Death of a Hawker ac-4

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  "It's Oliver's. He likes to sit on a chair and watch me eat. I sit on the bed."

  She smiled.

  Beautiful, de Gier thought, she is beautiful. She had turned the switch now and the only light in the room came from a lantern in the park. He could only just make out her shape but the light caught the white of her breasts and face. She was wearing his kimono but she hadn't tightened the sash.

  She can't feel like it now, de Gier thought. Her brother died today. She must still be in a state of shock. He closed his eyes, trying to destroy the image in his bedroom door but he could still see her. When she kissed him he groaned.

  "What's wrong?" she asked softly.

  He groaned again. The commissaris will find out. Grijpstra will find out. And Cardozo, the new detective on the murder squad, will find out and make sly remarks. And Geurts and Sietsema will know. The murder squad will have something to discuss again. De Gier the ladykiller. A detective who goes to bed with suspects. But he hadn't planned it. It had happened. Why will they never accept that things happen? Oliver yowled and Esther jumped.

  "He bit me! Your cat bit me! He sneaked up to me from behind and bit me! Ouch! Look at my ankle!"

  The light was on again and de Gier rushed to the bathroom and came back with a bandage. Oliver sat on the chair and watched the scene. He looked pleased. His eats pointed straight up and his eyes looked bright. His tail flicked nervously. Esther tickled the cat behind the ears and kissed him on the forehead. "Silly cat, aren't you? Jealous cat! It's all right, I won't take him away from you."

  Oliver purred.

  She switched the light off and took de Gier by the hand.

  The kimono had dropped to the floor. Oliver sighed and curled up.

  "He doesn't watch, does he?" Esther whispered on the bed.

  De Gier got up and closed the door.

  7

  "No, dear," theCommissaris' wife said sleepily, and turned over. "It's still early, it's Sunday. Til make the coffee a little later, let me sleep awhile, sleep sleep…"

  The rest of the sentence was a mumble, a mumble which changed into a soft pleasant polite snore. The commissaris patted her shoulder with a thin white hand. He hadn't asked for coffee, he hadn't said any* thing at all. She had probably noticed that he was awake and her sense of duty had been aroused. Dear Katrien, the commissaris thought, dear excellent soul, soul of souls, you are getting old and weak and tired and there are more lines in your face than I can count. Have you ever shared my thoughts? Perhaps you have.

  He patted her shoulder again and the gentle snore changed into deep breathing. He sat up and pushed the blankets away and crossed his legs, straightening his spine. He lit a small cigar and inhaled the first smoke of the day, blowing it away toward the open window. In the garden his turtle would be rowing about in the grass. It was eight o'clock and Sunday morning. The city was silent without the growl and clank of traffic. A thrush sang in the garden, the sparrows had left their nests above the drainpipe and were rummaging about in the hedge, twittering softly, and the magpies were looking for more twigs to reinforce their domed nest in the poplar. He could hear the flap of their wings as they wheeled about just outside his window. He grunted contentedly.

  There had been a dream and he was searching for its memory. It had been an interesting dream and he wanted to experience it again. Something to do with the garden, and with the small fishpond at the foot of the poplar, and with a splash. He sucked his cigar and the dream came back to him. He had been in the garden but his garden had been much bigger, spreading far into the distance, and the fishpond had been a vast lake. And the poplar was a forest, and the turtle was close. The turtle was his ordinary size, small, compact, self-contained and friendly, with a lettuce leaf in his mouth. The commissaris had been expecting something and so had the turtle, for it was craning its leathery neck and chewing excitedly. It had been staring at the blue metallic sky and the round white moon flooding the lawn with soft downy pale light.

