‘And didn’t seem upset when the puppet didn’t want any. What were the old girl and the pastor doing the while?’
‘Talking. They seemed to have a lot to talk about. Then Trudi got back and they all talked some more, then the pastor patted Trudi on the back, they all rose, he took his hat off to the old girl, as you call her, and they all went away.’
‘An idyllic scene. They went away together?’
‘No. The pastor went by himself.’
Try to follow any of them?’
‘No.’
‘Good girl. Were you followed?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t think so?’
There was a whole crowd of people leaving at the same time as I did. Fifty, sixty, I don’t know. It would be silly for me to say that I was sure nobody had an eye on me. But nobody followed me back here.’
‘Belinda?’
There’s a coffee-shop almost opposite the Hostel Paris. Lots of girls came and went from the hostel but I was on my fourth cup before I recognized one who’d been in the church last night. A tall girl with auburn hair, striking, I suppose you would call her — ‘
‘How do you know what I’d call her? She was dressed like a nun last night.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you couldn’t have seen that she had auburn hair.’
‘She had a mole high up on her left cheekbone.’
‘And black eyebrows?’ Maggie put in.
‘That’s her,’ Belinda agreed. I gave up. I believed them. When one good-looking girl examines another good-looking girl her eyes are turned into long-range telescopes. ‘I followed her to the Kalverstraat,’ Belinda continued. ‘She went into a big store. She seemed to walk haphazardly through the ground floor but she wasn’t being haphazard really for she fetched up pretty quickly at a counter marked “SOUVENIRS: EXPORT ONLY”. The girl examined the souvenirs casually but I knew she was far more interested in the puppets than anything else.’
‘Well, well, well,’ I said. ‘Puppets again. How did you know she was interested?’
‘I just knew,’ Belinda said in the tone of one trying to describe various colours to a person who has been blind from birth. ‘Then after a while she started to examine a particular group of puppets very closely. After shilly-shallying for a while she made her choice, but I knew she wasn’t shilly-shallying.’ I kept prudent silence. ‘She spoke to the assistant who wrote something on a piece of paper.’
‘The time it would — ‘
‘The time it would take to write the average address.’ She’d carried on blandly as if she hadn’t heard me. ‘Then the girl passed over money and left.’
‘You followed her?’
‘No. Am I a good girl too?’
‘Yes.’
‘And I wasn’t followed.’
‘Or watched? In the store, I mean. By, for instance, any big fat middle-aged man.’
Belinda giggled. ‘Lots of big — ‘
‘All right, all right, so lots of big fat middle-aged men spend a lot of time watching you. And lots of young thin ones, too, I shouldn’t wonder.’ I paused consideringly. ‘Tweedledum and Tweedledee, I love you both.’
They exchanged glances. ‘Well,’ Belinda said, ‘that is nice.’
‘Professionally speaking, dear girls, professionally speaking. Excellent reports from both, I must say. Belinda, you saw the puppet the girl chose?’
‘I’m paid to see things,’ she said primly.
I eyed her speculatively, but let it go. ‘Quite. It was a Huyler costumed puppet. Like the one we saw in the warehouse.’
‘How on earth did you know?’
‘I could say I’m psychic. I could say “genius”. The fact of the matter is that I have access to certain information that you two don’t.’
‘Well, then, share it with us.’ Belinda, of course.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because there are men in Amsterdam who could take you and put you in a quiet dark room and make you talk.’
There was a long pause, then Belinda said: ‘And you wouldn’t?’
‘I might at that,’ I admitted. ‘But they wouldn’t find it so easy to get me into that quiet dark room in the first place.’ I picked up a batch of the invoices. ‘Either of you ever heard of the Kasteel Linden. No? Neither had I. It seems, however, that they supply our friends Morgenstern and Muggenthaler with a large proportion of pendulum clocks.’
‘Why pendulum clocks?’ Maggie asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I lied frankly. ‘There may be a connection. I’d asked Astrid to try to trace the source of a certain type of clock — she had, you understand, a lot of underworld connections that she didn’t want. But she’s gone now. I’ll look into it tomorrow.’
