Criminal Conversation (26 page)

There was another pause, at Post's end this time.

“Why do you suggest this?” he asked at last. The answer, thought van der Valk, would be important.

“That terrible house,” he said. “Wait a minute, I'm looking for the right way to express myself.” Van der Valk's eye glanced round the room. Mr Kan was already making notes on the margin of a report. Mr Samson was sitting – or rather standing with his backside propped against a table, his hands in his pockets, watching. He had a faint grin, as though curious to see how van der Valk would handle this.

“Perhaps the best way of putting it is to say that once here, you can shed, completely, an identity that has grown distasteful. The gestures we go through here are almost totally automatic and impersonal. We no longer have any hostility, you see. If anything, it's rather a friendly performance.”

The pause this time was slighter.

“Are you free at this minute? I mean, to be more precise, in about twenty minutes?”

“Free as the wind.”

“Very well,” suddenly. “You can expect me.”

Van der Valk put the phone down and said “Oof”.

“Post, if I'm not much mistaken,” said the old gentleman.

“Quite right. In a quarter of an hour. I'd like to make it easy for him.”

Mr Samson had understood.

“Very well. In my office then. You can be stenographer. So – he's realised at last that he's without a friend in the world?”

“He's realised, I think,” said van der Valk soberly, “that I'm the only one he's got.”

This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

Copyright © 1965, 2001 Nicolas Freeling

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ISBN: 9781448206988
eISBN: 9781448206896

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