The Sergeant's Cat

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  “There are no Japanese herons?” the commissaris asked.

  “We only keep Japanese people on the islands now,” Su­zuki said. “Other life-forms are dying out in Japan.” He looked down at the commissaris’s Oriental rugs, then up at oil portraits of ancient Dutch constabulary captains, smiling down with red faces.

  There was a silence, first soothing, then disturbing. Toshiko broke it. “Not all wildlife is dead. There are sanctuaries, commissaris-san. The professor owns Heron Island on Lake Biwa, close to Kyoto. It is very famous.”

  “The snow monkey sanctuary in Hokkaido is famous,” Su­zuki said, “nobody ever heard of my insignificant effort.”

  “Your son, Koichi,” the commissaris said, shaking a pa­thology report from a plastic file and arranging its pages neatly next to the Polaroids, “died of an overdose of pure heroin.”

  “A new vice,” Suzuki said. “To add to the drinking. I worried about my son. I thought a change of environment . . .”

  “Amsterdam heroin,” the commissaris said, “is often pure.”

  “Well,” Suzuki said, “so you’re saying my son’s unnatural death was an accident? I don’t think so. Dealer Pierre knew that Koichi wouldn’t be able to handle that injection. Malicious fore­sight, neh? They robbed him, neh? Pierre and Ninette. You jailed that bad couple?”

  “Pierre is dying in the jail’s hospital now,” the commissaris said. “Withdrawal sometimes does that. Users are in bad shape, they haven’t eaten for a while, living on the drug only, and then, when the drug is withheld, the shock kills.”

  “Ninette, too?” Suzuki asked.

  “Holland is short of jail space,” the commissaris said. “We released her to the custody of her family, in Paris. Pierre pros­tituted Ninette. She’s in a clinic, recovering nicely.”

  “A good girl at heart?” Suzuki asked suspiciously.

  The commissaris lifted a thin, almost transparent hand, smil­ing gently. “What’s good?”

  “What’s good is what’s good for us,” Professor Suzuki said, thumping his chest.

  The commissaris smiled. “For the surviving life form?”

  “Hai,” the professor nodded.

  “The polluting life form?” the commissaris asked.

  “Arrr . . .” Suzuki said.

  “Arrr . . .” the commissaris said kindly. “I don’t believe holding Ninette will be for the common good.”

  The heron outside, alerted by the professor’s loud voice, lifted a wing and croaked loudly. Suzuki’s face twitched as he moved forward in his chair. “Listen, police-officer-san. Ninette bought the trunk with a traveler’s check taken from a dead body to get rid of that same body. My only son’s dead body. You yourself told me so. That’s how you caught Pierre and Ninette. They killed Koichi Saturday night in their loft on Blood Alley, and Pierre, a butcher by trade, bled and dismembered Koichi’s corpse. You told me that the stores here are closed Sundays and Mondays. The trunk, found floating in Brewer’s Canal late Monday, was new. Your detectives traced the vendor at the street market, which is open on Monday. He’d taken a hundred-dollar American Express traveler’s check in payment from a French female skinhead. You knew, because Tadao told you, that Koichi and he had been drinking with a French skinhead couple in Blackbeard’s Bar in Blood Alley the Saturday night when Koichi disappeared. The connection is clear. Your detec­tives traced the French couple to their loft and their search pro­duced more of Koichi’s traveler’s checks.” Suzuki’s voice squeaked indignantly. “Yes, commissaris-san, yes?”

  The commissaris coughed. “Please. I’m sorry, Suzuki-san, I really want you to make a confession.” He blew his nose. “Excuse me. It’s better for you. You will feel relieved.”

  “You want to arrest me?” Suzuki asked. “You’re kidding . . . arrrr . . . you can’t hold me for anything. I was halfway across the globe when Koichi died. How could I kill him?”

  The commissaris smiled. “I won’t arrest you.”

  “I’m a medical man,” Suzuki said, “I serve the common good. Why do you blame me? For sending my only son to Amsterdam, with a friend to protect him?”

  “I just want you to clarify your motivation,” the commis­saris said. “I am not blaming you. Besides,” he gestured gently, “you did nothing illegal.”

  Suzuki held up his hands. His eyes blazed. “So why demand a confession?”

  “To clear your mind,” the commissaris said.

