“Rats,” Douglas D. Dubber said. “These people are rats.”
“Just one rat,” Grijpstra said.
“Cutting off her finger,” Dubber said. “Really.” He opened a drawer and took out papers. “Here, perhaps you can help out. I need a statement from you guys to file a claim.”
The papers contained an insurance policy. De Gier mumbled slowly through the text. He looked up. “Life insurance, a thousand dollars for your and your wife’s lives each, you are covered for the duration of your vacation.”
“Right,” Dubber said. “I took it out at the travel agency; it came with the tickets. I say, would you mind giving me a statement on police stationery that Emily is dead? I might as well try to collect this.”
De Gier shook his head. “A mere thousand for a man of your wealth? Do you really need to bother?”
“Do you have any more substantial insurance on the life of your wife?” Grijpstra asked.
Dubber didn’t seem to hear him.
“Sir?” de Gier asked.
Dubber pointed at the policy in de Gier’s hand. “Just that.”
“That wasn’t true,” the commissaris said three days later. Dubber was facing him across the antique desk at Amsterdam’s Police Headquarters. “Was it?”
Dubber, looking as disheveled as he had the first time he visited the building, was silent.
The commissaris persisted. “You need our statement in order to collect the real insurance on your wife, don’t you? We will find out, you know. We have good contacts with the New York Police Department. As soon as you collect your ill-gained fortune we will be informed. You set up this entire chain of events in order to recapitalize yourself, didn’t you, Mr. Dubber?”
Dubber looked at his feet.
“You describe yourself as a stock market adviser,” the commissaris said. “But you play the market yourself, don’t you? And you are a drinking man, are you not?”
Dubber looked up quickly, before looking at his shoes again.
“Abuse of alcohol goes with impaired judgment,” the commissaris said. “Am I correct in assuming that your portfolio is close to zero and that you don’t have too many subscriptions to your monthly newsletter, Mr. Dubber?”
“Bungle Bongo killed my wife,” Dubber said tonelessly. “You told me that yourself. You have nothing on me.”
“Bungle killed the victim with a riding whip,” the commissaris said. “You killed her by making a clever play. You had been drinking in the Buddha Bar, listening to Bungle Bongo’s ramblings. You learned he liked to torture his sex partners. You also knew your wife, Emily, liked being the masochist in S and M activities. After you hit your wife Friday night, to make her walk out on you, you kept her purse so that she couldn’t buy more cocaine and would have to offer herself in order to satisfy her habit. You knew she would go to the Buddha Bar and would be likely to run into Bungle Bongo.”
“Bungle killed Emily,” Dubber said, “I didn’t. Besides, he is dead now, too. The whole thing is over.”
“Not quite, perhaps,” the commissaris said. “Maybe we only saw one episode when the Pleiades people had Bungle Bongo surrounded in the temple room of their farmhouse. They sat in a double circle, each behind a big church candle in a holder, with Bungle kneeling in the center. Cardozo said the scene reminded him of a scorpion caught in a ring of fire, and like a scorpion, which stings itself to death in such a hopeless situation, Bungle used a knife on himself. The same razor-sharp clasp knife he cut Emily’s finger off with. He used enough force to penetrate his breastbone.”
“Do you have the diamond ring?” Dubber asked.
“It is yours.” The commissaris pushed the ring across his desk. “Please sign this receipt.”
Dubber signed. He thanked the commissaris. He pocketed the diamond. “Can I go now?” He grimaced, reminding Grijpstra of a feral cat that had bared its teeth at him when he shone a flashlight at it in Nellie’s hotel’s courtyard. “I take it I am not under arrest, for lack of proof?”
The commissaris, Grijpstra, and de Gier stared at Douglas D. Dubber, who got up, hesitated, and sat down again.
“Are you arresting me?” Douglas Dubber asked the commissaris.
“I don’t think it would work,” the commissaris said. “We would have to wait for you to collect your million. It is a million, isn’t it?” He smiled. “That’s right, don’t tell me the exact amount. By that time you would be out of this country. We would have to extradite you. It would all be quite costly.”
“We don’t have much jail space here,” de Gier said.
“And it would make no difference to you,” the commissaris said, “whether in jail here, or in your Manhattan apartment there, with your bottles, and the dying goldfish in the aquarium, and Emily’s four-fingered bleeding hand in your dreams, and Bungle playing his bongo drums.”
“He is not too good a bongo-drum player,” Grijpstra said.
“And your million will be invested in speculative stocks,” the commissaris said. “You won’t be able to resist investing again, and your drinking will make you lose again. The vicious circle keeps turning, Mr. Dubber.”
“Maybe it would be better if you confessed,” de Gier said kindly. “Would you like to do that? We still wouldn’t arrest you, for the case won’t hold up in court, but you might seek some treatment.”
“Are you torturing me?” Dubber asked. “Is this fun for you? Seeing me squirm? First I lose my wife, and now you accuse me of being behind her horrible death.”
“But you were,” the commissaris said. “You don’t expect us to accept your denial. Passing your wife to a psychopath, taking out that little policy so you could ask for a statement to help you collect the real money in the States, adorning your wife with a jewel that would attract a sadistic killer, setting her up so that she would crave cocaine and not have money to buy it?” The commissaris lowered his voice. “How much money are you aiming to get, sir?”
