Nicolas Freeling
Double-Barrel
Contents
Part one: ‘Happenstance’
Part two: ‘Acquaintance’
Part three: ‘Friendship’
Part four: ‘Knowledge’
Part five: ‘Certainty’
Part one: ‘Happenstance’
1
How often it happens. We imagine some situation, or even construct a whole hypothetical case in the course of a discussion. It may be serious – it might be just said as a joke. But next week it comes true. There is something laughable about that even when the reality is disagreeable.
Back in the office, I did laugh, but the irreverence might have been to offset a strong idea that the next few weeks would be unpleasant. It was ridiculous, and from this far away it was fairly funny – but it was sinister, it was horrible, and it was certainly tragic.
There it was. I had gone and theorized, all pompous. And today my hypothesis gets presented to me complete in every detail.
A lot of good my theorizing will do me now. As likely as not I am going to fall straight on my classic, scornful nose.
It is my wife’s fault. I am not unhappy that Arlette is French; it helps me often enough to remember not to be quite so Dutch when I try to understand things. After twelve years she is still rebellious about Holland, and sometimes uneasy there. She won’t surrender to some of the attitudes natural to any Dutch woman, with their generations behind them of what she calls their conditioned reflex. The phrase is not all that bad. It sounds like Mr Pavlov’s dogs, and there is a good deal in common.
It was not even a week ago; evening. She was reading the paper and I was sitting in my socks, majestically doing nothing, probably with the socks on the coffee–table where I could admire their intricate beauty; grey wool, three and eleven in the January sales that were just over. The wall of newsprint opposite gave an indignant crackle. A voice said, ‘Pah!’
‘What is pah?’ No great interest; just making a sympathetic sound.
‘An advertisement for washing powder. In a headline, sub-heading, and five lines of text, the word “Fresh” is repeated six times. S-I-X.’
‘Ach. Every time they want to sell something to a housewife they tell her how fresh it will make her grey existence.’
‘But six times …’
‘It’s a witch word. Everything approved of in Holland is fresh, whether it’s the kitchen floor or a pretty girl.’
Snort from Arlette.
‘I only buy things from now on that are unfresh.’
‘Ha. I read a film review the other day; the sort of film – you know, takes the lid off the call-girl industry. Described by the reviewer as “decidedly unfresh” – you could see him holding his nose.’
‘I wish to go and see it immediately.’
‘I wonder what he’d call my daily life.’
‘Not as fresh as we would like.’
I got an idea, with a mild galvanic effect that aimed my feet towards the bookshelf. A book I have annotated. The annotations are probably silly, but I think about Louis XVIII, writing little notes in the margin of his Horace while Napoleon was on his way from Elba. Van der Valk being civilized while Amsterdam wallows in unfresh crime. Poor fellow; he’s tired.
‘You don’t understand Holland. Listen – this is Stendhal, talking about the America of eighteen twenty. Meaning puritan New England, a hundred years after the Salem witch-trials. Where am I? – yes – “The physical gaiety of Americans disappears as they reach twenty. A habit of reason, of caution, of prudence, makes love impossible.” What does that remind you of? – he cites, by the way, a mental climate hostile to art or literature.’
‘It does sound like Holland.’
‘Or this – describing a love affair in Protestant North Germany. “The sun is pale in Halberstadt, the government very particular and these two personages pretty cold. In the most passionate tête-à-tête, Kant and Klopstock are always present.” ’
‘Giggle as you like – I don’t think it funny.’
‘Be glad you live in Amsterdam. Think of living in a provincial town in Drente, and discovering that murder was a crime, right enough, but falling asleep during the sermon a lot worse.’
‘Is that the worst crime?’
‘I think that making love to your own wife in the living-room in the middle of the afternoon will count as the most serious.’
