Criminal Conversation (25 page)

I found you gossiping with a man I neither know nor wish to know; he looks a clot. You told me he was regarded as a serious
contender in the lightweights, or the featherweights, or the clotweights, for a European Judo Championship – as though I cared. You were learning, you said, about judo in case you got the sack from the police and had to take a job as a taxi-driver; this for my benefit. Your clotweight pal, who had the type of very curly close strawy hair that sets my teeth on edge, thought this a good joke and clapped you on the back. If people clap me on the back I simply do not speak to them again, but a policeman, I suppose, cannot afford such gestures. The man looked to me the sort of bank clerk that absconds with funds, but perhaps that is why you cultivate his acquaintance.

You had to gossip some more with another pal, a fat girl with rat's-tail hair and a moronic look – some swimmer. After keeping me waiting a good twenty minutes you said ‘Well, let's go and play squash', and I was so irritated that it took me several minutes to regain my control.

I changed; there are only a few clothes-lockers in this place, and I have one, though I take my playing clothes home each time after use. Clothes that have been sweated in, after hanging a day in a closed locker, smell most unpleasant: it is a pity other people do not recognise this fact. The squash court, though the fencers use it as well, is the only place on these premises that does not smell of feet.

I changed, into cotton trousers and a track-suit top. You sprawled on a bench with your hands in the pockets of denim shorts: you had simply taken off your trousers and dumped them. It irritates me to have someone watch me change, but it was a good exercise in the kind of watchful calm I have to maintain with you.

I do not wear shorts except when swimming; I have the kind of stringy leg that does not look well in shorts. You, I noticed, had exactly the kind of loose muscular leg, rather too hairy, that does look at its best in precisely the brief shorts you wore. You see that I have acquired a habit – your habit – of observation.

To make conversation, for a stony silence had fallen and I am not talkative in my underpants in public, I said something trivial. Your white sweater – rather off-white if I may say so, and you might ask
your wife to wash it – was ordinary, but I needed something ordinary to restore my even quietness.

“Nice sweater that.”

You beamed with your childish enjoyment.

“Isn't it? Standard Navy issue to submarine crews; cost me ten bob twenty years ago, in a government surplus store in Gosport.”

Typical.

I took my racket out of its press; yours wasn't in a press.

“I have any number of balls.”

“Delighted to hear it; I haven't any; my children pinch them.”

We walked on to the court. I am a fair squash player, having a sensitive touch. If I play a ball into an angle I generally get the return angle I want. I stand still as much as I can because I can't chase balls. I saw that I could beat you straight off on skill alone, but you gave me a harder match than I had thought. Once you took your sweater off – you had an ordinary cotton street shirt on – you started chasing everything. Hitting far too hard at impossible balls, talking, laughing, catcalling, jumping up and down when, as you quite often did, you brought off a good return with a shot that cannoned all over the court and left me flat-footed. You ran like a wild man, crashed into walls, sent half your services out of court, played one or two cunning flick shots I had not thought you capable of, and at least three superb balls that nobody could have returned, even though next time, invariably, you missed the ball altogether and looked accusingly at your racket to see where the hole was. As for my play it was like myself: clever, controlled, occasionally extremely skilful.

I find myself, probably momentarily, certainly temporarily, a thought depressed. I am tired. I find you like the Old Man of the Sea. I need a break from my routine. I have thought that this would be a mistake in tactics, as it might lead you to imagine that the strain was telling on me, but I do not care what you think. Thinking things will not help you find legal or convincing proof against me.

I have been tempted, at times of fatigue, like this, to slash the whole knot apart conclusively. I could always disappear. You have,
no doubt, eyes upon me. You could arrange, possibly, to be notified if I made any unusual withdrawals from the bank. No, that, I rather think, is an official act needing official sanction, and I have never believed that you had any official sanction. Yes, it is a temptation to think of the pleasant life I could construct in South America.

