The Sergeant's Cat

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  “Who would have argued with him?” de Gier asked.

  “You?”

  “No,” van Meteren said. “I don’t argue with anyone. Whenever Piet had one of his moods I avoided him. This is a very big house; there is always another room.”

  “Were you friendly with Piet?”

  “Yes, but I wasn’t his friend. I don’t believe in friend­ship. Friendship is a feeling of the moment. Moments pass. I have neither friends nor enemies. The people around me are the people around me, I accept them.”

  “What are you doing in this house?” de Gier asked.

  Van Meteren laughed. “Nothing. I live here. Piet invited me in. I was living in a small room in a boarding house. A cheap place although the rent was high. In a narrow street on the fourth floor, very little light and you can breathe the fumes of the street. The nearest tree was a mile away. I spent most of my free time walking around and had my meals at Chinese restaurants, as often as I could afford to. If I couldn’t eat in a restaurant I would have a sandwich in a park. This place has a restaurant and I tried to have a meal here but they wanted me to become a member. I had to go to Piet’s office and pay him twenty-five guilders and fill in a form. That’s how we met. He seemed to like me straightaway and offered me a room, two hundred guilders a month including as many meals as I wanted.”

  “That’s very cheap,” de Gier said.

  “Very,” van Meteren agreed. “But he may have had a reason. Perhaps he wanted a policeman in the house. I am not on the regular force but I do have a uniform and I am properly trained. There’s a bar in the place, clients may be difficult at times.”

  “Did he ever make use of your services?”

  “Once or twice,” van Meteren said. “I have taken guests into the streets but I didn’t hurt anybody. The grips we were taught are either defensive or merely meant to transport a suspect without causing him any undue pain.”

  Grijpstra smiled, he remembered the textbook phrase.

  “Was Piet a homosexual?” de Gier asked.

  It was van Meteren’s turn to smile.

  “You are a real policeman,” he said. But perhaps you are wrong this time. I have thought of it for he often visited me in my room, he was interested in my collection of stones and shells and wanted me to tell him stories about New Guinea. He wanted to know what Papuans eat and what our religion is and whether we used any herbs or drugs and if we danced. But he never bothered me. Whenever he felt that I wanted to be alone he would leave at once. No, Piet liked women even if they caused him trouble.”

  “Did they?” de Gier asked.

  “Always. He wanted to own them, to dominate them.”

  “I thought women liked to be dominated,” de Gier said.

  “Yes. But not by Piet. He had little charm and tried to make them ridiculous, especially when he had an audi­ence. So the women became bitter and attacked him and hurt him in his pride. He had a lot of pride. And in the end they would leave him.”

  “You don’t make him sound a very nice person,” de Gier said.

  Van Meteren shook his head. “No, no. He wasn’t all that bad. He meant well.”

  “No friend, no enemy,” de Gier said.

  “Yes,” van Meteren said. “I try to be detached, to keep my distance. People are the way they are; it’s hard to try to change them.”

  “And that’s the reason you drink tea,” Grijpstra said.

  Van Meteren thought for a while. “I do other things as well.”

  •

  “We are getting nowhere,” Grijpstra thought, and asked for more tea. Van Meteren filled his cup. Grijpstra took a sip, breathed deeply and immersed himself again in the opaque, sticky substance of an unexplained death of an Amsterdam citizen.

  “And this Hindist business, what does it mean?”

  Van Meteren felt through his pockets and found a pack of cigarettes. It contained one cigarette only. He offered it to Grijpstra.

  Grijpstra shook his head. “It is your last.”

  “Never mind,” van Meteren said. “I have some more somewhere, and if not I can get some downstairs in the shop, I have a key.”

  “Hindism,” de Gier said.

