A Long Silence (5 page)

At least this boy Richard was luckier than most. The landlady let him in without a sour complaint at being brought up the stairs. Even the smell, close and mean though it was, held a memory of air and light however narrow the passage.

‘Sorry to disturb you,' he said politely.

‘ 'S'allright,' she said. ‘Oddinga, ‘m, dunno ‘f he's in ‘r not,' clipping her ripe Amsterdam accent. ‘I s'pose y'can go on up, he's mostly back b'now.' She wasn't going to face those stairs! He had to, hitching his leg behind him: it was these interminable ladders as much as anything that had made work here impossible to him, but he was going to manage in a good cause.

A startled voice said ‘Who is it?' to his tap, opened the door on his prudent silence, staring on the dim landing, recognizing him, becoming filled with confusion, glancing alarmed down the well to where the landlady had an ear of unrivalled sharpness cocked, muttering, ‘Oh, it's you,' with embarrassment. The boy looked about as though trapped, and said finally, ‘Er – oh hell – sorry, it's a bit of a mess, but come on in anyhow.'

The usual narrow room, where there is nowhere to put anything. The bed that contrives to sag and be a plank, the cretonne curtain behind which to hang one's clothes, the window sill holding an iron and a packet of detergent, the rickety basketwork table and chair, the suitcase holding clean shirts, the camping gas ring with the dirty saucepan and the jar of Nescafé, the tin ashtray and the transistor radio. The boy wearing the cotton track-suit which is the uniform of students indoors, his good suit taken off and put on a hanger, the shirt anxiously inspected to see whether it will last a day more. The dim twenty-five-watt bulb, the antiquated and threadbare narrowness that will bend the stoutest heart, a smell of socks, and an old towel kept to masturbate on. Van der Valk had seen so many. He sat on the creaky chair, crossed his legs, lit a cigarette, and said, ‘I'm not butting in?' mildly.

‘No, no – I only just got back and hadn't time to tidy up yet.'

‘Doesn't bother me.'

‘Something the matter? I mean – you coming specially like that.'

‘No. I was in the quarter; just occurred to me you'd be home, thought I'd pass to see if you were o.k. Job all right?'

‘Oh yes.'

‘No trouble with that watch of yours?'

‘Oh no.'

‘Mean you put it back?'

‘That's right – well, actually – there was no need – I mean, I made a bit of a mistake, got in a bit of a panic, I don't know why. I mean, I shouldn't ever have bothered you, mean to say, you're busy, and an important kind of person, there wasn't any real need, I mean I don't know how I got the idea in my head, it wasn't anything at all really. Really there's no need to worry, I wouldn't want you to make a fuss, I mean there's no sense in that, it'd just be wasting your time and – '

‘That's all right,' peaceably.

‘No, I mean I don't want any more fuss,' in agony.

Van der Valk took pity.

‘That's o.k., I won't make any.'

‘I mean I'm sorry you're putting yourself out, but really, there's nothing to do any more.'

‘Of course,' blandly. ‘I'm glad to hear that. Putting it back was sensible,' looking at his watch. ‘Good, I'll be off to my train, rush hour'll be quietened down by now. Bye bye then, Richard, glad to hear you're all right.'

And he took himself off, bumping on the stairs but knowing the landlady would recognize the strange step and that her antennae would relax. He was happy: he hadn't wasted his time!

He walked as far as the café on the corner of the Noorder-markt, decided he was in no hurry, ordered blackcurrant gin and phoned Arlette to say he'd be a little late. The phonebook told him Louis Prins lived in a frumpy street over by the Jacob van Lennep where – he knew those streets – the flats were full of nineteenth-century furniture with plush and mahogany-carved scrollwork.

‘Oh, Mr Prins. So sorry to trouble you. Fact is I was trying to find Mr Saint but he doesn't seem to be in the book, aunt of mine – yes, recommended by a friend, little matter of business, thought I'd give him a ring, oh I see, thank you so much, awfully sorry to have troubled you.' How nice! Mr Saint lived just next door – well, very close by, in the Leliegracht; obliging of him. Mm, the neighbourhood was what you called picturesque but there, these old houses were often flats where pleasant people lived at pleasantly low rents, having been ensconced therein for numerous years. He had no pretext, or even a reason, for calling on Mr Saint. But Dicky-boy's behaviour was of interest. It was so close by, be worth looking at.

