Outsider in Amsterdam (9 page)

“Not bad,” de Gier thought. He had heard about the method but had never met it in actual life. “Perhaps I should try it on the girl in the bus,” de Gier thought. I look her straight in the face and say, “Miss, my name is Rinus de Gier. I want to go to bed with you. Here is my card. Could you come to my flat tonight? I’ll be home from seven
P.M
. onward but don’t come after eleven for then I am usually asleep.”

“Are you listening to me?” Thérèse asked.

“Sure, sure,” de Gier said.

“Can I go then? Or do you still think that I killed Piet?”

“You can go,” de Gier said. “If anything comes up I’ll phone you. I have your address and your number.”

“What could come up?” Thérèse asked. “Piet is dead and I am pregnant and I must find a way to stop being pregnant.”

Grijpstra had come in and de Gier told him what he had found out.

“Well, well,” Grijpstra said. “Throwing books, hey?”

Thérèse said nothing.

“Never mind,” Grijpstra said. “Have a good trip to Rotterdam,” and he gave the girl a kind look.

Together they searched the house again, room by room. They had plenty of time and worked slowly. They were disturbed by voices and went to investigate. The men from the city’s health service had come to collect Mrs. Verboom. They were going to take her to a clinic for neuroses, near the coast.

Mrs. Verboom allowed herself to be taken away quietly. She didn’t recognize the detectives. Van Meteren had given her another Palfium tablet and the old lady was only partly conscious and could hardly walk. Van Meteren carried her bag.

“How did you manage that so quickly?” de Gier asked when van Meteren returned.

“The physician helped. He wanted Mrs. Verboom to go to a clinic anyway and now that Piet isn’t here to frustrate the idea, it was very easy. She’ll never be allowed to live in a normal house again. She is really mad, you know.”

“In what way?” Grijpstra asked.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have said she is mad,” van Meteren said sadly. “What is madness? She only thinks of herself, perhaps that is mad enough. And she can’t look after herself. She is over eighty and needs opiates. An elderly drug addict. They won’t cure her but perhaps they can keep her happy until she dies.”

“You are right,” Grijpstra said. “We live in a socialist country and suffering is prohibited by law.”

“Suffering,” van Meteren said disdainfully.

“You don’t believe in it?” asked de Gier.

“No,” van Meteren said. “Suffering is very egotistic.”

“Nothing is important,” said de Gier, who had learned a lot that day.

“Come off it,” said Grijpstra, who had had enough. “This Eastern philosophy is all very well but we have work to do. We are dealing with a corpse, and with breaking and entering, and
with theft. Maybe it isn’t important but I would like to know who we have to arrest, just for the hell of it.”

“That’s all right,” van Meteren said. “Work is all part of it. Do what you have to do, as long as you don’t think it is important.”

Grijpstra looked furious and van Meteren smiled and went up to his room.

A little later, in Piet’s room, Grijpstra began to growl. De Gier recognized the sound; it reminded him of Oliver’s growl when he was on the balcony and sensed the presence of the neighbor’s Alsatian dog, separated by a thin glass plate. At such moments de Gier was frightened of his own cat, silly Oliver, suddenly transformed into a puffed up ball of rage, with a thick sweeping and twisting tail, spitting pure hatred.

“Yes, adjutant, what is it?” he asked sweetly.

“This,” Grijpstra growled and pointed at a file that he had found on one of the bookshelves. “Look at this. Piet Verboom mortgaged his house, a couple of weeks ago, for fifty thousand guilders. That’s a lot of money, a year’s wage of a well-to-do man. The house looks all right but it is rackety and three hundred years old. Fifty thousand is about the most you can get on a mortgage, I am pretty sure. The money has been paid into his bank account and he has drawn it out again, together with another twenty-five thousand he had to his credit. It was taken out in cash. Where is it?”

“Any money left on the account?” de Gier asked.

“About ten thousand. This means that he has drawn about everything the Society owned in ready cash. And we found nothing. If it is here, it must have been hidden in an impossible spot. If it is here. It’s probably somewhere else by now.”

“Stolen,” de Gier said.

Grijpstra nodded.

“Then we have the motive.”

“Certainly,” Grijpstra said, and sat down.

