"What happened, de Gier?" the commissaris asked again.
"A rat," de Gier said. "A large dead white rat. Its belly was ripped open and its inside hung out and it was covered in blood, and it was lying on my doormat when I wanted to leave this morning. I would have stepped on it if Oliver hadn't warned me. Oliver went out of his mind when he saw the rat. His fur was all up. He was twice his ordinary size. Like this."
De Gier indicated the size of Oliver. His hand was about four feet off the floor.
"Really?" the commissaris asked. "That's very big for a cat. Was he jumping up and down perhaps?"
"No. Neither was the rat. It just lay there. It had been put there to annoy me. We don't have rats in the building and if we did have rats they would be brown. This was a white rat, the kind they use in laboratories. I've got it with me, in a shoebox. Shall I show it to you?"
"Later," the commissaris said.
The commissaris picked up his phone, dialed two numbers and ordered coffee. He also offered de Gier a cigarette and lit it for him. De Gier didn't thank the commissaris; he was staring at the floor
"Right," the commissaris said cheerfully. "So why would anyone put a dead rat on your doormat, and kill it first, and rip its entrails out? Do you have any disturbed friends who would play a prank on you? Only your friends know that you are upset by the sight of blood and corpses. Is there anyone in the police who would do that to you? Think."
"Yes, sir."
"Perhaps you irritated someone."
"Cardozo," de Gier said. "I annoyed him yesterday. Twice I annoyed him. I made him take the money from the market home because he had spilled coffee over it. It had to be dried, and last night at the party I made him stay after Grijpstra and I left."
The commissaris picked up the phone again. "Cardozo? Good morning, Cardozo, would you care to step into my room a minute?"
"No," Cardozo said, sitting on the edge of his chair. "Never. I wouldn't do that. I have never killed anything. I shot a man in the legs three years ago and I still have dreams about it. Bad dreams. I wouldn't kill an animal. And I like the sergeant."
De Gier looked up. "You do?" he asked in a tired voice. Cardozo didn't look at him.
"I am frightened of rats," de Gier said. "Blood upsets me, and rats too. A bloody rat is about the worst thing I can imagine. And there it was, right on my doormat. I only bought that doormat a few days ago. The old one was getting tatty. I can throw this one away too now."
"Yes," the commissaris called, answering a knock on the door.
"Morning, sir." Grijpstra closed the door carefully behind him and ambled into the room, waiting for the commissaris to ask him to sit down. The commissaris indicated a chair. Grijpstra didn't sit down, he fell into the chair. The chair creaked.
"Shit," Grijpstra said.
The commissaris looked up irritably.
"I beg your pardon," he asked sharply.
"Shit, sir," Grijpstra said, "all over my doorstep this morning. Dogshit. Somebody must have gone to a lot of trouble collecting dogshit, with a little spade I suppose, and a bucket. Very early this morning when nobody was about. It was heaped in front of my doorstep. I was in it up to my ankles before I knew what I was doing. They had even pushed it under the door but my corridor is very dark and I didn't notice it as I left the house. Whoever did that must hate my guts."
"De Gier had a bloody rat on his doorstep," the commissaris said. Grijpstra looked at de Gier who was smiling faintly.
"Shit?" de Gier asked.
"You think that's funny, don't you?" Grijpstra asked and half rose from his chair. "You're an idiot, de Gier. You are always laughing and rolling about with mirth when I step into it. Do you remember when the sea gulls shat all over me some months ago? You were laughing so much you nearly fell over. I have never laughed when you went into your tantrums because there was a drop of blood somewhere. Never!"
The commissaris got up and stood between them. "Now, now, gentlemen, let's not get more nervous than we are already. The day hasn't even started yet. Who do you think could have done this to you, Grijpstra? Who knows that a dog's droppings will upset you and, mind you, whoever it is has a reason to shake de Gier as well, for he had a similar occurrence this morning. It must be somebody who knows you both very well and who has a good reason to get even with you."
Grijpstra had turned around and was looking at Cardozo. Grijpstra's brows had sunk low and there was an angry glint in his otherwise quiet and harmless blue eyes.
"No," Cardozo said. "Not me, adjutant. I wouldn't be scraping the street to collect dogshit. This is not like me at all. I assure you." Cardozo was on his feet too, gesturing wildly.
"Right. It wasn't you, Cardozo,'' the commissaris said pleasantly. "Why don't you order some coffee for the adjutant and yourself. Use the phone. My coffee machine is out of order."
It took the commissaris twenty minutes of patient questioning before they connected blood, rat and dog droppings to Louis Zilver and the party the previous night. De Gier, who had been fairly drunk, had to force his memory before he recalled Zilver's questions in the corridor of Uncle Bert's house, and Grijpstra was only prepared to admit a similar conversation with Louis Zilver after de Gier had mentioned his incident.
"Yes," Grijpstra said reluctantly. "I was in my cups a bit. Shouldn't have been but I was. That jenever knocked me off straightaway. He must have gotten it from an illegal distillery somewhere, pure alcohol with a bit of a taste, nearly burned my guts out. And that young fellow seemed harmless. We were talking about the horror movie which was on the TV and about what scares people and I said that I can't bear shit. He laughed, the silly bastard laughed, and he said that it would be unlikely that they would ever show a shitfilmon TV."
"And then you said that that's all they show on the telly," de Gier said. De Gier was looking much better.
"How do you know? You weren't there when Zilver was talking to me."
"It's the obvious thing to say."
"Oh, so I only say the obvious, hey? You have exclusive rights to intellectual conversation?"
"That'll be enough of that," the commissaris said, and selected a cigar from the small tin on his desk. He bent down so that Grijpstra had to search his pockets for his lighter.
"Thank you, Grijpstra. So our idea to have a sniff at the street market paid off. I am glad you got yourselves invited to that party. Zilver must have underestimated your drunkenness last night. Obviously he thought you would have forgotten what you said to him. This is a direct link. We may as well try to follow it up."
"Not much to charge the man with, sir," Grijpstra said, "if we can ever prove it was he. Dirtying the public thoroughfare is a minor offense. We can't even arrest him if we do prove the charge. He must have done it in the early hours, after he went home from the party."
"He wanted to shake you," the commissaris said. "He knows you and de Gier are charged with the Rogge case, and poor Elizabeth's death as well. The two cases go together, of course. If he can shake the hounds the fox will get away."
"He must be the fox himself," de Gier said.
"Possibly," the commissaris said, "but not necessarily. Louis Zilver dislikes the police. He told me that his grandparents were taken from their house by the Dutch police, during the war. The police must have handed them over to the Germans and the Germans put them on transport to Germany and eventually killed them. But he blames us, the Amsterdam Municipal Police, and rightly so. If he can get at you and the adjutant, he repays some of the debt he thinks he has to his grandparents."