Outsider in Amsterdam (12 page)

“Hash,” they said simultaneously.

“We’ll send it to the lab to make sure,” Grijpstra said, “but it’s hash all right.”

“Good work,” de Gier said to the constable, who looked pleased, but he didn’t think much of the find. A few crumbs of hash on the floor meant nothing. Of course these people would smoke hash. Johan, or Eduard, or the girls, or Piet himself, or van Meteren perhaps. And they might drop a little on the floor. Why not? To smoke hash is hardly punishable. To stock and sell it is a crime. If they could find a cask full of the stuff …

“You opened all the casks?” he asked.

“All of them. We had to cut the ropes and pry the lids open with a knife. Nothing but soup paste in there. We prodded them and took samples from the bottom and the sides. Soup, that’s all.”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing,” the constable said, “but it’s a hell of a mess here. Dirty. Dead mice and all. And they call it a restaurant. Bah.”

“You are still young,” Grijpstra said. “The world is held together by dirt. Don’t think of it or you’ll never eat again.”

Before leaving the cellar he stopped and turned around. “I’ll tell you something else. Female bodies can be very dirty too. Did you ever think of that? If you would only consider …”

“I don’t want to know,” the constable said.

De Gier laughed and climbed the stairs. A detective tapped him on the shoulder.

“You got a minute?”

De Gier followed the detective to the restaurant. “You found something?”

The detective shrugged. “Perhaps.”

“So?”

“Well, you’ll have to decide. You are in charge, aren’t you?”

“Grijpstra is in charge.”

“That’s what I mean,” the detective said. “You and Grijpstra, same thing.”

“Oh yes?” de Gier asked irritably. “I am a separate entity, you know. We aren’t a Siamese twin.”

“All right,” the detective said. “You are separate. You want to hear what I have to tell you?”

“Please,” de Gier said.

“In van Meteren’s room, that Papuan gent, we found some funny things.”

“I know,” de Gier said. “I saw the room. A wild boar’s skull,
a jungle drum, a collection of twigs and shells and stones and some funny dolls.”

“Exactly,” the detective said, “and a Lee-Enfield rifle, well kept and wrapped in an oiled cloth, but no ammunition.”

“Hey,” de Gier said. “He shouldn’t have that.”

“Right,” the detective said, “but the fellow is on the force and he had no ammunition. He told me that he used to be with the New Guinea state police and that he kept the rifle as a souvenir when the Indonesians took over. He didn’t want to surrender his weapon. A patriot. He took it apart and smuggled it in, and the customs didn’t notice. Now do I grab him or not? To own a firearm is a crime nowadays. It’ll cost him his job and maybe his unemployment benefits. He’ll have to pay a fine and his name will be in the books forever.”

“What have you done so far?” de Gier asked.

“I told him to report to the armory at Headquarters and ask them to pour aluminum into the barrel, then he can keep it. But I also said that the final decision rests with you. So I can still grab him if you give the word.”

“Okay,” de Gier said. “Let’s do it your way. But tell him to report to the armory this week. If he hasn’t been there in seven days’ time we’ll still grab him.”

“Yes, boss.”

“And write an unofficial report with a copy for the armory sergeant.”

“Yes, boss.”

“And don’t call me boss.”

“No, boss,” the detective said.

Grijpstra came into the restaurant, accompanied by a young woman and a little girl.

“Allow me to introduce you.”

“De Gier,” de Gier said. “You must be Mrs. Verboom.”

“Mrs. Verboom has come straight from the airport,”
Grijpstra said. “This is Yvette. Yvette is very tired, aren’t you?” The little girl smiled.

“We mustn’t keep you, then,” de Gier said. “Can we take you anywhere? Do you have a place to sleep?”

Mrs. Verboom smiled sweetly.

“Don’t worry about us,” she said. “My father is downstairs with the car. He’ll take Yvette home and I’ll go there later. I thought you might want to see me right away.”

“Yes, that would be a good idea,” de Gier said. “This officer will take your daughter down to the car.”

The detective took the little girl by the hand. “You want to come with me, dear?”

“Are you a policeman?” the girl asked.

“He is a very nice policeman,” de Gier said. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes, boss,” the detective said.