  “For the common good?” Suzuki asked.

  The commissaris nodded.

  “I don’t follow you,” Suzuki said. He turned to the pleasant-faced Toshiko. He muttered furiously. “Suzuki-san,” the interpreter, stepping out of direct-voice mode, said briskly, “says he doesn’t follow you.”

  “Tell Suzuki-san,” the commissaris said, “that he does. Tell him I want his confession. Tell him I won’t arrest him. Tell him he can go home.” Suzuki got up.

  “Confession first,” the commissaris said. Suzuki sat down.

  “Perhaps, if we go through the events again . . .” the com­missaris said.

  “Okay . . .” Suzuki said. “Where are we now? My un­employed son, Koichi, and his friend, Tadao Sakai, a medical student, vacationing in Amsterdam, visit a bar. Koichi drinks. Tadao abstains. Blackbeard, who tends bar, sells Koichi mari­juana. Koichi smokes a joint. Tadao does not. A French couple, in leather clothes, with shaven skulls, enters Blackbeard’s Bar. The couple indulges too, sidles up to the rich Japanese tourists. Pierre offers drugs that he keeps in his loft. Koichi leaves with the French couple. Tadao returns to the hotel alone. Koichi doesn’t show on Monday morning. Tadao informs our ambas­sador, a Kyoto native who happens to be an acquaintance of mine. The ambassador alerts the police.”

  “More coffee?” the commissaris asked.

  Suzuki’s trembling hand made his cup clatter on its saucer.

  The commissaris poured.

  “What do you want of me?” Suzuki asked. “Yes, I know I accused Tadao of kidnapping Koichi, when the ambassador phoned me in Kyoto. I overreacted. I’ve explained the situation: my colleague Sakai has been losing a fortune on the stock mar­ket. He’s back in debt, his house is mortgaged to the hilt again, the continued studies of his four sons are in jeopardy. I’m the rich guy. I first hear my son is missing, then that his dismembered body has been found floating about in a trunk. I don’t know about a French couple. I do know about Tadao. Maybe Tadao had Koichi tied up in some basement here and wanted me, in return for my son’s release, to pay for his, Tadao’s, studies, or maybe I was to pay off Tadao’s father’s debts. I imagined that Tadao might have killed Koichi by accident, by binding him too tightly. It could be, couldn’t it? And Tadao studies surgery, he knows how to cut up a human body . . . to get rid of the evidence.

  “Really . . . ” the commissaris said, shaking his head. “Re­ally, professor . . .”

  “Far-fetched,” Suzuki said. “I know. Tadao is a good boy. Besides, my hypothesis was unlikely, as you explained. There are no empty basements in Amsterdam, the city is overcrowded. Besides, Japanese are conspicuous foreigners here. How could one conspicuous foreigner molest another? Wouldn’t someone have noticed? Wouldn’t you have been informed?”

  The commissaris sipped coffee.

  “You didn’t arrest Tadao,” Suzuki said. “You want me to confess to accusing an innocent party? My motive is jealousy? Very well. I confess.” Suzuki thumped his knee. “Why does my associate professor Sakai, my inferior, Sakai the foolish gambler, have four excellent sons who study hard, four heirs to have pride in, and why am I cursed with a misfit, Koichi?”

  “Thank you,” the commissaris said.

  “Can I go now?” Suzuki asked.

  “That was only the first part of the confession,” the com­missaris said.

  Suzuki was shouting. “You want me to admit to manipu­lating Koichi by sending him here to
Amsterdam, a magic city of sin, where dangerous drugs were bound to reach him? That I was sure that Koichi would go for heroin? That he would surrender to that evil French couple? Show them his roll of traveler’s checks? Set himself up to be murdered?”

  “We dropped the murder charge,” the commissaris said. “There is no evidence of conscious planning. These things mostly just happen, you know. There’s no proof that Pierre knowingly injected an overdose into a willing client. We have Tadao’s testimony: Koichi bragged that he was used to heroin.”

  “Pierre should have noticed that Koichi didn’t inject,” Su­zuki said.

  “You think Pierre checked Koichi for needle marks?” the commissaris asked. “In a dark loft in the early hours? Everybody is drunk and stoned already, and Pierre has just wandered all over Amsterdam looking to buy heroin and needles, not easy products to purchase, even here?”