  “Yes,” van Meteren said. “Hindism. I have been curi­ous too, but I have never quite understood what Piet meant by it. Something between Hinduism and Buddhism perhaps. Piet’s own homemade religion. It’s quite intri­cate and bound up with right eating and tea and medi­tation. The room next door is a temple. There are cushions on the floor and twice a week people sit still on it for an hour or so. Piet is, or was, the priest and had his own special cushion, richly embroidered. He sat closest to the altar. Perhaps he really thought of himself as a prophet, a teacher who had something to show to the new people, the young offbeat types of today. But he was losing interest and he was running short of disciples. Hardly anyone showed up for the meditations and he had to put up with a lot of criticism from the people who work here. Nobody stayed long. The ones you have met, the girls and Johan, and Eduard, whom you’ll probably meet later, are all newcomers, they haven’t been here for longer than six months at the most and I think they only stay because they can’t think of another place they want to go. They’ll leave as soon as something turns up. Piet wanted to create an oasis of peace, a quiet place where people can get strength and where they can forget politics and money-making. Find their souls, their real selves. He had invented a special routine, the whole house has been redesigned for that purpose. The bar is an entry; people go easily into a bar. But finally they’ll end up in the meditation temple, at least that was the general idea. The barkeeper would have to listen to the guests and direct them, tactfully and gradually, to the higher regions, the restaurant with its clean food and pure fruit and vegetable juices, and the temple with its spiritual air. And Piet would be the divinity in the background, work­ing through others and guiding them without showing himself much. Perhaps he really thought that way in the beginning but he must have lost faith and found himself weak. The arguments must have hurt him and his own lack of strength. I have listened to a long lecture he delivered once; the subject was that one should never eat meat. But afterward he sneaked out and I saw him buy­ing some hot sausages off the street stall around the corner.”

  “Ha!” de Gier said. “But surely he couldn’t have been that much of a failure. This place looks reasonably suc­cessful. It is clean for one thing and the restaurant was almost full. He must have been making some money and some people must have admired him one way or another.”

  “Sure,” van Meteren said, “and the atmosphere here is quite pleasant. I have always been reasonably happy here and it would be a pity if it’s all over and done with now. And Piet’s ideas were all right, but he wasn’t the right man to put them into effect. Perhaps if he had admitted that he was a beginner himself and had lost some of his pride. He wanted to be a great master and it must have been a shock to him when people belittled him. His own wife called him a lesser nitwit when she left, the others called him other things. He has been walked over a lot lately . . .” He didn’t finish his sentence.

  “Who else lives here?” Grijpstra asked.

  Van Meteren counted them off on his fingers. “His mother, eighty-three years old, second door on the right from here, not altogether sound in mind.”

  “Old age?” asked Grijpstra.

  “No, not just old age. A bit mad I would say. Then there is me, you know me. On the next floor there is Thérèse, the girl with the pigtails. Annetje, the other girl, sleeps in the servant quarters, on the other side of the courtyard. She shares her room with Johan. Eduard lives in the little cabin at the end of the garden. He had his day off today but he may have been here this after­noon, you’ll have to ask him. Johan has been working; he had the shop today and has been barman during the evening.”

  Someone knocked at the door. Van Meteren called “Yes” but nothing happen
ed. He got up and opened the door and the detectives saw a very old lady, tall and angular, dressed in a gown set off with lace, a thick woollen scarf hung over her shoulders. Two glinting sharp eyes stared at them. The aggressive nose reminded de Gier of a sparrow hawk’s beak.

  “What’s going on?” the old lady asked. “What are you all talking about? I have been listening to the grunting of voices for hours now. It is half past one, I want to sleep.”

  Van Meteren put his arm around the old lady. “Come in, Miesje. These gentlemen are police officers. That’s Mister Grijpstra and that’s Mister de Gier.”

  The detectives shook the thin hand, dotted all over with dark brown spots.

  She sat down, with a straight back, on the edge of the settee.

  “So what goes on?” she asked in a brittle voice. “Are they your friends, Jan? Traffic wardens?”

  “No, Miesje. They are regular police. There has been an accident. Piet has had a bad fall.”

  The old lady’s eyes, which had been closing slowly, suddenly opened.

  “He is dead?” she shrieked.

  Nobody answered.

  “He is dead,” the old lady said and began to cry.

