Janwillem De Wetering - Blond Baboon

There was another shot, mis time aimed at de Gier, who had left his gravestone and was without cover as he jumped to the next. He dropped as die shot cracked, and the bullet whistled away in the general direction of the cows.

“Fool!” Grijpstra roared and de Gier looked around, waving a weed with small pink flowers that he had picked from a spot where the stone had powdered away so that nature could reassert itself. He was close enough to be able to speak to Grijpstra in a normal voice.

“You know what this is?”

“Keep your cover.”

Thousand-guilder weed, Grijpstra, Centawium erythraea, one of the very few I know by its Latin name. Fairly rare, I believe, but it grows near the streetcar stop and I took some to the city’s botanical garden the other day. Amazing, don’t you think? It grows all over the place here.”

“De Gier,” Grijpstra said pleadingly, “he must be close. It’s hard to hear where the shot came from. These stones echo, I think, but he must be over mere.”

“Where?”

“There, near that damned prick.”

“Prick?”

Grijpstra was pointing at a heavily ornamented phallus, sprouting a poll of withered grass on its crumbling extremity. It was nearly six feet high and throned on a huge granite slab.

De Gier moved and drew another shot. They heard the bullet’s dull impact where it hit the earth; a tufted reed sagged and broke with a snap as the tuft touched the ground.

“How many bullets left?” de Gier asked.

“One for the baboon, three for us, two left.”

“Can I move again-we’ll have to draw the other two-or do you want to sit here all day?”

Grijpstra picked up a rock and threw it at a patch of dandelions that brightened a complicated ruin of several tombs that had tumbled together. The revolver cracked again.

“Bergen! Stop making an ass of yourself. We won’t charge you, just get out of there. You’re safe. We want to help you.”

“Let me be!” Bergen’s voice was high-pitched, hysterical with fear and rage.

“No, you’re being senseless.”

Several cows mooed simultaneously. Grijpstra tried to move and slipped; his face fell into a patch of raw earth and he sat up, spitting out dirt. He saw de Gier take aim carefully, supporting his right arm with his left. The pistol’s bark was sharp and was followed immediately by the heavier retort of the revolver.

“Got him,” de Gier shouted, “in the arm. And he’s out of bullets. Come on, Grijpstra.”

They ran but Grijpstra stumbled, and de Gier stopped to help him. They reached Bergen in time to see him press the revolver against his temple. They were both shouting but the shot drowned their words. Bergen’s head snapped to the side as if it had been bit by a sledgehammer, and his body tumbled against the phallus and slid down slowly until it rested on the grave’s rubble. A small pile of cartridges had been stacked neatly into a cavity on the gravestone’s surface.

De Gier took out his hankerchief and manipulated Bergen’s revolver so that its chamber became detached. Its compartments were empty except for one. He closed the gun again and let the hand drop back.

“He just had enough time to slip in one more cartridge.”

“Yes,” Grijpstra said. “If I hadn’t stumbled we would have got him in time. What a mess.” He pointed at die blood seeping out of the corpse’s head. It was trickling off the stone and mixing with another little stream pouring out of the man’s arm. De Gier looked away. Grijpstra replaced his pistol into the holster on his belt and stretched. His back ached. It was very hot, and he thought of the cool pub on the dike and the cold beer that its polished barpump would splash into a polished glass.

When he turned he saw the commissaris running up the path, and he waved and shouted. The commissaris was supporting himself on a cane with a metal handle; he limped as he ran.

“Don’t run, sir, it’s all over.”

The baboon had jumped back across the ditch and was moving through the fallen gravestones, waddling on his short legs. He reached the corpse at the same time as the commissaris.

“We tried to draw his fire, sir, and rushed him when we were sure the revolver was empty. De Gier had put a bullet in bis right arm so we were doubly sure. But he had extra ammunition and he used his left hand.”

The commissaris had knelt down and was examining Bergen’s head. “Pity,” he said quietly. “The skull must be badly damaged on the inside.”

“He is quite dead, I think, sir.”

“Oh, yes, that’s clear. Dead. But there’s something else, this case goes on, adjutant. Well, never mind. I’ll mink of something, but it’s a pity about the skull.”

De Giers balcony door was open and the Commissaris was sitting close to it, peering contentedly at his mug. De Gier faced him. He was coming to the end of his flute solo, a sixteenth-century drinking song, full of trills and quick runs and occasional short intervals of almost mathematical precision. Grijpstra, his bristly mustache white with beer from, was rubbing Tabriz’s belly, smiling at the cat’s droopy look of complete surrender. Cardozo was stretched out on the floor, his head resting on a small cushion propped on a stack of books.

De Gier lowered his flute. The commissaris inclined his head and applauded briefly. “Very good. Get him another beer, Grijpstra. Pity you couldn’t bring your drums, it’s been a long time since I heard you play together.”

Grijpstra lumbered into the kitchen and came back holding a fresh bottle. De Gier poured the beer, spilling a little. “I won’t be able to play anymore, sir, the neighbors will be at my throat tomorrow.”

Grijpstra had brought in another bottle but the commissaris shook his head. “I would like to, adjutant, but it’s getting late, my wife’ll be expecting me. Cardozo, how do you feel?”

Cardozo’s eyes opened. He seemed to be thinking. The commissaris smiled. “Go back to sleep. I don’t think either of us should drive.”

It was past midnight. The lights in the park behind de Gier’s apartment building had been switched on sometime before but the opaque white disks, spread among the willows and poplars, couldn’t compete with the moon. The apartments around had gone to rest, and there were no sounds except an occasional rumbling from the boulevard on the other side of the building and the confused squeaking of a group of starlings that hadn’t found the right tree for the night yet.

“We’ll take a taxi. You can drive the Citroen to headquarters tomorrow, sergeant,” the commissaris said firmly. “One of my colleagues got arrested for drunken driving last week. It reminded me how vulnerable we are.”

“A brandy, sir?”

De Gier had struggled to his feet and was groping about behind his books. His hand came back holding a crystal decanter. Grijpstra’s heavily lidded eyes were watching him.

“Just a nip, that would be very nice.”

“A bad case,” the commissaris said a little later. “But it’s over and done with now. I didn’t like it. There was too much pettiness in it.”

Grijpstra stirred. There was a vague note of admonition in his voice. “We did have the baboon in it, sir.”

The commissaris raised a finger. “Indeed. Its one ray of illumination, and he stayed true to type until the very end, you know…” He looked at the balcony. Cardozo had begun to snore softly, but his cushion slipped away, and he woke up and pushed it back.

The commissaris sipped his brandy thoughtfully. “You know, I thought he would give in and I didn’t want him to give in. The baboon was drifting into a perfect, happy ending.”

The commissaris giggled. “But he smartly stepped aside. Good for him. Happy endings are always so sad. I even thought so when I was a little boy and my mother would read fairy tales to me. I would cry when the princes married the princesses and settled down in the beautiful palaces. Whatever were they going to do forever after? Watch football or cartoons? Play cards? But the stories didn’t tell, they didn’t dare to, of course. Just suppose that the baboon would marry Gabrielle and move into mat splendid home on the Mierisstraat with the sheik’s tent upstairs. Just imagine.”