Janwillem De Wetering - Outsider in Amsterdam

"Let's go there."

In the flat he asked her to wait at the door while he caught Oliver and locked him up in the kitchen. She slipped past him. He fed Oliver.

By the time he got into the bedroom she had little on.

He helped her take her panties off.

Grijpstra watched his wife, a formless lump under the blankets, and listened to the chief inspector whose loud voice hollered from the telephone.

The voice went on and on, connecting sentences, repeating itself. Mrs. Grijpstra's head became visible. She scowled. "Why," Grijpstra asked himself, "do curlers have to be pink? Why not brown? If they were brown they would blend with her hair, I wouldn't notice them so much, and I would be less irritated. I wouldn't have such a foul taste in my mouth. My stomach wouldn't cramp. I wouldn't have to worry about ulcers. My wife wouldn't forget to buy medicine because I wouldn't need to take medicine. I would be happier."

"Yes sir," Grijpstra said.

It was ten A.M., Sunday morning.

"No," the chief inspector said. "This 'yes sir' won't get us anywhere, Grijpstra. I don't see any progress in the case at all. We aren't getting anywhere, Grijpstra. Complications, that's all we get."

"How do you mean, sir?" Grijpstra asked and changed the telephone to his other ear.

"By now we should have sufficient material to start sorting and shifting," the chief inspector said, "but we haven't sorted anything and we have more material. You said that you found another staircase, didn't you?"

"Yes sir," Grijpstra said, "another staircase and another door. The staircase leads to Piet's room. The door is locked but we opened it, the lock was simple. It wasn't rusty. Piet had a key to it and Mrs. Verboom used to have a key. Perhaps other people had or have keys as well."

"Yes," the chief inspector said impatiently, "so anybody could have sneaked up, without the girls in the kitchen seeing him. Or her. Mrs. Verboom could have used her keys."

"She was in Paris, sir."

"So she says. But we have airplanes nowadays. She could have come in the morning and left in the evening. We'll have to check. Find out where she works."

"Yes sir," Grijpstra said and blew cigar smoke into the room. His wife began to cough, got out of the bed and stamped out of the door, slamming it.

"What was that?" the chief inspector asked.

"My wife closed a door."

"It sounded like a shot. Never mind. There is also the old Mrs. Verboom, do you know where she is now?"

"She is in Aerdenhout; the mental home is called Christian Freeminded Sanatorium for Neuroses."

"She is all that?" the chief inspector asked.

Grijpstra sucked on his cigar.

"Not funny, hey?" the chief inspector said and continued hopefully. "Perhaps we'll have an anonymous tip. Anything to give us a hint. A good hint. The commissaris is becoming impatient. He keeps on phoning me. You still think it is murder?"

'There is seventy-five thousand missing, sir," Grijps-tra said.

"Yes," the chief inspector said, "very true. He may have paid someone. But who? I don't know. We'll have to go on, what else can we do? You go and see the corpse's mother in Aerdenhout. She is crazy but crazy people sometimes answer questions. She may speak the truth. Crazy people often do. Go and see her, Grijpstra. Today. Sunday is just the sort of day to visit a mental asylum. Do it today and you can do something else tomorrow. You have to go and see our two drug dealers. Monday is a good day to see drug dealers. They won't have much resistance after the weekend."

Grijpstra put his hand over the mouthpiece and sighed.

"Are you there, Grijpstra?"

"Yes sir," Grijpstra said. "I'll go to the mental home today. Goodbye, sir."

He rang off.

"Good hunting," the chief inspector had said but Grijpstra missed it.

His wife had come into the room again.

"You shouldn't smoke cigars in the bedroom," Mrs. Grijpstra said.

"It's a filthy habit," Grijpstra said and got off the bed. He dressed and clasped his gun holster to his belt. He took his time shaving.

"This'll be my only pleasure today," he thought morosely. "A good shave, a lot of very hot water, and a lot of nice frothy soap and a new blade. And after that a sea of trouble. A black sea. A sea. I should have become a fisherman. They sail around, early in the morning, on a black sea. And then the sun breaks, and everything becomes beautiful. But I joined the police." He cursed and wiped his face and went back to the bedroom to stare out of the window.

His wife brought a cup of coffee. He swallowed a little and made a face. "This is cold, and you forgot the sugar."

His wife stamped out of the room and slammed the door. He stared out of the window again. The Lijnbaansgracht was dirtier than usual that morning. He counted three plastic dirt bags, a mattress, two chairs and some lesser and assorted rubbish, all floating slowly in the lazy current.

Grijpstra laughed, a dry hollow laugh. He had remembered article 41 of the General Amsterdam Police Ordination. "It is forbidden to dump any material, either on the public roads, or their adjacent precincts, or in the public waterways."

"Some article," Grijpstra thought. "The fine is probably ten guilders. I'll phone the municipality again tomorrow. They'll send a boat down and two men. And there'll be other rubbish floating past on Tuesday. Dirt is like crime, the supply is endless."

He picked up the phone.

"Yes?" de Gier asked.

"I'll meet you at Headquarters," Grijpstra said, "in half an hour's time."

"No," de Gier said. "I have a date."

"You have," Grijpstra said, "with me."

He put the phone down and struggled into his jacket.

"You going out?" his wife asked in the corridor.

"Yes," Grijpstra said.

"Will you be home late?"

"Yes," Grijpstra said and slammed the front door.

De Gier was sitting at the wheel of the gray VW when Grijpstra strolled into the court. Grijpstra looked relaxed. The walk had cheered him up and he had remembered the truth of the proverb that says shared sorrow is half sorrow.

De Gier started the car as soon as his chief got in and drove off.

"Shouldn't you thank the doorman for opening the gate for you?" Grijpstra asked.

"No," de Gier said.

"In a bad mood?" Grijpstra asked.

"Not at all. There's nothing like duty. I had a date with Constanze Verboom and her daughter. We were going to the beach. Didn't you go to the beach yesterday?"

"Yes," Grijpstra said. "The beach was full. And the sea was dirty. And if you want to pee they charge you twenty cents. And the children wanted to build a sand castle and a fat German walked right through it. He couldn't help it, he had to walk somewhere. My son hit him with his little spade. He bled like a cow."

"Haha," de Gier said.

"Amused, are you?" Grijpstra asked.

"Very amused," de Gier said. "Got you into trouble, eh?"

"Yes."

"And where are we going?" de Gier asked.

"To Aerdenhout," Grijpstra said. "We're going to visit your girlfriend's mother-in-law. In the nuthouse."

De Gier stood on the brake and the car veered to the side of the road. Grijpstra had to extend a hand to stop his head from hitting the windshield.

"You aren't serious," de Gier said, "and if you are, why take me? You can go to the nuthouse by yourself, can't you?"

"I am not fond of old ladies," Grijpstra said, "and I am scared of mental homes."

De Gier tried to tear the plastic off a pack of cigarettes. "So why didn't you send mel I had to go and see Con-stanze by myself, didn't I?"

"It wasn't my idea," Grijpstra explained patiently. "It's the chief inspector's idea. And he told me to go. And I didn't want to go by myself. Two hear more than one, and you have to do what I tell you to do, and let's get going."