A Long Silence

by Nicolas Freeling

  Even when summoned, as happened perhaps twice a year, to attend upon the Procureur-General, the chief legal authority in the province, he was bored. Once or twice in the past it had meant an enquiry of too delicate or embarrassing a sort to come through legal channels, occasionally productive of amusing or hair-raising episodes, but such things were more trouble than they were worth. Senior officials whose wives had taken to shoplifting, ticklish behaviour by Japanese or Bulgarian purchasing agents – such things no longer interested him. And mostly, anyway, such a summons had meant no more than a telling-off.

  This time he had been surprised. The high official had been blunt, almost brief.

  ‘Sit down. This is unofficial, and in confidence. Recent government conciliabule has tended to become increasingly preoccupied with social questions. The blurring, or obliteration of traditional values – however, I waste no time on this with you; it’s stale cake to both of us. Very well – most European countries as you know are studying these problems, and groups exist all over the place, many over-fragmented and isolated. Much work is purely empirical patching-over of holes, and more is over-theoretical. Now it is proposed that a commission be set up to co-ordinate some proposals on a European scale, and to draw up further recommendations. I have myself been asked to submit my own notions, and also to assist in the nomination of some members of this commission. Much of that work concerns the reform of the magistrature, and some purely juristic points – let that pass. It was agreed that a voice from the police would be beneficial, particularly as concerns the relations of the public to legal codes. Your name was mentioned in this context, eventually put forward for serving upon this commission, and subsequently approved, subject of course to your acceptance. I have called you to offer you this position, and to explain a few of the conditions attached.

  ‘It is not a paid post, but would in your case and a few others involve full-time work, so that the proposal is to withdraw you for this period, which might amount to two or even three years, from your administrative duties, and transfer you to The Hague, where evidently you would be continued in your rank and at full pay. A civil-service flat and of course an office would be found for you there. You have doubtless further questions; put them.’

  He had accepted on the spot. The Procureur-General had, he thought, been pleased by this alacrity.

  ‘By the way, Van der Valk,’ as he was on the verge of leaving, ‘it is felt that the members of this commission should where appropriate possess titles’, drily, ‘of a certain weight and substance. I will therefore mention to you that I have implemented a recommendation that you should have the rank and emoluments of a principal commissaire, and add that I think this not inappropriate in an officer of your seniority and experience. That is all, I think.’

  ‘My wife will be very pleased,’ said Van der Valk with a small smile.

  The Procureur-General, who was not without humour at odd moments, responded to this smile and tapped his fountain-pen upon the virgin blotter before pointing it at him.

  ‘Yes. You might give thought too to the idea that it is possibly the first time a police officer has been given his step for – aha – literary reasons. Well, goodbye, Van der Valk. Offer your wife my congratulations would you?’

  So now he felt pride. He had his name upon a door instead of his rank. He had an office smaller, to be sure, than the last, and probably even more dismal. But quieter, and definitely more private. And more luxurious, as befitted the higher pay. He no longer had policemen in shirt-sleeves clattering in and out, or the public with its incoherent rambling tales of persecution and victimization. To tell the truth he missed both these elements. But he didn’t miss the wire baskets, piled with paper of unbearable crassness, the phone ringing all the time and the floor which stayed dirty no matter how often it got mopped.

  No linoleum here! A modern office, with moquette wall-to-wall! An austere desk, slab of so-called teak on a complicated metal undercarriage, and a black leather chair. A window which wouldn’t open, for reasons of dust, noise, vertigo, possible suicides, and upsetting the air-conditioning. The phones were throttled to a civil-service purr. And next door, with some chaste filing cabinets, he had a secretary, a rather wearisome female called Wattermann, a name whose associations with fountain pens, venereal disease and French tram-drivers confused him, so that he sometimes called her Miss Hasselblad or Miss Valentine, and she was convinced he did this on purpose, and tended to bridle – or was it bristle? Down in the basement was an IBM computer which he was waiting to catch out in some exceptionally childish error, and which supplied him with a great many more statistics than really he wanted to know (amazing the number of persons convicted of indictable offences in Pittsburg one or both of whose parents, when known, suffered from tuberculosis). Next door was a professor of something or other behavioural from Utrecht who was rather nice, quite human except first thing in the morning, and smoked Three Nuns in an English pipe, just what you would expect.

