The Mind-Murders

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  "Did you see the car again?"

  "No. He wanted to show it to me, but I refused to leave the desk. Damn it all, I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm a hotel manager. There had been all the other nonsense too. His watch disappeared from his bathroom and turned up an hour later in the spot where it should have been all the time. He sent his clothes for dry cleaning and the wrong clothes came back to his room. One of the girls checked, but by that time they had changed into the right clothes again. Mr. Boronski was suffering from some form of paranoia. He hallucinated. He was physically ill too, he complained of stomach cramps and we had to serve him porridge for dinner; he exhausted the room service waiter by phoning for milk every half hour. I'm glad he has left us."

  "Yes," de Gier said.

  "I'm sorry he is dead, of course, sergeant. Now if there is anything else I can help you with." The manager looked at his watch. "I'm afraid I . . ."

  De Gier got up. "Thank you."

  Asta stumbled in the corridor, the sergeant stooped to catch her arm, and she turned and kissed him on the mouth.

  "Hey!"

  "I've been wanting to do that, do you mind?"

  "No."

  "Kiss me again."

  "You kissed me. I don't kiss colleagues during working hours. Would you like coffee?"

  They sat in the coffee shop of the hotel for a while. Asta served the sergeant, she even stirred his coffee for him. He grinned.

  "You're a slave. I thought that young ladies don't do that sort of thing anymore."

  "What sort of thing?"

  "Be servile."

  "I love to be servile," Asta whispered. "I'm old-fashioned. I like to be on my back and the man to be on me. I like to oblige. It's a pity you have nothing to carry, I would carry it for you, even if it was very heavy."

  "Have you had many men?"

  She pursed her thick lower lip and a tiny frown appeared on her smooth forehead. She blew at a curl that hung in her eyes.

  "Hmm. Not too many. I tried some young men but they weren't any good, too quick. The older men are usually married, and when they embrace me, I know that they're looking at their watch behind my neck. I can see it in their eyes. They're slow and polite, but they go away when it's over. You wouldn't be like that, would you?"

  "I might be. Who did you believe, the manager or Boronski?"

  "Boronski."

  "Why?"

  "I saw his corpse, remember," Asta said. "I didn't like him at all, not with that low forehead and the eyes too close together. I've known men with low foreheads and close eyes that I liked, but Boronski had something nasty about him. But he wouldn't lie like that. And that manager didn't really exist, did you notice that?"

  "How do you mean?"

  "He was just like the hotel. It looks all right, but once you're in it you can see that it's all hollow. They have tried to recapture the dignity of the past; they've got the right architecture and the right trimmings, but there's nothing in it. Everything is hollow, filled with air. He was too. He's like a doll I once had. I threw it away. Even when I scratched its face and tore its clothes, it wasn't there."

  "How do we find out who told us the truth?"

  She giggled. De Gier looked up. The giggle was vulgar. It reminded him of the cry of a disheveled parrot in the city's zoo. He would always spend a few moments with it when he strayed into the zoo. The parrot was a jolly common bird, quite unlike its splendid mates eyeing the passing crowd arrogantly from their high perches. So far Asta had impressed Viim as refined, different from the other policewomen he had worked with.

  "Are you testing me or don't you know how to find out whether Boronski saw things that weren't there?"

  "Let's say I'm testing you," de Gier said.

  She reached into her bag and gave him her notebook and her pen. "No. Write the solution down and fold the paper, then I'll tell you what I suggest doing and we'll see if we have the same solution."

  He wrote while she looked the other way. "Okay. Tell me what we do."

  "Boronski must have parked his Porsche close to the hotel. We'll find it and see which side the steering wheel is on. We know that it had the wheel on the right side when the manager saw it. If it's on the other side now, Boronski spoke the truth."

  "Right," de Gier said.

  "Can I see what you wrote?"

  "No." He crumpled the paper and put it in his pocket.

  "Am I right?"

  "Let's find the car."

  They found the car a few blocks away on the Princes-canal. It had two traffic tickets under the windshield wiper. De Gier made a note of its location, phoned Headquarters from the nearest booth, and told them to tow it away. The car's steering wheel was on the left side.

