Over the High Side (31 page)

‘Please stop asking these rhetorical questions,' said the judge crossly, ‘you sound exactly like an advocate with a poor case.'

‘That's exactly what I am'

‘Well please spare me the flapping sleeves,' short. ‘I'm a jurist, not a jury.'

‘Oh Jaysus,' said Van der Valk.

‘What's that?' startled.

‘It's what the Irish say when they meet a situation that is inextricably ballsed up:'

‘I propose,' primly, ‘to disinextricate. I say, that's quite a splendid neologism.'

‘The French talk all the time about disintoxication. I could do with some of both.'

‘We'll confront this precious pair,' said the magistrate, cheering up at the thought.

*

Senator and Mrs Lynch paid a visit to Holland. The instruction showed every sign of being long and painful. Each of the magistrate's questions, each of Denis's fumbling, foggy answers had to be laboriously translated by the sworn interpreter, besides being written down in Dutch by the greffier. This was bad enough without being interrupted all the time by Mr Dillon, who started every phrase by ‘With great respect, Monsieur le Juge', had acquired a Dutch accomplice as punctilious as himself, and was all set for an immense amount of
sleeve-flapping, by proxy or otherwise, in front of the assize court.

Van der Valk met Lynch in the corridor outside the judge's office, after a weary and fruitless interview with Denis.

‘Appallingly numb,' said Lynch with a slow, patient sadness. ‘He doesn't communicate at all.'

‘Ah,' said Van der Valk with sympathy. For the last fortnight he had not thought about the affair at all, had indeed been busy with other things and was in the Palace of Justice on a totally different errand. He was also in a hurry, but the least he could do was stop and be polite. ‘I'm afraid he's a bit disillusioned with the world.' He knew that things had not gone easily. Anna had told her tale and stuck to it. She had certainly not been seduced by Denis. Nor had she seduced him. No, she hadn't put ideas in his head. She had felt nothing but a sort of maternal kindness. She might have been misunderstood but no she had not behaved flirtatiously. It had simply never occurred to her that Denis could have killed her husband. Well, yes, perhaps she had concealed the truth. No she hadn't told lies; well, possibly lies by omission, but she had not wanted to bring the family into disrepute. She had been sorry for Denis. Yes, it was true that he had poured out to her a long tale about her sister Anastasia. She hadn't believed it at first. She had been much shocked. Yes, perhaps she had mentioned something of the matter to her husband. She had felt sure that he would know how to handle it. She had felt so overwhelmed by the tragic consequences that she had determined to suppress the whole thing.

‘Cold-blooded bitch,' muttered Van der Valk. ‘What did Denis say?'

‘Nothing, Dillon tells me. Just sat, with a miserable sort of little smile. Refused to challenge her at all. I'm convinced myself that even if she didn't seduce him – or allow him to be familiar with her, which comes to the same thing – she flirted with him and encouraged him, and that it was a sense of guilt that sealed her lips.'

‘She took me in at the time, I'm afraid.'

‘Yes,' said Lynch bitterly, ‘butter simply doesn't melt in her mouth.'

‘You showed me much kindness, besides fairness, in Ireland,' said Van der Valk suddenly. ‘I hope you'll allow me to invite you to dinner, and Madame of course.'

Lynch looked at him with a humble simplicity he found touching.

‘We'll be glad to,' he said.

*

Arlette was nervous about this, and on her best behaviour.

‘I'm not used to entertaining the grands bourgeois. I'm afraid they'll find my kitchen a very peasant affair. Well, tant pis pour eux.'

She produced smoked eel, Holland's glory, with an endive salad. With this, Riesling, which she got from the grower in Dambach-la-Ville, a tiny town in Alsace, not far from the ‘little house' they had bought to retire to when he got his pension. After this she had daube, because she came from Provence: a piece of beef braised in an earthenware pot, its lid sealed on with flour-and-water paste.

‘But what gives this marvellous flavour?' asked Mrs Lynch.

‘A small piece of orange-peel,' blushing slightly, ‘and a very tiny bit of marjolaine. I'll show you if you want.' With this came pink plonk from Cassis, bought in Albert Heijn's Supermarket probably though she wasn't going to admit it.

As vegetable, fennel, done with a slice of marrow.

As dessert, a grand stroke, another ‘Holland's Glory'; frangipane wrapped in flaky pastry, made by the baker, and Taittinger champagne, madly expensive she confessed in private later. She got a great deal of praise, all genuine, and blushed some more, with pleasure this time. She looks very pretty, thought Van der Valk proudly, and smells perfectly delicious, of cleanness and Madame Grès, and a scrap sweaty from the kitchen which adds piquancy. Mrs Lynch, nice woman, said ‘You're going to let me help with the washing-up,' and the two women disappeared into the kitchen, from which came a smell of coffee, earnest female conversation, and very unexpectedly, shrieks of laughter.

‘What are we?' asked Lynch suddenly. ‘Who are we?' Van
der Valk, ashamed at offering rather a plebeian cigar to his illustrious guest, struck a match.

‘It's a sensation common to everyone arrested for a misdeed of whatever sort. Whether one has committed a really ingenious fraud worth a million dollars, or simply pinched a bottle of milk the result is the same. Loss of identity, a feeling of no longer belonging. An impersonal, indifferent society has seized one. It is bloodthirsty, because it is frightened, and must appease strange gods like the Balance of Payments. The high priests are quite kind and civilized – it is rare now for them to be cruel or even very vindictive – but they tie you down just the same to the stone and wait for the sun to rise.'