‘We’ll do it today,’ Belinda said. ‘We could go to this Kasteel place and — *
‘You do that and you’re on the next plane back to England. Alternatively, I don’t want to waste time dragging you up from the bottom of the moat that surrounds this castle. Clear?’
‘Yes, sir,’ they said meekly and in unison. It was becoming distressingly and increasingly plain that they didn’t regard my bite as being anywhere near as bad as my bark.
I gathered the papers and rose. ‘The rest of the day is yours. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.’
Oddly, they didn’t seem too happy about getting the rest of the day to themselves. Maggie said: ‘And you?’
‘A car trip to the country. To clear my head. Then sleep, then maybe a boat trip tonight.’
‘One of those romantic night cruises on the canals?’ Belinda tried to speak lightly but it didn’t come off. She and Maggie appeared to be on to something I’d missed. ‘You’ll need someone to watch your back, won’t you? I’ll come.’
‘Another time. But don’t you two go out on the canals. Don’t go near the canals. Don’t go near the night-clubs. And, above all, don’t go near the docks or that warehouse.’
‘And don’t you go out tonight either.’ I stared at Maggie. Never in five years had she spoken so vehemently, so fiercely even: and she’s certainly never told me what to do. She caught my arm, another unheard-of thing. ‘Please.’
‘Maggie!’
‘Do you have to take that boat trip tonight?’
‘Now, Maggie — •’
‘At two o’clock in the morning?’
‘What’s wrong, Maggie? It’s not like you to — ‘
‘I don’t know. Yes, I do know. Somebody seems to be walking over my grave with hob-nailed boots.’
‘Tell him to mind how he goes.’
Belinda took a step towards me. ‘Maggie’s right. You mustn’t go out tonight.’ Her face was tight with concern.
‘You, too, Belinda?’
‘Please.’
There was a strange tension in the room which I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Their faces were pleading, a curious near-desperation in their eyes, much as if I’d just announced that I was going to jump off a cliff.
Belinda said: ‘What Maggie means is, don’t leave us.’ Maggie nodded. ‘Don’t go out tonight. Stay with us.’ ‘Oh, hell!’ I said. ‘Next time I need help abroad I’m going to bring a couple of big girls with me.’ I made to move past them towards the door, but Maggie barred the way, reached up and kissed me. Only seconds later Belinda did the same.
‘This is very bad for discipline,’ I said. Sherman out of his depth. ‘Very bad indeed.’
I opened the door and turned to see if they agreed with me. But they said nothing, just stood there looking curiously forlorn. I shook my head in irritation and left.
On the way back to the Rembrandt I bought brown paper and string. In the hotel room I used this to wrap up a complete kit of clothes that was now more or less recovered from the previous night’s soaking, printed a fictitious name and address on it and took it down to the desk. The assistant manager was in position.
‘Where’s the nearest post office?’ I asked.
‘My dear Mr Sherman — ‘ The punctiliously friendly greeting was automatic but he’d stopped smiling by this time — ‘we can attend to that for you.’
‘Thank you, but I wish to register it personally.’
‘Ah, I understand.’ He didn’t understand at all, which was that I didn’t want brows raised or foreheads creased over the sight of Sherman leaving with a large brown parcel under his arm. He gave me the address I didn’t want.
I put the parcel in the boot of the police car and drove through the city and the suburbs until I was out in the country, heading north. By and by I knew I was running alongside the waters of the Zuider Zee but I couldn’t see them because of the high retaining dyke to the right of the road. There wasn’t much to see on the left hand either: the Dutch countryside is not designed to send the tourist into raptures.
Presently I came to a signpost reading ‘Huyler 5 km’, and a few hundred yards further on turned left off the road and stopped the car soon after in the tiny square of a tiny picture-postcard village. The square had its post office and outside the post office was a public telephone-box. I locked the boot and doors of the car and left it there.