A Long Silence

by Nicolas Freeling

  One saw little of Larry nowadays. He had taken a very small margin of time before handing over all the day-to-day routine. It was Dick now who performed the ritual of the keys and the cash float, checked the alarms, did the paperwork of stocktaking and invoicing, and handled all the modern stuff, the watches and knicknacks, reproduction jewellery and silver-smithery, and ‘managed’ in rather more than name. He had used charm on the three ‘girls’, made jokes with them, had them eating out of his hand … He had a proper salary now, and a percentage. He had acquired a pair of Cartier links for ‘an apple and an egg’; he had at last got some decent clothes. The Lindengracht had been left far behind. No more student lodgings! He had indeed moved into Larry’s flat.

  For Larry had been away for lengthening periods, culminating in an absence of three weeks, ‘in the Caribbean’, he had said vaguely: certainly he had come back with a beautiful tan, light and unobtrusive, like everything of Larry’s.

  ‘I’d really like you to keep the flat warmed and aired. I might even end by handing it over to you altogether, but that’s all still in the womb of time, mm?’ with a chuckle at ‘his phrase’. ‘You’re doing very well, Dicky, very well. No, you needn’t pay me rent. Just keep an eye on the little shop – yes, the Apples. I’ll show you how; it’s quite easy. It’s nothing very spectacular, but it earns me a very pretty little dividend: more silly young girls in the world than there are dirty old men, but both have their uses as you’ll discover. In the good old phrase, crumpet sells when cotton and corn are a drag on the market. That girl I have running it is ideal – a real fanatic – women’s lib,’ with his easy light laugh. ‘A treasure. Go easy with her, Dicky boy; she has a fire in her belly, has our little sister Eileen.’

  At times, thought Dick, standing dreamily feeling the primitively-smoothed surface with its amazing patina, I feel as though I were running a temperature. Almost like someone with TB or something. Bouts of feverish excitement. Learning to keep that easy cool evenness Larry has is the hardest of all, when one is a success, has one’s foot on the ladder. I contrast myself now with what I was only a few months ago! Knowing nothing, able for nothing, totally empty-headed. Incredible! No wonder I feel the blood going to my head now and again …

  It hadn’t always been easy! In fact it had been very hard-bought, some of the winnings, taking fearful tolls of nerve, straining every atom of him. There had been Daisy – Lordy, what a fool she had made of him! The reminiscence was just one hot agonized blush. Worse than a tool – a toy he had been in her hard, cunning, oh-so-skilful fingers. Or the incident, as Larry had called it, the only time he had ever referred to it, at the time the heat had really been on, with plain-clothes policemen in pairs running around Holland checking everything they could think of and the papers were full of mysterious hints about their being hot on the trail of heaven only knew what. It had all blown over, exactly as Larry had prophesied. He had thought of everything! The incident had taken every scrap of nerve he had, as well as all the training Larry had been able to inject into him, but he had managed.

  It wasn’t a thing he liked to think about, even now. It was a damned unpleasant sore spot, only half-cicatrized despite everything. Still, he had to face it now and again, to show he was on top and wasn’t letting it get him down. It had been Larry after all – his idea, his responsibility. His plan and his action in all save ‘the surgical detail’. ‘I can’t hold the scalpel for you, Dicky boy; that’s the one thing one has to learn to do on one’s own or the whole exercise is pointless – that’s what separates the men from the boys.’ Well yes, of course, he’d understood that and accepted it. It was over. That ghost wouldn’t come back.

  ‘Mightn’t it be a trick?’ he had asked Larry tensely, after it had all disappeared from the press reports, when all the police activity both advertised and unadvertised had died away – Larry knew all about that; he had sources of information everywhere. ‘I mean, they always say they never close the file, never loosen the teeth.’ A shrug. ‘Teeth have to have a grip, if we’re insisting on these emotional metaphors. They’ve no hold anywhere; nothing at all.’ And so it had proved. One couldn’t ever relax vigilance, but that was just what Larry called ‘keeping in training’. ‘Never let yourself get out of training. Especially when – like me, my dear boy – you begin to approach middle-age. A real professional can’t afford that mistake – gravest one of all, the temptation to get softened by comfort.’

