Outsider in Amsterdam ac-1

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  The boat was old, a wreck, built from second-hand materials on the hulk of a small discarded river freighter. Its paint had peeled off long ago.

  A youth waited for them on the plank that served as a gangway.

  "A user," Grijpstra thought as he brushed past him.

  Thin unwashed hair framing the face of a living skeleton dressed in a pair of torn jeans, rope-slippers and a shirt that had lost most of its buttons.

  "Very far gone," de Gier thought, "hard drugs, heroin probably." He looked into the boy's eyes and saw the small pupils, contracted into black pinpoints.

  "She is inside," the boy said. "Please go inside."

  Grijpstra had switched on his flashlight. He couldn't see much. The curtains were drawn and the windows hadn't been washed for years. There wasn't any furniture. A small paraffin stove with a kettle, a few cups on the floor. A dirty carpet and some blankets. He bent down to study the small shape underneath the blankets.

  The girl wouldn't be over nineteen, perhaps she was even younger. She was lying on her back, her mouth had fallen open and her dead eyes were staring at the rotten planks of the boat's roof.

  "Who are you?" a voice behind them said.

  "Police," de Gier said.

  "Sorry," the brother-officer of the Municipal Health Service said. "I didn't recognize you, sergeant. It's dark in here. Just let me have a look at her."

  Grijpstra made room for him and shone his torch on the girl's face. The Health Serviceman pulled the blanket down and grunted.

  "Dead," he said. "Suffocated in her own vomit. Nice. If that clot had turned her over she would have been all right, but he probably didn't notice she couldn't breathe. Too busy, of course. You see, her pants haven't been fastened. Must have covered her up later, when he saw that there was something wrong."

  "Stretcher," the officer said to his mate.

  De Uier didn't hear. He was outside, in the street, leaning against a lamp post and trying not to be sick. Grijpstra joined him.

  "I can't stand that sort of thing," de Gier said.

  "Who can?" Grijpstra asked.

  "I'll never get used to it," de Gier said.

  "Who will?" Grijpstra asked.

  "Did you see her arms?" de Gier asked.

  "Of course. Pricks all over, what would you expect? Probably has three or four shots a day. Doesn't eat anymore, just drinks a bit. Thin as a rake. She would have died anyway, another year at the most." The Municipal Health men maneuvered past them, very carefully, and carried the stretcher toward the ambulance and blocked the street.

  'Where are you taking her?" de Gier asked.

  "City hospital," said the officer who had talked to them before. "We left her bag in the boat; perhaps there'll be some identification in it. Your doctor happens to be in the city hospital; the post mortem will probably be done before you get there."

  De Gier waved and the ambulance started. They didn't use their siren; a corpse has all the time in the world.

  "Let's get on with it," Grijpstra said and put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Come into the boat with us, we'd like to ask a few questions."

  They asked the usual questions and the young man answered, but on another level, perhaps from another dimension. He talked in circles and commented on what he said. De Gier remembered another boy he had arrested once in the middle of Leidse Square where he was jumping up and down, waving, shouting and disturbing traffic. In the station he had chased something, something invisible and had run with his head against the wall and collapsed bleeding. Whatever he had been chasing had gone through the wall.

  "He is in another world," Grijpstra said to de Gier when the youth went into another long monologue.

  "Yes," said de Gier, "but we have to find out what we have to find out," and patiently they continued their questions and slowly some understandable answers were produced. They learned his name and profession. A student.

  "What do you study?"

  "I study life."

  "Psychology?" de Gier asked. "Philosophy?"

  "Sociology."

  Grijpstra looked through the boat. There wasn't a scrap of a paper to be found, no ballpoint, no books.

  "Did you ever pass any examinations?"

  "Yes, a long time ago now. I am a candidate."

  "You stopped?"

  The boy began to ramble again. He hadn't stopped, but he hadn't gone to lectures anymore.

  "The needle?" de Gier asked.

  The boy sneezed a few times.

  "He needs the needle now," Grijpstra said.

