Outsider in Amsterdam (29 page)

“That’s the chief inspector,” de Gier whispered.

The detective looked again.

“You are right. What’s with his hair? Is he wearing a wig?”

“No,” de Gier said. “Why would he be wearing a wig?”

“He looks different,” the detective whispered.

De Gier produced a small pair of binoculars, his private property for which he had paid a lot of money. The chief inspector’s hair did appear different, curly, not slicked down with fat as it usually was.

“Must have washed and ruffled his hair,” de Gier thought. “Very effective. Goes with the old duffelcoat and the shuffling gait. He looks like one of the old unemployed characters who live around here, by themselves mostly. Misfits, drunks, potential suicides.”

He looked at his watch again: five to nine. Van Meteren had arrived and was waiting near the front door of number 5, leaning against the wall. The chief inspector had allowed the Alsatian to drag him away. Around the corner an old car should be parked with two detectives in the front seat, and two uniformed constables were supposed to patrol the Haarlemmer Street. The Haarlemmer Street is regularly patrolled by cops on foot so de Kater, if he would be coming through there, shouldn’t be unduly suspicious. They might catch him later though, should de Kater want to escape in a panic through the back of the house in the Haarlemmer Houttuinen, for the two streets are parallel and the gardens connect.

And then there was Grijpstra, of course, hidden in the courtyard of the house, together with a young burly detective who could walk up a gable and had shown them a diploma from a mountain club to prove it. They had tried to think of everything.

The detective put his hand on de Gier’s arm. “Is that our man?”

Joachim de Kater had appeared, striding along energetically, carrying an obviously empty suitcase and twirling an umbrella. He waved at van Meteren and the two started talking to each other. They seemed to agree after a while and de Kater opened the front door with his key. The door opened, and closed. The street became quiet again. The chief inspector’s Alsatian lifted his leg and pissed against a lamp post. The chief inspector waited patiently for the dog to finish.

“And now?” the detective whispered.

“Quiet,” de Gier snapped.

De Gier tried to imagine what was happening inside the house. The heroin was hidden in the Buddha statue throned in the corridor, the cheap copy that Piet Verboom had once bought in the Paris flea market. De Gier knew now, because van Meteren had explained it to him that the statue was hollow. Metal statues, even if they are hollow, cannot usually be opened and the detectives who had searched the house hadn’t thought of forcing the Buddha’s head off the body.

De Kater had become the rightful owner of the house and its contents. According to Constanze, he had inserted a clause into the contract that stated that anything in the house, whether furniture, ornament or whatever, came with the house. The statue was his, and the heroin inside the statue was his as well, but he hadn’t known that the heroin was inside the statue.

De Gier sighed. He had thought about the statues when Constanze had been telling him about the sale of the house. He sighed again, thinking of Constanze’s body and of the long leg that she had put on top of his own. He thought of the firm warm breasts and the soft slightly hoarse voice. And now he was here, squatting under a bush, with a branch scratching his neck and dog shit all around, and next to a bad-tempered detective.

He might have deduced that the Buddha statue was hollow but he had only thought of the sudden popularity of Eastern religions that would influence the price of the statue. He had thought that Piet Verboom and Joachim de Kater were clever people and that buying at the right time and selling at the right time seemed a more intelligent way of filling one’s time than the detection of crimes. The original of the statue, according to Constanze, stood in a temple in Ceylon. A famous statue, several times stolen and returned again, and often copied. “All the copies would be hollow,” de Gier thought. “Saves bronze and bronze is an expensive metal.” Piet had discovered the hollowness of the statue when he studied its head, which hadn’t been screwed on properly. A plumber had unscrewed the head, using a special oil and as little force as possible and the statue had been cleaned out and become a container. A container of the powder that leads the user straight to heaven. But a very temporary heaven and after a short while the user drops through a hole in its floor, straight into hell, and eventually the hell becomes permanent.

De Kater would now be standing next to the statue, impatiently waiting for van Meteren who would be giving him the small sealed bags, one by one, carefully of course, for he was handling very special merchandise. And the bags would be going into de Kater’s suitcase. But they wouldn’t stay there. Their contents could find their way into the blood of some of the young people of Amsterdam, the blood of simpletons, looking for higher spheres.