  And yet with it all Dick had what he could only describe to himself as a sort of uneasy nervous hunger. Very like that first day, which he often thought of, when he had been going to that absurd piddling job and stopped in the Spui to eat a sandwich from the snackbar at the corner! He hadn’t needed that sandwich, yet he’d had to have it. The incident was a bit like that. To this day he was anguished by the thought of ‘not knowing’ – had nobody, the police, or anyone else, ever had the wildest or most unconfirmable of ‘notions’? Larry said of course they couldn’t. Quite out of the question. ‘There is of course always one tiny risk,’ he had said. Before, not after. He had never spoken about it, after.

  ‘As in all surgery, even the most minor – always that one tiny risk. Naturally, one would never accept odds against – that in no circumstances. It’s from the departure-point of even money that an intelligent man will consent just to look at an operation – any operation. He then works to narrow those odds further in his favour. He gets, let’s say, nine-to-four on. At that point he might accept a bet. But he hedges it, Dick. He lays off – by betting on every other possibility as well. Always back both sides, my boy, and that at a moment when the odds are right for you. Now here, owing to this lamentable blabbermouth of yours, you’ve stacked cards against you. You went to this man and you told him some silly things. Now the odds are still very considerably in your favour. Point one, the man is not on any active duty. Two, the things you told him are fundamentally so trivial as well as so silly that the probability of his disregarding or forgetting the whole thing is overwhelming. He wrote nothing down – you’re certain of that. He began to, but stopped. There is no official move afoot, or we’d have learned of it long ago. No button has been pressed, no machinery set in movement. There’s nothing except a curiosity aroused by a half-recalled piece of gossip. Those odds are still slightly too large for my liking. We narrow them by removing this awkward grain of sand. That the grain of sand may be followed by others through the same hole – we close the hole. That another grain, too microscopically small to be seen, has already got through – those are the odds now facing you. They are so small as to be negligible. If a surgeon did not neglect the odds on his patient being a dangerous active haemophiliac there would be no surgery – nobody would dare incise as much as a finger.’

  ‘I see all that,’ muttered Dick. ‘The only thing that worries me is that he should have spoken to some friend, or acquaintance – or something. I don’t know what…’

  ‘Hedge your bet,’ said Larry with his soft gleam of amusement. ‘Hedge your bet, my boy – as I do. Arm yourself against any other loose-mouthed gossiping fool as yourself – sorry, but face it honestly – who might come floating idly in your direction, carried by some eddy of fantasy or supposition or conjecture – it can never be more than that.’

  And now weeks had passed. Nothing had happened. Nobody had appeared.

  Why had he still this persistent temperature, this chronic low fever? As though he had really caught some infectious disease? It was enough to make one go and have a chest X-ray, to be quite sure. People simply didn’t get TB, nowadays.

  His reverie was interrupted – and he was grateful, because it had become unpleasant – by the prolonged silvery tinkle of the door chimes. A customer …

  No, not a customer, Dick’s by now trained and sharpened eye told him straight away. Nothing but an artist! He had learned not to despise them, because Louis insisted on keeping a friendly relationship with all artists, however trivial or foolish …

  ‘Firstly you never know when
you’ll need a craftsman; do them a favour and they’ll do the same for you. Second, whatever you think, it’s good publicity – you’d be surprised how often an artist, who has a trained eye, has put me in the way of something good. And commercial artists, who are the most tiresome because they want to borrow things free, can give one in return a commercial puff. I furnished a whole play once for the Stadschouwburg – did me a lot of good and I recouped the trouble and the damage with no bother at all.’

  This was one of them, obviously. They came all shapes and sizes, wheedling for a Chinese silk screen ‘to photograph the model against’, putting an antique porcelain pipe with a Delft jar and a seventeenth-century astrolabe for a whisky advertisement, asking to borrow an Empire day-bed to help sell inner-spring mattresses! This object was typical enough. Small, broad-shouldered and bow-legged like a Belgian sprint-cyclist, thatch of untidy hair behind bald forehead, those idiot steel-rimmed glasses, a huge walrus moustache. Still, as Larry said – rule number one – ‘Be courteous no matter who’.

  ‘Good morning; how can I help you?’

