"Come back," Alice whispered quickly. "I live two floors up, number five-seven-four. Give me a ring first.
I won't charge you."
"Sure," de Gier said and slipped through the door.
"Like hell," he said a little later, cruelly pushing the gear lever of the Volkswagen. Like bloody hell, a policeman-friend to help her out when she gets into trouble. But she made me feel randy, the little bitch. Just the sort of thing for a day like this.
He had to stop for a traffic light and gloomily watched a big Mercedes which had pulled up next to the Volkswagen. There were two middle-aged men in the back of the car, dressed in suits and ties. They were both smoking cigars. De Gier saw one of them blow out a little cloud of smoke, which disappeared immediately, sucked away by the airconditioning in the car. He looked at the soggy end of his own cigar, and tossed it out of the window, watching it spark as it hit the tarmac. The driver of the Mercedes winked at him. He had pushed his cap to the back of his head, and was loosening his tie.
"Hot, eh?" he asked.
De Gier nodded.
The two men in the back of the car were laughing about something.
"Your passengers are cool enough," de Gier said.
"They are cool," the driver said, indicating the glass partitioning with his thumb. "I am not."
The light changed and the Mercedes accelerated.
"Bounders," de Gier thought. Two bounders and one little sucker to whizz 'em around."
He was thinking about Alice again. Grijpstra had his Nellie. He forced himself to think about something else. He saw the spiked ball, trying to visualize its flight as it approached Abe Rogge's window. Someone was directing the ball, using a device. But what was it? He tried to visualize the device but it blurred as he focused.
11
The Commissaris looked at the young woman who, red-eyed, perched on a highbacked chair, was studying a stain on the wallpaper. They had dispensed with courtesies and he would have to make an opening.
"We were informed that you were friendly with Abe Rogge, miss. Perhaps you can tell us something about him. Any information will help. We know a little about the way he was, but not enough. Someone went to a lot of trouble to kill him. There usually is a strong connection between killer and victim. Perhaps you can help us to find out what bound the two together."
"Yes," the woman said, and sniffled. "I understand. Poor Abe. How did he die? I didn't know until the police phoned me this morning. I didn't dare to phone Esther. She must be very upset."
Grijpstra gave her an abridged version of what the police knew. He left out the gory details.
"Horrible," the woman said.
She calmed down after a while. Her two visitors looked harmless enough and were sipping coffee and smoking cigars, careful to tip their ash into the saucers of their cups. She remembered that she hadn't put an ashtray on the table and got up to fetch one. The two men didn't look out of place in the small modern fiat on the top floor of an apartment building. The commissaris commented on the view. He identified some of the church towers and when he made a mistake, she corrected him.
"Yes," she said. "I understand now. You have come to me because I was his girlfriend, or one of his girlfriends rather. I didn't mind, not very much anyway. Abe could be charming, he knew how to flatter me, and perhaps I didn't want him all for myself. I am reasonably content with my routine. Abe would have upset it if he had moved in. It wasn't just sex either; he often came to talk, about books or about films he had seen and he took me out sometimes.''
"What was he like?" the commissaris asked.
"Crazy."
"How do you mean, miss?" Grijpstra asked.
"Crazy," she repeated.
"In what way?" the commissaris asked. "He didn't pull faces or jump about on all fours, did he?"
"No, no. How can I explain? He had an unusual idea of values. Most people have set values, or no values at all. Abe seemed to change his values all the time, but without being weak. He thought from an angle nobody could grasp. I didn't understand him either and I often tried."
The commissaris had come a little forward in his chair. "That isn't enough, miss. You have to tell us a little more. I cant see the man; we only met him as a corpse, you see. You knew him well…"
"Yes. I'll try. Well… he was courageous. Perhaps that's the word. No fear, no fear of anything. When he thought of something he did it or tried to do it and most of the things he did seemed absolutely pointless. They weren't getting him anywhere but he didn't mind. Perhaps he didn't want to get anywhere. You have heard about his business, have you?"
"Beads," the commissaris said, "and wool."
"Yes. Funny things. He could have been a big businessman, a manager of a large firm perhaps but he preferred to shout on the market, on the Albert Cuyp street market. I wouldn't believe it at first, not until I went there. A showman, hypnotizing the poor housewives, telling them they were creative, and admiring the ugly sweaters and the horrible dolls they had made out of his yarn. It was pathetic to see those inane dumpy women swarming around his stall. And he almost graduated in French. I knew him at the university; he was the best student of our year, the pride of the professors. His essays were brilliant, anything he did was original, but…"
"You make him sound as if he were a failure,'' the commissaris said, "but it seemed he was a great success. His business did well, he was a wealthy man, he traveled a great deal, and he was only in his early thirties…”
"He was a silly man,^n the woman, whom the commissaris had in his notebook as Corin Kops, said.
"It's not so silly to be successful in business," the commissaris said. "For many people it is still the optimal goal."
"I didn't mean it in that way. I mean he was wasting his talents. He could have contributed something to society. Most people just live, like toadstools. They grow and after a while they begin to die. They are living objects, but Abe was much more than that."
"Yes," the commissaris said, and slumped back. "Quite. You said you and he discussed books. What sort of books did he like?"
She pursed her lips, as if she were going to whistle. Grijpstra looked at his watch. His stomach rumbled. "Peckish," Grijpstra thought. "I am feeling a bit peckish. I hope he'll take me to one of those bistros. I could do with a rare steak and a baked potato. A large baked potato."
"Books without a moral. He read some travel books, written by adventurers. People who just roamed about and wrote down their thoughts. And he liked surrealist books."
"Surrealist?" Grijpstra stirred.
"It's a philosophy. Surrealist writers go deeper than the average novelist, by using dreams and unusual associations. They don't bother about surface logic or try to describe daily events but aim for the roots of human behavior."
"They do?" Grijpstra asked.
The commissaris brightened. "Like Nellie's bar, Grijpstra," he said and grinned. "Like what you think when you are fishing, or when you wake up in the morning."
"When I shave?" Grijpstra asked, and grinned too. "Lots of hot water and lather and a new razor blade and nobody in the bathroom and the door locked and swash, swash with the brush."
"What do you think about when you shave?" the commissaris asked. Grijpstra rubbed the short hairs on his skull energetically.
"Hard to say, sir."
The woman showed interest. She was on her way to the kitchen, carrying the dirty coffee cups, but she stopped and turned.
"Try to describe your thoughts," Corin Kops said.
"About the sea," Grijpstra said. "Mostly about the sea, and I have never been a sailor, so that's strange, I suppose. But I think about the sea when I shave. Big waves and blue sky."
"Could you give an example from Abe's life, miss?" the commissaris asked.