The Mind-Murders (6 page)

"Sea gulls," Grijpstra said.

"And crows," Fortune added. "There are always crows on the roof, but they are noisier now than usual."

"Let's have a look."

Fortune showed de Gler a trap door and the sergeant stepped into Grijpstra's hand and hoisted himself nimbly through the hole.

"How does that story finish?" Grijpstra asked Fortune. "Or don't you know how it goes?"

"Yes, I know the tale well. When the squire banged the wall with his poker, something inside the wall screeched back at him. An earsplitting screech, unnerving him and the constable. The constable had the wall opened and found the lady's corpse standing up. On her disheveled head sat the cat, the cat that your colleague kept forgetting. The cat was alive, and it screeched."

De Gier's head popped back. "Come up here, I found something."

"A corpse?" Grijpstra asked.

The corpse was on the other side of the roof, partly hidden by a chimney. It had neither ears nor eyes and its skin was badly torn, but it was still recognizable as the remains of a small poodle. Around its neck were the remnants of a red silk collar.

"Babette," whispered Fortune. "Poor little thing. Whatever happened to you?"

Grijpstra sat on his haunches and studied the dog's head. "Got a bit of a blow, the skull is broken. The birds didn't do that, they've only worked on the softer parts of the body."

De Gier walked away until he reached the roofs edge. He looked down and staggered backward.

"I'm nauseous," he said softly, "and dizzy." He held his stomach. "If I don't absorb some nicotine into my blood quickly, I'll lose control. I'll be mumbling and I'll never stop. Til be gesticulating too. I'll be mentally ill. Maybe they'll let me do something in therapy. I could sweep the path, somewhere in the rear of the asylum, in the cemetery, between the gravestones of the medieval disturbed. Nobody'll come to look for me."

"Talking to me?" Grijpstra asked.

"Yes. I'm telling you that I'm no good as a policeman."

"You never were," Grijpstra said, "or I wouldn't have asked for your transfer to the murder brigade ten years ago. Look at Fortune."

Frits Fortune had cradled Babette's head in his hands and peered into its empty sockets. His pursed lips were whispering endearments. He was also crying.

5

"Now what kind of a man is Frits Fortune?" Grijpstra asked. "If we don't answer that question, we don't answer anything. Is he a comedian? Is he a nice guy? Is he a murderer? He could be a nice guy but I think that he is a murderer."

Grijpstra leaned on the railing of the bridge. De Gier leaned next to him. A municipal barge, its lone skipper using the helm as a support for his back, approached slowly through the Brewerscanal. The skipper's legs were spread, he had his hands in his pockets, and he gazed straight ahead. The bent bodies of the detectives underwent a slight tension. It could just be possible that the barge would turn and sail under the bridge into the Emperorscanal. If it did, it would hit the elm tree straddling the water. The resulting accident would be spectacular and cause considerable damage to houseboats. There would be bodies in the water and appreciable commotion. The all-pervading silence of a late Saturday afternoon in the inner city, underlined by the monotonous growl of the barge, would be ripped into a thousand shreds.

But the barge didn't turn and the detectives returned to their quiet questioning. The red-beaked geese appeared majestically. The hairy well-dressed cyclist turned up; his pedal still clanged against the chain guard. The shiny Mercedes parked in front of Hotel Oberon and the fat German got out. The door of Cafe" Beelema opened and closed. Kiran, the Great Dane, romped about the quayside, slowed down and left drops on trees and lampposts.

"Stupid dog," de Gier said, "I hope he doesn't see me."

Kiran saw him and barked cheerfully.

"What kind of a man is Frits Fortune?" de Gier asked. "And what kind of question do we have here? Is it the right question? What sort of a man are you? What sort of a man am I? Sometimes I've been known to be like this, at other times, however, I'm more like that."

'This and that are limited ideas," Grijpstra said. "They're the extreme limits that hold the habitual behavior of a suspect. If he did something before, we know that he may do it again. If he was a comedian yesterday, chances are he'll be a comedian today."

"I used to smoke but I don't smoke anymore. What does that make me? A nonsmoker who smoked? A former smoker turned the other way? A nonsmoking former smoker who will smoke again? Finished once, done forever? Once started, on forever?"

