Tom Holt - Flying Dutch

“I said piss off,” said a voice through the letter-box.

Mr Gleeson muttered something in a low voice, and two other accountants rang the doorbell for him. This is known as the art of delegation.

Eventually the door opened again.

“Sorry about that. Can I help you?”

This time it was a man in a kilt with a beard. He seemed rational enough, and Mr Gleeson stepped forward. Far away in the distance, a nightingale sang.

“My name’s Gleeson,” he said. “Moss Berwick, accountants. Where’s Miss Doland?”

“She’s inside,” said the man with the beard, “but you don’t want to see her. You want to see me. My name’s Vanderdecker.”

For a moment, Mr Gleeson simply stood and stared. Then he pulled himself together. “We have to talk,” he said.

Vanderdecker shook his head. “Perhaps you may have to talk, I don’t know,” he said. “If it’s some sort of obsession you have, maybe a psychiatrist could help. I knew a man once…”

“Please,” said Mr Gleeson. “This is no time for flippancy. Have you any idea what is happening on the markets?”

“Heavy falls in jute futures?”

“We must talk,” said Mr Gleeson.

“We are talking,” Vanderdecker replied. Gleeson drew in a deep breath and started to walk past Vanderdecker into the house. But the Flying Dutchman put the palm of his hand on Mr Gleeson’s shirt front and shoved. There was a ripple of amazement among the other accountants. Vanderdecker smiled. “So what’s happening on the markets?” he said.

“Massive rises,” said Gleeson. “The situation has got completely out of hand. It is imperative that we…”

“Hold on a minute,” Vanderdecker said, and he stepped back into the hallway, called out, “Sebastian! Make him stop that bloody row, will you?” and turned to face Mr Gleeson again. Muted grumbling in the background, and the harpsichord music ceased.

“Sorry about that,” said the Flying Dutchman, “but I think you’ll find everything will be back to normal on your beloved markets in a few minutes. The Professor’s got completely ratted and he’s started playing things on the harpsichord, forgetting that it’s a computer too. You don’t understand a word of that, but what the hell, you’re only a glorified book-keeper. Clerks, we called them in my day. Used to shave the tops of their heads and talk Latin at you. I see you shave your head too, or is that just premature hair loss?”

“All right,” said Mr Gleeson, “that’s enough from you. Where is Miss…”

But before he could say any more, Vanderdecker had grabbed him by various parts of his clothing, lifted him off the ground and tossed him into a flower-bed.

“Now listen,” Vanderdecker said, “the lot of you. The phrase “under new management” springs immediately to mind; also, “the King is dead; long live the King.” If in future you wish to see Miss Doland, you will have to make an appointment. Miss Doland has left the accountancy profession and has gone into banking. She is now the proprietor of the First Lombard Bank.”

There was a very long silence—if the accountants had had their stopwatches running, about twelve hundred pounds worth, plus VAT—and then Mr Gleeson said, “You what?”

“Miss Doland,” Vanderdecker said, “has exchanged entitlements as sole beneficiary by assignment of what I believe you meatheads call the Vanderdecker Policy for a fifty-one per cent shareholding in Quicksilver Limited, which is—I hope I’m getting all this right, it’s not exactly my field, you know—which I believe is the holding company which owns the First Lombard Bank, Lombard Assurance, Lombard Unit Trusts plc, and all sorts of other money sort of things with the word Lombard in them. The remaining forty-nine per cent goes to me. We’ve just had a very pleasant half-hour with the previous owner signing stock transfer forms while drinking apple brandy and singing “Lilliburlero” in Dutch. If any of you people fancy dropping by at about eleven-thirty tomorrow morning, you can help out with the Capital Gains Tax. For now, though, you will kindly shove off before I set the cat on you. Goodnight.”

The door slammed again, and there was the sound of a chain going on. Mr Gleeson picked himself up, brushed leaf-mould off his trousers and lifted the flap of the letterbox.

“Doland,” he shouted, “you’re fired!” Then he got into the car and drove off.

As the receding-Mercedes noises faded away, the door opened again, just a crack.

“Has he gone?” said a small female voice.

“Yes,” Vanderdecker said.

“Really?”

“Really and truly.”

Vanderdecker closed the door. “But it beats me,” he said, “why you’re afraid of him. Them, come to that. Glorified, over-fed book-keepers.”

“I don’t know,” Jane replied. “Habit, probably. You know, I used to have these daydreams. The letter would come saying that my long-lost aunt in Australia had died leaving me a million pounds, and then I’d go into Mr Peters” office and say, “Peters, you’re a jerk, you can stick your job…” But even if she had…

“Who?”

“My aunt in Australia.”

“You have an aunt in Australia?”

“No.”

“Sorry,” Vanderdecker said, “forget it, carry on with what you were saying.”

“Even,” Jane said, “if I’d had one and she had, I still wouldn’t have.”

“Because of habit?”

“Habit of mind,” Jane replied. “Subservience, innate atavistic feudal mentality. You don’t go telling your liege-lord he can stick his job even if you’re leaving to join the Second Crusade. Purely theoretical, anyway.”

“Not now,” Vanderdecker said. “You are in exactly that position, thanks to my foresight in taking out life insurance all those years ago—my mother wouldn’t half be surprised, by the way, she always said I was a fool when it came to money—and yet you denied yourself a moment’s extreme pleasure because of habit of mind. Strange behaviour.”

“Oh, I’m just chicken,” Jane said. “Anyway, thanks for dealing with it for me. You did it very well.”

“Did I?” Vanderdecker said. “Call it beginner’s luck.”

They were standing in the hall. From the drawing-room came drinking noises. “Well, then…” Jane said.

“Well what?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Julius…”

“Do you know,” Vanderdecker said. “I can’t get used to people calling me that again. That Bennett bloke keeps calling me Julius, and I don’t know what to make of it. Only person ever called me Julius was my mother. Dad called me son, my master when I was a prentice used to refer to me as “hey, you”, and then I was captain or skipper for the next four hundred odd years. Being Julius again is a bit unsettling, really. I never liked the name, anyway.”

“Didn’t you?”

“No.”

“Do you have another name? A second name, or something?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Albert.”

That seemed to kill the conversation for a moment. Then Vanderdecker said, “You don’t like the name Albert, do you?”

“Well,” Jane said, “not really.”

“Nor me. Good old Dutch name, of course, been in my family for generations. I think it means Elf-beard, which is quite incredibly helpful. Well, too late to do anything about it now, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

There was nothing in particular keeping them in the hall, but neither of them moved. Eventually Jane asked: “So what are you going to do next?”

Vanderdecker raised an eyebrow. “Next?”

“Well, yes, I mean, you aren’t going to stay here drinking with Professor Montalban for the rest of time, now are you?”

Vanderdecker considered. “Probably not,” he said. “On the other hand, I feel like a bit of a holiday.”