  4

  Their eyes are the same color, Grijpstra thought as he watched the communication between the commissaris and the girl. He still referred to her as the girl, and the memory of the divine vision wherein he had given her to de Gier was clear in his mind. The sunlit antique room which the commissaris used as an office should have comforted him, as it had done so many times when the detectives discussed a case under the benevolent guidance of their chief, but it didn't now. At first he felt good again and easily fell into his role as an archangel handing out a sublimely beautiful girl to a special mortal, his cherished friend. The adjutant mused, and sucked on his cigar, which tasted bad but cost too much to throw away. The spotlight of the vision veered away from Asta, whose crossed legs showed enough of her thighs to stimulate Grijpstra's carnal appetite which he had transferred so successfully to the sergeant, to the pond that had formed part of his original fantasy. At that time, the pond was filled with various animal shapes, pleasurably engaged in play. He could see them more clearly now. There were monstrosities. A reptilian bird had caught something that might be a squirrel but had the legs of a frog. There was an evil glint in the bird's eye; it was relishing the frantic movements of its helpless prey. A winged fish was about to leave the water to attack a many-headed bird of splendor preparing to drink from the water that was no longer clear. Another shape, partly fish, partly animal, with a hooded head, floated about, engaged in reading a small book, a book of spells and curses, Grijpstra assumed, as he tried to read the text. He shook himself and tuned in to the conversation.

  "So we have an indication," the commissaris said, "a concrete fact we may call it. Very good of you, Asta, we should be grateful to Sergeant Jurriaans for lending you to us. You saved us some work, although I think that the value of Boronski's other accusations should be ascertained as well. Perhaps the sergeant can go back to the hotel this evening and find out what name the lady used when she registered. It may be her true name, and that part of Boronski's tale may be untrue, although if one part of his nightmare connects with reality, the others may ... It was you who suggested finding the car, wasn't it, Asta?"

  "Excuse me, sergeant," Asta said and got up. She walked over to where he sat, reached in the side pocket of his jacket and produced a crumpled piece of paper. She read it and laughed.

  "The sergeant was teaching me, sir. We played a game. I would say what I thought we should do and he would write his idea down. Here you are."

  The commissaris read the note. "Find the car Boronski referred to."

  "I see." He took off his glasses, blew on them, and rubbed them gently with his handkerchief. "But you shouldn't protect him, dear." He turned to de Gier. "And you shouldn't be smiling. You've been in the game a long time. Credit is . . . Grijpstra, you had a good term for credit, what is it again?"

  "A fart in a brown paper bag, sir."

  "Exactly. However, we have the Porsche and the hotel manager's statement. We also have a corpse, dead of disease but found in the trunk of a car with the lid down. What else?"

  "An obnoxious German, sir," de Gier said.

  "Ah yes. I'm glad you qualify him, for there are also good Germans. I mention the point, because it has taken me a long time to admit the existence of intelligent, sensitive, and highly developed Germans. During the
war I tended to forget, to my loss, I might say. But we haven't got the man. There's no charge. Are you planning to find confirmation of his whereabouts last night?"

  "I thought I might go to the nightclub and the bar."

  "Can I go, sir?" Asta asked.

  The commissaris looked at the slight figure of the girl. He hesitated. Asta's lips pouted. "I'm not as weak as I look."

  He nodded. "I know. Sergeant Jurriaans told me, and I heard what you did to the dog at Beelema's. Very well, you can go if you like. In which case Grijpstra can visit the hotel again and de Gier can stay here. There should be a telex from the Hamburg police, I've asked them to give us any information they may have on Herr Miiller. If there's nothing out of the ordinary there, sergeant, you'll have to return his passport I don't believe in unnecessarily annoying civilians, especially not if they are our guests. I should have an early night, my wife tells me. You can wait here for the reply from Germany and your colleagues can report back to you if anything turns up so that you can plan further actions. Now." He opened a drawer of his desk and held up a wallet.