  ‘Prins in?’ asked Danny de Vries.

  ‘I’m afraid he’s away in the Ardennes all week. Plundering the presbyteries he calls it.’

  ‘How about Saint?’

  ‘Ah, sorry.’

  ‘Not in Amsterdam either?’

  ‘Yes, he’s back, but we don’t see him here much now. Friend of his?’ casually. Couldn’t be much of an acquaintance of Larry’s, or he’d know more of his movements.

  ‘Not really. Recommendation from a friend. Was looking for an Italian madonna, any at all provided it’s early – quattrocento or thereabouts, something with a gold background, you know, genre Simone Martini, but Cinzano would do too, n’est-ce-pas? A motif I’m working on.’

  ‘Sorry, we’ve nothing like that in. We’ve an icon, but I don’t think I could let that go – the insurance … it belongs really to Marianne Colin in Paris. You might try Papenheim in the Leidsestraat.’

  ‘He sent me to you. You Richard, by the way?’

  ‘Oddinga – at your service, but I don’t know you do I?’

  ‘Do now,’ with a rather impudent grin that brushed Dick up the wrong way a bit, he didn’t know why.

  ‘How so? – that you come to know my name?’

  ‘Oh a friend – same fellow gave me Larry Saint’s name. Suggested you might help me.’

  ‘Who’s that then?’

  ‘Bit of an oddball,’ said Danny, laughing. ‘Policeman – not a type you’d think knew anything about art.’ Dick had stiffened up like a fresh-caught mackerel.

  ‘Er – what’s his name then?’

  ‘Rather a tragedy – daresay you read about it in the paper. Got shot over in The Hague by some psychopath – bit of a professional risk I suppose. Used to be a commissaire in the criminal brigade – but you knew him, surely? Piet van der Valk.’

  ‘Knew him?’ with stiff lips. ‘No, can’t say I did. How come?’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Dan, laughing heartily, ‘he seems to have known you anyhow. Suggested I looked you up, when I was talking one day about antiques – funny, only just before his death. Well, actually it was Saint he mentioned – interesting man, he said, and good at his job. But since he mentioned you in the same context…’

  ‘Really? What context was that? I don’t know why I’m curious – seemed funny, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh I forget. Something about a watch, I think, but I can’t really recall. Just about antiques; I was interested because old Piet was an absolute mine of information about all sorts of queer things – specially here in Amsterdam. Well, I’ll blow, pity about the madonna, better go and ask Peter Wilson ha, ha, ha. By the way, tell Larry when you see him, Piet was saying give his regards – bit out of date that, sorry about the joke, it’s in bad taste, huh? Still, regards are regards, pass on the message just the same. Bye bye, hope to have the pleasure of meeting you again some time.’

  And banged out happily, leaving Dick paralysed.

  He must mention this to Larry. But where was Larry? He didn’t know exactly. He was using the flat, but irregularly. He wasn’t back every night. But he must know about this for certain. Who was that chap? Damn it, he hadn’t given a name. Said he’d been to Papenheim – try ringing.

  ‘Hallo? Oh, Mr Papenheim – Oddinga here at Prins – you haven’t by any chance had an enquiry about a quattrocento madonna?’ Dick had been too disturbed to notice how odd this would sound.

  ‘What?’ said the voice at the other end, not believing its ears.

  ‘Well, I had a rather peculiar fellow asking whether we had a…’

  ‘Just like that eh? What did you do – tell him to try Marks and Spencer?’

  ‘No, not an oleo – artist of some kind by the look, wanted maybe to copy it or something.’

  ‘Why’n’t he go to the Rijksmuseum?’

  ‘Yes, I thought it odd too but maybe – ’

  ‘What is all this?’ suspiciously – was this a roundabout approach towards Louis letting it be known he’d got one, or had a client who wanted one, or – ‘- why d’you ask me such a thing?’

  ‘Oh, only, er, that of course I said we hadn’t and I suggested he ask you and he said he had.’ Dick was floundering now.

  ‘Had what? You think I’ve got one – why’n’t Louis ask me himself?’

  ‘No no – oh hell – look, it was just the fellow seems not all there, and I was a bit puzzled, and since he said he’d asked you, I thought I’d check with you what the fellow could be after really, since this might be just a pretext for something else.’

