Criminal Conversation (6 page)

Van der Valk had found himself suddenly. He turned in the closed doorway, grinning, with his hands in his pockets.

“I have something funny to tell you.”

The face behind the desk was so impassive that he knew it was forcing itself, for just a second, to conceal a flicker of uncertainty.

“I see things, oddly enough, just the other way round. I find that the moment I walk into this consulting-room our positions are
reversed, that the patient here is you, and the doctor is myself. Nor do I think you are suffering from delusions. I find you to be suffering from a very banal illness, as banal as nervous fatigue would be to you. An illness upon which I am the specialist. Because dishonesty, you see, is an illness. I don't just mean telling lies, of course; lies are part of the human whole, and I know from my experience that asking a man to stop telling lies is like giving him an axe and telling him to chop his big toe off. Only a very rare man has the force to do without his lies, since they are, you see, an integral part of him. Your illness is more of an infection.”

“I must congratulate you on the vivacity of your illustrations,” murmured the mask.

“You know what makes people – intelligent, highly trained, very perceptive people, like yourself – commit crimes? Even violent crimes, like murders? I'm not talking about little foibles like sleeping with other people's wives. It is because they are wounded in a deep sensitive part, and it is so painful that their reaction is uncontrollable. Wounded in their mechanism of self-deception, an area too complex for us poor ignorant doctors to follow, mostly.”

“May I interrupt?”

“No, you mayn't. Remember your professional training. Let the deluded person run on; listen to him in patience.”

“By all means.” The smile had been dropped; he was glad to see that a look of slight polite boredom had been assumed.

“Now, as a doctor, suppose for a moment that I was carried here into your consulting-room with a bullet in my stomach that had penetrated the nerve centres, what treatment would you advise?”

“Surgery, my poor friend; that is what carpenters are for.”

“Just so. I am only a carpenter and on that account you despise me, but they have their uses as you will see. You're coming on nicely now; I'm glad I didn't underestimate your intelligence. Quite soon now you'll be realising that I'm about to operate on you for a bad infected wound to your self-esteem that is extremely dangerous to your whole life without swift treatment.”

There was a silence. Van der Valk supposed that it was the silence of a man collecting his courage rather than his wits. He had, after all, banked upon Post's being an extremely intelligent and sensitive person.

“You are beginning to realise,” he went on smilingly, “that this, at the moment, is not your consulting-room at all, but mine, and since an examination is plainly necessary to aid our diagnosis, we examine everything – in the examination-room.” Theatrically, he opened the door behind him, turned calmly, and walked in. There was no protest from the desk.

“The pieces of paper which you talk about so irrelevantly” – his voice floated back through the doorway – “are things used and needed by bums with no brains. As one intelligent man, you should be able to recognise another. Lots of electrical equipment, I see - you ought to be a skilful electrician, or am I guessing?”

“Yes,” came Post's quiet ironic voice this time, “but occasionally these devices' most successful use is in impressing the ignorant layman. I believe you have something of the same technique… colleague.”

Van der Valk had to laugh at that.

“Admirable point. Lovely garden you have. Ah, and this is where the confident, relaxed, co-operative patient lies on the couch – very comfortable too – and gets his ills diagnosed by skilful hands. Your fingertips are probably your chief weapon – am I wrong? The invisible antennae. On your branch of medicine I'm pretty ignorant, I'm bound to admit. We specialists are pretty much all the same, though; what do you know, for instance, about the diseases of the lung?”

“Practically nothing.”

“That's our trouble; we just can't keep up with modern science even if we were to spend all day reading up the newest literature. My, what a lovely bathroom; makes me feel unwashed as hell. Another psychological aid, I take it, to the patient's confidence in his recovery – or is it purely for your personal use? I must congratulate you on your taste in material objects. And on a very nice, very well
arranged house. We come out here, no doubt,” reappearing suddenly, with a broad beam of self-satisfaction.

Post was sitting still, placidly smoking a cigarette. Van der Valk sat down heavily in the chair opposite.

