Janwillem De Wetering - Outsider in Amsterdam

Grijpstra grinned and told himself that he should remember to repeat the explanation to de Gier.

"So if Piet had continued on the way he was going he would have been in trouble?"

The accountant made his fingertips touch and looked at his interrogator from above, using his high seat and tall body to advantage.

"Perhaps. The inspection is busy, and very slow. Their servants are officials, nine-to-five men, moderately dedicated. With luck Piet could have gone on for years and years and even if the inspection had become suspicious, well, there would have been time. He could have sold out and run for it. He might had made a small fortune and retired, on an island somewhere. There are a lot of islands in the world."

"Piet was the only director?" Grijpstra asked.

"Yes. He asked me to join him but I refused. The Society's foundation was too rotten for me. His wife used to be a director but she never knew what went on. She left him anyway, you know that, don't you?"

"Yes," Grijpstra said, "and what did he do with the money?"

"Let's see," the accountant said and leafed through the ledger. "Here. The money wasn't spent. He invested some in the house, repairs and so on, improving its value considerably. There is a nice car in the Society, which Piet used, and he bought a small house in the South, in the country somewhere. A good buy, its present value should be three times what he paid for it. His own official income was six hundred guilders a month, plus free board and lodging. He paid income tax on the six hundred, which is next to nothing."

Grijpstra looked at the ceiling. The accountant waited patiently.

"So everything in the house, the stereo equipment, furniture, statues, inventory, stocks, were the Society's property?"

"Yes."

"And Piet could sell whatever he wanted to sell and pocket the money?"

"Yes," the accountant said. "In fact he was the Society. A difficult case, even for the inspection. If they had found out what he was doing they would have forced him to change it into a commercial company."

'To get a grip on him?"

"Exactly," said the accountant. "But what are you hinting at?"

Grijpstra smiled his special noncommittal smile and managed to put some human warmth in it.

"I don't quite know myself," he said. "I am gathering information, that's all. Who would benefit from Piet's death?"

"His wife," the accountant said, "but she ran away. To Paris I think; I seem to remember that Piet told me but I am not sure. If she is in Paris she can't have murdered him there. In any case, I know her and she is not the killing type. She is a rather lovely but very vague woman. She wouldn't hang anyone. And her little daughter is a toddler."

"Do you see any reason for suicide?" Grijpstra asked. The accountant sucked pensively on his cigar and began to cough. Suddenly he looked ferocious and the soggy cigar stub was killed with savage power.

"Bah. These cigars aren't what they are cracked up to be. Wet bags full of nicotine. Yagh."

Grijpstra waited patiently for the evil mood to pass.

"'Suicide,' you said. I am no psychologist," the accountant said.

"I am asking you ail the same," Grijpstra said pleasantly.

"I am an accountant. As an accountant I would say there might be a reason. I think I convinced Piet that his Society would have to disappear. He identified with the Society. Its death might mean his own death. And I think that the thought of having to pay a lot of money to the government upset him considerably. He might have had to pay as much as fifty thousand guilders, an amount he didn't have."

"Not in cash," Grijpstra said.

"Yes," the accountant agreed, "it wasn't all that bad. He could have raised the money on his property. I could have managed the mortgage for him, at a price of course. Mortgages are expensive these days."

"So he was upset," Grijpstra said. "He would have had to go to a lot of trouble to raise money to pay to the government."

The accountant put his fingertips together again and donned a pensive look.

"And there you may have your reason," he said suavely. "The government is the establishment and Piet fought the establishment. His Society was against the establishment. And now it looked like the enemy was winning."

"Aha," Grijpstra said. "And if his enemy would force him to change the Society into a commercial company he would have had to hire real staff and pay them real wages. It might have been the end of his small but profitable business."

"Quite," the accountant said.

Grijpstra studied the accountant, a tall wide-shouldered man, aged somewhere between fifty and sixty. A beautifully chiseled head. A chartered accountant, a man of standing, comparable to a surgeon, a bank director, an important merchant. An expensive office, an expensive image. Even an expensive name. Joachim de Kater. A "kater" is a tomcat. The tomcat watches how the others run to and fro, in the sweat of their brows, and every now and then the tomcat puts out his paw and flicks his nails and the others pay. A chartered accountant is a man trusted by the establishment. Whatever he says is believed and the tax inspectors talk to him as equal to equal. Grijpstra shuddered. Grijpstra is Dutch too and he feared the tax inspectors as the Calvinists had once feared the Spanish inquisition.

"Thank you," he said. "I won't take any more of your time."

"It was a pleasure to be of use," de Kater said, and stretched to his full length. His handclasp was firm and pleasant. His smile glinted in the dark room. Grijpstra studied the smile for a moment. Expensive teeth. Eight thousand guilders perhaps? Or ten thousand? The false teeth looked very natural, each individual tooth a work of art, and the back teeth all of solid gold.

Grijpstra walked past the water of the canal, in deep contemplation. Fifty thousand guilders, payable in one go perhaps, but perhaps not. The tax people always appear to be reasonable. They don't like to slaughter the goose who lays the golden eggs. They might have been prepared to wait a bit. Perhaps he should go to see them.

But on the other hand… Perhaps Piet panicked. He might have been petrified with fear, fear of the possibility of losing his easy trick to make money. And fear might have forced his head into the homemade noose.

Would it?

Grijpstra thought of the small head with the abundant dark red hair and the beautiful full mustache. The small head with the large bump on its temple. He saw the little corpse again, the naked feet and the neat little toes, pointed at the wooden floor.

De Gier walked past the merchants' mansions on the Prinsengracht using the long strides that, he believed, prevent the common policeman's complaint of flat feet. His mind was clouded by anger. He was angry with everyone in general and with Grijpstra in particular. De Gier didn't want to walk, he wanted to drive. But the police are stingy, and Grijpstra didn't like to be an exception. Why use a car if there is no immediate necessity?

But it was a nice day and de Gier's anger evaporated. The image of a terrible, silly and stupid Grijpstra slid from his mind. Grijpstra had been punished anyway. He, de Gier, was walking, wasting the state's time. He could have taken a streetcar. De Gier had gone further than Grijpstra had intended him to go. He was even saving the state the price of a tram ticket.

De Gier smiled. He had analyzed his own thoughts. He now faced the conclusion with courage. He was a petty little man himself. De Gier always tried to analyze his own thoughts, trying to find the real motivation of his actions. And always he had to conclude that he, de Gier, was a petty little man. But the conclusion didn't discourage him. He shared his pettiness with all of humanity. He didn't have a very high opinion of humanity. He had, once, when they were drinking together, told Grijpstra about his line of thought and Grijpstra had nodded his heavy head. It had been one of the rare evenings when Grijpstra had been prepared to talk. Unwilling to meet his family, and after a long day, he had accepted de Gier's invitation to have a meal at one of the cheap Chinese restaurants and afterward they had found themselves in a small bar of the Zeedijk, the long spine of the prostitution quarter. The owner of the bar had recognized them as plainclothes policemen and had filled and refilled their glasses, quietly and with a hurt smile on his cadaverous face. Grijpstra had done more than agree. He had finished his glass of jenever with one tremendous sip and raised a finger.