  They turned to the crime. There was no crime, the youth said, he had met the girl in the Dam square. He had asked her to come to his boat with him. They had slept together, she had died. De Gier admitted to himself that there had been no crime. The girl must have been over nineteen years old, and crime stops at the last day of a minor's fifteenth year, unless, of course, in case of rape. They couldn't even prove that he had seduced the girl. She must have come of her own free will, nobody had dragged her to the boat. And he had reported her condition as soon as he had become aware of it. No, no crime. So there would be no arrest.

  Grijpstra looked through the girl's handbag. It contained a pack of cigarettes, a dirty handkerchief and a purse with less than twenty guilders. And a needle, and some heroin in a small plastic bag.

  "Can I have that?" the boy asked.

  "Is it yours?"

  "No."

  "You couldn't have it even if it was yours, we'll need it as evidence."

  "Of what?" the boy asked.

  "Death," Grijpstra said.

  "So you have no idea who she is?" de Gier asked again.

  The youth shook his head. He knew her first name, and that was all.

  "Well, de Gier said, "we'll find out who she was, in due course. Goodbye for now, don't leave town for the time being. Here is my card, if there is anything else you think of, let me know."

  "Do you think he cared?" Grijpstra asked in the car.

  "No," de Gier said. "He may have been afraid for his own sake, frightened of arrest, I mean, but he didn't care about the girl. Life and death don't matter much where he is."

  "Where do you think he is?"

  "No idea," de Gier said, "and the only way to find out is to take opium."

  "Shit," Grijpstra said.

  De Gier agreed. He drove slowly and carefully.

  "Do you care?" Grijpstra asked suddenly and de Gier was surprised. In all the years he had worked with Grijps-tra the question had never come up. He looked at his chief but Grijpstra's expression was the same as ever, quiet, patient, noncommittal.

  De Gier found himself talking at length.

  "Yes," he was saying, "I care. I do care. I didn't like the way that girl died. We are supposed to maintain order so that society can live peacefully and rightfully and is protected against disturbing forces. Drugs disturb. That girl shouldn't have suffered, she should have some job or other, a boyfriend or a husband, a child perhaps. She shouldn't be wandering around the city, thin as a knitting needle and full of little pricks and scars, and full of poison. But what can I do? The opium law is a joke, and whoever contravenes it is released as soon as he is caught."

  "Now, now," Grijpstra said.

  "O.K. Some of them go to jail. For how long?"

  "For a little while," Grijpstra said.

  "In Persia they are shot," de Gier said.

  "Would you like to live in Persia?" Grijpstra asked.

  "Let's do some work," Grijpstra said.

  "No patrol duty," de Gier said. "I don't want to see another dead girl."

  "No, we still have our case. We'll go and see what happened to those nice young people of the Hindist Society."

  They found the boat the nice young people were living in but nobody was home and a card on the door said that they would be back at five thirty.

  They tried again at five thirty.

  Eduard opened the door and smiled. "Look who we have here."

  "The police," Grijpstra said. "
May we come in?"

  "Sure. You can have some coffee. We are here, all of us."

  The detectives said good evening, to Eduard, to Johan, to the fat girl Annetje and to the beautiful girl Therese.

  "I thought you were with your mother in Rotterdam?" de Gier asked.

  "I was, but I came back. I prefer Amsterdam and I can live on this boat."

  "We found work," Annetje said proudly, "real work for real pay. We assemble art-needlecraft kits in a factory and we make as much in a day as we used to make in a week, and we only work seven hours."

  "Not bad," de Gier said, "where do you work?"

  He wrote down the address.

  "You going to check?" Johan asked. "Don't do that. We are still on trial and they'll fire us for sure if they know the police are interested in what we do."

  "We'll be discreet," Grijpstra said and sipped his coffee.

  "Why do you want to check?" Johan asked.

  "I won't have to check if you are honest with us," de Gier said. "Will you be honest?"

  "Why not?" Johan said. "We have nothing to hide."

  "I hope not," de Gier said, "but we may have reason to suspect you of this and that. A tin of hash disappeared from the Hindist Society, a large tin of hash. Where is it?"