  The heron was looking at Suzuki. Suzuki covered his eyes.

  “Kudasai . . . kudasai . . .”

  “Please . . . please . . . ” Toshiko translated. Suzuki dropped his hands. He stared at the heron. “I protected you, remember?”

  “You’re almost there,” the commissaris said.

  Suzuki was calmer, sitting back, hands clasped on knees. “It hurts too much to tell you my truth.”

  The commissaris smiled helpfully.

  “You know why the truth hurts?” Suzuki asked.

  “Because we cover it up by lying to ourselves?” the com­missaris asked. “But lies are transparent. The truth moves un­derneath, it keeps wanting to get out.”

  “It twists about in pain,” Suzuki said.

  “So?” the commissaris asked.

  The heron had flown away. The commissaris looked out of the window, beckoning his guests to join him. Six stories below, the bird stood next to a man in a red hat, dangling a fishing rod above Moose Canal. Man and bird.

  “I love birds,” Suzuki said. “Koichi hated me. He wanted to hurt me. He was drunk, he was on my island, shooting my birds.”

  “What had you done to him?” the commissaris asked.

  “I didn’t marry his mother,” Suzuki said. “She gave him to me after my wife left me. Koichi’s mother hates me, too, but she thought I would pay for a good education. I paid for every­thing. Koichi wasn’t grateful.”

  “Should he have been?” the commissaris asked.

  Suzuki raised a shoulder. “Maybe I pressured him, eh? Pushed too hard, maybe? Wanting him to do well? Wanting to show off a good son?”

  “Thank you,” the commissaris said.

  Suzuki danced, using the commissaris’s large Oriental rug as a stage floor. First he danced Koichi, drunk, crazed, firing an automatic shotgun. Then he danced a wounded bird, flopping about between the pine trees and ornamental bushes, shrieking in agony, trying to stretch its broken wings. The commissaris noticed how heronlike Suzuki was himself, with his wavy silver hair brushed up over his ears so that it tufted backward, with his long arms that perfectly imitated wing movements, with narrow trouser legs and tall-shafted tight boots, stepping about stiffly.

  The shot heron died, falling into the professor’s chair. The professor sat up painfully, croaking, “Arrrr . . .”

  “I see,” the commissaris said.

  “See what?” Suzuki asked.

  “I see what you mean,” the commissaris said. “I’m very close to my pet turtle, a dear little fellow who lives in my garden and is closer than I am to humanity, perhaps.”

  “Now your son shoots your turtle,” Suzuki said.

  “Now I kill my son?” the commissaris asked.

  “So now what do I do?” Suzuki asked.

  Both parties met once again, at Suzuki’s invitation, at a restaurant facing the southern gate of Amsterdam’s Vondel Park, a conglomeration of large ponds surrounded by clusters of trees and shrubbery that provide an optimal habitat for the capital’s many species of birds.

  “Commissaris-san,” Suzuki said, “I thank you.”

  “Are we done?” the commissaris asked.

  Suzuki bowed. “My mind is clear.”

  “I’m glad,” the commissaris said.

  “So am I.” Suzuki smiled. He touched Toshiko’s arm. “My adviser here tells me that it’s time to move ahead intelligently. She also tells me that intelligence is the capacity to make the best use of a given set of circumstances. I still have the island with a recovering population of splendid birds. With Koichi gone I have no heir. You told me that your detectives, when they visited Tadao at his hotel, found him developing photo­graphs of herons, taken while he was hiking about in Vondel Park.”

  “Tadao told Adjutant Grijpstra,” the commissaris said, “who likes to paint waterfowl as a hobby.”

  “What style?” Suzuki asked. “. . . Arrrr, Hondecoeter’s style perhaps, the old master . . . ?”

  “The old master,” the commissaris said. “Tadao told my adjutant that herons, in Japan, symbolize the ability to fly off to higher spheres.”

  Suzuki nodded.

  “A sensitive boy,” the commissaris said, “this Tadao.”

  “My colleague Sakai might agree,” Suzuki said, “to give me one of his four sons. It would be beneficial to all parties. I would pay for Tadao’s education, and maybe lend his father some capital with which to sort out his present mess.”