Come come: that sounds too like some deplorable doctor who has made revolting experiments in concentration camps. I must not become childish. I have all the weaknesses of a member of the ‘establishment' and all the strengths. No police officer will dare institute proceedings against me. You would be bedevilled by a perfect tidal wave of outrage. Wrongful arrest, slander, damage to professional standing, abusive and excessive use of judicial powers. I have only to lift a finger, ring my minister, say that I am being blackmailed by a police officer.

My position is extremely strong, for as long as I choose to keep it so. I feel better; I always pick up rapidly. I will go off for a week, and you cannot do a damn thing about it. Not the sea, I think; the season is still too summery and there are tourists everywhere. Perhaps the forests. Autumn is getting near and there will soon be mushrooms. I am tempted by the notion of trees, huge numbers of trees, and I could pick a few amanitas for you, as a present.

That game of squash was typical of Post, thought van der Valk, taking off his shorts and stuffing them in his briefcase, next to the grey cardboard file marked CMP. He beat me, of course, being a practised, clever player. Yet if I took this damn game seriously I could beat him. By chasing everything, pushing him, playing him off balance, pressing in on him – if I practised… Sure, he is a tricky player, but when the ball flies out of his reach he lets it go. He stands aloofly watching it go, with his little smile, and gives his opponent that faint nod of amused congratulation, as though one were a peasant beneath his notice. As though there were something
contemptible about running, fighting, competing. There's no fight in him.

It was at that moment that he decided to lash out for all he was worth.

He waited for the doctor in the bar.

“How about a drink? Not here; too many people. Why not in the Amstel? That's more your style anyway. Quiet, discreet, elegant, beautiful view over the water at evening. Twilight on the bridge - Whistler nocturne – that's what we like about the Amstel, that nostalgic feeling. No police riffraff there, either.” The Amstel Hotel, which is the best in Holland, was a couple of hundred metres away, along the Sarphatistraat.

“Very well,” said Post agreeably. “It might be pleasant. I quite enjoy your company. You make, too, an interesting study – do you know you're quite a casebook example?”

Van der Valk beamed at him. “Still waiting for me to get tired, and go home and leave you in peace?”

“That is your choice. Your time you waste. It is indifferent to me – have I not told you about the man who used to get a recurrent desire to kill me?”

“Here we are. We might meet Mr Merckel; great stamping-ground this for your patients. Official dinners, with miniature decorations, under the gracious patronage of royalty. Preserving wild life, or some such praiseworthy cause.”

They sat down by the window that overlooks the terrace and looked out at the Amstel river.

“I buy the drinks, since I lost the game. Two very good very large cognacs.”

“Certainly, sir. Any especial brand?”

“Whatever you please. And two Cuban cigars.”

“Police hospitality!” said Post. “I'm quite struck. Rather significant, I fear: compensation wishes in you. Why not two beers and a packet of Caballeros?”

“You're a very special customer of mine. I like to see them happy, too. Look at him warming the glasses – he gets bored, you know. Like me. I have sympathy for all waiters; I'm sort of a one myself.”

“Speaking for myself, I'm never bored.”

“You aren't? Here's to you. I got this for you really because you need it.”

“What, after a game of squash? A glass of squash, more likely.”

“This is different. Now we're in a championship match. You want to absorb a lot of courage. You know who wins championship matches? The one who survives setbacks the longest. If that game had been for a championship, I'd have beaten you easily, wouldn't I? You follow?”

Post said nothing. Van der Valk picked up the enormous glass, stood it on his nose, and licked his lips happily.

“I must be off; my wife will be wondering where I've got to. Think I'll take a little stroll though, back along the river as far as the Rembrandtplein. Smoke this as I go. They taste best along the waterside.”

“Good night.”

“My pleasure. Ring me up some time…when you've had enough of it. Don't get like Casimir – you start collecting younger and younger girls…no future in it. You'd really like to be free of that house too, wouldn't you? You can, you know. So long.”

