Criminal Conversation

by Nicolas Freeling

  It was easy. Once a week the doctor went to a sort of athletic club which went in for less popular, almost snobbish sports. Fencing, badminton, squash. Some of the judo boys trained here, and a few of the physical-fitness fiends who went in for the formal balletic rituals of gymnastics. It was a nice place, with a tiny twenty-metre pool such as one finds in a turkish bath, and one heard the sporting gossip of Europe there. The subscriptions were high but van der Valk did not mind; one got to know all sorts of amusing people. He was no earthly good at games, but was active and supple enough to play most with enjoyment, and it was nice after sitting cramped over some thirty-page pomposity of a report all afternoon to box a bit and then go headlong into the little pool, legs anyhow, and come out with a villainous thrash that the back-stroke champion, a friend, called the ‘Harbour-Police-Special’.

  But he had hardly noticed the doctor, and the doctor had certainly never noticed him, because Post belonged to the club’s exclusive, fastidious clique, that had a special room with proper lockers. A few other specialist doctors and lawyers, a brace of high municipal executives, a Consul and a concert singer… They did not dream of playing with riffraff like businessmen or television stars. Squash was their game. Dr Post was rather good, with venomous shots coming back at totally unexpected angles, and that spectacular service that trickles meanly back along the ceiling and the wall behind, where one can never get a fair swing at it…

  Even now he did not notice van der Valk, though that gentleman put himself more and more impudently in full view. The ‘Heavy Mob’ went for a swim in the pool that was kept a whole hour for them on ‘their’ evening, reappeared beautifully dressed for a ceremonious whisky at the bar, and left soon afterwards, Dr Post still unconscious, apparently, of the police presence that had been drinking whisky at his very elbow.

  Dr Post was also a concert-goer. Van der Valk found himself at five in two weeks on this account. He knew nothing about music, except from Arlette’s gramophone, and her taste was personal and cranky, with a tendency to dislike all sopranos. He enjoyed himself now very much, discovered Bruckner, and was very taken with a Hungarian whose name he could not capture and who did the eighth symphony of Dvorák, which he was delighted with. When he told Arlette about it she was, typically, sniffy about ‘Czech folklore’ and he was indignant. There was, too, a wonderful American negress who did a Schumann group, a snobbish visiting conductor who did messy Mozart and got clapped furiously for it (to the disgust, he was glad to see through a little glass, of Dr Post, alone and austere among the abonnés) and a splendid German woman, quiet and gentle-looking, but who played the violin with such love that he became quite converted to Bach sonatas that he had always thought of as very dull.

  No, he did not think there was anything puritanical about the doctor. The lecherous puritan is a common enough phenomenon in Holland, but Post was more as well as more complex. He was a lover of sensuous delights, of civilised and luxurious arts, of pure pleasure. That bathroom of his jarred; it was too much the ostentatious vulgarity of a very expensive hotel. That was to tell him, surely, and quite openly, that Post was a collector of women the way he might have been of Sèvres china. Mrs Merckel was not the only one: he would make a little bet on that.

  Mrs Beatrix van der Post had some connection with it, he felt. He had seen her by now: meditating on the luscious summer evenings under the lindens he had had plenty of chances of studying Madam. For the movements of both were predictable, since they belonged to the chauffeured stratum of society. Not that this chauffeur was the figure of caricature that stands stiffly saluting outside the marble portal of a Rolls-Royce, but he brought the Alfa Romeo round to the front on evenings when Dr Post was going out – and drove it too, for Post either could not drive or greatly disliked driving. And he brought Madam’s little auto round every evening, because she always went out. It was a trim white BMW, pretty little object, and it fitted her like one of her elegant long white gloves. She had a trick of standing by it surveying her house and herself with satisfaction before climbing in, which she did well, with no display of stockings.

