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– no positive indication of any interference with natural processes and without that we can’t move. This Merckel of yours isn’t worth a burnt match.”
    â€œI saw this doctor, though.”
    â€œYou mean without getting chucked out?”
    â€œI didn’t show my card. Secretary took me for a patient, and just let me in without asking. There I was, sitting in the chair.”
    The commissaris pushed his glasses down and stared over them.
    â€œLook, boy, if this doctor raises a stink, I’m the one on the block.”
    â€œHe won’t complain. Complaining would make his fingers dirty. He’s far above such things. He treated it all as though it were just funny. I think, too, he’d be scared. He gave me a lot of time. There’s something there he wouldn’t want to come out.”
    â€œYou mean you think he does amuse himself with the women patients?”
    â€œHe amuses himself with everything.”
    â€œHow do you know that?”
    â€œHow does one ever know anything? He amused himself with me. It struck me afterwards. You see, I went in there and told him that I had unsupported information and that I had to look into it, blahblah, and chose to come and talk it over discreetly, unofficially – to cover myself, of course. Well. He took this up, began to weave a comic analogy. It was funny. I was a neurotic patient, come to him with fantasies, which he then has to treat. It tickled him. I’m his patient; he is going to diagnose the nature of my delusions. I liked that. I started trying to diagnose him. There’s something out of the ordinary about him.”
    Mr Samson put his elbows on the table and stared at his subordinate with a square, wooden face.
    â€œGo on,” in an ominous voice.
    â€œI had my foot in the door, I thought, and by pure luck, since I was expecting clam-up and the-door-is-over-there. So I said to him, ‘Now that I’m your patient, I’ll be coming again for consultation - treatment too, perhaps.’ I thought he’d tell me off. He just grinned and said, ‘Perhaps your delusions will be interesting enough to warrant my continuing this file’ – the secretary had filled out one of those cardboard files with my name and age; that crap. I knew he was scared, then. He wants to keep in touch, to hear if I say anything, try and know what I think. There must be something there.”
    â€œYes,” agreed the old man.
    â€œSo I went out and bought myself a cardboard folder too. And wrote his goddam name on it,” finished van der Valk, and realised that he had spoken with an emphasis that had something near fury in it. Old Samson almost grinned.
    â€œAll right, my boy. Just bear one thing in mind. If this chap is playing with you, he doesn’t need to make a complaint. I see what’s in your mind. You think that because you’ve made no formal move, he can’t make a formal complaint to the Emperor Franz Josef upstairs. True, but I looked up this doctor of yours. He says one quiet word to some high pooha and your days in this department are over. He’s married to a whole family of magistrates: friends everywhere and lord knows whom he may have in his pocket. Grateful ex-patients quite probably including the minister of justice. I won’t be able to save you.”
    It was a long speech. Van der Valk realised that if the old man didn’t approve of what he had done there would just have been a grunt – if that.
    â€œIf we stopped every time, before breaking a rule, to think what would happen if we got the sack, how many things would we miss? Would we ever get Janus, for example?” It was an impudent remark; the old man went a bit turkey-cocky.
    â€œYou bother about this doctor, and leave me to deal with Janus.”
    It was as near a green light as van der Valk would ever get. Mr Samson threw the magazine in the waste-paper basket as he went out. The last van der Valk