Outsider in Amsterdam (28 page)

“Morning,” said the policeman who entered the cabin.

“Is that fellow the prisoner?”

“He is,” Grijpstra said.

“Wounded, is he? We’ll let him stay where he is and you can follow us. I’ll radio for an ambulance. We’ll be in the harbor within half an hour. They can take him straight to the hospital.”

“Thanks,” Grijpstra said.

“We have looked everywhere for your boat,” the policeman said. “All we found were fishermen, cursing us because we were disturbing the fish with our bow wave.”

“It’s a hard life,” de Gier said.

Grijpstra looked at the water policeman, a strong healthy looking giant with a suntanned face.

“What a life,” Grijpstra thought. “Play around on the water all day.”

Van Meteren laughed; he had read Grijpstra’s thoughts.

T
HE CHIEF INSPECTOR
sat behind his desk, watching his cactus, which showed signs of growing a branch. The future branch was still no more than a slight swelling and might be a mere bump, some sort of infection, a wound perhaps, but it might also be a bud. Perhaps the cactus was trying to develop a flower. The chief inspector was considering whether he should cut if off. The bump, wound, growth or bud was spoiling the straightness of his plant.

He shook his head irritably. Perhaps the growth would be interesting. He closed the small penknife that had been lying on his desk for some time and put it back into his pocket.

The room was stuffy, filled with a damp heat being wafted through the open windows by a listless draft that might, later in the day, develop into a breeze. The heat had a slight smell of a hospital.

The chief inspector opened his nostrils and breathed deeply.

The smell made him think again of the Papuan who had been sitting at the other side of his desk a little while ago. The Papuan had been flanked by his two captors. He brought some order in his thoughts.

“They caught him,” he thought. “They had to shoot him to catch him but they merely winged him. Good work. An insignificant wound that is healing already. And they took him here. An arrested murderer. Took a long time though, three weeks
is a long time. But he was clever. An intelligent man. And a dangerous man, no doubt about it. A trained killer, properly trained. And now they say he is trustworthy.”

He closed his eyes and the orderly thoughts flaked off into a hazy pattern of hardly connected and only partly formed images. “Papuans,” he thought, “wild men from the early ages.” He saw the wild men from the early ages who once populated the swamp that, now, today, was called Holland. Powerful small men, bearded and lowbrowed, huddled near their campfires, exhausted from a buffalo hunt or an attack on a competing tribe’s close-by village.

“Then the Romans came,” the chief inspector thought. “In New Guinea the Dutch came. Some of our wild men must have joined the Roman army and some of them must have seen Rome. And now a Papuan has come to Amsterdam.”

He got up and looked out of the window.

Grijpstra had made a proposition, a proposition inspired by an idea of the Papuan. The Papuan had lost his rights, he had been arrested; a prisoner’s requests are of little consequence.

He looked at his cactus again, the enormous green phallus, the thorned phallus.

He had been requested to release a murderer, for a limited period of time of course. But a free man can escape. He turns a corner, he runs, he catches a streetcar or jumps on a bicycle. There are a lot of bicycles in Amsterdam.

He picked up his phone.

“The commissaris is ill today, sir,” a girl’s voice said. The chief inspector put his hand over the phone, swore, took his hand off the phone, thanked the girl, and rang off.

He dialed again.

“My husband is suffering of an attack of rheumatism, he is in the bath. It eases the pain, he says. Can I give him a message?”

The chief inspector thought.

“I really have to speak with your husband, madame,” he said.

“One moment.”

The chief inspector waited.

“Could you come here?”

“Right away,” the chief inspector said. “I’ll be with you in fifteen minutes.”

The chief inspector sat on a wooden footstool and looked at the commissaris’s head. He had placed himself in such a position that he couldn’t see more than the commissaris’s head. The commissaris was in his bath, stretched out on his back, hands folded on his small, round, old man’s belly which, if the chief inspector could have seen it, would have reminded him of an old-fashioned pith-helmet. “Well?” the commissaris asked.

The chief inspector spoke for some ten minutes. The commissaris interrupted him only once. He wanted one of his small cigars, from a box which the chief inspector found on the bathroom floor. The chief inspector lit the cigar and placed it carefully between the commissaris’s thin bloodless lips.

