Death of a Hawker (4 page)

"Exactly," Louis said. "That's what I am doing."

"No, no. You have some freedom, it seems to me, and you are using it. You are deliberately choosing."

"I try," Louis said, disarmed by the commissaris' quiet voice. "Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I am free in a way and trying to do something with my freedom. But I am not even very good at trying. I would never have done anything on my own. I was rotting away in a dark room, sleeping until two o'clock in the afternoon every day and hanging about in silly bars at night, when Abe found me. I just tagged on to Abe. It happened to me. He practically took me by the scruff of the neck and dragged me along."

"Didn't you say that you were making some structure out of beads? You were doing that before you met Abe, weren't you?"

"Yes, nothing ever came of it. I threw the whole mess into a dustbin one day. I had meant to create something really unusual, a human shape which would move in the wind or the draft. I was trying to make a body out of copper wire and connect the wire with thin plastic threads and string beads on the threads. The body would glitter and show life when it moved, but it wouldn't be moving itself, only acting when forces beyond its power played with it. Unfortunately I am no artist. The idea was good but I only managed to string a lot of beads together and waste a year."

"Right," Grijpstra said. "So Abe got you out of your mess. He may have got others out of their messes. But now he has been killed. The killer may want to kill other people like Abe."

"Rubbish."

"Pardon?"

"You heard me," Louis said sweetly. "Rubbish. Rot. Abe got killed because some force moved somebody's arm. The force was a haphazard force, like the wind. You can't catch the wind."

"If there's a draft we can find the crack and block it," the commissaris said.

"You can jail the instrument," Louis said stubbornly, "but you can't jail the force which activated the instrument. It's beyond you and the effort is silly. Why should I help you waste your time? You can waste it on your own."

"I see," the commissaris said, and looked at the trees again. There was no wind and the last rays of the sun were reflected in the small oblong mirrors of the young leaves.

"Do you really? You are an officer, aren't you? You direct the police?"

"I am a commissaris.
*
But if your theory is right I am only pretending to direct a shadow play which doesn't exist in reality. You are not original but you probably know you are not. Other people have thought of what you are thinking now. Plato, for instance, and others before him."

"There have been clever shadows on the planet,"

Louis said and smiled.

"Yes. But you have helped us nevertheless. We know a little about the dead man now and we know a little about you. We are simple people, deluded probably, as you have pointed out already. We work on the assumption that the State is right and that public order has to be maintained.

"And we work with systems. Someone, some human who meant to harm Abe Rogge, has killed him. He had the opportunity to bash his face in and he thought he had a reason to do it. If we find somebody who had both the opportunity and the motive we will suspect him of a crime and we may arrest him. You, Louis Zilver, had the opportunity. You were in the house at the right time. But from what you have told us we may assume that you had no motive."

"If I was speaking the truth," Louis said.

"Yes. You have told us he was your friend, your savior in a way. He got you out of a rut. You used to spend your time lying in bed all morning and drinking all evening and trying to make a beady man all afternoon. You weren't happy. Abe made your life interesting."

"Yes. He saved me. But perhaps people don't want to be saved. Christ was a savior and they hammered nails through his hands and feet."

"A hammer," Grijpstra said. "I keep on thinking that Abe was killed with a hammer. But a hammer would have made a hole, wouldn't it? The face was bashed in over a large area."

"We'll find out what killed him," the commissaris said. "Go on, Mr. Zilver. You interest me. What else can you tell us?"

"Tell me," de Gier said, still holding Esther's hand, "why was your brother killed? Did he have any enemies?"

Esther had stopped crying and was caressing the table's surface with her free hand.

"Yes. He had enemies. People hated his guts. He was too successful, you see, and too indifferent. He was so full of life. People would worry and be depressed and nervous and he'd just laugh and go to Tunisia for a few weeks to play on the beach or to ride a camel to a little village somewhere. Or he would sail his boat onto the great lake. Or he would take off for the East and buy merchandise and sell it here and make a good profit. He was a dangerous man. He crushed people. Made them feel fools."

