He woke up and, reluctantly, looked at his watch. Five minutes past eight.
"Yes," he said to Oliver and put the Siamese cat on the floor where it began to grumble and whine.
"Wait," he said and walked to the small bathroom, looking at his plants in passing.
If it is true that a house is a projection of the occupant's spirit then de Gier's spirit was not quite ordinary. He had furnished the little two-roomed apartment with a bed, plants, and bookshelves. No table, no chairs, no TV. A detachable shelf, screwed to the wall above the bed, served as a table if he wanted to write, which wasn't often. He ate in the kitchen, not much larger than an old-fashioned cupboard.
"Mmm," he said, stopping near the geranium, which had started as a seed no more than a few weeks ago and "Mmm," he said again when he admired his creeper, hanging down from a bookshelf.
"She grows," he remarked to Oliver, who wasn't interested, and began to splash cold water all over his chest and arms and poured hot water and lathered his face.
Oliver continued to grumble.
"We'll have breakfast together," de Gier said. "Go to the balcony and irritate the birds while I finish shaving."
He moved the protesting cat with his foot and opened the balcony door. A seagull swooped low, expecting to be fed, and Oliver chattered with fury.
A few minutes later the cat and the detective ate, chopped heart and scrambled eggs. Then they drank, water and coffee. Then de Gier went out to catch his bus, an hour late, and the cat stretched into the still warm blankets of the unmade bed, imitating his master's trick of being asleep without dozing off altogether.
"You are late," said Grijpstra.
De Gier smiled, remembering the pretty dark-haired girl he had been sitting next to in the bus.
"I am often late," he said.
"That's true," Grijpstra agreed. "Here, read this, the doctor's report."
They were in their large gray room of Headquarters. Grijpstra relaxed into a plastic chair and watched his colleague reading. Grijpstra smiled. He was content. His wife had been asleep when he came home at 2:30 in the morning. She was still asleep when he left. He had breakfasted by himself, helping himself to more toast and more eggs without any contradiction or argument. And, alone in the detectives' room, he had watered the rubber plant and played drums on the set that, in a so far unexplained manner, had arrived in his and de Gier's office about a year earlier. Found perhaps, or confiscated. Put there for a purpose that had been conveniently forgotten. Grijpstra had wanted to be a drummer when he was still a young man with a sense of adventure, and he I id some talent. He often came early, to hit the three drums and clash the cymbals. Very softly of course, which, in drumming, is the finer art. He had, during those many early mornings, specialized in the "rustle," the sweeping of the soft forklike instruments (which had come with the set of drums) on the stretched skin of the two smaller drums. Tsss, tsss and then BENG, but softly. And then a roll, a small roll, exciting because of its strict limitation. While de Gier read Grijpstra grabbed the sticks and sounded the small roll.
"Good," de Gier said, looking up.
"What's good?" Grijpstra asked.
"That roll. And this report too. So he had taken one of his mother's pills. Palfium, wasn't it? A trace of an opiate in the stomach. And the times fit. He must have died around seven P.M. and we arrived at eight."
The telephone rang.
"Yes, sir," Grijpstra said and pointed at the ceiling with a thick index finger. De Gier got up obediently. Within half a minute they were between the cactuses of the chief inspector.
"And?" the chief inspector asked.
Grijpstra told his story.
"And?" the chief inspector asked again.
Grijpstra said nothing.
The chief inspector got up and paced up and down. The detectives stared, at nothing in particular.
The chief inspector stopped in front of a cactus that was nearly five feet high, a stiff giant noodle, pimply and dotted with sharp cruel hooks. He watched the plant with concentration. De Gier grinned. He had seen the chief inspector measuring the monstrosity, using a tightly wound measuring tape in a metal container, which could be released and sprung by pressing a button and which he carried in his pocket. De Gier knew that he carried the measuring tape at all times, for the pocket of his tailor-made expensive suit bulged. For years de Gier had suspected him of carrying a mini-pistol until he had seen the tape-measure one day when the door of his office had been open and its occupant had been indulging in his secret pastime. De Gier was sure that the chief inspector was sorely tempted at this very moment to produce the tape and measure the cactus, which should have grown another millimeter or so since the previous day.
The chief inspector turned on his heels and faced the detectives.
"A nut," he said. "A crazy nut who wants to improve the world. He goes to a solicitor and registers a society. To improve the environment. A religious society, it can't be less, and containing a religion that he has created himself, or combined from a lot of ill-digested rubbish he has read or heard about. He buys an old rackety house at the Haarlemmer Houttuinen, fixes it up a little and whitewashes all its walls. He buys a second-hand imitation of an Asiatic statue and puts it in the hall, lights an incense stick and sells health food. Unwashed tomatoes and grains. The kind that sticks in your throat. A rat couldn't digest it. And carrot juice."
He interrogated the detectives with his eyes. Both nodded.
It was clear that the chief inspector had no liking for carrot juice. They knew what he liked. He liked Dutch gin, and shrimp cocktails, snails and peppersteak. Pineapple with whipped cream. And cognac.
"There's a bar as well," Grijpstra said.
The chief inspector looked surprised.
"A what?"
"A bar," repeated Grijpstra, "downstairs, as you go in, on the right, a bar where they sell gin and beer."
"Good idea," the chief inspector said. "With a glass of jenever you can get through to the other nuts. And when you have weakened their defenses you can make them eat unpeeled rice."
He thought.
"All right," he said, "but there is no base to the thing. It will attract the odd misfits who will come to join the faith, eager to penetrate the emptiness of purity above. Valhalla on earth. Or Nirvana. Or whatever it is called. What the great man does is new and so he is admired. The society is a success. He is making some money. Before you get into his temple you have to fork out twenty-five guilders, because the joint is 'members only.' True?"
Grijpstra nodded.
"And later, if you pass the test, you are allowed upstairs. You can enter the meditation room. Have you been there?"
"Yes, sir," de Gier said. "A large empty room with low seats of scraped pine topped with foamrubber cushions. And an altar. And a special higher seat with a cushion with an embroidered cover."
"Sure," the chief inspector said, "for the chief nut. And candles of course. And there they sit, legs crossed. A row of holy men. Piet is the high priest, the illuminated sage. I have read a little about it. There are various degrees apparently, first degree of the silence, second degree of the silence and so on. The more silence, the deeper the whatever. Perhaps they were wearing funny robes. Did you see any funny robes?"
"No, sir," Grijpstra said.
"Probably hidden in a cupboard."
The chief inspector thought.
"And after a while the whole thing falls to pieces. The sage becomes transparent and you can see through him. He has come to the end of his new value. At first he blames the others, which is usual human procedure, but finally he grasps that he, himself, is the fool. A crazy man. And, worse, a silly crazy man. So he takes one of his mother's pills, falls over, stays on the floor for a bit but manages to get up and finish the job. And when you came he was dangling from a deal beam that had been created for a nobler purpose, namely to support a merchant's ceiling."