Outsider in Amsterdam (22 page)

“So why didn’t you tell the chief inspector?” de Gier asked.

Grijpstra smiled.

“Why should I? I would have spoiled his game. He was looking for an excuse to shake up the underworld. And he certainly has. The action hasn’t been a flop you know, a lot of people have been caught, people we were looking for.”

“We, the police, you mean,” de Gier said. “Not you and me.”

“Not you and me,” Grijpstra said, “but who are we?”

De Gier drank his beer and smacked his lips, holding up the glass. The barman filled it for him.

“You are very quiet all of a sudden,” de Gier said.

“Lost my tongue,” the barman said and smiled. De Gier smiled back.

“Pity Verboom was such a secretive little bastard,” Grijpstra said. “He never told anyone anything. His own wife didn’t really know what he was up to. His girlfriend didn’t. The boys working in the Society didn’t.”

“And we don’t either,” said de Gier.

“It’s all over,” said the chief inspector.

“Yes sir,” Grijpstra said.

“Well, it can’t be helped. Your case is still stuck. You can go back on normal duty for the time being. I’ll keep on working on the case from here and I’ll let you know if something happens.”

“Yes, sir,” de Gier said. “Did you learn anything about Joachim de Kater, the accountant?”

“Yes,” the chief inspector said, “quite a bit. I’ll tell you.”

The detectives relaxed and the chief inspector began to pace the floor, hesitating every time he passed his cactus.

“De Kater was a brilliant student,” he said. “Finished his studies just before the war. He couldn’t get a job during the war but he went into business for himself, manufacturing talcum powder for the German army and mixing a little grit with it so that the soldiers would have bleeding feet. A true patriot. He was arrested but released again, probably bribed the German police. He worked for several well-known firms after the war but left them and went into partnership with an old colleague who died. So far everything is fine. But we investigated his present business a little and he doesn’t seem to be working much. He has a few clients who pay him some fifty thousand a year, all added. That isn’t much for a registered accountant. Usually they get at least four times as much. And he has an expensive office and lives in style, paying a fat alimony to his former wife. He doesn’t have a girlfriend but he visits elegant sexclubs. We tried to work out what he spends and it’s at least twice as much as he should be spending.”

“May not be declaring his full income,” Grijpstra said.

“Of course,” the chief inspector said. “Nobody declares his true income anymore, except us officials and the poor blokes who work for others. It has gone out of fashion.”

“So I expect you informed the tax inspector,” de Gier said smiling.

“I did,” the chief inspector said, “but they were already aware of his existence. They can’t prove anything, however. They are watching him, that’s all.”

“Where did he get the money to pay for the two houses of Piet Verboom?” Grijpstra asked.

“Yes,” the chief inspector asked, “that’s exactly what I asked him when I invited him to come and see me. He says it was given to him and he won’t tell me who gave it. A professional secret he said. Some investment company wanting to buy a lot of houses in the Haarlemmer Houttuinen. To build a hotel, I imagine.”

The detectives looked at the chief inspector.

“It could be,” the chief inspector said. “Perhaps you would like to look into this.”

Within an hour the detectives were on the road again, on their way to visit a wholesale company dealing in electrical goods. Its owner suspected one of his directors of embezzlement.

T
HREE WEEKS HAD
passed since the detectives had found the neat corpse of Piet Verboom dangling from a hook screwed into a beam. The summer was approaching its end and another heat wave had started, laming the city’s life. It was Saturday afternoon. The four policemen professionally interested in the Verboom case were off-duty. But they were still interested in the open file.

The commissaris had immersed his body into a very hot bath. Pain soared through his old thin legs, the hot water eased the mean slicing rays cutting through his nerves. He sweated and thought. He had served his community for a very long time now, too long to be frustrated. His mind was calm and orderly. He regathered the facts that the case had provided and sorted them out, fitting them into several patterns. Then he checked his suspicions with the clustered facts. He promised himself that he would go and see the chief inspector again.