  Grijpstra noticed that Annetje had become very red in the face.

  "Show me where it is," he said to the fat girl.

  Annetje looked at Johan.

  "All right, show him."

  Annetje went out of the room and came back carrying a tin. Grijpstra opened it. It wasn't a large tin and it was half full of loose marihuana.

  "We didn't steal it," Johan said. "It belonged to the Society and we were all part of the Society, or supposed to be anyway."

  "What did you intend to do with the tin?" de Gier asked.

  "Smoke the marihuana sometime," Johan said. "You know, a little in the evening, every now and then. None of us are habitual smokers but it is nice to have it at times, on a quiet night when there is nothing special to do."

  Grijpstra put the tin on the floor.

  "Some money is missing," de Gier said.

  "You mean the money that I took up to Piet and that he put in his cash box?" Johan asked.

  "Yes."

  "We didn't take it. There was a burglary that night, the thieves must have taken it."

  "We could have taken it," Annetje said. "The Society owed us some pay. We might have taken it too, but we didn't."

  "All right," Grijpstra said.

  "Are you going to take the tin and charge us with being in possession of drugs?" Eduard asked.

  "No," Grijpstra said.

  "So what are you. going to do?"

  De Gier lit a cigarette after having offered his pack around.

  "Ask some more questions," he said. "We suspect Piet of having dealt in drugs in a big way. Do you know anything? If you tell us, it'll help us and we won't give in until we know anyway. You'll save a lot of time if you help us."

  "Why shouldn't we tell you?" Eduard said. "We don't hold with dealing in drugs. The drug dealers are all capitalists and criminals, selling rubbish at high prices. Marihuana and hash should be legalized and the rest should be prohibited."

  "Are you a communist?" Grijpstra asked mildly.

  "No. Are you?"

  "No," Grijpstra said, "but I sympathize with some of the ideas of communism. Most people do, I suppose."

  Eduard smiled. "A communist policeman."

  "I didn't say I was a communist," Grijpstra said. "Now what do you know about Piet's drug dealing?"

  "Nothing concrete," Eduard said, "but mizo soup, do you know what that is?"

  "Yes," Grijpstra said.

  "Mizo soup, the way it comes as a paste, without being actual soup yet, looks very much like hash. Piet imported a lot of mizo, twenty little casks every six weeks or so. It came from the Far East. We never used that much. We used a quarter of a cask a week. The rest was sold. I think it was hash. Maybe one cask in twenty was mizo, the rest must have been hash."

  "The stuff in the tin isn't hash," de Gier said. "It's loose marihuana, not hash."

  "Same thing, really," Eduard said. "Hash is a paste made from marihuana. But the marihuana was bought by Piet from a fellow who grows it in Holland. We hardly ever used the paste. I think he sold the paste, it's more potent than the loose stuff."

  "Who did he sell it to?" de Gier asked. "Do you know?"

  "I don't know anything," Eduard said, "but I think he sold it to two types who used to come to the bar. In fact they were there on the evening of the murder. Your detectives took their names and addresses."

  "Why didn't you tell us?" de Gier asked.

  Eduard shrugged. "Why should I have told you? There was enough trouble as it was, and drug dealers are dangerous. I only wanted to get away from the place."

  "So why are you telling us now?" Grijpstra asked.

  Eduard shrugged again. "You are all right," he said. "You have treated us politely ever since you came into contact with us. Maybe you are real policemen, servants of society. Maybe you really want to help."

  "Thanks," de Gier said.

  "What do you know about the two types who used to come to the bar?" de Gier asked.

  "Not much," Eduard said. "Their names. And the fact that they drive a Mercedes bus, very expensive. They have a tape player in it with double loudspeakers. I noticed it one day when they parked the car on the sidewalk. And I didn't like them, they were obviously making fun of us."

  "Hmm," de Gier said, and threw his cigarette stub through the open window into the canal.

  "Don't do that," Annetje said. "It's a dirty habit. The nicotine will kill the fish, if there are any fish left."