This time the silence lasted a full minute, uninterrupted by the commissaris’s soft voice.
“Maybe two million?” Douglas Dubber asked. “What does it matter? You are right, your case is too weak, you can’t make a murder charge stick. Suppose you are right in your assumptions, how about me getting lucky? Pushing Emily off a train would have been easier, but also tricky. The way things turned out, with all these degenerates you allow in your so-called magic city, it was a piece of cake. All I had to do was to make use of what was happening anyway.” He tried to rub some dirt off his knee. He had dropped his voice to a confidential whisper. “And don’t worry about my future financial situation. This time I will invest in tax-free municipal bonds, with a steady return of five percent. I’ll live in Honduras. On a hundred big ones a year, I will be king of all castles.” He laughed. “I don’t need that much either; a jeep, a cabin with a view, a jetty to fish off of, a cool beer at sunset, the day’s catch for dinner. I have picked out the place. This time I will do it right. No gambling. No excessive drinking. No so-called high-class hooker to keep supplied with coke. Daily exercise, swimming, surfing, kayaking, whatever comes up that isn’t too exhausting. A local girl once in a while. Watching some satellite TV. No fuss. Just fun.”
“Where exactly do you plan to do this?” de Gier asked.
“In El Triunfo.” Dubber grinned at him. “A pretty coastal village. Come and see me sometime, I’ll be a good host.”
•
“Remember Douglas D. Dubber?” Grijpstra asked de Gier a year later. They were in a sandwich shop in an alley between the Emperor’s and Prince Canals. He read from an article in the Amsterdam morning paper. “El Triunfo, Honduras, hit full on by a killer hurricane with sustained winds of nearly two hundred miles an hour, mud flows, roads taken out, massive devastation.”
The commissaris inquired, via his wife’s nephew, a relief worker in Honduras, as to what had happened to
Douglas D. Dubber. Was anything known about an American millionaire living close to the beach in the idyllic village of El Triunfo?
Mr. Dubber, the nephew reported, was last seen at a second-story picture window in his luxurious beach house. Dubber was shouting for help, but nobody could get to the stylish building, which, having been picked up by a raging river, was rapidly floating toward a boiling ocean.
“You can’t win when you won’t quit losing,” de Gier said.
Grijpstra said he thought de Gier was stuck in dualism. He refused to believe in justice, but he was glad that happenstance tended to even things out, sometimes.
Continue reading
for a sneak preview of the first
Grijpstra and de Gier Mystery
Outsider in Amsterdam
Preface
Once, some time ago now, I was a child and my par-ents would ask me what I wanted to be. I always gave the same answer. I wanted to be an Indian, and a cowboy in my spare time.
When fate, which according to Buddhist thought is the result of previous actions, brought me back to Amsterdam after a trip which took me to a large number of countries and lasted a long time, I received a letter from the army. The letter gave me an address and a name and a date and I found a middle-aged lady behind a desk who told me that I would have to be a soldier. I pointed out that I was over thirty years old but she wasn’t impressed.
A little later I received another letter from the army. It told me that I would have to consider myself to be in “extraordinary service.” The letter puzzled me and I put it in a drawer. Then there was another letter that told me that I would have to join the “civil reserve.” I saw another middle-aged lady and told her that I didn’t want to join the civil reserve, whatever it was. She told me to join the police. I told her that I already had a job. “In your spare time,” she said.
The idea staggered me. I never knew that one can be a policeman in one’s spare time.
But one can, and for several years now I have been a member of Amsterdam’s Special Constabulary and serve the Queen in the uniform of a police constable. I have been in a number of adventures in the inner city of the capital and some of them inspired me to write this story. My imagination has, here and there, carried me away and the result is that the police routine as described in this book is not, in every instance, based on established police technique.
Chapter 1
The Volkswagen was parked on the wide sidewalk of the Haarlemmer Houttuinen, opposite number 5, and it was parked the way it shouldn’t be parked.
The adjutant1 had switched the engine off.
The adjutant hesitated.
He had arrived at his destination, Haarlemmer Houttuinen, number 5, and the high narrow gable house was waiting for him. He studied the gable house and frowned. The house had a body in it, a dead body, suspended. The body was bound to be turning slowly. Bodies, suspended by the neck, are never quite still.
The adjutant didn’t feel like doing anything. He didn’t feel like getting out of the car, running through the rain, watching a corpse move slowly, dangling, turning.
“Hey,” said Sergeant de Gier, who sat next to Adjutant Grijpstra.
“Hey what?” asked Grijpstra.
De Gier made a helpless gesture. Grijpstra could explain the gesture, the waving arm with its connected stretched-out hand, as he wanted.
But he still didn’t move and the adjutant and sergeant listened, peacefully and unanimously, to the fat raindrops patter from the heavy, juicy spring sky onto the tin roof of the Volkswagen.
