Death of a Hawker ac-4

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  "Yes, sergeant," Cardozo said. "Sorry, sergeant. Forgot myself a moment, sergeant. Won't happen again, sergeant. Do you want me to report when I've got it all arranged, sergeant?"

  "No," de Gier said. "That won't be necessary. I'll see you tomorrow morning, at the police garage at eight-thirty sharp. Good luck."

  He put down the telephone and went back to the bed.

  "Excellent young man," he said to Esther, "and clever too."

  "Aren't you clever?"

  "No," de Gier said.

  "Are you a good detective?"

  "No."

  "Do you try to be?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?" He laughed, leaned over and kissed her.

  "No. I want to know. Why do you try to be a good detective?"

  He kissed her again. He said something about her hair and how well the kimono looked on her and how glad he was that she had changed her clothes while he was talking on the telephone. And how slender her body was.

  "Yes," she said. "You are a charmer. But why do you try to be a good detective?"

  "To please the commissaris," he said, trying to make the remark pass off as a joke.

  "Yes," Esther said seriously. "I had a professor once I wanted to please. He seemed a very advanced little old man to me, and I loved him because he was so ugly and because he had such a big bald head. His mind was very quick but it was also deep, and I was sure he knew things that I should know. He was a strangely happy man and yet I knew that he had lost everything he cherished during the war and lived by himself in an old, untidy and very depressing house. I did very well in his class although his subject hardly interested me when I began. He taught medieval French and he made it come alive again."

  "Crime interests me," de Gier said. "It interested me before I began to work under the commissaris."

  "Why?" He lay back, stretching out an amorous arm which she didn't resist. "Why do you like crime?"

  "I didn't say I liked crime, I said it interested me. Crime is sometimes a single mistake, more often a series of mistakes. I try to understand why criminals make mistakes."

  "Why? To catch them?"

  "I am not a hunter," de Gier said. "I hunt, because it is part of my work but I don't really enjoy it."

  "So what are you?"

  He sat up, looking for his pack of cigarettes. She gave him the pack and flicked her lighter. Her kimono opened and she adjusted it.

  "Must we talk?" de Gier said. "I can think of better things to do."

  She laughed. "Yes. Let's talk for a little while, I'll shut up in a minute."

  "I don't know what I am," de Gier said, "but I am trying to find out. Criminals are also trying to find out what they are. It's a game we share with them."

  His voice had gone up and Oliver woke and yowled.

  "Oliver!" Esther said.

  The cat turned his head and looked at her. He made a series of sounds, low sounds in the back of his throat, and stretched, putting a forepaw on her thigh.

  "Go and catch a bird," de Gier said, as he picked him up and put him on the balcony, closing the door after him.

  "Don't be jealous," Esther said.

  "I am jealous," de Gier said.

  "Don't you have any idea what you are?"

  "Yes," he said and lay down on die bed, pulling her down, "a vague idea. A feeling rather. But it will have to become a lot clearer."

  "And you became a policeman to find out?"

  "No. I happened to become a policeman. I wasn't planning anything when I left school. I have an uncle in the police and he mentioned the possibility to my father and before I knew what I was doing I had signed a form and was answering questions and saying*yes' to all of them and then suddenly I was in uniform, with a stripe on my arm, and eight hours a day of classes."

  "My brother also wanted to find out what he was," Esther said. "It's dangerous to be like that. You'll get yourself killed."

  "I don't think I would mind," de Gier said and tugged at her kimono.