  The commissaris, limping slightly due to a rheumatic con­dition, leaning on a silver-tipped cane, walked Professor Suzuki and Toshiko back to the city’s center through the park.

  A giant blue heron, its long neck curved back gracefully, broad wings stretched wide, hovered effortlessly above them.

  Letter Present

  I just had a look at the visiting card again, after I found it in my file. It was neatly glued to a sheet of clean paper and put away under the letter G. Evidently, I knew I would need it sometime. The tiny document is filed under G because the person it refers to is called Grijpstra, Henk Grijpstra, adjutant of the Municipal Police, Murder Brigade.

  The adjutant, a paternal type with short grey hair that sticks up like the bristles of a well-worn brush, came to see me to inquire, as he put it, “about your father’s untimely demise.” That’s the way the old bird of prey likes to express himself. I would choose my words differently, but then I’m a bit of a scholar in my time off and a publisher of literature by trade.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” Adjutant Grijpstra said kindly after he lowered his bulk into the easy chair reserved for visitors. For a moment I felt relieved, as a respected citizen of our free coun­try. That the police were visiting me, the adjutant explained, was due to a regrettable fact, the possibly unnatural death of Dad. The authorities protect the citizen in a true democracy. The adjutant pointed out that I, as the bereaved party (isn’t it terrible when a son loses his beloved father?), could be sure of receiving help. Isn’t the state a father, too? I could rest assured. I felt im­mediately threatened again, however, not so much by the polite and well-mannered adjutant but by his companion, a quiet detective-sergeant, who had also given me his card. The ser­geant’s card found a place in the wastepaper basket after they left. One hint of conscience was sufficient in my case. The ser­geant’s name was Rinus de Gier.

  Gier means “vulture” and both officers reminded me of deadly, powerful birds. There I was, stretched out on the glow­ing white sand of a desert, helpless; there they perched on the branch of a dead tree flapping their transparent batlike wings; just another few seconds and the vorpal blade goes snicker-snack. I read too much and always remember the wrong passages, which frighten me, and which grow in horror in my sick but fertile imagination. The sergeant himself didn’t really resemble a bird at all; he is a much too handsome hero, in his early forties, with the mustache of a romantic cavalry officer of days gone by and the profile one finds in the expensive advertisements of fashion magazines. A movie projection, an exaggerated fem
ale dream; did I have to become all nervous because of his glossy image? Couldn’t I just shrug my shoulders while I observed the ser­geant’s smart casual wear, the well-fitting suit cut out of denim, the gay (I didn’t think he was) baby blue silk scarf knotted loosely under his strong but not uncharming chin? Couldn’t I define his presence as merely irritating and meanwhile keep listening to what the adjutant was saying? The adjutant spoke with just a touch of the musical Amsterdam accent and looked at me sym­pathetically from pale blue, deep-set eyes. He had a second chin and voluminous cheeks. Adjutant Grijpstra was regretting my father’s sudden heart attack and mentioned that he thought it “embarrassing” that untimely death had grabbed Dad from the arms of a woman he wasn’t married to. He thought I might know my father’s girlfriend—the lady who left Dad in the grip of fate, who ran away without even calling a doctor.

  I tried to control my trembling lower lip. Surely, I might be a little nervous. Wasn’t I Dad’s only child, and couldn’t I be expected to feel lost and alone? But if I lost my cool altogether, these sleuths, whose eyes were now drilling into my face, might be led to all sorts of dangerous conclusions. The interview, as the adjutant had said, was a formality, no more. They expected me to provide them with short and exact answers; if I could satisfy their curiosity briefly, this painful interlude would come to an end.

  “Yes,” I croaked. “She’s an acquaintance. Her name is Monica and she’s really my friend Hubert’s, well, eh, sort of mistress. I’ve known for a while that she rather liked Dad. He liked her, too. Dad was discreet, of course, but my mother died many years ago” (I didn’t tell them how Mom met her end, for information should never be too complete) “and Monica is rather attractive and does prefer older men” (I tried to smile in a know-it-all way, for this is Amsterdam and we’re all supposed to know what’s what in our wicked city.)

  The adjutant was decent enough to accept my words in silence, but the sergeant opened up. He saw a contrast between reality and my glib talk. Monica and Dad? An intimate relation­ship? And Monica was my friend Hubert’s girl?