  And then it came. A purple spot growing quickly in size. Mauve and moving. Splitting into two individual but similar shapes. Female, with large wings. They were so close that he could see their long limbs, curved breasts, calm faces. He saw their features, high cheekbones and slanting eyes. Quiet faces but intent, purposeful. Wings fluttered as they turned above him, him and the turtle, who had lost his benign solitude and was trying to dance in the high grass and had dropped his lettuce leaf. The commissaris was squatting down, holding on to the turtle's shield. He recognized the winged shapes' faces. They resembled the Papuan who had once been arrested by the murder-squad detectives and who had escaped again without leaving a trace. Perhaps they were his sisters. Or his messengers. Or his thoughts, reaching out from wherever he was now. The commissaris lost his association. The apparitions were so close above him now that he could have touched their slender ankles if he had reached out. The wings moved again and they were gaining height. They hovered above the lake and then, first one, then the other, folded their wings, and dropped. They hit the surface of the lake like arrows and plunged right through.

  The turtle had lost all self-control and was capering about at the commissaris' feet, distracting his attention. When he looked up again the mauve figures were with him on the grass, with spread wings, observing him and showing a glimmer of amusement in their sparkling eyes and softly smiling mouths. That was the dream. He rubbed the bald spot on his skull, amazed that the dream had come back to him. He didn't like purple or mauve and he had never been particularly impressed by naked winged angels. Where had the images come from? He now also remembered the events of the previous evening. Nellie's bar. Nellie's colors had been purple and mauve too, and pink, of course. He saw Nellie's large solid breasts again and the cleavage the doctor had been so poetic about. Had Nellie so impressed him that she had helped form this dream, together with the sympathetic presence of his turtle and the glorified version of his garden and the Papuan, a man he had liked once and whose attitude had puzzled him at the time?

  The commissaris sighed. It had been a good dream. He picked up the phone and dialed a number. The phone rang for a long while.

  "De Gier." The voice on the phone sounded deep and throaty.

  "Morning, de Gier."

  "Sir. Good morning, sir."

  "Listen," the commissaris said. "It's early and it's Sunday, and judging from the way you talk you were asleep when your phone rang. I want you to get up and wash and have some coffee and shave perhaps. When you are ready you can phone me back. I'll be waiting for you."

  "Yes, sir. Ten minutes."

  "Make it twenty. You can have breakfast first if you like."

  "Right," de Gier said.

  The commissaris replaced the phone and stretched out. Then he changed his mind and got up and fetched some lettuce leaves from the kitchen. The turtle was waiting for him in the garden and bravely left the grass and marched ponderously on the flagstones leading to the open door of the commissaris' study.

  ***

  "Morning sir," de Gier said again.

  "Tell me," the commissaris said, "about last night. Anything worthwhile?"

  "Yes," de Gier said. "Miss Rogge gave me three names and three addresses. Do you have a pen, sir?"

  The commissaris noted the names and addresses. De Gier talked. "Yes, yes, yes," the commissaris said.

  "Perhaps Grijpstra and I should call on these people today, sir."

  "No. Grijpstra can go and Til go with him. I have other plans for you. Are you ready?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Right. Go to our garage and ask for the gray van. Then go to the stores. We have some confiscated textiles, bales of cloth, a good assortment. They are due for auction next week but we can have them. I'll phone the chief clerk at his home later this morning."

  "Textiles?" de Gier asked. "The gray van? Do you want me to take the textiles somewhere?"

  "Yes. To the street market tomorrow. A detective should be a good actor; tomorrow you can be a hawker. I'll contact the
market master at the Albert Cuyp and he'll give you a stall and a temporary license. You won't need more than a few days. Make friends with the other hawkers. If the killer comes from the market you'll be able to pick up a trail."

  "Just me, sir?" De Gier didn't sound pleased.

  "No. You can take Sergeant Sietsema with you."

  "Can't I have Cardozo?"

  "Cardozo?" the commissaris asked. "I thought you didn't like Cardozo. You two are always quarreling."

  "Quarreling, sir? We never quarrel. I have been teaching him."

  "Teaching. O.K. Take him. Perhaps he's the right choice. Cardozo is Jewish and Jews are supposed to be good traders. Maybe he should be the hawker and you can be his assistant."

  Til be the hawker, sir."

  The commissaris smiled. "Right. Phone Cardozo and get him to join you today. Better phone him right now before he leaves for the day. And what about Esther Rogge, was she in a good state of mind when you left her last night?"

  There was no answer.

  "De Gier?"

  "I have her here with me, sir, in my apartment."

