Tumbleweed (4 page)

"So
you don't know anything about her death," de Gier said. "Well, tell us about her life."

Bart shook his head. "I told you already. I never got to know her very well. She has had me in there for coffee but there was never any conversation. I have some geraniums and they weren't doing well and she told me to put some special plant stuff in the water, she even gave me a carton full of it. I often fed her cat so perhaps she wanted to do something in return."

"Will you be looking after the cat now?" de Gier asked.

"Are you concerned?"

"Yes," de Gier said. "I have a cat myself."

"Don't worry. I'll look after the cat. It'll mess the boat up with all its hair but I'll keep him if nobody else wants him."

"Good," de Gier said.

"Who do you think killed her?" Grijpstra asked.

"One of her clients maybe?"

"Perhaps. Do you know who they are?"

Bart thought for nearly half a minute. "No. I can describe their cars. A new black Citroen with a CD plate and a Belgian number. A big Buick with a USA number, must be some army officer stationed in Germany; and another Citroen, also new, with real leather upholstery and a lot of chromium plating, a silver-colored car. I don't have the numbers. There were always the same cars. I often wondered what would happen if they arrived at the same time but they never did. She must have received them by strict appointment."

"Did anyone else ever visit her?"

Bart thought again. "Yes. The man with the red waistcoat. He used to come on Sunday mornings. A fat chap with a face like one of those small Edam cheeses, no expression at all on it. And he always wore a dark red velvet waistcoat with a gold watch chain. I couldn't make out what he came for. He used to have a small boy with him, five years old maybe, and he always came on Sunday mornings. Sometimes he came without the boy."

"Did he come by car?"

"No. On foot, with the boy."

"And when he was without the boy?"

"Also on foot."

"Tall man? Small man?"

"Just under six foot and getting fat. Forty years old, going bald. I could make a sketch."

Bart made a sketch, quickly, in pencil. The drawing was well done.

"Draw in the little boy as well, please" Grijpstra said.

"Why? The little boy wouldn't put a knife into a woman!"

"No, but we'll show the drawing around. Perhaps somebody will recognize them."

Bart drew in the little boy.

"He is carrying a ball under his arm," de Gier said.

"That's right. The boy always had a ball."

"Anyone else?" de Gier asked.

"No one else I can think of. She did have other visitors but I can't remember them. No clients anyway. Tradesmen perhaps and delivery boys and Jehovah's Witnesses, they always come around, they seem to like us, and a man selling eggs and door-to-door salesmen and people who have lost their way."

"And yourself," de Gier said.

"That's right." Bart looked relaxed.

"We won't bother you any longer," Grijpstra said. "Thanks for the lunch. Where's the nearest tram stop please?"

"You don't have a car?" Bart asked, surprised.

"The commissaris took it."

Bart laughed. "Walk down the path and turn left at the end, you'll have to walk to the football stadium and catch a tram from there. There's a taxi stand over there as well."

"You're joking," de Gier said.

4

"D
o COME IN," THE COMMISSARIS SAID PLEASANTLY. THE four men trooped in, smiling. They shook hands. They accepted cigars. They lit one anothers' cigars. But they were tense.

"I am glad you could come immediately," the commissaris said and sat down while he waved a small hand in the direction of chairs. The commissaris had a good room at Headquarters. He shared his rank with four other officers but he was the oldest and ranked directly under the chief constable and he had used his stars to secure comfortable quarters, with a thick rug on the floor, old paintings on the walls, a lot of large potted plants, and his own private coffee machine.

"We contacted the colonel by Telex yesterday afternoon," the man from the American embassy said.

The man directly opposite the commissaris bristled a little, reminding the commissaris of a large bear. A grizzly bear he thought it was, he had seen a stuffed specimen once in the zoological museum. The colonel looked friendly but dangerous. His thick tweed suit, not very suitable for the hot day they were having, accentuated the impression.

"You didn't contact
me?
he said to die man of the embassy, speaking rather loudly, too loudly the commissaris thought, "you made contact with the military police and they took me here."

The two other men said nothing.

"True or not?" the colonel asked the two silent men.

"Not quite, sir," the younger of the two said. "We invited you to come."

"And if I had refused?"

"You didn't refuse, sir," the military policeman said.

The commissaris smiled. He was enjoying himself. Policemen all over the world have common traits. He would have said the same thing under the circumstances.