‘Having been one of those high priests,' said Lynch in his slow way, ‘belonged to the caste, having been respected and even honoured … To retire from public life is easy enough; to retire from the image one has fashioned, to take off the mask – it's harder; one had come to believe in it oneself.'

‘To retire from anything at all would be a great mistake, I believe. You feel after being in that awful Palace of Justice as though it were you on trial. Put another way when you think about Denis you feel that you should be on trial, that you deserve it quite as much as he does. A pretty sound instinct. Nobody knows who should be on trial here. Anna – Stasie – Martinez himself. The whole pack collectively; Collins and all the lovely ladies of Belgrave Square and even Eddy Flanagan who precipitated the whole thing in a way by closing his eyes and pretending it wasn't happening. Even me – my conscience isn't clear in this matter. We're all standing by the dyke with our thumb in the hole.' Lynch looked at him curiously, and decided to say nothing.

‘That picture you have in your office,' Van der Valk went on, ‘the man playing cards. You and I have the advantage of being experienced card players. We know when to go softly, and when to shake the big stick. We know how to lull and how to cajole. We know how to frighten people with the big bristling eyebrows and the stony little eye – to make them lose their confidence. While Denis – at that age one is so utterly vulnerable. No craft, no cold blood, no reserves to draw on at all. Courage has to make up for everything.'

Mrs Lynch, who had come back with Arlette and the coffee, had been standing quietly listening.

‘Is there any answer, Mr Van der Valk, and can you give it us? Why did Denis have to commit this act, this gratuitous piece of violence? What forced him – what was irresistible? We have asked ourselves the question repeatedly, and we haven't found any answer. And we had thought we had some knowledge of the world.'

Van der Valk thought. Arlette gave him his coffee cup. Everyone sat immobile. He felt a fool.

‘I can give you a sort of answer. It won't satisfy you. It doesn't satisfy me. The judge will think he knows. The lawyers and the doctors will have answers. Theirs are better, probably.'

‘I'd rather yours. Whatever it is…'

‘I think it's a sort of challenge thrown down to the boys which they can't resist. A danger – a mortal danger – which must be defied. I suppose you remember reading about the motorbike gang in California – the Hell's Angels. They covered themselves and their clothes in filth, they painted themselves with obscene slogans to show that they rejected society, that they were putting themselves outside it.'

‘But –'

‘I told you it wouldn't satisfy you.'

‘Go on.'

‘You say that there's no comparison with Denis. No, but there's something in common – all these boys – they've only courage; it's the only way they have of proving themselves men. If I chose this example it is because they had simplified and stylized their lives into a clear formal pattern. They had these big powerful bikes, the one thing they seemed to value, to care for. Everything else treated with contempt and derision – men, women, money, shops, institutions of any sort, but the bike carefully cleaned, polished, tuned, beautifully cared for. Sort of symbol of purity, liberty, honour. And then somehow it seems that it's not enough. I don't know … you take the big bike, very fast, exceptionally powerful, you feel it in your arms, gripped between your thighs – you master it. And then somehow the challenge is not enough. There is speed, there is danger, but it's not enough. They aren't satisfied. They
have to push it faster and faster, on curves, on slippery roads, in bad visibility, at night… anything.'

‘Rosemeyer,' said Arlette suddenly, remembering.

‘Yes, Rosemeyer.' Lynch ánd his wife looked at each other, but asked for no explanation. Mrs Lynch at least knew that Arlette understood, which was enough. ‘I have two boys,' she had said suddenly, in the kitchen…

‘More than that, even,' went on Van der Valk laboriously.

‘They have to destroy the bike – the one thing … and themselves with it. If you go off a big bike at a hundred miles an hour there's not much left of you. If you go on pushing on a curve there comes a moment when the centrifugal force takes over, when you feel the back sliding away and know you can no longer stop it.' He was looking at the wall straight in front of him, trying to feel, to understand.

‘They seem to seek that moment, to desire it passionately, that moment when the bike takes over and they know they're helpless and that they may have only two or three seconds to live. They've a name for it, which they all understand because they've all been there. They call it going over the high side.'

‘And Denis …?'

‘I don't know, I tell you. That's how it seems to me, that's all.'

‘Over the high side,' repeated Lynch slowly. ‘I think I see. I think even that I've been there myself.'

‘I think we all have,' said Van der Valk gently.

Nicolas Freeling (1927–2003), born Nicolas Davidson, was a British crime novelist, best known as the author of the Van der Valk series of detective novels; a television series based on the character was produced for the British ITV network by Thames Television during the 1970s, and revived in the 1990s.

Freeling's
The King of the Rainy Country
received a 1967 Edgar Award, from the Mystery Writers of America, for Best Novel. He also won the Gold Dagger of the Crime Writers' Association.

In 1968 his novel
Love in Amsterdam
was adapted as the film
Amsterdam Affair
directed by Gerry O'Hara and starring Wolfgang Kieling as Van Der Valk.

Discover books by Nicolas Freeling published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/NicholasFreeling

A Long Silence
Criminal Conversation
Double-Barrel
Over the High Side
One Damn Thing After Another
Strike Out Where Not Applicable
The King of the Rainy Country
The Widow
Tsing-Boum

For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain references to missing images.

This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP

First published in Great Britain in 1971 by Hamish Hamilton

Copyright © 1971 Nicolas Freeling

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