  Trim was the word for her too. She had a solid Dutch figure, but she appeared slim in her excellent choice of clothes. A neatly rounded body, by no means unattractive, a keen, intelligent face with a high forehead and a sharp nose a scrap too big but well shaped, strong neat legs unbowed or bulged, with clean ankles and long shinbones.

  Yet van der Valk had no difficulty in seeing just what Cabestan had meant. Or why the girl Suzanne had never felt quite happy with this friendly, pleasant, kind woman. Or why Dr Post had no great interest in pictures, perhaps. The art whore, he suspected, looked at everything with the same self-satisfaction. With the same superiority, even. Her house, her clothes, her excellently composed body and ordered mind, her gleaming auto and gleaming driving style – she was an excellent driver. And her picture, her television programme: and of course her artist and her producer. Everything she touched she would manage and arrange – and always so extremely well…

  Once or twice, for the hell of it, he followed at a discreet distance, and watched her getting out of the little white car as gracefully as she got in. What would that be like in bed? he asked himself. He drew himself pictures of her undressing, but they were not erotic pictures. Mrs Beatrix van der Post-Rouwé was not an erotic woman. No, these hours in the street weren’t wasted; far from it.

  It didn’t do to draw conclusions from such things, but he was making pictures – or more accurately tentatively nervous scribbles - during these evenings. Post was plainly a kind of person that is not uncommon: the classic highly strung type, that likes and needs a quiet simple existence. Regular food, regular exercise, a lot of sleep. They have no great sexual capacity; he would have thought that a collection of women was more likely to be imaginary than real. They have a feeling of suspected inadequacy, no? Perhaps. Draw no conclusions. But the man was rather like Casimir, wasn’t he? That same air of promise that had come to little. Had he looked at the other man, and seen a vision rather like his own future, and hated it rather? How would he react, van der Valk asked himself suddenly, if I were to invite him to meet me personally? For a game of squash, say? Get away from being policeman and doctor. In that consulting-room I’ll never reach him; he’s too armoured. But on my ground - outside…?

  Suppose I were to point out to him, over a drink or something, this similarity. The withdrawal from the world, the observation from a high vantage point, the need for girls and reliance on them – for wasn’t that the one real contact with life they both had? Might it stir him up?

  There was nothing else he could do. Dr Post was sitting pretty. All he had to do was stay quiet another week and van der Valk would have made a brief, impersonal report to Mr Samson that there was nothing to be done. A formally worded little letter would have gone off to Mr Merckel. And that would be that.

  He gave Dr Post a telephone call, and made his invitation. And was surprised. He thought it would be pushed aside, politely. It was accepted. What ailed the fellow?

  Part Two

  One

  Why have I chosen to write this, to put it all on paper; even, on occasion, my own words in dialogue form? I could call it an exercise in detachment, a formal method – for studying this chain of circumstances. There is no ground for doing so. I have the requisite objectivity and – I do not need to go to such pains in order to reassure myself. Nor is this a casebook for others. I have no desire for immortality in the dusty clinical files of the Faculty Library, to be used for the edification of dim students.

  But perhaps for one pair of eyes? Can I trust him? I can, I believe, for even if his blessed regulations compel him to communicate all such findings to the legal authorities, he will not do that, if I have understood him. He is capable of illegality – as I am.

  I will emphasise that this is a dialogue. Or I should say rather a conversation between us – you see, I can address you directly, now that I have decided. If you read these pages, it will be be
cause you have understood, and will be capable of understanding better. That is why I have put in fragments of conversations that have passed between us. Listen to my words again, and put them together with the words I have added. I have said, ‘If you ever read this’. That will be when you have obtained formal proof against me. You will have realised, at the same time, that formal proof was not enough. For lawyers, yes, but not, I think, for you.

