Over the High Side (16 page)

All these flesh-pots do not conceal exceeding trickiness situation. Nobody pulls gun on me, but getting arm twisted in variety subtle Irish ways. So go about being blunt & Dutch & unimaginative – have to or would dissolve into tangled webs of fantasy … Have to do something clever, but no idea what.

Contact sound Irish pleeceman, bright but can't help me really, am pretty isolated. Thought of one indecent scheme unlikely, to commend self to embassy, whose one idea is to see my back, preferably falling over high cliff, by choice today but would settle for tomorrow.

Van der Valk was sitting at a little writing-table in imitation antique style of the type loved by expensive hotels. Their spindly legs are never quite even; this is to be remedied by one of the books of paper matches with the hotel's beastly name written on it, which serve no other purpose. In the drawer of this horrible object he had found writing paper and envelopes, as well as little brochures headed This Week in Town, telling one all about the Flower Show and the Folklore Dance Festival, and laundry lists in four languages, helpful if one badly wants to know what the German is for bra.

He was not washed and seemed to be wearing a mask of fried egg; it was nice to be dallying about writing a dutiful letter to one's wife, prefatory to lavish splashy bath, luxuriously knowing that the chambermaid will clean up after one – this is indeed practically the only pleasure one has in hotels, and he made the most of it. He was preparing for a leisurely day, in the course of which he had to write his tiresome report, bring it to the embassy, there no doubt to be asked several mostly foolish and all unnecessary questions, and then go for a quiet gossipy session with Inspector Flynn, which he enjoyed. After which one would do more work on his plot to squeeze the seductive Mrs Flanagan till her pips squeaked …

‘That pipsqueak,' was Flynn's word for Denis Lynch, but when asked what it meant he was vague. ‘Much the same as a whippersnapper.' Van der Valk, snared in the subtleties of the English language, was not much further. He yawned: high time he shaved (the combination of fried egg and bristles was nasty) but he would just finish his letter first. A knock came at the door.

‘Yes?'

Pageboy, grinning – what was the pipsqueak grinning at? His pyjamas, probably (chosen by Arlette, a bit psychedelic).

‘Porter says he's very sorry sir, bit of a mixup sorting the mail and he found another letter seems to be for you – that all right sir?'

Van der Valk grunted, looked for sixpence, couldn't find one, was damned if he'd give this horrid child a shilling, nodded vaguely, and was instantly absorbed in this letter. Aha, that explained the pageboy's grin. Extremely cheap envelope, ballpoint pen, illiterate handwriting of someone not knowing any Dutch. He handled it with some care, since there might be a thumbprint.

‘Inspector Van Devalk, Sheridan Hotel, Stephens Green, Dublin.'

Postmarked Dublin late the night before. Hm. Inside was a half-sheet of cheap lined paper.

Get out, we dont want foreingers coming smearing our people, we know what to do with Them. You got 24 hrs to leave then you Get it stay away from the Gards they wont Help you annyway. This is the Last and Only warning.

Up the Rebels

‘What d'you make of this?' Mr Flynn examined the missive and smiled his crooked oblique smile that made Van der Valk wonder just a little if he were being laughed at.

‘Want it sent to the lab?'

‘If you think that will help us.'

‘Mm, midnight last night – General Post Office. Paper's Woolworth, so's the ballpoint by the look of it. Irish handwriting learned at the Christian Brothers. Van de – that should be Van der shouldn't it – not what a Dutch person would write.'

‘Could be faked though. Common trick to put in spelling mistakes in an attempt to mislead.'

‘Surely. But look at the text. Inverting the n and g in foreigner is commonplace, means nothing – but anny is a Dublin fault based on pronunciation. Gards is guards in
English and Garda in Irish and the feller got his feet crossed.' It was the first time he had seen Flynn work – the vague joky manner had been discarded.

‘You mean it could be faked but not by someone Dutch, say.'

‘That's about it. Hardly your shiny new girl-friend.'

‘Doesn't seem exactly Senator Lynch's style either. Any ideas – sorry, anny?'

Flynn snorted.

‘Dublin humour,' shrugging. ‘Might have nothing really to do with this job at all – just a loony. Dublin's full of loonies – if you were to put them all in Grangegorman sure the queue would stretch from here to Athlone. I could probably find out given time – it's hardly important.'