  "I went through the contents of Boronski's wallet. There is a fair amount of cash, here are his credit cards, and there is an alphabetical register of names and phone numbers, mostly in Colombia and Peru, it seems, and some here in Europe. Mr. Muller is included—there is an office number and a private number, so we may assume that the two men had fairly intimate dealings with each other. There are no photographs except one which the photo room was kind enough to duplicate. It's rather small and in black and white, but I would like to study it closely. The photo room provided me with a slide, which I will now project; would Asta perhaps draw the curtains?"

  The commissaris busied himself with a projector, and Grijpstra set up a screen. The projection was life-size. It showed a treeless busy street with wide sidewalks. Boronski and a female companion, arms linked, were walking toward the camera; around them were several men in black suits and with dark faces. Street sellers were selling trinkets from shoddy suitcases. Dirty children ran in front of the couple.

  "Taken by a street photographer," de Gier said.

  "That's what I thought, sergeant. This must be in South America. Please remember that it was the only photograph in the wallet, so Boronski valued it. What do you think of the lady? Study her at your leisure."

  The room became silent for a full minute.

  "What do you think? Ladies first. Asta?"

  "The lady is Dutch, sir. I'm sure of it. The skirt she is wearing is expensive, but it was on sale in Amsterdam two months ago. It's tweed, I remember the C&A stores advertising it. Strange that she would wear tweed in South America; isn't Colombia a warm country?"

  "Yes, but Bogot£ has a cool climate. I looked it up in my encyclopedia this afternoon. The city is nine thousand feet high and usually chilly. Are you sure about that skirt, constable?"

  "Absolutely, sir, the lady is wearing the complete combination C&A advertised. The vest goes with the skirt and is of a special cut, it's called the Groninger style. Originally the style was for men only, but C&A launched it for women. Even the blouse fits the prescribed combination."

  "I would also say the woman is Dutch, sir," de Gier said. "She is about thirty years old and still slim, but she'll soon be heavy and she has a local face. Maybe it's the hair style, but it's also the features."

  "What do you think, Grijpstra?"

  "She's married, sir. I see the wedding ring, thick, gold, without a stone. An old-fashioned wedding ring on her left hand, that is, if the photograph isn't reversed. Is the traffic on the left or on the right side in Colombia?"

  "I don't know. In the photograph the cars drive on the right."

  "Right-hand traffic," de Gier said. "I saw a list of left-hand traffic countries, Colombia wasn't on it."

  "Good. We know that Boronski isn't married, Herr Miiller told us. So this would be an affair. Affairs are quite common but we might try to find out who the woman is. Bogota is a big city with two million inhabitants, but I don't think there will be too many of our countrymen over there. I can try our embassy out there; I could also try the police, but I hear that it's hard to establish contact with them. We had some illegal Colombian immigrants the other day who had fallen afoul of the law and we couldn't raise any information at all. I'll see if I can contact somebody on the teletyper, perhaps the Ministry of Foreign Affairs can assist; they've been helpful before. Anything else you noticed?"

  "Yes," Asta said, "I think I see something. The woman is in love. The man isn't. She is good looking, he's showing her off, but he only wants to bed her and be rid of her again." The girl's voice was flat but trembled slightly on the last part of her sentence. The room became silent.

  "Very well," the commissaris said, "you can open the curtains again, dear."

  De Gier helped the commissaris to rearrange the projector into its case, and Grijpstra rolled up the screen. The commissaris limped to the door.

  "How's your leg, sir?"

  "Worse," the commissaris said, "and it shouldn't be in summer. The heat usually stops the pain. And I have my wife after me, she wants me to rest; maybe I should listen to her."

  Asta and de Gier had left.

  "What do you think of this case, sir?"

  "What do I know, Grijpstra? I haven't seen the corpse, I'm not doing my job well these days. What do you think?" He closed the door and indicated a chair. "I have a few more minutes before my wife will call."

  "Do you know the morgue attendant who is called Jacobs, sir?"

