Outsider in Amsterdam, page 2
Dear Sirs:
I thank you for your letter of the tenth and have to inform you
No further text. The letterhead looked expensive. HINDIST SOCIETY, the address and the telephone number.
They saw a footstool, lying on its side, near the feet of the corpse. They saw a gramophone, a stack of records and a low bed covered with a batik cloth. The woven curtains were closed but allowed enough light to filter through to see every detail of the room.
"What's that?" Grijpstra asked, pointing at another low table, covered with red lacquer and serving as a seat for a fairly large statue, a rather fat bald-headed man sitting cross-legged and staring at them with glass eyes.
"An altar of sorts," de Gier answered after some thought. 'That copper bowl filled with sand must be an incense burner, and the brown spots in the sand are burnt-out incense sticks."
Grijpstra raised an eyebrow. "You know a lot today."
"I visit museums," de Gier said.
Grijpstra sniffed.
"Incense?" he asked.
De Gier nodded. The heavy sweet smell gave him a headache.
"Who discovered the body?" de Gier asked van Meteren, who was standing near the door.
"I did," van Meteren answered. "I had to ask Piet something and as he didn't answer when I knocked, I went back to my room. A little later I asked the girls in the kitchen if they had seen him and they said he had gone upstairs. I looked into the other rooms; one of them belongs to his mother, and another is the temple. He wasn't there. I thought he might be asleep and knocked again and then I opened the door and saw him hanging there. I telephoned the police and waited for you downstairs. Nobody knows anything yet."
"Why didn't you cut the rope?" asked de Gier.
"He was dead."
"How did you know?"
Van Meteren didn't answer.
"Are you a doctor?" Grijpstra asked.
"No," van Meteren said, "but I have seen a lot of corpses in my life. Piet is dead. Dead is dead. I could feel it. A dead body has no feel."
"Did you touch it?"
Van Meteren shrugged his shoulders. "I don't have to feel a corpse to know it is dead."
"So why didn't you cut the rope?" asked de Gier again.
"I couldn't do it by myself," van Meteren said. "Somebody would have had to hold the body. Besides, I wanted you to find it the way it was. Perhaps it will give you a lead."
De Gier looked again at the corpse. He had an idea that he had seen the man before and searched his memory. De Gier's memory was well organized and he knew his way around his files. After a while he knew that he hadn't seen the man before but that the strong chin, the long hair and the heavy mustache reminded him of a portrait he had seen in a museum in The Hague. A portrait of a Dutch statesman of the sixteenth century, a statesman and a warrior, on his way to do battle. The warrior had been sitting on a horse and had a sword in his hand. A leader. Very likely this man had also been a leader, a boss. A little boss in charge of a small society. Discipline, de Gier thought. That's it. This house and this room reek of discipline. Everything is neat and clean. The girls in the kitchen are clean too, reasonably clean. Van Meteren is clean. There would be some connection between the corpse and van Meteren. Perhaps van Meteren is an employee of the Society. But why do I observe this? de Gier asked. The answer came immediately. He hadn't expected cleanliness when he had read the sign on the door. HINDIST SOCIETY. He had associated the words with a mess. The new wisdom coming from the East is a messy business. He thought of the dirty doped vague shadowy people he had arrested in the street and interrogated at Police Headquarters. Petty theft, drug dealing in a small silly way, runaway minors, prostitution. All suspects stank. He had made them empty their pockets before locking them up and had been appalled at the dirty rags, the broken trinkets, the lack of money. He had seen the photographs they carried around with them. Pictures of "holy men," "gurus" or "yogis." Skeletons with long matted hair and craay eyes. The masters preaching the way.
He had associated the word HINDIST with Hinduism or Buddhism. The religions of the East. Before he had begun to arrest the crazy tramps the words had had a different association. Peace and quiet, some form of detachment. Real wisdom. But gradually "messiness' had crept in.
And now he had to admit that this place, this nest of nonsensical imitation faith, was, after all, clean. And he had been surprised. De Gier's thoughts took a few seconds only and meanwhile Grijpstra had sighed again. The body was dead, no doubt about it, and they would have to cut the rope. They had to assume that the body was still alive. Only a doctor can determine death. He looked over his shoulder and nodded at de Gier.