“But not this time,” de Gier thought, and felt a wave of contentment. The feeling surprised him.

“Careful now,” de Gier thought. His leg hurt because of a muscle knotting itself into a hard ball. He massaged the leg. “Easy now, soon you will be a dedicated police sergeant, motivated, complete. Complete with a sense of purpose.”

He was muttering to himself.

“Pardon?” the detective asked.

“Nothing,” de Gier said. “Just stay put. We’ll catch him when he leaves the house.”

“Don’t we want the black fellow?” the detective asked.

“We’ve got him already.”

“An informer?”

“Sort of,” de Gier said.

“He better watch it,” the detective said. “If he shows himself as openly as that, he won’t last. We’ll fish him out of the canal soon.”

“Not him,” de Gier said.

The door opened and de Kater became visible. He was holding onto the suitcase. It didn’t seem heavy.

“Heroin is pretty light,” the detective whispered. “If that suitcase is full he is carrying a hundred thousand guilders at least.”

“Up,” de Gier said.

“Now,” de Gier shouted.

It was easy. De Gier, followed by his two assistants, sprinted across the road. There was no traffic. De Kater saw him and dropped the suitcase. He ran toward the old dented car and the two detectives opened the doors and rushed at him. De Kater turned and ran toward the chief inspector. He had dropped the umbrella as well. Nobody seemed very concerned about the pistol in de Kater’s right hand. One of the detectives behind him fired, pointing his pistol at the moon. De Kater dropped his weapon and surrendered to the chief inspector and his dog who was showing his teeth and growling. The chief inspector hadn’t moved, he had merely told de Kater to stop, in a pleasant voice.

“Some show,” de Gier thought when he put his hand on the shoulder of the criminal. “Six men and one dog.”

* * *

De Kater began to cry. Nobody was surprised. Suspects, at the moment of arrest, often cry. Fear, or a feeling of release, or both. Or shock perhaps.

“Easy now,” de Gier said. “We won’t hurt you. Do you have a license to carry a firearm?”

“No,” de Kater sobbed.

“And can you tell us what you have in your suitcase?”

“Heroin,” de Kater sobbed.

“You better come with us,” de Gier said.

T
HE TWO DETECTIVES
who had been in the old car took charge of de Kater and drove off. Van Meteren appeared in the open door, grinning.

“Neat job,” the chief inspector said. “Very neat, van Meteren.”

“It was a pleasure, sir.” The Papuan laughed. “I don’t think he suspected anything at all.”

“Thanks to you,” Grijpstra said. “I was very close to you, you know. I had sneaked into the back part of the corridor but you couldn’t see me, it’s very dark in there. I overheard the last part of your and de Kater’s conversation. Perfect acting on your part, congratulations.”

“Yes,” van Meteren said, “I heard you, I thought de Kater would hear you as well but he was concentrating too much on the money, and on the dope, of course.”

“Did he pay up?” the chief inspector asked.

Van Meteren patted his jacket. “The lot. He tried to pay less but I wouldn’t have it. He was armed although he didn’t say so, but I think that he must have suspected me of being armed as well.”

He produced a fat brown envelope and gave it to the chief inspector.

“Here you are, sir, notes of a hundred guilders. He said he didn’t have smaller notes. Twenty thousand, I counted the amount very carefully.”

The chief inspector slipped the envelope into his inside pocket.

“Thanks.”

“That’s a lot of cash to carry around,” one of the detectives said, “and a gun as well. That’s the trouble with these sugar merchants, they all carry pistols nowadays. They have become proper highwaymen and before you know they put a hole into you and off you are for a few months, eating porridge and mashed vegetables in a dreary little hospital room.”

“Part of the game, mate,” Grijpstra said kindly. “Are we going home, sir?”

“Might as well,” the chief inspector said.

“A moment,” van Meteren said. “If you don’t mind I would like to talk to you, sir, and to Grijpstra and de Gier. In the house, perhaps.”

“Sure. I would suggest that the other three have a quiet beer in the Haarlemmerstraat. There is a reasonable pub on the corner, run by Aunt Jane, that fat lady with the red hair. I’ll meet you later in there, and we can have a final beer together.”

“Sir,” the detectives said.

“So?” the chief inspector asked. They were standing in what had once been the bar of the Hindist Society. Van Meteren faced them from behind the bar and the police officers, after looking around, settled themselves on bar stools.

