"Would you like to do a little work?" de Gier asked politely.
"No," the men said.
"Good. A red Rover, new model. The license plate starts with the letters VD, we don't know the number. Who owns it?'
"An interesting question," one of the men said.
"How long will it take you?"
"A couple of minutes or a couple of hours, depends how lucky we are. It isn't urgent, is it?"
"It isn't urgent at all," de Gier said, "but I would like to have the man's name and address within ten minutes and while you are about it you might check if he has a record."
The men stopped playing cards.
"Ha," the commissaris said, "there you are. Did you find the man in the red waistcoat?"
"We know who he is, sir," Grijpstra said. "His name is Holman and he lives in town. He is the owner of a small firm specializing in the nut trade."
"Nuts?"
"Cashew nuts, walnuts, peanuts, any type of nuts. He imports them and resells them to the wholesalers and supermarkets and so on. We telephoned his office and made an appointment for five o'clock this afternoon; he is coming here, to our office. He sounded very upset."
"Did you tell him why you wanted to see him?"
"No, sir."
"Good," the commissaris said, and rummaged through the papers on his desk. "I have the report here on the search of the houseboat. The detectives told me all about it this morning but it is nice to have some facts on paper. Sit down and I'll tell you what we found out."
The detectives sat down and relaxed. De Gier was rubbing his hands. The case was going well, he thought. The suspects were coming in, one by one. They were getting somewhere, but in the back of his mind a little thought was bothering him. He found the little thought and identified it. What if the killer was hired? He had never come across a hired killer before. Hired killers are professional. They have no real motive, they work for a fixed sum of money which will arrive in an envelope when the job is done. They have no personal connection with the victim. They are cool, disinterested. They only pay one visit to the victim's house. How long does it take to throw a knife? And how does a policeman catch a man who leaves no traces? The killer might even be a foreigner, especially flown in for the purpose of finishing Mrs. van Buren's life. He would have been shown the houseboat and a photograph and given a date and a time.
"You look worried," the commissaris said.
De Gier told the commissaris about his little thought.
"Yes," the commissaris said, "it worries me too. Very few people can throw a knife. In the army only special troops are taught to fight with knives. But perhaps the knife wasn't thrown, the doctor wasn't sure. But we shouldn't worry; worry is a waste of time. The woman was killed and somebody killed her. We have certain rules to follow in our investigation, and we are following the rules. We are interviewing the suspects. One of them may give us a clue. And we have searched the boat. Most of the information the detectives gave me this morning is negative. No fingerprints, the handle of the front door was wiped clean on the inside and outside, there were no signs of breaking-in so the visitor had let himself in with a key or Mrs. van Buren opened the door for him. The windows of the boat were closed except for two very small windows which must have been left open by Mrs. van Buren for ventilation. There is no way of entering through the small windows. The railing of the staircase was also wiped clean so the killer wasn't wearing gloves. The detectives found a metal strongbox in the bookcase which was locked. I had it opened and there was over a thousand guilders in cash in it. I have also been given a file with accounts and she had nearly thirty thousand guilders in her bank account. She has been paying taxes on a yearly income of twenty-five thousand guilders, her source of income is described as 'entertainment.' The houseboat is Mr. Drachtsma's property and she wasn't paying rent."
"Well," Grijpstra said, "that's not too bad. We know something anyway."
"There's a little more," the commissaris said. "I asked the detectives to look at her bookcase; I am always interested in what people read. She had a lot of books in Dutch, all novels by well-known writers. They wrote down the titles of the foreign books for me, must have taken them an hour at least. Perhaps de Gier was right, there were two shelves of books on witchcraft and sorcery, in five languages. She could read English, French and German but also Spanish."
"
is close to South America," de Gier said.
"Quite. There is one more item of interest. Look at this."
The commissaris produced two objects and put them on his desk. "What do you think these are?"
"Roots," Grijpstra said.
De Gier was looking at the roots with amazement. The roots were some fifteen centimeters long and looked like dried-out little men with spindly legs and complete with long thin penises. The little men had proper faces with noses and eyes.
"They look like little men," he said.
"They do, don't they? They are mandrake roots."
De Gier looked up. "Commissaris," he said in a low voice. "These things look evil; they are used in sorcery, aren't they?'
"They are. I asked the doctor to look at them and he recognized them at once. He told me a strange story. The plant these roots are part of is considered to be the most powerful sorceryweed known. In the Middle Ages the weed was often found at the foot of a gallows, and it was said that they wouldn't grow from a seed but originated from the sperms ejected by criminals hanged at the gallows as they went into their final struggle with death."
"Bah," Grijpstra said.
The commissaris gazed at the adjutant. "You have been in the police a long time, Grijpstra, you should be used to this sort of talk. The traces we find often come from the human body. It's like the songs small children sing. 'Shit and piss. And blood, and sperms and slime and vomit and pus and snot and sweat.'"
"Yes," Grijpstra said. "Sorry, sir."
"Never mind. And you are right of course. The picture I was painting isn't very nice, but anyway that's how the plant was supposed to be born. And the sorcerers always went for the roots. The roots are so powerful that a man cannot dig them up without risking his life. As you can see the roots look human, and they are human, the sorcerers say. When you pull the root out of the ground it will utter a fierce yell and the yell may drive you crazy or kill you outright so the sorcerers would dig very carefully and attach a piece of string to the root and tie the other end of the string to the leg of a dog. Then they stopped up their ears with wax and called the dog and the root popped out of the ground."
De Gier was still studying the roots. He hadn't touched them but had bent down to get a close view.
"And what are the roots supposed to do?" he asked.
"The doctor wasn't sure. He thinks that they were worn around the neck as a talisman, giving the sorcerer special powers, but they can also be ground up and mixed with other weeds and dried mushrooms. I suppose one could make a brew out of them."
"It seems the lady was a witch," Grijpstra said, shaking his head. "I thought they had gone out of fashion."
The commissaris was going to say something but the telephone rang and he picked it up.
"Show Mr. Drachtsma in," he said. As he put the phone down he quickly swept up the roots and put them into the drawer of his desk.
IJsbrand Drachtsma had sat down in the indicated chair and was looking at the commissaris. He seemed enveloped in an imperturbable silence, built around him the way an egg envelops and protects the chick. De Gier was admiring this newcomer in the intimate circle of suspects. Drachtsma, de Gier was thinking, had to be an unusual man. He had been described as a tycoon, a leader. Drachtsma was chairman of a number of well-known companies. He would be very rich. He would also be very powerful, more powerful perhaps than a minister of state. Companies led by men like Drachtsma employ thousands of people. Whole fleets of merchant vessels move about the oceans because men like Drachtsma have picked up a telephone. The advertising companies which they own tell us what to buy and do; they shape the routine of our lives.