“And the opportunity. Everybody had the chance to kill him. Van Meteren for instance. He must have killed quite a few people in New Guinea and he could have used the seventy-five thousand. And Mrs. Verboom, she is mad of course. But would she have wanted the money? She is over eighty years old.”

“Money is money,” de Gier said. “Old crazy people like to use it just like everyone else. Perhaps she has it in her bag and plans to spend it on a cruise around the world or a year in a luxury hotel in Madeira. There’s an English hotel over there that caters to rich old ladies. Somebody told me about it.”

“Possibly,” said Grijpstra. “I wasn’t trained along the new lines like you were. Psychology and all that. Perhaps you should go and visit her in the clinic.”

“Nice,” de Gier said. “Any more bright ideas?”

“A suspect has to be interrogated, even if she is as crazy as the government.”

“True.”

“And then we have Thérèse—she didn’t like Piet either. She threw dictionaries at him. And the boys, Eduard and Johan. Perhaps they got tired of being used and squeezed dry. Perhaps a joint venture of Eduard, Johan and Annetje. They worked for nothing for a long time and now, suddenly, rich! For seventy-five thousand you can buy a nice new houseboat and cover the floor with Persian carpets.”

“Second-hand carpets,” de Gier said.

“Sure.”

De Gier scratched his neck. “Everybody could have nipped up the stairs. Perhaps the girls were so busy stirring the health food that they didn’t notice. Or they were looking at the rhododendrons. You can’t watch rhododendrons and a staircase at the same time. Anyway, why would they have watched anything? Any of the thirty-eight guests could have done it, but what I
can’t understand is the breaking and entering. Do you think they were looking for the money?”

Grijpstra sat up.

“They hanged him, you mean, and they wanted to grab the money. But it wasn’t there. So they came back later?”

“Came back?” de Gier asked. “Perhaps they never left. The breaking and entering was a little sideshow. They just went on living here, quietly.”

“Not quietly. Criminals are usually rather nervous. Fidgety.”

“Next?” de Gier asked.

“Let’s look through the house again,” Grijpstra said. “We haven’t found anything but it doesn’t matter. There are still plenty of detectives around, in spite of the shortage. Let
them
have a try.”

He telephoned. Six constables arrived and searched the house. They knocked on beams, removed floorboards, unscrewed drainpipes and put hands into lavatories. Two went through the shop, like moles. White moles, for they upset some bags of flour.

De Gier watched them and smiled. He had been a mole too, some years back.

He was still smiling when he climbed the stairs.

H
E FOUND
G
RIJPSTRA
in Piet Verboom’s room, reclining on the low settee, hands folded on round belly, a belly that had lately formed itself, bulging over Grijpstra’s slipping belt, and that was being kept in some check by irregular gymnastics in Headquarters’ sportsroom.

Grijpstra opened one eye. “Ha,” he said. “Did you come to help me?”

“Yes,” de Gier said.

“With what?”

“With thinking,” de Gier said.

Grijpstra closed his eye.

“That’s all right,” he said, “but try and be as quiet as you can. There’s nothing worse than loud thinking. And sit down somewhere.”

De Gier looked around. The chairs didn’t look very inviting and Grijpstra had the settee. In the end he selected three cushions and arranged them close to the wall. He closed his eyes.

An hour passed. Grijpstra breathed deeply; his mouth had lost its usual energetic expression and drooled slightly.

De Gier had slept for a while but his head wasn’t properly supported and he had woken up again. He smoked, stared, and saw vague, ever-changing scenes and pictures in which the images of Thérèse and the girl in the bus, in various stages of undress, recurred. Grijpstra’s mouth opened a little more and
suddenly a sorrowful and very loud snore broke through the peace of the room. De Gier got up and stretched his back. He considered shaking Grijpstra awake but changed his mind. He thought of a more subtle approach. A set of small bongo drums in a corner of the room suggested it. He picked up the instrument, tiptoed to the settee, sat down on the floor, looked at the relaxed and helpless head of his superior, and hit the right bongo drum with a strong movement of his flat hand while the other veered quickly on the left drum.

Grijpstra leaped from the settee.

“Sha,” Grijpstra said, “bongo drums. Where did they come from?”

“Some search,” de Gier said. “They were in the room. You must have seen them before.”