Yes; picturesque. Picturesque – but very respectable neighbours; an Italian grocer with a windowful of lasagne and mortadella; a saddler with riding-boots, bridles, and the front end of a realistic horse. Wasn't room for the back end, but a tasteful array of velvet jockey-caps and the like. And in between, Mr Saint lived two doors above a sex shop. Dear, dear, but one made a joke of it to one's friends. Anyway, half the houses in central Amsterdam now had the same problem. Judging by the curtains Mr Saint was at home, but it wasn't what you'd call a thrill. The shop had a fancy name – The Golden Apples of the Hesperides; blimey. He had been a bit intrigued by that idiot boy, but not enough to make him want any golden apples. He went home and had supper, in the new and nasty flat in the Hague, and shortly after went to bed with a book about King Charles the First, whom he had hitherto known only from the portraits on cigar boxes. He could not get very excited about this tiresome person, but Cromwell was always interesting, and the Marquis of Montrose was a discovery.

*

He woke up feeling forceful and energetic, and moved in on Miss Hufflebloom aggressively.

‘Get me the Amsterdam fire-brigade on the line will you – hell, I've got to go again this morning.'

‘Not finished with your dentist yet?'

‘Committee-meeting in the Overtoom, an awful bore … Yes, hallo, Van der Valk here, tell me, fire alarms, when for example you had a jeweller holding valuable stock, and everything barred and bolted … I see, yes – you'd notify, yes … can you tell me now, Prins's there by the Spui … no, Van der Valk, Commissaris of Police, that's right, The Hague … I see. Yes. Aha, Bosboom, that's interesting, he's the manager there but I've a notion he's retired and they haven't brought you up to date. Where is it he lives? – near by, I take. Max Planck Straat, oh lord, that's miles away. Thanks very much, yes, that's right, the Ministry. Goodbye, thanks … very worried they were, giving away information, thought maybe I was planning to set the place alight. Listen, Miss Wattermann, I'll likely be away all day, I've quite a few chores.'

The conference of governmental powers awaiting him was due to take place – for reasons that escaped him – in a dreary building on the Overtoom, whose one advantage was that it was a direct tram ride from Amsterdam's central station. He was clinking along the Leidsestraat before he missed his new gloves and realized he'd left them on the train; he leapt off the tram to phone before the worst happened!

Waiting for the next tram, on the draughty corner of the Koningsplein, he glanced irritably at his watch and was exasperated to find it stopped. Misfortunes never come singly. He took it off to investigate, and his chilled and irritable fingers dropped it on the street, where it fell – it would – into the shiny groove of the tramline. As he stooped – how is it possible these things should happen to me – the growl of the swift monster and the kling-kling-kling of its alarm made him lurch back, treading on somebody's toe, and see his shabby, beloved watch which he'd had for twenty years chewed up under the pitying ‘oh dear' of a middle-aged woman, the nervous ashamed grin of another, and the blank indifference of an elderly man with troubles of his own. Van der Valk arrived at the Overtoom in a very bad mood indeed.

He wasn't in the least consoled by the concierge, coming to meet him with a tale about the station
sous-chef
running
fast along the platform before the train pulled out, and meeting halfway a dear good soul with a pair of gloves she'd just that minute found. He was tetchy at his meeting.

Still, when he left he had a grin, because he'd had an idea. Not in the slightest superstitious, he enjoyed it when something allowed him to pretend he was. Losing a watch on the Koningsplein was at least a sign from heaven telling him to go and buy another from Mr Saint only just across the road, and that was something to grin at: he told his colleague, a lawyer with whom he was having lunch.

‘A lamentable thing happened to me; a purely personal and relatively trivial incident. It might change the whole shape of a theory I'm working on.'

The colleague was amused.

‘But that's rather naughty, isn't it? I know from reading your reports as well as from the way you speak that you have a highly subjective way of going to work, but isn't this an exaggeration?'

