Outsider in Amsterdam ac-1

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  "You aren't drunk, father?" Constanze asked. She turned to de Gier. "When he talks about the hombill he is usually drunk, very drunk. We'll have to carry him to bed. He is heavy."

  "No, dear," the father said. "You go to town with the gentleman and enjoy yourself. I am not drunk and I won't get drunk. Not tonight anyway."

  De Gier said goodbye and waited for Constanze to go through the door. He looked around before he left the room but the father was gazing out of the window, with a peaceful expression on his flabby face.

  "That was nice of you," Constanze said and leant against de Gier. "You should come again. Nobody can cheer him up anymore. He isn't too bad tonight. Sometimes he groans and doesn't know his own wife. He keeps on saying that everything is black and then he begins to mumble. He can curse for hours. He isn't angry then, he just repeats the curses. Over and over again. I couldn't live in this house anymore. When Yvette is here he gets a bit better. He took her to the zoo this morning."

  "To look at the hornbill," de Gier thought. "Join the navy and see the sea, join the police and see the soul. I must tell Grijpstra, this would have interested him. Mayber Grijpstra should have a look at the hornbill sometimes."

  "Is that your car?" Constanze asked.

  "Yes," de Gier said. "I saved up for it. Tuppence a day, and I never stopped saving for a hundred years."

  "Really"

  "Not really. I borrowed it. I have a bicycle, an old bicycle. And when I'm on duty I drive a VW."

  "Oh," Constanze said, "you don't need a car to take me out. I am used to nothing. Piet had a car but he used it to take his girlfriends out. I worked in the kitchen and looked after the child."

  "Don't you have a friend with a car in Paris?" de Gier asked. "You are a beautiful woman. You can't tell me the men in Paris haven't noticed."

  Constanze was quiet for a while. "I only left Piet some months ago. In Paris I have to work. My mother's brother owns a wholesale company and he gave me a job. I lived in his house for a while and they are very strict people. I only got a little flat last week, and when I leave work I have to pick up the child at a creche. I haven't gotten around to men yet."

  "Hmmpf, hmmpf," de Gier said.

  "You said that last night," Constanze said. "Is it your war cry?"

  "Yes," de Gier said, "a war cry."

  "Do you want to have me?" Constanze asked.

  De Gier blushed and Constanze giggled.

  "Who is trying to make who?" de Gier thought and went on blushing. He put his hand on hers; she didn't pull her hand away.

  "Did you bring your sandwiches?" he asked, pointing at the plastic bag she had put between them.

  Constanze blushed. "Yes," she said, "but not because I thought you wouldn't feed me. It's some bread and cheese my mother gave to my father when he went to the zoo this morning. He brought mem back again. I was going to ask you to drive to the park later this evening. I always went there as a child and I would like to see it again before I return to Paris."

  "Are we going to feed the ducks?" de Gier asked.

  "No," she said, "it's a secret. You'll see. He took her to the Chinese restaurant on the Nieuwedijk. The owner bowed behind his counter and the waiter smiled. Constanze noticed the friendly reception.

  "Do they know you here?" she asked.

  "They do. We made a bit of a mess here yesterday."

  "What happened?"

  "We arrested a man we were looking for and my colleague accidentally ran into the waiter. In fact, he ran over him. There were noodles all over the place." De Gier grinned. "Pity I was out on the street when it happened, had to go after my man."

  "You can't be very popular here."

  "It's all right. The police are very popular. But they'll still sell us a meal."

  The owner served them himself.

  "Shrimps," the owner said, "very nice. Very fresh. With fried rice. And special soup. Real Chinese soup, not on the menu. And a glass of wine. Wine on the house. Yes?"

  "Yes," Constanze said, "that sounds nice."

  The owner bowed and smiled. He lit Constanze's cigarette and snapped his fingers at the waiter. The waiter ran to the kitchen, ignoring the other customers.

  "You get special service," Constanze said. "How does it feel to be powerful?"

  "I don't feel powerful," de Gier said. "A policeman is the public's servant."

  "Ha," Constanze said.