Grijpstra and de Gier studied the young woman. Piet’s taste must have been excellent. Thérèse was a good looking girl but this woman, although at least ten years older than her husband’s mistress, and worn out by the trip and possibly tension, was a beauty. De Gier admired the long thick blonde hair and the sensual, well-shaped mouth. Mrs. Verboom crossed her legs and produced a cigarette. De Gier smiled and lit it for her. She smiled back.

“I hope you don’t mind if I am not sad. I didn’t love Piet, not for a long time, and I am not really concerned about his death. I didn’t want him to die but if he did, well, then he did.”

“I understand,” de Gier said.

“And I didn’t kill him,” she said calmly. “I couldn’t have if I had wanted to for I was in Paris. I can prove it easily. I’ll give you my address in Paris, so you can check it out.”

She wrote the address down and de Gier copied it in his notebook. He would have to ask the chief inspector to contact the French police.

“You are now the only director of the Hindist Society,” Grijpstra said.

“Some society,” Mrs. Verboom said sarcastically. “Some nothing. The house is empty and everybody has left, except van Meteren, I hear, and he was never part of the Society. And he is leaving as well, he tells me. And I saw through the Hindist nonsense a long time ago. Piet converted me when I married him, when I still thought he had something to teach.” She looked at the policemen. “But I am interested in the money, I have to look after my child.”

“I am sorry, Mrs. Verboom,” Grijpstra said. “But I don’t think there is any money. Your husband mortgaged the house and I don’t know what happened to the money. There’s still a chance we may find it but right now there is no trace of it. Perhaps you can sell the house and make something out of it but I think you should contact Joachim de Kater, your husband’s accountant.”

Mrs. Verboom looked out of the window.

“The bastard,” she said. “For years and years I sweat on this house. I even plastered some of the walls and did carpentry. He made me carry bricks, right up to the top floor, he was too stingy to install a proper hoist. And it wasn’t just me. We were all idealists, we were going to improve the mental climate of Amsterdam and make people happy by introducing them to the ‘real peace.’ We were detached! Ha.”

The detectives smiled understandingly.

“And now he has blown the lot. What did he do with the money?”

“I wish I knew,” de Gier said. “Then we might also know if your husband was murdered and if so, why. But we can’t find anything. Would you know perhaps if your husband ever dealt in drugs?”

“Hash?” Mrs. Verboom asked.

“Hash, heroin, cocaine, speed, pills, any drug at all.”

Mrs. Verboom shook her lovely head and allowed her cape to slide down from her shoulders. She wore a thin cotton blouse underneath, with the three top buttons undone. She bowed down a little. De Gier saw her breasts, first one, and then, after a charming twist, the other.

“Hmmpf, hmmpf,” he said slowly.

“I beg your pardon?” Mrs. Verboom asked.

“No, nothing,” de Gier said. “I said hmmpf hmmpf. I have been saying that a lot lately. No specific meaning. Maybe I work too much.”

“May be the warm weather,” Mrs. Verboom said and laughed. “Drugs you said. Perhaps he did. He had no morals, I know all about his lack of morals. But he wasn’t very courageous and drugs are a risky business … I don’t know. We did have hash here, a big tin full of hash. He must have bought it wholesale for there was quite a lot in it. But he never sold any as far as I know. We used to have parties with it; he called it concentration exercises, and he would play special music on his gramophone and we had to be quiet. I enjoyed those parties. Once we had some tomatoes on the table and they were very beautiful. It was the first time I saw what a tomato really is like. Or, rather, that’s what I thought at the time. The next day it was just another tomato. Hash is very relaxing, you know.”

“You still use it?” de Gier asked.

“No. I gave it up when I went to Paris. Nobody offered me any and I felt no need to start rushing around to see if somebody would give me a stickie. I never smoked much of it. Perhaps we had six parties in all. Anyway, I have to work for a living now. I live a very dull life.”

“Why in Paris?” Grijpstra asked.

“My mother is French and we have relatives over there. French is my second language. When I left Piet I wanted to make a complete break.”

“So your husband gave people the opportunity to take drugs. But did he ever sell any?” de Gier asked.

“I am not sure,” Mrs. Verboom said. “We never sold stickies over the bar or in the restaurant. But perhaps he dealt in it in a big way. Some strange types used to come and visit him and he would receive them in his room and lock the door. Perhaps they were dealers.”