The commissaris inhaled, puffed, and began to cough. The chief inspector removed the cigar.

“All right,” the commissaris said.

“All right,” Grijpstra said and put the phone down.

De Gier jumped from his chair.

“They agree?” he asked unbelievingly.

Grijpstra nodded.

“But if anything goes wrong the case is all ours again.”

De Gier laughed.

“What would you expect?” he asked.

Grijpstra smiled. “I didn’t expect them to agree.”

“No,” de Gier said. “I didn’t expect them to agree either but perhaps they should have agreed. The police have always used methods like that.”

Grijpstra nodded, and rubbed his chin. The tough short hairs bristled against the inside of his hand. He hadn’t shaved that morning and he hadn’t had time to sneak off to the upstairs toilet where he kept an old tin containing a much better razor than he had at home, and a tube of shaving cream. Mrs. Grijpstra didn’t approve of shaving cream, ordinary soap is much cheaper.

“You haven’t shaved,” de Gier said.

“No,” Grijpstra frowned and a deep line formed between his eyebrows.

“Faulty discipline, hey?” de Gier asked.

“Yes yes.”

“But you should shave. Why didn’t you? Did you oversleep?”

“I like shaving,” Grijpstra said, “but they shouldn’t shout at you when you are shaving.”

De Gier nodded. “You are quite right. They shouldn’t.”

“Because if they shout at you,” Grijpstra explained, “you may become a little annoyed, and throw your brush on the floor.”

“And leave the house,” de Gier said, “and bang the door.”

“
Now
I’ll shave,” Grijpstra said. “I’ll be a little while. I’ll have to get some hot water from the canteen. You go and fetch van Meteren. I hope he slept well. The doctor should have come and seen him meanwhile. He is a strong chappie all right, a little heap of misery yesterday and full of beans today according to the guards.”

“He had a good cell,” de Gier said, “and I saw to it that they looked after him. Clean sheets, extra pillows, cups of tea, and the drunks next door were taken downstairs. I think he had a long quiet night.”

De Gier was back within half an hour with van Meteren, who lit one of Grijpstra’s cigars, drank the coffee that de Gier fetched, and looked through the telephone book that he found on de Gier’s desk.

“Hello,” van Meteren said. “Is that you, Mr. de Kater? This is van Meteren.”

Grijpstra had pressed a switch and a microphone attached to the telephone made de Rater’s voice audible to the detectives.

“Morning, Mr. van Meteren,” de Kater’s civilized voice was saying. “How are you? I hope you found a good room?”

“Certainly. Close by, too. I am living around the corner from my old address, on the top floor of an old house on the Brouwersgracht. I am quite comfortable here.”

“I am glad to hear it. I am sorry about having had to ask you to move but you will understand that I bought the house at the Haarlemmer Houttuinen to sell it again, and an empty house is easier to sell. What can I do for you, Mr. van Meteren?”

“A small favor, Mr. de Kater. I am planning to leave the country in the near future and I need a little money. I worked it out and I could use some twenty thousand, in small notes, twenty-fives and hundreds perhaps.”

“Yes?” de Kater asked politely.

“Yes, and I thought that you might be able to help me. Piet Verboom gave you a much larger sum not so long ago and I am sure that you didn’t bank the money. That money should still be around and available, I thought.”

The microphone was quiet and Grijpstra and de Gier studied the small gadget, made of grey plastic.

“It’s covered by a grid,” de Gier thought, “like the town’s sewers are. There are rats under the grids of the town’s sewers.”

“Quite, quite,” de Kater’s voice said. It didn’t sound as civilized as before. It sounded hoarse as well. “Yes, yes.” Grijpstra sucked his cigarette, de Gier had closed his eyes. Van Meteren’s voice sounded very pleasant and relaxed, as if he were talking to a friend or a very close acquaintance.

“The amount isn’t all that large,” van Meteren said.

“Perhaps not,” de Kater said, “but I was thinking what you would be prepared to do in exchange.”

“Oh, I’ll do something in exchange all right,” van Meteren said.

“What?”