  "It's true, you know. I learned it at the police school. I believed it then. Later I forgot. But I learned it again. It's quite true."

  "You are serious, aren't you?" Constanze asked.

  "Yes."

  "Let's not be serious."

  "All right."

  "Are you ever in uniform?"

  "Yes," de Gier said. "Maybe once a month for a few days. When they are very busy at the stations and short of sergeants. Come and see me at the Warmoesstraat."

  Constanze laughed. "I am having dinner with a police sergeant."

  "Not now. I am just me. The Chinese owner thinks I am, and the waiter thinks I am, but I am not. I am a man who is having dinner with a woman."

  She changed the subject and they chatted for a while. De Gier steered the conversation toward van Meteren. She talked easily.

  "Oh, he's nice. He was the only one in that house I could rely on. Always gentle and pleasant, and always busy with something. He never hung around. And he wasn't part of the house, he kept his distance but he would always help if anyone wanted help."

  "Busy?" de Gier asked. "Busy with what?"

  "He studied."

  "At the university? Did he take evening classes?"

  "He would have liked to, I think," Constanze said, "but he didn't have the right qualifications although I am sure he is very intelligent. He read history, Dutch history. He used to borrow books from the library, he probably still does, and the librarians were helping him, telling him what to read and finding books for him."

  De Gier shook his head. "History?"

  "Yes," Constanze said. "Why? Why not history? He knows everything about Holland there is to know, I think. And he has been everywhere. He knows every city and every village. He planned trips and then he would go on his motorcycle. Weekends, and holidays and all the time he could get from his boss. He wasn't enjoying his job much, I think, although he didn't complain."

  "Did he ever take you with him?"

  "No," Constanze said, "he never asked me but I wouldn't have gone anyway. Motorbikes scare me. I had a boyfriend who had a motorbike when I was a girl and we had an accident on it. I walked on crutches for months. Never again."

  "Did you like him?"

  Constanze looked at him, eyes half-closed. "Why? Are you jealous? Or is this an interrogation? Like last night?"

  "No," de Gier said.

  "Did you think I had something with that Papuan?"

  De Gier didn't answer.

  She put down her fork and looked at him. Her eyes were wide open now.

  "I am sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I have nothing against color. Van Meteren was always very good to me. But as a man… I don't think I ever thought about him that way."

  De Gier felt her foot against his.

  A few minutes later she mentioned van Meteren of her own accord.

  "Yes," she said, "a strange man. It must have been difficult for him to live here. He could never forget New Guinea, of course, and here he would never be accepted. People were nice to him, I think. But nice is not enough. They stared at him. Perhaps it would have been all right if he could have been a regular policeman. He would have had his self respect. He has been a policeman all his life. Do you know he could tell stories? I laughed a lot about the story of the white official who had been sent to New Guinea as an assistant district commissioner. He had hardly arrived when they sent him on an inspection and the very first time he went into a native village he ran into a tribal war. A tall thin lad, twenty-five years old perhaps, raised in a little Dutch city, and there he was with painted demons, dancing and yelling and
clubbing each other. They never touched him. Maybe they left him alone because he was white. He had nothing to do with it. Big black hooligans with bones through their noses and feathers in their hair, and someone beating a drum. When it was all over the official was raving mad and they had to fly him back. He spent years in an asylum."

  "That's a funny story?" de Gier asked.

  "Maybe not," Constanze said and laughed. "You think the poor chap had come to maintain order. Doing his duty and so on. But I thought it was funny. Maybe you would have thought so too if you had heard van Meteren tell it. He acted both sides, the wild ones, and the official. He was really very good."

  "He acted the white fellow as well?" de Gier asked.

  "Yes," said Constanze, "ask him to tell the story, you'll see."

  "I will," de Gier said, and paid the bill. It was only half of what it should have been.

  "I wonder what they are hiding," de Gier thought. "That waiter's papers won't be in order, that's for sure. Maybe there is something wrong with the owner as well. Or they were the fellows who hid Lee Fong."

  He wondered if he should mention the matter to the Aliens Department at Headquarters.

  "Maybe not," he thought.

  Constanze moved close to him in the car. "Let's drive to the park."