The chief inspector ran, dressed in a sky blue training suit, through the Amsterdam forest, the city’s largest park. The chief inspector was sweating as well. He was sorely tempted to sit down somewhere and light a cigarette. The temptation made him give in, almost. He argued with himself. He would run around the pond again, just once more, and
then
he would sit down and
light that cigarette. He would think about the Verboom case while he ran around the pond. It would be easy to think about the case for it had began to obsess him.

Grijpstra was fishing, leant over a railing, standing on the bridge of the Looiersgracht, close to his house on the Lijnblaansgracht opposite Police Headquarters. His float bobbed up and down but he didn’t notice it. His mind was on the case. It was lasting too long. He was quite convinced that he had all the facts, that he had gathered enough material enabling him to make the correct arrest. But he could not, by his own fault. He blamed himself easily for he knew his own shortcomings. He had been very slow at school and his years at the police school had been a continuous brainbreaking effort. He had studied every night to pass its examinations. But he had passed and he knew that he had learned a lot, at school and afterward, during the thousands and thousands of miles of walking the city’s streets and canals. He also knew that he had a good memory and the gift to concentrate his mind. And, for the umpteenth time, he forced his mind to return to the door of Haarlemmer Houttuinen number 5 where he had waited for de Gier to ring the bell.

De Gier stood on his balcony, with Oliver cradled in his arms, and studied the geranium plants in his flower box. He debated with himself whether or not he should pull out the small weed growing in an open space in the middle of the box. He bent down to get a good look at the weed and Oliver, frightened that de Gier would drop him, protested with a yowl, and extended twenty recently sharpened claws.

De Gier dropped the cat, who landed with a thump on the balcony’s tiled floor and stalked into the small living room, muttering to itself.

“No,” de Gier thought, “I won’t pull it out.” He had
discovered a dark green stripe on its stem. “Perhaps it will be a nice weed,” he thought. “It may grow into a bush, that’s what I need, a bush on the balcony.” But the weed had only temporarily distracted his line of thought. He had forgotten it now and stared at the small park behind his block of flats.

The weed had been a new fact in his life, a small fact that would cause his life to alter somewhat. He might have a new view because of the weed, its leaves bristling in the breeze.

The words “new fact,” which had popped up in his mind, had taken him back to the Verboom case. They needed a new fact, to inspire them again, to make the case alive once more. A new fact might untie the hopelessly twisted knot of facts, theories, suspicions, and tracks leading nowhere.

He protested. He had wanted a quiet weekend. He had planned to visit the new maritime museum and make a trip on the IJ River in the recently restored steam tug that the municipality was exploiting at a loss, to make its citizens recapture the atmosphere of days long past, when there were still thick plumes of fat smoke on the river and life was slower and transport was powered by machines whose well-greased parts moved at a speed that could be followed and admired by the eye.

He swore, and lifted the telephone.

“He is out, Mr. de Gier,” Mrs. Grijpstra said. “He has gone fishing but he can’t be far for he didn’t take his bicycle. Shall I find him for you?”

“No, thank you, Mrs. Grijpstra, I’ll find him myself.”

“Go away,” Grijpstra said. But the silent shape of de Gier’s body didn’t move. It had been standing next to him for at least two minutes.

“What do you want of me?” Grijpstra said.

“Nothing,” de Gier said. “I am watching the ducks on the
canal, and the seagulls and that fat coot over there. Can’t I watch the birds? Is nothing allowed in this city anymore? I am a free citizen you know, I can stand where I like. This is a public thoroughfare. You have no right to tell me to go away. There’s nothing in the law that says you can order me to move. What’s your name? I am going to lodge a complaint against you. It’s about time …”

“All right,” Grijpstra said, “you need me for something?”

De Gier didn’t say anything.

“You must be needing me or you wouldn’t be here. Did anyone send you?”

“No,” de Gier said.

Grijpstra watched his float.

A minute passed.

“Okay,” Grijpstra said, “the last fish must have died of suffocation a long time ago. This water is dead. And I don’t want to fish anyway.”

He unscrewed his fishing rod and put the parts back into its plastic cover.

“Tell me, why are you here?”

“I am restless,” de Gier said.

Grijpstra began to laugh, a deep friendly laugh coming from his wide chest.

