Janwillem De Wetering - Hard Rain

"Some sort of spying, dear?"

"More than that, I'm afraid. Well, shall we go downstairs?"

Karate, Ketchup, Sergeant Biersma, and Constable Ramsau got up when the commissaris came into the living room. De Gier stood near the window. A computer was set up on the table. Izzy Sanders sat behind the machine. "Sorry about this afternoon," the commissaris said.

His audience mumbled. "You couldn't have foreseen that," Sergeant Biersma said. "Nobody in his right mind kills his own son."

"Fernandus hasn't been in his right mind as long as I've known him." The commissaris smiled grimly. "If only I had thought a little deeper. We could have rushed the terrace the minute I saw Huip get into that boat."

The mumbling started up again and died down. "But I didn't think," the commissaris said. "Now we're faced with another infernal gadget. On our side, this time. Izzy? Can you show us?"

"Yes." Izzy worked on the computer's keyboard. The telephone receiver next to the screen crackled. "What's that?" the commissaris's wife asked.

"I'm making a connection with the bank," Izzy said. "Now I'll punch in the codes. Here we are."

The computer's screen lit up. Letters formed. "It wants a command," Izzy said. "Okay." He touched more keys. "I want to see Fernandus's private account. I have to tell it who's asking. Here we go, I'm pretending I'm Fernandus now, these letters represent his ID."

Figures appeared.

"But that's nothing," Sergeant Biersma said. "A few thousand guilders."

"So Fernandus doesn't keep his money in his own account," the commissaris said. "Let's see what the Society owns, Izzy."

More figures appeared.

"That's better," Grijpstra said, "but it still isn't very much. That's probably the takings of a few days. Where does the real money go?"

"We figured that out yesterday," Cardozo said. "We had to go through just about every account in the bank."

Izzy held up a notebook. "I have all the codes. The biggest account is in the name of Ernst Fernandus- about twenty million, plus securities, stocks, bonds, what have you. Here you are."

The screen showed figures and lists.

"But that's a fortune," the commissaris's wife said. "Ernst is a poet who floats around the world in an ancient sailboat. Ernst has no millions."

"Probably not," the commissaris said. "Izzy tells me that Willem can manipulate his brother Ernst's account."

"Maybe Ernst won a lottery, Jan?"

The general mumble rose up again. "Unlikely." "There aren't prizes that big." "A poet!"

"Can we do it now, sir?" Cardozo asked. "We can have the shares sold and all the cash transferred."

"You can do that with the computer?" Grijpstra asked.

Izzy looked up. "Easy. This works like a Teletype too. I can connect with other banks, brokers, anything you like."

"Theft," the commissaris's wife said. "Jan, you can't do that."

He took her hand again. "We did have the raid there, dear, same thing. You didn't mind the raid."

She shook her hand free. "But this is so sneaky."

Grijpstra grinned.

"Anything funny, Adjutant?" the commissaris snapped.

Grijpstra put up his hands.

"You mean I am sneaky?"

"Don't get cross with Grijpstra now, dear." The commissaris's wife held his shoulder. "You can be very sneaky at times. Taking money from poor Ernst."

The commissaris put his hand on the computer. "Hold off a minute now. Where could Ernst be? Sailing the seven seas? Who would know?"

"Fleur."

He looked at his wife. "Willem's ex-wife?"

"Fleur," his wife said. "I met her a few months ago, in the street. We had tea together. She mentioned Ernst."

"Would she know where we can find him?"

"I could visit her. She lives close by."

"Ernst?" Fleur Fernandus, Nie De La Faille, a plump woman in her sixties, asked. She was dressed according to younger taste and heavily made up. Her bejeweled fingers reminded the commissaris's wife of fat garden worms, splattered with luminous paint. "Ach, Ernst."

The commissaris's wife, in an effort to be polite, complimented Fleur on the elegance of her apartment. "Yes," Fleur said. "Wasn't I lucky that I still had those shares of Willem's bank? Willem always badgered me to have them transferred into his name, but I didn't want to weaken my position. When we divorced, he had to buy me out. Ernst sold his shares much earlier, and was bamboozled royally, but I got a bundle." She shrugged. "Can't expect a business head on the shoulders of a poet."

"Poor Ernst," the commissaris's wife said.

"No money," Fleur said, "but so what? I would have paid him just to have him around." She breathed heavily. "Ernst is such a wonderful man, but of course I had to settle for his greedy brother…"

"Ernst is doing well?"

"… and for his brother's retarded son," Fleur finished.

The commissaris's wife fidgeted with her handkerchief.

"Ernst…" Fleur clasped her hands together. "Do you know that he asked me to go sailing with him? A hundred years ago? Around the world? And I, like an idiot, refused. We could be living on Mauritius now, and I would have been a nature woman, eating coconuts off trees, splashing about in lagoons, listening to his rhymy wordage." She grinned at her guest. "I have no ear for the stuff, poetry passes me by completely, but I'm good at pretending. I'll bet Ernst's present woman doesn't give half a hoot for his poetry, either."

"Ernst has a woman?"

"Bah." Fleur offered a tray of bonbons. "Have one, they're expensive. Yes. Some native wench who works as a waitress. Ernst was here a month ago, actually looked me up. He sailed in from Mauritius to ask Willem for a loan to buy his girlie a restaurant. Didn't get a penny. Willem tried to interest him in smuggling drugs, but Ernst is too naive for the real world. I bought him dinner, a few times, and clothes so that he could take me out; he dresses rather sloppily."

The commissaris's wife's teeth broke through a thin coating of chocolate. She winced at the oversweet taste. "Not attractive?"

"Very attractive," Fleur said. "Sun-bleached jeans, big pectoral muscles, a tattered shirt, straw sandals, unkempt beard. The depth of the sea is in his eyes and he wears a golden earring. Katrien, Ernst is a dream. But I couldn't get him into one of my favorite restaurants looking like that."

"Fleur?"

"I tried to seduce him."

"Fleur?"

Fleur stroked the armrests of her chair. "With money, of course." She kneaded her thighs. "These won't work anymore. I would have liked to keep him here. I wonder if he noticed. Tried to get him to stay here with me, but he'd rather sleep in his boat. Crummy boat."

"Fleur?"

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry to have to tell you this," the commissaris's wife said, "but your son is dead."

"Huip?"

"You only have one son."

"Good," Fleur said. "The hateful monster. I could never stand him; he didn't even have his father's amusing side. Graspy little baby, hurt me a lot, and when he grew up it was even worse. How did he die? Got killed by his cronies? Huip never kept good company. You should have seen the human offal he dragged home from school."

"A boating accident," the commissaris's wife said. "Jan heard about it. I think he even saw it, on the Vinker Lakes earlier today."

"Good," Fleur said. "I always hated those damned lakes. That's where Willem enjoyed himself. Did Willem die too?"

"No, Fleur."

Fleur pushed a large bonbon into her mouth.

"Fleur?"

Fleur swallowed. "So Willem is still out there, making trouble? Why don't you send Jan after him? Jan could catch the miserable sod. Willem isn't all that clever, you know, he does have weak points."

"I think that Jan considers Willem a suspect in a murder case," the commissaris's wife said.