‘Have a look in my pocket,’ I said reasonably, and got at once a sinking feeling – I had changed, and hadn’t emptied my pockets. ‘No; I’ve just realized I haven’t my identity papers on me.’
‘Haw.’
‘I’m serious.’ It was less funny; I had to make an effort. Really, it took Van der Valk.
‘You can send the van round and ask my wife to give you the papers.’
‘Why bother? You’re staying here; you’re for the cell.’
‘Look, if I’m kidding you you’ll hit me on the head with a pistol, and it does me no good. I know perfectly well you’ll keep me here. But when you don’t check my identity, and I’m not kidding, you’ll be in trouble.’
‘Police where?’ – sceptical. ‘Fairyland?’
‘Central Recherche Amsterdam.’
‘Haw. What happened then? Go for a walk in the dark and lose your way, or what?’
Anything I said would have added to the comedy, so I kept my mouth shut and gave him my big frank open grin. He looked me up and down very carefully then. I could see that he wasn’t only studying me, but listening attentively to the sound of my voice. Then he reached for the mobilphone transmitter key and buzzed it.
‘Jan? Whereabouts are you? … Well, tour over to the Mimosastraat. Number twenty-five. If there’s a woman there you tell her that her husband’s held here, and to give you his identity papers – and they’d better be convincing. Right? … Yes, straight away.’
There was a wait of a quarter of an hour. The brigadier doodled on the back of his form. My angel breathed heavily through his nose. Nobody stopped me smoking. We didn’t have any light chat to make to one another.
I could hear the noisy motor of the minibus, a squeal of brakes, followed by exaggerated door-slamming. Arlette, possibly, had been sarcastic and they were taking it out on the auto.
There she was in person, looking determined, marching in advance of a faintly ruffled bodyguard.
‘What d’you bring her for, Jan?’
‘She brought us.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m sure all the neighbours are delighted?’ I asked, catching the pocket-book she tossed me.
‘Hanging out of the windows, buzzing like a beehive.’
‘Bitte sehr,’ I said, presenting the desk man with my police identity card and my extra-duty authorization, signed by the Procureur-Général. He read all this, chagrin tinged with awe.
‘Sorry.’
‘Not your fault. I changed, forgot my pocket-book, and you saw me in peculiar circumstances.’ I gave the company commander’s look of stern authority, taking in, in the semicircle, four open-mouthed policemen.
‘Look – sir – I’ll have to ring up the inspector and tell him.’
‘Yes. He’ll have to know straight away. And I’ll have a bit of business for him myself, I rather think.’
With no great enthusiasm, the desk man reached for his telephone.
‘Case is finished,’ I said to Arlette. ‘I’ll stay here, now I am here, because there’ll be a lot of paperwork. I’ll have to explain straight away to the inspector here, now, what’s been going on. Got a bit out of hand. Do you mind – going’ back to the Mimosastraat, I mean?’
‘Not a bit. I can start packing. I’ll be delighted. And whatever the neighbours are thinking, it no longer bothers me.’
‘Pity we haven’t had a bit more of that spirit.’ I fixed the car patrol, which was still a bit open-mouthed, with the glittering eye. ‘These kind gentlemen will give you a lift.’
2
The inspector of police in Zwinderen was not pleased at being rung up and dragged away in the middle of the Play, which was exciting, with gangsters. Still less was he pleased with my invasion of his territory. Least of all with having been kept in the dark.
‘I’m sorry about it too. Realize, though, that I’m under orders. Wasn’t my idea, and I’ve never liked it either. Seems the Procureur-Général himself decided that nobody was to know except the burgomaster. Total security, because of the leak over there, see?’
‘Miss Burger … good grief! I see her pretty nearly every day.’
‘That’s one reason at least, and not the worst either, why nobody ever suspected her. When you were on this affair initially, she must have known everything you said, thought or did. Huh? Hardly surprising that you never found out. Who would, under those conditions?’
He nodded heavily. ‘Assen hammed it up too.’
