Tumbleweed

'Nice boat you have, madam,' he said sweetly, 'must be wonderful living out here on the water.'

'I would prefer a nice apartment,' the woman said, but she smiled.

'You didn't notice whether the man used to come here in a car and park it somewhere around here?'

The woman thought; the effort made her less ugly. 'Yes. He might have come in a car. It's a long walk from the city and he had the little boy with him. Maybe he parked somewhere close by and then went for a walk. But I haven't seen his car.'

'Thank you,' de Gier said.

'Would you like some coffee, sergeant?'

'No, thank you, madam, I still have a lot of work to do.'

De Gier left. It was the seventeenth door he had knocked on that morning. He knocked on another ten doors and finally got an answer. He walked back to the police VW where he found Grijpstra waiting for him, patiently smoking a cigar.

'What kept you?' Grijpstra said. 'I have been waiting here for nearly half an hour. I looked for you, did you find a pretty lady somewhere?'

De Gier took a deep breath. 'No.'

'The man used to drive out here,' Grijpstra said, 'in a red Rover. I wanted to tell you.'

De Gier took another deep breath. He had been training himself in mental discipline lately and had set himself several goals, such as not to smoke before breakfast, not to swear, to stop at orange traffic lights, to be modest. But the exercises were difficult and he didn't win much. He lost now.

'I know,' he said.

'What do you mean you know?' Grijpstra asked gruffly.

'The man drove a red Rover.'

'So why didn't you tell me?' Grijpstra asked. 'I was running around knocking on doors and seeing a lot of old women with curlers in their hair and you knew all the time. What kept you?'

'Nothing kept me,' de Gier said. 'I was working and I know more than your red Rover. Two girls live in a houseboat right at the end, students. One girl studies English and the other medicine.'

'Yes. And they were under the shower and you had to dry their backs and then they made you some coffee and it was rude to refuse. I know.'

'You know nothing,' de Gier shouted. 'They knew something. They had seen the car and they remembered the letters on the license plate.'

'So?'

'V.D.,' de Gier said.

Grijpstra got out of the car and slapped de Gier on the shouder. 'Splendid. Good work. Excellent. That's enough for the clerks at Headquarters. You found our man.'

De Gier had his first kind thoughts of the day and thanked his fate. He knew other adjutants. He also thanked the commissaris. The commissaris had made him Grijpstra's assistant.

'I am soaked,' Grijpstra said, 'and so are you. Let's get back but let's go to your flat first and I'll have coffee while you change your clothes and then we can go to my house a minute so that I can change as well, and we'll phone the commissaris from there.'

'Right,' de Gier said.

'Yes,' the commissaris said through Grijpstra's phone. 'IJsbrand Drachtsma is coming at two o'clock, but I would like you to come to my office at one. The detectives have finished their search in Mrs. van Buren's houseboat and I would like to discuss their report with you.'

The detectives had lunch in a cheap little restaurant close to Headquarters. They ate quickly and rushed, still chewing their last roll, to a room on the top floor of the police building where two men in shirt sleeves were playing cards.

'Would you like to do a little work?' de Gier asked politely.

'No,' the men said.

'Good. A red Rover, new model. The license plate starts with the letters VD, we don't know the number. Who owns it?'

'An interesting question,' one of the men said.

'How long will it take you?'

'A couple of minutes or a couple of hours, depends how lucky we are. It isn't urgent, is it?'

'It isn't urgent at all,' de Gier said, 'but I would like to have the man's name and address within ten minutes and while you are about it you might check if he has a record.'

The men stopped playing cards.

'Ha,' the commissaris said, 'there you are. Did you find the man in the red waistcoat?'

'We know who he is, sir,' Grijpstra said. 'His name is Holman and he lives in town. He is the owner of a small firm specializing in the nut trade.'

'Nuts?'

'Cashew nuts, walnuts, peanuts, any type of nuts. He imports them and resells them to the wholesalers and supermarkets and so on. We telephoned his office and made an appointment for five o'clock this afternoon; he is coming here, to our office. He sounded very upset.'

'Did you tell him why you wanted to see him?'

'No, sir.'

'Good,' the commissaris said, and rummaged through the papers on his desk. 'I have the report here on the search of the houseboat. The detectives told me all about it this morning but it is nice to have some facts on paper. Sit down and I'll tell you what we found out.'

The detectives sat down and relaxed. De Gier was rubbing his hands. The case was going well, he thought. The suspects were coming in, one by one. They were getting somewhere, but in the back of his mind a little thought was bothering him. He found the little thought and identified it. What if the killer was hired? He had never come across a hired killer before. Hired killers are professional. They have no real motive, they work for a fixed sum of money which will arrive in an envelope when the job is done. They have no personal connection with the victim. They are cool, disinterested. They only pay one visit to the victim's house. How long does it take to throw a knife? And how does a policeman catch a man who leaves no traces? The killer might even be a foreigner, especially flown in for the purpose of finishing Mrs. van Buren's life. He would have been shown the houseboat and a photograph and given a date and a time.

'You look worried,' the commissaris said.

De Gier told the commissaris about his little thought.

'Yes,' the commissaris said, 'it worries me too. Very few people can throw a knife. In the army only special troops are taught to fight with knives. But perhaps the knife wasn't thrown, the doctor wasn't sure. But we shouldn't worry; worry is a waste of time. The woman was killed and somebody killed her. We have certain rules to follow in our investigation, and we are following the rules. We are interviewing the suspects. One of them may give us a clue. And we have searched the boat. Most of the information the detectives gave me this morning is negative. No fingerprints, the handle of the front door was wiped clean on the inside and outside, there were no signs of breaking-in so the visitor had let himself in with a key or Mrs. van Buren opened the door for him. The windows of the boat were closed except for two very small windows which must have been left open by Mrs. van Buren for ventilation. There is no way of entering through the small windows. The railing of the staircase was also wiped clean so the killer wasn't wearing gloves. The detectives found a metal strongbox in the bookcase which was locked. I had it opened and there was over a thousand guilders in cash in it. I have also been given a file with accounts and she had nearly thirty thousand guilders in her bank account. She has been paying taxes on a yearly income of twenty-five thousand guilders, her source of income is described as 'entertainment.' The houseboat is Mr. Drachtsma's property and she wasn't paying rent.'

'Well,' Grijpstra said, 'that's not too bad. We know something anyway.'

'There's a little more,' the commissaris said. 'I asked the detectives to look at her bookcase; I am always interested in what people read. She had a lot of books in Dutch, all novels by well-known writers. They wrote down the titles of the foreign books for me, must have taken them an hour at least. Perhaps de Gier was right, there were two shelves of books on witchcraft and sorcery, in five languages. She could read English, French and German but also Spanish.'