  The desk was bare, but for the notebooks and a jamjar full of ball-point pens and paper-clips, but there were a few things put away in drawers: the small, bland, Swiss cigars he smoked nowadays, eau-de-cologne, and a terribly secret bottle of brandy, in case Watterman came all over queer and had to be revived. There was nothing else in the office but shelves holding his law books, a growing collection of paperback thrillers, and a vase of flowers: he had thrown out – to Wattermann’s consternation – all the climbing plants. The corners were silting up inexorably with deposits of learning about Criminal Law: there was an awful lot of it. Under ‘Pride’ in the notebook he wrote ‘Claustrophobia’ because every now and then he found himself wishing that the mayor would suddenly ring him up with a tale about embezzlement in municipal parking lots; just the kind of thing that used to make him swear so. He looked at his notebook, scratched, and suddenly wondered what some bright young Ph.D. from Besancon or Berkhamsted would make of all that if he were to drop dead suddenly. These palaeontological speculations were interrupted by his secretary. Not that you could call those discreet sliding movements an interruption, or even an irruption. Arlette called her Miss Typhoo Tea: when asked why said because she appeared like the tiny tip of the tender leaf.

  ‘There’s a young man,’ said Miss Wattermann, ‘asking to see you.’

  ‘Has he filled in all the proper forms?’

  ‘He says his business is personal and unofficial.’

  ‘Does he seem agitated?’

  ‘No, quite reasonable and relaxed.’

  ‘So he’s safe in your opinion?’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to be on a trip or anything.’

  ‘Then I think frisk him for concealed weapons and send him in.’

  Van der Valk had learned a long time ago that to stand up and be polite, no matter who it was, never did any harm. The young man seemed ‘reasonable and relaxed’ enough but he had a balky look Van der Valk knew well, that of someone who is already regretting an impulse.

  ‘No, no, you don’t disturb me; I’m accessible. You’re quite wet, I suggest you hang your raincoat up over there, and there’s a chair in that corner.’

  The young man had a student look, but was dressed in a suit and a white shirt, giving him a formal air. Dark hair, fairly long and very clean; pale skin and a washed appearance, or was that the effect of rain? The sober suit was that of a bank-clerk. Neat hands; clean nails. Polished shoes, too, instead of those huge suede boots. Intelligent face; manner neither aggressive nor dotty. The usual difficulty in starting.

  ‘Visitors are always pleasant,’ said Van der Valk, ‘you’d like a cigarette?’

  ‘Yes – no – yes, after all I will. Thanks.’

  ‘What have you got, a story for me?’

  ‘I suppose – it’s bound to sound silly.’

  ‘They mostly do,’ rattling a matchbox to see whether there was anything inside, ‘at first. Which you bring to me to make it sound less silly; why? – because I’m a policeman?’

  ‘I suppose s
o, I don’t know. Wanted your opinion, I suppose.’

  ‘Because I’m no longer an actively employed policeman, was that it? Seemed less compromising somehow?’ The boy seemed relieved: yes, that was it.

  ‘It was because of the television really.’

  ‘I understand. And you knew where to find me?’

  ‘Well I asked at the Ministry. They sent me on here.’

  ‘Bit of detective work?’

  The boy grinned.

  ‘That’s right.’ Rather rewarding and encouraging, thought Van der Valk. Somebody had been looking at him – somebody had even listened.

  It had been decided, nobody knew by whom, that the active members of the Commission should be introduced to the public, as a first step in the education campaign. Result, they were presented on television, safely late at night, with a bland young man to interview them.

