Strike Out Where Not Applicable

by Nicolas Freeling

  ‘Now come. Criminals exist.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not talking about squalid crimes. Though even then …’

  ‘But there is a criminal type, surely.’ Doctor Maartens was rather shocked. ‘Without any metaphysical nonsense – I mean the fellow distorted right from the start – bad home, unlucky childhood, wet the bed and so on, twists of environment, the whole lot fixed and crystallized by an early prison sentence.’

  ‘That is just what I don’t like,’ said Van der Valk gloomily. ‘Wet the bed – anxiety symptom. Bad home – or over-rigid home. Early delinquency – and so on. All neatly pigeon-holed. Tick where applicable, strike out where not applicable – form-filling!’

  ‘But there must be some standards, man, by which you decide. And anyway, it’s not decided finally – that’s the precise function of the assize court.’

  ‘Yes – and there’s two sorts of assize courts, or if you like two systems. Ours, where everything is cut and dried beforehand, and the English kind, where everything relevant is suppressed because of “prejudicing the accused”.

  ‘A criminal is a criminal and must be judged accordingly,’ said Maartens primly.

  ‘Quite so. Always provided he is a criminal. The assize court is admirably equipped to handle anyone who is a criminal and singularly inept with anyone who isn’t.’

  ‘This is an interesting point of view you’re advancing’ – Maartens was evidently taken aback by the aggressiveness of the other’s words – ‘but I don’t quite see what you’re getting at.’

  ‘Briefly, that Fischer was killed – we’re ready to accept that. By whom? It’s pretty plain that it was somebody who knew him fairly well. Somebody who realized that it would very likely be taken for an accident – and perhaps worked that out beforehand. Somebody who knew his way around the riding-school and would pass there relatively unnoticed. Which leaves me in an unenviable position.’

  It was coat-trailing, but this trick of pretending to drop confidences was Van der Valk’s way, always had been, and he hadn’t done too badly with it sometimes. It depended on whether the other person had a streak of innocence and frankness – he thought Maartens had.

  ‘Why? It sounds to me as though it would narrow your field of enquiry a lot – and that is a help, surely.’ It had worked – he had taken another cigarette and lit it; he was hooked …

  ‘Nine-tenths of our work is straightforward. Straightforward crime, first, committed for gain by professional criminals, who take a calculated risk – housebreaking, frauds, and so on. Then the crimes committed by young men who want to assert themselves, ranging from the simple ones who want to be tough to the neurotic ones who want not to be failures. Put together they make the majority – the bread-and-butter business.

  ‘Next category are the loonies. They’re difficult for the courts, but easy for us. Nearly all psychopath in varying degrees. The humiliated, the downtrodden and the solitary, the ones who want to get their name in the paper and employ press-cutting agencies. The misfits.

  ‘Last, most difficult – and happily the rarest, though still unpleasantly common – the bourgeois crimes. Family crimes. The most respectable families have little scabrous secrets, which they will cover up to their last breath. It looks like that type, here. They are often the most unsympathetic, the most treacherous, the meanest and pettiest of criminals. One starts with a bias. To break it down, to get some tangible proof that can be presented to a court, is very hard indeed, and one resorts occasionally to pretty ignoble expedients. The only way of getting them, often, is to blacken them systematically. Make out everything they think and do as criminal. Persuade oneself that they are cold-blooded, wicked, scheming poisoners. And they aren’t, you know. They’re mostly frightened people – even pathetic. If one knew something of their inner lives it would be easier to avoid pigeonholing them as the foulest of criminals.’

  ‘But they are criminals – by your own admission the worst and the most dangerous.’

  ‘Not always.’

  ‘But we come back to the original point,’ warmly. ‘That is the function of the court to decide.’

  ‘The court goes along the rails laid down in the instruction. It’s rare that any totally new spectacular fact comes to light in a court. The prosecutor’s dossier is built on that of the instructing magistrate – here in Holland above all, because it’s one and the same person. The lines taken by the instruction follow the police enquiry – it’s inevitable. If the police devote themselves to proving a criminal guilty – and the harder it is the more effort they put into it – the court will inevitably tread the same path. I want to avoid that – I want to find out all I can about these people, and that means things they won’t tell me. One of the sources I want to reach is you. The family doctor.’

