"Wasn't that difficult? Sharing her with others, I mean?"
"Not really. I could only see her if she wanted to see me.
"Did you ever visit her without an appointment?"
"I tried once, she didn't open her door, but the lights were on. There was a car parked on the other side of the path. A black Citroen with a CD plate."
"Did you know the owner of the car?"
"No."
"Weren't you jealous?"
"No," the colonel said. "No, I don't think I was. I felt silly that was all."
"You have used the world 'silly' before. She often made you feel silly, didn't she?"
The colonel didn't reply.
The commissaris put on his kind old man's face.
"Don't feel embarrassed," he said. "We are all men in this room. We know what it is to feel silly."
"O.K." the colonel said, "she made me feel silly a lot."
The commissaris got up. "Thank you for coming," he said. "Here is my card. If anything else occurs to you, anything which may help us to find our man, let us know."
They shook hands. The colonel and the young man from the embassy left.
"Interesting," the commissaris said to the two military police officers.
"Very," the older replied. "You'll find your man all right. A nice straightforward case, I would say. A client has killed her, don't you think? Or a client's right hand. It must be possible to hire a killer, even in Amsterdam."
"Why even in Amsterdam?" the commissaris asked.
"Nice easy town. Quiet. I hear you don't even have a proper homicide squad here. You only have one when there is a murder and you only have a few murders a year. I am from the States, it's different where I come from."
"Yes," the commissaris said, "perhaps this will be an easy case. But we found no fingerprints, and the weapon is a professional weapon. A British commando knife. The doctor thinks it was thrown and there aren't many citizens in Amsterdam who can throw a commando knife."
"I would rather have your case than ours," the younger officer said.
"You have a case?"
"You know what the colonel is doing, he told you."
"Atomic warheads," the commissaris said. "Our Secret Service is interested. They led us to the case. We were watching the houseboat long before the woman was killed."
"Exactly," the officer said. "The colonel has some secrets, and the woman had him in the hollow of her little hand."
"So what will you do now?" the commissaris said.
The two policemen got up and began to walk to the door.
"Watch him," the older officer said. "If he spends ten thousand dollars on a whore he isn't a very good security risk."
"Who is?" the commissaris asked.
"He didn't do it," Grijpstra said.
"No," de Gier said.
They had a long drive, three hours to the north and nearly three hours to the south, they were almost back in Amsterdam.
"Nice chap," Grijpstra was saying, "a happy man. Happy in his job, happily married."
"Sickening, isn't it?" de Gier asked
"No. Why? Men should be happy."
"It isn't natural."
"Perhaps not," Grijpstra agreed, "but it is nice to see an exception, to actually meet one in the flesh. I really liked the man."
"But it was a wasted trip," de Gier said moodily, trying to overtake a large truck which was wavering slightly.
"He is asleep. Honk your horn."
De Gier honked. A hand appeared from the cabin's window and waved them on.
"Saved his life," Grijpstra said. "Must have been driving for more than his legal eight hours. You could stop him and ask him to produce his logbook."
"No," de Gier said, "this is an unmarked car, you have been in uniform too long."
"Right," Grijpstra said. "Let's sum up. We went to see Maria van Buren's former husband. He married her in , ten years ago, when she was twenty-four. They spent a year on the island together and came to Holland. He took her to the North where he got a job as a director of a textile factory. She was bored. She liked him, and she liked pottering about in the garden, and she did a bit of sailing on the lakes and she visited the islands, but she was bored all the same. He didn't have much time to spend on her so she took to sailing by herself. She was often gone for the day. She started staying away for the nights as well. She spent an occasional weekend in Amsterdam by herself. He objected and they were divorced. No children. He married again, six years ago and he is happy. His new wife is nice, we met her. We saw the children, a toddler and a baby. Nice children. He used to pay alimony but she wrote to him and told him he didn't have to send her money so he stopped. That was three years ago. He hasn't seen her since they were divorced. And most important of all, he has an alibi. He couldn't have been in Amsterdam on Saturday, or on Friday, or on Sunday. He wasn't there so he didn't kill her. He didn't have any reason to kill her either. And he seemed genuinely sorry that she had been murdered. I believed him. Didn't you?"
"Sure," de Gier said. "I believed him, and I never believe an ex-husband when his former wife has been murdered. Husbands and ex-husbands are always prime suspects in a murder case."
"Yes," Grijpstra said heavily. "So what else did this prime suspect tell us?"
"That she comes from a good family, high society. Her father is an important businessman. He is still alive, so is her mother. She has several sisters, all beauties. They sent her to Holland and she went to high school here and spent a few years at a university, studying Dutch literature. We'll have to ask the Curacao police to find out what they can. That'll be easy, we can get them on the Telex and we can phone. I have telephoned to before, there's only a few minutes' delay."
"So what else?"
"Nothing else," de Gier said. "We have wasted a day."
"It's impossible to waste a day," Grijpstra said. "We did something, didn't we?"
"We could have stayed home," de Gier said. "It's nice to stay at home. I could have read a book on the balcony of my flat. It has been a beautiful sunny day. I could have talked to my cat and I could have gone to a nursery. I want some more plants on my balcony."
"Plants," Grijpstra said. "I spoke to the doctor before we left. He checked those weeds with his friend. You know what they were?"
"No. You know I don't know what they were."
"One was belladonna, one was deadly nightshade, and the third was datura or thorn apple."
"So?"
"Poisonous. All three of them. And they are used by sorcerers."
"Botanists," de Gier said. "I told you we would become botanists."
"Not botanists," Grijpstra said. "We'll have to become sorcerers."
5
That same evening, close to midnight, a large black sedate car was heading for Amsterdam, forty-five minutes away from The Hague, where it had spent an hour parked in front of the Belgian embassy.
The commissaris was asleep on the back seat, his frail body slumped against Grijpstra. Grijpstra was awake and moodily contemplating the dark fields flashing past and remembering the evening's long fruitless conversation, and de Gier and the constable-driver were whispering to each other on the front seat.
"I can't keep my eyes open," the young constable whispered to de Gier. "It's hopeless, I am no good as a driver. I have put in my fourth application for a transfer but it will be refused again for the commissaris seems to like me. I have almost killed him and myself and people in other cars, I have driven the car off the road half a dozen times, I have fallen asleep waiting for traffic lights to change color but he won't give in. He says I'll get used to it. I'll never get used to it. The sound of an engine makes me sleepy, I get sleepy as soon as I turn the starter key. And I am sleepy now."