Outsider in Amsterdam (15 page)

“Let’s go there.”

In the flat he asked her to wait at the door while he caught
Oliver and locked him up in the kitchen. She slipped past him. He fed Oliver.

By the time he got into the bedroom she had little on.

He helped her take her panties off.

G
RIJPSTRA WATCHED HIS
wife, a formless lump under the blankets, and listened to the chief inspector whose loud voice hollered from the telephone.

The voice went on and on, connecting sentences, repeating itself. Mrs. Grijpstra’s head became visible. She scowled. “Why,” Grijpstra asked himself, “do curlers have to be pink? Why not brown? If they were brown they would blend with her hair, I wouldn’t notice them so much, and I would be less irritated. I wouldn’t have such a foul taste in my mouth. My stomach wouldn’t cramp. I wouldn’t have to worry about ulcers. My wife wouldn’t forget to buy medicine because I wouldn’t need to take medicine. I would be happier.”

“Yes sir,” Grijpstra said.

It was 10
A.M.
, Sunday morning.

“No,” the chief inspector said. “This ‘yes sir’ won’t get us anywhere, Grijpstra. I don’t see any progress in the case at all. We aren’t getting anywhere, Grijpstra. Complications, that’s all we get.”

“How do you mean, sir?” Grijpstra asked and changed the telephone to his other ear.

“By now we should have sufficient material to start sorting and shifting,” the chief inspector said, “but we haven’t sorted anything and we have more material. You said that you found another staircase, didn’t you?”

“Yes sir,” Grijpstra said, “another staircase and another door. The staircase leads to Piet’s room. The door is locked but we opened it, the lock was simple. It wasn’t rusty. Piet had a key to it and Mrs. Verboom used to have a key. Perhaps other people had or have keys as well.”

“Yes,” the chief inspector said impatiently, “so anybody could have sneaked up without the girls in the kitchen seeing him. Or her. Mrs. Verboom could have used her keys.”

“She was in Paris, sir.”

“So she says. But we have airplanes nowadays. She could have come in the morning and left in the evening. We’ll have to check. Find out where she works.”

“Yes sir,” Grijpstra said and blew cigar smoke into the room. His wife began to cough, got out of the bed and stomped out of the door, slamming it.

“What was that?” the chief inspector asked.

“My wife closed a door.”

“It sounded like a shot. Never mind. There is also the old Mrs. Verboom, do you know where she is now?”

“She is in Aerdenhout; the mental home is called Christian Freeminded Sanatorium for Neuroses.”

“She is all that?” the chief inspector asked.

Grijpstra sucked on his cigar.

“Not funny, hey?” the chief inspector said and continued hopefully. “Perhaps we’ll have an anonymous tip. Anything to give us a hint. A good hint. The commissaris is becoming impatient. He keeps on phoning me. You still think it is murder?”

“There is seventy-five thousand missing, sir,” Grijpstra said.

“Yes,” the chief inspector said, “very true. He may have paid someone. But who? I don’t know. We’ll have to go on, what else can we do? You go and see the corpse’s mother in Aerdenhout. She is crazy but crazy people sometimes answer questions. She may speak the truth. Crazy people often do. Go and see her, Grijpstra. Today. Sunday is just the sort of day to visit a mental
asylum. Do it today and you can do something else tomorrow. You have to go and see our two drug dealers. Monday is a good day to see drug dealers. They won’t have much resistance after the weekend.”

Grijpstra put his hand over the mouthpiece and sighed.

“Are you there, Grijpstra?”

“Yes sir,” Grijpstra said. “I’ll go to the mental home today. Goodbye, sir.”

He rang off.

“Good hunting,” the chief inspector had said but Grijpstra missed it.

His wife had come into the room again.

“You shouldn’t smoke cigars in the bedroom,” Mrs. Grijpstra said.

“It’s a filthy habit,” Grijpstra said and got off the bed. He dressed and clasped his gun holster to his belt. He took his time shaving.

“This’ll be my only pleasure today,” he thought morosely. “A good shave, a lot of very hot water, and a lot of nice frothy soap and a new blade. And after that a sea of trouble. A black sea. A sea. I should have become a fisherman. They sail around, early in the morning, on a black sea. And then the sun breaks, and everything becomes beautiful. But I joined the police.” He cursed and wiped his face and went back to the bedroom to stare out of the window.

His wife brought a cup of coffee. He swallowed a little and made a face. “This is cold, and you forgot the sugar.”