  ‘Infringes my oath.’

  ‘That’s right. You don’t get justice without infringing laws, and that’s twenty years’ experience in one sentence.’

  ‘You’re asking to look at my confidential files.’ A difficult character, this. ‘I suppose you’re right to say that justice is a vague ideal, unprecise and difficult to attain. It’s still the job of the court. Not that I approve of the ridiculous situations one finds in America and England, with the prosecution introducing experts, and the defence countering with others intended to refute them. No – the court has to observe, to test – to hurry nothing.’ He put his palms together, placing them under his nose, and rocked to and fro in the effort to be exact as he wished his assize court to be exact. ‘To be merciful, in short. Not to base a judgement on the opinion of one, even – but two, three, independently, separately – with no bias towards prosecution or defence. Mandated by the court – under oath to observe and state the truth.’

  Oh dear, thought Van der Valk, he is an innocent!

  ‘Would you accept such a role?’ smoothly.

  ‘I would if I were asked – I’m not likely to be thought sufficiently qualified.’

  ‘And it’s exactly what I’m asking you. I don’t ask to see your confidential files – I want your opinions, based on clinical observation. You know,’ drily, ‘I have a fairly broad experience of assize courts. I’m conscious of the responsibility I take. I don’t want to prejudge anybody, to pigeonhole them as criminals. I’m asking this if you like as one doctor to another. We’re under oath too, you know.’

  Maartens put his elbows so violently upon the desk he had to lift them off to rub them.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I can. Now?’

  ‘Tonight if you don’t mind – after dinner if you’re free.’

  ‘Very well – but why?’

  ‘I’m not trying to be all broadminded and give you time to reconsider,’ grinning in a villainous way. ‘It’s simply that it’s time for lunch, you’ve your visits to make at two, and your wife will not be at all pleased with me.’

  ‘Good grief,’ said Maartens, unwinding suddenly, ‘I hadn’t noticed.’

  You should have been a prosecutor, thought Van der Valk, closing the gate with his stick.

  Outside, the sun was shining, for a change.

  He had rather a good lunch, in the White Horse. It was busy when he arrived, and he had to share a table with a solid Dutch gentleman who kept his glasses on and his briefcase open on the chair beside him, and worked his way steadily through course after course of food and paper, never getting mustard on the wrong slice, a thing that compelled Van der Valk’s admiration. Over on one side a little group of noisy regulars in riding breeches were already at the dessert stage – he guessed that if latecomers came clamouring for table space these would be expected to drink up their coffee and shove off to make room.

  There was no ridiculous head waiter; it was Marguerite in a black jersey frock who walked from table to table, plainly knowing what she was talking about. For her he was not the police officer, quite a lordly one, who had that morning been asking personal questions about her late husband, but a customer like another, whom she could judge from appearances as the type t
o order a bottle of wine and the more expensive dishes. He admired this firm compartmented mind.

  ‘There is a nice roast rib – not too red; a real pink. Horseradish, potato pancakes – some spinach? Or calves’ liver – with almonds and sultanas.’ No mention of stew! Solid, good cooking, simply and well done, and not at all out of place since the place was packed with Germans who had been to the bulb fields.

  Saskia was behind the bar, giving the orders through the hatchway, checking the dishes as they came against the written slips, serving drinks and coffee, keeping a sharp eye on the two girls. ‘Fill the glasses up over there, and get some more bread. Can’t you see he wants mustard?’ – there were as many kinds of mustard as one got in Munich.

  Marguerite moved quickly from table to table, talking but never for too long, deftly selling people the expensive extras, being firm with a man who appeared towing a gigantic dog. ‘Of course we will find him a beef bone, but I’m afraid he must be left outside.’ He admired the way she did it. Perhaps not an intelligent woman, or not in the conventional sense, but she had practical intelligence.

