Strike Out Where Not Applicable (20 page)

‘Perhaps in the clinch, now that they are really rid of him at last, words would have been otiose,' with relish.

‘For a person presumed to have been so universally liked, though, wasn't it a scrap pointed?'

‘I feel fairly certain that there wasn't a soul there that didn't detest him.… Have you ever been to a cremation?' She hadn't, and what was more she never would. He had – professionally.

‘It is only worse than that performance in that you don't even get a breath of fresh air. Not even a smell of earth and leaves. A sort of desiccated drowning, asphyxiation in an odour of atheist piety.'

‘When you die,' said Arlette happily, ‘I will be there to finish you off. Women are always tougher than men.'

‘You won't commit suttee?'

‘What is suttee?'

‘Widows' self-immolation, on a pyre.'

‘Penses-tu,' greatly shocked. He laughed.

‘What will you do?'

‘Put you in a little boat and pour whisky all over before striking a match and giving a determined shove.'

‘Lovely. What's for lunch?'

‘Steak tartare – nothing to get ready. Did you notice how the sun came out suddenly?'

‘Yes indeed.'

Yes indeed. That April sunlight that came out suddenly, blinding: illuminating …

Full of peace and good digestion, he had to go and see the Officer of Justice. He was not yet back from lunch, but, being the Commissaire, Van der Valk could wait in the empty bureau. The
magistrate was a punctual person, and would certainly be back in five minutes.

He had known many of the breed. Old Slotemaker de Bruin in Amsterdam, elegant and eighteenth century, with his little digressions from law into metaphysics. Karstens, the opposite, the very worst type, the old-fashioned hanging bullying magistrate whose summing up in the courtroom never varied, who banged out a good dose of correctional training with the same emotional impartiality for robbery with breaking as for indecent exposure. (He had once, to his immense joy, overheard a barely murmured whopping indiscretion, unthinkable in an Officer of Justice … Old Slotemaker, passing Karstens in the passage on their way to their respective offices, half to himself, half to his ‘greffier' – ‘I do believe he must be a repressed homosexual …') And Rodcik, thin and dry and infinitely scrupulous, more scrupulous than most presidents – and Keller the swift and cutting, the reporters' delight, with his love of colloquialism and folklore illustration.

This one was of a newer school, a youngish, ascetic man with close cropped grey-blond hair and rimless glasses that gave his bony face a boyish look, so that from some angles he looked like a young law-student, and from others like a fanatical military bishop – he was both. You could never be sure how he saw things: at times startlingly progressive and liberal, one for ‘leaving the door open', he could be ruthless, a hammer of the infidel. His name was Romeijn and as Officers went he was reasonable; patient and considerate with prisoners and courteous towards the police, which was more than some …

‘I beg your pardon, Commissaire.' A doublebreasted suit of brighter-than-legal blue, a long bony white hand, slightly moist. A non-smoker – there was something to be said for those healthy tireless old hams, smoking big cigars and thumping the table. A man of the centre, embedded uneasily at times in the Palais, a pompous Victorian building smelling of damp umbrellas and echoing to continual clerical coughing. He had a canopied brass table-lamp and a modern red-and-grey telephone, a morocco blotter whose green had dulled to black – and a goldrimmed Parker pen-set; diamond-paned mahogany bookshelves full of lawbooks bound in quarter-leather – and a Philips tape-recorder encased in chaste grained grey plastic. He had a trick while talking of taking his glasses off (which gave his face an indecent appearance),
gazing blindly at the lenses, which were always perfectly clean, and rubbing at them nervously with a huge pure white hanky.

‘Do sit down. You've come to tell me about this Fischer business, have you?'

‘Yes, sir. He was buried this morning. I think we'll have to do some work on it. I've spent some time on the persons and places, getting to know their little ways, but it would take a whole team arid thorough work – it may come to that.'

‘Your conclusion?'

‘That the man was killed.'

‘Your premises?'

‘None at all.'

