Stone Cold (13 page)

She looked worried for a moment, then said, “No, they know me. They wouldn’t pay any attention to you. I’ll tell them you’re just a dumb Englishman who didn’t know where to put it.”

I took another stab. “Does your husband know you’re doing this?”

Now she looked really worried. “He’s a sick old man.”

“And you wouldn’t want him to know.”

“Are you threatening me to tell him? Is that what you’re doing?” I did not reply. “You bastard,” she said. I didn’t like being called a bastard, particularly when I was acting like one.

I tried to switch from threatening to persuasion. “It’s really important to me that I find out something. I’ve gone to a lot of trouble. I’ve been to America to try to find out. It can’t possibly do you any harm to tell me. Or him.”

She looked at me for a while, biting her lower lip.

“Look, whatever your name is really—”

“Annette.”

“All right, Annette. I don’t like the way this conversation was going. I’m not really a bastard. I don’t want to hurt your husband. I just want some simple information,” I said.

She said, “I don’t want you to see him. It would upset him.”

“Well perhaps you could ask him for me. What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s had a nervous breakdown. The doctors call it – what is the word? Depression.”

“Is it really very bad?”

“It’s because he got carcinoma. Skin cancer. On the hands.”

“On the hands? I imagine that’s the worst place for him.”

“Exactly. He did delicate work with his hands. He was clever, proud of his art. His skill, you would say in English. I think that’s the right word, yes?”

“Yes it is,” I said encouragingly.

“He was well known in the diamond trade, respected. When he had this hands illness he couldn’t work,” she went on. “When he had to stop working, he became depressed badly. He went to doctors. He spends most time alone, sometimes reading or watching television. He’s nervous to go out, and he’s nervous to meet people. He’s taking medicine and I hope he’ll get better.”

“I see. Well I just want to know about a diamond, where it came from. I don’t think it would upset him too much if I asked him.”

“Is it really that important to know?” she asked.

“Yes. I’ve followed the trail to California and back to here.”

“Somebody paid you to do all that?”

“Yes. You’d be surprised at the things people pay money for.”

“I might have been once, but not since coming to work here.”

I pressed on. “Anyway, if I tell you what I want to know, perhaps you can find out without bothering him.”

“OK. What do you want to know?” So I told her about the diamond, and explained that I wanted to know its origin. “I’m sure that if your husband were well, he’d be quite willing to tell me. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t,” I said. “And I’m sorry I threatened you.”

She relaxed a little now. “I remember that diamond,” she said. “He told me about it. He said it was the biggest diamond he had ever worked on. He said it didn’t need much cutting. Just polishing. It came from Germany.”

“Can you find out exactly where? A name and address?”

“I suppose I could look it up in his papers.”

“Please do. I really would like that. Will you call me tomorrow and tell me?”

“OK.”

“Do you promise?”

She hesitated. Evidently, she took a promise seriously. I liked that. “OK, I promise,” she said finally. She littered her conversation with OKs. Probably it was the first English word she’d learned. Apart from occasional lapses, her English was very good.

She said, “Tell me please, if I refused, would you really have told Israel?”

“Probably not. I’m too nice a guy. I didn’t even like threatening you. Thank you for the information. Or rather the promise of it.” I got up to go.

“Don’t go just now please,” she said. “It won’t look good if you go after five minutes.”

I wondered what I was expected to do. After all, it was a brothel and I had paid. I sat down on the bed and said, “Let’s talk for a while then. Unless you think we ought to, er, have sex. But that’s not why I came here. Although you are very attractive,” I added, because I did not want to offend her.

“No, I’d rather just talk,” she said.

“Ok, we’ll talk for a while,” I said. “Friends?” and I held out my hand.

She looked doubtful, then said, “Well, maybe friends.” But she did not take my outstretched hand.

“We can talk about anything,” I said. “Say anything about ourselves. I’ll be leaving Holland soon and we’ll never see each other again.”

She thought for a moment and then her mood changed and she smiled. “When I was a little girl, we used to play a game,
Geheim
voor
geheim
. Do you know what that means?”

“No.”

“It means – how shall I say it in English – a secret for a secret. I tell you a
geheim
, a secret, about me, and then you have to tell me a secret about you. It doesn’t have to be very secret, just something I don’t know about you.”

“You don’t know anything about me. And I don’t know a lot about you.”

“So it should be easy.”

“Then let’s start the game now.” She smiled and seemed almost cheerful. I suppose this was a brief vacation from her surroundings, playing a game like a little girl.

“You go first,” I said. “Are you from Amsterdam, or did you come from somewhere else?”

“No, I don’t come from Amsterdam, I come from Walcheren, in the south. I had a happy bringing up. The first part, anyway.”

“So why did you come to Amsterdam?”

“My father died when I was twelve. Then, when I was seventeen, my mother married again. He was handsome, and I suppose I was jealous. I loved my father, you see, and didn’t want my mother to have anyone else. Also, my mother didn’t like the way he was looking at me. I think she thought he was going to try to do things with me. So I left home and came to Amsterdam,

“Were you really afraid that he would make advances to you? Or were you attracted to him?”

“You think I was attracted to him?”

“I don’t know. I’m just suggesting.”

“I think you’re trying to be clever-clever. Anyway, I went from home and came to Amsterdam. I got a job working in a shop. Then I got a job as a waitress at an international business club. I was good with languages at school, and I took classes to make my English better. But I got involved with a guy. I suppose I was very stupid. I had a baby, a baby boy. That’s a long
geheim
. Now it’s your turn. Your secret.”