Rather wearily, Post caught the waiter's eye and ordered another brandy. He wished heartily he were back in his studio, lying in his silk dressing-gown on the cheap divan, with a book, Jane Austen - he was getting quite to enjoy Jane Austen…

It was with some glee that van der Valk heard about Dr van der Post's little holiday in the Schwarzwald. That was a good sign – nothing like a good German introspective forest landscape to bring out one's melancholy poetic nature, what? One renounced women for the little volume of Rilke bound in limp leather, ha. Or of course one took one's rifle and went deer-hunting. Even better! Post in the role of hunter would be fine: he would spend a good deal of time
sympathising with the deer. What thoughts would pass through his mind at the moment when, after a long crawl through sodden bracken, he finally got downwind of an unsuspecting beast, found a sightline, saw the cross-hairs on his backsight wavering across that rough warm sympathetic flank, loosened all his muscles, breathing shallowly through the mouth, and waited for the rifle-barrel to steady on the sturdy muscled shoulder? Would he really be able to feel the skin tighten and whiten on the top knuckle of the right hand?

Whatever the fellow did, he, van der Valk, busy deer-hunting in a smelly little office in the Marnixstraat, would be thinking up some new medicine to tighten the screw still more. He had at the moment no very good idea how, but he would find one, oh yes.

Unfortunately he got drowned all of a sudden in one of the incomprehensible busy periods of a policeman's life. Instead of pleasant summery evenings observing the demeanour of the art whore he was getting home at eleven at night, dulled and silent, to be given cocoa and rolled towards his bed by a wife he did not see at all during the day and hardly saw now when she dragged his socks off and pulled his shirt out of his belt to tap his back-muscles loose. Not for the first time, he was forced to forget all about Dr van der Post. There were other pots that might come to the boil if he stoked hard enough.

It was Chief Inspector Kan, all the same, that finally got Cross-eyed Janus, who made the grievous mistake of getting over-ambitious. If he had stuck to second-hand cars they would never have reached him, but Janus was tired of being a garage-attendant. He wanted to be a gentleman – damn it, there were criminals a lot worse than he to whom the Public Prosecutor took his hat off when he saw them on the street. He made an unwary phone-call. When Kan called, prim and tidy, Janus, who had always thought Kan a good subject for a horse-laugh, was disconcerted. Worse, he lost his head. He offered Kan a big bribe – they were all quite startled how big, and if it had been anybody but Kan they would have suspected him of exaggerating. Poor old Janus – all that money, and his looks
against him, and the fearful Amsterdam accent, and those Charing Cross Road clothes. He should never have got friendly with Rouppe, who looked like a gentleman and even behaved like one, so that Janus had never imagined he might be a police informer…

They had him. Issuing of false written statements (a great Dutch catch-all), incomplete and falsified income-tax returns, receiving of goods known to be stolen, harbouring of same, attempted disposal of same, interfering with an officer in the execution of his duty, attempted corruption of a state functionary – the Officer of Justice (red round a receding hairline after a delightful holiday in the Aegean) made a little addition of penalties, arrived at a fantastic total, and rather regretfully concluded that a lot of these sentences would have to Run Concurrently.

The police department was jubilant. They were being jubilant when the telephone rang.

“For you, van der Valk.”

“Gentleman asking to speak to you” – the concierge at the switchboard.

“Well we're all gentlemen today,” handsomely. “Put him on. Gentleman have a name?”

“A Dr Post.”

Van der Valk had a tiny shock of self-blame at having forgotten, and gave himself a rap on the knuckle of his trigger finger. His deer was within range, and he had been busy badger-watching.

“Van der Valk. Good morning to you. No, this is a private line. Yes, I'm alone in the office.” The others were gawking, but they held their tongues.

“Would you care to come and see me in my consulting-room, when you can spare the time?” Post's quiet voice sounded remote and cool, as unemotional as ever. “Are you still there?”

“Certainly I'm still there. I was thinking. I'd be inclined to make another suggestion. Suppose you came to see me here?”

“There? In that headquarters building or whatever you call it?” Post sounded a scrap shocked at this invasion of privacy.

“I believe – I base this on the experience of a good many people – you'd find this a great deal easier in my office than in yours. We'd be perfectly private, and undisturbed. Simply ask at the desk for Commissaris Samson's office. I'll see that the concierge does not keep you waiting.”