"Did he make you feel a fool?"

"I
am
a fool," Esther said.

"Why?"

"Everybody is. You are too, sergeant, whether you want to admit it or not."

"You were going to call me Rinus. O.K., I am a fool. Is that what you want me to say?"

"I don't want you to say anything. If you know you are a fool, Abe wouldn't have been able to hurt you. He used to arrange dinner parties but before anyone was allowed to eat anything, that person had to get up, face the assembled guests and say, "I am a fool."

"Yes?" de Gier asked, surprised. "Whatever for?"

"He enjoyed doing things like that. They had to state that they were fools and then they had to explain why they were fools. Some sort of sensitivity training. A man would say 'Friends, I am a fool. I think I am important but I am not.' But that wouldn't be enough for Abe. He wouldn't let the man eat or drink before he had explained, in detail, why exactly he was a fool. He would have to admit that he was proud because he had some particular success, a business deal for instance, or an examination he had passed, or a woman he had made, and then he would have to explain that it was silly to be proud of such a feat because it had just happened to him. It wasn't his fault or merit, you see. Abe believed that we were just being pushed around by circumstances and that man is an inanimate mechanism, nothing more."

"And people had to admit it to him all the time?"

"Yes, that was the only way to start doing something." "So they could
do
something after all?"

"Yes, not much. Something. Provided they admitted they were fools."

De Gier lit a cigarette and sat back. "Shit," he said softly.

"Pardon?"

"Never mind," de Gier said. "Your brother must have annoyed a lot of people. Did he ever admit he was a fool himself?"

"Oh, yes."

"And he really thought he was a fool?"

"Yes. He didn't care, you see. He just lived for the moment. A day consisted of a lot of moments to him. I don't think he cared when he died either."

"These friends he had, what sort of people were they? Business friends from the street market?"

Esther adjusted her hair and began to fiddle with the coffee machine. "More coffee, Rinus?"

"Please." She filled the apparatus and spilled some coffee on the floor.

"Allow me," de Gier said, and picked up a dustpan and a brush.

"Thanks. Are you married?"

"No, I live by myself, with my cat. I always clean up immediately when I make a mess."

"Friends, you said. Well, he often had friends from the street market in the house, and students would come, and some artists. And journalists, and girls. Abe attracted women. And Louis, of course, you have seen him in the corridor, haven't you. Where is he anyway?" "He is upstairs with my colleague, Adjutant Grijpstra, and the commissaris."

"That little old man is your chief?"

"Yes. Can you describe some of his friends to me? I'll need a list of them. Did he have any special friends?"

"They were all special. He would get very involved with people, until he dropped them. He wasn't concerned about friendship, he always said. Friendship is a temporary phenomenon; it depends on circumstances and it starts and ends like the wind. He would annoy people by saying that, for they tried to attach themselves to him."

"Some case," de Gier said.

Esther smiled, a slow tired smile.

"You remind me of the constables who came here a few days ago," she said. "They had the wrong number. Our neighbors had phoned. An old man was visiting them and the man suddenly got ill and collapsed. The neighbors had phoned for an ambulance but the police came as well, to see if there had been any violence, I suppose. The woman next door was very upset and I went there to see if I could be of some help. The old man was obviously dying. I think he had had a heart attack. I overheard the conversation between the constables."

"What did they say?" de Gier asked.

"The one constable said to the other, 'Hell, I hope the old bugger doesn't croak. If he does we'll have to write a report on it,' and the other one said, 'Never mind, he'll die in the ambulance and, the health officers can take care of it.'"

"Yes," de Gier said.

"That's the way you people think, isn't it?"

"Not really," de Gier said patiently. "It's the way it sounds to you. You are involved, you see. The dead man is your brother. If a friend of mine dies, or if my cat gets run over, or if my mother gets sick, I'll be upset. I assure you that I will be very upset."

"But when you find my brother in a pool of blood..."