  They fell asleep afterward and de Gier woke up an hour later because Oliver was throwing his body against the glass balcony door, making it rattle. He got up and fed the cat, cutting the meat carefully into thin slices. He lay down again, without disturbing Esther, who lay on her side, gently breathing. Her breathing excited him again. He turned over and looked at the geraniums and forced his mind to concentrate. He wanted to think about the spiked ball, the ball which had smashed the life out of Esther's powerful brother. He knew this was the best time to think, when his body was almost all asleep, leaving his brain to function on its own. It had made him conclude, early that morning, that the ball had been connected to a line, probably an elastic line. He had remembered some little boys playing ball on the balcony of a hotel in France. He had been watching them from the lounge, several years ago now, during a holiday shared with a police secretary, who had turned out to be very high-strung and possessive and who had changed the promised pleasure of the trip into a series of fights and withdrawals. He had been trying to get away from her that day and had been on his way out through the lounge when he saw the kids. They had a ball attached to some heavy weight and they were hitting it with miniature bats. They couldn't lose the ball for it could only travel a certain length. He hadn't been trying to think of kids playing, he had only concentrated on the mystery of the spiked ball and the picture of the kids and their gadget had suddenly popped up.

  The ball had been thrown or shot into Abe's room but it hadn't stayed there. He was sure that the killer had never been in the room. If he had, there would have been a fight. Esther and Louis Zilver were in the house at the time. They would have heard the fight. There would have been shouts, furniture would have been pushed around, bodies would have struggled and fallen. The killer would have had to leave the house after Abe's death. He would have had to take the risk that either Esther or Louis would see him. De Gier was sure that the murder had been planned. Planned with a hellish machine. He had seen an exhibition of hellish machines at the police museum. Fountain pens that spout poison, rings with hidden steel thorns moved by a spring, very involved machines that will trigger off an explosion, trapdoors, heavy weights that will fall at the right moment. But not a spiked ball that disappears after it has done its work. And yet he knew that he knew the answer. He had seen something once, something that was capable of moving a spiked ball. Where had he seen it?

  It would have to be something ordinary, innocuous. Something the riot policemen could see without having second thoughts. And it had to be noiseless. A bang would have alarmed the constables who were uneasy anyway that day. Something the killer could carry through the Straight Tree Ditch and smile at the constables as he carried it.

  His eyes were closing. He struggled. The answer was close; all he had to do was grab it.

  He fell asleep and woke up two hours later. Esther wasn't on the bed. He heard her in the kitchen. She was stirring something in a pot. The smell reached him, a good smell which touched his stomach. A stew. She must have found the minced meat and the fresh vegetables. He got up and stuck his head into the small kitchen. She had some rice at the boil too.

  They ate, and listened to records. De Gier felt happy, unbelievably and completely happy. He also felt guilty and he opened a can of sardines for Oliver.

  15

  The Albert Cuyp is a long narrow street cutting through one of Amsterdam's uglier parts, where houses are thin high slabs of bricks pushed together in endless rows, where trees won't grow and where traffic is eternally congested. The street market is the heart of an area consisting of stone and tar, and its splash of color and sound feeds some life into what otherwise wouldn't be much other than a hell of boredom, in which the human ant lives out its sixty or seventy years of getting up and going to bed, being busy in between with factory and office work, and TV programs and a bit of drinking at the corner bar. It was an area that both de Gier and Cardozo knew well, for it breeds crime, mostly sad and always nonspectacular. The neighborhood is known for its fa
mily fights, drug pushing in a small way, burglaries and a bit of robbery, committed by youth gangs who swagger about, waylaying the elderly passerby, stealing cars and motorized bicycles, and molesting lonely homosexuals. The area is doomed, for city planning will do away with it, blow it up with dynamite to make room for blocks of apartments set in parks, but the city works slowly and the street market will be there for many years to come, functioning as a gigantic department store, selling food and household goods cheaply, providing an outlet for the national industry's unsalable goods and for adventurer-merchants who import for their own account, or smuggle, or, rarely, buy stolen goods.

  Cardozo had managed to force the gray van on to the sidewalk and was unloading bale after bale of gaily printed textiles, which de Gier stacked on the worn planks of a corner stall, assigned to them for the day by the market master, who had given them a knowing wink when de Gier, waving his license, looked him up in his little office.

