"And now he has blown the lot. What did he do with the money?"
"I wish I knew," de Gier said. 'Then we might also know if your husband was murdered and if so, why. But we can't find anything. Would you know perhaps if your husband ever dealt in drugs?"
"Hash?" Mrs. Verboom asked.
"Hash, heroin, cocaine, speed, pills, any drug at all." Mrs. Verboom shook her lovely head and allowed her cape to slide down from her shoulders. She wore a thin cotton blouse underneath, with the three top buttons undone. She bowed down a little. De Gier saw her breasts, first one, and then, after a charming twist, the other.
"Hmmpf, hmmpf," he said slowly.
"I beg your pardon?" Mrs. Verboom asked.
"No, nothing," de Gier said. "I said hmmpf hmmpf. I have been saying that a lot lately. No specific meaning. Maybe I work too much."
"May be the warm weather," Mrs. Verboom said and laughed. "Drugs you said. Perhaps he did. He had no morals, I know all about his lack of morals. But he wasn't very courageous and drugs is a risky business… I don't know. We did have hash here, a big tin full of hash. He must have bought it wholesale for there was quite a lot in it. But he never sold any as far as I know. We used to have parties with it, he called it concentration exercises, and he would play special music on his gramophone and we had to be quiet. I enjoyed those parties. Once we had some tomatoes on the table and they were very beautiful. It was the first time I saw what a tomato really is like. Or, rather, that's what I thought at the time. The next day it was just another tomato. Hash is very relaxing, you know."
"You still use it?" de Gier asked.
"No. I gave it up when I went to Paris. Nobody offered me any and I felt no need to start rushing around to see if somebody would give me a stickie. I never smoked much of it. Perhaps we had six parties in all. Anyway, I have to work for a living now. I live a very dull life."
"Why in Paris?" Grijpstra asked.
"My mother is French and we have relatives over there. French is my second language. When I left Piet I wanted to make a complete break."
"So your husband gave people the opportunity to take drugs. But did he ever sell any?" de Gier asked.
"I am not sure," Mrs. Verboom said. "We never sold stickies over the bar or in the restaurant. But perhaps he dealt in it in a big way. Some strange types used to come and visit him and he would receive them in his room and lock the door. Perhaps they were dealers."
"We didn't find the tin you mentioned," Grijpstra said.
"Perhaps somebody took it; van Meteren told me downstairs that somebody broke in during the night after Piet's death."
The detectives went on asking but Mis. Verboom began to repeat herself. She mainly talked about Piet. Grijpstra became very sleepy.
"That'll be all Mrs. Verboom," he said. "You must be tired. I am sure you would like to go to your parents." He knew, by now, that Piet had not been the most charming person in Amsterdam.
\\\\\ 7 /////
Saturday morning, nine o'clock.
De Gier was asleep.
The alarm had gone off, as always, at six-thirty. And de Gier had got up, groaning, and fixed himself coffee and drunk the coffee on his balcony, while he looked at the large brown lawn behind the apartment building, a very neat lawn, with roses in the middle. He had listened to the many thrushes, admired the seagulls and the lone crow, and frowned at the pigeons.
"Why don't you catch yourself a couple of pigeons?" he had asked Oliver who had come out on the balcony too. "Pigeons shit too much. Look."
One of his geranium plants had been hit and showed a patch of slimy acid excrement.
De Gier went inside, got a pair of scissors, and snipped at the plant.
He looked at the lawn again, now populated by a dachshund. The dachshund couldn't make up his mind where to sit down, the lawn was too big. Acres and acres of grass and just one small dachshund.
De Gier finished his cigarette, grinned at the dachshund, patted Oliver on the head, and got into bed again. He grunted with pleasure as he pulled the blanket over his shoulder. Another hour, two hours maybe. A long pleasant day.
He dreamt.
It was a dream he had known before.
Some kind of warship sails through the bend of the Herengracht, Amsterdam's most aristocratic canal. It looks a little like one of the police vessels used to patrol the capital's waterways, a flat, smooth, powerful boat, gray and low for it must be able to pass under the bridges.
But the ship isn't manned by the bluecoated Water Police. Its crew consists of a large number of small square men, armed with old-fashioned tommyguns, dating back to the days of Al Capone, short blunt weapons with round cartridge-drums, fastened to the barrel.
De Gier is on the bridge, looking down. This is the moment when the underworld will take over. In a minute the boat will moor and send patrols into the city. The first will make for the city hall and arrest the mayor and the aldermen and the second will shoot its way into Police Headquarters and grab the chief constable.
De Gier is all by himself, and unarmed.
But he isn't nervous, he knows his power, the power of a municipal criminal investigator in a democratically governed country.
He studies the enemy and notes that all the small square men have the same face, and that every face is watching him, slyly from under the rim of its bowler hat. He sees that all these small parts, who, together, form the enemy, are dressed in striped suits, model Grijpstra, and in gray ties, model chief inspector.
But this is very logical, de Gier thinks. The enemy is the perversion of official authority, so it will have to resemble official authority.
It's very early in the morning. The city is empty. The seventeenth-century gables frame its emptiness.
The ship is moving closer, now it's underneath de Gier.
He leans over the railing. He spits.
The white fluffy flake of spittle, moved by a weak breeze, floats down slowly and finally lands on a bowler hat. There is an explosion. The ship catches fire and begins to sink, the small square men jump overboard and drown. Only one bowler hat, afloat by itself, remains.
De Gier woke up. He sighed. All's well that ends well. He had had the dream before, it didn't end well that time. That time he got caught. He was tortured. And, worse, ridiculed. The small square men had made fun of him. He had been on his knees.
"I am improving," de Gier thought happily. "I can direct my dreams. A man should be able to direct his own dreams."
"Hello, Oliver," he said to the Siamese cat who was asleep on his legs, its wide head flattened comfortably, its mouth curved into a contented half grin.
Oliver squeaked sleepily.
"Don't squeak," de Gier said. "You are a cat, you aren't a mouse."
Oliver squeaked again.
"All right, you are a mouse."
He jumped out of bed, sweeping the blanket back and Oliver, suddenly folded into an untidy ball, flew against the wall and got mixed up with the sheets.
De Gier laughed. "You are a clumsy mouse."
Oliver liberated himself and rubbed his smooth body against de Gier's legs, purring.
De Gier was on his way to the kitchen when the telephone rang.
"Morning," Grijpstra said. "I am not waking you up, I hope."
"You didn't. I have been up since six o'clock, going through the files."
"Good fellow," Grijpstra said. "I am proud of you, you know that, don't you? Sit down, will you, relax."
De Gier sat down and lit a cigarette. "I am relaxed."
"Right," Grijpstra said. "Now listen. I have a nice little job for you."
"No," de Gier said. "No. I've got the day off."
"A policeman," Grijpstra said patiently, "never has the day off. Especially not when he is working on a homicide. And this job is nice, I am telling you. Do you remember that lovely Mrs. Verboom?"