Over the High Side

by Nicolas Freeling

  ‘Yes,’ patiently. ‘About Holland.’

  ‘I think he asked my wife whether she could give him an introduction, don’t you know, anybody in Holland who might be useful, and she said I suppose that she didn’t know anybody much – she’s lived here since she was a child almost, y’know. So she gave him her father’s name I think, and I guess that’s just about all I know about it.’

  ‘You guess.’

  ‘I wasn’t there at the time, myself,’ with disarming simplicity.

  At this moment, on cue, as though to save dear Eddy some questions that might be embarrassing, exactly as though she had been listening outside – and quite likely she had – the door opened and Stasie came floating in. Van der Valk got up politely. She was relaxed and untidy in a brown skirt and sweater, wisps of hair coming down, and hadn’t stopped to comb it or repair her lipstick. Housewife ‘au naturel’ who has just worked the children off to bed and reappears slightly dishevelled, warmed by stooping under beds to find the missing slipper, sleeve finely spattered with soapy water from supervising a nailbrush, just a tiny bit sweaty since supper time. With some women – Stasie was one – this adds greatly to charm. Her unusually good looks were embellished, her magnetism intensified. She held a hand out with casual amiability, unembarrassed, unworried, unsurprised.

  ‘Sorry – but I’m sure you understand. Give me a cigarette then, Eddy.’ Out of politeness, perhaps, she spoke Dutch, which Eddy appeared at least to follow. She waved Van der Valk back into her chair, and curled up on a divan, arranging her feet under her, pulling her skirt modestly over her knees, puffing at the cigarette, screwing her eyes and blinking to keep smoke out, with a vague stare at the wall behind him. So much relaxation and casual composure, so easy a ‘take us as you find us’ manner – was there a bit too much, was it defensive? And if it were? Natural: strange policeman coming moseying in, second time in two days; could get to be a nuisance. But she was all politeness. And plausibility.

  ‘It must trouble you, Commissaire, to find me so as you might think unconcerned, about my father’s death. But he was an old man though he didn’t look it, he’d always lived a very strenuous fully-packed existence and we’ve always expected – my husband, my sisters, all who knew him – that something in the end would give way suddenly and that he’d just die without any longdrawn illness or anything. And that’s just what did happen. Oh yes, I know he died by violence – and that is indeed very shocking and dreadful. We’ve had though – saying this to you is absurd – to learn to live with violence; there’s such a lot in the world. We all felt quite sure that he’d been attacked by some crazy person for no reason – oh, of course, to the crazy person there’s a reason, obvious, and the need to do something about it quite overwhelming, but that is just typically psychopathic, isn’t it. It is unexplainable in any other way – I mean, people don’t stab one in the street, do they? I suppose it may have been someone he knew at best very slightly and had some imagined grievance, thought he’d been outsmarted in some deal, I suppose, stabbed him in a sudden fit of rage like a child and then walked off into the blue without a care in the world. Those people don’t have a guilty conscience or anything, do they? – and that’s surely the reason why you don’t find anything that makes any sense.’

  A fluent talker, our Stasie. Van der Valk felt in his pocket, found a crumpled box of Gitanes, put one in his mouth. Helpful Eddy jumping up snapping a lighter. Now he mustn’t be heavy and Dutch being all sarcastic.

  ‘Thanks … what you say sounds perfectly plausible, yes.’ Very light and colourless.

  Her eyes set in an oblique plane and flicked at him – she’d got it at once; nobody’s fool.

  Good old Eddy hadn’t got it, and put his great foot in it.

  ‘Not only plausible, surely.’

  Van der Valk took the cigarette out to straighten it; got a bit bent in his pocket.

  ‘A murder, Mr Flanagan. Crime of blood, crime of violence. The escaped lunatic, the psychopath let out on parole a bit premature – oldest cliché in the business. Plenty of legal brains expended energy on this notion. If it hadn’t been rejected I wouldn’t be here.’ Eddy fidgeted with an ashtray.

