Death of a Hawker (6 page)

"Three hundred and fifty guilders."

Grijpstra whistled.

"What's the matter with the woman?" de Gier asked fiercely.

Grijpstra grinned.

"Well?"

"Her husband was a handsome man. Same size as you. Thick curly hair and an air force mustache. Could have been your brother. He invented that bar for her and lived off the spoils. Until he got knifed one night, by a Canadian sailor who wasn't used to jenever."

"De Gier," the commissaris called.

"Coming, sir," de Gier said.

Perhaps it was the intangibility of the threat that unnerved him; the Straight Tree Ditch was quiet enough, guarded as it was by leather-jacketed riot police in pairs, strolling up and down, respectfully greeting the commissaris by either saluting or lifting their long truncheons. The elm trees were heavy and peaceful, their fresh foliage lit by street lights, and the ducks were asleep, floating about slowly, propelled by subconscious movements of their webbed feet, well out of the way of flying bricks, and the human shapes which had been diving into the cold dirty water to get away from charging constables and the relentless approach of police trucks and patrol cars—a common occurrence that night in the waterways closer to the Newmarket.

Grijpstra had marched away and the doctor and the fingerprint man were already on the launch. The commissaris, limping slightly, was a hundred yards ahead when de Gier finally shook himself free from his muddled thoughts. He sprinted and caught up with the commissaris, who looked approvingly at the sergeant.

"Nice," the commissaris said.

"What's nice, sir?"

"The way you sprint. If I run I get out of breath and the nerves in my legs play up." He looked at his watch. "Ten o'clock, we haven't wasted much time so far."

The commissaris turned into a narrow alley which led to another canal. They crossed a narrow footbridge. The commissaris was now walking briskly and his limp was less noticeable. De Gier ambled along, alert because they were getting closer to the Newmarket and might stumble into trouble, but the canal led nowhere, its water lapping gently at age-old crumbling quays and supporting more ducks, sleeping heaps of feathers emitting an occasional pleasant quack. De Gier remembered having read somewhere that ducks spend some twelve or more hours a day in a dream and he envied their daze, a condition preferable to human sleep on a bed. He was trying to imagine what it would be like to be a dazed duck, bobbing about in one of the city's many harbors or canals, when the commissaris stopped and pointed at a small houseboat.

"That's the one I was looking for," the commissaris whispered. "We are going in there and I want you to grab hold of yourself. A strange person lives on that boat but she is an old friend of mine and perhaps she will be of use. She may shock you perhaps but don't laugh or make a remark, never mind what she says or does. She won't be any good to us if we upset her."

"Yes, sir," de Gier whispered, awed by the unexpected warning. There was no need to whisper, the houseboat was still thirty feet away.

De Gier waited on the quay as the commissaris stepped on the short gangway, stood on the narrow ledge of the boat and knocked on the door. The houseboat looked pretty, freshly painted and its windows decorated with red and white checked curtains, tucked up in the middle and lifted toward the sides by pieces of laced braid, and framing geraniums in Delft blue china pots. Loving care had not been limited to the boat itself but had extended to the quay. A small garden grew on each side of the gangway, hemmed in by low ligustrum hedges and consisting of miniature rock gardens, the dislodged cobblestones piled up and serving as rocks, overgrown with trailers paying homage to the delicate orange laburnum flowers which formed the centerpiece of the arrangement. The entire garden covered no more than some twelve square feet, but de Gier, a dedicated balcony gardener himself, was impressed and promised himself to find the spot again, perhaps just to stand there and gaze or perhaps to see if the designer's artfulness would inspire him to do something more imaginative with his flower boxes than he had been able to do so far.

"Who is it?" a heavy voice asked from within.

"It's me, Elizabeth," the commissaris shouted. "Me and a friend."

"Commissaris!" the voice shouted happily. "Come in! The door is open."

De Gier's eyes were round when he shook the lady's heavy hand. She was old, over seventy, he guessed, and dressed in a black gown which hung to the floor. There was a purse attached by straps to the leather belt which surrounded her ample belly, an embroidered purse with a solid silver handle. Gray hair touched her shoulders and there was a knitted cap on the large head.

"Sergeant de Gier," the commissaris said, "my assistant."

"Welcome, sergeant," Elizabeth said and giggled. "You are looking at my cap, I see. Looks funny, doesn't it? But there is a draft here and I don't want to catch another cold. I have had two already this year. Sit down, sit down. Shall I make coffee or would you prefer something a little stronger? I still have half a bottle of redberry jenever waiting for company but it may be too sweet for your taste. How nice to have visitors! I can't go for my evening walk with all this fuss on the Newmarket and I was just saying to Tabby here that there's nothing on TV tonight and he gets bored just sitting around with me, don't you, Tabby?"

Tabby sat on the floor, looking at de Gier from huge slit eyes, yellow and wicked. De Gier sat down on his haunches and scratched the cat behind the ears. Tabby immediately began to purr, imitating the sound of an outboard engine. He was twice the size of a normal cat and must have weighed between twenty-five and thirty pounds.

Elizabeth lowered her bulk into a rocking chair and pounded her thighs. "Here, Tabby." The cat turned and leaped in one movement, flopping down on his mistress's lap with a dull thud.

"There's a good cat," Elizabeth boomed, and squeezed the animal with both hands so that the air was forced out of its lungs in a full-throated yell, which made the commissaris and de Gier jump, but the cat closed its eyes with sensuous pleasure and continued its interrupted purring. "So? Berry jenever or coffee?"

"Coffee, I think, dear," the commissaris said.

"You make it, sergeant," Elizabeth said. "You'll find everything in the kitchen. I am sure you can make better coffee than I can, and while you are busy the commissaris and I can have a little chat. We haven't seen each other for months and months, have we, darting?"

