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he would have to sit up all night and like it. So far no such thing had happened. Except for an attempted voluntary homicide (two loutish youths who had been supplanted with girlfriends and had tipped the supplanters’ Volkswagen into the canal coming home from a dance at one in the morning, materially aided by a big fourth-hand Chevrolet) he had had little work. Puff-puff – petty puff-puff – of a provincial town: burglaries, embezzlements and frauds; juveniles robbing the till in sweet-shops, terrorizing old women with air pistols, putting obstacles on railway lines (vandalism in public parks and breaking up the furniture at pop concerts was the affair of the municipal police) – there was always plenty to do, but it wasn’t the kind of thing one sat up at night for.
    When, therefore, he heard that Bernhard Fischer, owner of theWhite Horse Inn out in Warmond, had died suddenly in confused circumstances, he was at first pleased, then irritated. Something had happened at last to give him a headache over the weekend, not to speak of losing golf, a ridiculous game he had taken to for exercise and which he was getting to enjoy.
    A Saturday. Day for a ritual he enjoyed and looked forward to: English afternoon tea. Since this mania for fresh air and bumping on a horse had possessed Arlette, she seemed to eat more than ever and still stay thin, which he grudged. He was not on a diet, but he had to be frugal, watch his drinking carefully, and not smoke before five in the afternoon, and then only cigars. Weekends, apart from suburban joys like golf or gardening, brought the pleasure of naughty, illegitimate cigarettes. There was a suburban ritual too, and passwords given while he washed the soil off his hands. ‘Why is it that the servants always eat the cucumber sandwiches?’
    Buttered toast, and cherry cake, as well as Marmite. Goody, goody gumdrops. Arlette poured out tea, the Copenhagen porcelain that had been her promotion present. Darjeeling tea, no lemon at teatime, very austere (China tea with lemon, in a tall German beerglass, was made for him by the typist at ten-thirty on office mornings, while everybody else was gorging milky coffee).
    â€˜Have a good bump?’
    â€˜Jumped over hurdles with Janine. I made fastest time. That horse of hers cost a fortune but she’s not really up to it.’ He had heard quite a bit about Janine in the last months – Arlette had got quite friendly with her. She sounded an absurd woman. Her real name was Jannie, pronounced Yanny. She came from the South and had the local accent, which she had replaced by French spoken with a strong Belgian accent of which she was absurdly proud, and the name Janine went with this. You could not really blame her. Her husband, Rob, was the best bicycle champion Holland had produced in more than twenty years. World road champion, an excellent six-day rider in winter, a devil in one-day classics, he had become a rich man. Now, just retired at thirty-six, he had bought a seaside hotel and was making a good thing out of that. Janine had not only an expensive horse and two mink coats, related Arlette, but a very classy BMW two thousand coupé. She was a vulgar, noisy girl, greatly snubbed by the haute bourgeoisie of the riding-school for having made her money out of bicycleracing. Van der Valk agreed that this was pathetic as well as amusing. The girl herself, it seemed, was funny and Arlette liked her, laughing unmaliciously at her horrible French.
    â€˜Any news?’ not very interested in Janine or her horse.
    â€˜Well, yes – that is to say perhaps. Might not be news to you, but that’s not my business.’ Peculiar remark.
    â€˜Out with it.’
    â€˜You’ve heard of big Bernhard – Im Weissn Rössl?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Dead.’
    â€˜So? No, I hadn’t heard.’
    â€˜He was too fat, and it seems the doctor told him half jokingly to ride a horse. Everybody laughed,