I had to reply, although I did not know whether she would understand. I told that I thought the intellectual side of me was developed to the neglect of other parts of me. I wanted to be physically challenged. But because I could speak German I was sent to Germany. So I didn’t fight. Counter-intelligence. “Half my time was spent reminding soldiers that if they continued to get stoned on base they would end up in the guard house.”

“That’s all?”

“I did one good thing. We had a Syrian working in our kitchen. That was not unusual, a lot of the menial work was done by immigrants. But the German police connected this guy to an Al Qaida network. I had his movements monitored and his mobile tapped. Working with the German intelligence, we worked out that they were planning to put poison in the food. So there are some GIs alive and others who would have had God-awful stomach aches if it hadn’t been for me. It’s true that if I hadn’t been there somebody else would have worked it out, but it was me.

“And now you, Annette. Your turn. How did you come to be married to Israel Cremer?”

She paused, and I thought for a moment that she was going to pull out of the game. But she started again. “I got married and had another baby, a baby girl. My husband was a Moroccan, and he went back to Morocco. He said he’d send for me and the children to go, but after a few months I have not heard from him again. So I went back to work as a waitress. I tried to support two children and give them a good bringing up. Which was not possible. Now it’s you.”

“All right, I’ll tell you how I took on this job. As an investigator.”

“That’s not a real secret, a real
geheim
. You probably did it for the money, which is why most people take jobs. Are you homosexual?”

“No. Why would you think that?”

“I just thought you might be. Have you ever been in love?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“When was the last time?” I hesitated. My first instinct was that I did not want to talk about Tamsin. But then I thought that it might be good to spell out some of what had been churning around in my mind for months, and say it to this woman whose world would never cross mine, and who probably would not understand. So I started, working my way along gingerly.

“It was in New York. I had come out of the army and was staying with a friend and looking for a job. My friend took me to a gallery opening and I met this girl there. She worked in the gallery. She was wrapped up in the art world. We talked and got on together. She was horrified to learn that I had been in the army. She said she found everything military repellent. She did not want to know about international power politics, just about peace. We were opposites. But she was clearly attracted to me.

“She called me and took me to an art show and set out to educate me in contemporary art and I did learn some things from her. The fact that I was different from her and most of her friends was clearly an attraction. She actually showed me off to her friends, as if I were a strange animal she had captured. We just got along very well, and then I found that I didn’t want to let a day go by without speaking to her.

“Then she started making difficulties. I could say we were drifting apart, but actually she was creating spaces between us. Then she told me she had fallen in love with someone else.

“This was something that had never happened to me before. I’d had relationships break up, of course, but it had never happened that a woman had told me she preferred someone else. I found it hurt in a special way. I was devastated. I didn’t realize how jealous I could be. I was two when my baby sister was born and my mother told me I raised hell when she came into the house, so perhaps I’m naturally jealous. Does that make sense?”

“So you were in love with this woman.”

“It felt something like it. I don’t know. Looking back, I can’t see myself spending the rest of my life with her. Now that’s a pretty damned big secret. Tell me how you come to be married to Israel Cremer and working here.”

“That’s two secrets.”

“All right, how did you come to be working here?”

“Because I was married to Israel Cremer. He advertised for a housekeeper. I asked. Not many men would accept a housekeeper with two small children, but he did. He was much older than me. He became fond of my children, and he was very good to them. He’s a good man, a kind man. He isn’t very practised – he can’t do things – what do I mean?”

“Practical?”

“OK, yes. He isn’t practical. Diamonds are his life. I had to deal with most things for him. It was an ideal situation for me. The children had a home. I had led a what-you-call-it? A down-and-up life – and now they had a stable.”

“A stable? Oh, a stable life. Stability.”

“Yes. Then he asked us to marry. His wife had died years before. OK, it wasn’t a marriage of passion, but I’d settle for a comfortable life with a kind, decent man. It was good for my children. Then he became ill. His hands.”

“His hands?”

“Yes. He developed – what’s the word? Carcinoma, cancer of the skin, I told you.”

“Yes.”

“So he couldn’t work. His whole life was in his work, his skill with his hands. And he became depressed. Very. The doctor thought it might be good for him to go to a special hospital, but I said no, I wanted to take care of him myself, at home. He had taken care of me and my children.”

I said, “That’s his story. How about you?”

“I’ve told you my story.”

“But my question was ‘How come you’re working here?’”

“OK. I told you, he can’t work. Soon we would be having no money. He didn’t understand and I didn’t want to worry him. He couldn’t do anything about it anyway. A friend told me about this place, and I came here. I work here three evenings a week. He thinks I work as a receptionist. He would be very upset if he knew what I do. That’s it.”

“And you support him.”

“He’s a decent man. And he supported me.”

I liked Annette. She was gutsy and loyal. Now when I looked at her, with her sleeveless sweater pulled tight over her breasts and her mini-skirt, sitting on the bed with one leg tucked under her, she had a fleshy appeal. On an impulse I said, “Have lunch with me tomorrow. Or if you’re not working here, have dinner with me.”

She smiled for a moment. Then the smile vanished and she said, “You’ve had the time you paid for. Now beat it.”

On my way out of the club I said to the maître d’, “Sabrina was great. Terrific. I’ll recommend this place.”