  The sound of her sobs grated on the detectives’ ears. Her mouth dropped open and Grijpstra shuddered when he saw her tongue flapping and trembling with each fresh howl.

  Van Meteren had rushed out of the room and came back with a glass of water and a very small white pill.

  “Swallow this, Miesje.” The old lady swallowed. The sobs stopped abruptly. She responded to the brief snappy command.

  De Gier was grateful; the sudden silence eased his nerves.

  The old lady began to talk. She spoke slowly: it seemed that the pill had given her a dry mouth.

  “This afternoon Piet told me that I shouldn’t complain so much and that the rhododendrons are in bloom. But my eyes are so bad. What are rhododendrons anyway?”

  Her voice was gathering volume again.

  “Rhododendrons are flowers, Miesje,” van Meteren said, still using his command voice. “Like tulips. And now you are going to your room and you are going to sleep. Tomorrow I’ll come to see you before I go to work.”

  He pushed her out of the room.

  “I can’t stand old ladies,” de Gier said, “and I most definitely can’t stand them if they are mad.”

  “You’ll have to learn to get used to them,” said Grijpstra. “There’ll be more and more of them. It’s very dif­ficult to find a doctor who’ll let old people die nowadays. Haven’t you been reading the papers? I wonder what was in that pill.”

  “An opiate,” said van Meteren, who had returned. “It’s called Palfium. The doctor prescribes it; she can get as much as she wants. She has been taking these pills for years now and she is hopelessly addicted to them. Piet knew but he didn’t mind. It keeps her quiet. Without the pills she would have to go to an asylum and he preferred to keep her here. I’ll telephone the doctor tomorrow; he’ll probably have her taken away.”

  “Did Piet take those pills as well?” Grijpstra asked.

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “But he could have taken them, his mother must have a bottle full of them on her bedside table.”

  Van Meteren nodded thoughtfully.

  “I don’t think so,” he said after a while. “Those pills are very strong. According to the doctor, they will stun a horse but Miesje can take two at a time and stay on her feet. She hasn’t got much of a stomach left. She has been operated for ulcers and I suppose most of the stuff goes straight down. If Piet had taken a pill he would have had to sit down and he probably would have gone to sleep. I have never seen him like that. He did drink a bit lately, he would come down to the bar and have a few whiskies. Three glasses would make him drunk enough to be able to laugh and talk to people. I take it you are suggesting that he took a pill today and that the pill knocked him over and caused the bruise on his tem­ple?”

  “Yes,” said de Gier.

  “Perhaps,” van Meteren said, “but it would have been the first time that he took a pill. In my opinion anyway.”

  “Why do you call her Miesje?” Grijpstra asked.

  “Ach,” van Meteren said. “It’s just a trick. Whenever she is hysterical she screams. I thought I might make her calm down if I treated her as if she was a child. She was called Miesje once, when she was a child and wore laced boots and played hopscotch. When she behaves normally I call her Mrs. Verboom and when I think she will start one of her tantrums I call her Miesje. I take her on my lap and she’ll talk quietly and sometimes I cuddle her a bit.”

  “Brr,” said de Gier.

  Van Meteren grinned. “Yes. It’s quite ridiculous. Piet would do it too. I always laughed when I saw that tall skeleton sitting on his lap, he was such a small man. Perhaps it looks even funnier when she sits on my lap. But I have done other crazy things. I used to walk for miles with an Indonesian commando on a string. It was knotted in such a way that he would throttle himself if he tried to run away. I would hold the string with one hand and the carbine with the other. And now I have an old crazy lady on my lap and call her Miesje.”

  There was another knock on the door and a thin young man dressed in jeans and a T-shirt came in. De Gier looked at the long unwashed hair and remembered the barman.

  “This is Johan,” van Meteren said, and the detectives said, “Good evening.” De Gier asked Johan to sit down and made room on the settee.