‘For the trouble you'd be put to …' agreed Van der Valk. ‘What's these rebels?'

‘A slogan, quite meaningless, like shouting heil hitler, or that ho ho ho lark. We get thousands of these things – someone perhaps who saw you here, or with me.'

‘Seems to know something about me though – this phrase about smearing: would that imply some knowledge?'

‘Knowledge of somebody with nowt better to do than flap his ears in some pub – who maybe knows me. Quite a few people have reason to,' with the rusty iron smile. ‘We might have made a remark or two what could be thought indiscreet, that is if they hadn't been so general. Whatever, it's no great task to reason that you're here on some kind of job and not just for pleasure.'

‘If you're not impressed I've certainly no reason to be.'

‘Certain amount of xenophobia anywhere, in't it? – distrust of any outside influence or seeming interference – kind of thing a loony makes a lot of. We'll keep it, just in case huh? I'll send it down the lab – do them no harm; bit of comic relief. By the way, got a bit of news for you; Senator Lynch took a plane for Rome this morning. Routine information from the airport: booked openly in his name, and there's nothing unusual in that; he's often away off to such like places and it won't even rate two lines in the paper.'

‘I saw Lynch as you know. Made me promise hands off the
boy but he'll see what's what and will have the honesty to tell me, and I took his word because if I trust him I hope he'll have no hesitation in trusting me. He said, “We're in each others' hands.”'

‘You don't surprise me a bit. That's his style.'

‘Got an invitation to come to dinner in his house day after tomorrow – by the way that rebels thing came later, but it was in the same post; I checked with the porter. Got stuck under another envelope, he said.'

Flynn touched the envelope delicately.

‘Slightly sticky,' he agreed, nodding. ‘Fell in the jam-dish or something.' He bent down and smelled with his long bony nose, looking like one of those long sad dogs that hunt things. Beagles, wondered Van der Valk? Bassets?

‘Guinness,' said Flynn grinning, ‘or not to put a fine point, stout. Can conclude envelope is perhaps maybe been written on a pub table, like, where someone clumsy had slopped like with a jar. Loony. Who in their right mind goes writing letters in a pool of stout? Nobody you know.'

He was mistaken, though, because Van der Valk got slugged that evening in Seapoint Avenue.

*

He had had, as he feared, a boring day with the embassy. They didn't think the situation quite altogether satisfactory (nor did he). They weren't very pleased with the rate of progress (nor was he). It was altogether unpleasantly vague, blackly unpromising, and decidedly disquieting (he quite agreed). He must be exceedingly cautious in any dealings with Mrs Flanagan, since any suggestion of guilty knowledge or concealed information or whatnot could only be confirmed by this lad Lynch, who was in Rome hm, and anyway whose sayings now or in a hypothetical future were hardly gospel writ hm. So he'd better be exceedingly prudent, because if there were complaints about interference with the freedom of the subject, or false and malicious rumour, or god save the mark wrongful arrest (though this was prudishly and superstitiously referred to as ‘whatnot') THEN there'd be hell to pay in the Netherlands Embassy my god, it didn't bear thinking of.

He had a stronger desire than usual to tell them to go and get stuffed.

It was nightfall again when he got off the bus at Temple Hill and strolled down to get to Belgrave Square by the back door. He didn't have any ideas, and was strolling in an effort to concentrate his mind, which made him more oblivious than usual to immediate surroundings. Fictional detectives, he was thinking, made deductions. Real detectives got (or were supposed to get) most of their results from informers, meagrely paid for by a semi-secret, somewhat squalid and decidedly small fund appropriated by Authority for this purpose. That was all very well if one belonged to the more glamorous and publicized little clans with fancy names, like the Vice Squad or the Anti-Gang Brigade, but he was only a poor provincial policeman, and had no secret fund. What did one do then? Well, one did the best one could with petty jealousy and fear. With professional criminals one tried to manoeuvre the weakest of the group into splitting in order to receive preferential treatment. One tried to take advantage of a Conflict of Interest; hah. And with these family affairs what did one do? They were much, much, much worse. One got really squalid. One sank into a web of gossip, scandals and pettiness, working on such promising facts as Uncle Henry's squabble with Tante Mathilde that grew out of bad feeling concerning the inheritance from Great-Uncle Charles (who had quarrelled with Grandfather in 1910 over an investment that turned out sour).