"We won't keep you longer man necessary," the commissaris said softly. "Let me tell you why we invited you to come here."

The colonel relaxed a little. The commissaris had made a good impression.

"I know why I am here," the colonel said. "I was told by your colleagues. Maria van Buren is dead. Somebody murdered her. She was a friend of mine."

"Quite," the commissaris said. "She was your girl friend. We found her with a knife in her back. A dagger, in fact. A military knife. She was killed between eight P.M. and twelve P.M. last Saturday according to our police doctor."

The colonel thought. He thought for a full minute and broke out in a wide smile. "Last Saturday I was in Düsseldorf, I spent the night there, with friends. I don't think I spent a minute by myself that day and I wasn't alone during the night either. And I can prove what I am telling you."

"Good," the commissaris said, "I am very pleased on your behalf."

But the colonel wasn't listening. He was looking out of the window, the wide smile still on his face. When he had finished looking out of the window he turned and faced the two military police officers.

"Ha," he said, "you are wasting your time on me. If you had waited I could have proved my alibi in Germany."

The commissaris didn't give his colleagues a chance to answer back. "Now, now," he said smoothly, "we didn't invite you to come here to prove that you have committed a murder. At this stage of the investigation we merely want information. We know almost nothing about the dead woman. You knew her well. Perhaps you wouldn't mind telling us about her."

"Please, colonel," the man from the embassy said. The commissaris glanced at the man from the embassy. A nice young man, he thought. Very helpful.

"O.K., O.K.," the colonel said, "please excuse me. I didn't want to be difficult but I have been under some strain ever since these two gentlemen came to see me and never left me for a minute. I think they even kept me under observation when I went to the toilet in the plane. Thought that I might squeeze through the window."

The military policemen laughed politely and stopped laughing at the same moment.

"O.K. I'll help. I knew Maria well, intimately as they say. For three years now. Used to come to Amsterdam at least once a month. I am stationed just across the border, it isn't a very long drive. I am sorry she is dead."

"Please excuse me," the commissaris said, "but you don't look sorry."

The colonel scratched his knee. "I don't?"

"No. You look relieved."

"Well, I am relieved that I can prove that I didn't kill her."

"I see," the commissaris said.

"All right," the colonel said, "maybe I am relieved. I don't have to go and see her anymore."

"Were you tiring of her?"

"You speak very good English, you know," the colonel

The commissaris smiled. "Most Dutchmen do. We have to; this is a small country in a big world and nobody speaks Dutch, except us."

"Would you like to pour us all another cup of coffee?" the commissaris asked the young man from the embassy. The young man jumped from his chair, eager to oblige.

"Were you tiring of her?"

"Tiring," the colonel said, "no. But I did want to get away from her."

"But that would be easy," the commissaris said, "all you had to do was stop seeing her."

The colonel was scratching his knee again.

"Are you married?" the commissaris asked.

"Yes. In the States. My wife used to be with me in Germany but she went home again. She knew about Maria, if that's what you mean. Maria wasn't blackmailing me, she couldn't because I told my wife about her."

"Would she have blackmailed you if you hadn't told your wife?"

The colonel began to scratch his other knee. "She might have."

"Would you say that Maria van Buren wasn't a very nice woman?" the commissaris asked.

The colonel nodded. "Yes," he said slowly, "I could say mat. But she was very attractive. Beautiful too, but a lot of women are beautiful without being attractive. Beauty becomes boring sometimes."

"Are you an expert?" the commissaris asked.

The colonel laughed. "I am supposed to be an expert in the army. I should know something about atomic warheads. Maybe I also know something about women."

"So Mrs. van Buren attracted you and you went to see her regularly but now you are pleased that you don't have to see her again. Perhaps you could explain your relationship a little."

The colonel shifted in his chair. He had stopped scratching his knees and his hands were looking for some other activity. He became aware of his hands and put them in the pockets of his jacket.

"Were you paying the lady, sir?" the youngest military policeman asked.

"Yes, I was paying her."

"A lot?" the commissaris asked.

"She wasn't cheap."

"How much were you paying her?"

"All right," the colonel said, "she was a whore, if you must know. A high-class whore. She charged five hundred a night, payable in advance. Cash on the barrelhead or no fun and games. But her fun and games were good."

"Dollars?"

