Tumbleweed (13 page)

"They can't pull the buildings apart. Haven't you got any other suspects, without an alibi?"

"We have," Grijpstra said, and he explained the situation but the adjutant kept shaking his head.

"I see what you mean," he said in the end. "He is a strong person, our Dsbrand, and he would be ruthless if somebody went against him. He was a hero during the war I am told, rowed all the way to England and fought his way back, and he is probably as tough as nails in business, but here he is different, very gentle and relaxed. His father was born on the island and I think he considers Schiermonnikoog his real home. He is here most weekends and he doesn't go abroad like other people. When the place gets too full he gets on his yacht, and he has a big garden with a stone wall around it."

"We are not too sure of his alibi," de Gier said. "We have only the word of two German businessmen, and the commissaris spoke to them on the phone."

"The war is over," the adjutant said.

"Sure."

"You can trust the Germans nowadays."

"Sure."

"When did you say the lady was murdered?"

"Saturday a week ago."

"It's Sunday now," the adjutant said. "IJsbrand will be in his villa. He was here last weekend, I remember, I saw him in town in the afternoon, after the ferry left, the last ferry. He couldn't have gone to Amsterdam that evening. There's no way to get off the island, no airport, nothing."

"His yacht?" Grijpstra asked. "Surely the yacht is fast, it could get to the coast as quick as the ferry, and it only takes two hours in a fast car to Amsterdam. He has a fast car, a Citroen. He could have been back in his villa the same evening."

"Yes," the adjutant said, "but I think the yacht was here. I'll have to ask my colleague, he was out in the launch that evening. It was a nice night I remember, he often goes out, just for the fun of it. But Drachtsma could have used another boat, of course. There are a lot of boats in the harbor and anybody would lend him a boat if he asked for it."

"Maybe he didn't ask," de Gier said. "If he knew the boats he could have used one and the owner would never know."

Adjutant Buisman thought for a while. "He could have. But these German chaps say they spent the evening at his house and he was there with them. Your commissaris will have their names and addresses and he has probably asked the German police to check. Contacts with the foreign police are good nowadays, they tell me."

"Yes," Grijpstra said.

Buisman ordered another round and they drank for a while and smacked their lips and looked at each other.

"Suppose he did send a man to do the job for him, how will you go about proving it? You would have to find the man, wouldn't you?"

"He might be from the island, an old friend from the war days perhaps, somebody who could use a lot of money or somebody who admired him."

"Ah," Buisman said. "The knife. A fighting knife it was, a soldier's knife, and it was thrown. I could find out who knows how to throw a knife. I wouldn't know offhand. The rangers of the reserves have knives but they wouldn't throw them, and we have knives, we are often on the sea and a knife is always handy in a boat."

"'We, the police,' you mean?" de Gier asked.

"No," Buisman laughed. "I mean "we, the people who sail boats.' I have a sailing boat of my own, you know."

"Perhaps you could find out," Grijpstra said. "I admit that we haven't got much to stand on. Perhaps we are only here because we don't know what else to do and the commissaris has gone to
. He'll be back soon and he'll probably tell us to come back as soon as he sees the note on his desk."

"That's better," the adjutant said. "Let's make a little holiday out of it. I'll see if I can find a knife thrower and you have a bit of a rest and a bit of a walk. You mentioned birdwatching, this is the right time of the year for it. What say if you go to bed early and I pick you up early tomorrow morning. It's mating time now and I can show you some marvelous sights, sights you will never see in the city. How about that?"

Buisman's face was wreathed in smiles and Grijpstra didn't have the heart to refuse, but he tried.

"My friend here is very interested in birds, he was telling me all about it on the ferry. Why don't you go together and I'll see you later tomorrow. I have a bit of a cold." He coughed a few times.

"No," de Gier said quickly. "You come as well. Maybe we'll see some mallards."

"Yes, you come too," Buisman said, getting up. "Mallards you can see anywhere but here I can show you six or seven different types of duck and there are others, really rare birds which I want to show you. See you tomorrow."

"What time will you be here?" Grijpstra asked, trying his best to make his voice sound eager.

"Early," Buisman said. "It'll have to be early or we won't see anything. I'll be here at three-thirty sharp; I'll wait in the street. Put some warm clothes on. Have you got binoculars?"

De Gier nodded.

"You, Grijpstra?"

"No," Grijpstra said, "I haven't got any binoculars."

"Never mind. I'll borrow a pair from the police station. They are heavy but they are better than mine. You'll have to be careful for they cost a fortune. Well, have a good time."

"Shit," Grijpstra said as the door closed behind the adjutant. "Shit and shit again. Now why did you have to get
me
into it? You got me sick on the boat with your revolting sausage, peeling the skin off it as if it were a boiled monkey's pecker, and now you want me to stump through the mud in the middle of the night to see a lot of floppy birds jumping at each other. A joke is a joke but this is ridiculous. Sometimes you overdo it, you know."

