The Mind-Murders (16 page)

Half an hour later, a lone cyclist entered the inner city. The dying sun touched the lining of clouds that were lowering themselves on the spires of medieval churches. He left his cycle under a tree at the Brewers-canal and became a pedestrian. The herringstall on the bridge across from Hotel Oberon was doing a brisk business. He bought a herring, liberally sprinkled with chopped onions, and retired under the awning at the side to eat it in peace.

"Evening," a portly gentleman said.

"Evening," de Gier said. "I thought you had gone home."

"I didn't. I've been here for an hour and a half. I've eaten six herrings. He hasn't come out yet. Stay here, I'll have a beer at Beelema's. I'll be right back."

6

"There," Grijpstra said.

They moved simultaneously, each taking a side of the man, keeping well back. Mtiller waddled ahead, carrying a flat case. It was dark by now and the ornamental street lights, spaced far apart, played with the fat man's shadow. They also played with another shadow, slim and sharp, darting in and out of the lights. The shadow was attached to a girl, dressed in faded jeans and a trim jacket, bouncing on high-heeled sneakers. De Gier, on the waterside, and Grijpstra, inconspicuously merging with the walls of small and narrow houses, lagged even farther behind. Two more shadows joined the procession; they had sneaked from a side alley. They moved as gracefully as the girl. They were tall and thin, as black as their owners, who were both in their late teens or early twenties, with shaved skulls, sporting leather jackets and tapered dungarees.

Rapists, Grijpstra thought.

Robbers, de Gier thought.

Can't have that, they both thought. Neither man was concerned about the girl's safety at that moment. They were hunting and Miiller was the prey. If the boys caught up with the girl, there would be a scuffle, some noise, a scream maybe. Miiller would be distracted and not do what he was supposed to do, or do it in a different manner, adding complications to the simple situation that now faced the original pursuers. One of the muggers followed the line of trees bordering the canal, the other adopted Grijpstra's tactics. Neither of them was aware of the danger behind. De Gier ran, Grijpstra lumbered. De Gier drew his knife faster than Grijpstra.

"Hey."

The boys stopped and turned. They were well trained. They did the right thing, their knives were out too, but they were at a disadvantage.

"Drop it."

The knives fell. They were light and didn't clatter much on the cobblestones.

Grijpstra's catch muttered four-letter words, the other stared at de Gier. Of the two, the adjutant's prey was the most surprised. Grijpstra could not be in the same profession as the boy, yet he was. This well-dressed elderly man with the kind face, complete with tie, cuff links and neatly folded white handkerchief in his breast pocket, was asking a black street mugger for his money. The boy's deepest mind was disturbed. Facts no longer fitted reality. There was the stiletto, its cruel point pressing against his throat, there was the hand on the shoulder of his leather jacket, there was the pleasant voice, asking for money.

The other boy could accept his particular set of circumstances more easily. The tall man in the round cotton hat looked somewhat odd. He could, if the imagination were stretched just short of the breaking point, perhaps be lurking in dark streets, prowling for loot.

"Give," Grijpstra said.

De Gier didn't speak. He hissed. He supported the boy's bare skull with his left hand, pressed the knife with the other. The skin on the boy's throat was about to break. The boy fumbled in his pocket and came out with crumpled bills. De Gier grabbed the money and swung the boy round. The boy held on to a tree while de Gier patted him down. The sergeant's foot pushed the boy's knife into the water, it splashed softly. Grijpstra picked up the other boy's knife.

"Give!"

The boy gave.

"Off with you, that way!" Grijpstra pointed over his shoulder. The other boy was running already.

There was a second splash as the other knife hit the canal's calm surface.

The detectives waited for the boys to slip into the alley that had emitted them a few moments ago and turned.

They should have kept the knives. Muller, alerted by the splashes, looked around. Asta stopped short.

"You?" Muller asked. The arm that carried his case swung back. The girl ducked and pulled her gun, aiming the pistol as it came out of her pocketbook. The pistol's click immobilized Muller.

"You're under arrest; drop your case, turn round, and hold your arms behind your back."

Asta shifted the gun to her left hand and produced her handcuffs. She had some trouble trying to fit them around Muller's fat wrists. He kicked twice, forward and backward. The case shot into the canal and Asta staggered.

When Muller turned, clawing at the a,ir separating him from the girl, de Gier jumped. The sergeant's flat hand came down, hitting Mtiller in the neck. The man's thick skin and spongy blubbery tissue absorbed the impact, but de Gier hit again in a blur of vindictive fury. Mtiller's breath escaped in a burst of foul air; after that he sobbed. Then he fell, taking his time, spreading his monstrous body between a tree trunk and de Gier's feet. The sergeant stepped back.

