A Long Silence by Nicolas Freeling

Author:Nicolas Freeling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

*

It was true that the Amsterdamse wood was full of trees. The phonebook was full of Bosbooms. Arlette went to the branch of the Netherlands Credit Bank in the Plantage Middenlaan and was received with chill formality.

‘We regard the addresses of our customers as confidential information.’

Tell that to the Marines, Van der Valk would have said coarsely. Arlette adopted a feminine, emotional approach.

‘May I have a word with you in private?’

‘I see little use in that, Mevrouw.’ He was the stiffest, most wooden, most proper kind of Dutchman.

‘It costs you nothing to listen.’ I see her, her big Phoenician nose sticking out arrogantly, her splendidly straight body tense with the reined-in desire to slap this proper little man spinning and throw his polite little plaque saying ‘Chief Cashier’ at a nearby clerk eyeing her with a nasty mixture of lechery and disapproval.

‘If you insist, though I’m bound to say …’

‘Just hear me out. I am the widow of Commissaire van der Valk, a policeman who was assassinated in the streets of The Hague while going for an evening stroll.’

‘Er – my respectful sympathies, Mevrouw.’

‘Your respectful sympathies are, I’m afraid, no good to me. I am asking you for nothing but the address of a man to whom my husband paid some money.’

It might have been the key-word ‘money’.

‘Naturally, Mevrouw, you have our sympathetic consideration.’

‘I’m asking you nothing but an address.’

‘Our rules of confidentiality, Mevrouw …’

‘I’m asking you, will you or won’t you give me this piece of simple harmless information?’ Awful woman was showing signs of screaming.

‘Mevrouw, I beg you, there is no need of …’

‘There is great need. If your wife had been killed by an armed robber, would you be satisfied with people’s rules and regulations?’

‘Mevrouw, really …’

‘I’m not asking you for the front-door key.‘

‘Hush, Mevrouw, please. In the circumstances I will make an exception. But you do understand…’

‘Man,’ wearily, ‘don’t torment me further.’

*

The roses were shooting with a force undaunted by any rules. A cramped situation, a polluted atmosphere, a heavy layer of dark grey cloud, a cold north-westerly wind coming down from Scapa Flow where it was still winter at the very end of April – some of the roses were already showing buds. Mr Bosboom had met her with an aggressive roughness that startled her. Why should he be hostile? He was just a man who had sold her husband a watch.

‘I can see no way in which I can be of service to you.’

‘Will you at least listen? Politely or anyway patiently?’

‘I should hope so at least. I wouldn’t wish you to think me lacking in common courtesy. But as regards your husband’s most untimely and unhappy death – it is as though you appear to believe, if you will pardon me, that I had withheld information from the police.’

‘I have nothing whatever to do with the police. They know nothing about this. I have nothing to say to them. This is purely personal. I have no reproach or even remark to make to you which you could possibly find offensive.

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