'We got them early fortunately, two of them. There's nothing you can do when they come at you. Friend of mine jumped straight into the canal to get away. The crowd was very amused.'
'Did you catch the driver?'
'Sure. Pulled him out of the cabin myself, had to smash the window for he had locked himself in. That's one report I am going to write myself. He'll get three months.'
'Nice day,' Grijpstra said. 'Let's go. We have a lady waiting for us.'
They got to the lady ten minutes later. They only got into one more fight. Grijpstra was bitten in the hand. De Gier pulled the woman off by the hair. The military policemen arrested the woman. Her artificial teeth fell out as they threw her into a van. They picked up the teeth and threw them in after her.
2
The straight tree ditch is a narrow canal flanked by two narrow quays and shadowed by lines of elm trees which, on that spring evening, filtered the light through their haze of fresh pale green leaves. Its lovely old houses, supporting each other in their great age, mirror themselves in the canal's water, and any tourist who strays off the beaten track and suddenly finds himself in the centuries-old peace of this secluded spot will agree that Amsterdam has a genuine claim to beauty.
But our detectives were in no mood to appreciate beauty. Grijpstra's shins hurt him and the wound on his hand was ugly. His short bristly hair was white with soapstone powder and his jacket had been torn by an assailant whom he had never noticed. De Gier limped next to him and snarled at a policeman who told them to be off. There were no civilians about, for the canal offered no room for mobs, but the police had sealed its entrance to prevent access to the Newmarket Square. Red and white wooden fences had been hastily installed and riot police guarded the roadblocks, staring at the curious, who, silently, stood and stared back. There was nothing to see, the fighting in the square being screened by high gable houses. The atmosphere of the canal was heavy, loaded with violence and suspicion, and the policemen, forced into idleness, hit their high leather boots with their truncheons, splitting the silence. Far away the revving engines of motorcycles and trucks could be heard, and the whining of the water cannon, and the subdued yells of the combatants, eerily setting off the clamor of machines. Demolition was still continuing, for the houses had to come down, the sooner the better, and the cranes, bulldozers and automatic steel hammers and drills were adding their racket to the general upheaval.
'We are police, buddy,' de Gier said to the cop, and showed his card, which had got cracked when he fell.
'Sorry, sergeant,' the constable said, 'we trust nobody today. How is it going out there?'
'We are winning,' Grijpstra said.
'We always win,' the constable said. 'It's boring, I'd rather watch football.'
'Number four,' de Gier said. 'Here we are.'
The constable wandered off, hitting the canal's castiron railing with his stick, and Grijpstra looked up at the four-storied house, which was number four according to a neatly painted sign next to the front door. 'Rogge,' said another sign.
'Took us three quarters of an hour to get here,' de Gier said. 'Marvelous service we are giving nowadays, and there's supposed to be a dead man with a bloody face in there.'
'Maybe not,' Grijpstra said. 'People exaggerate, you know. Adjutant Geurts was telling me that he was called to investigate a suicide last night and when he got to the address the old lady was eating nice fresh toast with a raw herring spread on top of it, and there were chopped onions on top of the herring. She had changed her mind. Life wasn't so bad after all.'
'A man with a bloody head can't change his mind,' de Gier said.
Grijpstra nodded. 'True. And he won't be a suicide.'
He rang the bell. There was no answer. He rang again. The door opened. The corridor was dark and they couldn't see the woman until the door had closed behind them.
'Upstairs,' the woman said. 'I'll go first.'
They turned into another corridor on the second floor and the woman opened a door leading to a room facing the canal. The man was lying on his back on the floor, his face smashed.
'Dead,' the woman said. 'He was my brother, Abe Rogge.'
Grijpstra pushed the woman gently aside and stopped to look at the dead man's face. 'You know what happened?' he asked. The woman covered her face with her hands. Grijpstra put his arm around her shoulders. 'Do you know anything, miss?'
'No, no. I came in and there he was.'
Grijpstra looked at de Gier and pointed at a telephone with his free hand. De Gier dialed. Grijpstra pulled his arm back from the woman's shoulders and took the telephone from de Gier's limp hand.
'Take her outside,' he whispered, 'and don't look at the body. You two have some coffee, I saw a kitchen downstairs; I'll see you there later.'
De Gier was white in the face when he led the woman outside. He had to support himself against the doorpost. Grijpstra smiled. He had seen it before. The sergeant was allergic to blood, but he would be all right soon.
'The man's head is bashed in,' he said on the phone. 'Do what you have to do and get us the commissaris.'
'You are in the riot area, aren't you?' the central radio room asked. 'We'll never get the cars through.'
'Get a launch from the State Water Police,' Grijpstra said. 'That's what we should have had. Don't forget to get the commissaris. He is at home.'
He replaced the phone and put his hands into his pockets. The windows of the room were open and the elm trees outside screened the pale blue sky. He looked at their leaves for a while, resting his eyes on their delicate young green and admiring a blackbird which, unperturbed by the weird atmosphere of his surroundings, had burst into song. A sparrow hopped about on the windowsiil and looked at the corpse, its tiny head cocked to one side. Grijpstra walked over to the window. The blackbird and the sparrow flew off but gulls continued swooping down toward the canal's surface, looking for scraps and dead fish. It was the beginning of a spring evening which the occupant of the room would have no part of.
How? Grijpstra thought. The man's face was a mess of broken bones and thick bright red blood. A big man, some thirty years old perhaps. The body was dressed in jeans and a blue bush jacket. There was a thick golden necklace around the muscular neck and its skin was tanned. He has been on holiday, Grijpstra thought, just returned probably. Spain. North Africa perhaps, or an island somewhere. Must have been in the sun for weeks. Nobody gets a tan from the Dutch spring.
He noted the short yellow curls, bleached by exposure, and the beard of exactly the same texture. The hair fitted the man's head like a helmet. Strong fellow, Grijpstra thought, could lift a horse off the ground. Heavy wrists, bulging arms.
He squatted down, looked at the man's face again and then began to look around the room. Not seeing what he was looking for, he began to walk around, carefully, his hands still in his pockets. But the brick or stone wasn't there. It had seemed such a simple straightforward solution. Man looks out of the window. Riot outside. Someone flings a brick. Brick hits man in the face. Man falls over backward. Brick falls in the room. But there was no brick. He walked to the window and looked down into the street. He still couldn't see a brick. The helmeted policeman who had stopped them earlier was leaning against a tree staring at the water.
'Hey, you,' Grijpstra shouted. The policeman looked up. 'Has there been any stone throwing here this afternoon?' 'No,' the constable shouted back. 'Why?'
'Chap here has his face smashed in, could have been a stone.'
The constable scratched his neck. Til go and ask the others,' he shouted after a while. 'I haven't been here all afternoon.'
The stone may have bounced off this man's face here and fallen back into the street. Get some of your friends, please, and search the street, will you?'
The constable waved and ran off. Grijpstra turned around. It could have been a weapon, of course, or