Grijpstra was on his knees, holding Asta's leg.

"I'm all right," she said. "He caught me on the side. It hurts but the knee'U still work. Help me up please."

She held on to Grijpstra and hobbled over to de Gier.

"The case, it's floating away, we've got to get it. You can lower me down and I'll pick it up. Here, hold my gun."

De Gier lay down and Grijpstra held his feet. Asta grabbed the low railing at the end of the cobblestones and lowered her body gently. She touched the case with the point of her shoe and maneuvered it toward her.

"Don't drop me, sergeant." The case was between her feet. "Pull me up now."

Grijpstra handcuffed Mtiller while de Gier and Asta opened the case; it contained sixteen small plastic bags. Asta undid one and sniffed at the powder; she passed the bag to de Gier.

"Probably cocaine, the laboratory'll know. You did well, Asta."

She looked round. Grijpstra was slapping Muller's cheeks slowly and methodically with both hands.

"Is he coming to?"

"In a minute, not yet."

She kissed de Gier, just touching his lips. "Did I really do well? I wasn't sure. The connection between Mtiller and Boronski was drugs. There would be drugs in the hotel. Mtiller knew we were after him. He had to get rid of the evidence; he didn't want to leave it in the hotel, for we might have traced it back to him. He thought he would dump it into the canal, a little bag at a time. He would wait until dark. If I could catch him with the drug in his possession, I could arrest him. Right?"

"Wrong, you wanted to do it on your own. We never work by ourselves, not if we can help it. You should have asked me or the adjutant to assist you. We're supposed to work as a team."

"Yes, I'm sorry."

"It's a long road," de Gier whispered, "and there's nothing at the end, but we can have company on the way."

"Yes."

He saw her lower lip tremble and embraced her. She was talking, but her face pressed against his chest, and he couldn't hear what she said. He held her at arm's length. "Say that again?"

She was crying now. "Please don't think I wanted the credit of the arrest. It was that you looked so happy on your balcony with Tabriz. I thought the two of you should rest for a while. Please tell the commissaris you made the arrest."

"That's all right." He gave her her gun and his handkerchief. "Cops don't cry, not much anyway. How's he doing, Grijpstra?"

"Awake, and he wants to get up."

Together they pushed and pulled until Mtiller was in balance. They led him back, and Grijpstra telephoned for a car at Cafe Beelema. De Gier parked the wheezing Miiller against the bridge railing while he bought Asta a herring. The car, a minibus driven by Karate, arrived within minutes.

"Where to, sergeant?"

"To Headquarters. Tell the turnkeys to make him comfortable. We'll interrogate him later tonight."

"Right. If you have a minute, you and the adjutant might go over to our station. Sergeant Jurriaans wants to talk to you."

"No," de Gier said, "I've had enough for tonight. Some other time."

"You'd better go, sergeant, me and the chief did a little work for you tonight."

"Tell me what you did."

"No. The chief wants to tell you himself."

The bus drove off.

Grijpstra came out of the café, wiping beer froth off his mouth.

"Why did you let that bus go? I don't want to walk back to Headquarters."

"I have my bicycle," de Gier said, "but Asta wants to go with me and it won't carry two passengers. There's also a proposition from the station here, which is around the corner. Jurriaans wants to see us."

"Good. He can have us driven home."

They walked slowly, Asta in the middle.

"See?" Asta said, pointing at a disorderly heap of feathers. "This is where the Chinese throws out his garbage, and there's nothing we can do about it. It isn't just feathers, there's blood and meat too."

"Good for rats," Grijpstra said, steering her around a temporary fence. "This part of town'll never get organized. What are they blacktopping this area for? What's wrong with cobblestones?"

Asta tried not to limp. De Gier supported her elbow.

"You realize that we are still nowhere," Grijpstra said. "So Herr Miiller is a drug dealer and we can prove it. That's nice. But drugs is not our department. That the Hamburg police will be pleased has nothing to do with us either. First we had a murder and no corpse, it added up to zero. Now we have a corpse and no murder. Zero equals zero."

De Gier grinned. His arm slipped around Asta's shoulders. "There's nothing more glorious than zero, adjutant. You can multiply it at will, you can divide it at will, and it will always be the same. We can lose ourselves in nothing and go as far as we like; we'll never hit the other end of it."

The adjutant hadn't thought of a reply yet when Sergeant Jurriaans welcomed his guests with outstretched arms, beaming at the bedraggled group that reluctantly entered his small office.

7

"You look tired," Jurriaans said. "Are they overworking you already?"

