Over the High Side (24 page)

‘That was just self-protection.'

‘So was hitting me on the head, no doubt.'

‘No no – good God – no – that must have been Jim.'

‘Must have been,' dryly, ‘but wasn't. I only caught a glimpse – but now that I've met him it wasn't anyone nearly as big as Jim. Also Jim's a fool, but not that much of a fool. You had no trouble getting him to follow me tonight, the less because you and he have been pretty pally once upon a time. Jim – or one of his cronies – may have written the little note; he's
boastful enough when a bit drunk for that. But he didn't hit me. Without knowing it, maybe, he has a really good alibi, which it took Flynn a day or two to check. You, on the other hand, did.'

‘You seem to think me capable of any kind of crime,' wearily.

‘Except that of killing your father.' Her tears this time, he thought, were genuine. He himself was feeling the drag of fatigue that told him, with ominous frequency now, that fifty is double twenty-five. He was so sick of it all sometimes …

‘Listen, Stasie, listen just for once to another voice instead of that tricky little imp you have there in your head.' He was tired too of talking English: he wasn't even talking the polite, polished Dutch that Stasie had learned as a child – it had now a stilted sound, with turns of phrase which had almost a prewar ring – but the rough and pithy Dutch of the faubourgs. ‘Paste it up on your board – there's no way out. You're between the lorry and the wall, and that lorry isn't going to stop. You hadn't succeeded in realizing that if you had got rid of me you'd never have shaken Flynn off. A man in public affairs, I needn't say who, wants the truth. He's going to get it; nothing else will do. His integrity as a man and as a politician means that he'll want it in an open court. A Dutch court. You may not have to go yourself before that court – it's a legal point that neither concerns nor interests me, but you'll have to make Flynn's statement. Now if you want for once to think of your family and I mean your husband and not the Martinez family you can ask me to try and keep your name out of the press. Give me the truth, satisfy me that it's the truth and I'll do what I can.'

‘What is it you want?'

‘Sooner or later Denis is going to get in touch with you. He wants to be reassured; he wants to hear your voice. You have to tell him to come to me and say what he knows. He has no choice; he must understand that. He loves you.'

‘Yes.'

‘And he trusts you.'

‘Yes.'

It was with some difficulty that he bit back the phrase, ‘Heaven help him.'

*

‘What d‘you get out of Jim?' asked Van der Valk, trying not to yawn and failing.

‘Didn't get anything out of Jim,' said Flynn peacefully. He was cutting his fingernails with a little pair of folding scissors he had searched for, and found in his breast pocket. A litter of strange objects had come to light in course of the search, at which Flynn stared with a sort of indignant surprise, as though they had no right to be in his pockets. ‘Jim's lips is sealed,' he went on tranquilly. ‘What he calls his honour – you'd think he was in the Mafia or something.' It was never any good trying to hurry Flynn. ‘Whereas on the other hand he didn't need to tell me what I knew already. What I think happened is that she got on to him to push you in the canal like, reckoning maybe Jim knew how. He was too fly for that – wasn't having any. But he got a bit loose-mouthed, and this much I know. One of his pals in the boozer wrote that note; they maybe thought themselves funny. What good it was supposed to do is what we call an enigma, but I'd hazard the guess they was both footless at the time.'

‘Footless?'

‘Ach here in Ireland we wouldn't say a feller was in a state of intoxication then: we say he'd drink taken. Now then I'd hazard the further guess that Jim went back and told her, still thinking himself funny, and she gets pretty easily into a hysterical state. Set her off to clonk you, like? – don't ask me to explain these women's ideas, but we'd say maybe hearing about this she got mad, reckoning it would lead you straight back to her? Depends what interpretation you want to give the word mad.'

‘Right the whole way,' said Van der Valk. ‘She coughed it all up, admits everything. Denis too. He was dotty about her.'

‘They were sleeping together?'

‘Of course. For a year. Under Eddy's nose. Eddy refused to see it or do anything about it, reckoning that would just be humiliation all round.'

