lungs being pushed past his vocal chords.
The next morning the two detectives were facing their officers. Neither of them felt well, and their eyes were hollow. The points of de Gier's usually so merry mustache drooped down and Grijpstra looked as if his clothes were too large for him.
The chief inspector studied his assistants one by one, pointing at each of them in turn with the small cigar he held between his lips. The commissaris was in the room as well, a small unsightly man with a wrinkled gray face.
'So what are we going to do about all this?' the commissaris suddenly said in an unexpected, deep voice.
'Go on,' Grijpstra said, 'what else?'
'How?' the commissaris asked.
Grijpstra didn't answer.
'What do you think of it?' the commissaris asked and looked at the chief inspector.
'Grijpstra is right, I think,' the chief inspector said. 'We'll shadow Beuzekom and his friend for a while and call them in for questioning from time to time. And we'll be watching the other suspects as well. Perhaps something will happen, someone is bound to become nervous. Perhaps we'll receive an anonymous tip. Perhaps the psychiatrist of the mental home will come up with something.'
'Perhaps,' the commissaris said. 'Perhaps you need more men. We have more men. This seems to be a murder and murders have to be solved.'
The chief inspector lit his small cigar again.
'I have a plan,' he said and looked at Grijpstra. 'You want to hear about my plan?'
'Yes sir,' Grijpstra said.
'We'll start at the other end and we'll stir the pot till the broth froths,' the chief inspector said.
There were question marks on the faces of the commissaris and the two detectives.
'I'll explain,' the chief inspector said. 'Piet Verboom dealt in hash. We can be quite sure about that now. He imported it in casks and pretended they came from Japan. We found the invoices but the mizo paste didn't come from Japan, it came from Pakistan. There is no mizo paste in Pakistan, mizo is a Japanese dish.'
De Gier came to life.
'But sir, we found mizo paste in the casks. There was no hash in them at all, I am quite sure of it.'
The chief inspector nodded.
'You found mizo. The casks you discovered had been bought by Piet from a wholesaler who imports from Japan. The casks you found in Piet's cellar also came from the same wholesaler. But the stuff Piet imported came from Pakistan and was hash. The customs must have slipped up, for anything coming from Pakistan is suspect. Perhaps the customs were busy and didn't check properly.'
'Right,' Grijpstra said. 'The real hash came from Pakistan, was imported by Piet and sold to Beuzekom and Company. But why? Surely Beuzekom and Company could have imported the stuff themselves.'
'They could not,' the chief inspector said, 'for they didn't have a connection. We found Piet's passport and he has been to Pakistan. We also checked with the passport people and they produced his old passport from their files. He has been to Pakistan at least twice in the last ten years. He probably showed his supplier a Japanese mizo-paste cask and the packing was copied in Pakistan.'
'How much did he import?' Grijpstra asked.
'Quite a lot. Perhaps over a hundred casks in all.'
'Yes,' Grijpstra said, 'I suspected that the five casks we found in Beuzekom's house had been planted there, in case we got wise to them.'
'But what happened to the seventy-five thousand guilders that are missing?' de Gier asked.
'So far we have gone on facts, now we'll have to begin to surmise. This Pakistan business is clear enough. We have found little wooden elephants full of hash, and fruitcases full of hash, all coming from Pakistan, so why not mizopaste casks full of hash? But hash is bulky and fairly cheap. If dealers want to make real money they have to sell the hard stuff. Hash costs from twenty-five guilders to thirty guilders a stick now but the consumer gladly pays from one hundred twenty-five to one hundred fifty for a teaspoonful of heroin. The dealer who can sell hash can sell heroin as well, the channels are the same. But heroin doesn't come from Pakistan. Piet must have wanted to switch to new and bigger profits. If he had enough initiative to locate a supplier in Pakistan he must have thought that he could also find a heroin supplier. Heroin can be found in France, there are some refineries on the south coast where rough opium is transformed into powdered heroin, which can be packed into handy little sealed plastic bags.'
'Did Piet go to France?' Grijpstra asked.
'Perhaps,' the chief inspector said. 'The French immigration doesn't stamp a Dutchman's passport anymore so we can't prove anything. But he traveled from time to time and was away from his house at the Haarlemmer Houttuinen for weeks at the time. He may have been in France.'
'Yes,' de Gier said, 'so perhaps he found a supplier and needed money to buy a large supply, so he scraped together all the money he could find.'
'That's what I think,' the chief inspector said, 'and when he did have the money he was killed. Perhaps by someone who knew that the money was in the house. Perhaps by the heroin supplier. Perhaps by the customer. For Piet would have sold it to a wholesaler, he didn't sell directly to the public.'
'Beuzekom and Company,' Grijpstra said, 'but why should they kill him? They didn't need the money that badly, they needed the business. Why hang a man who can sell you regular lots of goods you need for resale?'
'Yes, yes,' the chief inspector said. 'Beuzekom has a lot of money. He is spending a hundred guilders an hour in some of the expensive bars of Amsterdam. He needs a continuous supply of heroin, not just one catch of seventy-five thousand guilders. I think you are right there. In fact, you can arrest Beuzekom if you like. I have spoken to the public prosecutor and he'll give his permission if we apply for it. We could keep both Beuzekom and Ringma for a few weeks.'
'Interrogate them separately,' de Gier said.
'You think it would be a good idea?' the chief inspector asked and lit a fresh little cigar.
'No,' de Gier said, after some reflection.
'Why not?'
De Gier scratched his leg. 'Beuzekom studied psychology, he is both clever and disciplined. We won't break him, not even by keeping him in a wet cell on the ground floor and refusing to let him smoke. Perhaps we might break that little boyfriend of his but I doubt it. They have too much to lose. They live in splendor now and they know we have no real proof. They would prefer a few weeks of misery in a cell to losing their golden future.'
The chief inspector looked at his cactus.
'All right then, we'll stir the pot. We'll give the underworld a thorough shake-up. The goal will be to get at the drug dealers, the real big fellows, who can sell or buy drugs in quantities. I have a list here of all likely addresses. It's a recent list compiled by the Investigations Bureau. Some of the addresses are of cafes and bars but there are also benches in public parks, tram shelters, public lavatories, student hostels, sleep-ins, houseboats and houses that have been empty for some time. I'll coordinate the raids from Headquarters and we'll have every detective out on the job. The uniformed police will be helping as much as they can, I'll be working with their chief. The action will start tomorrow night but you can begin earlier if you like. I would suggest that you put some pressure on that nasty young fellow who gave you the dead girl yesterday. He is a user and he will be buying his drugs somewhere. Find out where and go from there, and keep on going until you get a nicely sized fish on the hook.'
'Yes sir.'
'You can go and have some coffee now,' the chief inspector said. 'You need it, I think.'
The detectives saluted and left the room.
'Good hunting, gentlemen,' the commissaris said.
\\ 12 /////
