'No,' the colonel snapped, 'she never asked me about atomic warheads.'
'These questions must be very unpleasant for you,' the commissaris said, 'and we won't ask many more, but I have been calculating a little. If you knew the lady for three years, and if she charged five hundred guilders per visit, and if you saw her at least once a month, and if you gave her expensive presents, you must have spent some ten thousand dollars on her.'
'That's correct,' the colonel said. 'I worked it out myself on the plane. Ten thousand.'
'That's real money,' the commissaris said. 'Would you mind telling us how and where you met her?'
'I met her at a party. I often used to come to Amsterdam before I met Maria. Amsterdam is a good town for us, better than Germany. The atmosphere is just right here. I used to come with friends of mine and one of them knew some people here. There's an old gable house on the Leidse Gracht which belongs to a rich Dutchman, a man called Drachtsma. His first name is Ice, I think, something like that. The name suits him, he is a very cool guy. There were a lot of people at the party, some of them pretty famous, I believe. Musicians, painters, businessmen, professors. They like to have foreigners at the house. Maria was the star of the party and I was careful because she seemed to be Ice's girlfriend but she made it real easy for me. I took her to her houseboat that night and stayed.'
'Did she make you pay?'
'She did,' the colonel said. 'It made me feel silly all right. I thought I was making a big impression but I had to pay.'
'And you kept going back,' the commissaris said, 'even when you didn't really want to anymore. That's right, isn't it?'
'That's right,' the colonel said.
'Illogical, isn't it?'
'Yes. I can't explain it. It wasn't love. It was sex, of course, but I can get sex in Germany.'
'Do you know of any other men who were interested in Mrs. van Buren?' the commissaris asked.
'Anybody who knows her, I would guess,' the colonel said. 'You would have been if you had known her.'
The commissaris smiled. 'I am an old man,' he said, 'and I suffer from rheumatism.'
'She would have cured it perhaps.'
'Yes. She might have. But she is dead.'
'Well, Ice was interested in her, the man who gave the party and who owned the house. Big roan with a bald head. A big powerful man. I am sure she was his mistress as well.'
'Wasn't that difficult? Sharing her with others, I mean?'
'Not really. I could only see her if she wanted to see me.
'Did you ever visit her without an appointment?'
'I tried once, she didn't open her door, but the lights were on. There was a car parked on the other side of the path. A black Citroen with a CD plate.'
'Did you know the owner of the car?'
'No.'
'Weren't you jealous?'
'No,' the colonel said. 'No, I don't think I was. I felt silly that was all.'
'You have used the world 'silly' before. She often made you feel silly, didn't she?'
The colonel didn't reply.
The commissaris put on his kind old man's face.
'Don't feel embarrassed,' he said. 'We are all men in this room. We know what it is to feel silly.'
'O.K.' the colonel said, 'she made me feel silly a lot.'
The commissaris got up. 'Thank you for coming,' he said. 'Here is my card. If anything else occurs to you, anything which may help us to find our man, let us know.'
They shook hands. The colonel and the young man from the embassy left.
'Interesting,' the commissaris said to the two military police officers.
'Very,' the older replied. 'You'll find your man all right. A nice straightforward case, I would say. A client has killed her, don't you think? Or a client's right hand. It must be possible to hire a killer, even in Amsterdam.'
'Why even in Amsterdam?' the commissaris asked.
'Nice easy town. Quiet. I hear you don't even have a proper homicide squad here. You only have one when there is a murder and you only have a few murders a year. I am from the States, it's different where I come from.'
'Yes,' the commissaris said, 'perhaps this will be an easy case. But we found no fingerprints, and the weapon is a professional weapon. A British commando knife. The doctor thinks it was thrown and there aren't many citizens in Amsterdam who can throw a commando knife.'
'I would rather have your case than ours,' the younger officer said.
'You have a case?'
'You know what the colonel is doing, he told you.'
'Atomic warheads,' the commissaris said. 'Our Secret Service is interested. They led us to the case. We were watching the houseboat long before the woman was killed.'
'Exactly,' the officer said. 'The colonel has some secrets, and the woman had him in the hollow of her little hand.'
'So what will you do now?' the commissaris said.
The two policemen got up and began to walk to the door.
'Watch him,' the older officer said. 'If he spends ten thousand dollars on a whore he isn't a very good security risk.'
'Who is?' the commissaris asked.
'He didn't do it,' Grijpstra said.
'No,' de Gier said.
They had a long drive, three hours to the north and nearly three hours to the south, they were almost back in Amsterdam.
'Nice chap,' Grijpstra was saying, 'a happy man. Happy in his job, happily married.'
'Sickening, isn't it?' de Gier asked
'No. Why? Men should be happy.'
'It isn't natural.'
'Perhaps not,' Grijpstra agreed, 'but it is nice to see an exception, to actually meet one in the flesh. I really liked the man.'
'But it was a wasted trip,' de Gier said moodily, trying to overtake a large truck which was wavering slightly.
'He is asleep. Honk your horn.'
De Gier honked. A hand appeared from the cabin's window and waved them on.
'Saved his life,' Grijpstra said. 'Must have been driving for more than his legal eight hours. You could stop him and ask him to produce his logbook.'
'No,' de Gier said, 'this is an unmarked car, you have been in uniform too long.'
'Right,' Grijpstra said. 'Let's sum up. We went to see Maria van Buren's former husband. He married her in , ten years ago, when she was twenty-four. They spent a year on the island together and came to Holland. He took her to the North where he got a job as a director of a textile factory. She was bored. She liked him, and she liked pottering about in the garden, and she did a bit of sailing on the lakes and she visited the islands, but she was bored all the same. He didn't have much time to spend on her so she took to sailing by herself. She was often gone for the day. She started staying away for the nights as well. She spent an occasional weekend in Amsterdam by herself. He objected and they were divorced. No children. He married again, six years ago and he is happy. His new wife is nice, we met her. We saw the children, a toddler and a baby. Nice children. He used to pay alimony but she wrote to him and told him he didn't have to send her money so he stopped. That was three years ago. He hasn't seen her since they were divorced. And most important of all, he has an alibi. He couldn't have been in Amsterdam on Saturday, or on Friday, or on Sunday. He wasn't there so he didn't kill her. He didn't have any reason to kill her either. And he seemed genuinely sorry that she had been murdered. I believed him. Didn't you?'
