"And what do you do for a living?"
"I am on the force," van Meteren said, and laughed when he saw surprise glide over the faces of his investigators. He had a nice laugh, showing strong, even, very white teeth under the small pointed mustache and the flat wide nose.
"Don't let it upset you," he said. "I won't arrest you. I am a traffic warden. All I can do is give you a ticket for parking your car on the sidewalk and you won't have to pay the fine anyway."
'Traffic warden?" Grijpstra asked.
Van Meteren nodded. "I joined the department five years ago. In New Guinea I was a real policeman, constable first class because I could read and write and my name was Dutch. I commanded thirty men. Constable first class is a high rank even there. But when I came out here they told me I was too old for active duty. I was thirty years old. They gave me a job as a clerk in one of their bureaus in The Hague. I kept on asking to be allowed to join the force and eventually they made me a traffic warden and assigned me to street duty. I have two stripes now and I am armed with a rubber truncheon. Every six months I apply for a transfer to the real police but they keep on finding reasons to refuse me."
"A traffic warden is a real policeman too," Grijpstra said.
Van Meteren shrugged his shoulders and looked at the wall.
"What exacdy was your job in the New Guinea police?" de Gier asked.
"Field duty. During the last few years I served with the Birdhead Corps, in the South West. We watched the coast and caught Indonesian commandos and paratroopers sneaking in by boat or being dropped. We caught hundreds of them."
De Gier looked at the large linen map of New Guinea that had been pinned on the wall. The map looked worn and had broken on the folds. There were two other maps on the wall, a map of Holland and another of the Usselmeer, Holland's small inland sea, now transformed into a large lake by the thirty-five kilometer dyke that stops the rollers of the North Sea. "Could I see your traffic warden's identification?"
The little document looked very neat. Van Meteren showed his New Guinea identification as well, yellow at the corners and spotted by sweat, its plastic cover torn right through.
Both Grijpstra and de Gier studied the documents carefully. A Dutch constable first class from the other side of the world. A memento of the past. They looked at the imprint of the rubber stamp and the signature of an inspector-general. They spent some time on the photograph. Van Meteren was shown in uniform, the metal strips had glinted in the light of the photographer's flashbulb. A strong young face, proud of his rank and his responsibility and of his Corps, the Corps State Police of Dutch New Guinea, part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
"Well, colleague," Grijpstra said, "and what do you think? Did anyone help Piet when he was being hung?"
Van Meteren's eyes were sad when he replied.
"It is possible. He may have fallen. I studied the room and I have thought about what I saw but it is always dangerous to come to a conclusion. Piet may have knocked his head against something. And there may have been a fight, it wouldn't be unlikely because he had a very short temper. His state of mind wasn't good, not lately anyway. His wife and child have left him and refuse to return. He has been depressed and he did mention the possibility of suicide. Man is free and has the right to take his own life, I have heard him say it at least three times. He knew he wasn't very well liked but he couldn't make himself likable. Perhaps someone came to see him, perhaps there was an argument, perhaps someone hit him and perhaps Piet was so upset that he hung himself after whoever it was left him."
"Who would have argued with him?" de Gier asked. "You?"
"No," van Meteren said. "I don't argue with anyone. Whenever Piet had one of his moods I avoided him. This is a very big house, there is always another room."
"Were you friendly with Piet?"
"Yes, but I wasn't his friend. I don't believe in friendship. Friendship is a feeling of the moment. Moments pass. I have neither friends nor enemies. The people around me are the people around me, I accept them."
"What are you doing in this house?" de Gier asked.
Van Meteren laughed. "Nothing. I live here. Piet invited me in. I was living in a small room in a boarding house. A cheap place although the rent was high. In a narrow street on the fourth floor, very little light and you can breathe the fumes of the street. The nearest tree was a mile away. I spent most of my free time walking around and had my meals at Chinese restaurants, as often as I could afford to. If I couldn't eat in a restaurant I would have a sandwich in a park. This place has a restaurant and I tried to have a meal here but they wanted me to become a member. I had to go to Piet's office and pay him twenty-five guilders and fill in a form. That's how we met. He seemed to like me straightaway and offered me a room, two hundred guilders a month including as many meals as I wanted."
