"You were close friends right up to yesterday?"
"No," Bezuur said. "Lost touch. Went his way, I went my way. I have a big business now and no time to play about on the street market, but I enjoyed it while it lasted."
"When did you each go your own way?"
"Wasshit matter?" Bezuur said, and that was all they could get out of him for a while. He was crying now, and had opened another bottle, slopping half of it on the floor. The fit took a few minutes.
"Shorry," Beznur said.
"That's all right," the commissaris said, and rubbed his legs. "We understand. And I am sorry we are bothering you."
"What did Mr. Rogge and yourself study at the university?" Grijpstra asked. Bezuur looked up, there seemed to be some strength in him again and he was no longer slurring words.
"French. We studied French."
"But you weren't so good at languages. Didn't you say so before?" the commissaris asked.
"Not too bad either," Bezuur said. "Good enough. French is a logical language, very exact. Maybe I would have preferred science but it would have meant breaking from Abe, I wasn't ready for that then."
"Did you study hard?"
"Same way we got through high school, in my case anyway. Abe was more enthusiastic. He read everything he could find at the university library, starting at the top shelf on the left and finishing on the bottom shelf on the right. If the books didn't interest him he would flip the pages, reading a little here and there but often he would read the whole book. I just read what he selected for me, books he talked about."
"And what else did you two do?"
Bezuur was staring at the portrait and the commissaris had to ask again.
"What else? Oh, we ran about. And I had a big boat in those days; we'd go sailing on the lakes. And we traveled. Abe had a little truck and we went to France and North Africa and once I talked my father into buying us tickets on an old tramp which went to Haiti in the Caribbean. The language is French over there and I said we needed the experience for our study."
"Your father paid for Abe's ticket as well? Didn't Abe have any money himself?"
"He had some. German love-money. The Germans paid up after the war, you know, and they had killed both his parents. He got quite a bit; so did Esther. Abe knew how to handle money. He was doing a little business on the side. He was buying and selling antique weapons in those days."
"Weapons?" the commissaris asked. "He didn't happen to have a good-day, did he?"
"No," Bezuur said, when the question had got through to him. "No, no, cavalry sabers and bayonets, that sort of stuff. You think he was killed with a good-day?"
"Never mind," the commissaris said. "Did he ever live out of your pocket?"
Bezuur shook his head. "No, not really. He accepted that ticket to Haiti but he made up for it in other ways. He only relied on himself. He would borrow money sometimes but he always paid up on time and later, when I was lending him big money, he paid full bank interest. The interest was his idea, I never asked for it but he said I had a right to it."
"Why didn't he borrow from the bank?"
"He didn't want his transactions on record. He borrowed cash and he paid cash. He was pretending to be a small hawker, a fellow who lived off his stall."
The commissaris looked at Grijpstra and Grijpstra asked the next question.
"Why did you both drop out of the university?"
Bezuur looked at his beer bottle and shook it. "Yes, we dropped out, right at the end. Abe's idea, that was. He said the degree would be pure silliness, it would qualify us to become schoolteachers. We had learned all we wanted to learn anyway. We went into business instead."
"The street market?"
"Yes. I started importing from the communist countries. In Rumania a lot of people speak French and we went there to see what we could find. The East Bloc started exporting cheaply in those days, to get hard currency. You could pick up all sorts of bargains. They offered wool and buttons and zippers, so we found ourselves in the street market. The big stores wouldn't buy at first and we had to unload the goods. We made good money, but then my dad died and left the road-working machinery business so I had to switch."
"Were you sorry?"
"Yes," Bezuur said and drained the bottle. "I am still sorry. Wrong choice, but there was nothing else to do. There's more money in bulldozers than in colored string."
"You cared about money?"
Bezuur nodded gravely. "I did."
"You still do?"
Bezuur didn't appear to hear.
"One last question." Grijpstra said brightly. "About this party last night. When did it begin and when did it end?"
Bezuur scratched the stubbles on his bloated cheeks. The small eyes looked sly in their greasy sockets. "Alibi, hey? And I don't even know when Abe was killed. Zilver didn't tell me. Party started at about nine in the evening. I can get the girls to testify if you like. I should have their names and phone numbers somewhere."
"Callgirls?"
"Yes. Sure. Whores."
He was looking through the pockets of a jacket which he had taken from the couch. "Here you are, telephone numbers, you can copy them. The names are fancy, of course. Minette and Alice, they call themselves, but they answer their phones if you need them. Better try tomorrow, they'll be asleep now. I had them driven home in a taxi at five o'clock this morning. They had a gallon of champagne each, and another gallon of food."
Grijpstra jotted down the numbers. "Thank you."
"Excuse me, sir," the constable said. He had been standing in the open door for some time.
"Yes, constable?"
"You are wanted on the radio, sir."
"Well, we have finished here, I think," the commissaris said. "Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Bezuur. Contact me if you think I should know something which you haven't mentioned now. Here is my card. We would like to solve the case."
"I'll let you know," Bezuur said and got up. "God knows I'll be thinking about it all the time. I have done nothing else since Zilver phoned."
"I thought you were having a little party here, sir," Grijpstra said, keeping his voice flat.
"I can think while I have a party," Bezuur said, taking the commissaris' card.
"Another dead body in the Straight Tree Ditch, sir," the female constable from the radio room said. "Water Police found it. It was dangling from a rope tied to a tree, half in the water and partly hidden by a moored boat. The Water Police suggested we should contact you. They had seen the telegrams* reporting the other murder last night. Same area, sir. Sergeant de Gier is there now. He's got Detective-Constable Cardozo with him. They are in their car waiting for instructions. Would you like to speak to them, sir?"
"Put them on," the commissaris said, gloomily looking at the microphone which Grijpstra was holding for him.
"Cardozo here, sir."
"We are on our way to you now," the commissaris said, nodding to the constable at the wheel who started the car. The constable pointed at the roof and raised his eyebrows. "Yes," the commissaris mouthed silently.
The siren began to howl and the blue light flashed as the car shot away. "Anything you can tell us at this stage, Cardozo?"
"Sergeant de Gier knows the dead person, sir. An old man dressed up as a lady. Used to be on the force, sir." Cardozo's voice had gone up, as if he was framing a question.
"Yes, I know her, Cardozo. How did she die?"
"Knife in his back sir. He must have been killed in a public telephone booth here; we found a track. He was dragged across the street and dumped into the canal. The killer used a short rope, strung under the corpse's armpits and attached to an old elm tree. The rope didn't kill him. The knife did."
"Do you have the knife?"
"No, sir. But the doctor said it was a knife wound. Penetrated the heart from the back. A long knife."