Plenty of Officers of Justice on getting this answer would get all exophthalmic and flap their hands like angry pigeons, and yelp about timewasting. But Mr Romeijn stayed tranquil and said gently that perhaps it was time for him to know something about these people. Van der Valk was grateful. His idea about violent emotions, so jarring in this placid landscape of pale green and watery grey, like the belts of brilliantly coloured flowers, wouldn't do at all in this office.

‘The presumption about Fischer begins with the village doctor. A youngish man but of considerable experience among these people. He chose to stir up a troublesome enquiry that would certainly harm him if it failed to produce its result. It wasn't physical evidence that really moved him, because an accident, while unlikely, remains possible. We couldn't act on that alone. I have questioned him, indirectly. He knows something, but he won't say. Possibly aspects of what he feels come under professional lipsealing, and his suspicions can't be substantiated and can't consequently in fairness be formulated. He cuts the knot by throwing veiled warnings our way, which takes the monkey off his shoulder.'

‘The physical likelihood of an attack?'

‘Open. The ground is reached easily by anyone whose presence at the manège would pass without comment, and that is very large. One could be seen but unremarked. The spot is not, though, overlooked either from the windows or the fields.'

Mr Romeijn had uncapped his fountain pen and begun to make notes. It was a little like a copywriter presenting an advertising campaign to a soapflakes manufacturer.

‘Around this patch of ground – here are the photographs – lies a variety of natural junk – by natural I mean that it's not unexpected or incongruous. Among the rubbish an old golf club and a round iron weight. The means for an attack lay at hand.'

‘Thus no presumption of planning or spontaneity.'

‘No, sir.'

‘Further.'

‘Fischer: his wife is on friendly terms with the owners of the manège, Francis and Marion La Touche. He is if anything not. Told to take exercise by the doctor, he chooses horses. The choice seems to strike a false note. He had never shown interest in horses – he suddenly does so. I am left with a notion that he wished to provoke people – to show his importance – perhaps even his power.'

‘You must support this remark.'

‘He had nothing to do in the restaurant, beyond superficial appearances. There he was faced with a coalition of two women, his wife and a woman called Groenveld, of no particular age, not unattractive, of decided character.'

‘What is this woman's standing in the household?'

‘Manageress, but she has an investment in the business – a part owner. She helped to rescue, before the marriage, a place that had run down in the post-war atmosphere – the man was of German origin. She lives in the house and has a close relationship with the wife. It's not going too far to call it an alliance, and the man may have felt he was not master, that the alliance was hostile …'

‘A lesbian relationship?'

‘Possible. The wife, who ran the business and still does, combines energy and decision with a casual laziness in private – the other adopts a protective maternal attitude, and speaks disparagingly of the husband. Both show anxiety, tension about gossip, fear lest their even peaceful ways be disturbed.'

‘He put up with all this?'

‘Odd isn't it?' said Van der Valk, feeling he had made his first point.

‘Go on.'

‘He might have looked for authority in other spheres – naturally blackmail came to my mind. On the surface liked and hail-fellow with everyone, he aroused dislike, which everyone mentions once their confidence is gained.'

‘They feel free to mention this dislike?'

‘He had a reputation as a gossip, a talebearer. A collector and retailer of malicious tattle.'

‘A weak man, he had pleasure in noticing and discussing the weaknesses of others?'

‘One might push a hypothesis like that – a hypothesis is all it is.'

‘I merely wished to test your awareness of the dangers of doing so,' said Mr Romeijn almost apologetically.

‘All this circle of close acquaintances seem normal enough – Doctor Maartens was willing, guardedly, to give me a little medical background. An even-tenored, pleasant set of lives, settled, without financial worries, no obvious emotional distortions, surrounded with comforts and conveniences – it's just that which awakens my dissatisfaction. All so smooth, and they all show a state of tension. I can't say it's out of the ordinary – I just wonder.'

‘A police officer – the mere fact of an investigation arouses embarrassment, worry, hostility.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘You aren't satisfied?'

‘No.'

Mr Romeijn looked at him for some time in silence.

