Over the High Side (7 page)

‘None of – more natural to call them your sisters, isn't it? – their husbands couldn't help you to a job?'

‘Oh, them,' not sounding much impressed by the step-sons in-law. ‘I don't think any of them could help much.' Quite.

*

And at the end of it all it was Van der Valk himself who found out something, by accident arising from his own stupidity. The fact was that while in Amsterdam, to be exact while drinking blackcurrant-juice in a dismal café near the Post Office, he left his glasses behind. He had only been wearing them for a year, and then only for reading. Wasn't really even middle-aged; must be all those years of filling in forms. No disgrace anyway; half Holland wears glasses; but he had not taken to them with any great enthusiasm. Still, must have been very preoccupied: how had he come to leave them on a café table in full view? It was two hours after when he discovered his loss and rang them up. Ah – they'd found them … but with a zeal utterly infuriating, instead of hanging on to them the silly bastards had sent them to the Lost Property Office. As in all major cities, the Lost Property Office is a joke. Incredulously, he thought back but could not remember having ever been there: where was it anyway?

*

The employee nodded sadly, went away, and came back with a large cardboard box full to the brim.

‘Good grief!' said Van der Valk as two or three hundred pairs were tipped out.

‘Your bad luck,' with faintly spiteful satisfaction. ‘Got piled up. People thinks we keeps them a year. Couldn't; too many. Once in a while we has a clear-out.'

‘Don't people claim these things?' asked Van der Valk, whose experience told him never to be surprised at any vagary or oddity, but a bit taken aback at seeing tape-recorders, guitars by the hundred, cameras, typewriters, cases and bags of every description, many expensive.

‘Reckon on them being stolen, people say. I reckons it's just too much trouble to come and claim them. Can't think why we bother. People got too much money.'

‘Here are mine anyway. Want to check them?'

‘You think we ties labels on all these? We only does that with articles of value.'

‘They are articles of value.' He had been strictly brought up.

‘Nobody seems to care. Easier to go buy another. Sign here. Seven hundred umbrellas, we got.'

Fascinated, Van der Valk was staring at the heap of unclaimed spectacles, wondering what was interesting about it. He did a double take, caught it, and read the gold print on the handsome green leather slipcase a second time. ‘Murray', fresh and new. ‘Optician. Duke Street. Dublin.'

‘You don't tie a label. But you do have a register. You enter a description.'

‘Well?'

‘Can you identify these?'

‘What's it to you?'

‘Police.'

‘Oh well … suppose I might. What do you want to know?'

‘Where they were found, what date – no name on them, I suppose?' The old-fashioned metal cases that shut with a snap, he recalled, had a paper sticker inside for a name and address. People could no longer be bothered.

The old man shuffled back.

‘Horn rim, brownish black, no metal – hundreds of 'em. Greenish case, leather, stamped Dublin – that's Ireland, in'it?'

‘Yes.'

‘Uh uh uh,' turning pages, ‘goes back a bit. Here we are. Table in waiting-room, Schiphol airport.'

‘Date,' with a sudden excitement.

‘Ninth of inst – here, you can't take those without you gives me an official receipt.'

Van der Valk, pleased with himself, as though losing his glasses had been a clever thing to have done, bore the prize away.

Doubtless there were dozens of Irish people leaving Schiphol any day. But how many – that day – sufficiently worried, distracted, preoccupied to leave their glasses on the table, like himself?

‘Superimpose them on the photo.'

‘But nobody said anything about glasses.'

‘I only wear mine for looking at things. Reading, or the cinema. Not in the street. Or looking at a picture – an art-gallery attendant remembers Martinez with a man wearing glasses. Profile and three-quarter; I'm taking nothing for granted this trip.'

*

‘Sure I remember. I look at the pictures, because I know them and I'm fond of them. I look at people too; like they were in a picture. How the light strikes them, and such. Why? You ask why and I tell you because I've nothing else to do, that's why. Before you asked me, I said no, because of the glasses. Now you ask me I say yes, still because of the glasses.'