“I’ll explain it to you. You delivered some merchandise to Piet Verboom, shortly before Piet died, as you will remember. The merchandise was paid for and the money was received by you, and the transaction came to an end, a satisfactory end to all parties concerned. But the goods still represent a certain value, perhaps more than Piet paid at the time, for prices are rising.”

“Yes, you are right,” de Kater said. There was a slight tap, followed by a sound of de Kater breathing in.

“He lit a cigar,” Grijpstra thought, “a nice long fat cigar.”

“And I thought that you might be interested in buying the goods back again,” van Meteren said.

“For twenty thousand guilders?” de Kater asked.

“Yes, indeed. A small part of the value, but the goods aren’t altogether mine, although I might say that I have inherited them.”

“Ha,” de Kater said. “If you have possession of the goods you could say that you are the owner as well. Why didn’t the police find the merchandise?”

“They didn’t look in the right place.”

“Quite,” de Kater said, “but tell me, why sell them to me? Supposing of course that you have them. You were Piet Verboom’s assistant, surely you know who he intended selling the goods to, and if you do know, why, you can get the right price, I suppose.”

Grijpstra looked up. Van Meteren raised a hand and smiled.

De Gier’s eyes were still closed.

“I know the buyers,” van Meteren said, “but I am not going to take the risk of approaching them. Piet’s death woke the police and they are sniffing around everywhere.”

“I see.”

“And I am in somewhat of a hurry,” van Meteren said. “I want to leave the country. The police are sniffing around me
too, or they were, rather. I think they have stopped suspecting me and they stopped shadowing me.”

“You are sure?”

“Absolutely sure.”

“You were in the police yourself, weren’t you?”

“I was,” van Meteren said, “and I know when I am being shadowed. Any Papuan knows, he needs no police training for
that
.”

“Twenty thousand,” de Kater said.

“Twenty thousand.”

“Well, your idea interests me. When and where, Mr. van Meteren?”

“Tonight, in your own property, the old house in the Haarlemmer Houttuinen, nine o’clock. I’ll meet you in the street outside.”

“And you will have the goods with you?”

“No goods, no money, Mr. de Kater.” The silence returned. De Gier opened his eyes and stretched. Grijpstra screwed the stub of his cigarette into the ashtray. He was using a lot of force and the paper of the cigarette disintegrated and mixed with the tobacco grains. Van Meteren’s eyes glittered.

“I don’t like to rush into things,” de Kater said, “but I am rather interested. If I don’t show up tonight you may ring me again.”

There was a click and the line died. Van Meteren carefully replaced the receiver on the hook.

“Do you think he will come?” Grijpstra asked.

“Sure,” van Meteren said. “His greed will drive him straight into our hands. He’ll be here tonight and you can grab him with the heroin under his arm.”

“I’ll take you back to your cell,” de Gier said.

Grijpstra was shaking the Papuan’s hand. “See you tonight.
Christ Almighty, if we pull this one off it will be medals for everybody.”

“I already have two medals,” van Meteren said.

D
E
G
IER SQUATTED
between the bushes that grew against the side of the railway-dike on the other side of the Haarlemmer Houttuinen and watched the front door of number five and his watch at intervals of about five seconds. Two other detectives had hidden themselves close by. They were sitting on dog turds and both were complaining. De Gier had managed to keep himself clean but his legs hurt and he was squatting down with some difficulty.

“Bah,” de Gier whispered to himself. Their position wasn’t ideal. They were on the wrong side of the railway dike’s fencing and he doubted that they would be able to get through the hole, which he had cut in the fence’s chicken wire quickly enough. But there had been no other place. He hoped the youth gangs that were bound to roam the area wouldn’t discover them. Fortunately the street was empty; only an occasional car passed.

De Gier studied the lonely pedestrian on the sidewalk on the other side of the street. He had recognized the chief inspector, dressed in an old worn duffelcoat and talking to his Alsatian, a young dog that by wagging his tail and barking was asking to be released from his leash. De Gier looked at the chief inspector with admiration. The chief inspector shuffled along, dragging his feet, and seemed some twenty years older than his real age.

“You see that fellow over there?” he whispered to the detective next to him.

The detective looked.

“I see him. The old chappie with his dog. There was another man some minutes ago, with two dachshunds. Anything the matter with him?”