‘Very well. Since you wish to convince me, I presume you have more?'

‘La Touche. An anxious man, with a sense of inadequacy, needing reassurance. Shouts at clients, who seem to enjoy it, carries violence a stage further in private – he beats up his wife. She told me this with a frankness intended perhaps to disarm me. She cultivates a façade of calm, poise, chic, weary sophistication.' Mr Romeijn plainly disliked this phrase; since he was quite right, Van der Valk kicked himself in the ankle.

‘There is a grown-up son, who got into some trouble – there were violent scenes with the father. The boy left the country with a black-sheep label of sorts.'

‘Anything on our files?'

‘A charge of fraud that didn't seem terribly convincing and was later withdrawn. Cheques. There was a rather – halfhearted – enquiry.'

‘Here?'

‘No – Hague.'

‘Are you suggesting that this charge was true but was manipulated?'

‘I don't know whose name he was supposed to have written on the cheque.'

‘I see.'

‘A riding-school is of course a hotbed of namedropping, compulsive boasting, anxieties about status.'

‘I suppose that might be so,' with distaste.

‘My wife goes there. She genuinely likes horses. My status as an officer of police is sufficient to satisfy snobbery, but since she is French that scarcely interests her. She has given me some amusing lights on behaviour – one striking example of the persistent striving common to many of this group.'

‘What is that?'

‘A girl from a village who married a bicycle champion and has pots of money.'

A small smile stirred an austere mouth.

‘I can see how that might be possible,' he murmured. ‘Unacceptable on both counts.'

‘The husband owns a hotel in the district, and though he did not frequent the riding-school he knew both Fischer and his wife professionally. He speaks of both with dislike. A lot of things in this circle are half felt, half seen.'

‘And what, Commissaire,' incisively, ‘do you suggest?'

‘You gave me a commission of interrogation, sir, with some doubt. You might consider summoning the people most closely concerned, and examine subsequent statements for inconsistency,' colourless. ‘The classic method – when one has anything to go on.'

‘Just so. Your suppositions, Commissaire – moonshine. That is, judicial moonshine. To test and sift all this – there's no nail to hang a case on, and people have a natural distaste for accounting for their private lives – any further suggestion?'

‘I would be inclined,' gingerly, ‘to consider some discreet observation to see if these people have relationships we know nothing of.'

The magistrate had stiffened, as Van der Valk had known he would.

‘I don't like it, as you know. We don't like that in this country. Smacks of interference with a subject's liberties. Unwarrantable sniffing and snuffling – unconstitutional.'

‘A riding-school – there's something dashing and uninhibited about horses, an atmosphere Mr La Touche encourages. It is fashionable there to be outspoken and a bit daring. By the way, the customers had a habit of lunching at Fischer's restaurant, and meeting there on horseback. Fischer certainly knew many of them well.'

‘You think blackmail, do you? Covert rendezvous, flirtations, extracurricular carryings on, hm?' with irony.

‘I don't know what I think. But I feel convinced that somebody is banking on our impotence all round. We can't even prove this death wasn't an accident from the medical evidence, but there is no doubt in the state pathologist's mind – that is of course his unofficial opinion expressed to me in private.'

‘Very well, Commissaire,' suddenly. ‘I will allow this observation, holding you personally responsible.'

The fact was that in Amsterdam he had done such things constantly, without any reference to nervous juridical functionaries either. It might be unconstitutional, but if one wasn't going to sit being impotent, one had to. But here in the provinces it was another matter, and if he put his staff on to something on this scale, there would be talk. It would leak to higher spheres. He would be up shit creek, and without a paddle too.

And the magistrate had agreed – unexpectedly.

Did he – like Doctor Maartens – feel something he himself was not properly attuned to? All he could say about this whole business was that it was not quite catholic – and now he would swear that the magistrate himself had just such a phrase lodged behind his sinus somewhere.

What could it be? Inaudible transmissions came from the bourgeoisie. Janine was right and you could never be one of them unless you were born there.