2
I was in the office on the Marnixstraat next morning, unravelling a long wearisome report about a bank fraud. Holland is a strange country. Every single thing is fragmented, organized, and subject to a thick book of rules, and here was the treasurer of a large concern happily speculating with thousands that weren’t his – undetected or even suspected for years. He looked, you see, so utterly respectable, and the rules were such gobbledygook that nobody could understand them anyway without three diplomas for treasuring. Phone buzzed. My superior, Commissaris Tak of Central Recherche. An old maid if ever I saw one.
‘Van der Valk? The Procureur-Général wants to see you. Right away.’
‘Oh lord, what have I done wrong now?’
‘Nothing, as far as I know.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘I haven’t been told. You’d better get over to the Prinsen-gracht and find out, hadn’t you.’
I put my jacket on. Central heating was too hot today. Real February; westerly, windy, rainy. Not cold, but here that does not mean that winter is now over. It’ll probably be snowing tomorrow.
‘Nice and fresh,’ my colleague said coming in this morning. We share a room – there is space for the two of us, our papers, and maybe one beer bottle, carefully concealed behind a report on the number of auto thefts there were in nineteen thirty-eight.
It is five minutes’ walk to the Palace of Justice, and I spent them wondering what I would get the telling-off for. The Procureur-Général is a most important personage. He is supposed to be busy presenting appeal cases to the Court of Cassation or whatnot, or codifying public morals, but he has a trick of finding time to censure imprudences of unimportant functionaries – and that has meant me, more than once.
There is a barrier of pale legal advisers to penetrate before one reaches the sanctuary where the big Bourns contemplate pale legal paper in utter silence. Here the telephone lines are all guarded, and probably the lowest typist is under some awful oath – Safety of the Realm Act 1823.
At least in the other half of this big building it is more human. There sits the ‘Parquet’ – the prosecutors, the Officers of Justice and the Children’s Court – and policemen sit on benches with criminals in an atmosphere of almost-cordiality. Over here, the milk-of-human-kindness has been in the autoclave. Well and truly sterile.
I reached a secretary; elderly soul with prim blue hair and no lips.
‘Inspector van der Valk, on the instructions of Commissaris Tak.’
An approving nod for that. She picked up the intercom phone and spoke in hushed tones. The Vatican voice. Cardinal commanding the Holy Office here.
‘Will you please go straight in?’
Master Anthoni Sailer, learned in the law, is a tall dry man, a bit creaky. Body, nose, lip: all long and perfectly straight. The straight hair combed across a high white forehead to hide a balding patch is still dark. His look is direct – yes, straight. And his handwriting is upright and always legible, in black ink with a fine pen. But he is capable of understanding. Even, as I once learned during an otherwise unpleasant interview, capable of humour. Acid: arid – but humour.
‘Ah – Van der Valk. Sit down, then.’ He took a horizon-blue folder from the side of his desk, opened it, arranged it perfectly parallel to the edge of his blotter, and studied the opening paragraph of the co
ntents. Short pause, legal but pregnant, giving me time to wonder what it was pregnant with.
‘I have been posed an unusual problem, and after thought I have reached an unusual conclusion. Incidentally, have you ever been in Drente?’
‘No, sir.’
‘I am thinking of sending you there.’
Big fright. I had a sudden vision of Louis XV saying in his icy voice, ‘Monsieur Maurepas, you will retire immediately to your estate in the country.’ Damn it, I’ll resign first.
‘It would amount to a temporary detachment, upon a temporary duty. An unusual duty, and delicate. Demanding tact as well as ability. Naturally you may refuse if you wish; it is not an order. But first you must study this folder.’
Leisurely, Master Sailer drew a little tube of throat pastilles from his breast pocket and popped one with dignity behind his wisdom tooth. There was a minute twitch, but not by a millimetre did it bulge the straight-shaved cheek.
