"Two-sixteen," de Gier said.
"I'm listening," a young female voice said.
"Amstel Dike, maybe three kilometers south of the city line, an abandoned truck with a cargo of what looks like sheets of tarpaper, stuck in the soft shoulder. I'll read you the license number. Looks like the truck is ready to slide into the moat. Nobody around the vehicle. Please alert the local police."
"Can we go again?" de Gier asked when the message had been repeated and acknowledged.
Grijpstra nodded. "Find some ducks."
The Volkswagen was still on the country road and had begun to turn onto the dike when the Daimler, parked just behind a curve, started and approached the Volkswagen at speed, coming from the left. De Gier, knowing he had the right-of-way, accelerated. The Daimler accelerated too. Grijpstra shouted. The Volkswagen hit the Daimler broadside and began to crumple. Grijpstra's head shot forward and broke the windshield. The steering wheel pressed hard into de Gier's chest. The heavy Daimler, carried by the Volkswagen's momentum, steered to the left but managed to shake the little car off. The Volkswagen hobbled on, crossed the dike, nosed into the opposite shoulder, and was held by a poplar. Grijpstra's head snapped back. The skin of his forehead was sliced in three places and began to fold over.
I'm looking into Grijpstra's head, de Gier thought. How revealing to be able to look into another man's head. He reached into his pocket to find a handkerchief that might serve as a bandage. He leaned over, trying his other pocket.
The door on the sergeant's side opened and he fell out of the car. He fell through the grass growing at the side of the road, into a steep tunnel with living walls. The walls consisted of lizards, embracing each other. As he kept falling, or floating, he saw the lizards let go of each other and wave cheerfully at him. They stuttered amusing bits of wisdom that he instantaneously and fully understood and immediately forgot. The diminutive reptiles sang, with sirenlike voices. Blue lights revolved in their bright eyes. They suddenly grew much larger but only two were left, dressed in white coats, like grocers' assistants; they picked him up and carried him into a large biscuit tin. One sat next to de Gier, a kindly lizard hiding behind a black beard that, after the biscuit tin had begun to move and finally stopped again, must have been lost somehow, but the black color remained, although the lizard now seemed to be female. Her voice was remarkable, and she used it in a jazz song that de Gier defined as mathematically correct. The biscuit tin was lifted off his prostrate body but he kept moving, through a corridor. De Gier wanted to tell the lizards to please stop changing all the time; he appreciated the way in which they tried to keep him amused, but he had never cared much for nurses.
So the lizard was a real nurse. De Gier accepted reality again, with some misgivings, and inquired where Grijpstra might be.
"In the other bed," the black nurse said. "Don't sit up now. Your ribs are broken."
"Grijpstra?" de Gier asked.
"Now remember this good," Grijpstra said. "There was a woman at the side of the river, with a hairbun on her fat face. I'll be forgetting that hairbun in a minute. The bun called the ambulance. And there were two state cops, don't forget the cops either. Their uniforms are different, but they're still cops. And there was only one hairy type in the Daimler, the green Daimler, you got that?"
"What about the lizards?" de Gier asked.
Grijpstra didn't react.
"Lizards," de Gier said.
"I think they were more like cops," Grijpstra said. "Lizards have no hairbuns on their fat faces either. I don't think lizards have hair at all. Where are you? On the field at dawn again? There weren't any knights, either."
"Right," de Gier said. "The black knight. How could I forget? He came in early, dealing the first Wow. That's what they do, black knights. Sneaky assholes."
"You didn't have the right-of-way," Grijpstra said.
"No?" de Gier asked. "No? Any vehicle coming from the right has the right-of-way. I passed my sergeant's exam. That was one of the lead questions. I was leading, Adjutant."
Two State Police officers came into the room, talking softly, for the nurse held a long, slender black finger in front of her sensuous pink lips. "You didn't have the right-of-way," the officers told de Gier. "That side road was marked, on the tarmac. A white line. White letters. Stop. That's what the letters said."
"Never saw that," de Gier said. "And neither did you. You were in the tunnel, pretending to be lizards. I did see what you were doing there. Embracing on work time. Okay. I won't report that."
"No," the officers said. "But we will report that you crossed lines and letters and caused a bad accident."
"Okay," de Gier said. "Crawl into some pimp's mouth so that he can't beat up that nice old lady anymore. What is it to me? This is naptime anyway."
The nurse brought breakfast.
"That was quick," de Gier said. "I was just sliding off into my nap. Would you mind switching off the sun?"
"You were talking and snoring all night," Grijpstra said. "No wonder Constable Jane doesn't want a steady relationship with the likes of you."
"Let her marry the likes," de Gier said. "I got some knighting to do."
The nurse closed the curtains.
"Is your head closed up again?" de Gier asked. "I looked into it yesterday. You got a porterhouse steak in your head."
"They pushed it back," Grijpstra said. "Are you in pain?"
"Only when I breathe," de Gier said.
The nurse fed him his breakfast. She was still black. She also still had a mathematical jazz voice. She was humming a breakfast song. De Gier liked the melody but the words were kind of silly, as they often are in music. The lizards shuffled through his chest, in tunnels, but they didn't seem to like the tunnels, for they kept digging new ones.
"Ouch," de Gier said.
"I'll inject some painkiller," the nurse sang. "Won't hurt at all. Here. Hah."
De Gier floated off, on waves of pain.
\\\\\ 16 /////
"There you are," Chief Inspector Halba shouted when he saw Cardozo bicycling out of the hospital's yard. "Come here."
"Yes?" Cardozo said, putting a foot on the ground.
"Where have you been, Constable? Several notes were placed on your desk, ordering you to report to my office."
"Haven't seen my desk for a while," Cardozo said.
"So where were you? You know that the commissaris has been temporarily relieved of his duties and that I'm in charge of the brigade?"
"You?" Cardozo asked, drying his face with his handkerchief and huddling further down in his threadbare raincoat. "Terrible weather, don't you think? Why you?"
"Why not me, Constable?"
Cardozo shrugged. "Oh, well, it's logical, perhaps, with the way things are going. I'm not on duty, I don't have to report anywhere."
Halba gaped.
"Holidays," Cardozo said. "I had a lot of overtime saved up, and this is my brother's bicycle-the one you had issued to me fell apart. I left it with the other garbage in the Headquarters yard. 'Bye now."
"Wait!" Halba shouted.
"Yes?" Cardozo put his foot on the ground again.
"Until when are you on holiday?"
"Until our case is cracked," Cardozo said. "And you with it. I don't work under you."
"Constable," Halba said slowly, "I don't accept your insolence. I'll be applying for your transfer to the Traffic Department."
Cardozo shook raindrops off his unruly hair. "No, I'll resign first. My uncle Ezra wants me to take over his market stall."
Cardozo pedaled off. A Citroen drew up next to Halba's BMW. The commissaris got out. "Ah. Morning, Chief Inspector. How're my men doing?"