“We didn’t find the tin you mentioned,” Grijpstra said.

“Perhaps somebody took it; van Meteren told me downstairs that somebody broke in during the night after Piet’s death.”

The detectives went on asking but Mrs. Verboom began to repeat herself. She mainly talked about Piet. Grijpstra became very sleepy.

“That’ll be all, Mrs. Verboom,” he said. “You must be tired. I am sure you would like to go to your parents.” He knew, by now, that Piet had not been the most charming person in Amsterdam.

S
ATURDAY MORNING, NINE
o’clock.

De Gier was asleep.

The alarm had gone off, as always, at six thirty. And de Gier had got up, groaning, and fixed himself coffee and drunk the coffee on his balcony, while he looked at the large brown lawn behind the apartment building, a very neat lawn, with roses in the middle. He had listened to the many thrushes, admired the seagulls and the lone crow, and frowned at the pigeons.

“Why don’t you catch yourself a couple of pigeons?” he had asked Oliver, who had come out on the balcony too. “Pigeons shit too much. Look.”

One of his geranium plants had been hit and showed a patch of slimy acid excrement.

De Gier went inside, got a pair of scissors, and snipped at the plant.

He looked at the lawn again, now populated by a dachshund. The dachshund couldn’t make up his mind where to sit down, the lawn was too big. Acres and acres of grass and just one small dachshund.

De Gier finished his cigarette, grinned at the dachshund, patted Oliver on the head, and got into bed again. He grunted with pleasure as he pulled the blanket over his shoulder. Another hour, two hours maybe. A long pleasant day.

He dreamt.

It was a dream he had known before.

Some kind of warship sails through the bend of the Herengracht, Amsterdam’s most aristocratic canal. It looks a little like one of the police vessels used to patrol the capital’s waterways, a flat, smooth, powerful boat, grey and low for it must be able to pass under the bridges.

But the ship isn’t manned by the bluecoated Water Police. Its crew consists of a large number of small square men, armed with old-fashioned tommy guns, dating back to the days of Al Capone, short blunt weapons with round cartridge-drums, fastened to the barrel.

De Gier is on the bridge, looking down. This is the moment when the underworld will take over. In a minute the boat will moor and send patrols into the city. The first will make for the city hall and arrest the mayor and the aldermen and the second will shoot its way into Police Headquarters and grab the chief constable.

De Gier is all by himself and unarmed.

But he isn’t nervous; he knows his power, the power of a municipal criminal investigator in a democratically governed country.

He studies the enemy and notes that all the small square men have the same face, and that every face is watching him slyly from under the rim of its bowler hat. He sees that all these small parts, who together form the enemy, are dressed in striped suits, model Grijpstra, and in grey ties, model chief inspector.

“But this is very logical,” de Gier thinks. The enemy is the perversion of official authority, so it will have to resemble official authority.

It’s very early in the morning. The city is empty. The seventeenth-century gables frame its emptiness.

The ship is moving closer; now it’s underneath de Gier.

He leans over the railing. He spits.

The white fluffy flake of spittle, moved by a weak breeze, floats down slowly and finally lands on a bowler hat. There is an explosion. The ship catches fire and begins to sink, the small square men jump overboard and drown. Only one bowler hat, afloat by itself, remains.

De Gier woke up. He sighed. All’s well that ends well. He had had the dream before, it didn’t end well that time. That time he got caught. He was tortured. And, worse, ridiculed. The small square men had made fun of him. He had been on his knees.

“I am improving,” de Gier thought happily. “I can direct my dreams. A man should be able to direct his own dreams.”

“Hello, Oliver,” he said to the Siamese cat who was asleep on his legs, its wide head flattened comfortably, its mouth curved into a contented half grin.

Oliver squeaked sleepily.

“Don’t squeak,” de Gier said. “You are a cat, you aren’t a mouse.”

Oliver squeaked again.

“All right, you are a mouse.”

He jumped out of bed, sweeping the blanket back and Oliver, suddenly folded into an untidy ball, flew against the wall and got mixed up with the sheets.

De Gier laughed. “You are a clumsy mouse.” Oliver liberated himself and rubbed his smooth body against de Gier’s legs, purring.

De Gier was on his way to the kitchen when the telephone rang.