‘I have upon occasion,’ slowly, ‘criticized your handling of circumstances. And I have had occasion to praise your – penetration. Since this affair calls for just that quality, I am asking you to use it – but with more discretion than you have been known to show.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Among the officers of police within my jurisdiction, I thought of you.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘You would have, consequently, the complete confidence and support of the relevant authorities. Possessing that confidence, this support, you are capable of justifying my choice. As I estimate.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Good. Drente, you are doubtless thinking, is not within my jurisdiction. This problem is now over six months old. It has – baffled is not too strong – the local municipal police of a small town called Zwinderen, and an inspector from Assen, and became subsequently the subject of inquiry by the State Recherche officers, who have produced a file of exhaustive investigation with little positive result. The file finally reached my colleague in Leeuwarden, who has sent it to me for study and possible comment. His conclusion was that a man from the city – with, that is to say, no local connexions or even knowledge – may overcome the apparent obstacles. I am prepared, conditional to your acceptance, to advise him that you may be the man for his task.’
What answer could one make to that?
‘I will now give you the relevant parts of this dossier for study.’
‘Can I take them home?’
‘Files here don’t get taken home. They get studied here; they don’t leave this building. There is a small room where you will be undisturbed. Take the whole morning if you wish. I shall inform Mr Tak that I am holding you at my disposal. Come back when you have decided. You will have to consider whether you believe yourself competent to succeed where these other gentlemen’ – with a sudden gleam – ‘got stuck in the bog.’
All I know about Drente is that it is up in the north-east corner of Holland, between Groningen and the German border. A poor province; the ground is not much good for agriculture. Wet, peaty sort of moorland. What in Ireland is called ‘the bog’. Oh!
It had taken me nearly five minutes to see that Sailer had made a joke.
Rather flabbergasted, I was led to a small menacing room, and the photostat girl brought me a cup of legal coffee. After reading the first twenty pages of general introductory remarks I gave a sort of moan. Why hadn’t Arlette kept her mouth shut?
Twenty pages further I was thinking that this affair was a bit unfresh too. And that, doubtless, is why everybody seems to have thought of Van der Valk.
3
‘Well?’
‘Well, sir – I mean yes, sir. I accept, of course. May I state a few brief conclusions? Better say a few steps that I think it would be necessary to take?’
‘Certainly.’
‘There’s been a lot of policemen. One more, and he won’t get anywhere at all – more likely to get his eye blackened. I believe, sir, that if I go at all it should not be as a policeman. Am I allowed to make a suggestion?’
‘Yes.’
‘A state functionary, with some foolproof cover to explain the nosing about and questioning. A – a – I don’t know – inspector of tax dividends or something. I think that nobody should know who or what I am.’
Thought. Dought. Sorry doubt. Reconsideration. Conclusion.
‘The point is well taken. The burgomaster will have to know. You will be responsible to him – but to him alone – and can make a direct verbal report. But this – cover. I think I can agree and I think I could arrange it.’ Weird but indubitable legal smile. ‘How would you like to be an official – a responsible official – of the Ministry of the Interior? That is not, technically, an untruth. Shall we say that such an official might be sent from The Hague to draw up a detailed report on aspects of a provincial town. Perhaps with a view to the further industrial expansion in a district of underdevelopment? Mm, your powers of inquiry should be very broad and extremely vague. I am casting about for a suitable vague, impressive, minatory phrase … Suppose we were to say that you were conducting Ethnographic Research? That means nothing and will cover everything.’
Really, he has understood. I have to be able to blind the tiny local bigwigs with bullshit.
‘I dislike conspiracies, but this is an unorthodox situation. It is justifiable to meet it in an unorthodox way,’ meditating. ‘I have no doubt but that you can be provided with a lodging, transport, an identity, as well as various necessary papers.’ Very cool indeed.
He reached for the private-line telephone.
‘Will you please get me the Minister of the Interior at The Hague? … There is a further point’ – while his call was winging towards another discreet burr in another padded, panelled office – ‘I should like you to be accompanied by your wife. You may be there some time, and if you are to be the complete, convincing, colourless if intelligent state functionary, you need a wife to do the housekeeping.’
‘My wife is French, sir.’
