A Long Silence (10 page)

‘What happened to her?'

‘She got taken off by that man with the loud laugh, the waterski type. He's a cretin, that man – they make a well-matched pair. Now if I hadn't stopped you you'd have been running after her. That might I suppose have been more fun.'

‘But isn't she…?'

‘Not at all, does that because she thinks it's more fashionable and makes her appear more interesting: give me some more coffee, would you?'

‘Daisy …' hesitantly; was it a taboo subject?

‘Daisy, yes, not easy, she likes her geese green and that's what you are, if you'll forgive my saying so, Dicky. But it will be very valuable for you. She'll tease you, persecute you, cut you off and on again, wait for you to lose your temper, make scenes – she enjoys that. That other calf is too stupid to be vicious but Daisy is for real and that's what I want. Come through that for a week or two, and I'll give you a present. To help you – look at her as though she were a work of art. Her movements, her laugh, the way she eats – watcn her when she's dressing, or putting on make-up, and you'll see her studying her art. You got that stuff cleaned up?'

‘Lot of dusty old tat,' distastefully.

‘I don't mind you saying that,' said Saint in his dryest voice, ‘as long as you don't start to think you know what you're talking about.'

‘Sorry.'

‘Yes. Let's get it straight. You've heard me make remarks about this place being a good old moo-cow, and you add that to other scraps of conversation you overhear, and you conclude that I'm milking this business for purposes of my own. That's one thing. Then I tell you an elementary fact or two about markets, and you realize that I'm interested in the young, and after adding that to the obvious fact that the young do not spend money in antique jewellers you think you can behave in a contemptuous fashion. An exceptionally stupid attitude. Talking of youth, there's mayonnaise all over the window again – get that cleaned up, Dick boy, and make sure while you're at it no dogs have been looking for lamp-posts.'

It was a continual grievance. The clientele of the snackbar strolled along the street refreshing themselves with things in paper bags. They stopped to look at shop windows, and covered the glass in greasy finger-marks. Richard, realizing this to be a rap on the knuckles, went obediently to get the little bucket and sponge. Larry and his goddam discipline. He hoped Daisy didn't take that moment to come strolling along the pavement. That would be humiliating.

Mr Saint was also thinking of Daisy – along other lines – when the stupid boy came hurtling in as though a bull was chasing him and rushed through into the back of the shop.

‘Forgot the shammy-leather,' he muttered confusedly. Mr Saint was considering this uncontrolled behaviour with raised eyebrows when the door swung open afresh and Van der Valk walked in with a pleasant imbecile smile tacked all over his face.

‘Good morning, sir,' said Saint with his invariable politeness.

‘Good morning, good morning. A lamentable occurrence – I've broken my watch. Irreparably I fear.'

‘We'll see what we can do. Perhaps you'd like to sit down.' Van der Valk had decided that his ‘personal investigation' was
dragging a little, and having come from another of his boring meetings in the Overtoom had thought of improving the hour. Leaning upon Mr Saint a tiny bit was obviously the next stage.

‘It was very sad,' he burbled. ‘I dropped it in the tramline of all things, right there in the Koningsplein; I never would have thought it possible, would you?'

‘A very unhappy accident,' agreed Saint gravely. ‘There is of course nothing we can do here. A new watch is the one solution to your problem, I'm afraid.'

‘I fear so, I fear so,' shouted Van der Valk. ‘Something quite simple – er – classic.'

He was amused. He had been studying a window full of shirts – blimey, King Charles the First got up to dance the Lilac Fairy – when he had seen his idiot boy come trotting out with his bucket to clean the window. He stood grinning a dozen yards along the pavement, wondered what the reaction would be, and was delighted when the boy caught his eye suddenly while gawking about, stared in open-mouthed consternation, and bolted.

Saint came sliding over with a velvet-lined tray of expensive stuff in restrained good taste, hitched another of the little Empire chairs across and sat down, the specialist at the patient's bedside. Van der Valk put his elbow on the little circular table and prepared to have his blood tested. An interesting face, that, a foot from his own. Character there, and determination. Very highly polished. A ‘bad man'? He had no idea. He had been many years a policeman, but had met few bad men. Plenty of silly men, and a great many stupid ones. This was neither. A man, quite certainly, in whom one could grow interested.