  "Right," Grijpstra said. "My house faces the water, and I can't stand people throwing rubbish into the canal."

  "Hell," de Gier said and looked hurt. "I'm sorry. I'll never do it again. I'll fish it out if you like," and he got up to look out of the window.

  Therese laughed. "It's all right, sergeant."

  De Gier felt comforted and smiled at the girl.

  "Are you all right now?' he asked.

  "No," Th6rese said, and began to cry, "I am still pregnant."

  "For God's sake," de Gier said. "I do everything wrong today. I am sorry. I didn't mean to make her cry."

  "All right sergeant," everybody said in choir.

  They left. Annetje saw them to the door and waved.

  "Cheer up," said Grijpstra, in the car.

  "Isn't this where Claassen died?" de Gier asked a little later as they were driving past a site that belongs to the Public Works Department.

  "Yes," Grijpstra said, "and you know it is."

  De Gier knew. He had known Claassen well, they were in the same group at school.

  Claassen had shot himself on the vacant site, early one morning. The body had been found by a patrol car. Claassen had used his service pistol. Grijpstra had been ill at the time and another adjutant had investigated the death, together with de Gier. Suicide. No apparent reason. No family troubles for Claassen had no family. No girlfriend. No boyfriend. No money troubles.

  Depression.

  "What causes depression?" de Gier thought.

  What makes a man shoot himself, on a vacant lot in winter, between two rusty cranes of the Public Works Department, at two o'clock in the morning?

  "Claassen was a good policeman," de Gier said. "Serious. Intelligent."

  "Yes," Grijpstra said.

  \\ 10 /////

  "A proper raid," De Gier said contentedly. "WE haven't done that in a long time. And at the chief inspector's orders."

  "I thought we only had to question them," Grijpstra said. 'To raid them is overdoing it a bit. But perhaps we can arrest them."

  De Gier had managed to overcome the trials of the day and looked agreeable.

  "Yes. So far they are the only suspects that we. know are no good."

  "We'll need another car," Grijpstra said. "You can stop at that cafe over t
here and I'll phone the garage."

  They went into the cafe and de Gier ordered two coffees; the waiter wasn't enthusiastic. It was a very hot day. It was stuffy in the bar and half a dozen large bluebottle flies buzzed about at top speed and crashed into the windows, surviving their accidents and trying again.

  "Get some good help," de Gier said when Grijpstra walked to the call box at the rear of the room. "At least two."

  Grijpstra came back and sat down. The owner of the cafe" came to talk to them and offered cigars.

  "How are you doing?" Grijpstra asked.

  "All right," said the owner, a sad old man with a drooping mustache. "Did you hear about the fight we had here last night?"

  "No," Grijpstra said.

  "Then I won't tell you about it," the owner said and shuffled back to his living quarters. "Nothing to do with us," he whispered to the waiter as he came past him.

  "So where do we go?" Grijpstra asked.

  "I have two addresses," de Gier said, finding the right page in his notebook, "one in the Vossiusstraat and one on the Leliegracht."

  "Complications again," Grijpstra said.

  De Gier agreed. "They may be at neither address, they may even be on holiday, sunning themselves on a Spanish beach. But we better try both addresses."

  They paid, in spite of the waiter's protests, and returned to Headquarters. While Grijpstra went to find the two detectives scheduled to help that night de Gier checked the contents of their own gray VW; the car had been used by others and he wanted to make sure that everything was still there, and in its proper place.

  When Grijpstra returned with his two assistants he found de Gier with a carbine in his hands.

  "What do you want to do with that?" Grijpstra asked. "The war is over."

  "I know," de Gier said, "I saw too many movies. And a carbine is a beautiful weapon, it has to be handled every now and then. When it lies under the back seat it dies."

  "A point fifty machine gun is a beautiful weapon too," one of the detectives said. "I used to have one in Indonesia. Ah, the sound of it. Rattattat it would go. And afterward we would eat real fried rice, with shrimps on the side, and some good fried vegetables. A good life. And to think that all I do now is walking about the street markets, sniffing about for stolen goods."