"I am upset too, but I keep the feeling down. I won't be of much help if I crack up, will I? And this looks like a strange case. I can't figure out why your brother was killed. Perhaps Grijpstra has seen something. You were here all afternoon, weren't you? Did anybody go up to his room?"

"No. Louis came in but I heard him pass the room and go up the second staircase to his own room."

"The Straight Tree Ditch is not a very busy thoroughfare," de Gier said, "but there must be people moving about in it. It would be possible to climb into the room from the street but it would be a real risk. Nobody has reported anything to the constables in the street, for they would have come in to tell me about it."

"Perhaps someone threw something at Abe," Esther said. "He could have been looking out at the canal. He often does. He stands at the window, the window is open, and he stares. He goes into a trance that way and I have to shout at him to break it. Somebody threw a stone at him perhaps."

"The stone would have fallen in the room or bounced off and got back to the street. The constables would have found it. A bloody stone in the street. I'll go and ask them."

He was back in a minute. "Nothing. I asked the men upstairs as well. There is a man from the finger-print department. He says there is nothing in the room either. No weapon, no stone."

"Abe was a strange man and he died in a strange way," Esther said, "but there will be some technical explanation. There always is, for anything."

"Nothing is stolen, is there?"

"No. There is no money in the house, except what Abe keeps in his wallet. The wallet is still there, in the side pocket of his bush jacket. I saw the bulge. The pocket is buttoned. He usually has a few thousand guilders in it."

"That's a lot of money to keep in one's pocket."

"Abe always had money. He could make it much faster than he could spend it. He owns the warehouse next door; it's full of merchandise, and it never stays there long. There is cotton cloth in it now, bought just before the cotton price went up, and a whole floor stacked with cartons of wool, which he is selling in the street market."

"There is no connection between this house and the warehouse next door is there?"

"No."

"No secret door?"

"No, sergeant. The only way to get to the warehouse is via the street. The courtyards in the back are separated by a high brick wall, much too high to climb."

Grijpstra and the commissaris were coming down the stairs. De Gier called them in and introduced the commissaris to Esther. Two health officers were maneuvering their stretcher up the stairs, they had come with the Water Police launch.

"I'll go upstairs," de Gier said. "I think we would like to have the contents of the pockets before the body is taken away. You'll be given a receipt, Miss Rogge."

"Yes," the commissaris said. "We'll be off for a while now but we may have to come back later. I hope you don't mind the intrusion on your privacy, miss, but..."

"Yes, commissaris," Esther said. "I'll be waiting for you."

The atmosphere in the street was still eerie. A siren wailed in the square nearby. A fresh platoon of riot police came marching up the narrow quay. Two launches of the Water Police, their foredecks packed with leather-coated constables ready to disembark, were navigating carefully between the moored houseboats and the launch preparing to take Abe Rogge's body aboard.

A young man, exhausted, was being run to the ground on the other side of the canal. Gloved hands grabbed his wrists and the detectives could hear the handcuffs' click and the man's sobbing breath.

"Where to, sir?" Grijpstra asked.

The commissaris was watching the arrest. "Hmm?"

"What now, sir?"

"Anywhere, a quiet place somewhere, a pub, a cafe. You go and find it. I am going back into the house a minute. When you find a good place you can telephone the Rogge house. The number will be in the book. Terrible, isn't it?"

"What, sir?"

"That manhunt just now. These riots bring out the worst in everyone."

"They weren't manhandling him, sir, they only made an arrest. The man has probably wounded a policeman in the square. They wouldn't go to so much trouble to catch him otherwise."

"I know, I know," the commissaris said, "but it's degrading. I have seen men hunted down like that during the war."

Grijpstra had seen it too but he didn't say anything.

"Right, run along."

"Sir," Grijpstra said and tapped de Gier on the shoulder.

"So where to?" de Gier asked. "Do you know anything here? The pubs will all be closed and I wouldn't want a police conference in a pub here right now anyway." Grijpstra was staring at the policemen across the water. They were marching their prisoner to a Water Police launch. The prisoner wasn't resisting. Three men going for a walk.