Over the High Side (9 page)

The food was a blow. Pretentious but poor; one just never knew, recalling how badly he had eaten too in Marseilles: he put himself outside a strapping big meal for all that, nice and slow, studying his street map the while, had Irish coffee – he was going to do all the right things – and went happily to bed having learned several useful things already, like ‘Avoid soup', ‘The cake is too sweet', and similar slogans in favour of tea, whisky, and of course oysters. He took a pile of paperback shockers to bed – let this holiday mood last as long
as it could – and had great difficulty getting out of bed next morning, but was cheered to find that everyone else in Ireland did too. The thought of the Netherlands Embassy dispelled the holiday mood, and cast a slight chill across breakfast, too.

It was only five minutes away; he could observe the Georgian houses which Arlette had lectured about. Very beautiful indeed, or would have been had they not been disastrously turned into offices. The Netherlands Embassy was as bad as any, a fact that did not surprise him in the slightest. Mr Slavenburg had the cheek to keep him waiting, and when he did get in there was a distant manner, a strong flavour of his being likely to create Incidents. He got a chilly white handshake, a plastic chair, and a cup of weak tea. The flag was being kept flying all over the shop with Leerdam glass and Philips Electrics, not to speak of the tea.

Mr Slavenburg was pear-shaped, overshaved, and smelling of Cardin-for-Men. Van der Valk was not surprised at the hostility: all functionaries have a holy horror of interference from Another Department. Being Dutch, this one was not likely to speak openly of the Procureur General as ‘that silly little man back there', but you could see that he thought it, and moreover that he wanted you to notice that.

‘Well – er – Commissaire. I understand you'll be here for a little time. Your – er – investigation seems to touch people living here. Now Senator Lynch – I do hope you have understood that he's not the person to ask bluntly where he was on Tuesday evening.' This was so crude – and so obviously only dented amour-propre – that Van der Valk held his tongue. ‘Well,' sighing, ‘you give me your reports, and I'll have them typed.'

‘I'm afraid I have instructions that my reports are to be confidential. A copy goes to the Ambassador, of course. Verbally though I understand that I have to keep you in touch, and of course this Mr Flynn. I would though be grateful for the loan of a typewriter and carbons: I can do the reports in the hotel room and take pains to bother nobody.'

‘As for these Dutch people…'

‘I'm not going to cause you any trouble,' firmly. ‘I can't guarantee that they won't come storming round here complaining
of being harassed but you'll have to take my word it won't be true.'

The diplomat was tapping his teeth with a paper-knife, seeing if they were sound enough to bite policemen.

‘That's all very well, but what guarantee have we that you won't – quite possibly with no blame attaching you but you aren't familiar with the ways of thought here – that you won't get into a false position?' Had he been briefed to the effect that Van der Valk headed at false positions like bears at a beehive?

‘I take it that this is the reason I will be giving the Ambassador a copy of my reports. Avoiding false positions – isn't that what this place is for?'

A level look and a level voice.

‘No need to get hostile.'

‘I thought I had felt a certain hostility.'

‘Well, that may be so – and if it is so then I'm sorry.'

‘Well, I was rude – and so am I sorry. The truth is that I'm over-sensitive about this because of course I'm not myself happy about it. I'm here to try and find a shred of proof for a hypothesis that sounds strong enough but – and that's a false position by definition.'

Slavenburg softened and put his elbows on the table, displaying hairy wrists and a lot of gold cuff-link, but it did make him more human.

‘I don't want to force unwelcome advice upon you,' with more sympathy. ‘I did wonder, and I'm speaking quite informally, whether you knew the role – just for instance – that religion, say, plays in this country. Are you by the way Catholic? Good, that's a point acquired. You might know for example that divorce doesn't exist here, but you might underestimate the role played by the hierarchy, diminished but still very puissant, in public as well as private, hm, proceedings. You need to realize that this is a small town in many ways, rather provincial – and extremely touchy. Now take this boy Lynch: he went to an exclusive boarding-school on the English model. All the parents know each other. I'm only, shall I say, opening a perspective. The slightest things are known here, seized on as tea-party conversations and a chat under the
dryer – commented on, and criticized. Beware of that criticism. Beware of a national pastime which is coat-trailing; beware above all of comparisons with the way we do things in Holland.'

