Van der Valk’s office desk was full of pencilled messages. He disliked tape-recorders.
‘Piet Hartsuiker reports all negative on intruder in flat-block Van Lennep.’
‘Rik and Gerard have neighbourhood pattern on Zomerlust/ Marx. Negative on unusual circumstance or particular friendship.’
‘Labo much interested by weapon reported Uzzi s.m.g. what the hell?’
Indeed. What the hell?
‘Get me Amsterdam, Technical Services … Lab? Ballistics there? … Sam? – Sam? What is this animal? – a Japanese motorbike?’ Jewish snickers came down the line.
‘Now you’ve come to exactly the right shop, Mister.’
‘Huh?’
‘Israeli, very nice, extremely simple, remarkable little weapon.’
‘Sammy, sonny, don’t go technical. Guns bore me. Would it go under a raincoat without being noticed?’
‘Go down your pants leg if you want it to, Mister.’
Since the only possible answer to this was an obscenity, he obliged, put the phone down, and asked himself who the fornication walked about in Holland with an Israeli army sub-machine gun. It remained a simple, neat, thoroughly professional killing, but this rococo flourish of childish melodramatics irritated, intrigued … Nobody Dutch did such things. Professionals, anywhere, used ordinary, unglamorous medium-calibre guns from national arms factories, simple to supply, maintain, exchange, or dispose of; difficult to notice, trace, or identify. Fancy guns were for musical-comedy spies. To soothe himself he picked up Sergeant Zomerlust’s dossier. He at least was a good sound Dutch boy who never did anything surprising. And to his amusement he was quite mistaken.
Forty years old. Origin Brabant. Religion, Roman Catholic. Father’s profession, sheet-metal worker. Parents living. Career army man, re-engaged. Good technical man. Armourer First Class. Relatively low rank explained by a common phenomenon: promotion went largely nowadays by written examination and he was a poor examinee. Education had not gone beyond primary. His handwriting was unformed and laborious; he would always be top on practice and bottom on theory. Intelligence slowish. Turn the page. Medical history. Physicals perfect, eyesight twenty/twenty, hearing … aha, been wounded. Well well, he had served in Korea. And there was the first spark: the man had a thumping medal. Wounded by shell-fragments in the face and arm, ran the citation, had rallied section of badly-shaken infantry. Wounded again (abdominal), long stretch of hospital in rear area (Philippines). Mum-mum-mum, turn page. Service Dutch forces in New Guinea. Back to Europe, posted Nato training camp La Courtine, France. Wounded in leg and foot by grenade splinters in accident caused by nervous recruit – commended for saving said imbecile’s silly skin. Six weeks in French military hospital. Van der Valk was turning pages back and forth by now, piecing together the man’s life. Another flash of originality. Met – in the hospital? – and married a woman of vague antecedents.
But there was not much about Esther Marx. Jugoslav origin, nationalized French, born in the Pas de Calais, father miner. Profession nurse.
A woman who had refused to talk about her past. And the marriage had been disapproved of by Zomerlust’s commanding officer. There seemed to have been some sort of incident. The episode had lain heavily on Sergeant Zomerlust; he had been punished for it. He hadn’t been court-martialled or anything – clean record, wounds, a medal had helped him there. But promotion was slow, and scattered through the dossier in coded annotations and military jargon were various incomprehensible sanctions. Not suitable for tactical atomic-weapons training. Suitable for coordination with English troops but not with French or German.
Was it all just Nato bullshit? There was a lot more stuff – posting on manoeuvres with Scandinavian elements, some work on tanks, a belated promotion to his present rank and the posting to his present unit, a mechanized infantry depot; Van der Valk’s attention sagged. It was all too ambiguous. What did ‘Not recommended for advanced ops in Central European theatre’ mean? A thread ran through the dossier sounding almost like politically unreliable. Had the marriage with the dubious Jugoslav antecedents anything to do with it?
Van der Valk reflected that dossiers had always an unreal quality. Dangerous to read between the lines: half of this might well be the stupidities of owlish clerks.
The technical report, with huge numbers of glossy photographs, now appeared on the desk. Discouraging. No prints of foot or finger signalled a mysterious intruder. Esther Marx had been peacefully cooking the dinner when interrupted and massacred, and that, behind reams of exhaustive analysis, was all there was. This business was uncomfortably like a nasty mess.
Knocking-off time arrived and with it the Press. The sensational aspects had attracted an unusual crowd, milling and cat-calling in the waiting-room: two or three hopeful photographers took shots of him as he arrived.
‘Statement, statement.’
‘You all know the rules. The Officer of Justice will allow no comment that may prejudice the investigation, which, I need hardly say, has barely begun and may be lengthy. We possess few valid indications.’
‘This sergeant …’
‘Has satisfied me that he could not possibly have been present.’
‘She wasn’t Dutch.’
‘She was of Jugoslav origin.’
‘Has that anything to do with it?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘What about the weapon?’
‘Of military origin?’
‘Possibly, but not Nato issue.’
‘Russian? Czech?’
He wished he could knock their silly heads together.