"And what do you see?" asked de Gier.
"Yes," Grijpstra said and rubbed his face with a tired hand. "I don't know really. I don't see very much when I study them. But I don't trust them at all. These well-meaning people are no good either, I am sure of it."
De Gier had often thought about Grijpstra's three groups and the older he became and the more he experienced, the more he believed in Grijpstra's theory. But he left some room on the side. De Gier didn't like theories that seemed to be watertight. De Gier believed in a miraculous surrealist world and he didn't want to give up his faith, mainly because the existence of this miraculous world seemed to be confirmed to him, and quite regularly, by the inexplicable beauty that echoed, he thought, in the perception of the half-conscious dreams he was subject to. It was happening again, right now, while he walked past the Prinsengracht's water. A seagull kept itself suspended above the hardly moving surface of the gracht, seemingly effortless, by the merest flick of its spread wings. A gable silhouetted sharply against a dark gray rain cloud, an old woman fed the sparrows throwing an ever-changing shadow-pattern on the cobblestones. A miraculous world, de Gier thought. Very beautiful. Perhaps the world is no good, but I am here. I walk here and I am doing something and although it probably serves no purpose, it's interesting. Fascinating even.
It was warm in the street and he was glad when he saw the Haarlemmer Houttuinen and knew that the coolness of the large house was waiting for him. But before he entered he had seen the car parked on the sidewalk, in the same place as he had parked the police VW the night before, and a little later he recognized the detective who greeted him in the corridor, a detective from the Bureau Warmoesstraat.
"Now what?" he asked his colleague
"Breaking and entering," the colleague said and took him to me restaurant where van Meteren and the four helpers of the dead Piet sat quietly around a table.
"Hello," de Gier said to van Meteren. "Don't you have to work today? It's past eleven."
Van Meteren smiled. "You here again? No, I don't have to work. I took the day off because of special circumstances. I wanted to organize the removal of Piet's mother. But somebody broke in last night and I telephoned again."
"When was that?" de Gier asked.
"I don't know. I went to sleep after you both left. It must have been between one-thirty and seven-thirty this morning. Someone kicked in the little cellar's door and they went all through the restaurant and the shop. I don't think they went upstairs for I should have heard them."
"Anything missing?" de Gier asked.
The detective shrugged his shoulders. "Not much. The tape recorder that was supposed to have been here in the restaurant and the money box from the shop. According to the girls here it only contained small cash, they had given the notes to their boss. And the boss is supposed to have committed suicide yesterday, but you should know all about that."
De Gier looked at his colleague and thought that he knew nothing at all. A corpse and now breaking and entering. Marvelous.
"Did you make your report?" he asked.
"Sure. The fingerprint man was here as well but mere has been quite a crowd here they tell me, and you must have touched a lot of objects as well last night. I was on my way out when you came in."
De Gier shook his hand and the detective disappeared, grumbling about the lack of staff and the impossibility of catching anyone nowadays. An old detective, close to retirement.
"Marvelous marvelous," de Gier said irritably to van Meteren, "and I came to see if we had overlooked anything yesterday."
He realized that he was treating van Meteren as yet another colleague.
"Can we go now?" the girls asked.
De Gier nodded.
"Where do you want to go?"
"Don't worry," Johan said. "We'll stay in town. Eduard and I found a houseboat at the Binnenkant, opposite number 10. The ship is called The Good Hope. She belongs to my brother but he is on his way to India and he left me the key."
De Gier noted the address.
"And what are you going to do?" he asked the girls.
"I am going with the boys," the fat girl called Annetje answered and moved closer to Johan. De Gier had to suppress an expression of horror, he didn't mind fat girls but if they were wearing dresses with flower patterns… He was sure that she was barefoot, and that her feet would be dirty. He dropped his pack of cigarettes and bent down to pick it up. Her feet were dirty.
"And you?" he asked the beautiful girl.
Therese stared.
De Gier repeated his question.
Therese began to cry.
"There there," van Meteren said and moved over so that he sat next to her.
"She is pregnant," he said to de Gier, "and she doesn't know where to go."
"It's all right," de Gier said to the girl. He had become interested and watched her closely. A lovely girl, long black hair, green cat's eyes, a tall rather thin girl but with a good full bosom. He dropped his matchbox. Her legs were long and well shaped and she wore sandals, and her feet were clean.
"Can't she stay here for the time being?" he asked van Meteren.
"I don't know. The place is closed. I sent a telegram to Piet's wife. Paris isn't far, she can be here any minute now. She used to be a director of the Society, together with Piet, and now she would be the only one in charge, I suppose. I never saw the Society's articles, perhaps the accountant can be of help. The house will probably be sold."
"But she could stay for the time being," de Gier insisted.
"I don't want to stay," Theiese said. She had stopped crying. "It's the house of a corpse. And now they have broken in as well. I'll go to my mother."
She gave an address in Rotterdam and de Gier wrote it down in his notebook. Johan, Eduard and Annetje said goodbye. Their bags were packed and had been stacked in the corridor, very neatly. De Gier touched Annetje's hand. Van Meteren got up as well.
"I'll see you later," de Gier said to van Meteren. "I'd like to have a few words with Th6rese."
When they were alone he offered a cigarette and lit it for her. She sucked on the Gauloise and began to cough. "Put it out," de Gier said, "it doesn't help. I wanted to ask you who caused your pregnancy."
"Piet," the girl said.
"Is that why his wife left?"
She shook her head. "His wife was used to it. Piet tried to make us all and sometimes he was lucky. I kept away from him at first but he insisted and it was hard to refuse him all the time. I lived here, and he could be rather charming at times."
"Was he really nice?" de Gier asked.
The girl stared.
"Was he?"
She began to cry again. "No. He was a bastard. With his insane health ideas. Why did I have to get involved in all this? Now I need an abortion if it isn't too late. And I don't want his child."
De Gier let her cry. Van Meteren showed himself in the open door but de Gier made a gesture and he disappeared.
"Did you have any fights with him?"
The girl wasn't listening. De Gier got up and held her by the shoulders but it complicated the situation for she allowed her body to drop into his arms.
"Hey," de Gier said and put her back, carefully, onto her chair. He repeated the question.
She nodded.
"Did you have a fight with him yesterday?"
She nodded again.
"In his room?"
"Yes," the girl said. "I shouted at him but he didn't answer. All he said was that I could leave if I didn't like it here, and that I was over twenty-one, and that he was married already. I should have been more careful. After that he shut up. I called him names. It has happened before. 'Karma,' he said. Everybody has to accept the consequences of his own actions. Karma is very useful. It teaches you things. Haha."