Double-Barrel

Nicolas Freeling

Part one: ‘Happenstance'

Part two: ‘Acquaintance'

Part three: ‘Friendship'

Part four: ‘Knowledge'

Part five: ‘Certainty'

How often it happens. We imagine some situation, or even construct a whole hypothetical case in the course of a discussion. It may be serious – it might be just said as a joke. But next week it comes true. There is something laughable about that even when the reality is disagreeable.

Back in the office, I did laugh, but the irreverence might have been to offset a strong idea that the next few weeks would be unpleasant. It was ridiculous, and from this far away it was fairly funny – but it was sinister, it was horrible, and it was certainly tragic.

There it was. I had gone and theorized, all pompous. And today my hypothesis gets presented to me complete in every detail.

A lot of good my theorizing will do me now. As likely as not I am going to fall straight on my classic, scornful nose.

It is my wife's fault. I am not unhappy that Arlette is French; it helps me often enough to remember not to be quite so Dutch when I try to understand things. After twelve years she is still rebellious about Holland, and sometimes uneasy there. She won't surrender to some of the attitudes natural to any Dutch woman, with their generations behind them of what she calls their conditioned reflex. The phrase is not all that bad. It sounds like Mr Pavlov's dogs, and there is a good deal in common.

It was not even a week ago; evening. She was reading the paper and I was sitting in my socks, majestically doing nothing, probably with the socks on the coffee–table where
I could admire their intricate beauty; grey wool, three and eleven in the January sales that were just over. The wall of newsprint opposite gave an indignant crackle. A voice said, ‘Pah!'

‘What is pah?' No great interest; just making a sympathetic sound.

‘An advertisement for washing powder. In a headline, sub-heading, and five lines of text, the word “Fresh” is repeated six times. S-I-X.'

‘Ach. Every time they want to sell something to a housewife they tell her how fresh it will make her grey existence.'

‘But six times …'

‘It's a witch word. Everything approved of in Holland is fresh, whether it's the kitchen floor or a pretty girl.'

Snort from Arlette.

‘I only buy things from now on that are unfresh.'

‘Ha. I read a film review the other day; the sort of film – you know, takes the lid off the call-girl industry. Described by the reviewer as “decidedly unfresh” – you could see him holding his nose.'

‘I wish to go and see it immediately.'

‘I wonder what he'd call my daily life.'

‘Not as fresh as we would like.'

I got an idea, with a mild galvanic effect that aimed my feet towards the bookshelf. A book I have annotated. The annotations are probably silly, but I think about Louis XVIII, writing little notes in the margin of his Horace while Napoleon was on his way from Elba. Van der Valk being civilized while Amsterdam wallows in unfresh crime. Poor fellow; he's tired.

‘You don't understand Holland. Listen – this is Stendhal, talking about the America of eighteen twenty. Meaning puritan New England, a hundred years after the Salem witch-trials. Where am I? – yes – “The physical gaiety of Americans disappears as they reach twenty. A habit of reason, of caution, of prudence, makes love impossible.”
What does that remind you of? – he cites, by the way, a mental climate hostile to art or literature.'

‘It does sound like Holland.'

‘Or this – describing a love affair in Protestant North Germany. “The sun is pale in Halberstadt, the government very particular and these two personages pretty cold. In the most passionate tête-à-tête, Kant and Klopstock are always present.” '

‘Giggle as you like – I don't think it funny.'

‘Be glad you live in Amsterdam. Think of living in a provincial town in Drente, and discovering that murder was a crime, right enough, but falling asleep during the sermon a lot worse.'

‘Is that the worst crime?'

‘I think that making love to your own wife in the living-room in the middle of the afternoon will count as the most serious.'

I was in the office on the Marnixstraat next morning, unravelling a long wearisome report about a bank fraud. Holland is a strange country. Every single thing is fragmented, organized, and subject to a thick book of rules, and here was the treasurer of a large concern happily speculating with thousands that weren't his – undetected or even suspected for years. He looked, you see, so utterly respectable, and the rules were such gobbledygook that nobody could understand them anyway without three diplomas for treasuring. Phone buzzed. My superior, Commissaris Tak of Central Recherche. An old maid if ever I saw one.

‘Van der Valk? The Procureur-Général wants to see you. Right away.'

‘Oh lord, what have I done wrong now?'

‘Nothing, as far as I know.'

‘What's it about?'

‘I haven't been told. You'd better get over to the Prinsen-gracht and find out, hadn't you.'

I put my jacket on. Central heating was too hot today. Real February; westerly, windy, rainy. Not cold, but here that does not mean that winter is now over. It'll probably be snowing tomorrow.

‘Nice and fresh,' my colleague said coming in this morning. We share a room – there is space for the two of us, our papers, and maybe one beer bottle, carefully concealed behind a report on the number of auto thefts there were in nineteen thirty-eight.

It is five minutes' walk to the Palace of Justice, and I spent them wondering what I would get the telling-off for. The Procureur-Général is a most important personage. He is supposed to be busy presenting appeal cases to the Court of Cassation or whatnot, or codifying public morals, but he has a trick of finding time to censure imprudences of unimportant functionaries – and that has meant me, more than once.