‘Which is in general deplorable,' and regretted it because the fellow was pinked.

‘I must remind you that you are a public servant and that people will judge your country by your behaviour. You have – it is said – something of a reputation for indiscretion.'

It was undoubtedly a test, to see how he reacted to coattrailing.

‘That is quite true, and I suppose quite often deserved. But I didn't come here because I wanted to. I came because I was sent, and I wasn't sent on account of a reputation for indiscretion. However, don't think I have an inflated notion of my importance. In this job it's important to remember one's nothing but a tool. So are you if you'll forgive my saying so.'

Mr Slavenburg had a self-controlled expression, as of someone stung by a bee just as he is being presented to royalty, but he managed a nod.

‘You're no relation to the bridge-player?' asked Van der Valk politely, getting up.

‘No. I do play, but only socially.'

‘Ah. I only play marbles. In the gutter; that's where I was born, in Amsterdam. Learned to cheat at an early age. That's the difference between us; if you cheated you'd be expelled from school, whereas at marbles one has to cheat; it's expected. We are different kinds of tools, called for as wanted. Good luck, now, as they say in Ireland.'

*

From the Netherlands Embassy in Merrion Square to Dublin Castle in Dame Street is not very far, not much over ten minutes for an active man, or not much over fifteen for Van der Valk, who had an old bullet wound in the hip. But it is another world.

He was not at all disconcerted – on the contrary, he was reassured – to find that it isn't a castle at all, but a courtyard surrounded by blocks of exceedingly dingy offices: to him this
was a good deal cosier than the pretty, well-painted, much window-boxed house in Merrion Square (Georgian, mannered – a town place for Sir Walter Elliot). The smell was dearly familiar – stone, dust, guggly old central heating, cardboard, damp umbrellas and not very clean lavatories. He was perfectly at home immediately.

Detective-Inspector Flynn was tall, thin and countrified, with the bucolic look that is so useful (in hardly any other profession is looking intelligent such a disadvantage). He had a soft voice and a gentle manner, large hands and large feet, shabby clothes, a tweed cap (new, checked, shocking) and all the time in the world. He might have been about fifty and Van der Valk trusted him instantly.

‘So there we are. Will you find these cigarettes nice, I wonder? And we've got to have a talk, um. And about Senator Terence Lynch, so help us. And him.'

‘He needs it too?'

‘Sure he needs it as much as us if all I hear about him be true or even the quarter of it.'

‘You are a man in my heart.'

‘After my heart it would be. Why after, now, I wonder.'

‘My English is I'm afraid very bad.'

‘Your English will do fine then. Amn't I now just out the bog, and don't speak any languages at all. Now you'll be speaking the French and German too, I make no doubt.'

This was coat-trailing.

‘Yes, that will do me no end of good, being able to speak German to Senator Lynch.'

‘Sure he's a greatly travelled man, and maybe he speaks the German too; I wouldn't know. D'you want very much to talk with him?'

‘I rather talk with you, or listen better, not quack quack what I nothing know from. Here to have your advice, not give mine.'

‘There now, you'll get on famously with him. He's a businessman. Broad-minded. Goes all over Europe. Represents us in a heap of these international discussions, don't you know, disarmament and all that. Now what,' meditating, ‘does Ireland be wanting with disarmament? Sure we've six tanks
and maybe two old fighting planes we got cheap from the English in nineteen fifty-three.'

‘You don't take Senator Lynch very seriously?'

‘Ho yes I do then, because he's like me, he looks a damn fool but isn't. But about his son now – maybe he is. A nice boy, I'm told; I don't know him. Some say he's no good – I wouldn't know that, neither. Senator Lynch is no doubt of it a proud man, and he wouldn't like to hear people say his boy wasn't any good. Which the boy is as good as any other, do you follow me, but he may be in a bit of a jumble, don't you know. I'm told there's some as says he's no use. Isn't it a lamentable human failing now, to go about saying things are No Good, and isn't it just an excuse now for us, being ourselves too lazy and too uncharitable to take a bit of trouble and inform ourselves properly instead of repeating a slipshod load a guff?'

