mayonnaise addict! He didn’t believe in Anna having a lover. He didn’t know what he did believe in. Casting about for any conceivable loose end he had forgotten or hadn’t noticed he saw the note he had made upside down on his blotting-paper that morning. What was that? Couldn’t read his own writing, now … oh yes, Anna had been here, it was Amsterdam ringing up about a hired car; something totally irrelevant – why did one’s time always get wasted with rubbish … oh well … pooh … yes, pooh … oh well, why not? Yes, yes, he knew all about maxims written in manuals. Stuff thought up by imbeciles to be learned by more imbeciles. Never neglect the most insignificant detail which may turn out … Samuel Smiles wrote that one. Oh well, why not when all was said and done.

  ‘I want some information – no, I don’t want your charming hostess. I don’t want to hire a car at all, I’ve got one. This is the police. No, I said this is the police. Van der Valk, Commissaire, Criminal Brigade, yes, that’s right, yes, good morning good evening. Now I want details of who, in the course of last week, hired a car – yes of course I give you the number. I want to know if it is still out and if not where it was left. I want to know what mileage it did – don’t be so damned silly, man, I’m not asking the colour of his eyes. You don’t just hand out cars like toffees. You make out a form. You make a driving-licence check. I want the number of that licence. And when it’s a foreigner, don’t you make a passport check? … Left at Schiphol on what date? … yes, I’m still here: Denis James Lynch, spell that … American? … yes. Yes. No. No. Nothing for you to worry about. Nonsense. You tell your area manager from me, Commissaire Van der Valk, if he doesn’t like it he can tell me so.’

  The car that had been parked two days running on the far side of the street to the Martinez apartment was booked in the name of a young Irishman called Denis Lynch. Which was something of a coincidence, interesting Van der Valk, no great believer in the long arm, enough to want to know more. Alas, before he knew enough he was bidden to attend the Officer of Justice. Evil-minded personage.

  *

  ‘This,’ said the Officer of Justice, ‘is not at all satisfactory. I can’t issue a commission on the basis of a hired car someone left in the street. She denies all knowledge of this car, you tell me. Man may have had business, or relations, or an acquaintance, anywhere in the district.’

  ‘The local commissariat has done a door to door. Nobody knows Mr Lynch from Ireland.’ Officers of Justice do not say ‘So what?’ but they think it.

  ‘He was just taking a stroll. Visiting an antique shop or whatnot.’

  ‘All day? Two days running?’

  ‘Proves nothing. Now if you could place this car in your area, around the time Martinez was attacked – I might be willing to listen then.’

  ‘Who notices a rented car? – nothing distinguishes it.’

  ‘Why should anything distinguish it? It was parked on the wrong side, a thing all foreigners do. Otherwise it would have attracted no notice.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said Van der Valk obstinately, ‘KLM tell me that Mr Lynch flew out of the Amsterdam airport on the evening of Martinez’ death after changing his booking at short notice.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ impatient. ‘It could be most significant and no doubt you imagine it is. But I must have a peg to hang it on. I can’t see myself,’ sarcastically, ‘asking for an extradition order on account of a parking offence. Did you find out where he stayed, while in Holland?’

  ‘Nine days in all in a little hotel in the Paul Potterstraat. Slip correctly filled in. Occupation given as student: reason for visit, tourism.’

  ‘Quite. And what criminal activities were noticed in the Paul Potterstraat?’ Fortunately, Van der Valk was used to the heavy humour of magistrates exercised at the expense of the police. It is common form.

  ‘He went out every day after breakfast, and slept in his bed at night.’

  ‘You appear, Commissaire, to entertain a hypothesis that a tourist came expressly to Amsterdam to murder this Martinez, but took nine days to make his mind up. You are wasting my time.’

  ‘It’s all we’ve got.’ Which did, yes, sound excessively feeble.

  ‘The paper-knife?’

  ‘Made in Holland,’ drearily. ‘Tourist souvenir with the town coat of arms.’

  ‘This town?’

  ‘Yes. But they’re still made by the hundred and sold everywhere.’

  ‘What was that tiresome Martinez doing here anyway?’ muttered the magistrate crossly. He felt that he was being played with too. But he could show irritation; Van de Valk couldn’t.

  Self-respecting people did not get stabbed on a Saturday afternoon outside Vroom and Dreesman.

  *

  It was still such marvellous weather; everyone exclaimed over it. The great thing, they agreed earnestly, was that being autumn it wasn’t too hot. Didn’t they call it an Indian Summer? – that couldn’t be, surely: why, everyone knew that summer in India was insufferable. Or Saint Martin? – what had he to do with it? There was no lack of rambling talk, much sententious opinionating about atom bombs and jumbo jets. Meteorological law – lore? – got laid down in every café. Everybody enjoying themselves but me, thought Van der Valk self-pityingly. It had become plain that he was condemned to the kind of police investigation never mentioned in crime stories, because it was far too dull.

