A Long Silence (6 page)

‘Yes,' said Bosboom. ‘What can I do for you?'

Van der Valk explained. Mother appeared with tea, which
had jasmine in it. A woman with a lot of character, who said absolutely nothing.

‘Well,' said Bosboom at last, putting down his cup. ‘You realize I'm retired. I owe them nothing. They owe me nothing. Louis I'll say nothing about, save that I've known him and worked with him for thirty years, and that he's honest. You needn't look for anything there. He's a genuine expert, a good business man – that shop wouldn't be there if he weren't – and a good human being. Has his share of human weaknesses – like most of us. Enough is enough – no, don't go reading anything into my words, and I'm not answering any questions. Loyalty still means something to me.'

‘A young man called Saint,' suggested Van der Valk.

‘A young man called Saint,' mocked Bosboom. ‘Young dog.'

‘You know him well?'

‘No, thank God. Larry Saint,' in a mimicry of affectation. ‘Name's Leopold. Leopold! Leopold Neil, what a name. Old man's nephew – sister's son I believe. I don't know anything about him – don't like what I see. One of these characters that go about psychoanalysing Christ and His saints – an honest atheist I can respect. But a cynic. No self respect. Undermining everything. Seeing evil in everything. A bad man,' he said abruptly.

‘You know that you interest me strangely?'

‘That's all right. Conclude what you please. I don't know him. I don't want to know him.'

‘He worked there with you?'

‘No!' contemptuously. ‘Knows nothing about antiques.'

‘He seems to be running that business.'

‘Then God help the business – I suppose you think that'd be just my jealousy saying the place couldn't run without me, but it's a business you can't know without feeling – no, stronger – without love. A man like Saint doesn't love anything. His own adored self.'

‘Did you know he'd got rid of the assistant as well, as it appears?'

Bosboom seemed surprised.

‘Really?'

‘Some story of his falling down and breaking an arm, and being a drunk?'

‘Mm. I suppose there's some truth in that, but he was a decent chap. Kissinger – German chap – unreliable certainly, but a good craftsman. Wonder why he hasn't been to see me?'

‘You've his address?'

‘I can find it for you if you like – out in Sloterdijk somewhere. Strange.'

‘What d'you make of this business of hiring a boy?'

‘I can't see the point of it at all. What use is that? Might as well have a typist-girl. What can he do? Stick on stamps, answer the phone, make the tea. What do you make of it?' with a suddenly shrewd, heavy stare.

‘I don't know at all.'

‘There's something, and you feel it – or you wouldn't be here. The boy came to see you – a tale of finding a watch, you say …'

‘Which he thought was impossible.'

‘So it is,' with a snort.

‘This story of stock being run down – one can't attach anything to that because what could the boy know about it?'

A shrug.

‘Some modern stuff – it's of no importance. I know, roughly; I mean that Saint was always in and out, sniffing and peering, and went on at Louis about modernizing. That's all tripe: what does a good antique business need with modern silver?'

‘You saw no virtue in it?'

‘Och, it's well in its way; I've every respect for good French craftsmanship, but those Scandinavian things – flibberty-gibbety. No real balance, no real taste. Might as well open a hairdressing saloon.' Van der Valk laughed.

‘Good word.'

The old man snorted.

‘Good word for Saint. I dunno – perhaps not. If you were to take him seriously you might find more gibbet than flibbet.'

‘What makes you say that?'

‘Can't say really – nasty crooked way of looking at things. I don't like the chap, never will – that's no good to you. Give you
another good word – means the same in French.
Patibulaire
. I shouldn't say things like that,' he added with a grunt. ‘Not fair. Not evidential. Just backbiting anyhow. Benefit of the doubt and all that. Must be accurate; I've nothing against him.'

‘What can he possibly want with the boy?' wondering aloud.

‘No, no, not that, he's not that way. Or I'd be most surprised.'

‘Would you say,' suddenly, ‘that he has something on Louis?'

Bosboom looked extremely disconcerted, and barked once or twice gruffly to get himself under control.