  The commissaris looked out the window. One of the magpies was sitting on the grass, looking at the turtle. The turtle was looking back. He wondered what the two could have in common.

  "It isn't what you are thinking, sir."

  "I wasn't thinking, de Gier, I was looking at my turtle. I had a dream last night, something to do with the Papuan. Do you remember the Papuan?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "A strange dream. Something about his two sisters. They had wings and they flew into my garden. There was a full moon and my turtle was in the dream as well. My turtle was excited, jumping about in the grass."

  "In your dream, sir?"

  "Yes. And it was real, more real than the conversation I am having with you now. You dream too, you told me last night."

  "Yes, sir. I'd like to hear more about your dream sometime."

  "Sometime," the commissaris said, and stirred the coffee which his wife had put on the little table next to his bed. "Sometime we'll talk about it. I often think about the Papuan, possibly because he was the only suspect who ever got away after we had caught up with him. You'd better get Miss Rogge home, I suppose. I'll phone you tonight and tell you what Grijpstra and I found out, or you can phone me. My wife will know where I am."

  "Sir," de Gier said, and rang off.

  By eleven o'clock the commissaris' black Citroen was parked outside Grijpstra's house on the Lijnbaansgracht opposite Police Headquarters and the commissaris had his finger on the bell.

  "Yes?" Mrs. Grijpstra's tousled head shouted from a window on the second floor.

  "Is your husband in, madam?''

  "Oh, it's you, sir. He'll be right down."

  The commissaris coughed. He could hear the woman's voice inside the house and Grijpstra's heavy footsteps on the narrow wooden staircase. The door opened.

  "Morning, sir," Grijpstra said. "Excuse my wife, sir. She is getting too fat to move around much and she won't answer the door anymore. Just sits near the window and shouts a lot. Right opposite the TV, but there won't be any TV till this afternoon."

  "Never mind," the commissaris said.

  "We are going to see this Bezuur fellow first, aren't we, sir? Does he know we are coming?"

  They were in the car now and Grijpstra greeted the sleepy-eyed constable at the wheel. The constable wasn't in uniform but sported a dark blue blazer with the emblem of the Amsterdam Municipal Police Sports Club embroidered on the left top pocket.

  "Yes. I phoned and he will see us right now. Then we can have lunch somewhere and see if we can raise the two ladies on the phone. I would like to see them later today if possible."

  "Good,'' Grijpstra said and accepted a cigar.

  "You don't mind working on a Sunday, do you, Grijpstra?''

  "No, sir. Not at all, sir."

  "Shouldn't you be taking the little ones out?"

  "I took the brats to the zoo only last week, sir, and today they are going to play at a friend's house. And they are not so small anymore. The littlest one is six and the other one eight."

  The commissaris mumbled.

  "Pardon, sir?"

  "Shouldn't have asked you to come," the commissaris repeated. "You are a family man and you were up half the night. Sietsema could have come just as well, I don't think he is working on anything now anyway."

  "No, sir. But Sietsema isn't on this case, sir. I am."

  The commissaris smiled. "How is your oldest son, by the way? He must be eighteen, right?"

  "Right, sir, but there's nothing right about the boy."

  "Doing badly with his studies?"

  "Dropped out altogether and now he wants to leave the house. The army doesn't want him and he'll never find a job, not even if he wanted to, which he doesn't. When he leaves the house he'll be applying for national assistance, he says. I never know where he is these days. Rushing about on that little motorbike, I imagine, and smoking hash with his friends. He's sniffing too, caught him the other day. Cocaine powder."

  "That's expensive," the commissaris said.

  "Very."

  "Any idea where he gets the money?"

  "Not from me, sir."

  "So?"

  "I've been with the police a long time, sir."

  "Dealing?"

  "Everything, I think," Grijpstra said and pretended to be watching the traffic. "Dealing, motorbike stealing, straight-out burglarizing and a bit of prostitution. He doesn't like girls so he'll never be a pimp, but that's the only bad thing he'll never be."

  "Prostitution?" the commissaris asked.

  "He goes to the wrong pubs, the sort of places where they pick up the shopkeeper from the provinces and get him to take them to a motel."