‘Not to speak of the State Recherche.’
‘They went on at me as though there were a hole you could drive a bus through in my organization.’
I knew that he had asked for a transfer, because a State Recherche investigation looked too much of a reflection on him. The burgomaster had talked him out of it – it was in the confidential file. I felt a good deal of sympathy with him.
‘Ach,’ I said, ‘it can soon be finished with now. It’s only ten-thirty – you could pick her up straight away. Pretty certain to find all the evidence we’ll need in her flat.’
‘And suppose there’s nothing?’
‘She’ll tell. You see, I saw her; that will burn her. She won’t love me – here under false pretences.’ For Arlette’s sake, I would keep quiet about the letter I had in my pocket. The other woman too might, possibly, be grateful to have that forgotten.
‘You don’t think a summons – no, I can see; has to be an arrest, and the sooner the better.’ He got up and put his head out of the door.
‘Haas!’
‘Sir.’ An oldish three-striper; solid, impressive, with a lot of jaw. He looked very quiet, good man for a disagreeable job.
‘Haas, I want a woman arrested now, tonight, without noise, with tact and patience; I want the warrant executed by you.’
‘Sir.’
‘You’ll take the little auto. Don’t lose sight of her; she may do something unbalanced.’
‘And if she has to dress, sir?’
‘Damn it, Haas, I don’t have to teach you police procedure at your time of life, do I?’
‘Sir.’
I was amused; it was one of the classic problems posed for the police cadets by the instructor on ‘Relations with the public’.
‘You are instructed to arrest a woman suspected of being a jewel thief in her hotel room, at night. You have been warned to avoid disturbance. When asked to accompany you to the bureau, the woman refuses to dress. She threatens’ – with immense relish – ‘to scream, tear her nightdress, complain that you have made indecent proposals to her, bruise her face and claim that you used violence. What steps will you take?’
‘But why?’ the inspector said suddenly to the closed door. ‘Of all people …’
‘I suppose we might find something in her past. Childhood, upbringing, early experiences. Not police work, thank heaven.’
‘I have heard, I think, that she was an orphan.’
‘If she was brought up in a state orphanage that might account for a few things.’
‘Psychology,’ with deep distaste.
‘It’ll all take months, no doubt. Compulsion towards public service, resentment of governmental rigidity. Meticulous, perfectionist – neurosis. Wound up with sex and strong religious feelings. Shame and horror at lesbian inclinations, which she tries to work off in social work; only makes it worse – hell, I’m only guessing.’ The inspector was a local man; I wasn’t going to brush his hair the wrong way by going into my notions of the calvinist wish for isolation, independence, putting the clock back, nor my feeling that to wrestle against sin with a calvinist conscience was not the best method to cure an emotional instability.
‘Burgomaster’ll be upset – he thinks the world of her.’
‘But only as a public servant. I guess she got sick of being a cog in the machine, and wanted someone who would think the world of her as a person. What does it matter?’
‘Not to us, anyway, now we’ve got the criminal.’
‘We’ve got another victim,’ I
corrected mildly.
3
Miss Burger did not make a scene with chief agent of police Haas, a man she had known all her life. But when she saw me she went into hysterical tears and used four-letter words. They hadn’t found the listening gadget – she denied ever having heard of it and it remained a mystery – but they found the Bardot robe which I had seen her in, walking about playing her pathetic part. And they found an envelope with cut-up newsprint.
Everybody came to ask how I had thought of her. I had prepared my answer. She had had access to all kinds of information, I said smoothly and had developed a passion for having a finger in everything. In her spare-time activities she had met and talked with all the women who had received letters. What had made her write imaginary abuse of their husbands was none of my affair. The Protestant minister, I thought, had what had seemed to her dangerously modernist leanings. I glossed over a good deal, and did not mention the burgomaster’s wife. I said I had never believed much in the creeping around at night – tried it myself, I said jocularly, and got promptly pinched by the very efficient municipal police – this greatly soothed the still-ruffled inspector. I did not say that both my wife and I had found out in a disagreeable way that she did creep about at night.