‘Nonsense, nonsense. Anyway – I'm not going to discuss Louis. I've told you that. Gave me his confidence for many years, not going to abuse it. Sorry and all that, no wish to appear offensive to yourself. But nosing around like this – why not just walk in and say what is all this? Do the boy no harm. Fellow's got anything to conceal, why then, you've more chance of finding out than all this conjecture.'

Van der Valk nodded.

‘I even thought of walking in as a bona-fide customer and putting on an act. I want to see this Saint.' A big grunt.

‘Want to buy some antiques? My advice would be don't unless you know what you're after.'

‘No, I bust my watch this morning. For good, alas.'

‘Ach – man,' went Bosboom impatiently, ‘if you really want a watch I'll tell you – why, I've even – here, I don't know whether it's any good to you, but it's virtually new.' He lumbered up and over to a secrétaire, fumbled in the little drawers. ‘I've had this some time. Old fashioned but nice. Proper gold, not plated; movement's an Omega. Not automatic, no quartz vibrator. It might vary a minute or two in a month, don't know how important that is to you.'

Van der Valk took it in his hand and liked it at once, a slim gold circle with a white face and roman numerals like an old hunter.

‘No second hand,' said Bosboom in his expert voice, which was gentler and with love, the way he might talk to his roses, ‘and won't tell you the date or the phase of the moon or that
technological stuff. Not even phosphorescent. But if you press the winder it'll chime for you, very tiny, it's a repeater. Was made special. I'll show you.' His fingers winding were stubby and earthy, but amazingly precise and delicate. ‘Quarter past three, see!' He pressed the winder and the watch chimed minutely, a church twenty miles away across an Alpine valley. Van der Valk was delighted.

‘Isn't it a pretty thing,' said Bosboom, as though it were a new baby granddaughter. ‘I kept it for my son – he wanted something more modern,' heavily. ‘Let you have it for an apple and an egg.' The old-fashioned Dutch phrase completed the seduction.

‘With much gratitude,' said Van der Valk, taking out his chequebook. He would pay more than an apple and an egg, but he was not to know that. If he had gone that evening to get a watch from Saint … he would have accepted the defeat had he known, because he was accustomed to big events hanging, often, upon very trivial occasions.

*

He went out to Sloterdijk instead, a tiresome trip across the town, and as it proved a great waste of time and energy. It held, even, tragedy. He found a haggard, embittered, wretched woman in the worst kind of Dutch flat, where the economy in space and the meanness of material is not compensated by a gallant display of green plant and mopped floor but pulled down into utter squalor by neglect, smelling sour like an unaired dishcloth. The woman would not even open the door, but kept it on a chain and glared through the gap with a mad yellow eye, the eye of a captive sick parrot.

‘He's not here. He's in hospital. Who wants him? Why? What good could that do him? It's too late to think about that now. He's in hospital I tell you, and he's dying, I know he is. He's got cancer, and what will become of me then? You go and ask Mr Prins that. I won't talk to you. Go away or I'll call the police. I've nothing to say. Get away and leave me solitude at least. It's all I've got left.'

He trekked wearily back into the town. In the bus he made
his new watch chime two or three times in his ear, secretly. Time, it said to him, time. End of the round. One minute's rest to recuperate. Put stuff on the man's eyes, get the swellings down, or he won't be able to carry the fight. Time again, and keep your left hand well up.

*

That afternoon's deceptive, mild February sunshine, which had sent Bosboom out with string and secateurs to see how his beloved roses had withstood the storms of winter, lifting and airing sodden earth around the boles, with love, care and compost – the sunshine had vanished as it always did and now the evening was coming down and bringing fog with it as the weather turned colder again. People shivered, tempers shrank and snapped; trams clanged monotonously and desolately in the open spaces of the Leidseplein, modern plague carts tolling to the population to bring out its dead. Van der Valk sat heavily on a covered terrace and had two large glasses of brandy and a fresh squeezed lemon. Saint had a hold on Louis Prins. That much was obvious. Bosboom had stopped him going out by laying that big badger's paw of his upon Van der Valk's forearm, very gently.