  He parked the car as close to the park as he could get. She guided him to a pond. "Crumble some bread and throw it in."

  "There are no ducks," he said.

  "Never mind. Just do as I say."

  The crumbs hit the pond's surface and caused a strange spectacle. Great carp, some of them seemed more than two feet long, fought for the bread. The water foamed. The pond seemed full of carp. De Gier couldn't imagine where they had all come from. The smacking of their thick pink lips filled the air around him.

  "Did you like that?" Constanze asked when he had finished the bread.

  "Yes," he said. He thought the time had come and put his arms around her. She kissed him back and then pushed him away.

  "Where do you live?" she asked.

  "Five minutes from here," he said.

  "Let's go there."

  In the flat he asked her to wait at the door while he caught Oliver and locked him up in the kitchen. She slipped past him. He fed Oliver.

  By the time he got into the bedroom she had little on.

  He helped her take her panties off.

  \\ 8 /////

  Grijpstra watched his wife, a formless lump under the blankets, and listened to the chief inspector whose loud voice hollered from the telephone.

  The voice went on and on, connecting sentences, repeating itself. Mrs. Grijpstra's head became visible. She scowled. "Why," Grijpstra asked himself, "do curlers have to be pink? Why not brown? If they were brown they would blend with her hair, I wouldn't notice them so much, and I would be less irritated. I wouldn't have such a foul taste in my mouth. My stomach wouldn't cramp. I wouldn't have to worry about ulcers. My wife wouldn't forget to buy medicine because I wouldn't need to take medicine. I would be happier."

  "Yes sir," Grijpstra said.

  It was ten A.M., Sunday morning.

  "No," the chief inspector said. "This 'yes sir' won't get us anywhere, Grijpstra. I don't see any progress in the case at all. We aren't getting anywhere, Grijpstra. Complications, that's all we get."

  "How do you mean, sir?" Grijpstra asked and changed the telephone to his other ear.

  "By now we should have sufficient material to start sorting and shifting," the chief inspector said, "but we haven't sorted anything and we have more material. You said that you found another staircase, didn't you?"

  "Yes sir," Grijpstra said, "another staircase and another door. The staircase leads to Piet's room. The door is locked but we opened it, the lock was simple. It wasn't rusty. Piet had a key to it and Mrs. Verboom used to have a key. Perhaps other people had or have keys as well."

  "Yes," the chief inspector said impatiently, "so anybody could have sneaked up, without the girls in the kitchen seeing him. Or her. Mrs. Verboom could have used her keys."

  "She was in Paris, sir."

  "So she says. But we have airplanes nowadays. She could have come in the morning and left in the evening. We'll have to check. Find out where she works."

  "Yes sir," Grijpstra said and blew cigar smoke into the room. His wife began to cough, got out of the bed and stamped out of the door, slamming it.

  "What was that?" the chief inspector asked.

  "My wife closed a door."

  "It sounded like a shot. Never mind. There is also the old Mrs. Verboom, do you know where she is now?"

  "She is in Aerdenhout; the mental home is called Christian Freeminded Sanatorium for Neuroses."

  "She is all that?" the chief inspector asked.

  Grijpstra sucked on his cigar.

  "Not funny, hey?" the chief inspector said and continued hopefully. "Perhaps we'll have an anonymous tip. Anything to give us a hint. A good hint. The commissaris is becoming impatient. He keeps on phoning me. You still think it is murder?"

  'There is seventy-five thousand missing, sir," Grijps-tra said.

  "Yes," the chief inspector said, "very true. He may have paid someone. But who? I don't know. We'll have to go on, what else can we do? You go and see the corpse's mother in Aerdenhout. She is crazy but crazy people sometimes answer questions. She may speak the truth. Crazy people often do. Go and see her, Grijpstra. Today. Sunday is just the sort of day to visit a mental asylum. Do it today and you can do something else tomorrow. You have to go and see our two drug dealers. Monday is a good day to see drug dealers. They won't have much resistance after the weekend."

  Grijpstra put his hand over the mouthpiece and sighed.

  "Are you there, Grijpstra?"