Van der Valk was relieved to find that he understood English very well indeed.

‘The Senator – I talk too much but just put a stop to me any time – he's accustomed to making a success of things. Good businessman like I said. A' course we none of us like to admit failure. He's maybe an unusually sensitive and intelligent man, like yourself. If he doesn't see things it's not maybe that he hasn't noticed them. Maybe he doesn't want to see them, being human and imperfect, like the rest of us.

‘As for this boy Denis now – been to an expensive school, been to the Trinity College, and he's been sent on a kind of tour, to complete his education, like. The Senator Lynch is a man who has a lot of friends, and all anxious to oblige. If the boy likes to travel round Europe, and he wants to study a while at the Sore Bone or anywhere you like he can stay as long as he takes a fancy and the Ambassador will esteem it a pleasure and a privilege as the saying goes. He doesn't have to find any students' lodgings, sous les toits. And maybe he likes that and maybe he doesn't. Being a young man that likes to feel free. When you're a little boy, isn't it so, feeling free is more or less always just having ten bob to clink in the pocket, and small worry who put it there. When you're a bit older, having the money always there put there by your dad, all of
a sudden you don't feel free any more. About that I wouldn't know.

‘I'm told too – the hear-say we call it – that the Senator Lynch is not too happy. Why is that? Well, invest your money in the oil or the gold you can always get it out again. You might have dropped a little, but on the Stock Exchange even the Pope's not infallible, though I seem to have heard,' meditating again, ‘there's a few cardinals in training, like, to be infallible. But when you invest in a boy you can't just sell out while the quotation's still high. This is a problem maybe our Terence hasn't got quite worked out yet, but don't get me wrong now, I don't know him. Haven't spoken to him, nor don't yet intend to.

‘Me now, I have this disadvantage coming from Cahirciveen and Terence Lynch coming out of that backward kind of place himself and never once looked back neither, he don't like to be reminded of his native woodnotes wild as the saying is, and with people like me he gets kind of impatient.

‘You now speaking the German you'd be very welcome. Mrs Lynch now – very nice lady. I could talk to her, sure, but I thought I'd just as soon leave that to you. I'd only be in your way.

‘Live out in Ailesbury Road they do. You know where that is? A bit outside – not far. Enough for some gardens and nice trees and a bit of quiet. Old-fashioned it looks. Where the crust lives and always has since I was a tiny boy in Clanbrassil Street and the Castle here was where the Lord Lieutenant lived; in the English time that was. Lot of changes since as you'll notice. Lot of embassies out there, the Ailesbury Road way,' he added, with meditative malice, squinting at Van der Valk.

‘Would that be anywhere near Monkstown?' asked Van der Valk with false innocence.

‘Ah. Monkstown. That would be just a step further out along the road there. From Ailesbury Road, a quarter of an hour on the bus. Very respectable kind of a little district, all suburbs of Dublin now, built up it is all the way along the coast, not like when the tram used to go out to Dalkey, cost you fivepence it did, an' now it's half-a-crown. Mm,
these women of yours, I don't know them neither. Reckoned you wouldn't be wanting me to know them. Got no call to know them, myself,' with an innocence quite as false as Van der Valk's.

‘And does Senator Lynch know them?'

‘They wouldn't be his sort of people. You're staying in the Sheridan Hotel now, and there in the bar you'll find a lot of money just back from the races and that's where you'll find his friends: call themselves his friends anyhow, which ought to be good enough for the likes of me. In the right place, you are.'

‘Come out and have a drink,' said Van der Valk, moved irresistibly by powerful springs.

‘Why bless my soul,' said Inspector Flynn. ‘Half eleven already. Maybe I will at that. Just be getting me coat.'

‘In Holland we put the clock back instead of forward – I've no idea why – and say half twelve.'

‘That's a very interesting place, Holland, and I hope you'll be finding a moment to instruct me a bit about it. Now here we are,' he did not have to put his cap on because he had had it on throughout the conversation, ‘but if you'll excuse my touching your elbow we won't go to any Sheridan – be full of a lot of rich women around this time; no fun at all. We'll go to the place over there – you see where the big clock is – Mooney's it's called.'