Detective-Constable Simon Cardozo, a curly-haired young man in a rumpled corduroy suit, brought the fax in and, when he was unable to attract attention, jumped up and down while he read its text loudly.
He shouted the word "GOLF."
Grijpstra had been practicing on a set of drums, which, for years, had been kept in his office, as Lost amp;Found was desperately short of space and had no idea where the set had come from. De Gier provided background on his dented mini trumpet. They were trying out a composition by the Dutch group Chazz called Water- straat Blue, with a young black student detective pecking out the melody on a small Yamaha keyboard, confiscated by Cardozo from an unmusical street musician using too powerful amplification. Cardozo, it turned out soon enough, could not learn to play the instrument either.
"Golf?" Adjutant Grijpstra asked after he had studied the commissaris's note. "Are we to believe that Termeer was knocked down, maybe even killed by a golf ball, in a public park, for God's sake?" He studied the commissaris's note again. "And what, please, is lacrosse?"
Cardozo knew. He had seen the game played on TV. Early Native Americans-using long-handled racketlike implements, "crosses," to hit a hard little deerskin ball- considered lacrosse as combat training. "A rough sport," Cardozo said, "with thousands of players on each side, with goals miles apart." Players got wounded, even killed. The white man changed the rules, making the game soft, with only twelve players on each side and penalties for "unnecessary roughness." But it was still a bruising sport.
"The ball," Cardozo said, "is now hard rubber."
"And it could have knocked down our man," Grijpstra said. "Oh dear."
"And what are we to do?" de Gier asked.
The commissaris's note said that they were to ask the chief-constable, who played golf, to locate an expert, and to consult with same.
Grijpstra and de Gier were received by the owner of the Crailo Golf Club, some thirty miles out of Amsterdam. Balder Gudde, former golf champion, dressed in a sky blue suit, could have modeled for a semitransparent figure in a Magritte painting.
"A good day to you," Grijpstra said, pocketing his police identification, which Baldert tried to study while he held the plastic-laminated card upside down. "Just a few questions if you please. Merely routine. My colleague and I are interested in a possible deadly impact caused by a golf ball."
"At this golf club?" Baldert asked nervously.
"Anywhere," Grijpstra said.
"Not specifically here?" Baldert asked. "No. Could have been here, though. Right? In fact, you do mean here." He stepped back, sideways, forward, sideways. "Out with it, Detective, are you treating me as a suspect?"
"As an expert," Grijpstra said. "This isn't our jurisdiction, sir."
From Baldert's babbling the detectives gradually understood that they were accused of looking into the death of Baron Hilger van Hopper at the Crailo Golf Club. The baron had been a star member of Baldert's establishment. He 'wasn't anymore because he had passed away, just a few weeks ago. Baldert winked, reminding the detectives jokingly-as if they didn't know all about the dead baron-that the baron had died at his own so-called wedding party.
"You don't say," Grijpstra said.
Baldert kept winking.
De Gier thought he would humor the golfer, who might suffer from a disorder. "What did the baron die of, sir?"
Baldert shrugged. Then he mimed swinging a golf club.
"Overextended himself?" Baldert asked Grijpstra. "Physical shock? A golf ball whizzing by too close for comfort?" He patted Grijpstra's arm. "But you know all that, Detective. I told the lieutenant. Want to go through all that again?"
Grijpstra checked his watch. Nellie was cooking mussel soup that evening. He liked mussel soup, especially when it was made Nellie's way, with mustard and shallots. De Gier checked his watch too. A musical group from Papua New Guinea was to perform that night at Amsterdam's Tropical Museum. Spectacular cassowary-bone-rattle percussion was their forte. The leaflet said that listeners had been known to enjoy remarkable insights.
"As you know," Baldert said in his unlikely falsetto, while waddling ahead, flapping his arms as he led the way across a field, "as you must have been told by the Rijkspolitie lieutenant, Detectives, the baron died in the pavilion over there."
"What we wanted to ask you…," Grijpstra said.
"I was practicing at the time," Baldert said. "I was a bit bored. We had over two hundred guests but they were watching plastic ducks. Way over around the pond there. A race by windup ducks. The guests were betting money. I was over there, out of sight of the guests. I may have to arrange them, but duck races bore me. The baron was too drunk and too stoned to leave the pavilion. He usually was. Maybe I had been drinking some. So I could have directed my drive toward the pavilion. Even if I did, the ball missed the baron."
Grijpstra put a heavy hand on Baldert's shoulder. "Could a golf ball driven by an expert golf player have killed this baron?"
"It didn't." Baldert's eyes bulged. "The autopsy proved that."
De Gier strolled along, his tall body at ease, but the tips of his huge mustache quivered. He kept his voice down. "But the ball you hit could have killed your friend?"
"Extreme wear and tear killed the baron," Baldert said. "Isn't that what the autopsy came up with? Heart? A seventy-year-old man who indulged continuously? The baron liked to dip his Cubans into a double jenever and suck the alcohol through the tobacco. His liver was bad. He was coked up too. He had sinus trouble. He had been overeating at the party. And the twins, those active fellows, his 'Javanese princes,' as he called them…"
"Twins?"
"Double gay mock marriage," Baldert said. "That's why we had the party."
De Gier nodded as if it all made perfect sense. "And you hit that tee shot. Did anyone see you?"
Baldert, leading the way back to his office, insisted, "It didn't strike the baron."
"But if it had hit him," de Gier asked, "in the chest, for instance?"
Baldert sweated.
"Yes, Baldert?"
"Yes." The club manager was almost crying.
"That's what we are here for," Grijpstra said. "We are investigating whether a golf ball can kill a human being. So a drive would do it." He pointed. "The baron was in the pavilion. You said you were over there-at what, a hundred yards' distance? Your ball would have had enough force, you think?"
Baldert nodded. "But it missed him. Maybe it was close, whizzed by the baron, so to speak. Maybe it missed him by just a few inches."
"So much for a drive," Grijpstra said. "How about another type of shot? Like up"-the adjutant pointed at a cloud-"then down."
"Like with a mortar," de Gier said. "A howitzer."
"You mean a chip," Baldert said, "or an approach shot."
Grijpstra nodded good-humoredly. "The names don't much matter."
"No velocity that way," Baldert said. "It would have to be a drive."
"And what kind of distance would you need for a killing shot?" de Gier asked.
"Would! need?"
"Would one need," de Gier said, swinging an imaginary golf club himself.
Baldert was getting nervous again. "You just said it. Within a hundred yards maybe. But I was only taking a practice swing. I didn't know there was a ball on the ground. No idea how it got there."
They had reached Baldert's office. Baldert kept stretching out his hands towards de Gier, while he talked about the dead baron, who, he claimed, wasn't merely a financial backer. Baron Hilger van Hopper was Baldert Gudde's good friend. He showed them a large photograph, silver framed. The baron, an aristocratic figure in a gold-braided uniform, wearing a tell bearskin hat, was on a horse, held by young Baldert. Baldert was a hussar too, with a corporal's double chevron on the sleeve of his tunic.