Grijpstra thought while he rubbed his face. “True. I had them in my hands even, to see if there was anything inside them.”

He put out his hand and de Gier gave him the drums.

Grijpstra studied the instrument with some distrust. He was used to larger drums in Headquarters. He vaguely tapped the right drum, rubbed the skin, and hit it with his knuckles, near the edge. Slowly a rhythm was being formed, quietly, pleasantly even, consisting of dry short plocks. While he played he looked at de Gier, invitingly almost, and de Gier understood. He felt in the inside pocket of his coat and found, in between his two ballpoints, wallet and comb, the leather case containing his flute, the flute he had been carrying since Grijpstra had begun to play drums again. De Gier had been a promising musician as a boy, playing the recorder in the school’s orchestra, and had even specialized somewhat in medieval religious music, but he had given it up in exchange for sports and hanging around at street corners in the company of pimply friends telling tall stories. At the police school he had thought of music again but had been stopped by the prospect of becoming part of the police band, parading in the rain. But when Grijpstra had found his drums,
de Gier had been inspired as well and had bought himself a secondhand flute, and brought it out, after much hesitation, during an early morning solo in which Grijpstra had excelled in delicate rustles and taps, and he had blown a long thin note.

Grijpstra hadn’t even looked up but he had heard all right and immediately the drums filled the space that the weaving flute left open and since then they had often played together.

Grijpstra didn’t look up now either. De Gier’s flute was neither thin nor hesitant now but strong and free, and Grijpstra had to go down to the depth of his heavy soul to find the inspiration necessary to follow his artful friend. De Gier was on his feet, bent slightly, shoulders hunched; he had closed his eyes. The bongo drums formed a well connected base, fairly loud and extremely simple, and the flute was now very courageous, shrilly wavering between two notes, shrieking almost. One shriek was so loud, and so breakable, that nothing could follow it.

Grijpstra paused and waited, very straight on the settee.

The flute came back, with a lovely round sound and the two little drums were with it.

Neither of the two had noticed the opening door. They hadn’t seen van Meteren come in and they hadn’t seen van Meteren leave again. They didn’t notice his second entry either and they were so far gone that they didn’t stop when the third player hit his wooden instrument, a tree trunk, hollow and with a long split in its surface. The sound of the jungle drum was hypnotic, magical, deep yet sharp and fitted in and even became the center of the melody. Both Grijpstra and de Gier played around the new sonorous vibration and raised the theme until they could go no further and until van Meteren, with a high-pitched yell and a final groan of his tree trunk, broke the interlinking sounds and they looked at each other, silently, and utterly surprised.

“What was that?” Grijpstra asked softly.

Van Meteren shook himself from his dream and looked at them with a laugh.

“I heard you both play so nicely and I thought my contribution might go with it. This is a drum from the forests of New Guinea. My mother’s grandfather used it as a telegraph, to pass messages to the next village. It can also be used to make music. And our witch doctors have other uses for it. Whoever knows the drum well can create moods, influence others. You can lame the enemy with it but if you do you take a risk. A grave risk. The power may turn around and strike you down and you have to be well protected. The drum can kill its owner, or drive him mad, and you rush off into the jungle, hollering and beating your chest.”

“You’re not serious,” de Gier said.

“What do you mean?” van Meteren asked.

“This influence, this power,” de Gier said.

Van Meteren smiled gently.

“And what about you? What about your flute? What about the adjutant and his drums? What do you think you were doing? Making music?”

“Sure,” de Gier said, “we were making music. Nothing to it. Boom boom. Squeak squeak. Lots of people do it. To amuse themselves.”

“But then you are changing your mood, aren’t you?” van Meteren asked. “You are creating something, surely. Something new I mean, something that wasn’t there before. Perhaps this new something is innocent. But you might, with the same effort, create something dangerous, a little evil force, which sneaks away from you and does what you intend it to do.”

Grijpstra laughed.

“You are in Holland, van Meteren. Cheese, butter and eggs. Tulips. Windmills keeping the swamp dry. Nice crumbly potatoes and thick gravy. Grey porridge, so thick that you can
hardly stir it. But all right, if you like we will be sorcerers and witches. We’ll catch the murderer by creating a vibration.”