Over the High Side (2 page)

The wallet – so often a disappointment – proved so again. A little money, some stamps, the scraps of paper one always keeps religiously long after their purpose has been forgotten. A few more cards – printed this time. ‘F.-X. Martinez. Import and Export. Harbour Building, Amsterdam.' There was a tiny pocket-diary with appointments, names and numbers, but that could wait. Van der Valk rang the Harbour Building.

‘Martinez please.'

‘Who?'

‘Martinez – import and export.'

‘Never heard of it. Not here. Some mistake.'

‘Elderly man, tall, well dressed. Distinguished.'

‘It's possible – this is the switchboard; I only know their voices.'

‘Put me through to the concierge, would you?'

But was that not curious? If – it did not seem to fit in with what observation could tell him about Mr Martinez – one had cards printed with a spurious commercial address, one did not, he would have thought, do it so incompetently: one telephone call … And the Harbour Building, a vulgar commercial block near the Central Station; it did not seem to fit. Import-export, by all means, but this man? He was curious to meet Madame.

Devil take the woman; what was keeping her? He had leisure to discover that his own police department knew nothing about Martinez, which meant nothing, and that the Criminal Record office knew nothing either, which meant precious little.

A woman like her voice. Trim, pretty and young – thirtyish. A fur coat despite the warm weather. Dutch the fair hair, the large teeth, the high complexion. Small; shop-girls would call her petite. Quiet and composed.

‘I'm sorry to have been so slow – trams; trains …'

‘Not at all,' said Van der Valk politely, ‘I had supposed without really any reason you would take a car.'

‘I haven't one,' abruptly.

‘Your husband had it – what was he doing here, do you know? – some business appointment?'

‘I presume so; I'm afraid I've no idea.'

‘Well, we'd better look: I'm sorry to inflict it on you.'

‘I'm ready.'

‘It seems unnecessarily painful but we do, as you realize, have to have a formal identification.'

She looked at him steadily with clear pale eyes, prominent but pretty.

‘I am calm, Commissaire, because I have known this day would come, and in a way I've practised for it.'

‘You've expected an accident?'

‘There are so many accidents.' He bowed and said nothing. She showed little emotion in the mortuary: her cheekbones showed, she went white around the curve of the nostril; her hands clenched on her leather gloves.

‘Poor Vader,' she said softly. Note of affection, or respect …

‘Vader?'

‘He was old enough to be my father,' composedly. ‘Did he have a heart attack?'

‘He had a weak heart?'

‘Not especially – that I know of. But he was no longer young, he worked too hard … His blood pressure was rather high, that I do know.'

‘It isn't quite so simple.'

She seemed puzzled. ‘He doesn't seem injured: was it a car?'

‘We'll go back to my office, perhaps. A few formalities, and some explanations – may I offer you a lift? – a few questions, no doubt very futile, to put to you.'

She went on being composed, though in the car her nostril kept whitening and twitching, and once tears came quickly down before she could regain control, staring determinedly in front of her.

At police headquarters busy little plastic plates were screwed helpfully to doors. His said, ‘Commissaris: Criminal Brigade'. He never noticed it but when it caught her eye she stopped and stared at him.

‘Criminal Brigade?'

‘Pease do sit down, Madame. I have to explain.'

‘But what does this mean? What has happened?' Shock, astonishment, but not fear.

‘We have the habit of talking about accidents because it sounds less upsetting – a professional cliché, in a way. But I'm afraid I have to tell you that your husband was stabbed with a kind of dagger.' It was lying on his desk. ‘With that.'

She shuddered violently and bit into her glove.

‘But that's – is it? – does that mean…?'

‘I rather think it does. Do you recognize this? Have you seen it before? It's a paper-knife.'

‘No – no – how, stabbed? – where?'

‘Here in the town, in the street, in the Grote Markt to be precise, around four this afternoon.' Blank astonishment, and shock.

‘Would you like a cup of coffee?'

‘Yes – no – some water – if you don't mind.'

‘No trouble.'

‘God…'

‘Take your time.'