The burgomaster, rung up, was very concerned, if relieved. If, I reflected, he knew about his wife he would be more of both. Maybe she would tell him when it all leaked out.
Will would be happy that no one had said nasty things about his sister-in-law.
The director of the milk factory, freed from the accusation of being free with his great healthy shiny farm girls, would be happy.
The minister would be reinstated; they might manage to cure his wife.
And Mr Besançon would doubtless be happy, when he heard that there was no longer any need for people to walk about suspecting him of heaven knew what.
It could not have been pleasant for him, the owlish suspicions of relays of policemen, all wondering why he was a queer chap.
Of course, someone who shuns society, and is not enthusiastic about his fellow citizens of the twentieth century is asking for a bad name in Holland. Land of community activities, of jolly clubby get-togethers on the slightest pretext. Our Treasurer is this week twelve-and-a-half years married; our Secretary has for fifteen uninterrupted, productive, endless years been the very cornerstone of Municipal Sanitation.
Even I had suspected Besançon, and I still didn’t know what of.
I got home at about three in the morning, my paperwork done. There would be, of course, a detailed report for Mr Sailer in Amsterdam, but that could wait till I was home. Arlette, I was glad to see, had already done the packing. Not that there was all that much. About what one would have for a holiday; a couple of weeks in beautiful unspoilt Drente.
I would have to make a courtesy call on the burgomaster, in the morning.
Who would do all the little jobs like finding accommodation for officials, now that Miss Burger was due for a rest in a clinic? Dear, dear; the municipal administration would be in an uproar, with its invaluable can-do department vanished.
4
‘If you have a courtesy call to make,’ said Arlette – she had not lit the stove and we were standing perished, clutching inadequate coffee-cups to our bosoms – ‘it’ll just leave me time to get the house tidy as we found it. Your Miss Burger may be round the bend – I have to admit I feel awfully sorry for the woman – but she was good at her job.’
‘Too good. She must have been under tremendous tension. That need to do everything, know everything, the perfectionist urge, being meticulous in the tiniest details, is a classic pointer, or was when I went to school.’
‘You mean that you’re glad I’m sloppy and forget things?’ said Arlette, rather meanly.
I suspected that the burgomaster had after all learned something from his wife, remembered my questions, and drawn conclusions. He was full of warm compliments, nearly fulsome. Perhaps he was just extremely delighted to see my back. He promised that his own report would go off that very day to the Minister of the Interior, who would doubtless pass it on to Mr Sailer.
‘I’ve stolen our Secretary’s girl,’ with a ghost of a smile. ‘But I’m afraid she’ll never be a patch on Miss Burger. Her mind’s too much on her boy-friend.’
‘Yes,’ I said grinning, unable to resist it, ‘I’m all for abnormality myself.’
I walked off and left the bureaucrats hard at it, making a tiny market town in Drente into an industrial town with model garden suburbs, a place of beauty and joy to live in.
Arlette had the cases in the auto. The neighbours were taking a great interest in her movements, and Mrs Tattle at the back had bustled across with her inimitable blend of helpful nosiness. I had no doubt that the theory was that I had been sacked for misdemeanour, after being arrested by the police in disgraceful circumstances most unbefitting to a functionary of some obscure Ministry. I tried to see myself as a devoted servant of Ag and Fish, and remembered a delightful Frenchman I had once known, whose family had been in Ponts et Chaussées for five generations, and who was now a painter in Santiago, Chile.
‘One last call I still want to make,’ I said, crowding in behind the wheel. I am tall, and fairly broad, and was wearing a winter overcoat; in a little Volkswagen one always has that minute of thinking the zipper won’t close. ‘I think I should drop in on Besançon. Tell him the affair is officially closed. He stands in a peculiar position – he was number one suspect for months and I never have understood why. I’ve suspected him myself. And it’s not just because he’s odd, or a Jew. There’s something sinister about the man. Perhaps you’ll see it.’