  "Yes. He has been with the morgue a long time, but he's often ill. The man survived Auschwitz. It's strange that he selected such a morbid profession after all he went through. He came back alone, all his relatives died. Did you meet him today? I'm glad he is sane again, he was institutionalized for a while."

  "He was talking about the dead this morning, sir, when we investigated the corpse. The way he talked interested me. He said that the dead sometimes hang about the morgue and are frightened, and that he talks to them and tries to reassure them and send them on their way. I went to see him again, just before I came here. The morgue is close and there was something I wanted to ask him."

  Grijpstra fumbled with a cigar. The commissaris flicked his lighter and waited.

  "I didn't like that corpse, sir. I've always paid special attention to corpses, it's part of the job; usually you get some sort of impression that's helpful. Do you remember the case of the blond baboon, sir?"

  "Yes. Mrs. Carnet?"

  "Yes. She looked victorious, as if she had pulled something off, just before she was killed. There have been other cases where the corpse hinted at something. This Boronski was different, he died of natural causes, but I had a distinct impression of evil, secretive evil, extreme egotism. There was also fear, but you feel that with most corpses. Nobody is courageous when it's all over and he is about to enter the unknown."

  "So you went back to Jacobs? Why?"

  "I wanted to know what he felt about the corpse."

  "Did he tell you?"

  "Yes. He said it was giving him trouble. He said Boronski was still around in the morgue; hating, cursing, frantic with rage."

  "Was Jacobs bothered by that?"

  "Not too much. He had protected himself." Grijpstra smiled. "He said he had made a transparent egg around himself, and that Boronski's spirit wouldn't be able to get through it. He said he always makes the egg when he has a troublesome client. I found him in his little office, peacefully sucking on a pipe and reading some holy book in Hebrew."

  "Jacobs is a wise man," the commissaris said.

  Grijpstra lumbered to the door. He turned before he left. "You know that we haven't really got a case. We are chasing phantoms again, just as we did during the weekend, but this time de Gier insists on going on."

  "Are you with him, adjutant?"

  "I am, sir."

  "Good. The sergeant is developing, but he should still be watched."

  Grijpstra walked back to his off
ice and addressed the empty corridor. "I'm with him," he said loudly, "but I overdo it. I've even given him the loveliest girl I've seen in a long time, a girl, moreover, who prefers men my age to men his age. Now she's all his, to mess up as he likes."

  He got into the open elevator, didn't pay attention, and went all the way round before he got off at the proper floor.

  He was still mumbling. "A lovely girl with the right perversion. A pearl, for a pig."

  He forced himself to think of something else and evoked the thought of hot water and a sharp razor. He found his shaving gear in his desk drawer and walked over to the rest room. Ah, to shave at ease, for there wasn't much to do, just a leisurely walk to Hotel Oberon to find out what the woman's name might be and another pleasant walk back to Headquarters to check her with the computer.

  Then his mood changed again. He no longer saw the smooth lines the shaver traced through bubbly foam but the pond that had been in his vision when he was an angel, giving Asta away. The pond was filled with murky water now and sinister tiny animals tore at each other in the greenish slime. The sight unnerved him, the shaver caught his skin and a thick trickle of blood formed a fat drop and stained his shirt.

  5

  Managers are all the same, Asta thought as she sat opposite the man in an office that could have been any office. The man was still looking at her police card. His face was blank.

  "I'm a police officer, as you can see. The photograph is of my face, right? I'm not here to apply for a position in this establishment, I'm here to find out whether a certain Mr. Karl Mttller, a fat German businessman, came here last night and I want you to tell me at what time he arrived and at what time he left."

  "Yes," the man said.

  They make them in a machine, she thought. The other one ran a hotel, this one runs a brothel. They are employees, there are others behind them who may be alive. This man isn't. He either came out of the metal mouth of some fantastic gadget or he grew in a big bowl of warm fluid. When he was done they fished him out, dried him, put him on his legs, slipped him into a plastic 161 envelope, and brought him here. He was already programmed so nothing could go wrong. All he has to do is greet the visiting lechers, take their money, pour them full of alcohol, and steer them to the right girl. I don't fit his formula, and he doesn't know what to do now.