‘I am so sorry. I will not be stupid. I promise you.'

‘Are you in a hurry? Somebody waiting for you – at home? Children?'

‘I have no children. Nobody is waiting.' Bleakly.

‘You won't mind then if we do a bit of paperwork? Very good. The usual then to begin with – full names, date and place of birth, yes, your husband and yourself, nationality, both Dutch? – very good – address … the Harbour Building is a business address, I take it?' She went on writing without looking up.

‘I'm afraid I know practically nothing at all about my husband's business affairs, Commissaire,' she murmured.

‘Shall we begin then with the personal angle? A cigarette, Madame?' He lit it for her, staring at her peaceably, as cow-like as he could get, which was quite a lot.

‘To get it clear from the start … a death by violence, which is incontestable. And yes, I'm afraid, murder, as self-evident. Leaving aside any inherent possibilities of suicide – forgive my bluntness – people do not stab themselves in the middle of the crowd at four of a Saturday afternoon in front of the Prisunic. Nor do they trip and fall on a paper-knife.'

She let out a short yap of hysterical laughter and killed it at once.

‘Quite so,' he said calmly, ‘there's no need to apologize – it is ludicrous. So we are faced with a criminal investigation and that is my job, my affair, and explains the notice on my door. Eventually, too, a judicial instruction or process. When we find the assassin,' he explained bluntly. ‘So that at this point, Madame, you have a kind of choice. I am the investigating officer, and will have questions for you. We will be as discreet as possible, but these questions might be personal, embarrassing, even painful. I would go fingering through your house.'

She gazed helplessly, not seeming quite to understand, but plainly she was in shock.

‘What I'm trying to explain to you is that you may feel you want advice, professional help, a kind of protection. No no, that doesn't make you in any sense suspect or imply the slightest guilt. It's a sort of prudence. You might feel I was taking in some way advantage of you – do you follow?'

‘You mean a lawyer?'

‘I mean a friend, who could advise you. You're in no sense obliged to have a lawyer. You might, shall I say, decide against it.'

‘What difference could it make?' with a sort of vague helplessness.

‘It would reduce my role, confine it to fact-finding and verifying. And it does make things more complicated, lengthier, more laborious. I would notify the Officer of Justice, because then the whole affair comes into the hands of the examining magistrate, who asks you to come and see him and – why, then he takes whatever steps he sees fit. Which can be all very wearisome. I would work in a simpler, less official, perhaps less oppressive manner. If,' he spread his hands out, ‘you allow me to.' Quite the little civil servant: a model of prudence.

She smiled, very slightly, thought it over, taking her time.

‘I think I prefer to leave things with you, Commissaire. I don't think I need a lawyer; as for friends …' She thought a while more, and sighed as though tired. ‘I realize that being much younger than my husband I must look an attractive
prospect – a kind of candidate, is it, for this criminal you will look for … Lawyers – magistrates – all these formalities …' She sighed again. ‘I'm afraid it's all going to be quite complicated enough as it is.'

*

He thought about her, driving back, wordlessly, to Amsterdam. Reasonable woman, balanced, not going to make his life a perfect misery. Detachment – yes, in the voice too. That phrase ‘preparing myself for the day' – resignation, even a certain humour. She spoke of Martinez with undoubted affection and respect. ‘Vader' – begun perhaps as a joke, and turned into genuine feeling. It did not sound the slick, simplified gloss of someone pretending. Still … ‘Women criminals are consummate actresses' – quite so. The phrase, however classic, is nonetheless itself a little slick. He had a solid Dutch distrust of aphorisms: they tended to appeal to immature minds.

He had not asked her any of the obvious questions yet. Not even why she wore a fur coat on a hot day.