Asta lit a cigarette. Her hand trembled.

"No, I fell and hurt my knee; otherwise I'm having a good time."

"How do you like de Gier?"

De Gier reached for the match Grijpstra was about to strike; he put it in his mouth.

"This is not a social call, colleague. Please come to the point."

Asta smiled. "I love him. I love you too. My soul is torn."

Jurriaans nodded. "I'd advise you to lean his way, even if he's short-tempered. Married men are easy to deal with, but they've lost their spunk; the stress of the home situation takes its toll. Married men also carry guilt which clogs up the atmosphere. Take him and come to me for comfort. I'll always be around for I can't get away."

De Gier's teeth snapped through his match and he took another from Grijpstra's hand. Grijpstra gave him his matchbox and took Jurriaans's lighter. He lit his cigar and slipped the lighter into his pocket.

"Why are we here?"

"You're here because your chase has come to an end. I've liberated you. If you like, I'll tell you about it, after you return my lighter, of course."

Grijpstra replaced the lighter.

Jurriaans sat back. He cleared his throat.

"Well, where shall I start? I can't start at the beginning, for I don't know where it is. My interference came so much later, and it wasn't even mine, for Karate saw him. He saw the Prime Punk, and we subsequently arrested him. About two hours ago I tried to get hold of you, but I couldn't trace you. I wanted you to hear the Chief Punk confess, but he'll repeat his performance if you like, and if you don't, I have his signed statement."

"Who?" Grijpstra asked.

"He is a mugger and he robs cars. He's quick and sly and an expert, but Karate was quicker. Karate and I were driving about tonight; with Ketchup on leave and Asta in the higher spheres I'm even more short-staffed than usual and besides I was bored. A bit of active duty cheers me up sometimes. We drove through the Red Mill Alley, and Karate braked and raced out of the car and confronted the Punk. He is twenty years old and leads the other Punks, the second best gang of the district. The best gang is the Black Jackets and I'm sorry we didn't catch their chief for he specializes in perfidity. The Punks will break your bones, the Black Jackets will suck the marrow. They're bad and they're black. This is a racist station and we tend to identify the two ideas. That is a mistake, I know it. I know that the percentage of criminals of our black fellow men is only slightly higher than the white percentage. I'm also aware that the blacks are recent immigrants and are learning to deal with a new environment, but I don't always practice my knowledge."

De Gier selected a fresh match. "You arrested the Prime Punk?"

"I did. He was breaking into a car. Karate caught him red-handed; the Punk was using a wonderbar. A wonderbar is a metal tool and he hit Karate with it. Karate thereupon attacked the Punk and I couldn't stop him in time. The Punk was in a bad state afterward. I admonished Karate for a few minutes and interrogated the Punk for an hour. I said that it was about time that we caught him and that I would make sure that he would receive the maximum punishment. I thereupon appealed to his sense of logic. I implored him to confess all his crimes so that he would only be punished once and not repeatedly. The Punk has never been arrested yet and we don't have his fingerprints. Knowing that he works without gloves, I told him that we found fingerprints on a silver-colored Mercedes with a Hamburg registration yesterday. I said that, if the fingerprints matched his, he would be in more trouble than he was now, but that he could improve his position by confessing right now."

Grijpstra no longer reclined in his chair. De Gier's match broke again, but he didn't take another.

"Ah," Sergeant Jurriaans said, "I see that I have your attention. Yes, my friends, it was him, him and an unidentified helper."

Grijpstra sighed. "He didn't kill Boronski. Our corpse died of natural causes. We'll never break the doctor's statement. A large duodenal ulcer, no human hand. What did the Prime Punk say about Boronski?"

"He said that he and his helper, whose identity he can't remember, hot-wired the Mercedes in front of the Oberon and drove it to the Gentleman's Market. They parked the car and pried the trunk open. There was nothing in the trunk. They closed the lid and got back into the car, intending to go for a joy ride, when the trunk's lid popped open. Because they had forced the lid, it no longer closed easily. They got out to close it again, when a man came staggering along. It was around midnight and there was nobody else about."

"They didn't rob Boronski," Grijpstra said.

"No. They may have intended to, thinking the man would be drunk and helpless. As they approached Boronski, the man doubled up and vomited blood. He took a few more steps and held on to the trunk's lid. He fell into the trunk."

"As I thought," Grijpstra said. "As I thought all the time."

"Did he fall in altogether?" de Gier asked.

"No, but a patrol car passed on the other side of the canal. The constables in the car weren't paying attention, but the Prime Punk didn't want to be seen with a bleeding drunk. He expected the patrol car to come back on his side of the canal. He pushed Boronski into the trunk, slammed the lid, and walked away. He thought that the man would sleep in the trunk and that there would be enough air, because the lid didn't close properly. He expected the man to be found in the morning."