‘The quartz crystal vibrator …' Saint was saying.

‘No, no tuning forks. They sing at one all the time,' explained Van der Valk inadequately.

‘Then a classic movement. Now this Jaeger le Coultre …' The boy was still fumbling about pretending to be busy in the back. What was more, Saint had noticed. He glanced at the door and the fine silky eyebrows drew together a little: a slight sidelong glance without turning the head; a flicker of the well—
cut nostrils – no, he would say nothing in the presence of a customer.

‘Perregaux … there are very few made, you understand, only a hundred or so a year. These are all really exclusive models.'

‘They're perhaps a little rich for my blood,' with a loud self-conscious laugh.

‘I do rather like this one,' he went on happily – it was a Patek Philippe, not so very dissimilar from the one the boy had had. Would there be any reaction to this extremely light touch, or should one lean a little harder? ‘I mean it's most distinctive. Not the kind of thing one sees every day.'

‘Quite so.' No, no flicker. Could he really not have known about that watch? Bosboom had pooh-poohed that as absurd. ‘Should I perhaps look up the prices for you?'

‘I'm afraid they'll be alarming.'

‘Yes, well, they run at around a thousand, you know. Of course that is solid gold – a real investment.'

‘Not plated?'

‘We sell no plate,' with a delightfully simple hauteur.

‘Oh dear. I'm quite perplexed. I do rather fancy this one.'

Van der Valk had a good stare round, with the vacant gaze of someone wondering whether he can afford it: tempted but frightened.

‘Just so. You might of course wish to think it over.' Mr Saint was evidently well accustomed to people who went off to ‘think it over' and were no more seen … That boy was still lurking in the shadows: locked in the lavatory as likely as not. He wouldn't come out now, that was certain.

‘I hardly feel able, alas …'

‘But my dear sir, there is no obligation.'

‘But putting you to this trouble,' said Van der Valk most earnestly. Saint smiled.

‘There is no trouble.'

The smile told him much. It was the smile of a man who makes a habit of contempt, and practises it frequently. Of a man who is clever, but his cleverness will never amount to
much because of his vanity. When their vanity is as great as that, decided Van der Valk, they will bear watching.

‘I think perhaps an Omega or a Longines …'

‘We don't have them I'm afraid. But of course you will have no difficulty – you see we are jewellers really, not strictly speaking watchmakers except as objects of decorative art.'

‘Something a bit more practical I feel…'

‘But I understand perfectly. Good morning, sir: thank you for your visit.'

Saint stood a moment thinking.

‘Dicky … You're not still looking for that shammy leather, are you?'

‘Sorry – er – I had to go to the lavatory.'

‘How sudden,' said Saint dryly.

*

‘Louis – you recall you told me of a visit by some bumbledom policeman the other day – can you tell me at all what he looked like?'

‘Looked like? I don't know. Sort of between two ages. Biggish. Glasses – sort of hair which isn't fair and isn't really grey. Hell, I didn't look; I wasn't buying him.'

‘Did he have a walking stick?'

‘Now I come to think, believe he did.'

‘Walk a bit funny, a little stiff?'

‘Didn't see him walk, not to notice.'

‘Talk a lot – voluble, persuasive?'

‘God, yes. Been on at you, has he?'

‘I rather think so.'

‘Not going on about that French picture, I hope.'

‘No. In fact I wonder whether he's really interested in art at all.'

‘What, then?'

‘Snowing me with a ridiculous tale about a watch. Don't bother, Louis – perhaps if you run across him again you might mention it.'

*

‘In pictures,' Van der Valk wrote laboriously, spelling it all out, ‘there is plenty of opportunity. There are large sums – now what is he doing with large sums? There's no proof or even evidence of any large illegal deal, but it doesn't matter. The fact is that things and people are being manipulated – now why? Louis is obvious – he needs his technical expertise. But the boy – what can he need the boy for? Not for personal reasons, said B. – and he's pretty shrewd, he'd know. But – “a bad man …' It didn't add up to anything, except that by the trick with the watch – and some trick there was – he had a hold over the boy. And Bosboom had said as good as straight out that he had a hold over Louis. And people who liked to acquire holds over others were never altogether to be lost from sight.'

