The boy sneezed a few times.
'He needs the needle now,' Grijpstra said.
They turned to the crime. There was no crime, the youth said, he had met the girl in the Dam square. He had asked her to come to his boat with him. They had slept together, she had died. De Gier admitted to himself that there had been no crime. The girl must have been over nineteen years old, and crime stops at the last day of a minor's fifteenth year, unless, of course, in case of rape. They couldn't even prove that he had seduced the girl. She must have come of her own free will, nobody had dragged her to the boat. And he had reported her condition as soon as he had become aware of it. No, no crime. So there would be no arrest.
Grijpstra looked through the girl's handbag. It contained a pack of cigarettes, a dirty handkerchief and a purse with less than twenty guilders. And a needle, and some heroin in a small plastic bag.
'Can I have that?' the boy asked.
'Is it yours?'
'No.'
'You couldn't have it even if it was yours, we'll need it as evidence.'
'Of what?' the boy asked.
'Death,' Grijpstra said.
'So you have no idea who she is?' de Gier asked again.
The youth shook his head. He knew her first name, and that was all.
'Well, de Gier said, 'we'll find out who she was, in due course. Goodbye for now, don't leave town for the time being. Here is my card, if there is anything else you think of, let me know.'
'Do you think he cared?' Grijpstra asked in the car.
'No,' de Gier said. 'He may have been afraid for his own sake, frightened of arrest, I mean, but he didn't care about the girl. Life and death don't matter much where he is.'
'Where do you think he is?'
'No idea,' de Gier said, 'and the only way to find out is to take opium.'
'Shit,' Grijpstra said.
De Gier agreed. He drove slowly and carefully.
'Do you care?' Grijpstra asked suddenly and de Gier was surprised. In all the years he had worked with Grijps-tra the question had never come up. He looked at his chief but Grijpstra's expression was the same as ever, quiet, patient, noncommittal.
De Gier found himself talking at length.
'Yes,' he was saying, 'I care. I do care. I didn't like the way that girl died. We are supposed to maintain order so that society can live peacefully and rightfully and is protected against disturbing forces. Drugs disturb. That girl shouldn't have suffered, she should have some job or other, a boyfriend or a husband, a child perhaps. She shouldn't be wandering around the city, thin as a knitting needle and full of little pricks and scars, and full of poison. But what can I do? The opium law is a joke, and whoever contravenes it is released as soon as he is caught.'
'Now, now,' Grijpstra said.
'O.K. Some of them go to jail. For how long?'
'For a little while,' Grijpstra said.
'In Persia they are shot,' de Gier said.
'Would you like to live in Persia?' Grijpstra asked.
'Let's do some work,' Grijpstra said.
'No patrol duty,' de Gier said. 'I don't want to see another dead girl.'
'No, we still have our case. We'll go and see what happened to those nice young people of the Hindist Society.'
They found the boat the nice young people were living in but nobody was home and a card on the door said that they would be back at five thirty.
They tried again at five thirty.
Eduard opened the door and smiled. 'Look who we have here.'
'The police,' Grijpstra said. 'May we come in?'
'Sure. You can have some coffee. We are here, all of us.'
The detectives said good evening, to Eduard, to Johan, to the fat girl Annetje and to the beautiful girl Therese.
'I thought you were with your mother in Rotterdam?' de Gier asked.
'I was, but I came back. I prefer Amsterdam and I can live on this boat.'
'We found work,' Annetje said proudly, 'real work for real pay. We assemble art-needlecraft kits in a factory and we make as much in a day as we used to make in a week, and we only work seven hours.'
'Not bad,' de Gier said, 'where do you work?'
He wrote down the address.
'You going to check?' Johan asked. 'Don't do that. We are still on trial and they'll fire us for sure if they know the police are interested in what we do.'
'We'll be discreet,' Grijpstra said and sipped his coffee.
'Why do you want to check?' Johan asked.
'I won't have to check if you are honest with us,' de Gier said. 'Will you be honest?'
'Why not?' Johan said. 'We have nothing to hide.'
'I hope not,' de Gier said, 'but we may have reason to suspect you of this and that. A tin of hash disappeared from the Hindist Society, a large tin of hash. Where is it?'
Grijpstra noticed that Annetje had become very red in the face.
'Show me where it is,' he said to the fat girl.
Annetje looked at Johan.
'All right, show him.'
Annetje went out of the room and came back carrying a tin. Grijpstra opened it. It wasn't a large tin and it was half full of loose marihuana.
'We didn't steal it,' Johan said. 'It belonged to the Society and we were all part of the Society, or supposed to be anyway.'
'What did you intend to do with the tin?' de Gier asked.
'Smoke the marihuana sometime,' Johan said. 'You know, a little in the evening, every now and then. None of us are habitual smokers but it is nice to have it at times, on a quiet night when there is nothing special to do.'
Grijpstra put the tin on the floor.
'Some money is missing,' de Gier said.
'You mean the money that I took up to Piet and that he put in his cash box?' Johan asked.
'Yes.'
'We didn't take it. There was a burglary that night, the thieves must have taken it.'
'We could have taken it,' Annetje said. 'The Society owed us some pay. We might have taken it too, but we didn't.'
'All right,' Grijpstra said.
'Are you going to take the tin and charge us with being in possession of drugs?' Eduard asked.
'No,' Grijpstra said.
'So what are you. going to do?'
De Gier lit a cigarette after having offered his pack around.
'Ask some more questions,' he said. 'We suspect Piet of having dealt in drugs in a big way. Do you know anything? If you tell us, it'll help us and we won't give in until we know anyway. You'll save a lot of time if you help us.'
'Why shouldn't we tell you?' Eduard said. 'We don't hold with dealing in drugs. The drug dealers are all capitalists and criminals, selling rubbish at high prices. Marihuana and hash should be legalized and the rest should be prohibited.'
'Are you a communist?' Grijpstra asked mildly.
'No. Are you?'
