When asked why he was so forthcoming Eugene stated that he and Peter had changed their minds, that they now thought that solving Jo's problem would be a good thing for all parties concerned.
Chapter 25
Two days after the commissaris's return, Jo Termeer was arrested after having been thrown out of the Warmoes Street Precinct, Amsterdam, three times within three hours.
Jo worked out of the Warmoes Street Precinct when he did duty as a reserve constable-first-class. The sergeant was disappointed to see Jo, whom he knew as a reliable and capable colleague, turn up drunk and disorderly.
Jo, dressed in a torn-up black leather suit and muddy boots, wearing a tattered leather gun belt and carrying a wooden copy of a riot gun in a strangely shaped holster, kept bothering the sergeant.
The first time Jo came in, the sergeant tried to treat the matter as a joke. His colleague must have been playing charades at a party. "Great act, Jo, you go home now." Jo laughed and left. When, a few minutes later, Jo staggered into the precinct, the sergeant had him removed by force. The third time Jo stumbled into the precinct he was arrested on a drunk charge and locked up.
When Jo's cell door was unlocked the next morning he wouldn't leave. The desk-sergeant remembered that Jo had been a pupil of Adjutant Grijpstra.
Jo wouldn't talk to Grijpstra at first but Grijpstra managed to cajole/threaten him into his Fiat Panda and took him home to Outfield where Peter cleaned him up.
The commissaris telephoned Peter that afternoon and asked him to bring Jo and Eugene to his house on Queens Avenue at nine that evening.
Cane chairs had been arranged on the veranda. Five chairs formed a crescent, opposite two chairs that faced each other.
Katrien put coffee on and cut up cake before leaving the house to visit with the neighbors.
The commissaris had the center seat, between Grijpstra and de Gier. Cardozo and Eugene sat on the end chairs.
Jo Termeer, wearing the same neat clothes as when he confronted the commissaris previously, sat facing Peter.
In spite of the formal setting everyone seemed relaxed, even jolly. The sky was clear, a breeze cooled the garden after a fairly hot day. Willow trees intertwined their branches on the street side. Their foliage screened the garden from cars swooshing by and the clatter of electric streetcars that liked ringing their bells.
"Is this a trial?" Jo asked before sitting down.
The commissaris said it could be, if Jo would like that.
"Are you the prosecutor, Peter?" Jo asked.
Peter said he would play any part that was required.
Jo told Grijpstra that he would prefer to be tried in a courtroom, with real judges in robes and lawyers and armed guards. Grijpstra explained that that would be difficult to arrange "for lack of reasonable cause."
"You know that, don't you, Jo?" the commissaris asked. "I've checked your file. You passed your criminal law examination with honors." The commissaris smiled his appreciation. "Now you tell me what the police could come up with to sustain a charge that earlier this month you killed your Uncle Bert in Central Park in New York."
Jo, elbows on knees, chin on hands, spoke to the floorboards of the commissaris's veranda. "Surely someone saw me dragging Uncle Bert into those azalea bushes?" He looked up anxiously. "You did check with that sergeant?"
"Hurrell?" the commissaris said. "Yes, I did. Sergeant Earl Hurrell says no one saw you near the scene of the crime."
Jo thought again. "The mounted cop, the beauty with the ponytail on the chestnut horse. She saw me."
"Not near the azalea bushes," de Gier said. "Policewoman McLaughlin saw a Road Warrior look-alike near a bandstand, too far away to be identifiable. I interviewed the policewoman several times."
Jo nodded. "I bet you did, Sergeant."
"Yes." De Gier looked away from smiling faces. He scratched his thigh. "Sure."
"Listen," Jo told Peter. "Let's start at the beginning. I was in New York at that time. You know I have two passports. My new passport was stamped. That's proof, isn't it?"
"I believe you destroyed your new passport," Peter said. "I believe it was a replacement for the one you said you lost on the Riviera."
Jo's muscular hands patted his knees. "Yes." He addressed the commissaris. "Maybe Kennedy Immigration has a record of my arrival. I made four trips in all, sir, three to shadow Uncle Bert, to find out what his routine was, and the fourth to kill him. Every time I arrived at Kennedy my passport was stamped. They have computers there; don't they retain such information?"
"I don't think so," the commissaris said.
Cardozo spoke up. "I checked with the U.S. Embassy. It's the same routine at Kennedy Airport as here at Schiphol. If everything looks okay no notes are made."
Cardozo and Eugene served coffee and cookies.
Turtle emerged from the long weeds bordering the commissaris's unkempt lawn. The company watched the reptile, on his 'way to a dish of lettuce, plod steadily along.
"I heard about your turtle," Jo told the commissaris. "Nice pet."
The commissaris smiled. "He is a friend, Jo."
Peter waited until Eugene and Cardozo had returned from the kitchen to ask Jo whether he had murdered his uncle.
"Sure," Jo said. "I planned it and I did it. Things worked out fine. The horse kicking Uncle made his heart play up. All I had to do was aggravate that condition."
"There is no proof you did any of that, Jo," Grijpstra said.
"How can you say that, Adjutant?" Jo's deep voice reverberated under the veranda's low roof. "You should have seen the mess we made. We were rolling around on the ground. I slapped his face. I put my knee in his balls. I shook him until his dentures went flying. I tore my nail when I was holding on to lapels of his jacket. I banged his face with the top of my head."
De Gier shook his head. "No traces, Jo."
"Please," Jo said. "What about all this DNA testing you read about in reports? What about boot prints? I have just read an article in Police Weekly that says a boot print is all a detective needs now." He held up a finger. "One boot print, Sergeant! I must have left hundreds."
"Jo," the commissaris said. "Sergeant Hurrell showed you Uncle Bert's body. Animals ate a good deal of it. The clothes found with the body were left by a robber. The robber and the animals erased your prints."
"Did you castrate your uncle?" Peter asked.
Jo was watching Turtle chomping a lettuce leaf.
"Tell us whether or not you cut Uncle Bert," Peter said. "I think you want to tell us that."
Perhaps the breeze changed direction, opening up the willow leaves, or it could be that a passing streetcar had an unusually loud bell. The tram's clanging penetrated the garden.
Jo was babbling now, talking about liquidating filthy perverts, which should be okay. There were all these perverts around abusing little boys. Jo kept repeating himself, mentioning his parents, who might have had problems, lovers, debts, what the hell, but they weren't gay at least. His dad and mom were just fine, they had him, didn't they? A little son, people like that, having little sons, to carry on their name, inherit the farm, and then Uncle came, and he was nice, yes goddamn it, Uncle Bert was nice, he, Jo, would never say he wasn't. They had gone on boats on the Amstel River together, and they had played at home, Sunday mornings, with a zoo that Aunt Carolien gave him for his birthday, and she unwrapped the plaster-of-Paris animals from the special silk paper that kept them from getting hurt, and he and Uncle Bert put all the animals between their little wooden fences, or in iron cages, and that's where they belonged, and sometimes Uncle Bert got the model train and made it go on rails looping all under and around the dining table, those were great games, and for lunch Aunt Carolien would make little pancakes, with ginger jam, but then after she left, Uncle would do those goddamn things damn it "