‘Yes, of course, I've been reproached with it before now. I know all the arguments – a lawyer considering a brief does not stop to worry about his client being guilty – or personally unappealing – or sadistic towards his wife. He couldn't. A negotiator, a civil servant, let's say, working on agricultural price subsidies – he doesn't stop to think how much he likes New Zealanders. I'd be inclined to answer firstly that he's never truly objective however much he thinks he is, and secondly that the virtues of objectivity are greatly exaggerated. As far as police work is concerned, there is too much objectivity applied. Crime hasn't got much to do with absolutes like right and wrong – like some more coffee? A policeman is a good deal of an actor – a comedian if you prefer. Is a doctor's job to cure disease or to alleviate suffering? Both, of course. It all sounds easy. But when he finds himself in conflict, when the objective good of the patient is not identical with his own moral standards, as in the classic instance of abortion? He follows the law, and the law is very often bad.'

‘These are student arguments,' said the lawyer dryly. ‘Anybody of experience knows that crime or disease or whatever
it may be calls for a remedy, the remedy must be applied, and if the patient dies, why, that's just too bad.'

‘I quite agree. Cardinal Richelieu condemned one of his own oldest friends and most faithful servants to death for reasons of state, and I approve. There's a deal too much sentimental cant spoken about compassion – in fact, in this world there's a great deal more cant than compassion.'

‘Alarmingly true.'

‘But there are moral issues where the good of the greatest number or the safeguards of society have no bearing and where only our own personal conscience can suffice. Objectivity isn't a virtue; it's an overrated dodge for evading responsibility.'

‘Your ethics are questionable and your logic deplorable,' said the lawyer, grinning.

‘Quite so,' agreed Van der Valk. ‘Now if we split the lunch bill in half, is that objective? Or if we toss for it – is that objective? And is either more ethical than my paying for it? Give me subjectivity every time.' And a loud laugh made several Dutch lunchers look at the two of them, without any objectivity at all.

‘Cant,' said Van der Valk, feeling in his raincoat pocket to make sure his gloves were there, and remembering they weren't, ‘is our worst enemy. I hear more humbug…'

He passed the Spui on his way to catch a tram, and his nose twitched. No place to buy a watch – too dear! If he found any good reason for leaning on Mr Saint a scrap, though, it might be in a good cause.

*

Mr Bosboom was a great consolation to him. Wholeness, simplicity, honour – and an earthy Dutch choice of language: it pleased him no end.

A minuscule house in the suburbs, with a minuscule front garden full of roses which had used their available space to the last centimetre. Roses occupied the metal fence and leaned over the gate, rioted round pergolas and climbed up to the gutters of the roof, embowered the front door and framed the windows.
Mr Bosboom when he appeared was better still, a huge bow-legged frog with hornrimmed glasses and a nose like a potato, a shambling walk, a rumbly voice and a waistcoat with a watch-chain across it. More like a man who has spent a life in trade-unions than in jewellery. He glared at Van der Valk through roses and asked, ‘Who are you?'

No finessing here.

‘Police. Commissaire van der Valk. Need your advice.'

‘My advice is it now? What can I advise the police about?'

‘Rose-growing by the look of it. Not the police – me. In a private capacity. Rose by the name of Prins.'

Bosboom suddenly looked shrewder, though no less rustic. Shaggy eyebrows came down over the rim of his glasses.

‘Satisfy me.'

‘A young boy of twenty has been employed there. He came to me with a childish tale. I'm not municipal police, I have a special job. I'm not investigating anything. I'm seeking to satisfy my curiosity, and I have a sensation that this boy was asking me for help although he denies it. I'm looking for information. That leads me to you.'

Bosboom stared, searchingly.

‘Didn't I see you on television?'

‘Yes.'

‘Come in.'

Inside was as honest, old fashioned and clear as champagne. Chintz, lavender polish, and walnut. On the walls hung flower-prints framed by someone who knew his job; one of the few details hinting at a past in the antique business. The name was on the tip of his tongue: Bosboom saw him looking.

‘Redouté,' he agreed, nodding. ‘Valuable!' in a tone between sardonic humour and surprise that anyone like himself could possibly possess anything valuable, ‘Tea?'

‘Yes, please.'

‘Mother!' bawled Bosboom. ‘Tea!'

‘Astonishing,' looking out at the rose-bushes. ‘If this were June, now.'