When he left the bus he saw the commotion on Van Nijenrodeweg. He had lived on Van Nijenrodeweg for some years now and knew its ability to attract traffic accidents, most of them serious. It was about a week ago that he had seen a small French car standing forlornly, its nose crumpled into a young plane tree. The two old ladies in the front seats were both dead, both slumped forward at identical angles. Their mouths had fallen open and they seemed to be peering into the night, waiting for the end of whatever had interrupted their conversation. He had had trouble not smiling when he saw them, probably because of the clownish effect of their frumpy hats, tilted down and accentuating the surprised birdlike faces. But what was it now? A speeding car, seduced by the straight wide lines of the boulevard into hitting one of the badly illuminated pedestrians' islands? Or had someone crossed without paying attention? There were two patrol cars and a van of the Heavy Accident Department. Their blue lights sparkled silently and ominously as small black shadows darted around them. They were dragging a white figure over the tarmac, a life-size doll. He was getting close enough now to see details. An outline had been chalked on the tar surface close to the footway. They were lowering the doll, made out of strong sackcloth and stuffed to give it a horrible lifelike appearance, forcing its limbs to follow the chalked lines. A sergeant was busying himself with a camera on a tripod. Evidently the victim had been so badly hurt that they had allowed it to be taken away by an ambulance, satisfying themselves for the moment by drawing its position on the boulevard's surface.
He stopped to talk to the sergeant, an old friend out of the days when de Gier was still on regular patrol duty as a uniformed constable first class, more than ten years ago now, but still fresh in his memory.
"Evening, sergeant, are they making you work late at night again?"
"De Gier," the sergeant said, clicking his camera. "You live around here, don't you?"
"I do. Bad accident? We are getting too many of them here. Your officers should start an investigation of the causes sometime. There is really no reason why people should keep on losing their lives on Van Nijenrodeweg. Maybe it's bad streetlights, spaced too far apart, or they could create some device to slow the traffic, especially at night."
The sergeant grunted as he shifted his tripod into a new position. De Gier watched a constable adjusting the position of the doll. The fact that the doll's face showed no features made it look even more sinister.
"That cat must still be in the bushes somewhere, sergeant, shall I hunt for it?" the constable asked.
"Cat?" de Gier asked, as he felt his body grow cold. "What cat?"
"A Siamese cat," the sergeant said. "A witness told us. The cat lives in one of those apartments up there. Somebody left the door open and it got away. The lady who lives in the apartment went after it, but it got as far as here before she caught it and got hit. She was concentrating on grabbing the cat, of course. Bloody great truck hit her, truck was speeding, we can prove it from the brake tracks, see, they are over there. I have photographed them already. I think he was going at eighty kilometers. Can't blame him too much though, the lady must have practically run into his front bumper. She was holding the cat as he hit her, he says. Poor bloke is sitting in his cab now, crying his eyes out."
He pointed at a stationary truck, parked half on the footwalk, some two hundred yards ahead.
De Gier's mouth felt very dry. "How old was the lady?"
"Thirty, I would say. Quite nice-looking, I think, although it is always hard to say when they are dead."
"Color hair?"
"Dark." The sergeant suddenly looked up, almost upsetting his tripod. "Shit, she isn't yours, is she? You have a cat, I remember now. A Siamese. They were telling me at the station. One of the constables had seen you playing with it on your balcony. You were holding it in your arms and he thought it was a baby at first."
De Gier wasn't listening, he was walking to the bushes, dreamily, his mind only partly functioning. She is dead, he thought. Esther is dead. She let Oliver escape. I warned her. I even told her never to go after him if he gets away. He got me almost killed too, once. He always runs to the park and he can be caught in the park, it is too dangerous to catch him on the road. Too much traffic. But she went after him all the same. She is dead.
His mind was giving him all sorts of disconnected information. How long had he known her now? About a year. Whether he loved her. He did. She had never really surrendered completely. She held on to bits of her freedom here and there. She would spend her nights with him, but not always. She hadn't given up her own house. She hadn't allowed him to marry her. But he had accepted her conditions and had enjoyed the pleasant side effects. They had never quarreled. Their love life had been fairly passionate. They hadn't bored or irritated each other. He was wiping his face as he stumbled about the bushes. He had thought the woman very beautiful. A slender neck, long black hair, long legs and very slim ankles. He had never understood how such thin bones could support her, but she walked graciously. He saw her sensuous wide lips and the nose with the delicate bridge.
The cat was stretched out on the edge of the lawn. De Gier knelt down and caressed its wet skin. A bleeding paw came up and touched his cheek. Oliver was aiming for his nose but it seemed he couldn't focus, the eyes were glazed and the cat was breathing with short painful gasps. The cat always liked to pat him on the nose.
"Oliver," de Gier said. The cat lifted its head but had to let it drop back. De Gier felt the skin again, Oliver's fur was wet with blood and sweat, the sweat of fear and pain. The eyes had closed, but the gasping continued. De Gier felt for his pistol, withdrew and loaded it mechanically and pressed the muzzle against the Siamese's ear. The shot was loud in the breathlessly still park. He got up and replaced the pistol under his armpit and walked away. He hadn't seen what the bullet had done to the cat's head.
Running footsteps on the path brought the sergeant and two constables. The sergeant's arm caught de Gier's body as it began to crumple up.
"No," a constable said. "He has shot the cat, not himself."
De Gier's brain hadn't stopped completely. He mumbled a name and a telephone number. The sergeant called the number on the radio in his van. The commissaris answered.
"Yes," the commissaris said. "I see, sergeant. Put him on a stretcher or something, it won't take me long to get there. Til take him to my house. Do you have some strong drug you can inject into him?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do that then; keep him warm and quiet. I'll be there in ten minutes."
The sergeant wanted to ring off.
"Sergeant?"
"Sir?"
"Remove the cat's body. He shouldn't see it again."
"I have a spade, sir. I can bury it in the park."
"Yes. Bury it properly and mark the grave."
\\\\\ 7 /////
Six men had gathered en the Chief Constable's sitting room. They all suffered from the clammy late afternoon heat and had been glad to take off their jackets. The Japanese ambassador, uncomfortable in his unwieldy plus fours-he was planning to play a little golf afterwards-sighed and wished for air conditioning. There was no air conditioning in Amsterdam Police Headquarters, and there probably never would be. Dutch summers usually don't last long, but this particular summer had lasted for some time and showed no signs of abating. Mr. Johnson, the CIA chief, shared the Japanese ambassador's desire, but he managed to look cheerful, in his unobtrusive way. There was nothing striking about Mr. Johnson, a property which had saved his life on numerous occasions and in several countries. Everything about him was gray, even his skin, maybe even his teeth, but Mr. Johnson never showed his teeth. His cheerfulness was strictly limited to movements of the muscles that controlled his eyes and lips and didn't include laughter or even smiling. When he spoke he mumbled. He was mumbling now.