  ‘This evening we have Professor Doctor Bandaid of the Institute of Industrial Psychology in Nijmegen, who has been studying some of the odder ways you and I behave, and he is going to tell us some startling things, which we believe will be having a lot of impact on this world of ours. I ask him to begin by defining some of the basic attitudes he believes we will have to adopt if we are going to be able to control our environment, a word we’ve heard a lot of lately.’

  With just the same patronizingly apologetic patter Van der Valk had been given his turn at ‘speaking the Epilogue’; Tuesday nights after the variety show, when one could feel comfortably assured that ninety-five per cent of the sets had been switched off at the first syllable. Still, they had all gone through it, shrugging and muttering that after all it wasn’t a bad idea they supposed: secret Star Chambers were always a bad thing.

  ‘With us tonight we have Commissaris van der Valk whose thirty years’ experience with the Criminal Brigade has given him we believe an unusual insight into the traumatic perhaps I can use the word contacts of the public with the criminal code of law. An increasing number of us perhaps feel frustrated by what we find an excessive rigidity perhaps in the application of what we might perhaps call a rather anachronistic and um, antiquated apparatus.’ The fellow is pleased with his phrase, thought Van der Valk. And he on his cue, bothered by sweating too much, hoping he did not sound condescending, nervous in a grey suit a little too heavy for the overheated studio and an expensive silk tie with little marguerites bought by Arlette.

  ‘Most policemen,’ he began a little hesitantly, ‘are polite, clean, patient, and willing to take trouble. These are not the characteristics of pigs. Plainly this is not enough, since many people are convinced that we are pigs. It is also fair to remark that if one treats people, and policemen are people, as pigs then they begin to behave like pigs. We have therefore two basic proposals from which we must start examining our problem: to educate ourselves, and to educate the public.’

  The interviewer was leaning forward with an eager, expectant look, lips slightly parted and eyes shiny, so that Van der Valk feared he was sounding dull and hurried on.

  ‘Holland is a very law-abiding country. Our rate of serious crime is negligible, our gangsters are simple-minded and pathetic oafs, and we tend to congratulate ourselves that crime belongs in countries like England, France or America. This extreme complacency and self-satisfaction is, simply, catastrophic …’

  *

  ‘Was I very bad?’ he asked Arlette anxiously.

  ‘Not at all, I think. Quite a future as a reforming popu-larizer.’

  It wasn’t quite the answer he would have liked; her remarks seldom were.

  ‘I didn’t make a fool of myself?’

  ‘Pas trop.’ Not too much; faint praise.

  *

  And now this boy coming bumbling into the office with a silly story … But wasn’t that what he had meant – a renewal of trust between the police and the public, a renewal of communication. He should be grateful!

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘suppose you tell me your silly story.’

  When it came to the point the boy squirmed a bit, because they always did. He’d done something stupid, and then invented a whole drama to cover it up, which was boring. It was a job for kindhearted Harry from Ham Common, the rustic cop on English television. Boy worked in this jewellers’, and there were all sorts of odd occurrences, yes to be sure, and … Van der Valk had avoided the bleak act of give-your-name, place and date of birth, and the rest which was so discouraging, but one could overdo the kindly paternalism.

  ‘You pinched something,’ he said.

  ‘Well – yes and no – the thing is, I’m sure it was meant.’

  Yes, of course!

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘This.’ It was a plain, square, severely expensive wristwatch, a solid gold Patek Philippe; yes indeed, seductive thing. Banal affair. Van der Valk shrugged; still, he would be full of forgiveness and make no fuss.

  ‘Simple enough – put it back.’

  ‘But I’m telling you – I’m sure it was meant – that I was meant to take it.’

  ‘That’s catch twenty-two I’m afraid; being meant to take it is no defence in law.’

