were no arrests. The drugs were in a dustbin in a small courtyard but nobody knew how they got there.
All week the police force worked. Detectives looking like hippies raided the sleep-ins and parks. The bars were combed. People were arrested in tram shelters and under bridges. The stations were full of suspects and the city's detectives worked overtime night after night. The uniformed police helped and the state police helped, even the military police followed up tracks and caught a few dealers in the armed forces. The net was dragged through several provinces and some echoes were heard in Germany and Belgium. Suspects were charged and taken into custody but no connection with either Beuzekom and Company or the Hindist Society was found.
'I've had it,' de Gier said and climbed on a barstool in a small cafe. Grijpstra had been waiting for him.
'A beer, sergeant?' the barman asked in a loud voice.
'Please,' de Gier said, 'and keep your voice down. You've been working here long?'
'All right,' the barman said, 'calm down. I didn't mean any harm.'
'Go and serve the other customers, mate,' Grijpstra said. 'Any luck?'
'Nothing,' de Gier said. 'Sure, I caught someone, very small fry. The charge will stick, I imagine. But not what we are looking for.'
'We won't find what we are looking for,' Grijpstra said, 'not this way.'
De Gier looked at Grijpstra over the rim of his glass.
'No? Why not?'
'The man we are looking for isn't known. He is probably new to the game, to this game I mean. He'll be a criminal but he won't have a record. He is a big fellow, quite detached from the known contacts. He has offered, or sold a bulk lot of drugs. My guess is that Piet Verboom was the only man who knew who our man was.'
'So why didn't you tell the chief inspector?' de Gier asked.
Grijpstra smiled.
'Why should I? I would have spoiled his game. He was looking for an excuse to shake up the underworld. And he certainly has. The action hasn't been a flop you know, a lot of people have been caught, people we were looking for.'
'We, the police, you mean,' de Gier said, 'not you and me.'
'Not you and me,' Grijpstra said, 'but who are we?'
De Gier drank his beer and smacked his lips, holding up the glass. The barman filled it for him.
'You are very quiet all of a sudden,' de Gier said.
'Lost my tongue,' the barman said and smiled. De Gier smiled back.
'Pity Verboom was such a secretive little bastard,' Grijpstra said. 'He never told anyone anything. His own wife didn't really know what he was up to. His girlfriend didn't. The boys working in the Society didn't.'
'And we don't either,' said de Gier.
'It's all over,' said the chief inspector.
'Yes sir, Grijpstra said.
'Well, it can't be helped. Your case is still stuck. You can go back on normal duty for the time being. I'll keep on working on the case from here and I'll let you know if something happens.'
'Yes, sir,' de Gier said. 'Did you learn anything about Joachim de Kater, the accountant?'
'Yes,' the chief inspector said, 'quite a bit. I'll tell you.'
The detectives relaxed and the chief inspector began to pace the floor, hesitating every time he passed his cactus.
'De Kater was a brilliant student,' he said, 'finished his studies just before the war. He couldn't get a job during the war but he went into business for himself, manufacturing talcum powder for the German army and mixing a little grit with it so that the soldiers would have bleeding feet. A true patriot. He was arrested but released again, probably bribed the German police. He worked for several well-known firms after the war but left them and went into partnership with an old colleague who died. So far everything is fine. But we investigated his present business a little and he doesn't seem to be working much. He has a few clients who pay him some fifty thousand a year, all added. That isn't much for a registered accountant. Usually they get at least four times as much. And he has an expensive office and lives in style, paying a fat alimony to his former wife. He doesn't have a girlfriend but he visits elegant sexclubs. We tried to work out what he spends and it's at least twice as much as he should be spending.'
'May not be declaring his full income,' Grijpstra said.
'Of course,' the chief inspector said, 'nobody does declare his true income anymore, except us officials and the poor blokes who work for others. It has gone out of fashion.'
'So I expect you informed the tax inspector,' de Gier said smiling.
'I did,' the chief inspector said, 'but they were already aware of his existence. They can't prove anything, however. They are watching him, that's all.'
'Where did he get the money to pay for the two houses of Piet Verboom?' Grijpstra asked.
'Yes,' the chief inspector asked, 'that's exactly what I asked him when I invited him to come and see me. He says it was given to him and he won't tell me who gave it. A professional secret he said. Some investment company wanting to buy a lot of houses in the Haarlemmer Houttuinen. To build a hotel, I imagine.'
The detectives looked at the chief inspector.
'It could be,' the chief inspector said.
'Perhaps you would like to look into this,' the chief inspector said.
Within an hour the detectives were on the road again, on their way to visit a wholesale company dealing in electrical goods. Its owner suspected one of his directors of embezzlement.
Janwillem Van De Wetering
Outsider in Amsterdam
\\ 13 /////
THREE WEEKS HAD PASSED SINCE THE DETECTIVES HAD found the neat corpse of Piet Verboom dangling from a hook screwed into a beam. The summer was approaching its end and another heat wave had started, laming the city's life. It was Saturday afternoon. The four policemen professionally interested in the Verboom case were off-duty. But they were still interested in the open file.
The commissaris had immersed his body into a very hot bath. Pain soared through his old thin legs, the hot water eased the mean slicing rays cutting through his nerves. He sweated and thought. He had served his community for a very long time now, too long to be frustrated. His mind was calm and orderly. He regathered the facts that the case had provided and sorted them out, fitting them into several patterns. Then he checked his suspicions with the clustered facts. He promised himself that he would go and see the chief inspector again.
The chief inspector ran, dressed in a sky blue training suit, through the Amsterdam forest, the city's largest park. The chief inspector was sweating as well. He was sorely tempted to sit down somewhere and light a cigarette. The temptation made him give in, almost. He argued with himself. He would run around the pond again, just once more, and then he would sit down and light that cigarette. He would think about the Verboom case while he ran around the pond. It would be easy to think about the case for it had began to obsess him.
Grijpstra was fishing, leant over a railing, standing on the bridge of the Looiersgracht, close to his house on the Lijnblaansgracht opposite Police Headquarters. His float bobbed up and down but he didn't notice it. His mind was on the case. It was lasting too long. He was quite convinced that he had all the facts, that he had gathered enough material enabling him to make the correct arrest. But he could not, by his own fault. He blamed himself easily for he knew his own shortcomings. He had been very slow at school and his years at the police school had been a continuous brainbreaking effort. He had studied every night to pass its examinations. But he had passed and he knew that he had learned a lot, at school and afterward, during the thousands and thousands of miles of walking the city's streets and canals. He also knew that he had a good memory and the gift to concentrate his mind. And, for the umpteenth time, he forced his mind to return to the door of Haarlemmer Houttuinen number 5 where he had waited for de Gier to ring the bell.