“I am an honest man,” he said. “I mustn't tell you I know yet exactly how to treat your case. My diagnosis isn't complete, I can see that. But of course, as always, recovery depends upon the patient in the end, hm? Since you are evidently going to help me, I have confidence in your recovery. Well, we are both busy men, and I mustn't take up more of your expensive time. But next time we meet I shall hope to find you on the right road; getting better.”

Post said nothing at all. Just smoked his cigarette in a mannered careful way, and looked at him amiably.

Outside on the pavement van der Valk shook his head at his own performance, so crude, so coarse, so uncivilised by comparison with Post's. I should be a fairground salesman, he thought, that's about my speed. Selling some quack cure – all in a pretty bottle to astounded villagers. Contains real gold, ladies and gentlemen, and only two-fifty the half litre. Van der Valk the tally-boy; live now and pay later. But there's no doubt, that's the approach with a civilised type like the good Dr van der Post. He felt mightily pleased with his awful self.

Next morning, back in the office, he was less inflated, less horribly pleased with himself, but still feeling lucky. It was undoubtedly the weather, that he enjoyed, that made everything light and bright around him, that gave him energy and speed, that protected him from the landslide of gloomy depression that generally followed an early success in one of his affairs. But no, really he couldn't help it, couldn't feel like a wooden police official, dependent on a mountain of administrative paper, surrounded by the querulous nagging of clowns like Chief Inspector Kan – not in this light that bathed Amsterdam in a dusty golden shimmer. The smell of green, of leaves, of shooting flowering bushes, was too strong, even conquering the sewer smell of the canal, and the inky-cardboardy smell of the office. And Mr Samson was on an island, and Scholten was in a tent, and that juggle-buggle of a Kan was lost somewhere in a perfect epidemic of autothefts. The autos seemed mostly to belong to German tourists; why was that? Was it simply that they contained a richer loot of money and passports, cameras and binoculars? – or was it some cunning notion perhaps master-minded by Cross-eyed Janus? Van der Valk didn't know and didn't care, and if he were Kan, he thought happily, he'd go to Zandvoort and lie on the beach, and watch the German tourists playing with their expensive beach toys, and think with content of the unfortunate police of Köln – even more swamped by the epidemic than they were here. Summer madness… August heat. Van der Valk, who had bought a paper bag
full of greengages on his way to work, wiped juice off his chin and felt happy. He had to go and wash; when he got back he felt like making a nuisance of himself and telephoned Mr Carl Merckel on his private line.

“Speaking.” As though he didn't know; that grey, guarded, neutral voice.

“Here van der Valk. I'd like to see you. Before, during or after lunch – not knowing your appointments I leave it open.”

“You have something conclusive to say to me?”

“I've a slight case of sunstroke. Say the word.”

“It does not sound as though I have much choice,” vexed.

“No,” blandly.

“I have no lunch appointment. One o'clock precisely, in the Chinese restaurant opposite the Concert Building.”

Good heavens, thought van der Valk, what extraordinary precautions to avoid being seen. He knew it well, an unpretentious place needing repainting, but the food was good; being much frequented by the musicians from over the road it had to be.

“Sweet and sour everything – and lots of shrimp crackers,” he told the boy in the white jacket.

“Well?” said Merckel, still sounding vexed.

“I've taken up the matter you would probably have preferred me not to take up.”

“How can you possibly know, or claim to know, what I prefer?”

“Why, I'll admit to you that the overwhelming impression I had when we met was of someone who wishes to avoid a responsibility and who makes a criminal indictment with every effort to minimise its possible truth or even likelihood.”

“You do not know me well, I see. Enquire among those of your associates who know something of the business world whether I am afraid of responsibility.”

“If you had not considerable moral courage, I agree, you would have kept silence altogether,” lightly. “There must be many things you would not be happy to have me know.”

“I distinguished, I recall, between the private, I presume discreet knowledge of a police officer under oath, and the public, uninformed insinuations of the press.”

“That is precisely the position of my new acquaintance Dr van der Post. He does not mind my asking, guessing, even knowing all sorts of things as long as it is kept inside the walls of his consulting-room. What might be said outside would be a much naughtier idea, but he knows that I have no convincing evidence. He realised, however, that however disagreeable company I may be, I am a great deal preferable to the press.”