"You are a nicotineur," Grijpstra said, "and you have a weak character. But as you aren't a suspect, I don't care what sort of a man you are."

"No?" de Gier asked. He raised his voice. The old man, feeding the geese on the board attached to his houseboat, looked up. "Shshsh!"

"What sort of a man are you?" shouted de Gier.

The old man crumbled his last piece of bread.

"What sort of a man am I?" he asked in a clear high voice. "I'm a feeder of red-beaked geese. I am what I do and I do what I am." He sprinkled the crumbs like a stingy farmer sowing his field, nodded, and shuffled back into his boat.

Grijpstra laughed. "He's a shuffler-into-boats. And I'm a haver-of-hunger."

Kiran trotted on to the bridge.

"And so is the dog. Care to join us in a visit to a sandwich shop? Or don't you dare?"

Kiran stood against the door, imploring de Gier. The sergeant opened the door. Kiran fell/jumped inside. The dog placed his front paws on a stool and slobbered two meatrolls off the plate of a client. Then he ate another meatroll out of the hand of another client. The clients objected and the dog growled. He stopped growling and embraced a young woman who entered the shop.

The detectives found a booth in the rear. Protected but invisible behind its high partitioning, Grijpstra shouted for service. He shouted twice again before a square woman with a granite face growing from a starched dazzling white coat inquired after the purpose of his powerful exclamations.

"A roll with warm meat, another with chopped steak, another with ox sausage, and another with
two
meatrolls."

"A hundred," the woman said. "Pay now."

"What?"

"You let the dog in. The dog stole twenty guilders' worth and is now outside gobbling a liver worth eighty that I had to give him so that he would leave."

"Are you out of your mind?"

"Out," the woman said.

They walked along for some distance, then they walked back.

"If only we could find somebody who knows Fortune well," Grijpstra said. "I could ask Borry Beelema, and the man who tends bar in his nighties, and Titania, but I believe, with the certainty provided by almost total probability, that they are all interchangeable parts of the same thing and not on my side. I need somebody on the outside, which is my side, outside the lost lady and the dead dog but still within the boundaries of the suspect, if such a person existed."

"A relative?" asked de Gier.

They faced the display window of the sandwich shop. Kiran had returned to his opening position and implored the detectives over his shoulder.

"Again," Grijpstra said. "Shall I. . . ?"

"No, he'll be stealing and raping," de Gier said. He's done it already, we shouldn't allow him to step into the same river twice."

Grijpstra stopped. "I can find him a similar river. A relative you say. An aunt or an uncle?"

"Both. Aunt Coba and Uncle Henry."

"True. I forgot. I'm getting old. Those people live on the Emperorscanal. This is the Emperorscanal. We need a number. You know what, I think I'll open the door for that dog. Like this he looks pitiful. This is not a normal attitude for a dog, he'll get cramps in his paws. Maybe he won't be so hungry for he ate that liver. The girl has gone so there's nothing to rape. He might communicate with the woman who wasn't polite to us and with the big men sitting at the counter. What do you think?"

"The decision is yours. There's a public telephone over there. I'll find Uncle Henry's house number. Let's hope he's a paternal uncle and that his name is Fortune too." De Gier left.

Grijpstra opened the door. Kiran barked and fell/ jumped inside. Grijpstra walked on. A slowly passing coach, filled with Japanese tourists being instructed through loudspeakers, drowned a disharmony of sounds erupting from within the restaurant.

6

Aunt Coba smoked a cigarette, Uncle Henry smoked a pipe, Grijpstra smoked a small cigar, and de Gier didn't smoke. The four protagonists sat on armchairs, upholstered with green velvet, on the back porch of a mansion built and kept in an exuberance that would surely have been liberating if Calvinism and the urge to make both spiritual and material profit hadn't imposed certain limits. The open garden doors offered a view of rhododendron bushes gracefully curving around a sea of lowly flowers. A choir of invisible songbirds engaged in a fairly steady melody embellished with trills and twitters. Aunt Coba and Uncle Henry were stately miniatures, and their faces were nicely chiseled by age and determination. They looked alike, under silvery hair cut and combed in identical fashion, and wore about the same clothes. Antique unisex, the sergeant thought, observing and admiring their narrow trousers and flowing jackets of old shiny velours.

