Read Online Criminal Conversation by Nicolas Freeling - Free Book Online

expensive shoes, since any policeman is kind to his feet, but they needed mending and could have done with a lick of polish). He was agreeably surprised when she jumped up, in a lithe, active way, offered her hand, and said, “I am Mrs Merckel; how do you do”, in a voice that had a pleasant warmth in it, like a ripe apricot.
    â€œDo sit down. Have some orange juice?”
    â€œYes, please.” She poured him a glass full, out of a Provençal earthenware jug that made a nice tinkling sound of ice-cubes and had that primitive look he liked, as though it had been dug up in a field with bones of ancient Gauls.
    â€œCigarette? Oh, I love those ones of yours; may I have one?” It made a good impression, easy and unaffected and no kittenish gurgling.
    She was a solid, well-constructed woman, not fat at all but all curves, with the very fine-textured, pearly skin that goes so well with dark chestnut hair. Small good teeth, quite rare in Holland, where the women have excellent teeth looking like a well-polished row of marble gravestones. A big wide comic mouth. She should have had large clear brown eyes, but they were small, with crinkles round them, and brilliant dark blue. He liked this face, and he liked her for not trying to hide behind the dark glasses, which she had taken off to look at him with a kind of honest curiosity.
    â€œI must sound awfully inquisitive, but lunch with my husband sounds quite important, and I’m wondering where I come in?”
    â€œThat is quite easily told. My name is van der Valk, I am an inspector of the recherche in the Amsterdam Police, and trouble is my business, as Sam Spade used to say. Has anybody ever tried to blackmail you, Mrs Merckel?” The well-known raid technique: the amiable little domestic pleasantry and the bomb in the same breath. Van der Valk, the smiler with the knife.
    No, he could swear the reaction was genuine; she was too unguarded and too spontaneous.
    â€œI’m sorry…but talk about a bolt out of the blue… Do you mean my husband thinks…?…oh…” It had suddenly come to her to wonder why anyone should think she was being blackmailed, and she immediately looked stricken.
    â€œDon’t look so worried,” kindly. After the flash, the burn cream. “I think I know why someone might, possibly, have tried to blackmail you.” She looked then with relief at him, wanting to be open, but too cautious to put her feet in the water before she knew how cold it was likely to be.
    â€œWhat has my husband told you?”
    â€œNothing. I told him. A little succession of things that had come to my notice, giving me a notion that an attempt of the sort might have been made.” There was something rather theatrical about this talk, he thought. Blackmail, in this summery birdy garden, sitting on a padded swinging sofa on the lawn, innocently drinking orange juice with a pretty woman in primrose yellow shorts and a white shark-skin shirt. It did not sound convincing at all. He didn’t mind, because he didn’t believe in it either. She was looking wary, but there was something transparent about this woman that was a most attractive quality.
    â€œDid you ever hear of a man called Casimir Cabestan?”
    â€œNo. Sounds like a juggler in a cabaret.”
    â€œA painter – quite well known at one time.”
    â€œI’m afraid I don’t know much about painting.”
    â€œMrs Merckel, I’m going to tell you quite honestly what I know about all this, and you can tell me then quite honestly whether it means anything to you, and if so, whether there are things I don’t know, or have maybe misunderstood.”
    She laughed now. She had never heard of Capstan, as Mr Samson called him, and that made her think she was in the clear. It was evident that she thought he was driving at something else altogether, and was greatly relieved about it.
    â€œI’m quite willing to try,”