‘Uh – one thing, Should you find out anything, through my remarks or otherwise, that may seem discreditable to old Louis – why, I'd like to ask, knowing I've no right of course to interfere in your work but I'd like just to ask – take it easy. He's an older man than me, and he has no children. Just not to let your judgements get too abrupt or too severe is all – you won't mind my asking you that?'

It was a temptation to go and see Larry Saint, and create a big drama about watches, and no doubt alarm that silly boy Richard who was now in such agony at any interference, and see what happened. Still time before the shop shut. It was a perfectly good tactic to lean on the laddy a bit. He had been certain that Van der Valk had forgotten all about that flustered, impulsive visit, or at least would shrug and do nothing about it: what was it after all but a piece of childishness, almost hysterical? The boy had made a fool of himself, had been
humiliated – and now instead of letting it slip that bloody policeman comes bumbling officiously around Amsterdam, walking into his own private room, the one place where he can forget his extreme vulnerability. Tactless!

Van der Valk grinned. It might, too, provoke Saint in some way. The odds were that Saint had not witnessed his apotheosis on television, but if he was the man Van der Valk took him for he might have a sharp nose for plain-clothes policemen, and the story of the watch dropped in tramlines had just the right fabricated sound to make him suspect something fishy while wondering what on earth it was. The chap must be up to something – but for the life of him Van der Valk could not tell what it could be. What can you get up to in a jewellers' shop? Bosboom had discounted any financial fiddle very firmly.

‘The professionals would be on to that in no time at all.'

‘Too many people involved – all that business is by word of mouth.'

He might be exaggerating, from self-respect and pride in a business where he himself had spent most of his life. But still – a good witness, a responsible person.

Why should Saint pretend to lose a valuable watch, let the boy find it, in circumstances tempting him to put it in his pocket, and continue to pretend he had noticed nothing?

‘What I don't like,' he had said to Bosboom, with whom he had been frank about his errand, ‘is that it's such a classical manoeuvre with a young boy. I mean it's absolutely the three-card trick. It's a bribe, and as well a handle – I mean that technically the boy can be made out a thief, and threatened with that. Not much of a grip, because these boys nowadays don't take that kind of accusation too seriously. They know they won't go to any real prison, and couldn't care less about a night or two in jug and a scolding from a police-tribunal magistrate. Nor does the social stigma bother them: petty pinching is now so widespread. Still, it's quite a valuable object – seven or eight hundred surely, a gold Patek Philippe … So that it's a substantial hold, and also could be a fine bribe for a boy – not just a lousy underwater watch, huh. But what I don't see is how that could help Saint. Vice, presumably, but
not just a banal bit of sodomy – comes too expensive and he can get that for free – anyway, you discount that idea.'

The shops will be closing, thought Van der Valk, looking at his watch (and taking it off to put in his pocket: Louis Prins might know it again). The rabbit-scurry in the wavering light-reflections on the Leidseplein was thickening steadily, and next door the flower-shop was putting up the shutters. Louis might not be going home, but the Jacob van Lennep was not far away; it cost nothing to go and find out. And on the whole this seemed the best line of approach. If Saint had something on the old man, it was quite probable that in return the old man knew something about nefarious activities, assuming there were any. It was even on the cards that he had a hand in them.

A frumpy street, and at a foggy February nightfall intensely dreary. Gloomy dreary surroundings, a sense of heavy dusty hangings and curtains and old women peering out behind them. Van der Valk was well aware that he was being ‘subjective' again, and very unfair, and that all the arts of civilized living can flourish around the Wilhelmina Hospital as well as they can anywhere, but he had never been able quite to rid himself of an old suspicion, that around here the Stock Exchange page of the newspaper gets very thoroughly read, but precious little else.

Van der Valk did not expect Mr Prins to be a great fan of late-night television either, but was taking no chances. On the quayside, where fog was settling heavily upon the greasy black canal, he adopted a disguise. He had two sets of reading-glasses, one with tinted lenses. The hat, the briefcase, the precise fussy manner as of Special Branch types for whom he had always had a healthy dislike. He took his hat off, and combed his damped hair down flat. Might be a risk, but not he thought much of one.