Well, what could he do? He shrugged a bit at the silliness of it – the private detective lark. He was still a working policeman – why not make an official memo, turn it over to the criminal bureau in Amsterdam, people whom he knew, after all, and ask them to spend a little time there, preferably working from the hypothesis of a tax fiddle on works of art? No, he wouldn't do that, because it wouldn't get anywhere. No complaint had been made, no evidence existed, there were no grounds whatever for any perquisitions or examinations – they simply would not act and Amsterdam would not fail to point that out to him. What could they do, in any case, but warn Saint that they were interested in him, and then he would cover up anything not already well covered, and quietly go to ground.

Anyway this would dash his ‘private detective' experiment. Did that make any difference? Was the experiment any use at all beyond a foolish whim? Hadn't he already proved that one couldn't do anything as a private detective, except hang around and bother people, and even then only when someone was handing out large sums of money as a ‘retainer'? Nobody had handed him any retainer. But that, he told himself, was the point. Nobody was his principal, nobody had any say in his doings, he owed nobody secrecy, loyalty or silence – except the state. Hadn't that been the basis of his ‘experiment' – the notion of a private detective who has no client to protect, no
axe to grind, no vendettas to indulge or honesty to be compromised except his ordinary state oath, getting rid of all those fictitious private eyes with private codes of ethics?

Anyway, he had done all that a private man could do. Lean on Prins a bit, lean on Saint a bit – unless Saint was a very stupid man he would surely have realized that an eye had rested on him, and that it might be a police eye, not anyone inviting him to come to the station and assist in enquiries but a very gentle, very discreet touch intended to provoke him into getting rattled and doing something silly.

Would Saint now react? Probably not. He would lie low to see whether the cat would come out of the tree – a good Dutch phrase, that. So for Van der Valk there was nothing to do yet awhile. Just think about it from time to time, and notice whether any other fact came to his notice, huh. And that is a very sensible conclusion, he told himself, as the train slowed to stop at The Hague. He had a briefcase full of work, and he didn't know when he would again have the time to think of Mr Saint, let alone do anything about him.

*

That very evening, oddly enough. He was finishing his book about King Charles the First, and got to the sad bit about how the Scotch finally rounded up and chopped Montrose – as well they might, seeing as how he had put the fear of the very devil into them for a longish while. What a relief to see that fellow's head on a pike! And what a typical thing, to see this immensely gifted and noble partisan leader – moreover, an exceptionally skilful guerrilla general – sold to the government by a fellow he had trusted. It was nice to know that the said fellow, a petty local squire in the backwoods called Macleod, had acquired undesired immortality as the prototype of a dirty bastard: the Scotch were quite unconcerned about treachery, which was their historical bread-and-butter, so to speak (Charles I himself an absolute past-master at double-dealing) but they did draw the line at treachery for money: one didn't altogether blame them. They had written a poem about this fellow – probably, he thought, originally a popular song for the boys to sing in the
street, full of down-to-earth insults. Not bad either – there was a fine indignation in it, a splendid contempt, and even a spark of poetry: the ‘stripped tree of the false apples, Neil's son of woeful Assynt'. The bitter phrase stayed with him, but it wasn't till next morning, going to work, that an assonance somewhere brought an idea to life. Saint! Leopold Neil Saint! Standing by his desk, before even taking his coat off, since otherwise it would be forgotten, he took a notebook, reached for a ball-point, and wrote ‘Neil's son of woeful Assynt'. And the fellow living on top of a shop called the Golden Apples of the Hesperides – a sex-shop,
bonne mère;
if that isn't the tree of the rotten apples I've never bitten into one. And with a grin across his face he scribbled in – ‘the stripped tree of the false apples too' – had perhaps the boyo Saint an interest in the sex business, and was that an idea which might lead him further? Louis perhaps dealing in porn? Might that be the little disgrace Bosboom had hinted at? Really, next time he had a committee meeting in Amsterdam he would go and have a look at those golden apples! He was interrupted by Miss Wattermann, who had heard him come in.