A Long Silence by Nicolas Freeling Read Free Book Online

Dicky-boy’s behaviour was of interest. It was so close by, be worth looking at.
    Yes; picturesque. Picturesque – but very respectable neighbours; an Italian grocer with a windowful of lasagne and mortadella; a saddler with riding-boots, bridles, and the front end of a realistic horse. Wasn’t room for the back end, but a tasteful array of velvet jockey-caps and the like. And in between, Mr Saint lived two doors above a sex shop. Dear, dear, but one made a joke of it to one’s friends. Anyway, half the houses in central Amsterdam now had the same problem. Judging by the curtains Mr Saint was at home, but it wasn’t what you’d call a thrill. The shop had a fancy name – The Golden Apples of the Hesperides; blimey. He had been a bit intrigued by that idiot boy, but not enough to make him want any golden apples. He went home and had supper, in the new and nasty flat in the Hague, and shortly after went to bed with a book about King Charles the First, whom he had hitherto known only from the portraits on cigar boxes. He could not get very excited about this tiresome person, but Cromwell was always interesting, and the Marquis of Montrose was a discovery.
    *
    He woke up feeling forceful and energetic, and moved in on Miss Hufflebloom aggressively.
    â€˜Get me the Amsterdam fire-brigade on the line will you – hell, I’ve got to go again this morning.’
    â€˜Not finished with your dentist yet?’
    â€˜Committee-meeting in the Overtoom, an awful bore … Yes, hallo, Van der Valk here, tell me, fire alarms, when for example you had a jeweller holding valuable stock, and everything barred and bolted … I see, yes – you’d notify, yes … can you tell me now, Prins’s there by the Spui … no, Van der Valk, Commissaris of Police, that’s right, The Hague … I see. Yes. Aha, Bosboom, that’s interesting, he’s the manager there but I’ve a notion he’s retired and they haven’t brought you up to date. Where is it he lives? – near by, I take. Max Planck Straat, oh lord, that’s miles away. Thanks very much, yes, that’s right, the Ministry. Goodbye, thanks … very worried they were, giving away information, thought maybe I was planning to set the place alight. Listen, Miss Wattermann, I’ll likely be away all day, I’ve quite a few chores.’
    The conference of governmental powers awaiting him was due to take place – for reasons that escaped him – in a dreary building on the Overtoom, whose one advantage was that it was a direct tram ride from Amsterdam’s central station. He was clinking along the Leidsestraat before he missed his new gloves and realized he’d left them on the train; he leapt off the tram to phone before the worst happened!
    Waiting for the next tram, on the draughty corner of the Koningsplein, he glanced irritably at his watch and was exasperated to find it stopped. Misfortunes never come singly. He took it off to investigate, and his chilled and irritable fingers dropped it on the street, where it fell – it would – into the shiny groove of the tramline. As he stooped – how is it possible these things should happen to me – the growl of the swift monster and the kling-kling-kling of its alarm made him lurch back, treading on somebody’s toe, and see his shabby, beloved watch which he’d had for twenty years chewed up under the pitying ‘oh dear’ of a middle-aged woman, the nervous ashamed grin of another, and the blank indifference of an elderly man with troubles of his own. Van der Valk arrived at the Overtoom in a very bad mood indeed.
    He wasn’t in the least consoled by the concierge, coming to meet him with a tale about the station
sous-chef
runningfast along the platform before the train pulled out, and meeting halfway a dear good soul with a pair of gloves she’d just that minute found. He was tetchy at his