‘I’ll be interested to see him, anyway, after hearing him spoken about so much.’
‘Quite apart from business, I like him. I’ve found myself getting friendly with the old boy,’ turning the auto into the Koninginneweg.
‘This is my wife.’
‘Honoured, Madame,’ Besançon had his neutral, indifferent voice, but he made a formal Germanic bow and kissed her hand with politeness.
‘No, thanks, we won’t sit down – this is just dropping in to say good-bye.’
‘Really? Your affair is untangled then?’
‘It is. You won’t be pestered by any more policemen, I should imagine. Certainly not by me; in Amsterdam they’ll all say I’ve wasted enough time and I’d better get back to work smartly.’
The strange look crossed his face for an instant, the look that I had seen the first time I met him, and told him I didn’t really think he had been writing potty letters. I had thought then that it might be relief. I still thought so. I didn’t know, though.
‘Another eccentric elderly man like myself?’
‘No, no – an over-conscientious constipated female civil servant with a calvinist conscience.’
He smiled faintly. ‘I seem to recall that we touched on the point in conversation. Didn’t I tell you that the born civil servant is a dangerous person?’
‘You did. And I think the remark helped me more than I care to admit. I haven’t exactly been a shining example of deductive or even intuitive intellectual brilliance around here.’
‘You must allow me to offer you both a drink.’
‘Thanks but we’ve a long drive ahead. I do want to say that it has been a pleasure talking to you – I can’t in honesty say knowing you because I don’t. It was one of the few things that gave me pleasure while I was here, and I’m very grateful.’
‘You are more than kind,’ formally. He looked at Arlette, who was wearing her llama jacket and looking pretty. ‘I have been pleased to meet you, Madame, and regret only that it should be brief. But I am old enough not to expect pleasures.’
‘That’s even nicer for me than for you, because I certainly don’t expect to give them.’ Her accent was strong this morning.
He gave her his tired, faint smile, but something had moved him; the lines on the still, hard face altered for a second.
‘You rem
ind me of my wife, strongly.’ It was only an instant; he recovered himself at once.
‘I quite agree; remarkable man,’ Arlette said a kilometre further.
‘Very. I can’t reach bottom at all with him. All sorts of depths. Even his books tell me little enough.’ Arlette knows that I have a passion for the book test; I have sometimes boasted, unwisely, that I can make a character assessment from a library.
‘He professes no interest in religion, but he has a Bible on his desk. He dislikes live Jews, but likes dead ones. What were the others he had there? – yes, a biography of Cromwell and the plays of Corneille. An interest in conscience? – the conflict between emotion and duty – the classical dilemma? I’ve no idea.’
Arlette was not interested in Corneille.
‘Who is Cromwell? – the name is vaguely familiar.’
‘A seventeenth-century English De Gaulle,’ I said rather frivolously. ‘Very interesting – the Puritan conscience at its finest. The Sword of the Lord. Submitted himself completely to God, did what God told him, and once he was satisfied he knew what God wanted – utterly immovable. Good cavalry general, and a very good politician. But rather an odd study, one might think, for a Jewish atheist watchmaker with a nervous degeneration disease after five years in the Third Reich.’
‘Can’t be atheist, I should think.’
‘Perhaps he’s become calvinist,’ I said, still frivolously.
‘Watch your cigarette.’
‘Sorry. I have to keep both eyes on the road; it’s slippery … And no books about Jews or Jewry at all, unless you count Jew Suss which is only a novel, if a good one.’
‘Not about Jews anyway.’
‘Come. Wonderful Rabbis, fearful eighteenth-century money-lenders.’
‘I only meant the man isn’t really a Jew at all, hm? Pretends to be a Jew.’
‘Not pretends … decides to be a Jew.’ I lapsed into silence; the road was very glidy in patches.
5
With a huge sigh of pleasure Arlette opened her own front door.
‘Only dust. Once the stove’s lit and a drink poured out, we’re home.’
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