His wife stomped out of the room and slammed the door. He stared out of the window again. The Lijnbaansgracht was dirtier than usual that morning. He counted three plastic dirt bags, a mattress, two chairs and some lesser and assorted rubbish, all floating slowly in the lazy current.

Grijpstra laughed, a dry hollow laugh. He had remembered article forty-one of the General Amsterdam Police Ordination.
“It is forbidden to dump any material, either on the public roads, or their adjacent precincts, or in the public waterways.”

“Some article,” Grijpstra thought. “The fine is probably ten guilders. I’ll phone the municipality again tomorrow. They’ll send a boat down and two men. And there’ll be other rubbish floating past on Tuesday. Dirt is like crime, the supply is endless.”

He picked up the phone.

“Yes?” de Gier asked.

“I’ll meet you at Headquarters,” Grijpstra said, “in half an hour’s time.”

“No,” de Gier said. “I have a date.”

“You have,” Grijpstra said, “with me.”

He put the phone down and struggled into his jacket.

“You going out?” his wife asked in the corridor.

“Yes,” Grijpstra said.

“Will you be home late?”

“Yes,” Grijpstra said and slammed the front door.

De Gier was sitting at the wheel of the grey VW when Grijpstra strolled into the court. Grijpstra looked relaxed. The walk had cheered him up and he had remembered the truth of the proverb that says shared sorrow is half sorrow.

De Gier started the car as soon as his chief got in and drove off.

“Shouldn’t you thank the doorman for opening the gate for you?” Grijpstra asked.

“No,” de Gier said.

“In a bad mood?” Grijpstra asked.

“Not at all. There’s nothing like duty. I had a date with Constanze Verboom and her daughter. We were going to the beach. Didn’t you go to the beach yesterday?”

“Yes,” Grijpstra said. “The beach was full. And the sea was dirty. And if you want to pee, they charge you twenty cents. And the children wanted to build a sand castle and a fat German
walked right through it. He couldn’t help it, he had to walk somewhere. My son hit him with his little spade. He bled like a cow.”

“Haha,” de Gier said.

“Amused, are you?” Grijpstra asked.

“Very amused,” de Gier said. “Got you into trouble, eh?”

“Yes.”

“And where are we going?” de Gier asked.

“To Aerdenhout,” Grijpstra said. “We’re going to visit your girlfriend’s mother-in-law. In the nuthouse.”

De Gier stood on the brake and the car veered to the side of the road. Grijpstra had to extend a hand to stop his head from hitting the windshield.

“You aren’t serious,” de Gier said, “and if you are, why take me? You can go to the nuthouse by yourself, can’t you?”

“I am not fond of old ladies,” Grijpstra said, “and I am scared of mental homes.”

De Gier tried to tear the plastic off a pack of cigarettes. “So why didn’t you send
me?
I had to go and see Constanze by myself, didn’t I?”

“It wasn’t my idea,” Grijpstra explained patiently. “It’s the chief inspector’s idea. And he told me to go. And I didn’t want to go by myself. Two hear more than one, and you have to do what I tell you to do, and let’s get going.”

A motorcop stopped his gleaming white Guzzi motorcycle next to the VW and tapped on its roof with his gloved hand.

De Gier opened the window.

“It’s all right, Sietsema. We are hunting criminals. Go and ride in the park, it’s a nice day.”

“Morning, sergeant,” the motorcop said. “You are parked under a no parking sign. It’ll give people ideas. Can’t you park somewhere else?”

“Off, off,” de Gier said. “We’ll scratch your beautiful cycle.”

Sietsema looked hurt and accelerated viciously. The powerful Guzzi shot off.

“You shouldn’t have said that,” Grijpstra said. “See what you made him do? He went through a red light.”

“Bah. He can ride his shiny monster, all by himself. Nothing to worry him. Free as a bird.”

“Apply for a transfer,” Grijpstra said. “Let’s go.”

They drove in silence. De Gier remembered the events of the night.

“How did it go last night?” Grijpstra asked.

De Gier nodded dreamily. “Very well, thank you. It was a good idea. But I don’t think she had anything to do with it.”

“Tell me,” Grijpstra said.

De Gier told him.

“Is that all?” Grijpstra asked.

“Not quite.”

“I thought so.”

De Gier grinned.

