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vino.’
    â€˜May I get it for you?’
    â€˜Sure, in the fridge, and take a kitchen glass.’
    â€˜Madame talks French.’
    â€˜Madame is French. So do you talk French – I hear.’
    â€˜You do too! So am I French.’
    â€˜Are you really?’
    â€˜Is that all right?’
    â€˜Pour one for me too,’ said Arlette. ‘You may have a small one if you like.’
    â€˜I do like.’
    The child had bad table manners and was over-excited. After supper Van der Valk conveyed by violent sign language that she must go to bed. Arlette made a teach-your-granny face and was away for a long time: a lot of noise came from the bathroom. Finally Arlette appeared, said she was mangled, and asked for a glass of port.
    â€˜She’s had a rotten time. Needs a lot of warmth, a lot of affection, a lot of spontaneous enthusiasm. Been left alone a lot. She’s used to bottling it all in, and she has to learn to flood it all out. You can’t do that in three days. Do you know anything about it?’
    â€˜Very little. The woman was killed by X with what appearsto be an Israeli army sub-machine-gun. Her name was Esther Marx. Born in France of Jugoslav parents, it would seem.’
    â€˜Israeli – Esther – Ruth – Jewish, you think?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ dully. ‘Has it importance? Did Jews shoot her?’
    â€˜More likely Arabs – they ran away so quickly,’ said Arlette frivolously. ‘I think she guesses that Mamma is dead – they’re so sharpened to that. You saw the husband?’
    â€˜A nice man. Says Esther never talked about the past and that he made a point of never asking. Now that I think about it I’m sure that it’s the truth and that what’s more it was damn sensible of him.’
    â€˜No doubt, then? – something or someone out of the past?’
    â€˜Perhaps – if only because she had so oddly little present. What did she do all day? We’ll hear from Ruth – eventually.’
    â€˜Have you plans, for tonight?’
    â€˜I want to have a look at the flat. The technical report tells me nothing. But I won’t be late.’
    â€˜What are we going to do with the child?’
    â€˜Keep her, for the moment. You don’t mind?’
    â€˜I think I like it. You may find me asleep – she takes a lot of concentration.’
    â€˜The husband’s family is hostile. He doesn’t know what to do with her.’
    â€˜A very lucky thing that she speaks French. Does the poor little wretch get shoved off to the orphanage? I could help there, but so little.
    â€˜I wonder whether one could adopt her,’ she went on vaguely. She looked at him, waiting for him to sort his mind out.
    â€˜I don’t know – it seems to me that we could. This Zomerlust – he’s her legal guardian, of course.’
    â€˜Think about it.’
    â€˜Sleep on it.’

Chapter Six
    Raining again – the thin stinging rain of Holland that blows in across the North Sea in gusty draughts that go up your sleeve and down your leg, the cold fine streaks of wet slashing at his ears and eyelids: he felt old and disheartened at having even noticed. How many nights had he not spent in the open, professionally armed against cold and damp, boredom and fatigue? But now he was sick of it, and counted the years before he could retire. Ten years? – unless the doctors threw him out first. This weather hurt his bad leg and made him limp; it was a struggle to get into Arlette’s deux-chevaux and even more to get out of it again in the Van Lennepweg. Ach, work kept one young.
    He didn’t have to run around draughty streets at night; he was the Commissaire, desk man, executive, armchair strategist, and for running about he had active healthy young men at his disposal. But there, he couldn’t taste with their tongue.
    The Van Lennepweg at nine thirty on a wet autumn night was