It was a typical provincial art gallery, a historic town house with faded elegance, chipped stucco needing regilding; the kind of place that would be very beautiful if intelligently restored but which no provincial municipality will ever consent to spend money on.

‘Not so many people come here. They go for the better-known ones, like the Mauritshuis, or the Frans Hals in Haarlem. And here they go for Gallery Nine acause that's the Van Dam Bequest. But there's good stuff here.'

‘Really,' said Van der Valk, staring anaesthetized at a huge boring seascape by Abraham Van der Velde (the Elder). Even to himself his voice sounded glassy; the old man was stung.

‘'Course if you know nothing about pictures.'

‘No,' humbly.

‘That one now, that's a good one, but not obvious, that one isn't. Carel Fabritius that one is, the girl with the parrot. That's what they were looking at and talking about. Knew something about it, the elder gentleman did.'

‘And the younger?'

‘Well your photo's not much good. But with the glasses, I'd say yes, I'd say yes, and I'd be pretty positive, not maybe to swear but to be pretty positive.'

Conscientiously, he went to look at the girl with the parrot – putting his glasses on … Prickles went suddenly from the back of his neck clear down to his behind. He hadn't expected that!

Down off the faded crimson wallpaper out of a baroque gilt frame Stasie's face was looking at him. Far more living than in her photos; calm and delicious, between youth and age, between innocence and experience, fondling the parrot, mocking, gay, mischievous, extremely sexy.

*

‘Well, Van der Valk, something new? Come a bit nearer towards convincing me this time.'

‘Martinez was seen in the town, by a good witness, an hour before his death, with a young man in glasses. These glasses. They were found in Schiphol on a table, that evening. Young man booked on a flight to Dublin via London. They were looking together at a picture that has an interesting resemblance – here, see for yourself: this is a photo from Martinez' flat. About five years old, his wife says.'

‘I see the resemblance. What is the significance – it's his wife?'

‘Daughter. Who lives,' with relish, ‘in Dublin, Ireland. And this time I've got something. Two elements. Neither strong but taken together … The time factor – afternoon of the death – and the space factor; this same young man, who hired a car seen outside Martinez' flat, lives in Dublin. Where Martinez once lived, where three of his daughters still do. Madame Martinez disclaims all knowledge of the man or his car, but she
may be in perfect good faith, because by all accounts Martinez did not tell her about his business affairs, especially when they weren't going too well. Now we know what he was doing in our town – showing this picture. And why does he go seventy kilometres outside Amsterdam to show this young man a picture so strangely like his daughter? And why is he killed within an hour? Case there surely for an international mandate. Is Ireland in the Interpol net? – must be, surely.'

The Officer of Justice fell into a profound trance, apparently disagreeable.

‘Well,' he said at last, ‘there's grounds for questioning, certainly. But even a mandate for interrogation, to a witness in another country, is still a serious step. You're a pest, you know that?'

‘Oh I quite agree. But I thought you'd be pleased.'

‘Pleased! – you have this infernal knack of turning things up in other countries.'

‘Haven't turned anything up there yet. I thought we could get the Irish police to look into it.'

‘Remember that infernal mess in France – woman got machined-gunned. You always get yourself into these irregular positions.'

‘I don't want to go to Ireland,' defensively. ‘Haven't the least interest in going there. Position's entirely different.' He spoke with sincerity, but realized at once he was not telling the truth: he would be interested, very, in meeting the lady of the portrait!

‘They can surely ask the fellow questions on your mandate?'

‘I'm none too sure,' muttered the magistrate irritably, ‘it's all very circumstantial.'

*

‘Just my sentiment,' said Mr Kevin Nolan, Counsellor at the Irish Embassy. He was like a teddybear that has a bald forehead, with tiny round eyes, a curly little mouth, a round padded pleasant face that needed shaving often, a benevolent milky voice. ‘Tenuous, y'know. A pair of glasses, a picture in a museum, a hired car, a changed plane ticket; nothing there that can't bear a construction of complete innocence. Can't expect
us to believe, can you now, that this young man comes over for a bit of sightseeing, since nothing shows otherwise, kills this Mr Martinez and calmly takes the next plane back. Maybe he does know Martinez and these daughters of his. Comes over here and looks him up – reasonable. Art gallery together – normal. Chap shows him a picture like his daughter – amusing coincidence. And then he forgot his glasses – so do I, often. So did Mr Van der Valk on his own showing: not exactly an indication of guilt is it now?'

