Double-Barrel by Nicolas Freeling Read Free Book Online Page B

smile. ‘More than enough … I suppose that you have informed yourself about my circumstances?’
    â€˜I have access to all information normally available to the Ministry,’ sounding correctly prim. I thought I was doing this quite well.
    â€˜Just so.’
    â€˜Such details are necessarily incomplete.’
    â€˜So you make a point of calling on people who may live – let’s say along a road scheduled for rebuilding.’
    â€˜When we can.’
    â€˜That is conscientious. And courteous. My experience of officials from Ministries is that they frequently have both qualities, but that their function seems to prevent the free exercise of either.’
    My turn for the faint smile. Really, this fellow was shrewd.
    â€˜We do our best. It is painful to be criticized for what, to the uninformed eye, simply looks like turning defenceless people out of their homes.’
    â€˜Painful, but the state functionary grows an extra skin. Perhaps they have to. I am very grateful that you should spare the time to call on me.’
    â€˜We learn’ – thinking I was being sly – ‘to make time our servant. The wheels of Ministries are slow.’
    â€˜Ah,’ reflective nod. ‘You have plenty of time. Most functionaries bustle, always in a hurry. You have a bird’s-eye view – in a manner of speaking – of people as well as sites, streets, ciphers, statistics. Most interesting.’
    â€˜Certainly.’ I did not quite get the drift but admired the way he was cross-examining me – in a manner of speaking.
    â€˜Perhaps my experience has been too one-sided. It is the lower echelon, is it not, that adopts that bustling air, that fiction that there is never time for anything, that determination to obliterate the individual. The tiny self-importance of the village postmaster; once he has a rubber stamp in his hand he imagines that he embodies all the dignity of the State. Whereas you are plainly a senior official.’
    â€˜That is so.’ I was being driven like a sheep, and interested enough not to care.
    â€˜Since you are not in a hurry,’ inexorably, ‘may I offer you a cup of coffee?’
    â€˜That would be kind.’
    â€˜I will ask Mrs Bakhuis – she generally brings me some…’
    â€˜I am tempted to think,’ coming back with deliberate steps – the trembling was noticeable, but not disconcerting, ‘that as a general rule policemen, perhaps, are fortunate among state servants, in having more obligatory contact with human beings. Even rather objectionable humans, who smell, who could do with delousing, are preferable to none.’
    â€˜And yet, if I am to believe what I hear, you are not very fond of the human race.’
    â€˜There have been times, you see, when I smelt and needed delousing. A thing quite inconceivable to a civil servant. The pressure upon functionaries to spend more and moretime shut away in little cells, monastically devoted to their in and out trays – it is hardly fair on them.’
    I felt like saying straight out what I had come for. What was the point of fencing further? This man was not guilty of any little, dotty, pathetic crimes. But I had to play the scene out a little.
    â€˜Aren’t you tending towards special pleading? Every type of state servant has his particular problems. His questions of conscience, call it.’
    He did not answer. He studied his guest with a placid look. I studied the surroundings. There were no pictures, but there were many home-made bookshelves. Lots of books, rows of cardboard files, doubtless containing his work, a shelf full of records. Tidy, for a man who lived alone. A shabby poverty, but not genteel, not ashamed. Those books were in all the major languages of Europe, and they all looked well handled.
    Why were there no pictures? Did the man prefer things heard to things seen? … Mrs Thing came in with a pleasant smile and two cups