He had still two of the lovely ladies to approach. What did they know, and what would they say? What had Anna written to them? What had Stasie told them? By now they knew there was a Dutch policeman floating about, with an obstinate, unaccountable interest in Denis Lynch. There was also Mr Flanagan. What would his reaction be to a continuation of the hard-nosed tactic to which Van der Valk had pinned some faith – had to, because he had so little else – that of saying bluntly that come now, there was some relationship between his virtuous and charming wife and this equally charming virtuous boy and what the hell was it, and even more important what did Mr Flanagan think of it? He would continue to be simple, stubborn, and stupid.

He had been alone at the bus stop. Nobody had been following him that he was aware of. But somebody had been waiting for him in Seapoint Avenue who couldn't have known beforehand he would go that way. Had someone in a car played hide and seek with the bus out from the town, dodged on ahead, lurked about in shadowy areas where the street lighting was thinner spaced?

He had felt a sudden movement close behind him; too close, so that he dodged and sidestepped, a lot too slowly: as he began an about-face and parrying kinds of movement a heavy lump of something hit him a glancing blow on the side of the head, skidding along his jaw and descending painfully on to his shoulder. Heavy enough, and close enough to his temple to knock him silly for a second or two. He had had a heavy push immediately in the small of the back, gone tumbling tipsily into the roadway, tripping and sprawling in the gutter and hitting his head on the asphalt so that he had gone out for proper then, and known nothing else, heard no scream of brakes, never known whether a car hit him.

He had come round feeling beastly sick, with a helpful young man and his girl friend manhandling his limp knees clumsily into the awkward back of a small car. He had been too muzzy to answer any of their excited questions. They had driven him to St Michael's Hospital Dun Laoghaire, heaved him into outpatients, announced loudly that a gentleman had been run over, and left, mercifully, having utterly confused any subsequent effort to discover what happened.

Little he cared at the time. He slumped dully on a bench covered in plastic, where there was something sticky. Blood, possibly, or had a child been sucking a lollipop, or had somebody slopped stout, and a barman given a hasty wipe-round with a dirty dishcloth? No, this was a hospital, and a hard-handed nurse was cleaning his grazed forehead with cotton wool dipped in ether, beastly stuff. He couldn't think, felt vilely soggy, and had to vomit anyway; the stink of ether was overpowering.

‘Sorry, I've got to go and be sick.'

‘Here, be sick in this, don't try to walk.' Sympathetic nurse holding him, seeing he didn't fall down the hole.

‘Nothing too dreadful there,' a male voice said. ‘Just a bump. A bit muzzy in the head, a bit bluggy round the mental faculties; drink this.'

Drink-this was sal volatile in water, nice old-fashioned remedy.

‘No internal injuries.' The voice got home to where it belonged, a brisk rugby-playing giant of an interne: his head had cleared.

‘That hurt? No? Or that? Or that? Good. Or that? Or that?'

‘Ow.'

‘Ah yes, that's the collarbone. Fragile. Simple fracture, no need for an x-ray. Not too terrible sure it isn't, all things considered. Stepped off the curb I dare say without looking to see if a car was coming, terrible the traffic is nowadays. Ah, a foreign gentleman, now that explains it, you'll be used to the cars going the other way, isn't it now? Sling, nurse, bit of a pad under the arm there. Couple of codeines for the headache. Slight shock, nothing much, give us the wrist again a sec – hundred and five and steadying down, that's O.K. then, not to worry. You're a healthy great big feller; be right again in no time. Seen lots worse in a rugby match.'

‘Wouldn't you like to lie down now?' asked the nice nurse.

‘I'm all right, sister, thanks – could I get a taxi to bring me home?'

‘What happened to you then?' asked the night porter, full of sympathy.

‘I'm afraid I stepped rather stupidly off the pavement and a car glanced me. It's nothing much.' Nobody had noticed that his injuries were a bit oddly placed: the story satisfied everybody. Presumably, that had been the idea.

‘Sure that's awful now. Terrible the traffic is, terrible. Some of them bastards got no discipline at all, none whatever, tear along they do, should see them all parked outside here, taxis only it says in letters as big as your head and do they take a blind bit of notice do they hell, forgive the expression sir, I'll work the lift for you. Goo' night now: sleep well.'