“All right,” Grijpstra said, “I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. I hope she enjoyed herself as well. But she could have done it. The constables found another door in Haarlemmer Houttuinen number five. It leads to a staircase and connects with the floor where Piet had his room. Mrs. Verboom, your Mrs. Verboom, is supposed to have a key to that door. And she may have flown in from Paris to pay a last call to her husband.”

“We’ll have to check Paris to see if she did,” de Gier said. “But I don’t think so. Murderers are nervous people, very nervous. She wasn’t.”

“Where are you going?” Grijpstra asked.

“To Aerdenhout,” de Gier said. “Wasn’t that where you wanted to go?”

“This road doesn’t go to Aerdenhout,” said Grijpstra.

“Ah yes. We’ll take a turning to the left.”

“There are no turnings on the left on this road.”

“Then we’ll turn around,” de Gier said happily.

“You should watch where you are going.”

“So should you.”

They found the right road, they found Aerdenhout, but they didn’t find the mental home. Eventually they found the police station and were shown the right way.

“If the civilians knew how silly their police, are they would commit more crimes,” Grijpstra said.

“They don’t,” de Gier said happily. He had reached the point of not caring. The day was lost and everything was going wrong but he only noticed the trees and shrubs of the lovely Aerdenhout gardens. Even the tarred roads seemed beautiful to him and a nondescript man leading a small dog on a leash sent a thrill of ecstasy down his back.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked Grijpstra, wanting to share his feeling of sudden joy.

“I am thinking of my wife’s curlers,” Grijpstra said, “and of the missing seventy-five thousand. If somebody has lifted that money he must be spending it now. Maybe the Investigation Bureau boys will turn up something. Have they phoned you at all?”

“I phoned them,” de Gier said, “early this morning, after Constanze left. They don’t like being phoned early. There is a lot of money floating through town, black money, honestly earned by tax dodgers. The bars are full, the sex clubs are full and there is some gambling. Nothing unusual.”

“And what is van Meteren doing?”

“Nothing special,” de Gier said. “The detective who follows him phoned me of his own accord. Early this morning. He knows I don’t like to be phoned early. Van Meteren dined in a very cheap restaurant last night, the cheapest in town, the municipal soup kitchen. He spent some thirty guilders on the street market, buying a jersey and a pair of jeans, and he took his time. The merchant lost his temper with him, he had to see every article the poor fellow had on his stall. Then he had two
beers. He only paid for one, the other was given to him by a drunk. The detective heard him say to the bar keeper that he was going to spend today on a long trip on the Harley.”

“Anyone following him?” Grijpstra asked.

“No. I told him to forget it. It’s impossible to follow a motorcycle. Van Meteren would know within two minutes. We waste enough time. I told the detective to take his children to the beach.”

“What’s wrong with wasting time?” Grijpstra asked.

De Gier didn’t answer. He was watching another nondescript man with a small dog on a leash.

“For God’s sake,” Grijpstra snapped, “pass that woman in that silly little car. I have been looking at her for the last ten minutes.”

De Gier passed the small car.

“In a bad mood?” de Gier asked.

“Yes,” Grijpstra said. “There’s the mental home.”

The mental home consisted of a number of buildings and its roads were signposted.

Grijpstra read the signs.

“New Chief Building,” he read. “Old Chief Building. Now where?”

“New,” de Gier said, but the building proved to be devoid of human life and its doors were locked. They found a kitchen with a young man in it, cutting vegetables. The young man knew nothing. They wandered about and eventually found a young girl. The girl told them to come back in the afternoon, during visiting hours. De Gier showed his police card. The girl wasn’t impressed. They still had to come back during visiting hours. De Gier insisted and used his charm and finally an elderly nurse arrived and took them to the director, a psychiatrist. They were shown into a stuffy little office and put on straight-backed chairs. The psychiatrist watched her visitors
nervously, shifting a vase filled with dying flowers to have a better view and managing to drop and break it.

Grijpstra explained the purpose of their visit.

“Foo,” de Gier thought. “She looks like the chief inspector.” She did, but her hair was shorter and her glasses dangled from a silver chain. Her hands were square, with short nails, and her dress seemed to be made of jute. The psychiatrist wasn’t helpful.

“The lady has only just arrived,” she said. “And we have her in observation. I haven’t seen any reports on her yet.”

“Would you mind calling the nurse in charge?” Grijpstra asked. “Perhaps Mrs. Verboom has said something. There has been a murder, you know. Mrs. Verboom may be connected with the murder. Murder is a crime that has to be solved.”