  ‘I was down on Seapoint Avenue,’ went on Van der Valk peaceably. ‘Nice view there is. Very quiet. Holland’s like that – we like to think we’re very peaceful. No broken glass, un-emptied dutsbins, riots with Porto-Ricans in Spanish Harlem, police sirens wailing – we think of that as something on the television, hm? all the fourteen-year-olds able to buy guns freely. Or the pretty young woman, mother of small children – like your wife here – who goes to the shooting gallery after shopping and carries a thirty-eight in her handbag. But violence – as your wife says – is everywhere. Cliché to think it can’t happen here. Cliché to think that I’m just a filler-in of forms because I don’t walk about carrying a machine-gun. This trouble with clichés is a handicap in police work. Like the policemen in books, who’re all nice quiet guys with wives and children. Not a bastard among them. Like you – like me. Except,’ blandly, ‘that I’ve a dirty mind.’

  ‘Sure, sure,’ said Eddy, disturbed. Stasie said nothing.

  ‘I don’t want to seem rude,’ went on Van der Valk, ‘but I didn’t come for a cosy chat about psychopaths.’

  ‘Yes but violence…’

  ‘Violence is like the Good Housekeeping Seal; it comes in the package.’

  ‘That,’ objected Eddy, ‘sounds a bit cheap.’

  ‘You’re quite right, it is a bit cheap, and I’m sorry. I think I should have said that lacking perhaps a good honest dirty war to exercise their muscles people do have a tendency to violence, even gratuitously – anywhere. We ought maybe to give them a little red book to carry.’

  ‘Dammit,’ protested Eddy, ‘I didn’t know Denis – I don’t know Denis – at all that well, but I find this pretty hard to swallow.’

  ‘So do I, and I don’t know him at all. Why do you think I come to you? – for whatever light you can help shed.’

  ‘Stasie,’ in a cowardly way, ‘knows him of course better than I do.’

  ‘Well enough that I don’t believe it for a moment. Or perhaps I don’t know him at all. But anyway, Commissaire, isn’t all this the greatest nonsense? Just an exercise in rhetoric?’ It was as though she wished to show him she carried claws and could defend herself: his eyes crinkled up with enjoyment, his ‘tiny little eyes all brimming with spite’, as Arlette said. She saw this and was pleased with herself.

  ‘You can’t just settle on Denis simply because he handily happened to be around. Not unless my notions of justice are a great deal queerer even than American television.’

  ‘Nobody has “settled on Denis”, that I know of. He isn’t accused of anything whatever, everybody is taking pains to be extremely fair and he certainly isn’t being harassed. He’s a witness, and I’d like to see him: that doesn’t mean there’s some sort of dragnet out for him.’

  ‘If there is it’s a poor one,’ said Stasie mockingly, ‘because he’s in Rome.’

  ‘If he’s still in Rome,’ remarked Van der Valk.

  ‘How do you know anyway?’ asked Eddy.

  ‘I had a card from him this morning – it’s on the chimneypiece.’

  Eddy jumped up, studied a gaudy tourist photo-card, and passed it to Van der Valk. It was addressed to, ‘Signora S. Flanagan,’ and said in a slant, ‘Having a good time seeing a lot of new things as well as old wish you were here to share it love Denis.’

  ‘There’s a proof he’s not hiding or anything,’ said Eddy.

  ‘Very conventional and reassuring,’ agreed Van der Valk politely.

  ‘And hardly sounding like a murderer,’ added Stasie.

  ‘Very true. Well, you’ve been very kind and cleared up a lot of doubt; I’ve bothered you long enough.’

  There were the essential perfunctory exclamations of regret that they could help him no further. Plus, he thought, a pleasurable feeling of sending him off with a flea in his ear.
/>
  He looked at his map under a streetlamp: it was such a nice night that he felt like a long walk and made it, right out to Dalkey along the sea front. He wondered what had put him into such a good mood; he could see no real cause for such gullible self-satisfaction, but there it was, he was immensely pleased with himself and even found himself singing, that catchiest of all waltz tunes.

  ‘Mit mir, Mit mir –

  Keine Nacht dir zu lang’

  – and guffawed, since this sentiment was addressed to the deliciously beddable Stasie, no doubt. Being Baron Ochs in a lecherous frame of mind amused him so much that he recalled another of those superbly complacent remarks.

  ‘Hab halt so ein jung und hitzig Blut,

  Ist nicht zum Stillen!’

  – and an old Dublin biddy going home from the pub took a look at this idiot figure laughing to himself and talking alone out loud in German, and made a significant gesture with her finger.