"That's very cheap," de Gier said.
"Very," van Meteren agreed. "But he may have had a reason. Perhaps he wanted a policeman in the house. I am not on the regular force but I do have a uniform and I am properly trained. There's a bar in the place, clients may be difficult at times."
"Did he ever make use of your services?"
"Once or twice," van Meieren said. "I have taken guests into the streets but I didn't hurt anybody. The grips we were taught are either defensive or merely meant to transport a suspect without causing him any undue pain."
Grijpstra smiled, he remembered the textbook phrase.
"Was Piet a homosexual?" de Gier asked.
It was van Meteren's turn to smile.
"You are a real policeman," he said, "always assume the lowest motive and you are usually right. But perhaps you are wrong this time. Piet wasn't a homo. I have thought of it for he often visited me in my room, he was interested in my collection of stones and shells and wanted me to tell him stories about New Guinea. He wanted to know what Papuans eat and what our religion is and whether we used any herbs or drugs and if we danced. But he never bothered me. Whenever he felt that I wanted to be alone he would leave at once. No, Piet liked women even if they caused him trouble."
"Did they?" de Gier asked.
"Always. He wanted to own them, to dominate them."
"I thought women liked to be dominated," de Gier said.
"Yes. But not by Piet. He had little charm and tried to make them ridiculous, especially when he had an audience. So the women became bitter and attacked him and hurt him in his pride. He had a lot of pride. And in the end they would leave him."
"You don't make him sound a very nice person," de Gier said.
Van Meteren shook his head. "No no. He wasn't all that bad. He meant well."
"No friend, no enemy," de Gier said.
"Yes," van Meteren said. "I try to be detached, to keep my distance. People are the way they are; it's hard to try to change them."
"And that's the reason you drink tea," Grijpstra said.
Van Meteren thought for a while. "I do other things as well."
"We are getting nowhere," Grijpstra thought, and asked for more tea. Van Meteren filled his cup, Grijpstra took a sip, breathed deeply and immersed himself again in the opaque sticky substance of an unexplained death of an Amsterdam citizen.
"And this Hindist business, what does it mean?"
Van Meteren felt through his pockets and found a pack of cigarettes. It contained one cigarette only. He offered it to Grijpstra.
"Grijpstra shook his head. "It is your last."
"Never mind," van Meteren said. "I have some more somewhere, and if not I can get some downstairs in the shop, I have a key."
"Hindism," de Gier said.
"Yes," van Meteren said. "Hindism. I have been curious too, but I have never quite understood what Piet meant by it. Something between Hinduism and Buddhism perhaps. Piet's own homemade religion. It's quite intricate and bound up with right eating and tea and meditation. The room next door is a temple. There are cushions on the floor and twice a week people sit still in it for an hour or so. Piet is, or was, the priest and had his own special cushion, richly embroidered. He sat closest to the altar. Perhaps he really thought of himself as a prophet, a teacher who had something to show to the new people, the young offbeat types of today. But he was losing interest and he was running short of disciples. Hardly anyone showed up for the meditations and he had to put up with a lot of criticism from the people who work here. Nobody stayed long. The ones you have met, the girls and Johan, and Eduard, whom you'll probably meet later, are all newcomers, they haven't been here for longer than six months at the most and I think they only stay because they can't think of another place they want to go. They'll leave as soon as something turns up. Piet wanted to create an oasis of peace, a quiet place where people can get strength and where they can forget politics and money-making. Find their souls, their real selves. He had invented a special routine, the whole house has been redesigned for that purpose. The bar is an entry, people go easily into a bar. But finally they'll land up in the meditation temple, at least that was the general idea. The bar-keeper would have to listen to the guests and direct them, tactfully and gradually to the higher regions, the restaurant with its clean food and pure fruit and vegetable juices, and the temple with its spiritual air. And Piet would be the divinity in the background, working through others and guiding them without showing himself much. Perhaps he really thought that way in the beginning but he must have lost faith and found himself weak. The arguments must have hurt him and his own lack of strength. I have listened to a long lecture he delivered once, the subject was that one should never eat meat. But afterwards he sneaked out and I saw him buying some hot sausages off the street stall around the corner."