“Are you telling me that my suppositions about this man are true but that you either cannot or do not propose to do anything about it?”

“Some of it is certainly true, I think. All of it even, possibly. What you suggest might easily turn out to be the case. Wouldn't be unheard of. I might even say it happens every day,” tranquilly, with his mouth full of shrimp cracker.

Merckel laid down his soup-spoon, wiped his mouth meticulously, and turned a cold eye on the policeman.

“You give me an impression – I have no wish to sound offensive – of being decidedly lukewarm.”

“I am lukewarm. I would warm up if I knew more things that I think have been kept from me hitherto. Have I, Mr Merckel, all the information you can give me? Suppose, for instance, I imagined the likely hypothesis that your wife had received blackmail threats also. And that she had gone to her doctor, perhaps insisting that he remove the source of pressure and pain?”

Merckel looked, surprisingly, extremely shocked, as if this had never occurred to him.

“She has a very strong sense of values,” he said sharply. “She would have come to me, knowing that I would give her every support and that I would stand by her no matter what.”

“No doubt. But in her loyalty to you, she might think that none of this must reach you. That your position – more, your integrity, your honour; you have a very strong sense of honour – must not be
smeared or even touched. Assume by all means that she would not think of any violent means of retaliating. She would then pay blackmail money, thinking it safer and easier to stand for the squeeze. How much could she pay without your noticing?”

“It's unheard of,” muttered Merckel furiously.

“You see, it's not enough to insist on meeting me where no one would recognise you. It has not even occurred to you that I am, in different circles, I grant, as widely known a figure in this town as you are. Here, for example – full of musicians – I might easily be recognised. I might even be seen by someone who would have very little trouble, and might easily think that little bit worth taking, uncovering your own identity. You will have to get accustomed to numerous ideas, including that of my questioning your wife.”

Merckel gave him a slow look. Not furious or unhappy, but appraising, as though he were sizing up a man who had asked him for the loan of money.

“Well, Mr van der Valk,” he said at last. “I see that my notion that you would not show vigour was wide of the mark. You have evidently seen Dr van der Post and are not, apparently, afraid of what he could do to your career. What conclusions you have really drawn from this visit are not my business. I now ask you whether you have thought what I can do to your career. As you remarked when I first met you, I am acquainted with a number of persons prominent in public life.”

“Yet you still came to me. Perhaps you were sure that we would be careful not to probe too deep. If we were able to pin a crime - any crime – on the good doctor, that would destroy his reputation and you would be content. But the idea of your wife being a likely suspect of a possible murder – and it was you, Mr Merckel, who first mentioned the word – we would be too tactful to let that occur to us. Of course. You got the wrong man.”

Merckel smiled contemptuously.

“You have as mistaken an impression of me as most people,” drily. “I am pleased that you do not allow yourself to be intimidated; if you did you would be of singularly little use. If you wish to talk to my wife do so by all means; I do not stand in your way. I ask you
to respect my original wish for discretion and not to mention my name, even to her.”

“Why shouldn't your name be mentioned?”

“That concerns me.”

“I'll respect that,” careful to make no protest or further query.

Lot of things I don't understand in that quarter as well, he thought, having a little stroll; the trouble with Chinese food is that one invariably eats too much of it. I think I would almost have preferred it if Merckel had made more objection to my questioning his wife. He sounds pretty sure of her. Still…

He had to get an auto; Merckel lived out in Aerdenhout, on the far side of Haarlem. One of the creamy residential districts of Holland; elegant quiet streets lined with trees, down which purred elegant quiet autos, lined with bank-notes; the plebeian Volkswagen, in these streets, made a noise like the umbrella of classical tradition dropped on the floor of the British Museum. The streets wound aristocratically in and out of one another, noiseless but for the tocking whirr of lawnmowers: the villas all looked the same and all rather ugly, with cedars, plenty of grass lush from the automatic sprinkler, a slight tendency to stained glass and bulbous grandiosities, and a patrician disregard of street-numbers. He had leisure to admire a good deal of gaudy garden furniture strewn about among the cedars before he found the right house, and the usual Spanish maid to take his card, on the back of which he had scribbled, ‘I have just had lunch with your husband'.