  I am not a psychopath and have no compulsion to do dangerous things, court risks, bring about my own downfall. I have no hunger to confess, to be caught. You are trying to exert pressure upon me, but you have no lever of compulsion. No, it will be because you have built up, patiently, step by step, a chain of circumstantial witness. You will find it very difficult. (I am speaking of all this in the future tense still; it has not yet happened, after all. Perhaps it never will? No, I told you I possessed detachment. I have also courage, honesty, and the ability to resist self-deception. You will arrive.)

  You will find it discouraging. But behind the mass of silence and deception, you will winkle out scraps of real evidence. It is there after all, and it will point to me in the end.

  To prove to you that I have foresight, that I am not even worried, I will show you that I have thought of everything. Full proof will be lacking, inevitably. You will construct a rigmarole of minor charges. I will have an expensive, skilful advocate, a lot of money, a great deal of patience. I may not secure acquittal – and I do not greatly care if I do not, for I will not waste a lot of time. A year in prison, with time deducted for waiting to come to trial, and of course the full deduction for good behaviour. I shall be very well behaved.

  But then? After? That, you are thinking, will be the worst part. The disgrace, the broken career, the pointing finger, the whisper behind the fat soft knuckles. My dear fellow, not a bit. It would not alarm me to be deprived, even permanently, of my licence to practise medicine. I am a good doctor. Nobody can take away my skill and experience. You wonder what I will do? I am a handy electrical craftsman, and quite complex gadgets are within my scope. I could find interesting and well-paid work. And of course in many countries I could simply set up as a quack. The word does not alarm me. I have known quacks of a great deal more use to their patients than most doctors that are officially recognised. Nor am I alarmed about social position – ‘standing’.

  But let us get back to our conversation. Our criminal conversation. The phrase amuses me. It is the kind of phrase I will find in the list of charges read against me. Is it a criminal charge, or only civil? Does it even still exist on the statute book? I hope so; I find it amusing. There will be other trifling things, no doubt. Illegal possession of drugs not accounted for, or some other tedious and laboured phrase.

  This conversation of ours will never be mentioned in any court. In reading it, you will have observed that you cannot show it to anyone without compromising yourself and your career, which is no doubt precious to you. You will not hold this against me, if you are the man I take you for. You are given to unguarded remarks, Mr van der Valk. Even indiscreet. The kind of thing that journalists call, still, ‘off the cuff’. All journalists, of course, cling like limpets to the coarse cliché, but have you noticed how old-fashioned journalese often sounds? Who, in the last thirty years, has worn starched cuffs?

  This will make a bulky manuscript. You will get practice in deciphering my handwriting, with its scribbles and its jumps, its clarity and precision, and the personal abbreviations all doctors use. We are accustomed from our earliest student days to large quantities of notes, which to be any use at all must be full, clear, and perfectly comprehensible, however much haste was used in taking them down. It is no hardship to me to write at this length. When I was a student my notes were constantly borrowed by the others. Every night I wrote them up religiously from the day’s roughs on scratch paper, into the series of big loose-leaf volumes. It was my greatest pleasure in student days. How I loved – and still do – a large, new, loose-leaf notebook. With what pleasure I watched it fill. There, if you like, is one of the answers to your question – why all this? It is a pleasure.

  I know what you will say, of course. You will say – it is one of the axioms at the police school, no doubt – The characteristic, overriding, never-failing mark of the criminal, by which he can always be recognised, is his immense vanity.’

  Very likely they are right. And has the writer, too, no vanity? Are not all his characters reflections of himself? Are not his books a measure of his exhibitionism? You have yourself, my dear van der Valk, considerable vanity.

  So there I am now, an hour’s work or more already, scribbling away happily. It will all have quite a smell of Monsieur Simenon. Yes indeed, I read him too; so do you, no doubt. Don’t we all? Of course the man is simply a good doctor. Indeed his nostalgia for his other vocation shows through constantly. But I am not copying his technique, though I recall a book of his presenting a similar situation – you remember ‘Letter to my Judge? – by a doctor! But there is no resemblance, I am afraid, between M. Simenon’s imaginary awkward rustic in a French provincial town and my very real self – from a background quite aristocratic – in the city of Amsterdam.