  ‘Sure these Poles are all the same, God help them,’ she remarked sympathetically, disappearing up a side street. A small pale full moon, looking anaemic and sorry for itself, appeared in the sky. Van der Valk looked at it like Eugène de Rastignac gazing over Paris, but was not quite pleased enough with himself to say, ‘A nous deux maintenant,’ – on the contrary, he was thinking that Baron Ochs had fallen with a loud crash through the trap-door into the dung-heap, and doubtless it would happen to him very shortly. He always did manage to get into the shit sooner or later.

  Why was he behaving in so ridiculous a way, he wondered – he hadn’t had any whisky for hours …

  *

  Dear Arlette,

  Have just had very large Irish breakfast in bed – coffee abominable natch but tea delicious here. This plus large amounts whisky would have horrible effect on liver, but I walk a great deal. Town centre nicely compact, like A’dam walkable: this is nice. Today got to go to effing embassy; job is pretty awful as usual but Irish v. amusing. Lunch yesterday with politician’s wife in expensive restaurant: grub not up to much but drinks good, and post just brought invit. dinner private house of same – run to hire dinner-jacket Moss Bros! His cigars are good.

  All these flesh-pots do not conceal exceeding trickiness situation. Nobody pulls gun on me, but getting arm twisted in variety subtle Irish ways. So go about being blunt & Dutch & unimaginative – have to or would dissolve into tangled webs of fantasy … Have to do something clever, but no idea what.

  Contact sound Irish pleeceman, bright but can’t help me really, am pretty isolated. Thought of one indecent scheme unlikely, to commend self to embassy, whose one idea is to see my back, preferably falling over high cliff, by choice today but would settle for tomorrow.

  Van der Valk was sitting at a little writing-table in imitation antique style of the type loved by expensive hotels. Their spindly legs are never quite even; this is to be remedied by one of the books of paper matches with the hotel’s beastly name written on it, which serve no other purpose. In the drawer of this horrible object he had found writing paper and envelopes, as well as little brochures headed This Week in Town, telling one all about the Flower Show and the Folklore Dance Festival, and laundry lists in four languages, helpful if one badly wants to know what the German is for bra.

  He was not washed and seemed to be wearing a mask of fried egg; it was nice to be dallying about writing a dutiful letter to one’s wife, prefatory to lavish splashy bath, luxuriously knowing that the chambermaid will clean up after one – this is indeed practically the only pleasure one has in hotels, and he made the most of it. He was preparing for a leisurely day, in the course of which he had to write his tiresome report, bring it to the embassy, there no doubt to be asked several mostly foolish and all unnecessary questions, and then go for a quiet gossipy session with Inspector Flynn, which he enjoyed. After which one would do more work on his plot to squeeze the seductive Mrs Flanagan till her pips squeaked …

  ‘That pipsqueak,’ was Flynn’s word for Denis Lynch, but when asked what it meant he was vague. ‘Much the same as a whippersnapper.’ Van der Valk, snared in the subtleties of the English language, was not much further. He yawned: high time he shaved (the combination of fried egg and bristles was nasty) but he would just finish his letter first. A knock came at the door.

  ‘Yes?’

  Pageboy, grinning – what was the pipsqueak grinning at? His pyjamas, probably (chosen by Arlette, a bit psychedelic).

  ‘Porter says he’s very sorry sir, bit of a mixup sorting the mail and he found another letter seems to be for you – that all right sir?’

  Van der Valk grunted, looked for sixpence, couldn’t find one, was damned if he’d give this horrid child a shilling, nodded vaguely, and was instantly absorbed in this letter. Aha, that explained the pageboy’s grin. Extremely cheap envelope, ballpoint pen, illiterate handwriting of someone not knowing any Dutch. He handled it with some care, since there might be a thumbprint.

  ‘Inspector Van Devalk, Sheridan Hotel, Stephens Green, Dublin.’

  Postmarked Dublin late the night before. Hm. Inside was a half-sheet of cheap lined paper.

  Get out, we dont want foreingers coming smearing our people, we know what to do with Them. You got 24 hrs to leave then you Get it stay away from the Gards they wont Help you annyway. This is the Last and Only warning.

  Up the Rebels

  ‘What d’you make of this?’ Mr Flynn examined the missive and smiled his crooked oblique smile that made Van der Valk wonder just a little if he were being laughed at.

  ‘Want it sent to the lab?’

  ‘If you think that will help us.’