  "Yes sir," Grijpstra said. "I'll go to the mental home today. Goodbye, sir."

  He rang off.

  "Good hunting," the chief inspector had said but Grijpstra missed it.

  His wife had come into the room again.

  "You shouldn't smoke cigars in the bedroom," Mrs. Grijpstra said.

  "It's a filthy habit," Grijpstra said and got off the bed. He dressed and clasped his gun holster to his belt. He took his time shaving.

  "This'll be my only pleasure today," he thought morosely. "A good shave, a lot of very hot water, and a lot of nice frothy soap and a new blade. And after that a sea of trouble. A black sea. A sea. I should have become a fisherman. They sail around, early in the morning, on a black sea. And then the sun breaks, and everything becomes beautiful. But I joined the police." He cursed and wiped his face and went back to the bedroom to stare out of the window.

  His wife brought a cup of coffee. He swallowed a little and made a face. "This is cold, and you forgot the sugar."

  His wife stamped out of the room and slammed the door. He stared out of the window again. The Lijnbaansgracht was dirtier than usual that morning. He counted three plastic dirt bags, a mattress, two chairs and some lesser and assorted rubbish, all floating slowly in the lazy current.

  Grijpstra laughed, a dry hollow laugh. He had remembered article 41 of the General Amsterdam Police Ordination. "It is forbidden to dump any material, either on the public roads, or their adjacent precincts, or in the public waterways."

  "Some article," Grijpstra thought. "The fine is probably ten guilders. I'll phone the municipality again tomorrow. They'll send a boat down and two men. And there'll be other rubbish floating past on Tuesday. Dirt is like crime, the supply is endless."

  He picked up the phone.

  "Yes?" de Gier asked.

  "I'll meet you at Headquarters," Grijpstra said, "in half an hour's time."

  "No," de Gier said. "I have a date."

  "You have," Grijpstra said, "with me."

  He put the phone down and struggled into his jacket.

  "You going out?" his wife asked in the corridor.

  "Yes," Grijpstra said.

  "Will you be home late?"

  "Yes," Grijpstra said and slammed the front
door.

  De Gier was sitting at the wheel of the gray VW when Grijpstra strolled into the court. Grijpstra looked relaxed. The walk had cheered him up and he had remembered the truth of the proverb that says shared sorrow is half sorrow.

  De Gier started the car as soon as his chief got in and drove off.

  "Shouldn't you thank the doorman for opening the gate for you?" Grijpstra asked.

  "No," de Gier said.

  "In a bad mood?" Grijpstra asked.

  "Not at all. There's nothing like duty. I had a date with Constanze Verboom and her daughter. We were going to the beach. Didn't you go to the beach yesterday?"

  "Yes," Grijpstra said. "The beach was full. And the sea was dirty. And if you want to pee they charge you twenty cents. And the children wanted to build a sand castle and a fat German walked right through it. He couldn't help it, he had to walk somewhere. My son hit him with his little spade. He bled like a cow."

  "Haha," de Gier said.

  "Amused, are you?" Grijpstra asked.

  "Very amused," de Gier said. "Got you into trouble, eh?"

  "Yes."

  "And where are we going?" de Gier asked.

  "To Aerdenhout," Grijpstra said. "We're going to visit your girlfriend's mother-in-law. In the nuthouse."

  De Gier stood on the brake and the car veered to the side of the road. Grijpstra had to extend a hand to stop his head from hitting the windshield.

  "You aren't serious," de Gier said, "and if you are, why take me? You can go to the nuthouse by yourself, can't you?"

  "I am not fond of old ladies," Grijpstra said, "and I am scared of mental homes."

  De Gier tried to tear the plastic off a pack of cigarettes. "So why didn't you send mel I had to go and see Con-stanze by myself, didn't I?"

  "It wasn't my idea," Grijpstra explained patiently. "It's the chief inspector's idea. And he told me to go. And I didn't want to go by myself. Two hear more than one, and you have to do what I tell you to do, and let's get going."

  A motorcop stopped his gleaming white Guzzi motorcycle next to the VW and tapped on its roof with his gloved hand.