Outsider in Amsterdam (26 page)

“I can hit you easily from here,” van Meteren shouted. “I have enough ammunition on board to keep it up all day, far more than you have. But I don’t want to kill you. Go away and let me go.”

“We can’t,” Grijpstra said, his deep voice being carried by the still air above the water. “You are suspected of having committed a murder, van Meteren. It’s the most serious crime our law knows. You have to surrender or we’ll be following you until the Water Police catch up with you. We would prefer you to surrender now. If you hit or wound us, you’ll be in worse trouble than you are now.”

Van Meteren looked at him. He was holding the rifle. De Gier was holding the carbine.

“You are crazy,” van Meteren shouted. “I am a better shot than any of you. This rifle is powerful, I can shoot holes in your boat.”

“Surrender,” de Gier shouted. “Put your rifle down.”

“No. I want you to go into the cabin and sit on the table. I am going to approach from behind and sink your boat. Then I’ll drop my rubber dinghy and sail away. I’ll phone the Water Police and tell them where you are.”

“You’ll be caught anyway,” de Gier shouted.

“Not necessarily,” van Meteren said. “Please go into your cabin. Sit on the table. I’ll aim as low as I can.”

Grijpstra and Runau went into the cabin. De Gier pretended to follow but he turned at the last moment.

Van Meteren had been expecting the shot. The bullet missed him by at least a foot.

De Gier wanted to fire again but Grijpstra pulled him into the cabin.

“Idiot,” Grijpstra said.

De Gier breathed deeply and got onto the table. They heard the botter turn around and the Lee Enfield began to fire, slowly and methodically. Five holes appeared near the yacht’s rudder, a few inches above the waterline.

Van Meteren wasn’t satisfied.

The next five holes were lower.

“Good work,” Runau said. “We’ll sink for sure. I hope the dinghy isn’t too small.”

The botter’s diesel accelerated. De Gier jumped off the table, aimed and emptied his carbine’s clip. He had been so quick that Grijpstra’s hand hit his shoulder when the last bullet had left the carbine’s barrel.

“Fool,” Grijpstra roared.

“I hit him,” de Gier said. “The first shot got him. In the shoulder. I saw him go down.”

“Not very nice,” Runau said. “He was aiming at the boat. You aimed at his body.”

De Gier didn’t answer. His face was very pale, he was staring at the botter.

“Are you hurt, van Meteren?” Grijpstra shouted. There was no answer.

“Are you hurt?”

“I am,” van Meteren’s voice came back.

“We are coming,” de Gier shouted. “Don’t move.”

“I’ll swim to the botter,” Runau said and stripped. Within five minutes they were all in the botter. Van Meteren was stretched out on the floor of his cabin. His sheepskin-lined windbreaker was soaked with blood.

“R
IGHT
,” G
RIJPSTRA SAID
. “I’ll keep him covered while you get the bandages.”

“Can I help?” Runau asked.

Grijpstra looked at the yacht, now tied up to the botter. The surface of the lake was still calm but soon the early morning breeze would start up and small waves would be lapping against the yacht’s side, flooding it slowly.

“You see if you can save your boat,” Grijpstra said. “Maybe you can block the holes.”

“Hey,” van Meteren said.

The three men looked at the Papuan’s face.

“Look in the bottom drawer,” van Meteren said, pointing at the cabin’s port wall. “You’ll find some rubber sheeting I use for repairing the dinghy with and some cleaning rags. You could twist them into the yacht’s holes. She’ll still leak, but not too badly.”

“Go ahead,” Grijpstra said to Runau.

While Runau rummaged through the chest of drawers, de Gier fetched the Red Cross tin from the yacht’s cabin, staying as far away as he could from the rear of the boat.

Runau joined him with an armful of cleaning rags.

“I’ll wait for you here,” Runau said. “Bandage him up and then you can come and stand on the front deck while I try to do something about the holes. It would be better if Grijpstra
came as well. He is nice and heavy and can stand on the front deck with you, but somebody will have to watch van Meteren.”

“I was lucky,” de Gier said. His mouth twitched a little.

“You mean that you didn’t shoot him through the head?”

“Yes,” de Gier said. “I was aiming for his shoulder but I didn’t have much time.”

“Maybe you weren’t lucky,” Runau said. “Maybe you are a good shot. Have you had a lot of practice with the carbine?”

“Yes,” de Gier said. “I try to go to the rifle range at least twice a month.”