"You can telephone headquarters, if you like."
There was no need to say it. De Gier was dialing the number already. He didn't have to say much. At headquarters the machine was already in operation. Within a few minutes they would be arriving. Doctor, ambulance and the experts.
While de Gier telephoned Grijpstra picked up the stool and put it right and climbed on top of it. He cut the rope with his switchblade, an illegal weapon that he carried against all regulations. The rope wasn't thick and the knife very sharp. De Gier wanted to catch the corpse but van Meteren was quicker. He put the corpse down, very carefully, on the bed. No one thought that Piet would start breathing again.
He didn't.
Grijpstra bent down and looked at the dead face. "Have a look."
De Gier looked. "Ach, ach," he said.
Van Meteren looked as well.
"A bruise," van Meteren said, "near the temple, slightly swollen."
"You saw that very quickly," de Gier said.
"He has been hit," van Meteren continued, "with a stick, or perhaps a fist. The doctor will be able to tell us."
* * *
"What exactly do you do in this house?" de Gier asked.
Van Meteren straightened his back and rubbed it. He thought. The low forehead became wrinkled and the nose seemed to flatten itself even more. Suddenly de Gier knew what this man had to be. Not a Negro, but a Papuan. He remembered the photographs in his geography book at school. Papuan sitting on the beach, sharpening spears. But not a fullblooded Papuan, the nose wasn't flat enough and the face showed other properties. Perhaps three-quarters Papuan or seven-eighths. That would explain the Dutch name. The Papuan's language was pure Dutch, impeccable, overcorrect even. De Gier knew the way the Dutch Negroes spoke and the Indonesians. Van Meteren's way of talking was more guttural.
"I live here," van Meteren said. "That's all. I do nothing here. Piet ran the Society. I think that the girls will take over now, or Eduard or Johan. But Johan is in the bar and hasn't been told yet and Eduard took the day off."
"All right," de Gier said, "in that case I will go down. For the time being nobody is allowed to leave the premises. The cars from Headquarters can arrive any minute now. They'll be sending more detectives and probably uniformed policemen as well. It'll be the usual hullabaloo."
De Gier ran down the stairs. Hullabaloo was the right word. Day after day nothing to do but to drive around and look around a little and now suddenly two corpses in one evening. They had found the first corpse early that evening, or rather, they had seen a body change into a corpse. The woman was still alive when they found her, naked and bleeding in the shabby whorehouse at the canal. A knife in her belly. She died in the doctor's arms; he had come immediately answering de Gier's emergency call. The woman had been able to describe her killer, while she kept her hands pressed against her body in a vain attempt to stop both pain and blood. An aging whore, a reasonably sweet person. De Gier had found the young man under a tree, right opposite the whorehouse. The boy was resting his back against an old elm tree and was staring into the canal's murky water. The knife was still in his hand. He confessed at once. A pleasant boy, but not to be trusted with knives and middle-aged women who reminded him of his mother. They had taken him with them in the car and locked him up after they had taken his statement. Another job for the municipal psychiatrist. Most likely the boy wouldn't even have to face court but be taken to an asylum straight away to rot there for the rest of his life while he filled his time making feltdolls and swallowing pills. Or they might release him after a while and put him on national assistance and the state's money would buy another knife and another middle-aged woman would die.
The dead prostitute hadn't taken much of their time and Grijpstra and de Gier had gone out for another ride hoping to be able to fill the rest of their night's shift with peacefully ambling about, with a cup of coffee in a quiet café somewhere. And now this.
De Gier strode into the restaurant. He found the amplifier and turned the knob the wrong way. The loudspeakers screeched and some forty startled faces stared at him. One of the faces, a heavily bearded one, lost its temper.
"Look here," the face said, "would you mind leaving that amplifier alone? We are listening to that music!"
De Gier walked up to the man and put a hand on his shoulder. "Never mind the music. I am a police officer I have to request everybody here to stay put."
He raised his voice.