  Grijpstra asked the usual questions but Johan could only shake his head. He hadn’t seen Piet after he had given him the takings of the shop at four o’clock. Three hundred and fifty-six guilders and some cents. Piet had phoned him later on the house phone to tell him that there was a difference of some thirty guilders but Johan hadn’t gone upstairs; he had been too busy getting the bar in order for the evening’s customers.

  “What do you think has happened?” de Gier asked.

  Johan shrugged his shoulders and didn’t reply.

  Grijpstra grunted. He had been thinking that he had met the boy hundreds of times already. The inner city was full of duplicates of this boy. Well-meaning, unin­telligent and knocked loose from their surroundings, full of protests and questions and wandering in a thin, almost two-dimensional thought-world where they could find no answers. “Maybe they don’t really want to find any­thing,” Grijpstra thought. “Maybe they wait for death, or a strong woman who will take them in hand so that they will find a daily routine again and start watching football on TV.” He thought of his oldest son and studied Johan without much sympathy. Grijpstra’s son wouldn’t watch football either. He preferred to lie on his bed, dressed in a striped shirt and an embroidered pair of trousers and watch the cracks in the ceiling.

  “Suicide, I suppose,” Johan said after a few minutes of silence, which hung heavily in the room. “Who would want to murder Piet? He was a bit of a bore but he didn’t hurt anyone. He couldn’t if he tried.”

  Grijpstra changed his opinion. The answer had been cleverer than he had expected.

  “You don’t seem to be very upset,” de Gier said.

  “No,” Johan said. “I am sorry. Perhaps I should be upset, but I can’t generate any feeling. Annetje and I were going to leave next week anyway. This is a commercial enterprise where the goal is money. Piet wanted to make a profit and he wanted the profit for himself. He was the owner of the business. We intended to leave him and find some other place with a bit of idealism behind it, or maybe start one of our own. Piet crooked us. I don’t really hold it against him. It’s my own stupidity, I should have seen it. He made us work for the great purpose but all we worked for was his wealth. Did you see the gold strap on his wristwatch?”

  Grijpstra nodded.

  “There are other things as well. There is a new sta­tion wagon parked outside. We earned it for him. He was a capitalist but he didn’t tell us.”<
br />
  “You don’t like capitalists?” de Gier asked.

  “I don’t mind them,” Johan said. “It’s a way of life. Free enterprise is a philosophy. It isn’t mine. I am against fascism and I would fight it if I had to, but I wouldn’t fight capitalism.”

  “So you think it was suicide?” de Gier asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Enough,” Grijpstra said. “You need some sleep. All of us do. Tomorrow is another day. Try and remember anything that may be relevant and tell us about it tomor­row. The peace of the citizens has been disturbed and we, criminal investigators of your police department, have to repair the peace again. And you have to help us. Such is the law.”

  He grinned, got up, and stretched his aching back.

  •

  Within a few minutes the detectives were walking toward their car. A late drunk came swaggering toward them, and de Gier had to jump aside.

  “Out of my way,” the drunk shouted and grabbed a lamp post.

  “Bah,” Grijpstra said. The drunk was pissing on the street and all over his own trousers.

  “Watch it,” de Gier shouted. The drunk had fallen over and rolled off the sidewalk into the street.

  Grijpstra, who was getting into the car, grabbed the microphone.

  “An unconscious man on the sidewalk of Haarlemmer Houttuinen opposite number five. Please send the bus.”

  “Drunk?” the voice of Headquarters asked.

  “Very,” Grijpstra answered. “No need for an ambu­lance, the police bus will do.”

  “Bus coming,” the voice said. “Out.”

  “We better wait,” de Gier said. “I have pulled him off the street but he may roll over again. He is fast asleep.”

  “Sure. We’ve got nothing else to do.”

  They waited in silence for the small blue bus with its crew of two elderly police constables who dragged the drunk inside, cursing and sighing.

  “Nice job,” de Gier said, waved at the constables and started the engine.

  “So have we,” Grijpstra said, “nice and complicated. Murdered innocence dangling from a piece of string, surrounded by dear sweet people of which one is a black cannibal trained in guerilla warfare and another a crazy old female bag of bones.”