“Yes,” the adjutant said, and got out of the car. De Gier had parked the car on the edge of the sidewalk and Grijpstra was forced to step into the street, a main thoroughfare, busy at all times of the day and the night. He didn’t pay attention and a large American limousine approaching at speed had to turn suddenly to avoid the door of the car. The limousine, suddenly indignant, honked its powerful horn.
De Gier laughed and shook his head. He got out of the car as well, on the safe side, and locked the door carefully while the rain hit him in the neck. In Amsterdam nothing is safe, not even a police car, and this Volkswagen didn’t look like a police car. No expert would recognize the VW as a means of transport reserved for officers of the criminal investigation department. Its radio set was hidden under the dashboard and the antenna was a mere twig, slightly rusty. No one would suspect that the backseat contained a well-oiled carbine, neatly wrapped in canvas and complete with six magazines, or that the harmless nose of the car was filled with a complete collection of utensils that police officers think they need during the lawful exercise of their duties, including such items as a small suitcase full of burglar’s tools, a powerful searchlight, a dredge, gas masks and a tape recorder.
But nothing was suspected and the officers looked as innocent as their vehicle. Grijpstra is a fat man and de Gier neither thin nor fat—qualities they share with a large number of other men in Holland’s capital. Grijpstra wore a badly fitting suit made of expensive English striped material, with a white shirt and a dark blue tie, and de Gier a made-to-order suit of blue denim, a blue shirt and a multicolored scarf neatly folded around his Adam’s apple. Grijpstra’s hair looked like a well-worn scrubbing brush and de Gier’s curls were beautifully cut by a proud and highly trained coiffeur taking an almost personal interest in the glamour of his clients. De Gier’s curls were so well shaped, in fact, that he could have been mistaken for a woman if viewed from the rear, and only his narrow hips protected him from attacks from that side.
A pedestrian, in a hurry to reach his parked car, bumped into Grijpstra and hurt himself against the large model service pistol that the adjutant carried under his jacket.
“Watch where you’re going,” the pedestrian mumbled ferociously.
“Yes sir,” said Grijpstra kindly.
An ordinary car was parked on the sidewalk and two ordinary men ran through the rain until they reached the porch of number 5 and tried to catch their breath.
Their object achieved, a new period of inactivity began.
“Bah,” Grijpstra said and read the sign on the door.
The sign said hindist society.
Both men studied it. It looked neat, like the door. The text had been written in an unusual script as if the letter artist had tried to create a mysterious atmosphere. It seemed as if the letters had been drawn very quickly; the result was vaguely Chinese, far away.
De Gier produced a comb and arranged his hair while he looked about him.
The porch was old and magnificent in its Golden Age splendor. It had been designed in the seventeenth century for a gentleman-merchant who specialized in expensive timber imported from Africa and the Far East and stored in the first three stories of the tall house, while the merchant himself would have lived in the top three stories where he could see the harbor and his vast stocks of cheaper timber stacked in an area of perhaps a square mile. But that was long ago and the stones of the porch were cracked now and the beams supporting the gable house sagged a little. But the well-built house still retained a good deal of its original stately beauty and the present owner had kept it in reasonable repair.
A small window showed a number of objects and de Gier studied them one by one. Glass jars filled with health grains brown and green tea, and a substance that de Gier, after some thought, determined to be seaweed. A sign in the window, showing the same sort of lettering as the main sign, informed the visitor that the Society went in for a variety of activities. Grijpsira grunted and read the sign in a loud voice.
“Shop, open from nine to four. Restaurant and bar, restaurant open to nine, bar open to twelve p.m.”
He looked at de Gier but de Gier was still studying the display.
There were several small cartons filled with incense and a gilded Buddha statue sitting on a pedestal, staring and smiling, with a headgear tapering off into a shar
p point.
“A pointed head,” Grijpstra said. “Is that what you get when you meditate?”
“That isn’t known as a pointed head,” said de Gier, using his lecture voice. Once a month, when he taught the young constables of the emergency squad the art of crime detection.
“Not a pointed head,” de Gier repeated, “but a heaven-head. The point points at heaven. Heaven is the goal of meditation. Heaven is thin air. Heaven is upstairs.”
“Ah,” said Grijpstra. “Are you sure?”
“No,” said de Gier.
“You can ring the bell,” Grijpstra said. “You have a nice index finger.”
De Gier bowed from the hips and rang. His index finger was indeed nice, well tapered, thin and powerful.
Grijpstra, as if he wanted to avoid all comparison, had hidden his hands in his pockets.
The door opened immediately; they had been expected.
Both men braced themselves.
“Suspected suicide,” the police radio had said, a few minutes ago. “It seems that a man has hanged himself.” That was the message, and they had been given the address.
Grijpstra had repeated the address and had said that they would go there, and the female voice belonging to the constable first class of the radio room had thanked them and closed the communication.
And now they had arrived, but they knew no more than the radio had told them.
And now, of course, there would be a great commotion. Several people talking at once. White faces. Fearful eyes. Shouts and screams. Violence affects people.
But the face that looked at them, from the open space where the thick green monumental door had been, wasn’t white but black, and it wasn’t excited but calm.
The officers studied the man in the door.
“A Negro,” Grijpstra thought. “A small Hindist Negro. Now what?”
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