  "Good luck," the market master said. "You'll be after Rogge's killer, I bet. You'd better get him. Abe Rogge was a popular man here and he'll be missed."

  "Don't tell anyone," de Gier said.

  The market master was shaking his head energetically.

  "I don't tell on the police. I need the police here. I wish you would patrol the market more regularly. Two uniformed constables can't cover a mile of market."

  "There are plainclothes police as well."

  "Yes," the market master said, "but not enough. There's always a bit of trouble here, especially on a hot day like this. We need more uniforms. If they see a shiny cap and nicely polished buttons they quiet down quickly. I have been writing to the chief constable's office. He always answers, but it's the same answer. Short of staff."

  "Complain, complain, complain!" de Gier said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "What I say. Go on complaining. It helps. You'll get more constables."

  "But they'll come from some other part of town and there'll be trouble down there."

  "So someone else can start complaining."

  "Yes," the market master said, and laughed. "I am only concerned about my own troubles. What about you? Will you catch your man?"

  "Sure," de Gier said, and left.

  But he wasn't so sure when he got back to the stall. Cardozo was complaining too. The bales were too heavy.

  "I'll get you some coffee," de Gier said.

  "I can get my own coffee. I want you to help me unload these bales."

  "Sugar and milk?"

  "Yes. But help me first."

  "No," de Gier said and left the stall. He found a girl carrying a tray with empty glasses, who took his order. He ordered meat rolls too and hot dogs.

  "You are new, aren't you?" The girl was pretty and de Gier smiled at her.

  "Yes. First day here. We've been on other markets, never down here."

  "Best market in the country. What do you sell?"

  "Lovely fabrics for dressmaking and curtains."

  "Will you give me a special price?" The girl reached out with her free hand and patted his cheek.

  "Sure." He smiled again and she swung her hip at him in response. He wasn't in a hurry to get back to the stall, but Cardozo saw him and shouted and jumped up and down, waving his arms.

  Together they finished the stall, draping some of the textiles in what they thought to be an attractive display.

  "This is no good," Cardozo muttered as he worked. That fellow on the other side of the street knows who we are. He keeps on looking at us. Who is he anyway?"

  De Gier looked and waved. "Louis Zilver. I asked the market master to give us a place close to him. He was Abe Rogge's partner. He's selling beads and wool and embroidery silk and all that sort of thing."

  "But if he knows us he'll spread the news, won't he?"

  "No, he won't, why should he?"

  "Why shouldn't he?"

  "Because he is the dead man's friend."

  "He may be the dead man's killer."

  De Gier sipped his coffee and stared at Cardozo, who was glaring at him from between two bales of cloth. "What are you so excited about? If he is the killer we are wasting our time here for we'll have to get at him in some other way. But if he isn't he'll protect us. He knows he is a suspect and if we find the killer he'll be cleared; besides, he may really want us to catch the murderer. He's supposed to be Rogge's friend, isn't he? There is such a thing as friendship."

  Cardozo snorted.

  "Don't you believe in friendship?"

  Cardozo didn't answer.

  "Don't you?"

  "I am a Jew," Cardozo said, "and Jews believe in friendship because they wouldn't have survived without it."

  "That isn't what I mean."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Friendship," de Gier said. "You know, love. One man loves another. He is glad when the other man is glad and sad when the other man is sad. He identifies with the other man. They are together, and together they are more than two individuals added up."

  "You don't have to spell it out for me," Cardozo said. "I won't believe you anyway. There's such a thing as a shared interest and the idea that two men can do more than one. I can understand that but I won't go for love. I have been in the police for some time now. The friends we catch always rat on each other after a while."

  "Love your neighbor," de Gier said.

  "Are you religious?"

  "No."

  "So why preach at me?"

  De Gier touched Cardozo's shoulder gingerly. "I am not preaching at you. Love your neighbor; it makes sense, doesn't it? Even if it happens to be a religious command."