There is a barrier of pale legal advisers to penetrate before one reaches the sanctuary where the big Bourns contemplate pale legal paper in utter silence. Here the telephone lines are all guarded, and probably the lowest typist is under some awful oath – Safety of the Realm Act 1823.

At least in the other half of this big building it is more human. There sits the ‘Parquet' – the prosecutors, the Officers of Justice and the Children's Court – and policemen sit on benches with criminals in an atmosphere of almost-cordiality. Over here, the milk-of-human-kindness has been in the autoclave. Well and truly sterile.

I reached a secretary; elderly soul with prim blue hair and no lips.

‘Inspector van der Valk, on the instructions of Commissaris Tak.'

An approving nod for that. She picked up the intercom phone and spoke in hushed tones. The Vatican voice. Cardinal commanding the Holy Office here.

‘Will you please go straight in?'

Master Anthoni Sailer, learned in the law, is a tall dry man, a bit creaky. Body, nose, lip: all long and perfectly straight. The straight hair combed across a high white forehead to hide a balding patch is still dark. His look is direct – yes, straight. And his handwriting is upright and always legible, in black ink with a fine pen. But he is capable of understanding. Even, as I once learned during an otherwise unpleasant interview, capable of humour. Acid: arid – but humour.

‘Ah – Van der Valk. Sit down, then.' He took a horizon-blue folder from the side of his desk, opened it, arranged it perfectly parallel to the edge of his blotter, and studied the opening paragraph of the contents. Short pause, legal but pregnant, giving me time to wonder what it was pregnant with.

‘I have been posed an unusual problem, and after thought I have reached an unusual conclusion. Incidentally, have you ever been in Drente?'

‘No, sir.'

‘I am thinking of sending you there.'

Big fright. I had a sudden vision of Louis XV saying in his icy voice, ‘Monsieur Maurepas, you will retire immediately to your estate in the country.' Damn it, I'll resign first.

‘It would amount to a temporary detachment, upon a temporary duty. An unusual duty, and delicate. Demanding tact as well as ability. Naturally you may refuse if you wish; it is not an order. But first you must study this folder.'

Leisurely, Master Sailer drew a little tube of throat pastilles from his breast pocket and popped one with dignity behind his wisdom tooth. There was a minute
twitch, but not by a millimetre did it bulge the straight-shaved cheek.

‘I have upon occasion,' slowly, ‘criticized your handling of circumstances. And I have had occasion to praise your – penetration. Since this affair calls for just that quality, I am asking you to use it – but with more discretion than you have been known to show.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘Among the officers of police within my jurisdiction, I thought of you.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘You would have, consequently, the complete confidence and support of the relevant authorities. Possessing that confidence, this support, you are capable of justifying my choice. As I estimate.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘Good. Drente, you are doubtless thinking, is not within my jurisdiction. This problem is now over six months old. It has – baffled is not too strong – the local municipal police of a small town called Zwinderen, and an inspector from Assen, and became subsequently the subject of inquiry by the State Recherche officers, who have produced a file of exhaustive investigation with little positive result. The file finally reached my colleague in Leeuwarden, who has sent it to me for study and possible comment. His conclusion was that a man from the city – with, that is to say, no local connexions or even knowledge – may overcome the apparent obstacles. I am prepared, conditional to your acceptance, to advise him that you may be the man for his task.'

What answer could one make to that?

‘I will now give you the relevant parts of this dossier for study.'

‘Can I take them home?'

‘Files here don't get taken home. They get studied here; they don't leave this building. There is a small room where
you will be undisturbed. Take the whole morning if you wish. I shall inform Mr Tak that I am holding you at my disposal. Come back when you have decided. You will have to consider whether you believe yourself competent to succeed where these other gentlemen' – with a sudden gleam – ‘got stuck in the bog.'

All I know about Drente is that it is up in the north-east corner of Holland, between Groningen and the German border. A poor province; the ground is not much good for agriculture. Wet, peaty sort of moorland. What in Ireland is called ‘the bog'. Oh!

It had taken me nearly five minutes to see that Sailer had made a joke.

Rather flabbergasted, I was led to a small menacing room, and the photostat girl brought me a cup of legal coffee. After reading the first twenty pages of general introductory remarks I gave a sort of moan. Why hadn't Arlette kept her mouth shut?

Twenty pages further I was thinking that this affair was a bit unfresh too. And that, doubtless, is why everybody seems to have thought of Van der Valk.

‘Well?'

‘Well, sir – I mean yes, sir. I accept, of course. May I state a few brief conclusions? Better say a few steps that I think it would be necessary to take?'

‘Certainly.'

‘There's been a lot of policemen. One more, and he won't get anywhere at all – more likely to get his eye blackened. I believe, sir, that if I go at all it should not be as a policeman. Am I allowed to make a suggestion?'

‘Yes.'

‘A state functionary, with some foolproof cover to explain the nosing about and questioning. A – a – I don't know – inspector of tax dividends or something. I think that nobody should know who or what I am.'