  He even failed to see humour in making an identikit photo, generally good for a laugh. People – the hotel porter, the car-hire ‘hostess’, the airline booking girl – produced regulation clichés from women’s magazines. What was a sensitive mouth, a firm jaw, a fresh complexion? They came to the laboratory and did their best: as usual, the compromise arrived at satisfied nobody. A
camel is a horse designed by a committee, thought Van der Valk, not for the first time cursing all eyewitnesses – not for the last time – from the bottom, or dregs, of his heart.

  With this wooden object, and a ten-year-old photo of Martinez, who had like a wise man disliked being photographed, the inquiry hobbled upon flat feet in circles.

  Two antiquated plainclothes men from Central Recherche, characters who had learned nothing in thirty years but professional insensitivity (indifference to disturbing anyone on absurd and futile grounds, refusal to be snubbed, veneer of unconvincing and threadbare politeness upon utter lack of consideration, whether for people, mealtimes, television programmes or just comfort in general – comfort means not being involved, that terror of all populations) – these two dreary old bores were beating up Amsterdam. Not all of it, naturally; would have taken a year. The tourist quarter. Since Lynch was a tourist, said Van der Valk hatingly, he had gone to the Rembrandthuis, or Anne Frank’s garret, or gone for a ride on the waterbus. He just might have been seen there with Martinez.

  Two more old bores were shuffling round his own town, which was at least smaller, so that concentric circles could begin with the pavement outside Vroom. They came one day with the information that Martinez had been seen in the municipal art gallery, possibly on the day in question. He had been with a man, but the attendant didn’t think it was anyone like that, staring in disbelief at the Lynch reconstruction. Man in glasses. Van der Valk could not feel convinced that this item really advanced the inquiry very much.

  Meanwhile he had read more letters. The three lovely ladies had private lives seeming both confused and bizarre and so, as the magistrate might say, what? He thought that any fluent and prolific letter-writer – Arlette for instance – would give the same impression.

  There was nothing to be had out of Anna. She had never laid eyes on the mysterious car, had never heard of Mr Lynch. Yes, the ladies of Belgrave Square had sent long emotional telegrams and Interflora wreaths, but had not come: they couldn’t get away. They were under the impression that Vader had had a heart attack; she hardly knew how to tell them he had been stabbed. What good would it do anyway? She supposed she would have to tell them sooner or later. No, none of them read the Dutch papers.

  ‘You wouldn’t think of going back to Ireland yourself?’ fishing vaguely.

  ‘It would be attractive in a way, I suppose,’ as though she had never thought of the idea. ‘It would be pleasant to be near them all again, and I enjoyed Ireland. But earning a living would be harder: that’s what I’ve got to think of.’

  ‘None of – more natural to call them your sisters, isn’t it? – their husbands couldn’t help you to a job?’

  ‘Oh, them,’ not sounding much impressed by the step-sons in-law. ‘I don’t think any of them could help much.’ Quite.

  *

  And at the end of it all it was Van der Valk himself who found out something, by accident arising from his own stupidity. The fact was that while in Amsterdam, to be exact while drinking blackcurrant-juice in a dismal café near the Post Office, he left his glasses behind. He had only been wearing them for a year, and then only for reading. Wasn’t really even middle-aged; must be all those years of filling in forms. No disgrace anyway; half Holland wears glasses; but he had not taken to them with any great enthusiasm. Still, must have been very preoccupied: how had he come to leave them on a café table in full view? It was two hours after when he discovered his loss and rang them up. Ah – they’d found them … but with a zeal utterly infuriating, instead of hanging on to them the silly bastards had sent them to the Lost Property Office. As in all major cities, the Lost Property Office is a joke. Incredulously, he thought back but could not remember having ever been there: where was it anyway?

  *

  The employee nodded sadly, went away, and came back with a large cardboard box full to the brim.

  ‘Good grief!’ said Van der Valk as two or three hundred pairs were tipped out.

  ‘Your bad luck,’ with faintly spiteful satisfaction. ‘Got piled up. People thinks we keeps them a year. Couldn’t; too many. Once in a while we has a clear-out.’

  ‘Don’t people claim these things?’ asked Van der Valk, whose experience told him never to be surprised at any vagary or oddity, but a bit taken aback at seeing tape-recorders, guitars by the hundred, cameras, typewriters, cases and bags of every description, many expensive.

  ‘Reckon on them being stolen, people say. I reckons it’s just too much trouble to come and claim them. Can’t think why we bother. People got too much money.’

  ‘Here are mine anyway. Want to check them?’

  ‘You think we ties labels on all these? We only does that with articles of value.’

  ‘They are articles of value.’ He had been strictly brought up.