"Something unpleasant has happened in this house tonight. Please remain seated. My colleagues will be here any minute now and we will have to ask some questions. It's only a formality and we won't keep you long. II anyone knows anything about what happened upstairs earlier tonight or this afternoon he can come and speak to me."
The faces began to mumble to each other. The two girls came from the kitchen and approached de Gier.
"What happened?" the oldest girl asked. A beautiful girl with large green eyes and pigtails, she would be just over twenty years old.
"You'll be informed in due course," de Gier said.
"Is it about the money?"
"Has money been stolen?" asked de Gier.
"I don't think so," the girl said, "but Piet asked us this afternoon if we had been in his room. Johan had taken the shop's money to Piet and put it on his table at four o'clock and Piet counted it and it was less than he expected. He probably didn't count properly. Did you come because of that?"
"No," de Gier said softly, "we wouldn't disturb the joint for a few guilders. Piet is dead. He was hanging from one of the beams in his room."
"Oh," the girl said and covered her mouth with a shaking hand. The other girl, a fat little thing with glasses, began to cry.
"O.K., O.K.," de Gier said. "It can't be helped. Any of you two been to his room?"
Both girls shook their heads.
"No," the fat girl said.
"No," the beautiful girl said, "not after five o'clock this afternoon. I saw the money on the table when I went up with Piet. I only stayed ten minutes or so and then I returned to the kitchen to prepare for supper. In fact, he told me to go, he wanted to write some letters."
"He is the boss here, isn't he?" de Gier asked.
"Yes," said the fat girl, "he is the Society's director. The Society is supposed to belong to all of us members but he runs everything. And is he dead now?"
De Gier gave her his handkerchief and she rubbed her eyes.
He looked at the black stripes on the clean white cloth and realized dejectedly that they would never come out in the small washing machine in his apartment.
"You can keep the handkerchief," he said to the girl, "with the compliments of your police force."
Her tears didn't impress him. He has seen the glint in her eyes. Death is sensation. Apparently she liked sensation.
He heard the doorbell and went to answer it. There was quite a crowd on the sidewalk and four parked cars, not counting his own. The colleagues had come quietly, without flashing blue lights or howling sirens. The experts didn't believe in a mad rush.
He shook a few hands and spoke to a fingerprint man, a close friend. He showed them all the way. The doctor and the experts to the dead man's room, the detectives to the restaurant where they started their investigation immediately. All they needed at this stage were names and addresses. De Gier told them to spend a little time on the two girls and Johan the barman, and to ignore van Meteren, whom he reserved for himself.
"Ah yes," he said to the senior detective, "if you find an old lady leave her alone as well. She is the dead man's mother. We'll see her later."
"Who's 'we'?" the senior detective asked.
"Grijpstra and myself," said de Gier.
The senior detective looked impressed and de Gier grinned at him.
"You are a comedian," he said.
The doorbell rang again.
"Sir," de Gier said when he recognized the chief inspector.
"Suicide?" the chief asked.
"Could be," de Gier said, "but he has a bruise on his temple."
"Hm," the chief said, and went upstairs. He left within a few minutes, and Grijpstra accompanied him to the door.
De Gier looked at Grijpstra.
"Usual behavior," Grijpstra said. "He looked around and grunted a bit. It's all ours."
Peace returned to the gable house two hours later.
Grijpstra and de Gier sat at one of the restaurant tables and smoked and looked at each other.
"Twice in one day," Grijpstra said.
'Too often," said de Gier, "twice too often."
"But what do we make of it?" de Gier asked. "Murder or no murder?"
Grijpstra blew some smoke out of his nostrils; de Gier watched the little hairs wave inside.
"Could be either of the two," Grijpstra said, "but it'll probably be murder. Somebody gave him a nice thump, using his fist, for I saw no possible weapon lying around and the bruise didn't seem very serious. Bam, Piet is on the floor, it doesn't need much to knock a small man over. He is unconscious or dazed. The rope is ready. Rope around the neck. You lift him up with one arm and put him on the stool. Other end of the rope on the hook in the beam. You kick the stool. You leave the room quietly. One minute's work. Half a minute maybe."
"One or two killers?" de Gier asked.
Grijpstra gave him a fierce look and shook his head.