‘Good for him,' said Flynn. ‘So now you can go back to Holland in a deckchair, with four pretty girls fanning you. What more d'you want? Denis is loose somewhere in Europe. Sooner or later he'll come back here. I, eejit that I am, will pick him up and give him to you.'

‘Yes,' unenthusiastic.

‘What's bothering you now? She told you the tale, didn't she? What did she do to the boy?'

‘That's just it. Genuinely, she hasn't the faintest idea. She can't understand it, she refused to believe it, it sent her into a spin, and now,' dryly, ‘she believes it, but she can't explain it.'

Flynn shrugged.

‘So what? When you have the boy, and put the stories together, you'll explain it, or rather the psick man,' pronouncing the p, ‘will do it for you. No crime at all; what they need us for I ask meself.'

‘Having once done something unbalanced he's likely to do so again. He must be in a state of uncertainty that would put anyone off their rocker – I don't see him just wandering vaguely round Italy.'

‘I do. I'd say his idea was to get away from something he only realizes very vaguely, but which presses on him: he knows there's something pretty badly wrong. He bums about – times he forgets all about it. One fine morning his da turns up and that brings it home all right, and he just bunks. It's so easy. Grow a beard, get in with this hippy crowd, they slop about aimless anywhere. You won't get him yet awhile, but when the cold weather comes there's kind of an icy blast in Italy then; that winkles them out.'

‘I don't know,' said Van der Valk. ‘I'd say more his one idea was to get home to Mum – Stasie, rather – irrespective of what's happened. Tell her all.'

‘How he felled her da with the stroke of a loy.'

‘What?'

‘It's the English,' said Flynn apologetically. ‘It's a hell of a difficult language.'

*

‘How are you then?' asked the delicious Liz, managing to
make it sound as though she really cared. She was in tobacco brown this morning, eyes greener than ever, hair cascading voluptuously; he was ready to swear it had grown another ten centimetres since he saw her last, ‘You're looking a lot better.'

‘Looking at you that does it.' She laughed as gaily as though she had never heard this atrociously feeble gallantry before.

‘No, genuinely, you looked tired when you were here last, not really sick or anything, but harassed, what the French call emmerdé, you know?'

‘I do indeed,' heartfelt. ‘Will the Senator see me, do you think?'

‘I'm quite sure he will; in fact I needn't even ask. Would you like a cup of coffee?'

‘Nes?' with remnants of suspicion.

‘Certainly not,' reproachful; how could he think such a thing? ‘I grind it myself.'

‘Then yes please.'

‘We'll all have one.' That girl – he followed, much cheered by her behind – will be selling Manhattan Island back to the Indians any day now.

Lynch sat at his desk, carved out of stone, like the lion of Belfort but sharper round the teeth, which were holding one of his little Upmanns. He signed to Van der Valk to sit down, pushed aside a sheaf of papers, offered the cigar-box, and said, ‘Good morning.'

‘Less bad morning, at least. I've some news, anyway. Before I tell you, have you any news – or Monsieur de Coninck?'

‘Coninck,' lighting both cigars, ‘has had conversations with half Rome,' not smiling. ‘There is no news of Denis, but I am told that this is normal; there are still very large numbers of foreign visitors and they need a little time. I suppose we do have time. Some, anyway. What have you got?'

‘A surmise, no more, but based on my dealings with the lady in question. If it is accurate we may not need all that laborious work from the Italian police. We may need time, not perhaps a lot; I've no idea – can you tell me do you, or does perhaps Denis know people who have a yacht?'

‘I suppose I do. So does he, I should think. In fact two or
three. I see what you're driving at – that he might have joined up in some way with friends and gone somewhere by sea? Isn't it pretty improbable?'

‘I don't know; perhaps. It seems possible. The universities open only in another week or so, Europe is still full of students sculling around, sailing is a very popular sport, the weather won't break up before the equinox – it seemed worth inquiring into. And it seemed to me at least likely that he's headed back here.'

‘After avoiding me deliberately?' said Lynch, frowning.

‘Instinct,' with tactful vagueness.