“Keep it up,” Runau said. “I don’t think I could have hit him in the shoulder, not even when I was in training.”

“Very good,” van Meteren said.

“What do you mean?” Grijpstra asked.

“You are pointing your pistol at me,” van Meteren said, “and I am on the floor, bleeding. A friend of mine got killed in New Guinea because he wasn’t paying sufficient attention to a wounded prisoner. The man looked harmless enough, leaning against a tree and bleeding like a slaughtered pig, but he had a revolver and he shot my friend.”

“Have you got a revolver?” Grijpstra asked.

Van Meteren tried to change his position and grimaced with pain. “Yes,” he said, “under my armpit, very close to the wound.”

De Gier had come in. He put his left hand under van Meteren’s head, lifting it a little off the floor.

Grijpstra threw him a small cushion.

“That’s better,” said van Meteren. “Take my revolver and then we can get the jacket off. The wound isn’t dangerous, I think. The lung hasn’t been touched, it may be just a flesh wound but it’s certainly bleeding. Perhaps you can stop the blood.”

De Gier worked quietly, bandaging the wound and fastening the gauze with metal clips. He made a sling for van Meteren’s arm.

Van Meteren’s teeth chattered.

“Are you in bad pain?” de Gier asked.

“It’s beginning to hurt now,” van Meteren said.

“Shock,” Grijpstra said. “Give him one of the pills from the tin.”

Van Meteren swallowed the pill and de Gier poured him a mugful of tea from a thermos flask he had found in the cabin.

“I’ll be all right,” van Meteren said. “I have had shock before. Very hard to control. I have been knifed during a jungle patrol, didn’t see the man coming. My teeth chattered for hours afterward. They were all laughing at me but I couldn’t stop.”

“To be knifed isn’t very funny,” Grijpstra said.

“The man who knifed me got shot in the stomach,” van Meteren said. “That isn’t funny either. He was dead by the time we got back to camp and he had been howling all the time he was on the stretcher. A sergeant from Ambon. Very tough fellow, a commando. Most of the Indonesian commandos came from Ambon.”

Runau came back.

“How’s the yacht?” Grijpstra asked.

“She won’t sink,” Runau said, “but our friend did a neat job.”

“I am sorry,” van Meteren said. He looked sorry and Runau went over and patted him on the sound shoulder.

“Don’t worry, friend. The yacht is insured. A bit of welding and she’ll be as good as new.”

De Gier had been watching van Meteren’s face. The Papuan seemed much calmer now.

“You look better,” de Gier said.

“So do you, de Gier,” Grijpstra said. “You’ve got some color in your face again. Now let’s get going, we’ll have to get this chap to the hospital. He isn’t coughing blood so his lung is probably all right, as he says, but there is a bullet in him and it should come out. Will you take the boat back for us, Runau?”

“Sir,” Runau said and left the cabin.

“Nice military fellow,” Grijpstra said. “Calls me Sir and all. Does as I tell him. I wish you’d behave like that, de Gier.”

“You’d be in a dinghy now,” de Gier said.

Van Meteren laughed.

“How did you know I was on this boat?” he asked.

“Grijpstra’s idea,” de Gier said. “You remember the map you have on your wall?”

“Yes,” van Meteren said, “silly of me. Very silly. Never thought of it. A maritime map. I used to look at it a lot, plan all my trips on it.”

“If it hadn’t been the map, it would have been something else. Somebody would have caught you sooner or later. The State Police were alerted and we knew what you looked like. We found Seket as well, there’s always something that connects.”

“How did you find Seket?” van Meteren asked.

De Gier told him.

“I couldn’t help
that
,” van Meteren said.

“Didn’t say you could,” de Gier said.

“No.” Van Meteren grinned. “Perhaps I should have controlled my greed, but I always wanted to have a motorcycle and a Harley is the biggest motorcycle you can get. Still, you have done very well. My congratulations! It would have been nice to work with you.”

“Don’t be so modest,” said Grijpstra, who had poured himself some tea from the thermos. “We would never have caught you. You
let
us catch you. You could have shot the lot of us, one by one, like sparrows on the roof of the gardenshed.”

“I am not a murderer,” van Meteren said.

There was an awkward silence.

“Let’s have some breakfast,” de Gier said and opened a cupboard at random.

