"De Gier was telling me about the case," the commissaris said. "Yesterday, while eating sushi. He was getting ill again, an association with stewed eel."
Grijpstra laughed.
"De Gier thinks," the commissaris said, "that this is one of those cases where the alleged culprit seems unclear about his own guilt. To have sinned or not to have sinned, that is the question." He laughed. "How can we help?"
"How can we help ourselves to become ridiculous?" Grijpstra asked. "Baldert needs our help so that he can have his day in court. The defense asks the judge what the prosecution is talking about. The judge asks us. We don't know either. Baldert goes free, clears his conscience at the law's expense. Once again we look foolish."
"Well put," the commissaris said. "You have time to talk, Adjutant? Nellie isn't waiting with supper?"
"Nellie and I argued," Grijpstra said. "As I was wrong, again, I'm punishing myself by staying in empty cold rooms partly illuminated by a dim bulb dangling from a peeling ceiling."
"I thought you and de Gier," the commissaris said, "recendy painted that ceiling."
"It's part of a poem, sir, that a Turk and I made up at a tram stop."
The commissaris was sorry to hear that Grijpstra and the Turk were depressed. He came to the point. While Grijpstra put in hmm's and ha's the commissaris argued that point. The point was that Baldert's confusion was more likely to happen in regal territories, like, for instance, The Kingdom of the Netherlands, than in an unroyal democracy like the one that the commissaris happened to be in right now. Baldert felt he had more hope if he could find royalty to judge him. What is a queen, the commis-saris asked rhetorically. The queen, if not divine herself, is God's representative in the Low Countries. The mystique of the crown, Grijpstra," the commissaris declaimed. "Forefathers like our statesman Thorbecke deliberately built this bridge to beyond into our judicial system."
Grijpstra's "Hmm" showed interest.
"Our judgmental language is proof," the commissaris said. "Under our set of rules offenders can be judged to be criminally insane and referred to a mental institution 'at the queen's pleasure.' That sort of thing, Adjutant. 'At the queen's pleasure' sounds a whole lot better than 'for an indefinite period' or even, as I read in the paper here, 'for the duration.' Insert a royal person into your rules-a queen, a divine mother-and immediately there is a feeling of warmth, of divine love. It makes us look better too. As policemen we are the queen's servants. A man like Baldert wants us to lift him into a higher sphere where things finally make sense, where there is absolute good and bad, and a queen-appointed judge to tell him the difference. Baldert requires us to serve as angels." The commissaris coughed. "It would be harder to do that here."
Grijpstra professed curiosity. "Why?"
"Why, Adjutant? Because here The People judge the people."
"My God," Grijpstra said, sounding shocked.
"See?" the commissaris said. "Even you, a cynic, are appalled by such level-mindedness. Now then, Adjutant, where I really want to get to, and am getting to, is our alleged Central Park Murder Case. This is what I want you to do now. You and Cardozo. Maybe there is no killer but there is a much-mangled dead body. I want you to look into those body parts' background." "I thought," Grijpstra said, "that we were all about to tentatively agree, based upon available facts, that we would tell complainant that there is no case, sir."
"The NYPD is about to close the case here," the commissaris said, "but I still feel uneasy. This time you won't be alone chasing phantoms. I want to do some background searching too. De Gier and I plan to get a certain Charlie, Termeer's landlord, to let us into Ter-meer's apartment and workplace. I understand the two men shared a building. We may pick up some ideas, clues, what have you, by walking about the premises where the victim lived. If I could get a better idea of how Termeer came to frolic into the azalea bushes…"
"But why do you feel uneasy, sir?" Grijpstra asked. "We have hard facts here. Subject habitually overexerts himself, even after open-heart surgery, a bypass and so forth. The surgery is a fact." Grijpstra waved a document at the phone. "You faxed me the autopsy, remember? The New York coroner saw the marks. Here, right here, on official stationery…"
"Yes," the commissaris said soothingly. "I know…"
"So," Grijpstra said, "we have an old man who frolics in parks, which means that he runs and dances about like a madman, for God's sake. During one of these fits subject frightens a horse and is touched by its hoof. It says so, right here, sir." Grijpstra waved his own report. "…Termeer now staggers about. Passersby, reliable witnesses interviewed by de Gier and me, well-educated society folks, set him down on a park bench. Subject now seemingly recovers and is left by the Good Samaritans. However, Termeer obviously has a relapse, for his dead body is found under azalea bushes, well off the path, the next morning. So? So the old boy staggers into nearby azalea bushes, collapses, dies. What else could possibly have happened? There was nobody about by then. The entire park's population was watching events. Cause of death? Heart attack. The coroner says so."
There was some silence.
"Sir?" Grijpstra asked.
"Not all that much left for the coroner to investigate," the commissaris said. "I faxed you photographs of the corpse, Adjutant. Bits and pieces here and there. Upper parts of the thighs and the lower part of the torso are missing."
"Most of the chest was there," Grijpstra said. "The heart is in the chest. Coroner mentions a heart attack as cause of death. Isn't that all we need to know, sir?"
"Yes."
"They really have raccoons in that park, sir?"
They discussed raccoons. Grijpstra said that the raccoons released by a fur farm in Germany that Hermann Goring owned, but gave up on because of better profits in the Nazi business, had now spread into both Poland and Holland. "Maybe soon they'll arrive in our very own Vondel Park," Grijpstra said morosely. "They look cute, with those little masks on, but they're devils, sir. Raccoons get in your garbage and when you want to send them on their way they'll charge you in your own kitchen."
"Devilish denizens of the future," the commissaris said, not uncheerfully. "They won't create as much horror and terror as our species, that's for certain."
The commissaris, after cradling the phone, mused for a few moments. Was there anything in his and Grijpstra's discussion that might fit in with the persistent nightmare of the tram-driving hollow-eyed woman? Some hint that would relieve his anxiety? Hunches, parts of thoughts, even entire logical and acceptable conclusions seemed to float just under his level of consciousness.
Lying back on the springy mattress of his huge four-poster bed, the commissaris tried to concentrate. Why was he thinking that he should pay attention to something that wasn't anywhere anymore?
He drifted off into sleep again. The dream immediately produced the tram-driving Angel of Death. This time there was also chanting.
The chanting was performed by the commissaris's neighbors on Queen's Avenue, Amsterdam. The woman was Chinese, a successful artist; the man, a well-known Dutch Orientalist. The couple was Buddhist. The professor and his wife sang sutras every morning in their temple room, which was next to the commissaris's bedroom. Listening to the exotic songs had become a daily pleasure. He especially liked the "Makahanya Paramita," a term that has to do, he learned, with obtaining "Penetrating Insight." While having a Chinese fried lobster dinner with the neighbors one enjoyable evening, he was told by Suhon, the Chinese lady, that she and her learned husband opened their early-morning routine by chanting the Heart Sutra, which she called the most basic Buddhist text ever formulated. She translated a few paragraphs-the sutra was fairly brief-while she hit a small wooden hand drum to provide proper punctuation.