‘If I may say,' said Van der Valk softly while the magistrate fidgeted and a lawyer from the Ministry of Justice smoked a cigar, ‘none of my friends or yours got knifed in the street.'

‘It's a point, to be sure,' said the Irishman, ‘a point – no more.'

‘But perhaps the essential point,' said the lawyer, ‘– the manner of this death. Hardly a premeditated act. The very suddenness of it suggests a violent upheaval. Evidence on Martinez' state of mind would be relevant, and this young man's own state of mind. The car parked outside, the meeting in the art gallery, the resemblance to a person in Ireland – the tie is undeniable. This young man, Mr Nolan, is thus a witness to Martinez' movements, words, possibly mind, on the last day of his life. We suggest no more than that there is a case for hearing his account. Time enough afterwards to consider any, uh, whatever might appear a subsequent suitable step.'

‘Oh I'm not trying to obstruct the course of justice,' with good-humoured milkiness.

‘Very well then, suppose we ask your people to interview him.'

Van der Valk said nothing: too cosy altogether, all these bland functionaries. But once out in the street he realized that this was the way to do things, that he was only cross at things being taken out of his hands. His witness, found by him – and now a pack of civil servants were doing what they enjoyed; squabbling over legal niceties. But there, his Officer of Justice, dubious, had asked advice of the Procureur General, and it had been that gentleman who suggested a tactful scheme with, if possible, the co-operation of the Irish.

‘We haven't even a case. Even if we did, launched an
international mandate, they would sit thinking up excuses for not letting us have him. Remember the fellow who helped the English spy break prison, the one who got that absurd prison sentence – Irish chap that too. English wanted him, tried to extradite him, fine fools they looked, never did get him. Irish said blandly he was a political refugee. We don't want any touchy nationalist sentiments: extradition is always a tricky business.' A faint volcanic noise rose from the Procureur's lungs, suppressed out of consideration for United Europe.

No no, thought Van der Valk, better this way, they're quite right – but he did dearly wish there was some way of contacting his opposite number in Ireland for a little heart-to-heart.

*

Some days later the Officer of Justice handed him a thick envelope of papers clipped together, the top two or three covering-notes, but – ‘Read it for yourself,' with a long face. It was like peeling an onion.

Republic of Ireland, Ministry of Justice, Attorney-General – a few skins in came ‘Criminal Investigation Department. Dublin Castle. Confidential,' which was more up his street.

‘In furtherance of instructions received' – he could skip the phraseology, which he could read easily enough, English bureaucracy being much the same as Dutch, and the jargon no different (mercifully it wasn't all in Irish!).

Facts at last. Lynch was a common name; since there was no clue to identity they had begun with a passport check: this was the subject of a confidential memo to the Irish Embassy in The Hague – yet another skin further in. Inquiry from airlines had produced information that young man in question had not come on connecting plane from London to Dublin, nor did name appear on subsequent lists, which did not exclude possibility of travel by boat (or flying saucer, muttered Van der Valk, exasperated). Further discreet inquiry elicited information that young man was not at home: had stayed in England, or of course gone elsewhere. His home had apparently received no recent news but he ‘was always a bad letter-writer'. Detective-Inspector Flynn (plainly jubilant at finding the fellow outside his jurisdiction) felt there was little purpose
in pursuing matter until receipt of further instructions; bloop bloop bloop.

What was this memo lark? The Officer of Justice rang the Ministry of Justice. Yes, there was a memo; it had been received, was the subject of study, would doubtless be forwarded on from External Affairs when the time should be ripe.

‘What did I tell you?' said the magistrate, almost with satisfaction in his voice, ‘I knew there would be trouble.'