  ‘I’ve seen nobody, know nothing of this. Sounds cockeyed to me. You get any loonies, don’t send them to me as a way of getting rid of them, my boy, I beg you.’

  ‘Yes, of course, sorry I troubled you.’ There was a grunt and the phone clanked. Dick wiped his forehead, felt for a cigarette he needed, regretting the foolish impulse that had made him ring up without thinking – Papenheim was such a suspicious bastard. He would go on thinking for weeks that there was a real fourteenth-century picture somewhere, perhaps offered for sale, and Louis was trying to find out whether it had been offered to him! People said one thing and meant another, and in this slippery world Richard was not yet altogether always at his ease. He blew out smoke in a noisy puff, rubbed his head, and wondered what it all meant.

  Dan, gleefully, was reporting that Saint was not at home, but the young man had nearly had kittens: they were on a hot trail. Trix, it was decided, would be the next attacker. She giggled self-consciously, but said she wouldn’t lose her nerve, whoever else might.

  Dick had not seen Larry at lunchtime, nor apparently had he been to the flat. Dick thought of leaving a message on the phone pad, but decided not to. He had had time to cool down. Don’t get flustered, he told himself. He could imagine Larry’s sarcastic eyes, being expressive – what, another panic? He decided to do nothing. Just a coincidence which would blow over. Recall – if anything were known he’d have heard about it long before this.

  *

  He was amused at this fine example of slightly over-blown Amsterdamse bourgeoisie. Successful shopkeeper a mile off! Trix, much dressed-up and heavily perfumed, had difficulty starting, which didn’t bother Dick at all. This type of customer, with money to spend and a decision that antiques would increase their standing as well as prove a good investment, was familiar. Dick was young enough for them to patronize, which gave them confidence: he had made some good sales this way, a thing which had much amused Larry.

  ‘Of course, Mevrouw. A piece of furniture perhaps? Now this is a striking little piece, and extremely elegant – it opens out to form a writing table, you see. A bonheur du jour – genuine Louis Quinze lacquer. It’s not signed, but we’ll give you our written guarantee. That might look very well in your salon.’ Like fun it bloody would, Trix was thinking, but what she said was, ‘You see a lot of them faked.’

  ‘Not in this house, Mevrouw.’

 
‘Yes, but how would you know the difference, huh?’

  ‘An expert can tell, Mevrouw, and Mr Prins is recognized as a great authority.’

  ‘That’s all very well, but – why, I remember as a child there was a cabinet-maker’s shop in the quarter, and he used to make these things.’

  ‘Naturally. There are numerous reproductions. But both the wood and the methods used are modern.’

  ‘That so? Well let me tell you something, young man – this old chap, old Piet van der Valk, he used to mend chairs and such, but his shop was full of old bits of furniture and he used to say if you took a piece of old wood, and used the traditional methods and such, you could make something even an expert couldn’t tell the difference.’ Trix came out with it bravely. The information came from Arlette, who had been told by her husband. These reminiscences had been confirmed by Willy. ‘I remember the old boy when I was a kid in the street; ‘s true enough, he had an attic full of old wardrobes and such, used to take them to pieces.’ But it was not this remark that petrified Dick.

  ‘Really?’ he was saying in a light voice with no timbre. ‘How interesting. One would not think he had sufficient skill. What was the name again?’

  ‘Old Piet van der Valk. Of course you weren’t born then, that was in the old days – I can only just remember them,’ added Trix in haste. ‘But his son was well-known too – real Amsterdammer, nice chap, my husband went to school with him,’ with perfect truth. ‘You’ll know about him – he was that commissaire of police, got assassinated in the street just the other day, a right filthy trick that was. If my husband got his hands on the one that did that, he said to me at the time … well, young man, how about it?’

  ‘Mr Prins will guarantee the authenticity,’ Dick managed to get out from between his anaesthetized jaws.

  ‘He will, will he – well, perhaps I’ll talk to him. I’ll think it over – thank you, young man.’ And out Trix flounced. She hadn’t done it very well, she thought, but well enough. She’d seen that young cockerel’s jaw drop!