  ‘Mm, midnight last night – General Post Office. Paper’s Woolworth, so’s the ballpoint by the look of it. Irish handwriting learned at the Christian Brothers. Van de – that should be Van der shouldn’t it – not what a Dutch person would write.’

  ‘Could be faked though. Common trick to put in spelling mistakes in an attempt to mislead.’

  ‘Surely. But look at the text. Inverting the n and g in foreigner is commonplace, means nothing – but anny is a Dublin fault based on pronunciation. Gards is guards in English and Garda in Irish and the feller got his feet crossed.’ It was the first time he had seen Flynn work – the vague joky manner had been discarded.

  ‘You mean it could be faked but not by someone Dutch, say.’

  ‘That’s about it. Hardly your shiny new girl-friend.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem exactly Senator Lynch’s style either. Any ideas – sorry, anny?’

  Flynn snorted.

  ‘Dublin humour,’ shrugging. ‘Might have nothing really to do with this job at all – just a loony. Dublin’s full of loonies – if you were to put them all in Grangegorman sure the queue would stretch from here to Athlone. I could probably find out given time – it’s hardly important.’

  ‘For the trouble you’d be put to …’ agreed Van der Valk. ‘What’s these rebels?’

  ‘A slogan, quite meaningless, like shouting heil hitler, or that ho ho ho lark. We get thousands of these things – someone perhaps who saw you here, or with me.’

  ‘Seems to know something about me though – this phrase about smearing: would that imply some knowledge?’

  ‘Knowledge of somebody with nowt better to do than flap his ears in some pub – who maybe knows me. Quite a few people have reason to,’ with the rusty iron smile. ‘We might have made a remark or two what could be thought indiscreet, that is if they hadn’t been so general. Whatever, it’s no great task to reason that you’re here on some kind of job and not just for pleasure.’

  ‘If you’re not impressed I’ve certainly no reason to be.’

  ‘Certain amount of xenophobia anywhere, in’t it? – distrust of any outside influence or seeming interference – kind of thing a loony makes a lot of. We’ll keep it, just in case huh? I’ll send it down the lab – do them no harm; bit of comic relief. By the way, got a bit of news for you; Senator Lynch took a plane for Rome this morning. Routine information from the a
irport: booked openly in his name, and there’s nothing unusual in that; he’s often away off to such like places and it won’t even rate two lines in the paper.’

  ‘I saw Lynch as you know. Made me promise hands off the boy but he’ll see what’s what and will have the honesty to tell me, and I took his word because if I trust him I hope he’ll have no hesitation in trusting me. He said, “We’re in each others’ hands.”’

  ‘You don’t surprise me a bit. That’s his style.’

  ‘Got an invitation to come to dinner in his house day after tomorrow – by the way that rebels thing came later, but it was in the same post; I checked with the porter. Got stuck under another envelope, he said.’

  Flynn touched the envelope delicately.

  ‘Slightly sticky,’ he agreed, nodding. ‘Fell in the jam-dish or something.’ He bent down and smelled with his long bony nose, looking like one of those long sad dogs that hunt things. Beagles, wondered Van der Valk? Bassets?

  ‘Guinness,’ said Flynn grinning, ‘or not to put a fine point, stout. Can conclude envelope is perhaps maybe been written on a pub table, like, where someone clumsy had slopped like with a jar. Loony. Who in their right mind goes writing letters in a pool of stout? Nobody you know.’

  He was mistaken, though, because Van der Valk got slugged that evening in Seapoint Avenue.

  *

  He had had, as he feared, a boring day with the embassy. They didn’t think the situation quite altogether satisfactory (nor did he). They weren’t very pleased with the rate of progress (nor was he). It was altogether unpleasantly vague, blackly unpromising, and decidedly disquieting (he quite agreed). He must be exceedingly cautious in any dealings with Mrs Flanagan, since any suggestion of guilty knowledge or concealed information or whatnot could only be confirmed by this lad Lynch, who was in Rome hm, and anyway whose sayings now or in a hypothetical future were hardly gospel writ hm. So he’d better be exceedingly prudent, because if there were complaints about interference with the freedom of the subject, or false and malicious rumour, or god save the mark wrongful arrest (though this was prudishly and superstitiously referred to as ‘whatnot’) THEN there’d be hell to pay in the Netherlands Embassy my god, it didn’t bear thinking of.