‘Better a French wife than none at all,’ remarked Mr Sailer charmingly. ‘Ah – Good morning, Excellency …’
4
A week later I had a black Volkswagen and a new identity, supported by most impressive and not-quite-totally incomprehensible papers. I was making a preliminary survey of Zwinderen, a small market town rapidly growing past the fifteen thousand persons mark, in the extreme north-eastern corner of the province of Drente, a scant twenty kilometres from the German border. As an official introduction to this new sphere, I had an appointment with the burgomaster.
A modern town hall, very large for a place this size. Very ugly for anywhere. Lot of money and all wasted. The steps were very grand, where the couples stand to be photographed after being married, the farmers’ sons vastly uneasy in hired top hats. You don’t even get married by the mayor with his sash on, in Holland. It’s done by a character whose title is ‘Functionary of the Civil Status’ – there’s nothing more Dutch than that. The steps of the town hall have to be pretty grand to make up for it. But Holland can be nice. There are tiny dorps in Friesland that were places of importance in the sixteenth century, with perhaps five thousand souls now, but possessing magnificent Renaissance and baroque town halls, their façades towering and curling above sleepy tiny squares, and steps … like Napoleon taking leave of the Old Guard at Fontainebleau.
Inside, black-and-white rubber marble. Aseptic corridors, with glass sliding windows to protect the functionary from the contagious, coughing public. Various depressed members of the said public, waiting to be noticed and kindly to be allowed to register a child’s birth – but only if the name is approved of by the Handbook for Functionaries of the Civil Status. And finally a light, airy, freshly-painted office.
The burgomaster got up from his desk when a neat and competent-seeming female showed me in. He had a firm, resilient face; quite the portrait of a burgomaster. He could hang later in some pompous frame, looking down benignly on the couples getting mar
ried. Not quite on the same wall as the swimmy-sentimental portraits of royalty, but well up there in the league – presented by a grateful municipality after he retired, handsome and silver-haired. But he did not look a nonentity. I had already decided anyway that he would not be a dud – this was the man in charge of a town scheduled for expansion into a thriving industrial community. In twenty years there would be sixty thousand people here; it was already well on the way and it was his work.
‘Good morning, burgomaster.’
‘Good morning; pleased to make your acquaintance.’ He turned to the secretary, waiting with an alert, impersonal face. ‘Accessible to no one; I am in conference.’
‘Very good, burgomaster.’ The door shut crisply.
‘I have an hour. Sit down, Mr van der Valk; let us get to know each other – and see what we can do for each other.’
An hour later I had a lot. Access to everything; neat dockets of disturbing information in close detail; assurance of every co-operation; a hearty handshake, and a request for a verbal report twice a week at least – at his home; that would be more discreet. No need to let the municipal officials into our little secret. I was an embarrassment; he would prefer to see as little as possible of me officially. I could see how he disliked this hole-and-corner game – but he had been convinced of its necessity.
I got passed to the secretary, who was helpful. I had been wondering where on earth I was going to be lodged, and what the point of the wife was. Now I found that the wheels had turned, and the hand of the Procureur-Général had reached as far as this tiny tentacle of central government.
‘I have been instructed, Mr van der Valk’ – bright, very efficient and both conscious and proud of it – ‘that you will be staying here a few weeks. You’ll be glad to hear that I’ve a furnished house for you – oh, only a little one, but at least you’ll be independent of hotels. You see, we do quite often have to house officials: inspectors, headmasters; people whose own houses and belongings aren’t yet ready. Or of course people who are here temporarily, as in your case; we’ve had functionaries from The Hague before, doing these administrative surveys. I’m afraid the furniture is rather a scratch lot, but it’s adequate. The house does tend to look as though it had no owner – well, of course, it hasn’t. I do hope your wife will be comfortable – but if there’s any little thing you or she need, you’ve only to ask me. Any help – I’m delighted if I can be of service.’
Double-Barrel Page 1