The Rivieren-Laan is not one of Amsterdam's old quarters. Built after the war, but not so long after that one of the streets missed being called Stalin-Laan, an enthusiasm that later caused the municipality embarrassment. A wit had suggested ‘Stalinweg' – ‘weg' means a roadway in Dutch but it also means ‘gone'. He was not thought funny. It was renamed ‘Liberty-Laan', which does betray a certain laborious lack of imagination, but there, municipalities are like that and the whole quarter is anyway drearily unimaginative too. Within these heavy blocks live many rich people; there is the thick silence which more than anything means wealth in an apartment block. Picasso lithographs, and a little safe built into the wall behind. Gilt-edged, but lots of lead within. But behind the lumping boulevards named for lumping great heroes are narrow noisy streets, full of poor people, who go to work of a morning along the busy tramlines of the Van Woustraat and the Ferdinand Bol. Van der Valk, during twenty years in the city, had mined the seams often but still never knew which of the little streets were which.

‘Left … second to the right … you can stop here.' There
was resignation in her voice. A big row of letterboxes showed that the flats were small and crowded. The stairway was cramped: no lift. Junior officials and undermanagers, not distinguished old men with morocco card-cases. She walked in front of him to the third floor, slipped her key in the lock, gestured him in, and slipped off the fur coat. Under it was a cotton frock, which his Arlette-trained eye could see was home-made, not very well home-made. He knew these flats all right: minute, with a little hallway, doors to broom-cupboard and bathroom, both the same size; doors to kitchen and living-room. He knew the kitchen would have a little balcony where one hung out the wash, that behind the living-room were two bedrooms, the one a scrap less cramped than the other. He needed no telling that the Martinez household was not rich.

The living-room was furnished in the solid mahogany of the thirties now despised in Holland and sent to junk-shops. He was asked to sit down, in a fat little armchair with a chintz cover hiding the worn plush upholstery. Madame Martinez had determined upon uncompromising honesty.

‘I can't offer you a drink because there isn't one. In fact it's a miracle the phone hasn't been cut off. Still, he would have paid that if he possibly could – was there any money in his pocket?'

‘Not a great deal.'

‘How I'm to pay for the funeral … well, there it is. We hadn't a penny and you may as well know it.'

‘Was it always like that?'

‘Oh no – no, often we were – how to say, we ate in expensive restaurants, the place here was full of champagne – ah, there is at least a cigar I can offer you – everything riding high, but suddenly, without any transition, one would be wondering how to pay the phone bill.' And Van der Valk felt a little spurt of interest and admiration. In a boy of twenty-five, yes, it was commonplace, but at seventy-six! However improvident, or irresponsible, or whatnot – what vitality the old boy must have had! She read his mind from the pursed lip, the twitch of amusement and the tiny whistle. ‘He wasn't all stiff and chalky and incapable of movement,' warmly. ‘He had mettle.'

‘You loved him?' It wasn't really a question needing answering.

‘Yes. I suppose we lived squalidly – but whatever he was he wasn't squalid.'

‘You didn't work yourself?'

‘He was also very proud. He'd been a more than adequate breadwinner for fifty years, and wasn't a man to live on women's earnings.'

‘You didn't get bored, with nothing to do?'

‘Never,' with conviction.

Van der Valk smoked his cigar, which was good.

‘He had mistresses?' in a peaceful, tranquil tone.

‘Certainly not,' indignantly, and then suddenly saw through his little deception and said, ‘And I didn't have any lovers,' even more indignantly.

‘I did warn you that I would ask this kind of embarrassing, rude question.'

‘That's quite true. I beg your pardon.' Tensing herself to a lot of desperate honesty.

‘Perhaps you might have been his mistress before he married you?' She did not frown but thought it over carefully.

‘Well – I was his secretary – how am I to explain this? He didn't have mistresses; that would be a most immoral thing to do.' Suddenly a little click of intuition gave it him.

‘He married them instead?' A little to the surprise of both, they found themselves laughing a little, but in a sort of admiration of Martinez.

‘Well, yes, I'm bound to admit he did. And – and – well, you'd find out easily enough – I'm bound to admit I'm his fifth wife. Such cows really – so often exploiting him – making so little effort – did they ever really even try to understand?'

‘How long have you been married?'

‘Seven years,' with an innocent enough kind of pride. Quite an achievement.

Van der Valk was becoming quite attached to Martinez, who had been an engaging old rogue. Did they get killed then, the engaging old rogues?