He was red in the face and thumping the table with his fist.

"Do you think I like it?" de Gier said, his face just as red. "And who was telling the adjutant that I liked birds. You know I was only egging you on on the ferry. What do I know about coot and cormorants and whatnots? Just a few names I happened to remember. We need this man, don't we? And we can't upset him by refusing his invitations? I don't like drinking jenever in the middle of the day but I accepted just to please him. And I don't like playing billiards. And I am damned if I'll walk through the mud while you are stinking and snoring in your bed."

Grijpstra had begun to laugh and de Gier, after having tried unsuccessfully to stare him down, joined him. Soon they were hiccuping and helplessly patting the table.

Grijpstra shouted for more jenever and they finished up playing billiards, giggling at each other.

"Three-thirty in the morning," de Gier said.

"Promise never to tell anyone."

"I promise," de Gier said.

They shook hands and went to the dining room for a late lunch.

By nine o'clock that night they were fast asleep, worn out by thirty games of billiards and some seven or eight glasses of old cold jenever each.

13

"E
XCUSE ME," A PLEASANT WELL-MODULATED VOICE SAID. "Do you mind if I sit down at your table for a moment?"

The commissaris looked up from his plate of fried noodles and shrimps. He had been eating and looking at the map, spread out on the table next to his plate, at the same time. He felt a little perturbed by the interruption; he had refused Silva's invitation to lunch in order to be by himself and he had, after having walked about for a few minutes, found a cheap clean-looking Chinese restaurant where he could enjoy his favorite food. And now there was someone else, standing patiently next to him and wanting something.

"Please," the commissaris said, "please sit down." He shook hands.

"Van der Linden," the neatly dressed man said. "I saw you at the airport yesterday, I saw you again in the lounge of the hotel last night and now I see you for the third time in two days. In
it is quite unheard of to meet the same man three times in two days without knowing his name, so I have taken the liberty of making your acquaintance."

The commissaris smiled, looking at the face of the old gentleman. Mr. van der Linden would probably be close to seventy but a pair of very alive eyes twinkled in his face which seemed to be covered with old white-yellowish leather.

"I am a tourist," the commissaris said. "Surely you must see thousands of tourists wandering through your city."

Mr. van der Linden smiled and the waxed ends of his mustache vibrated. "No, sir. Excuse me for contradicting you. You are not a tourist."

"No?" the commissaris asked.

"No. A tourist has no purpose. He wanders about, looking at the shop windows. He wears an open shirt with a flower pattern, or striped, and he talks in a loud voice. He has to, for otherwise he loses his identity."

"Ah."

"A tourist doesn't wear a shantung suit with a waistcoat. Your waistcoat intrigues me. I haven't seen anyone wear a waistcoat for years."

The commissaris looked down at his waistcoat. "It went with the suit," he said guiltily, "and it isn't warm. It isn't lined, you see. And it has handy pockets. I always wear a waistcoat. My lighter goes into the left pocket and my watch into the right. It's a matter of habit."

Mr. van der Linden roared with laughter. "You don't have to explain yourself to me," he said. "It's I who should explain myself. I am a lawyer, you see, I have practiced here for many years, more than I can remember, and I didn't leave when I retired. I got used to the place. You are a police officer, aren't you?"

"Yes," the commissaris said.

"You are here to investigate the death of Maria van Buren."

"Yes."

"I was expecting a Dutch police officer to come out. Usually when one of us gets into trouble out there the causes can be found here."

"Do you have an idea that could help me?" the commissaris asked, opening his tin of cigars and holding it out.

"No, thank you. I am not allowed to smoke anymore. It's a great pity. We always have Cuban cigars here and to smoke one in the evening, sitting under the tamarind tree in the garden, is a true pleasure.
Was
a true pleasure. Yes, perhaps I have an idea. You found what Maria was doing out there, in Amsterdam I mean. It's 'out there' to me now, strange isn't it, and I am a true Dutchman."

"A macamba," the commissaris said.

"You have been learning already. Maria was a very courageous girl. She had ideals, strange ideals. Some girls have ideals, not too many of them, fortunately perhaps. They might stop having children one day and it would be the end of us."

"It might be the best ideal of all," the commissaris said, trying to blow a smoke ring:

"Yes. Quite. An interesting theory. Will you be staying long?"

The commissaris shook his head.

"Pity. I have a bottle of old brandy left and we could drink it under my tree and discuss a world without people. It's a beautiful thought. We wouldn't be there to regret the fact that we wouldn't be there."

"Maria was the mistress of at least three rich men," the commissaris said.

"Yes. My mind was wandering. It often does, nowadays. But Maria wasn't a prostitute. I knew her as a child and I think she had the mind of a discoverer, and explorer. She wanted to find out. She liked men, of course, any beautiful woman does. Men will confirm the fact that a woman is beautiful. I think she was experimenting with manipulating people."