  ‘Yes but look, I mean, when I tell you I’m sure you’d agree. There are these drawers, see, full of junk, and Larry that’s the boss so to speak said very casually to clear one out and throw it all away. A lot of packing stuff, you know, little cardboard boxes, foam plastic and crap that little leather cases come wrapped in, you know, so I took an armful to the dustbin, and then this box seemed a bit heavy you know, and this was just thrown inside, no label on it or case, and it’s not marked on the stock sheet I looked and well he said to sling all that junk but then after I thought hey there must have been an invoice but there wasn’t and how could I put it back, and where?’

  ‘Simpler still – give it back. When in doubt, tell the truth.’

  ‘But why isn’t there a record of it?’

  And now he thought of it, yes, why wasn’t there? And come to that, he had known firms do things of astonishing stupidity. Even big firms sometimes just went home forgetting to lock the door after them. As a policeman he had known human error of staggering magnitude. But jewellers – those notoriously careful stocktakers who counted everything every day – no, it was true; they did not do such things.

  ‘And Larry Saint – he’s a nice guy, but there’s no denying he’s a bit – I mean he’s so easy-going, it just isn’t for real. About getting this job, now, I mean, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Van der Valk slowly, ‘you’d better let me have some facts.’ He reached for a notebook. A third full of some legal guff: to punish the legal guff he turned it upside down and smoothed out a virgin page.

  Richard Oddinga, age twenty-two. Father dead. Been business man up in backwoods of Friesland, boy been sent to Amsterdam to read law at the university. Failed some courses, been dropped, had been leading the happy-go-lucky loafer’s existence of the phony student which is so common. Had been suddenly offered this job in of all places a jewellers’, and it did sound a bit persuasive. Could there be something in this? Hm, to plant a watch and acquire a hold on the boy was perfectly classic and laughably easy – but what would that be aimed at? Though it still sounded like an episode for Mac of Mockturtle the understanding bobby.

  ‘I think it might be a kind of bribe,’ said the boy. ‘And I don’t know – I think they’ve got rid of anyone who really knows anything about the business, on some kind of pretext.’

  ‘Where is this shop?’ Van der Valk picked his pen up.

  ‘Prins.’

  ‘Prins?’ Astonished, he put the pen down again. ‘You mean there on the Spui?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But that’s dead fancy – Cartier, Van Cleef and – all that stuff, and dressy antiques, Fabergé easter eggs or whatnot in the window.’

  ‘Just try and find anything that genuinely is by Cartier. Some boxes, maybe.’

  Van der Valk, by now amused, pushed his glasses up and rubbed his eyes.

  ‘
Do you have some conclusion about all this?’

  ‘I don’t know – I thought of some insurance fraud – they would stage a fire or a burglary or something, but I suppose that’s too crude.’

  ‘A little,’ smiling. ‘Insurance companies aren’t quite that soft a touch. Perhaps something that if you’ll forgive me would look innocent enough to a more experienced eye. Has even an innocent explanation.’

  ‘I guessed you’d say that,’ downcast. ‘And yet – I know I couldn’t prove it or anything, but I do have a feeling something funny’s going on. That’s why I thought of you, I mean coming to say – but I might have known, you’ve got no use for that so I’ve wasted my time. Sorry.’

  ‘No. Not mine or yours. Funny feelings are sometimes better than facts. They have, occasionally, more resonance. But it would still be more sensible to put the watch back. On the other hand,’ with regrettable frivolity, ‘suppose you were right and it were a sort of bribe – it might be interesting to know what it was and why. If you get into trouble on account of this come and tell me. All right?’

  The boy looked relieved.

  ‘As long as I’m covered. I mean, that’s what I came to see you for.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Van der Valk dispassionately. ‘You pinch a watch and see whether you can’t arrange for me to be an accessory. No, don’t worry, I’m joking. Put it back or not, exactly as you please. You’ve made no formal deposition, and I’m making no record. All informal – I haven’t even written anything down.’