  ‘Have you had a pleasant lunch?’

  ‘All you said it would be. But without your husband it must be a considerable strain, isn’t it? Suppose your cook got a dose of flu or something?’

  ‘The women are competent, and we have an old cook who can’t face it day after day, but comes in to help us over holiday weekends and so on. I can’t help feeling that you exaggerate the amount of work poor Bernhard actually did – he spent most of the day at that table over there.’ It was an ordinary table for four, in the extreme corner, made a little more awkward than the others by the big tank of tropical fish, a little more undesirable by the door at the side through to cloakrooms. Papa, Mama, and two children, from Dortmund, were whaling into the potato pancakes with undiminished appetite.

  ‘The gossips are rather aggrieved,’ said Marguerite smiling, ‘but they won’t be put off coming in to play cards in the evening, which is no harm because then, you see, there are far fewer people. Aren’t you having coffee? What about a glass of cognac?’

  It was said in such a friendly way that he genuinely thought she was offering it him and said ‘If you insist’ politely – so that he was quite disgruntled when it duly appeared on the bill. She had outsmarted him – he was amused by this, once the momentary pang of paying for it had passed.

  Down the road, back in the village of Warmond opposite the chill little row of shops, was a poorer, humbler kind of hotel. An ordinary Dutch café really, where they have a few rooms, and ‘do you a meal’. Tomato soup, pork chops or steak, fried-egg-and-ham sandwiches. Van der Valk had eaten too often in humbler days at these tables not to know exactly.… Tinned peas or tinned beans; fruit salad with ice-cream or just ice-cream.… But he went in because he wanted to phone Arlette, and had not wished to do so within reach of that Groenveld woman, who certainly had an uncanny talent for keeping her ears pricked.

  A few Dutch transitories were chewing on chops in front of glasses of beer – the humbler kind of travellers, whose expense accounts were carefully scrutinized! And a few family parties who had gone out for the day to the bulb fields because it was Grannie’s birthday or some such reason: unassuming people who would know instinctively that they would only feel out of place under Marguerite’s eye – not to speak of the prices!

  On his way to the phone his eye was caught by the painter, eating quietly away in the corner at a table by himself and reading the paper. He was eating a homely Dutch meal of beef stew, with boiled potatoes and apple sauce, doubtless what the café owner had himself. He must eat here every day – very likely lived here. Van der Valk’s interest was sharpened by the chap seeming more interesting than most of the people who haunted the riding-school.

  It was a coinbox phone and he was disgusted at how much small change he had to dig out and feed into its maw before he could get hold of his wife only twelve kilometres away, but he preferred that, and being stuck in a stuffy cubby-hole smelling of dust and disinfectant next to the men’s lavatory, to having people listen while he talked to his wife. The little nickel ‘dubbeltjes’ tinkled musically and he scrabbled for more.

  ‘There you are. All quiet on your front? Yes, I had lunch in the White Horse – not bad at all. Yes, very dear, but worth it for the interest, huh? I’ll be spending the whole day out here, even part of the evening.’ He heard the door from the café open with a noisy creak and lowered his voice, going on in French. ‘No no, just that I’m using a public phone. So you won’t be uneasy, and you’ll keep me some supper if I should be held up? – try and find a cos lettuce. Yes, a rare bird, I know. ‘Bye.’ He stepped out and found the painter innocently buttoning his trousers. And that was perhaps a little too much coincidence – he decided that he would try and find time for a nice chat with this painter.

  The riding-school was perhaps seven hundred metres up a narrow bumpy road between trees, which would make quite a pleasant walk, but he took the deux-chevaux because the leg would be painful enough from fatigue, by the end of the day. Pottering round fields and stable-yards. The weather was cold and windy – the sun hadn’t lasted, of course.… The rain was holding off still – would be there tonight, no doubt.