‘What would he do here? He must realize that if he has – permitted himself … some grave action … irresponsible or not – here he'd be expected to face the consequences.' Lynch rubbed his eyes, took his reading glasses out of his pocket, put them on, changed his mind, pushed them up on his forehead. ‘I'm not exactly making myself clear.'

‘Responsibility – never easy to assign. This woman – she's been tremendously upset by her father's death, and frightened – she's neurotic and over the last few days she's done some astonishingly foolish – irresponsible – things. I've managed to persuade her to say what she knew.'

‘Persuaded her how?' with sudden shrewdness.

‘By not very creditable means and I'm not going to tell you about them. Put it that I'm satisfied at present that she is telling the truth and let's leave it at that. They had a love affair for several months. That I expected – I virtually knew. I had thought they had a fight then, but no, she staged a dramatic resignation, stuff about not ruining his life and so on, and he went to Holland with an idea of breaking. A peaceful break, to which he was emotionally keyed up.'

‘What sort of woman is she really – a bad woman?' touchingly.

‘No, not a bad woman. There are few really bad people, no? Nor sad – she's a naughty woman, a maker of mischief. She has what she finds a dull life, and she needs to create excitements, thrills, risks – she wants to be on the trapeze all the time – none of this perhaps would be very dreadful if she didn't have a nasty habit of manipulating people's lives. I
don't pretend to understand her fully. A complex character, not very different from the father, whose life was full, too, of fantasies and pretences, little intrigues and theatrical gestures – these people never can forgo a gesture. That is their undoing and I think we'll find is at the bottom of this tragedy. What actually happened we'll only learn when we find Denis – and then it's doubtful.' And unlikely, he added silently. Lynch was following with narrowed unhappy eyes.

‘What has she done to Denis?' pathetically.

‘Nothing very much, I suppose, when you add it up – not that would cause him harm, or not permanent harm,' stumbling. ‘Filled his head with unrealities. He may – must have tried to say something to the old man, who perhaps lost his temper, said something insolent or wounding; I don't know.'

Lynch became suddenly Terence, putting his cigar in his mouth, staring bluntly straight into Van der Valk's eye.

‘What is a court going to make of this?'

‘I hope that you won't be disappointed but myself, I'd be fairly optimistic. Courts have got a lot better – judges, assessors, prosecutors: they're much better trained. Homicide is a crime that they make a real effort to be sensible about. Breaking jewellers' windows is a thing that gets less sympathetic consideration – sorry, I don't mean to sit here being comfortable about this. I only wished to tell you that prosecutors no longer shriek and bang the table. The other day in France a woman who had killed her husband got two years' suspended sentence. She had children, so a home to run and a living to earn but that's not really the point: the court made a real and successful effort to grasp what went on.'

‘You reassure me,' said Lynch, ‘– a little.'

‘Could you inquire about the sailing boat possibility?'

‘I can. The result …' He shrugged.

‘Of course. But if it were so – one could assume that they were headed back here. How long that takes … I suppose it could take a week and it could take two months. Sounds like working out the cost of entering the Common Market.'

Lynch permitted himself a thin grim smile.

‘Which happens to be my subject.'

‘That's why I chose the illustration. So many considerations
– political, economic, plain human – all police work is like that, past the stage of robbery of hen-runs.'

The door opened.

‘Can I come in? I've cups of coffee.'

‘Liz,' said Lynch in his heaviest voice, ‘you do a lot of sailing, don't you?'

*

‘Maybe it is a daft notion like you say,' Mr Flynn's voice was indistinct because he had his front teeth propped against a large wooden ruler, ‘but I like it.'

‘I'd asked Mrs Lynch about you know, what his interests were, about his friends, stuff like that.'

‘This feller is a feller he's been to school with and that's a possibility. Boat's out there in Italy, what makes it a better one. But hell, it's giving me trouble. I understand the pleece out there can't check everybody, people all look the same anyway in this sailor getup, but hell, they can't even check the boats. This one now,' he tapped a large glossy photograph, ‘I've had checked out in every harbour from Genoa to Gibraltar, and they all say they can't be sure. Don't they keep records? Isn't there a harbourmaster or something, port dues or what not?'