He rang off.
He telephoned Mrs. Verboom. Her mother answered.
"This is Rinus de Gier. Could I speak to your daughter please?"
"A moment," the other said. He heard her call, "Con-stanze."
"Hello, Constanze," he said in his smooth sexhunt voice. "This is Rinus de Gier. We met yesterday."
"How do you know my name?" she asked, surprised.
"The police know everything," de Gier said in his normal voice.
Constanze laughed, a very natural laugh.
"Grijpstra is wrong," de Gier thought. "The poor thing isn't connected with the case at all. She is the corpse's wife, that's all. However…"
"Are you phoning me as a detective, or as a man?"
De Gier picked up a little courage. The response was free, welcoming even.
"Well," he said, and hesitated, "as a man really. I thought you might be free this weekend and I am free too. I wanted to come and pick you up this afternoon. Perhaps we can go for a drive and have dinner in town, and so on."
"So on what?" Constanze asked.
"A beer after dinner, or a glass of wine somewhere."
"All right," Constanze said. "My parents are only interested in the child anyway. And they talk about Piet's death. I'd like to get away for a bit. Come and fetch me if you like. What time?"
"This afternoon? Two thirty?"
"No," Constanze said. "I have something to do this afternoon. A little shopping. Would you like to come around seven?"
"Seven o'clock," de Gier said.
"All right, Rinus, I'll be waiting for you," her voice had dropped. There was a hint of a promise in it. She rang off.
"Ha," de Gier said and looked at Oliver. Then he picked up the cat and rubbed its head against his face. "You wouldn't know," he said soothingly. "They cut it all out of you. But I had to ask them to do it. You would have gone mad in this place, jumping about and tearing the curtains and dribbling. You've seen me jump about sometimes, haven't you? You should be glad I had you treated."
He sang while he shaved and dressed.
Oliver whined, and rolled on the carpet.
"Shut your Siamese howler," de Gier said. "We consist of lust, you and I. Different sorts of lust. When one is satisfied the other rears its ugly snout. Let's eat."
They breakfasted together, on the balcony.
"Now watch it," de Gier told the cat. "I am going to leave the balcony door open. Try and stop yourself from falling off the flowerbox. I am going to the library to get all the books I can find on Papuans and then I'll come and read them. And I'll get us some food. So watch it."
He picked up the Mercedes at 6:30. The car was almost new, with an open roof. The tank had been filled.
"A car of the Investigation Bureau," de Gier thought, "but they don't investigate. They just follow people and snoop. And then they call us and we make the arres. Why didn't I apply to join them? I would have qualified. I could have spent my life in the best bars and the b°si nightclubs. And the best brothels. All at the state's expense. All for the good cause. And what do I do? I walk around and get flat feet."
But he was grateful, and guided the car carefully through the Jacob van Lennepstraat whore Constanze stayed with her parents. The Jacob van Lennepstraat is a long, narrow, lightless ditch. There are no trees in it. The scenery consists of crumbling brick walls and dented unwashed cars.
"It wasn't my sexy voice that made her say yes," he thought. "Nobody wants to spend any time here. Not in these stuffy small rooms, full of furniture and clammy air."
The mother asked him to come in for a minute. She laughed shyly, almost submissively. A very fat woman, with moist spots under her arms. Yvette ran into him in the corridor and remembered who he was. She gave him a little kiss and called him uncle. The mother pointed at a chair, he sat down and the child climbed onto his lap. The mother laughed again and complained about the hot weather. She spoke with a marked French accent.
"Meet my husband," she said and de Gier put the child down and got up stiffly. They shook hands. The father was fat as well and the hand he shook seemed swollen and a little rotten.
"I am on sick pay," the father said. "My nerves, you know. You work for the city as well, I hear."'
"Yes sir," de Gier said. "I am with the police."
"Nice work,"the father said, "better than mine. More exciting, I am sure. I work in the Land Registration Bureau. I put files away and when I have put them away I look for them again. And every time I show anyone a file because some builder or architect or prospective buyer wants to see what's what, the city earns six guilders and fifty cents. Of that I get about ten cents. I worked it out once. It must have got on my nerves. But I don't know how it got on nerves. What has it got to do with me? Do you know?"
De Gier withdrew into a polite silence.
"My daughter will be here soon. She is painting her face and fluffing her hair and fiddling about. All unnecessary work. She is a nice doll. Of course I shouldn't know, I am her father. But I think she is a nice doll, even when she flops about in the morning with curlers in her hair. She shouldn't have married that little mangy squirrel. But he is dead now. That's better."
"You didn't like Piet Verboom?" de Gier asked.
"Of course not," the father said, "nobody did. He didn't like himself. A slimy slicker first class. He never talked to me because he thought I was too stupid. And I never talked to him for I thought he was a bore. He talked about himself only. I also talk about myself; it limits the conversation after a while."
De Gier broke his polite silence and laughed. The father laughed too.
"That's nice," he said. "I can be amusing, in spite of my nerves. You want a cold beer?"
De Gier got his beer. Constanze brought it, on a tray. Two cold tins, two glasses. She poured the beer. The father studied de Gier over his glass and smiled. "You like-football?" he said.
"No, sir," de Gier said.
The father sat up suddenly, nearly spilling his beer. "You are serious?"
"Yes," de Gier said. "I am probably crazy but football bores me. I often had to watch it, as a young cop guarding the field. I saw some of the famous matches, Ajax against Spain, and Ajax against that other club, I forgot the name, but all I see is a lot of striped men chasing a little ball. It means nothing to me. It doesn't just bore me, it irritates me. I think it's a waste of energy."
"You hear that, wife?" the father shouted.
De Gier had to say it all over again. The father's face split open in a wide grin.
"Against that other club," the father repeated. "I forget its name now. Hahaha."
"You made him happy, sir," the mother said. "He thinks he is the only one in town who doesn't enjoy watching football and he worries about it."
"Yes, damn it," said the father, who was still sitting on the edge of his chair, "I am ashamed of it. It's like I am different from all the neighbors, and the chaps at work. And now you are just the same. Ha."
"What do you like?" de Gier asked.
The father pointed at the floor. De Gier saw a long row of gramophone records. He got up and looked through them. All modern jazz and mainly piano and trumpet.
The father was watching him unhappily. "You like that sort of music?" he asked.
De Gier felt a chill going down his spine. It amazed him. He had had it before, at moments of deep emotion. This fat puffy man might share his own spirit. He tried to control himself but his enthusiasm and bewilderment won.
"Sir," de Gier said, "sir, I really like that music. I have the same records as you have, not all of them maybe, but most of them. And I listen to them, once, twice a week. I put the cat on my lap and switch the lights off and open the balcony door when the weather permits, and light a cigar and I listen. For hours. And then it all stops, you know, it stops."