Uncle Henry talked around the stem of his pipe.

"Nephew Frits did something wrong?"

"No, Mr. Fortune, not that we know of. But we're looking for his wife, who seems to have disappeared. All household goods, I beg your pardon, the contents of the house, disappeared as well. So did the dog, we retrieved the dog; it was dead, however."

"Still had its head?" Aunt Coba asked.

Grijpstra stared.

Aunt Coba repeated her question loudly, articulating the syllables.

"Yes ma'm. But somebody knocked it on the head. The skull broke. The dog was on the roof."

Aunt Coba nodded happily.

"Never was much good."

"The dog?"

"Nephew Frits. If you
knew
what experiences we had with him! But how could you know?"

Uncle Henry coughed painfully. Aunt Coba's beady eyes pierced her husband's forehead. He coughed again and patted his chest.

"You want a glass of water?"

"No. Isn't it coffee time yet?"

"Not for a long while. Why don't you go and write some checks? You always write checks on Saturdays. I'll take care of these gentlemen."

Uncle Henry didn't move. Aunt Coba's steady gaze increased in strength. He got up, excused himself and left the room.

Aunt Coba sighed. She restrained her hands that were about to rub each other.

"So Rea has gone, has she? Doesn't surprise me, no, not at all. What isn't needed anymore is put away. Such a nice woman too, serving, servile even. And married to Frits!" She sighed again, sadly this time, also a little longer and deeper. "Ah well."

"Yes ma'm."

"But that's the way it had to go. His father was a Fortune and his mother was crazy too. Whenever she got too crazy, the child came here.
Little Frits is going to spend some time with Coba.
She always said that with such conviction. I was never asked whether I wanted to put up with that child, the child just came."

Empathy flooded Grijpstra's face.

"And what would little Frits do, when he stayed with you, ma'm?"

"What wouldn't he do?"

"What wouldn't your nephew do, ma'm?"

"He would wet the bedclothes. He wouldn't eat cauliflower, with or without white sauce, the sauce didn't matter to him. He would use half a roll of toilet paper at a time. If that garden fence was locked, it always was locked, and if he wanted to get his push-bike into the garden, he would break the lock, again and again. He picked his nose, at mealtimes preferably. He didn't do well at school. He stole money."

"Your money, ma'm?"

"No. He stole at home. But he wasn't home much, he was mostly here."

Aunt Coba gazed at the garden. De Gier kicked Grijpstra's ankle, too hard, because his leg jumped out of control. Grijpstra began to get up, but de Gier pushed him back. De Gier's lips formed the word "home."

"What else did he do at home, ma'm?"

"He read. He wasn't allowed to read, the doctor said he shouldn't. He had to play. He was given a box of toy bricks, an electric train, and a teddy bear. He refused to play, although he would pretend to play. He attached strings to the bricks and kicked the string while he read, and meanwhile the train moved around and around. They gave him another train with a clock-work he would have to wind now and then, but he worked out a defense. Do you know what he did with that train?"

"What did he do, ma'm?"

"My sister-in-law came into the room one evening, and there were no lights in the room. The curtains were drawn. Frits had inserted matchheads into the locomotive and the little carts and wagons, and lit them. A big flame rushed around the carpet. It frightened his mother and she tripped over the rail. Half the house burned down."

"Is that it, ma'm?"

Aunt Coba shrank in her armchair. Her eyes glistened behind her gleaming glasses.

"You know what he did with his teddy bear?"

"No ma'm."

"The teddy bear was called Brom. It was a big bear, of good quality and expensive. One day Brom disappeared. Frits's parents couldn't understand what had happened to it, and they didn't trust Frits's peculiar answers to their straightforward questions. Do you know where Brom was found?"

"No ma'm."

"Buried in the garden in a shallow grave. And do you know what else Frits had done?"

"No ma'm."

"He had beheaded Brom."