“Where did you get the revolver?” Grijpstra asked and sat down close to van Meteren. He had put his pistol away after
de Gier had removed the revolver and left it in Runau’s care near the rudder, together with the rifle and the carbine. De Gier wasn’t taking any risks. He had been very impressed by the Papuan. Beer in his eyes and a chair kicked to smithereens, within a split second from the expression of infinite sadness on the suspect’s face. And the sadness had been real, which made the fast reaction even more amazing. The Papuan was dangerous, even with his wounded shoulder.

“But he didn’t kill us when he had the chance,” de Gier kept on thinking.

“I’ll tell you,” van Meteren said, “but first I’ll tell you where the food is. We can have breakfast together and de Gier can prepare it.”

Soon there was a smell of crisp bacon and fried eggs and fresh coffee. The boat was well stocked.

“I got the revolver in Belgium,” van Meteren said when he had eaten. “A Smith and Wesson, like the one I had in New Guinea. You know how I got the Lee Enfield, I smuggled it through customs. I also tried to buy a jungle knife, I lost mine just before I left and I haven’t been able to find another one like it. They aren’t made anymore.”

“You were homesick,” Grijpstra said.

“Perhaps. In New Guinea, I was somebody. I had a uniform, arms, a task in life. I served the Queen. My Queen. Here you laugh about the royal family perhaps; the crown is a symbol, a symbol of the past they say, but to us in New Guinea the Queen was holy. We saluted every time we passed her portrait. Religion and the law are very close. I still think the Queen is a sort of saint. I cried when I saw her in the street. She was all I had when I left my island. But nobody wanted me when I came to The Hague to ask for the Queen’s orders. I showed them my medals and my papers. They were polite and patient, but they had no time for me. I was a strange black fellow from far away. With a Dutch passport.”

“Constable First Class van Meteren, at your service,” de Gier said.

“Exactly. Constable first class of the overseas state police. I thought it meant something. It meant nothing at all. I spoke to the soldiers from Ambon who came to Holland instead of joining the Indonesian army as commandos and paratroopers. They were treated as I was treated. But there was a difference. They had each other. I was alone.”

“That’s just the way you feel,” Grijpstra said, “but the feeling is wrong. You are human here, just like the rest of us. We don’t discriminate against colored people in Holland. You are a Dutch citizen. You have your rights.”

“Yes,” van Meteren said, “an old-age pension in case I manage to reach the age of sixty-five years. You gave me a job. I became a clerk. It wasn’t too bad really. I like writing. In New Guinea I would tear up a report if there was one little mistake in it. I would work overtime to get the wording exactly right. It was appreciated. But nobody appreciated what I did here.”

“Now, now,” Grijpstra said.

Van Meteren fingered his shoulder.

“All right. I am telling you what I used to think. Since then I have changed a lot. At that time I wanted to rejoin the police, I don’t think I ever stopped being a policeman. I am an expert on all arms, including the bren. I am very good with a knife; I can throw a knife too and I learned judo. But I am not just a fighter. I know the law. By heart. Call a number and I’ll recite the article to you.”

“More eggs?” de Gier asked. “More coffee?”

“More coffee,” van Meteren said.

“You could have gone back,” de Gier said, filling the mug, careful not to step between Grijpstra and the Papuan.

“I thought about going back, but I needed money. It would have taken me a few years to save up for the ticket, but I wanted more than the ticket. I wanted to return in style.”

“I don’t understand this about the police,” Grijpstra said. “There are Indonesians in the Dutch police, aren’t there? And Chinese too.”

“No Papuans,” van Meteren said. “Not one. They think we are cannibals. We’ll eat the prisoners.”

“So you came to Amsterdam?”

“Yes. And they gave me a job as a traffic warden. I have a cap again, and a rubber truncheon.”

De Gier wanted to say something but van Meteren raised his hand.

“You are a nice man, de Gier. And very likely you are right. Perhaps I should have been content, after all, there are plenty of Dutchmen in the parking police. It’s an honest job, very useful. Perhaps I am too ambitious. Don’t argue with me. If you let me talk, you’ll have a confession. You can make notes if you like and I’ll sign the statement. It’ll save time.”

De Gier didn’t say anything.

“I was content, in a way. I didn’t like The Hague. It reminded me of a cemetery, full of shadows. In Amsterdam I began to live again. People talk to each other here, even in the street, and there are a lot of Negroes in Amsterdam. I stopped feeling black. People thought I came from the colonies in South America, I didn’t have to explain myself. And it got even better when I met Piet Verboom. The people of the Hindist Society accepted me.”