  "But we don't love our neighbors," Cardozo said, furiously pushing at a bale of lining which had fallen over. "We are envious of our neighbors, we try to grab things from them, we annoy them. And we make fun of them if we can get away with it and we kill them too if they don't want to put up with our demands. You can't prove history wrong. I was too young to have been in the last war but I've seen the documentaries, and I've heard the stories and seen the numbers burned into people's arms. We have an army to make sure that the neighbors across the frontier behave themselves and we have a police force to make sure that we behave ourselves within the frontiers. You know what the place would be like if the police didn't patrol it?"

  "Stop kicking that bale," de Gier said. "You are spoiling the merchandise."

  "Without the police society would be a mad shambles, sergeant, a free fight for all. I am sure that Zilver fellow doesn't care two hoots if we catch the killer or not, and if he does care he has a personal interest."

  "Revenge, for instance," de Gier said.

  "Revenge is selfish too," Cardozo said, "but I was thinking of money. He'll want us to make an arrest if he can profit by the arrest."

  "You've been drinking with Grijpstra," de Gier said, and helped to lift the bale.

  "No. You have. Last night."

  De Gier looked hurt. "Last night, dear friend, I was at home. I only spent a few minutes with Grijpstra at Nellie's bar and half that time went on a telephone call. He didn't want me around so I left. Nellie didn't want me around either."

  "Nellie?" Cardozo asked.

  De Gier explained.

  "Boy!" Cardozo said. "As big as that? Boy!"

  "As big as that," de Gier said, "and Grijpstra wanted them all to himself. So I left. I checked out two prostitutes who were supposed to be Bezuur's alibi and after that I went home."

  "Bezuur?" Cardozo asked. "Who is he? I am supposed to help you and the adjutant but nobody tells me anything. Who is Bezuur?"

  "A friend of Abe Rogge."

  Cardozo asked more questions and de Gier explained. "I see," Cardozo said. "What about the callgirls? Had they been with him all night?"

  "So they said."

  "Did you believe them?"

  "According to Grijpstra there were six empty champagne bottles lying about in Bezuur's bungalow, and there were cigarette burns on the furniture and stains on the walls. An orgy. Who rem
embers what happens during an orgy? Maybe they were out on the floor half the night."

  "Did they look as if they had been?"

  "They looked O.K." de Gier said. "One of them even looked pretty nice. But they had had time for their beauty sleep and they knew I was coming. I didn't know the address so I couldn't jump them."

  "Couldn't you have checked with the telephone company?"

  "I could have but it would have been difficult. It was Sunday, remember? And maybe I was too lazy to try and jump them."

  "So what did you do afterward?"

  "I went home and I went to bed. And in between I was weeding the flower boxes on my balcony. And I had a late supper with my cat."

  Cardozo smiled. "You are a lucky man, sergeant."

  "Don't call me sergeant. Why am I lucky?"

  Cardozo shrugged. "I don't know. You are older than I am but you are like a child sometimes. You enjoy yourself, don't you? You and that silly cat."

  "He isn't a silly cat. And he loves me."

  "There we go again," Cardozo said and began to tug at another bale. "Love. I saw a poster in a bookshop last week. A love poster. Half-naked girls with frizzy hair sitting under a beautiful tree chanting away while birds fly around and angels gaze down. It's a craze. When I was still in uniform we had one of these love places a block away from the station. We had complaints every night. The girls would have their bags stolen and the boys had their wallets rolled and they were buying hash which turned out to be caked rubbish and they had knives pulled on them and they got the clap and crabs and the itch. I've been in there dozens of times and it was the same thing every night, dirty and smoky and silly and hazy. Some of them would catch on and drift away, but there were always others who hadn't learned yet and who were begging to get in."

  "The wrong place," de Gier said. "Brothels are the wrong place too. And Nellie's bar unless your name is Grijpstra and Nellie falls for you. But love exists." He patted his pockets.

  "Cigarette?" Cardozo asked, and offered his tobacco pouch and packet of cigarette papers.