‘Grey and wet,’ said Rooth. ‘And windy. As usual.’
‘I’ll be going out again in April,’ said Goscinski, glancing sceptically out of the window. ‘Around the fifteenth, or thereabouts. Was there anything else you wanted to know, while you’re lounging around here?’
‘No,’ said Rooth. ‘Thank you for your help. The Succulents are exactly what we wanted to know about.’
‘Okay,’ said Goscinski. ‘Be off with you, then. It’s time for my afternoon nap.’
They paused for a while in Wickerstraat before going their different ways.
‘What do you think about that?’ wondered Jung. ‘The Succulents? What on earth are they when they’re at home?’
‘I don’t think anything at all yet,’ said Rooth. ‘But that was the worst bloody coffee I’ve ever drunk in all my life, no doubt about that. Still, we did what we had to do in just one afternoon. I reckon we’ve earned a lie-in tomorrow morning. What do you say to that?’
‘I agree entirely,’ said Jung. ‘Shall we say we’ll turn up at about ten?’
‘Make it half past,’ said Rooth.
39
It was Saturday morning before Chief Inspector Reinhart was able to arrange an audience with one of the pro-vice-chancellors of Maardam University. In the meantime he managed to work up an impressive amount of anger.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked Winnifred as they were eating breakfast in bed. ‘You’ve been grinding your teeth all night.’
‘They’re a lot of halfwitted bloody idiots,’ said Reinhart. ‘There are people in the university administration who would be locked up in a loony bin if they weren’t allowed to prance and strut around and collect a fat salary in Academe.’
Winnifred looked at him with an expression of mild surprise for a few seconds.
‘I’m well aware of that,’ she said. ‘I also work in the talent factory, remember? It’s not something to grind your teeth about.’
‘They’re my teeth,’ said Reinhart. ‘I’ll grind them as much as I like.’
He turned his head to look at the clock.
‘Anyway, it’s time I was off. Professor Kuurtens, is that somebody you know?’
Winnifred thought hard.
‘I don’t think so. What’s his field?’
‘Political science, if I heard rightly. Bone idle.’
Winnifred shook her head and went back to her newspaper.
‘Say goodbye to Joanna before you go.’
Reinhart paused on his way to the bathroom.
‘Have I ever forgotten to say goodbye to my daughter?’
He could hear her chatting away to herself through the open door of the nursery, and noticed that he relaxed his cheek muscles when he started thinking about her. Presumably what his wife had said was true: he really had been grinding his teeth all night.
Pro-Vice-Chancellor Kuurtens, he thought, you’d better tread extremely carefully.
Kuurtens received him in an office on the third floor of the registry. Reinhart estimated the ceiling height at four metres, and the floor space at about seventy square metres. Apart from a few freestanding columns in black granite with headless busts on top, a display cupboard from the seventeenth or eighteenth century and a few drab oil paintings depicting long-dead pro-vice-chancellors, there was really only one item of furniture in the room: a gigantic desk made of a black wood Reinhart reckoned was probably ebony, with a high-backed red armchair on each long side.
In one of them sat Professor Kuurtens, gazing out over the world and the empty desk as he slowly and deliberately wrote a few gems of words with a priceless fountain pen on a sheet of hammered white paper.
Reinhart sat down in the other one without waiting to be invited.
A hint of a sneer formed on the professor’s face, which was highly aristocratic in appearance. A classic Greek nose. A high forehead that disappeared under an Olympian mass of greying curls. Deep-set eyes and a firm, trust-inspiring jaw.
An immaculate grey suit, an ivory-white shirt and a dark-red tie.
He’s been given the job on the basis of his looks, Reinhart thought. He’s as thick as three sawn planks.
‘Welcome, Chief Inspector.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Or should I address you as Detective Chief Inspector?’
‘My name’s Reinhart,’ said Reinhart. ‘I haven’t come here to be addressed, nor to play cricket.’
‘Hmm,’ said the professor, glancing at his wristwatch. ‘I can give you fifteen minutes. Cricket?’
‘A metaphor,’ Reinhart explained. ‘But never mind that. The Succulents, what are they when they’re at home?’
Pro-Vice-Chancellor Kuurtens screwed off the cap of his fountain pen, then screwed it back on again.
‘I think I must ask you to enlighten me somewhat more on the circumstances before we proceed any further,’ he said.
‘Murder,’ said Reinhart. ‘Now you are enlightened. Well?’
‘I would not say that was an adequate enlightenment,’ said Kuurtens, clasping his hands over the sheet of paper. ‘If you bear in mind that Maardam University has been in existence for over five hundred years, I trust you will understand that I must protect values that cannot be swept aside as casually as that.’
‘What the hell are you babbling on about?’ asked Reinhart, regretting that he hadn’t brought his pipe with him: it would have been an ideal moment just now to envelope this overweening prat in a thick cloud of tobacco smoke.
‘Might I beg you to adopt a more seemly tone of conversational discourse.’
‘All right,’ said Reinhart. ‘But if you are so simple-minded as to claim that this university has had nothing at all to hide for several hundred years, you are doing your Alma Mater a disservice, as you must surely realize. Anyway, the Succulents. Let’s hear about them. I don’t have unlimited time at my disposal either.’
The professor leaned back in his chair and adopted an expression of deep thought. Reinhart waited.
‘An association,’ he said in the end.
‘Thank you,’ said Reinhart. ‘More details, please.’
‘Statutes from 1757. An association of scholars active in various faculties of the university, with the aim of promoting research and progress.’
‘Why the name “Succulents”?’
Kuurtens shrugged.
‘The original founders of the association were biologists. The title was a reference to an ability to reproduce and persist over a long period of time — applied to knowledge, for instance. But perhaps you don’t-’
‘I understand,’ said Reinhart. ‘So we’re talking about freemasons, are we?’
‘There are no freemasons any longer.’
‘That’s an assertion open to discussion. But I’m talking about those days.’
Kuurtens paused and contemplated his fountain pen.
‘Sort of.’
‘And the Succulents have continued to exist ever since then, have they?’
‘Continuously.’
‘With a red S against a green background as their symbol?’
The professor moved his head in a way vaguely reminiscent of the shape of a banana. A combination of affirmation and protest.
‘Yes, although it’s a comparatively recent invention. Quite late in the twentieth century.’
‘I see,’ said Reinhart. ‘And how many members are there today?’
‘About a hundred.’
‘Men and women?’
‘Men only.’
‘And you are a member yourself?’
‘It is forbidden to inform outsiders with regard to membership.’
‘How can you know that if you’re not a member?’
Professor Kuurtens did not reply. As I said, Reinhart thought: he’s not exactly Nobel prizewinner material.
‘I happen to know that you are a senior member of the Succulents, and I take it for granted that you will allow me to take a look at the membership list. Right now, I can’t see any objections to that.’
‘But that’s. . That is out of the question!’ exclaimed Professor Kuurtens. ‘Do you think you can come barging in here and demand to look at. . at whatever you like?’