An ape man, definitely, the commissaris thought as he watched Vleuten move the tiller. De Gier was standing next to the suspect; the baboon’s golden mane stood out against the sergeant’s uniform. The commissaris caught the rope thrown by Grijpstra and held it while he waited for the three men to join him.
“Mr. Vleuten, sir. Mr. Vleuten, please meet our chief.”
They shook hands and crossed the street in pairs, Grijpstra and the baboon going ahead.
“Have you arrested him, de Gier?”
“No, sir. He has been very well behaved.”
“The radio room says that you fell into the river. If that event was caused by your suspect an arrest would be warranted.”
De Gier explained and the commissaris nodded. “Good. No vengeance.”
The commissaris thought back. He was a young inspector again, long ago, thirty years ago. He had been beaten up by a suspect and the suspect was subsequently caught. When he went to the station a constable had taken him down to the cell block where his man was chained to a pipe, cowering. The constable had told him to go ahead and had turned and left the basement. He had been tempted, but he had released the suspect and taken him to a cell and gone upstairs.
“No vengeance,” he said again. “That’s very good, de Gier.”
Some surprise showed on the sergeant’s face. “I thought it would be better not to ruffle him, sir. This way he may talk easier.”
“You’ll lay charges against him later?”
De Gier looked uncomfortable. “I can’t, sir. I more or less accepted his apology. A case of mistaken identity, really. He mistook me for an officer from the court. He has some parking fines he has been protesting and the court constables have been bothering him.”
“Good. Is this our man’s house?”
“Yes, sir, and that’s his car.”
The commissaris took a moment to observe the seventeenth-century house and the Rolls-Royce.
“A nineteen thirty-six model I would say, sergeant, but very well kept. It should be worth some money, and the house is very valuable, of course. So he isn’t badly off, your baboon. That would explain why he resigned so easily from Carnet and Company. Still, he did refuse unemployment benefits, Mr. Bergen told me. Most unusual. He would qualify and they are eighty percent of previous income and will be paid for several years now, I believe. And he turned it down. Most unusual.”
The baboon had opened the door and gone in with Grijpstra, and the commissaris and the sergeant began to climb the stairs slowly, pausing on the landings. Even so the commissaris was exhausted when they finally reached the seventh floor. The baboon’s apartment was open and the commissaris sunk into the first chair he saw. The baboon was busying himself at the kitchen counter.
Grijpstra looked at the commissaris. “Do you want to ask the questions, sir?”
The commissaris shook his head. He had closed his eyes, his breath was still coming in gasps. “Go ahead, adjutant.”
The baboon served coffee and sat down. “Gentlemen?”
Grijpstra phrased his questions slowly and precisely and the baboon’s answers connected promptly.
“Yes, I visited her last night, early in the evening.”
“Why, Mr. Vleuten?”
“To repay a loan. I shouldn’t have borrowed from her but I didn’t want to increase my mortgage on the house. The bank has always been very helpful, it’s the same bank Carnet and Company uses and I know the manager well, but even so, mortgages take time and I needed money promptly. I had miscalculated on the remodeling costs of two of the apartments below and the workmen expected to be paid, of course. In a weak moment I asked Elaine to lend the cash to me, that was six months ago. Since then I sold a boat and made some money again, so last night I took the money to her.”
“How much?”
“Twenty thousand. She gave me the money in cash and I returned it in cash. She didn’t ask for interest. I’ve often done repairs in her house and I never charged her and I think she wanted to repay the favor.”
“You have a receipt, sir?”
“No. It was a loan between friends.”
“Were you seeing her regularly?”
“No, not anymore. I hadn’t seen her since she lent me the money, and that was half a year ago, as I said.”
“Was she expecting you?”
“No.”
“Did you have the impression that she was expecting anybody else?”
The baboon got up and stretched. The three policemen looked at the short legs that dwarfed the man; when he dropped his arms they swung loosely.
“Yes, she was very well dressed, overdressed, I would say. At first I thought she was planning to go out and I asked her where she was going. She said she wasn’t going anywhere.”
“Did she seem nervous?”
“Yes. I thought it was the gale. It was a strange night, the gale had already started up. She talked a good deal, but she didn’t exactly make me welcome.”
“Did she offer you anything? A drink?”
“No.”
“Do you smoke, Mr. Vleuten?”
“I’m trying to give it up. I have cigarettes here but I don’t carry them anymore. I only smoke when I have to, about ten cigarettes a day now.”
“So you didn’t smoke while you were with Mrs. Camet last night?”
“No.”
The commissaris was following the conversation but the words seemed far away; his breathing had slowed down and he was controlling the pain. He noticed that the baboon wasn’t asking Grijpstra to explain his questions. He forced himself to sit up and observe the suspect. The baboon’s and the commissaris’s eyes met for an instant. There was a slight gleam in the man’s eyes. He seemed amused but there was also sadness, mainly in the lines of the wide lips.
“What time did you leave?”
“Around eight. I only stayed a quarter of an hour, I think.”
Grijpstra sat back and the commissaris raised a hand. “Your money was found, Mr. Vleuten. I had a message, just before I came here, from Gabrielle Carnet. She found a hundred thousand guilders, which must be the sum of your twenty thousand and the eighty thousand Mrs. Carnet collected from her company’s bank account recently. Do you have any idea what she may have wanted to do with that eighty thousand?”
“No.”
“The hundred thousand was found under her mattress, a strange hiding palace, don’t you think? She did have a safe.”
The baboon’s hand reached out to a side table and came back with a pack of cigarettes. He smiled apologetically. ‘Time to smoke. Under the mattress, you said, that is a strange place. I know her safe. It isn’t really a safe: it’s fireproof but not burglarproof, it opens with a normal key. She never kept much money in there. I made a hiding place in her bedroom, under a loose board. It has a spring lock. You have to press a very small knob near one of the legs of her bed. If she wanted to hide money she would have hidden it in there.”
Nothing was said for a while and the commissaris looked around. The apartment seemed to consist of only one room stretching from the front to the rear of the house. The furniture was sparse but of good quality, not from the showrooms of Carnet and Company. Good Victorian furniture and not too much of it. A quiet room, refined, with large empty surfaces, both in floor and wall space. The sergeant had got up and was wandering around.
“Sir?”
The commissaris got up too. The sergeant was looking at a painting. The painting showed a rat realistically drawn, each long brittle hair in place, the mouth half open showing pointed cruel teeth, the red eye glared. It was rearing on its spindly hind legs and its long tail, of an obscene, glaring naked pink, hung down.
“Unusual, don’t you think, sir?”
The tail went beyond the painting, curving over its frame and continuing on the wall. The part that protruded from the painting’s flat surface had become three-dimensional, molded out of some plastic material but so well shaped that it seemed alive. There was another strange detail in the painter’s subject matter. The rat was ridden by a little boy dressed in a dainty suit of dark red velvet.