  "That's bad," the commissaris said. "Anything we can do to stop him?"

  "No, sir. I am not going to hunt my own son but one of our colleagues will stumble into him and then it'll be reform school and he'll come back worse. I have written him off. So have the social workers. The boy isn't even interested in watching TV or football."

  "Neither is Sergeant de Gier," the commissaris said brightly, "so there's still hope."

  "De Gier has a cat to care for, and he reads. He has things to do. Flowerpots on the balcony and flute-playing and judo at least one evening a week and visiting museums on Sundays. And when a woman is after him he gives in. Sometimes anyway."

  "Yes," the commissaris cackled. "He's giving in right now."

  Grijpstra thought.

  "Esther Rogge? Nellie didn't want him."

  "Esther Rogge."

  "He'll never learn," Grijpstra said gruffly. "Bloody fool he is. The woman is involved in the case."

  "She's a lovely woman," the commissaris said. "A refined woman even. She'll do him good."

  "You don't mind then, sir?" Grijpstra sounded relieved.

  "I want to find the killer," the commissaris said, "and quickly, before he swings his ball at somebody else. The man can't be altogether sane, and he is certainly inventive. We still haven't worked out what weapon he used."

  Grijpstra sighed and leaned a little further into the soft upholstery of the car. "It may be a simple case after all, sir. The man was a hawker, a street seller. They usually make a lot more money than the taxman should know about and they hide the difference in tins under the bed, or in a secret place behind the paneling, or under the floor somewhere. One of my informers told me that over a hundred thousand guilders were stolen from an old mate of his, a man selling cheese in the street. The cheese-man never reported the theft because he wasn't supposed to have that much money. If the taxman had heard about it he would have stung the poor fellow for at least half of it, so the poor sucker kept quiet and cried alone. But Abe Rogge may have wanted to defend his cache and he got killed."

  "By a spiked ball swung at his face?"

  "Yes," Grijpstra said, "why not? Maybe the killer is a man who is clever with his hands. A carpenter, a plumber. Maybe he m
ade his own weapon, invented it."

  "But he never took Abe's wallet," the commissaris said. "There was a lot of money in the wallet. If he came for money he wouldn't have left a few thousand right in his victim's pocket. He only had to reach for it. An inventive man, you said. Louis Zilver is inventive. Remember that figure he was trying to create out of beads and wire?"

  "He threw it into a dustbin," Grijpstra said, "made a mess of it. But the idea was inventive, true."

  Grijpstra looked out of the window of the car. They were in the southern part of Amsterdam now, and gigantic stone-and-steel structures blocked the sky, like enormous bricks dotted with small holes.

  And they are full of people, Grijpstra thought. Little people. Little innocent people, preparing their Sunday lunch, lounging about, reading the paper, playing with their kids and with their animals, making plans for the rest of the day. He looked at his watch. Or having a late breakfast. Sunday morning, best time of the week.

  The car stopped at a traffic tight and he found himself staring at a balcony, populated by a complete family. Father, mother, two small children. There was a dog on the balcony too. One of the children was making the dog stand up by dangling a biscuit just above its head. The toddler and the small dog made a pretty picture. The geraniums in the flower boxes attached to the balcony's railing were in full flower.

  And we are chasing a killer, Grijpstra thought.

  "Louis Zilver," the commissaris said, "not a very well-adjusted young man perhaps. I had him checked out last night. He has a previous conviction, for resisting arrest when caught making a drunken racket in the street. Happened a few years ago. He attacked the constables who tried to put him into a patrol car. The judge was very easy on him, a fine and a lecture. What do you think, adjutant? Do we put him on the list of prime suspects?"

  Grijpstra's thoughts were still with the family on the balcony. The harmonious family. The happy family. He was wondering whether he himself, Adjutant Grijpstra, flat-footed sleuth, bogey-man of the underworld, restless wanderer of canals, alleyways, dark cul-de-sacs, would like to be happy, like the young healthy father enthroned on his geranium-decorated balcony on the second floor of a huge transparent brick, facing a main thoroughfare.