"Death by guilt," Grijpstra said. "You have a charge. The doctor said that Boronski could have been saved if he had been taken to hospital straightaway."

"The charge has already been laid. Now for the Prime Punk himself." He picked up his phone.

Within a minute the suspect was brought in. The young man's face was made up and his jacket carried a number of gaudy brooches, a bottle opener that had been unscrewed from a bar counter, a framed photograph of Alain Delon, and a German Iron Cross. His short hair was dyed with henna. His fingernails were painted orange. He didn't say anything. His jaw was bruised and bis left ear bandaged.

"You can take him away again. Remove his ornamentation so that he can't hurt himself." The elderly constable accompanying the Prime Punk saluted.

"End of the case," Sergeant Jurriaans said when the door closed again. "I didn't mean to fish in your water, I just happened to be around when the fellow could be caught."

"Another cow catches another rabbit," de Gier said. "Here's money." He counted seven twenty-five guilder bills. "How much did you get, Grijpstra?"

Grijpstra put another sev6n bills on Jurriaans's desk.

"You're not paying me, are you?"

"No, we mugged two muggers. Black Jackets. They were in our way and if we hadn't acted serious, they might have hung about. You probably had a complaint at this station tonight. Somebody must have lost the 350 that the Black Jackets split among themselves. I hope it was only one robbery. If this is the total of several felonies, you may have complications."

Jurriaans laughed. "You must have shaken them. It so happens that I do have a complainant who lost that amount tonight, a parson from the provinces who happened to stray into one of the bad streets around here. Do you remember what your fellows looked like?"

"Perhaps this little matter shouldn't be pursued," Grijpstra said. "Just return the venerable sucker's money, will you?"

"I will," Jurriaans said and tucked the bills into an envelope which he licked carefully. "Perhaps the parson doesn't want to pursue the matter either. He's a married man and the street where he was caught has a prostitute behind every window." He looked at his watch. "Are you free now? I am, and I live close by; I can go home and change. We could meet at Beelema's."

Grijpstra got up. "No, I've been there twice already tonight, and it is a place I'm trying to avoid. We still have some work to do. Some other time, Jurriaans, at another café, and thank you."

"The pleasure is mine."

They met Karate at the door. He looked at Asta. "How're you doing?"

"She's fine," de Gier said.

"I'm not," Asta said. "My knee hurts and needs a compress. A wet towel will do. I should lie on a bed. Do you have a towel?"

"He'll have a bed too," Karate said.

De Gier turned on the small constable. "Just for that, you can drive us to Headquarters and pick up my bicycle on the way, and you can drive me home, too, after we're done."

Karate opened the side door of the minibus.

"Be my guest, sergeant."

Grijpstra sat in front. He pushed away the partitioning between the driver's compartment and the rear of the bus and tapped de Gier on the shoulder.

"Rinus?"

"Yes?"

"We have no murder."

De Gier smiled. "Are you sure?"

"No."

The bus drove off.

Asta's hand slid into the sergeant's. "You mean it isn't over yet?"

"No, but we'll have to start all over again and in a different way."

"Good," she said, "I need more time with you, and my knee hurts."

"I have a towel at home," de Gier said and looked at a window where a tall black woman in white lace underwear stared back at him. She smiled; the mauve neon lighting of the small room made her teeth light up. She pulled a hidden string and her bra opened for a moment, displaying a perfect bosom.

Asta's elbow hit the sergeant's chest.

"Uh."

"Did you like her?"

"So-so."

"Did you like me in the bath today?"

"Yes."

"Good," she said. "Let's not spend too much time on Herr Muller." She tapped on the partitioning and yelled at Karate. "Let's go!"

The minibus's faulty siren howled hesitantly, worn gears ground painfully, a profound rattle shook the vehicle. Karate, jaw set, bent down over the wheel and mumbled encouragingly; the car picked up some speed.

It stopped again for some drunks who tottered from sidewalk to sidewalk in the narrow street.

"Sorry," Karate said, "only civilians can speed in Amsterdam."

"Yes," Grijpstra said, "or no. Never mind. Maybe I see it now, but I don't see all of it."

"Beg pardon, adjutant?"

"A chaos."

"It sure is, adjutant. See that respectable lady over there? With the hat in her eyes? A schoolmistress or a welfare worker. Drunk as a coot. How the hell did she fall into sin?"

"I've never accepted the chaos," Grijpstra said. "Perhaps I should. Turn up that siren, constable, we've got to get out of here."