“Your nerves are bothering you, aren’t they? You are too high-strung, you know. Well, you know the recipe. Go and see the city’s psychiatrist and get some pills. If you give him the right answers he may give you a month’s rest and you can wither in the Spanish sun. There must be a beach full of policemen from Amsterdam at Torremolinos.”

They were walking toward Grijpstra’s house and de Gier carried the fishing rod.

“Would you like to come in a minute?” Grijpstra asked. “You can have some coffee. It’ll be cold and there’ll be a nice thick skin on it.”

“Yagh.”

“Why are you restless?” Grijpstra said as he put his fishing rod in the corridor and closed the door again behind him.

“I just want to know who hanged Piet Verboom. Is that too much to ask?”

“You should know by now,” Grijpstra said.

“So should you.”

“So should I, but I don’t know. And yet the indication must have been staring us in the face somewhere along the line. We can’t have been very attentive. It blew right past us.”

“Where are we going?” Grijpstra asked.

“For a walk,” de Gier said. “We could have another look at Haarlemmer Houttuinen number five; the house may give us an inspiration.”

They walked along the Prinsengracht, against the traffic, giving themselves a reasonable chance to stay alive. A woman was cycling against the traffic as well, a clear offense. The lady’s lawlessness irritated de Gier. He could remember the time that policemen would write tickets for simple traffic offenses. He remembered how he, himself, some twelve years ago, on his first day on the street, neatly uniformed and complete with the police brooch on the left side of his tunic, had raised his hand to stop a lady cyclist who was ignoring a one-way traffic sign.

The lady had stopped. De Gier had been almost speechless with surprise. The lady had stopped because he, de Gier, a mere youth fresh from police school, had raised his hand. She had been a rather beautiful lady. He had given her a ticket and ordered her to walk back, and push the bicycle. “Yes, officer,” she had said and she had walked back, pushing the bike. What exquisite power!

De Gier didn’t feel so powerful now. He was walking with some difficulty. The heat had made his feet swell and he hadn’t been able to wear proper shoes for some days. He was wearing heavy leather slippers instead and he had to watch
where he was walking. The slippers tended to stick on the heavy cobblestones.

Grijpstra, on the other hand, was enjoying himself. Anything rather than being home, he was thinking. He liked the architecture of the Prisengracht and he chuckled to himself when he saw some little boys playing in the canal on a homemade raft. But then his face clouded.

He had remembered his own son, who used to play in the canals as well. His son was growing up now and he wasn’t doing well at school. He also seemed to be spending more money than he should. Grijpstra was suspecting him of stealing motorized bicycles and selling their parts. He had warned the boy.

“Isn’t that the house where we discovered a stock of stolen motorbike parts?” de Gier asked, pointing at an expensive corner house, an elegant structure belonging to one of the richest men in town.

“Yes,” Grijpstra said grumpily.

“Why would that boy have gone to all that trouble?” de Gier asked. “Surely his father must have given him a lot of pocket money. Adventure, I suppose. Got bored, and saw a good film with plenty of action in it and thought he was missing something.”

Grijpstra didn’t answer.

“He won’t have much action now,” de Gier said. “The judge gave him a good stretch in the reform school.”

“Yes,” Grijpstra said grumpily.

“Hey,” de Gier said.

Grijpstra looked.

The woman who had been cycling ahead of them wasn’t overdressed. A pair of very short pants and a sort of scarf wound tightly around large springy breasts. Two men, working overtime, and offloading a truck, had noticed the wheeled goddess approaching and had staged a mock attack, rushing at the bicycle with outstretched hungry hands. The woman, suddenly
startled, lost her balance when her front wheel struck a bad patch of cobblestones. The bicycle skidded and the woman fell off. The scarf came off and the men, overjoyed by their success, pretended to help her on her feet using the opportunity to squeeze her breasts and pat her bottom. The woman screamed. The ever present passersby circled the miniature stage and gave their comments. The woman scrambled onto her feet, covered her breasts with her hands, and began to cry.

A sporting gentleman understood what was expected of him and hit one of the bad men. It was a good straight punch and the bad man went down. The other bad man, irritated by the smile on the sporting gentleman’s face, revenged his mate.