  In front of the manège a pretty large group of cars was parked already, just the kind he had expected. ‘Second cars’ – Mini-Coopers and little Triumphs bought for the women. He left the deux-chevaux provokingly next to a decidedly gaudy scarlet Giulietta and noticed that pressure of work had not stopped the very-important-business-men bringing the ‘first cars’ either – a Bentley, two Mercedes 220s and two DS 21 Citroens …

  He did not go in at the front this time, but round the side, where there was a strong smell of horse and a good deal of activity amid which he passed quite unnoticed. Perhaps it was his clothes – he would be put down as one of a horsy set, not perhaps their own, but kin. Buying a horse, maybe.… Three men in bowler hats and white trenchcoats reaching to the tops of their boots, all with clipped moustaches and commanding voices, did not as much as glance at him. He passed the girl Els, who looked askance but kept her trap shut.

  There were several buildings in a cluster at the back – stables, he told himself, harness rooms and – er – harness rooms, and paths led out both ways past the big roofed-over exercise ring, roughly gravelled, cut about by hoofs and boots, with patches of mud and hacked grass. Here Bernhard had been found – yes, it was as he had thought, looking back – a blank wall, and the overhang of a roof, hid one here from the windows of the house. On the far side was a belt of trees through which one could – if one wished – pick a way through roots and sodden branches back to the parking place in front. Before him was another clump of firs, and paths leading both ways around it into the fields. He walked on and looked. Yes, left was the way to go hacking out across country in the direction of the White Horse. Cows grazed; in a few fields green corn was sprouting. And to the right were the fields where they practised jumping, and painted obstacles of different heights and sorts stood about for you to spill yourself over.

  Between the path and the wall of the exercise ring was a strip of rough grass and weeds; between the path and the trees was a bigger patch, thirty metres long perhaps, twenty wide. A variety of junk was slung in corners – it was just a waste patch of empty ground, serving for nothing in particular. A place where a horse coming in from the fields might stand for a minute cropping the reins loose, twitching flies off his sweaty skin, while the rider stopped to gossip, or went perhaps across the yard round the corner in search of a stable-boy. Perhaps from time to time beginners learned here to go through elementary movements, how to mount, to dismount, how to walk a horse around, perhaps how to trot. He supposed there would be no room for more elaborate manoeuvres, and that it would be in the exercise ring that they would learn to change legs with the off fore leading, or whatever it was. He knew nothing about horses, and cared as little, and what was more felt disinclined to learn. It would get v
ery rapidly as technical and wound in jargon as cars, which bored him equally – he asked nothing but that the wretched object should go when he pressed the button …

  He poked about in the grass verge with his stick. It was scythed from time to time; Francis kept his premises carefully, and would certainly take pains that rats should not breed, but junk accumulated terribly fast, and apart from the usual toffee-papers slung there by badly-brought-up children there were unlikely objects like a decaying tomato box with a moist and musty sack folded in it, the remnants of a worn-out woollen saddle-lining, and a rusty golf club. He stopped to stare at this carefully, and even lifted it before putting it back in the whitened track it had left in the grass. He didn’t want any technical staff out here; it wasn’t his style.… He went on poking, suspecting himself of wasting time, and after covering the whole length he had found an old enamel saucepan, chipped, the handle broken off, and an oval metal affair with zigzag holes punched in it that puzzled him for some time before he recognized it as a potato-masher.… Further on he found an old-fashioned round weight, half-kilo size, iron with a faint film of rust. It had crushed but not whitened the grass beneath it – going by that and the rust, it had not been there long. Mm, he remembered seeing a weighing machine in the stable-yard somewhere, and went in search of it. Yes, there it was; a thing doubtless much used around here, where they were always weighing themselves and their saddles; it was important somehow. But this was of a much more modern pattern, using no weights but a graduated metal arm, one sliding counterpoise for kilos, one for fractions of a kilo …

  He found Francis in the exercise ring, under an echoing roof that magnified and distorted a welter of horsy sounds.

  ‘Ah, hallo. Anything I can do for you?’

  ‘Did you ever have another weighing machine – the kind with weights?’