  I recall the book very well. It was an appeal, for the man had been tried and condemned; nobody had understood and he could not bear that. He chose as the object of his letter the only man who, he thought, had made a serious effort to comprehend – the judge who had drawn up the instruction in his case.

  You see how the parallel fails? You cannot, my dear chap, see me doing that. Pas si bête. As for understanding – everything, not just barely enough – I don’t care a damn whether you do or not. I’m not appealing to you. Understand that, at least.

  Two

  I paused at that last sentence, I remember – this is a day or so later – for I found myself slipping into a sort of meditation about the kind of life I would lead once released from prison. I shall be able to gain a good living, I have told you. I shall keep up my studies in prison, and develop my knowledge of electronics. They are so humane and conscientious, and of course bothered by having educated men as their guests: they will certainly give me every opportunity for study. But my private life? You have seen me, always known me, in this large, luxuriously fitted and furnished house. A solid comfortable house. I am surrounded by comforts, stuffed with bourgeois ornament, including my dear wife. Well, my friend, I shall whisper to you a little secret. You recall my mentioning the psychopath’s longing to be caught, to confess? And my assured denial that such was my case? Aha, you thought. No, no, my friend, I shall be quite glad to be caught, but only because it is the only really secure way, short of killing her of course, of getting rid of my dear wife. I do not think I would be able to kill her. She would, I am afraid, catch me out in the attempt.

  But the comfort of my life – will you be surprised to hear that I am well able to part with all that? Didn’t I say that I was detached - and I interpret the word in its strict sense. I do not hold fast to any material thing. I enjoy them, often, but I sit very loose to my possessions, my encumbrances. I have for long hankered for the life of a student again, living alone in a single room, simply furnished. I shall be one of those elderly bachelors, cooking their meals on a gas ring and reading while they eat. Indeed to read while I eat, alone, in leisure, with no damned table-talk, has always been one of my dearly loved pleasures. Another has been to sit, while everybody was dashing about surrounded by bustle, by noise, in a dim, quiet room, listening to the rain outside the window – or on the zinc roof over a window – beating; trickling. That is pleasure for you. I shall have a life, in fact, rather similar to Cabestan’s – or, rather, to the life he could have had, with any sense.

  Yes, I killed him. And you will say – no, you will not, perhaps, but the prosecutor will – What sort of a doctor is this, Mr President, who showed such callous, elementary disregard for human life?’

  The answer will become apparent to you – if it has not already. He should not, of cou
rse, have tried to blackmail me. That was treading on a banana skin: he ran out of time extremely suddenly then. Ill on Thursday, worse on Friday, died on Saturday. Solomon Grundy would have been a good name for Cabestan.

  I shall not bother you, my dear van der Valk, with a technical description. There are so many ways a doctor can cause death with no pain, leaving no trace. He did not suffer. I am reminded of a ridiculous English criminal prosecution – do you recall that rather pathetic doctor, who resembled a figment of M. Simenon’s imagination a good deal more than I do, who was accused of murdering an ancient widow with overdoses of heroin? She was in even worse shape than Cabestan, for she was bedridden and practically gaga. The idea was so stupid, so clumsy, such a waste of time – shall we say as much of all three as the trial itself?

  Three

  I must not lose coherence, and I must avoid all suggestion of the long rambling monologue attempting self-justification. I must put everything in order, for the eye of an ‘orderly policeman’. And I must give you a frame of reference. As I promised, I am going to reproduce fragments of our dialogue, which will help you. Another hold upon your discretion, my poor friend! My memory is trained and retentive, and I took rough notes immediately, each time you left me. If you have notes yourself, compare them with this record, and if there is any discrepancy, it is your notes, my friend, that are dishonest. You will see with surprise that I have reproduced your words accurately. Your words! – I have even caught your speech rhythm and your verbal mannerisms…