De Gier busied himself in the kitchen, nearly dropping the heavy coffeepot as he thought of what he had just seen. When Elizabeth sat down he had glimpsed her feet, stuck into boots which would be size thirteen. De Gier had seen travesty before, but always in young people. Only a week ago he had helped to raid a brothel where the prostitutes were men and boys dressed up as females. When he had interrogated them, trying to find a suspect to fit the charge of robbery brought in by a hysterical client, he had been a little disgusted but not much. He knew that the human mind can twist itself into any direction. But de Gier had never met with an old man, an old big man, dressed up as a woman. Elizabeth was a man. Or was she? Was this a real case of a female mind accidentally thrown into the body of a male? The houseboat was definitely female. The small kitchen he was moving about in now showed all the signs of female hands having arranged its pots and pans, having sewed tablecloths and curtains to fit the cramped space, selected crockery in harmony with the neat array of cups on the top shelf of the cupboard and crocheted a small cloth in an attempt to make, even the refrigerator look nice and dainty. The room where Elizabeth was now chatting to the commissaris—he could hear her deep voice coming through the thin partition—could be part of a Victorian museum; its armchairs, foot warmers, tea table, framed yellowish photographs of gentlemen with waxed mustaches and high collars had been high fashion, female fashion, a very long time ago.

"Can you manage, sergeant?"

De Gier shuddered. Elizabeth was in the open door, filling it completely; she had to bend her head.

"Yes, Elizabeth." His voice faltered. She was in the kitchen now and he could see the commissaris through the open door. The commissaris was gesticulating frantically. Yes, yes, he wouldn't give the game away, what mis the silly little man worrying about?

"Yes, Elizabeth, the coffee is perking and I've got sugar, cream, cups, spoons, yes, I've got it all."

"Naughty," Elizabeth said. "You haven't got the saucers. You aren't married, are you, sergeant? Living by yourself, I bet. You weren't planning to serve coffee in cups only, were you? What do you think of these cups? Bought them last week. Just what I've been looking for for years. My mother had cups like that, cost a few cents when I was a child and now you pay as many guilders, but it doesn't matter, I bought them anyway. And there's a saucer for Tabby too, nasty cat goes on banging it about when I don't keep it filled; he'll crack it if he isn't careful and I'll have to give him an ugly enameled one again. Nasty cat, he got so angry with me yesterday that he didn't watch where he was going and he fell off the roof into the canal and I had to fish him out with a broom and all I got for thanks was a scratch. See here."

She rolled up her sleeve and de Gier saw a thick hairy wrist with a deep scratch on it.

"I have a cat too," and he showed the top of his right hand where Oliver had scratched him that morning.

"Ha," Elizabeth said, whacking him on the shoulder so that he nearly dropped the sugarbowl, which he was refilling from a tin found in the cupboard. "They all do it, but what else can they do, the silly little animals! They can't talk, can they? But they still have to show their tempers. What's your cat? Alley cat or proper aristocracy like my Tabby?"

"Siamese."

"Yes, they are nice too. I had one, years ago now. The neighbor's dog got it when it was still small, grabbed it by the neck and shook it and it was dead when he dropped it. All over in a second. Since then I have always had bigger cats. No dog would try to pick on Tabby. He would be blind and castrated and floating in the canal with his legs up if he only tried to look at my Tabby."

She went back into the living room and de Gier followed, carrying a tray. Elizabeth fussed with the cups and brought out a tin with a Chinese design. "A biscuit, gentlemen?"

De Gier was nibbling his biscuit, inwardly grumbling about its oversweet taste when Elizabeth got up again and opened a drawer. "Here, what do you think of it, commissaris? Didn't I make a nice job of it? A hundred and fifty hours of hard work, I timed it, but it was worth the trouble, wasn't it?"

The commissaris and de Gier admired the bellpull which Elizabeth dangled in front of their eyes. It showed a repeating design of roses, embroidered in cross-stitch. "I have lined it with the material you brought me in that little plastic bag. They are clever nowadays, aren't they? When I was a little girl you had to buy your material by the yard, even when you only needed a little bit, but now it's all supplied in those handy kits. Just the right fit too. All I have to do now is find a set of copper ornaments and sew them on and then I'll hang it over there, next to the door. Just the right place for it. Maybe I'll get a brass bell as well and then I'll pull it and the servant will come. Hahaha."

"Beautifully done, Elizabeth," the commissaris said. "No, don't put it away, I want to see it properly. My wife is doing something like that as well. On linen I think she said it was, pure linen."

"Can't work on linen anymore," Elizabeth said sadly, "not even with a magnifying glass. If the design isn't printed on the cloth I can't follow it; on linen you have to count the stitches, from a chart. I used to like doing that but now I get a headache when I try. We are getting old. It was very thoughtful of you giving me the bellpull kit, commissaris. Good of you not to forget an old woman living by herself."

"I like coming to see you," the commissaris said, "and I would come more often if I wasn't so busy and if my legs didn't make me ill all the time, but this visit tonight isn't a social call. That's why the sergeant came with me. He is a detective and we are working tonight. There's been a manslaughter on the Straight Tree Ditch this afternoon."

"Manslaughter? Nothing to do with the riots, I suppose?" "No. A man's face got bashed in. Abe Rogge, a hawker. The house is close, perhaps you know the man."

"That handsome man with the blond beard? Big fellow? With a golden necklace?"

"Yes."

"I know him." Elizabeth pursed her lips. "He has spoken to me. Often. He has even visited me here. He's got a stall on the Albert Cuyp street market in town, hasn't he?"