"Where to, sergeant?"
"To Headquarters. Tell the turnkeys to make him comfortable. We'll interrogate him later tonight."
"Right. If you have a minute, you and the adjutant might go over to our station. Sergeant Jurriaans wants to talk to you."
"No," de Gier said, "I've had enough for tonight. Some other time."
"You'd better go, sergeant, me and the chief did a little work for you tonight."
"Tell me what you did."
"No. The chief wants to tell you himself."
The bus drove off.
Grijpstra came out of the cafe, wiping beer froth off his mouth.
"Why did you let that bus go? I don't want to walk back to Headquarters."
"I have my bicycle," de Gier said, "but Asta wants to go with me and it won't carry two passengers. There's also a proposition from the station here, which is around the corner. Jurriaans wants to see us."
"Good. He can have us driven home."
They walked slowly, Asta in the middle.
"See?" Asta said, pointing at a disorderly heap of feathers. "This is where the Chinese throws out his garbage, and there's nothing we can do about it. It isn't just feathers, there's blood and meat too."
"Good for rats," Grijpstra said, steering her around a temporary fence. "This part of town'll never get organized. What are they blacktopping this area for? What's wrong with cobblestones?"
Asta tried not to limp. De Gier supported her elbow.
"You realize that we are still nowhere," Grijpstra said. "So Herr Miiller is a drug dealer and we can prove it. That's nice. But drugs is not our department. That the Hamburg police will be pleased has nothing to do with us either. First we had a murder and no corpse, it added up to zero. Now we have a corpse and no murder. Zero equals zero."
De Gier grinned. His arm slipped around Asta's shoulders. "There's nothing more glorious than zero, adjutant. You can multiply it at will, you can divide it at will, and it will always be the same. We can lose ourselves in nothing and go as far as we like; we'll never hit the other end of it."
The adjutant hadn't thought of a reply yet when Sergeant Jurriaans welcomed his guests with outstretched arms, beaming at the bedraggled group that reluctantly entered his small office.
7
"You look tired," Jurriaans said. "Are they overworking you already?"
Asta lit a cigarette. Her hand trembled.
"No, I fell and hurt my knee; otherwise I'm having a good time."
"How do you like de Gier?"
De Gier reached for the match Grijpstra was about to strike; he put it in his mouth.
"This is not a social call, colleague. Please come to the point."
Asta smiled. "I love him. I love you too. My soul is torn."
Jurriaans nodded. "I'd advise you to lean his way, even if he's short-tempered. Married men are easy to deal with, but they've lost their spunk; the stress of the home situation takes its toll. Married men also carry guilt which clogs up the atmosphere. Take him and come to me for comfort. I'll always be around for I can't get away."
De Gier's teeth snapped through his match and he took another from Grijpstra's hand. Grijpstra gave him his matchbox and took Jurriaans's lighter. He lit his cigar and slipped the lighter into his pocket.
"Why are we here?"
"You're here because your chase has come to an end. I've liberated you. If you like, I'll tell you about it, after you return my lighter, of course."
Grijpstra replaced the lighter.
Jurriaans sat back. He cleared his throat.
"Well, where shall I start? I can't start at the beginning, for I don't know where it is. My interference came so much later, and it wasn't even mine, for Karate saw him. He saw the Prime Punk, and we subsequently arrested him. About two hours ago I tried to get hold of you, but I couldn't trace you. I wanted you to hear the Chief Punk confess, but he'll repeat his performance if you like, and if you don't, I have his signed statement."
"Who?" Grijpstra asked.
"He is a mugger and he robs cars. He's quick and sly and an expert, but Karate was quicker. Karate and I were driving about tonight; with Ketchup on leave and Asta in the higher spheres I'm even more short-staffed than usual and besides I was bored. A bit of active duty cheers me up sometimes. We drove through the Red Mill Alley, and Karate braked and raced out of the car and confronted the Punk. He is twenty years old and leads the other Punks, the second best gang of the district. The best gang is the Black Jackets and I'm sorry we didn't catch their chief for he specializes in perfidity. The Punks will break your bones, the Black Jackets will suck the marrow. They're bad and they're black. This is a racist station and we tend to identify the two ideas. That is a mistake, I know it. I know that the percentage of criminals of our black fellow men is only slightly higher than the white percentage. I'm also aware that the blacks are recent immigrants and are learning to deal with a new environment, but I don't always practice my knowledge."
De Gier selected a fresh match. "You arrested the Prime Punk?"
"I did. He was breaking into a car. Karate caught him red-handed; the Punk was using a wonderbar. A wonderbar is a metal tool and he hit Karate with it. Karate thereupon attacked the Punk and I couldn't stop him in time. The Punk was in a bad state afterward. I admonished Karate for a few minutes and interrogated the Punk for an hour. I said that it was about time that we caught him and that I would make sure that he would receive the maximum punishment. I thereupon appealed to his sense of logic. I implored him to confess all his crimes so that he would only be punished once and not repeatedly. The Punk has never been arrested yet and we don't have his fingerprints. Knowing that he works without gloves, I told him that we found fingerprints on a silver-colored Mercedes with a Hamburg registration yesterday. I said that, if the fingerprints matched his, he would be in more trouble than he was now, but that he could improve his position by confessing right now."
Grijpstra no longer reclined in his chair. De Gier's match broke again, but he didn't take another.
"Ah," Sergeant Jurriaans said, "I see that I have your attention. Yes, my friends, it was him, him and an unidentified helper."
Grijpstra sighed. "He didn't kill Boronski. Our corpse died of natural causes. We'll never break the doctor's statement. A large duodenal ulcer, no human hand. What did the Prime Punk say about Boronski?"
"He said that he and his helper, whose identity he can't remember, hot-wired the Mercedes in front of the Oberon and drove it to the Gentleman's Market. They parked the car and pried the trunk open. There was nothing in the trunk. They closed the lid and got back into the car, intending to go for a joy ride, when the trunk's lid popped open. Because they had forced the lid, it no longer closed easily. They got out to close it again, when a man came staggering along. It was around midnight and there was nobody else about."
"They didn't rob Boronski," Grijpstra said.
"No. They may have intended to, thinking the man would be drunk and helpless. As they approached Boronski, the man doubled up and vomited blood. He took a few more steps and held on to the trunk's lid. He fell into the trunk."
"As I thought," Grijpstra said. "As I thought all the time."
"Did he fall in altogether?" de Gier asked.
"No, but a patrol car passed on the other side of the canal. The constables in the car weren't paying attention, but the Prime Punk didn't want to be seen with a bleeding drunk. He expected the patrol car to come back on his side of the canal. He pushed Boronski into the trunk, slammed the lid, and walked away. He thought that the man would sleep in the trunk and that there would be enough air, because the lid didn't close properly. He expected the man to be found in the morning."