  ‘Nobody seems to care. Easier to go buy another. Sign here. Seven hundred umbrellas, we got.’

  Fascinated, Van der Valk was staring at the heap of unclaimed spectacles, wondering what was interesting about it. He did a double take, caught it, and read the gold print on the handsome green leather slipcase a second time. ‘Murray’, fresh and new. ‘Optician. Duke Street. Dublin.’

  ‘You don’t tie a label. But you do have a register. You enter a description.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Can you identify these?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘Police.’

  ‘Oh well … suppose I might. What do you want to know?’

  ‘Where they were found, what date – no name on them, I suppose?’ The old-fashioned metal cases that shut with a snap, he recalled, had a paper sticker inside for a name and address. People could no longer be bothered.

  The old man shuffled back.

  ‘Horn rim, brownish black, no metal – hundreds of ’em. Greenish case, leather, stamped Dublin – that’s Ireland, in’it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Uh uh uh,’ turning pages, ‘goes back a bit. Here we are. Table in waiting-room, Schiphol airport.’

  ‘Date,’ with a sudden excitement.

  ‘Ninth of inst – here, you can’t take those without you gives me an official receipt.’

  Van der Valk, pleased with himself, as though losing his glasses had been a clever thing to have done, bore the prize away.

  Doubtless there were dozens of Irish people leaving Schiphol any day. But how many – that day – sufficiently worried, distracted, preoccupied to leave their glasses on the table, like himself?

  ‘Superimpose them on the photo.’

  ‘But nobody said anything about glasses.’

  ‘I only wear mine for looking at things. Reading, or the cinema. Not in the street. Or looking at a picture – an art-gallery attendant remembers Martinez with a man wearing glasses. Profile and three-quarter; I’m taking nothing for granted this trip.’

  *

  ‘Sure I remember. I look at the pictures, because I know them and I’m fond of them. I look at people too; like they were in a picture. How the light strikes them, and such. Why? You ask why and I tell you because I’ve nothing else to do, that’s why. Before you asked me, I said no, because of the glasses. Now you ask me I say yes, still because of the glasses.’

  It was a typical provincial art gallery, a historic town house with faded elegance, chipped stucco needing regilding; the kind of place that would be very beautiful if intelligently restored but which no provincial municipality will ever consent to spend money on.

  ‘Not so many people come here. They go for the better-known ones, like the Mauritshuis, or the Frans Hals in Haarlem. And here they go for Gallery Nine acause that’s the Van Dam Bequest. But there’s good stuff here.’

  ‘Really,’ said Van der Valk, staring anaesthetized at a huge boring seascape by Abraham Van der Velde (the Elder). Even to himself his voice sounded glassy; the old man was stung.

  ‘’Course if you know nothing about pictures.’

  ‘No,’ humbly.

  ‘That one now, that’s
a good one, but not obvious, that one isn’t. Carel Fabritius that one is, the girl with the parrot. That’s what they were looking at and talking about. Knew something about it, the elder gentleman did.’

  ‘And the younger?’

  ‘Well your photo’s not much good. But with the glasses, I’d say yes, I’d say yes, and I’d be pretty positive, not maybe to swear but to be pretty positive.’

  Conscientiously, he went to look at the girl with the parrot – putting his glasses on … Prickles went suddenly from the back of his neck clear down to his behind. He hadn’t expected that!

  Down off the faded crimson wallpaper out of a baroque gilt frame Stasie’s face was looking at him. Far more living than in her photos; calm and delicious, between youth and age, between innocence and experience, fondling the parrot, mocking, gay, mischievous, extremely sexy.

  *

  ‘Well, Van der Valk, something new? Come a bit nearer towards convincing me this time.’

  ‘Martinez was seen in the town, by a good witness, an hour before his death, with a young man in glasses. These glasses. They were found in Schiphol on a table, that evening. Young man booked on a flight to Dublin via London. They were looking together at a picture that has an interesting resemblance – here, see for yourself: this is a photo from Martinez’ flat. About five years old, his wife says.’

  ‘I see the resemblance. What is the significance – it’s his wife?’

  ‘Daughter. Who lives,’ with relish, ‘in Dublin, Ireland. And this time I’ve got something. Two elements. Neither strong but taken together … The time factor – afternoon of the death – and the space factor; this same young man, who hired a car seen outside Martinez’ flat, lives in Dublin. Where Martinez once lived, where three of his daughters still do. Madame Martinez disclaims all knowledge of the man or his car, but she may be in perfect good faith, because by all accounts Martinez did not tell her about his business affairs, especially when they weren’t going too well. Now we know what he was doing in our town – showing this picture. And why does he go seventy kilometres outside Amsterdam to show this young man a picture so strangely like his daughter? And why is he killed within an hour? Case there surely for an international mandate. Is Ireland in the Interpol net? – must be, surely.’