"Why two killers? Two men? Two women? One man and one woman? Why make it involved? One killer, not two or three. Killers are very scarce in Amsterdam so why would we suddenly run into a whole bunch of them?"
"But it isn't an easy job," de Gier said carefully. "He had to be carried around, and put on a stool. It may be difficult if you are by yourself."
Grijpstra got up. "Come with me, we are going to do a little work."
They were busy for several minutes. De Gier stretched out on the floor and relaxed his body. Grijpstra pulled him to his feet, put him on the stool, slipped the noose around his neck.
They tried several times.
"You see?" Grijpstra said. "Nothing to it. Your weight is more than Piet's, you must weigh a little over seventy kilos while he probably weighed ten or twelve kilos less. A very thin little chap. Anyone who isn't a hungry dwarf could have done it."
"Yes," said de Gier.
* * *
But later he disagreed again.
"It wasn't like that," he said. "Pay attention."
"I am paying attention," Grijpstra said and opened his eyes as wide as they would go.
"Right," said de Gier. "This Piet of ours is a morose fellow. He wants to die. Life isn't what it should be, he thinks. He can't remember ever having given permission for his own birth. And now he finds himself here, in a room in an old ramshackle house in the Haarlemmer Houttuinen, director of a nonsensical society that isn't going well anyway and gives him nothing but a lot of work and debts. He goes on thinking and works out that he is now over forty years old and that he will soon be an old man who won't be able to look after himself. And it annoys him that he is a little man, and that he always has to look up at people. Here he sits, in his empty room. Everything is stale. His ideas are gone and proved wrong. All he has is his own loneliness. It frightens him. He wants to leave, through the white gate which can be opened with the silver key. And he does have the silver key."
"Beg your pardon?" said Grijpstra.
"Imagery from the East," said de Gier. "Comes from my reading and it fits the case for this is a Hindist Society. Death is the white gate and everybody has the silver key."
"Excuse me," Grijpstra said. "I wasn't very good at school and I never read anything. But now I understand. The rope is the silver key."
"Don't excuse yourself," de Gier said. "You are very clever. And books don't give any real information. Words, nothing but words. Hollow words. I read that too. The rope is the silver key but if you have the will to stop breathing for longer than two minutes you are also using the silver key."
"Fine," said Grijpstra. "Piet wants to leave. Through the gate. Or into the tunnel, that's even better imagery. Death must be like a tunnel, I think, a tunnel that leads to the inexpressible. But now what happens? In your story he is still considering."
De Gier got up and began to wander through the restaurant. "He makes up his mind. But that sort of decision takes some doing. We never really decide anything, we take life as it comes and it drags us where it wants to drag us. It's all a matter of circumstances, of powers that control us. But to commit suicide is a decision. He decides but he helps himself by taking a drink. He drinks a lot. He becomes very drunk. Now he has to attach the noose to the beam. He climbs on the stool and he falls. He hurts his head. But he insists. And he manages to hang himself in the end."
Grijpstra scratched the stubbles of his beard. De Gier was still wandering through the restaurant.
"I didn't notice any smell of liquor," Grijpstra said, "perhaps a whiff. A glass of sherry maybe. But I don't think he was drunk. I didn't even find a glass in the room. I looked out the window but I didn't notice any splinters in the street. I'll check when we go home. He may have thrown the bottle out the window. Drunks often do. But I don't think Piet would have thrown a bottle out the window. I think we agree on his neatness. Somehow I can't believe that a neat man, living in a clean room in a well organized house, and dressed nicely, with combed hair and a beautiful mustache, will commit suicide."
De Gier looked at the statue of the dancing Indian Goddess. "Yes," he said. "Suicidal people lose their self- discipline. They don't shave anymore and have meals at odd times. They have accidents, they drop things. They don't make their beds. I remember the psychologist told us about it at the police school. Could be. But I could imagine a neat man hanging himself using a good piece of rope knotted into a perfect noose, and hung from a strong hook, screwed tightly into a solid beam. Why not? Perhaps there are neat suicides, we'll have to look it up in the library and we can ask the chief. Psychology is his hobby, they say."