“Three beers,” de Gier said.

“Sorry,” van Meteren said, “no beer, but there is some coke and lemonade here and I can clean a few glasses.”

“That’ll be nice,” Grijpstra said.

Van Meteren washed and wiped four glasses and opened four bottles of cola.

“The place is still complete,” de Gier said.

“Not quite. The draft beer has been taken out; it won’t keep, I think,” van Meteren said, “but the furniture and everything is
still here. De Kater could probably have sold the lot for a good price; he might have auctioned it. There are a lot of new pubs opening up in town.”

“Silly man,” the chief inspector said, “a silly man taking a silly risk. But we have got him now. A pity we can’t grab the other two but they won’t last either. They are bound to slip up one of these days and we can catch them like rotten plums falling off the tree.”

“Brr,” de Gier said. “I don’t like this stuff.”

“Spit it out,” van Meteren said. “I have some soda here. The other two, you say, sir. I would like to talk about them.”

He opened another bottle and gave it to de Gier. “Here, have another glass as well.”

“You mean Beuzekom and his friend?” the chief inspector asked.

“Yes sir. Perhaps you won’t catch them. I got to know them and especially Beuzekom is very intelligent. They won’t stay in the game, not when he feels that he has made enough. They’ll go to Spain and dabble in real estate and become respectable. If you want to catch them it should be right now.”

“We’ll have to be quick,” Grijpstra said. “The newspaper vultures haven’t smelled anything yet but they will soon, and once they honk the news around, Beuzekom and Company will go into cover and we’ll never flush them.”

“There is my arrest as well,” van Meteren said. “They might not find out about de Kater until you want them to find out but that chase on the IJsselmeer was quite spectacular, spectacular enough to make headlines.”

“Not yet,” the chief inspector said. “I have seen the papers. You got into the harbor of Monnikendam at the right time. The vultures were all fast asleep. What we did here tonight is dangerous, however. The newspapers have patrols in the city and they pay for every tip, in case the patrol misses out. If somebody in the neighborhood noticed the commotion the game is up.”

“So we’ll have to be quick,” van Meteren said. “I am glad you agree. I suggest that I phone Beuzekom now. He should be in. It’s Sunday. He drinks on Saturday and rests on Sunday. I’ll ask him to come here. We still have the heroin, it can go back into the statue. We can play the same game.”

He took a sip and watched the three men on the other side of the bar.

De Gier began to grin.

“You like the idea, de Gier?” the chief inspector asked.

“Yes sir. A lovely idea, too good to work almost. Twice in one evening, what a beautiful thought.”

“Grijpstra?”

“Lovely,” Grijpstra said.

“We don’t have enough men for a proper trap,” the chief inspector said.

“I’ll fetch the beer drinkers.”

“Right, de Gier. Perhaps I should telephone the commissaris first.”

The chief inspector walked to the phone, but hesitated. “Perhaps not. He is sick. And he approved the first trap.”

Nobody said anything.

“Right,” the chief inspector said.

“I’ll fetch those jokers in the pub while you phone Beuzekom,” de Gier said to Van Meteren.

“Yes, but get them quickly. If Beuzekom answers I’ll tell him to come right away. Fetch the others but don’t come in while I phone; I’ll tap on the window when I am done.”

“Go ahead,” the chief inspector said.

De Gier left and van Meteren dialed the number; he knew it by heart.

“Beuzekom,” the phone said.

“Evening Beuz, this is van Meteren.”

“Ha,” Beuzekom said, surprised, “good to hear your voice.
Haven’t seen you for a while, how are you? Still in business or has everything died since Piet left us?”

“Still in business, Beuz, and how are you two?”

“Well, what can I tell you? We are all right, I suppose, but Ringma has been annoying me lately. He mopes about all the time. We should go on holiday but we have been spoiled. Holidays cost a lot of money these days; the sun has become expensive when you are used to four-star hotels.”

“You sound as if business has been bad.”

“There’s always the small trade,” Beuzekom said. “There have been some supplies but some of it is rubbish, it looks all right but it isn’t and it is hard to see the difference. If they get any cleverer, I’ll have to hire a chemical engineer and install a laboratory. They can even imitate the smell now.”