"No, guilders. But five hundred guilders is a lot of money. And there were extras. Perfume, a ring, a dress. A fur coat too. The fur coat was two thousand dollars, but I wanted her very badly then."

The face of the older military policeman moved. It moved for a few seconds and suddenly a question popped out of the face.

"Did she ever show any interest in your job, sir?"

"No," the colonel snapped, "she never asked me about atomic warheads."

"These questions must be very unpleasant for you," the commissaris said, "and we won't ask many more, but I have been calculating a little. If you knew the lady for three years, and if she charged five hundred guilders per visit, and if you saw her at least once a month, and if you gave her expensive presents, you must have spent some ten thousand dollars on her."

"That's correct," the colonel said. "I worked it out myself on the plane. Ten thousand."

"That's real money," the commissaris said. "Would you mind telling us how and where you met her?"

"I met her at a party. I often used to come to Amsterdam before I met Maria. Amsterdam is a good town for us, better than Germany. The atmosphere is just right here. I used to come with friends of mine and one of them knew some people here. There's an old gable house on the Leidse Gracht which belongs to a rich Dutchman, a man called Drachtsma. His first name is Ice, I think, something like that. The name suits him, he is a very cool guy. There were a lot of people at the party, some of them pretty famous, I believe. Musicians, painters, businessmen, professors. They like to have foreigners at the house. Maria was the star of the party and I was careful because she seemed to be Ice's girlfriend but she made it real easy for me. I took her to her houseboat that night and stayed."

"Did she make you pay?"

"She did," the colonel said. "It made me feel silly all right. I thought I was making a big impression but I had to pay."

"And you kept going back," the commissaris said, "even when you didn't really want to anymore. That's right, isn't it?"

"That's right," the colonel said.

"Illogical, isn't it?"

"Yes. I can't explain it. It wasn't love. It was sex, of course, but I can get sex in Germany."

"Do you know of any other men who were interested in Mrs. van Buren?" the commissaris asked.

"Anybody who knows her, I would guess," the colonel said. "You would have been if you had known her."

The commissaris smiled. "I am an old man," he said, "and I suffer from rheumatism."

"She would have cured it perhaps."

"Yes. She might have. But she is dead."

"Well, Ice was interested in her, the man who gave the party and who owned the house. Big roan with a bald head. A big powerful man. I am sure she was his mistress as well."

"Wasn't that difficult? Sharing her with others, I mean?"

"Not really. I could only see her if she wanted to see me.

"Did you ever visit her without an appointment?"

"I tried once, she didn't open her door, but the lights were on. There was a car parked on the other side of the path. A black Citroen with a CD plate."

"Did you know the owner of the car?"

"No."

"Weren't you jealous?"

"No," the colonel said. "No, I don't think I was. I felt silly that was all."

"You have used the world 'silly' before. She often made you feel silly, didn't she?"

The colonel didn't reply.

The commissaris put on his kind old man's face.

"Don't feel embarrassed," he said. "We are all men in this room. We know what it is to feel silly."

"O.K." the colonel said, "she made me feel silly a lot."

The commissaris got up. "Thank you for coming," he said. "Here is my card. If anything else occurs to you, anything which may help us to find our man, let us know."

They shook hands. The colonel and the young man from the embassy left.

"Interesting," the commissaris said to the two military police officers.

"Very," the older replied. "You'll find your man all right. A nice straightforward case, I would say. A client has killed her, don't you think? Or a client's right hand. It must be possible to hire a killer, even in Amsterdam."

"Why
even
in Amsterdam?" the commissaris asked.

"Nice easy town. Quiet. I hear you don't even have a proper homicide squad here. You only have one when there is a murder and you only have a few murders a year. I am from the States, it's different where I come from."

"Yes," the commissaris said, "perhaps this will be an easy case. But we found no fingerprints, and the weapon is a professional weapon. A British commando knife. The doctor thinks it was thrown and there aren't many citizens in Amsterdam who can throw a commando knife."

"I would rather have your case than ours," the younger officer said.

"You have a case?"

"You know what the colonel is doing, he told you."

"Atomic warheads," the commissaris said. "Our Secret Service is interested. They led us to the case. We were watching the houseboat long before the woman was killed."

"Exactly," the officer said. "The colonel has some secrets, and the woman had him in the hollow of her little hand."