"And someone objected and killed her."

"That's one possibility," Mr. van der Linden said. "Another thought which occurred to me was that somebody would object to her way of life in general."

"We have reason to believe that she dabbled in sorcery."

"Sorcery," Mr. van der Linden repeated, and laughed.

"You don't believe in sorcery?"

"Of course I believe in it. I have lived a long time, and most of my life I have spent on this island, and on similar islands. Black magic works, I am convinced of it. It's a lot of mumbo jumbo of course but so is advertising, and nobody will deny that advertising works. But black magic is silly, like advertising."

"Magic is silly?" the commissaris asked.

"Black
magic is. Not the real thing. Black magic is a perversion of the real thing and all perversions are silly. The desire to hurt others is childish."

"You think Maria practiced black magic?"

Mr. van der Linden spread his hands on his knees and looked at them for a while. His body became still, his face relaxed. "Yes," he said in the end.

"Do you think it killed her?"

The commissaris had to wait for the answer again. "Yes," Mr. van der Linden said.

* * *

The car bounced a little on a bad patch of tar and the commissaris lost the thread of his thoughts. He had changed the pattern of his theory so that Mr. van der Linden's remarks would fit in, but now he remembered that Silva had told him not to miss the
forest. The forest was supposed to be two hundred yards long and there would be a dip in the road. If he reached the dip he was supposed to stop the car and get out. Silva had told him to spend at least five minutes in the forest to try to recapture the old atmosphere of the island, the atmosphere that it had in the beginning of the fifteenth century, when Indian tribes still lived in
, Indians who fished and hunted and who welcomed strangers and took care of them and who built large huts which fitted in with the landscape and whose religion centered around magic.

The car found the dip and the commissaris drove her off the road and switched the engine off and got out. He sat down on a rock and closed his eyes.

"The real thing," he said aloud, "not the perversion." To hurt is the perversion, he thought. So the real thing would be to cure, to restore.

He tried not to think but to feel the trees around him but his mind refused to become calm. He lit a cigar and got back into the car.

He was driving close to the coast and he could hear the sea raging against the cliffs. The forest had given way to the cunucu again, the dried-out veld with thornbushes. An occasional car passed or met him but nothing else moved, except the few cabryt goats tearing at dry plants, and once he had to slow down suddenly for a large lizard which scuffled across the road and gave him an angry look from its heavily lidded eyes.

He had to be close to Shon Wancho's place now and he stopped near a hut. The black woman who had come to the door gave him directions in slow pure Dutch. He thanked her and lifted his hat, and her answering smile was kind and puzzled.

The road didn't go to the house and he had to walk the last half mile until he came to the cliffs.

When he finally found the tall thin black man he felt very hot and his suit stuck to his skin.

"Good afternoon, Shon Wancho," the commissaris said, and took off his hat.

When, later, he tried to remember, to rebuild their meeting he found the task to be impossible. He tried often, he always failed.

There had been, and that seemed to be the main difficulty which made fun with his memory, no real conversation. Shon Wancho hadn't answered a single question, and after a while the commissaris had stopped asking questions. The experience was weird. As a police officer he had been trained to create situations. The other party, whether suspect or witness, had always been at some considerable disadvantage. He had always managed to trick his opponents, playing on their fear, on their sense of self-importance. And they had talked. Never once had the commissaris failed. He had cornered his opponents, threatened and flattered them. And they had talked. Never once had the commissaris failed. He had cornered his opponents quietly, by being polite to them, by making a little statement or asking a little question. They had been frightened of going to jail, of losing their reputation. They had been jealous and tried to incriminate others. They cared.

But Shon Wancho didn't care. When the commissaris found him the old man had been working in his garden tending a creeping plant with delicate yellow flowers. The garden was next to a small house, a neat building consisting of two rooms and a covered porch, supported by strong beams which looked as if they had been found on the beach, bleached by a hundred years of sun. Shon Wancho had met his guest, treating the commissaris as if he were a small tired hot child. He had been shown where he could wash his face and hands, had been given some cool fruit juice to drink and directed to a rocking chair in the shadow of the porch from which he could see the flowers of the garden. There had been no need to explain the purpose of his visit. The commissaris had tried but his sentences broke halfway. The quiet half-closed eyes of the thin elegant black man expressed a peaceful lack of interest in the prattling of a distracted mind. He neither answered nor acknowledged the questions of the commissaris but stood silently, leaning against a bleached beam. The commissaris became irritated and began to repeat himself, his words stumbled over each other, he felt as if he were trying to press against something which wasn't there, but at the same time he felt some response in his own mind, as if the tall Negro were right. Nothing had happened so what was the police officer fretting about? He began to pay attention to the silence of his host. He saw Shon Wancho's face now, the small pointed beard, the high cheekbones, the thick arching lips framing the wide mouth, and the aquiline nose, the face of a chief, of a nobleman.