Criminal Conversation by Nicolas Freeling

his ills diagnosed by skilful hands. Your fingertips are probably your chief weapon – am I wrong? The invisible antennae. On your branch of medicine I’m pretty ignorant, I’m bound to admit. We specialists are pretty much all the same, though; what do you know, for instance, about the diseases of the lung?”
    â€œPractically nothing.”
    â€œThat’s our trouble; we just can’t keep up with modern science even if we were to spend all day reading up the newest literature. My, what a lovely bathroom; makes me feel unwashed as hell. Another psychological aid, I take it, to the patient’s confidence in his recovery – or is it purely for your personal use? I must congratulate you on your taste in material objects. And on a very nice, very wellarranged house. We come out here, no doubt,” reappearing suddenly, with a broad beam of self-satisfaction.
    Post was sitting still, placidly smoking a cigarette. Van der Valk sat down heavily in the chair opposite.
    â€œI am an honest man,” he said. “I mustn’t tell you I know yet exactly how to treat your case. My diagnosis isn’t complete, I can see that. But of course, as always, recovery depends upon the patient in the end, hm? Since you are evidently going to help me, I have confidence in your recovery. Well, we are both busy men, and I mustn’t take up more of your expensive time. But next time we meet I shall hope to find you on the right road; getting better.”
    Post said nothing at all. Just smoked his cigarette in a mannered careful way, and looked at him amiably.
    Outside on the pavement van der Valk shook his head at his own performance, so crude, so coarse, so uncivilised by comparison with Post’s. I should be a fairground salesman, he thought, that’s about my speed. Selling some quack cure – all in a pretty bottle to astounded villagers. Contains real gold, ladies and gentlemen, and only two-fifty the half litre. Van der Valk the tally-boy; live now and pay later. But there’s no doubt, that’s the approach with a civilised type like the good Dr van der Post. He felt mightily pleased with his awful self.

Eight
    Next morning, back in the office, he was less inflated, less horribly pleased with himself, but still feeling lucky. It was undoubtedly the weather, that he enjoyed, that made everything light and bright around him, that gave him energy and speed, that protected him from the landslide of gloomy depression that generally followed an early success in one of his affairs. But no, really he couldn’t help it, couldn’t feel like a wooden police official, dependent on a mountain of administrative paper, surrounded by the querulous nagging of clowns like Chief Inspector Kan – not in this light that bathed Amsterdam in a dusty golden shimmer. The smell of green, of leaves, of shooting flowering bushes, was too strong, even conquering the sewer smell of the canal, and the inky-cardboardy smell of the office. And Mr Samson was on an island, and Scholten was in a tent, and that juggle-buggle of a Kan was lost somewhere in a perfect epidemic of autothefts. The autos seemed mostly to belong to German tourists; why was that? Was it simply that they contained a richer loot of money and passports, cameras and binoculars? – or was it some cunning notion perhaps master-minded by Cross-eyed Janus? Van der Valk didn’t know and didn’t care, and if he were Kan, he thought happily, he’d go to Zandvoort and lie on the beach, and watch the German tourists playing with their expensive beach toys, and think with content of the unfortunate police of Köln – even more swamped by the epidemic than they were here. Summer madness… August heat. Van der Valk, who had bought a paper bagfull of greengages on his way to work, wiped juice off his chin and felt happy. He had to go and wash; when he got back he felt like making a nuisance of himself and telephoned Mr Carl