worth doing, especially if we are doing the best we can.'
It was quiet in the room. The commissaris moved his feet together.
'Yes,' he said. 'We'll have to go and arrest Mr. Bezuur. Where would he be right now, do you think, Mr. Zilver?'
'Any of a dozen places,' Zilver said. 'I can give you a list. He may be at his office, or at home, or in any of the four yards where he keeps his machinery, or he may be wandering about in the Straight Tree Ditch area again.'
'Would you like to come with us?' Cardozo asked, looking at the commissaris for approval. The commissaris nodded.
'Yes. I shouldn't have told you but I have, and now I wouldn't mind seeing the end of it.'
The commissaris was telephoning. He spoke to Grijpstra, and to the police garage.
'We'll go in two cars,' he said. 'You and Cardozo can come with me in the Citroen. Grijpstra and de Gier will follow in their VW. Are you armed, Cardozo?'
Cardozo opened his jacket. The butt of his FN pistol gleamed.
'Don't touch it unless you absolutely have to,' the commissaris said. 'I hope he hasn't got his fishing rod with him. Its accuracy and reach will be about as much as those of our pistols.'
'Mr. Zilver?'
Louis looked up.
'You can come with us on one condition. Stay in the background.'
'All right,' Zilver said.
20
The two cars left Police Headquarters at about eleven that morning and managed to lose contact almost immediately, as the constable at the wheel of the Citroen beat a traffic light just as it changed, leaving de Gier cursing in the battered VW, stuck behind a three-wheeled bicycle ridden by an invalid.
Grijpstra grunted.
'You should drive this car for a change,' de Gier said, turning up the radio's volume.
'Yes?' the radio voice asked as de Gier gave his number.
'Put me on relay,' de Gier said, 'and give us another frequency. Your third channel is free, is it?'
'Fourth channel is free,' the voice said. 'I'll tell the commissaris' car to change into it.'
'Yes?' the constable in the Citroen asked.
'Don't drive so spectacularly, constable,' de Gier said. 'We are still in Marnix Street and we have lost you already. Which way are you going?'
'East, through Weteringschans. We are headed for a yard in the industrial part on the other side of the Amstel.'
'Wait for us, I'll try to catch up, and don't rush off when you see us.'
They found the Citrosn again and tagged on. Bezuur wasn't in the yard. He wasn't in the next yard either. They tried his office. They went to the south but he wasn't at home. De Gier's initial impatience disappeared. Grijpstra sat next to him, smoked his small black cigars and said nothing, not even when a Mercedes, coming from the left, ignored their right of way and made them lunge forward as de Gier kicked his brake.
The radio came to life again. Cardozo's voice, flattened strangely, mentioned that it was past lunchtime.
'So?' de Gier asked.
'So the commissaris wants lunch.'
Grijpstra broke his silence and grabbed the microphone from de Gier's hand.
'Excellent thought, Cardozo. Tell your driver to turn right at the next traffic light, second right after that.'
'What's there, adjutant?'
'A Turkish snack bar. They serve hot rolls with some sort of meat stew inside, and tomatoes and onions.'
The radio crackled for a while and the commissaris' voice came through.
'These Turkish rolls you mentioned, Grijpstra, what are they like?'
'Delicious, sir, but a little foreign.'
'Spicy?'
'Not too much, sir.'
'What's the restaurant's name?'
'A Turkish name, sir. Couldn't pronounce it if I could remember it, but you can't miss it. They have a stuffed donkey on the sidewalk and there's a Turkish lady on the donkey, with a veil and wide trousers and lots of necklaces.'
'Yes?' the commissaris asked. 'She's got to sit on that carcass all day?'
'A dummy, sir, a window display model. Not alive.'
'I see,' the commissaris said.
They sat on the restaurant terrace and ate. The commissaris complimented Grijpstra on his good taste and ordered another helping. Zilver began to talk to de Gier and de Gier, after breathing deeply, managed to look friendly. Cardozo looked at the lady on the donkey. She seemed to be slipping off and he wanted to get up and adjust her, but then the commissaris asked for the bill.
'So where shall we go now, Mr. Zilver?'
'There's another yard in Amstelveen where he keeps some of his larger earthmovers and a few bulldozers and tractors. I've been there but I got the impression that he doesn't often go there himself, so I was keeping it as a last possibility.'
'What were you doing there?' the commissaris asked. 'You weren't particularly friendly with Klaas Bezuur, were you?'
'I wasn't,' Louis said, 'but I had nothing against the man either. He was lending us a lot of money after all. I went to the yard that time with Abe. Bezuur had phoned to tell us about a new bulldozer he had bought and which he wanted to demonstrate. I thought Abe wouldn't be interested, but he went straight off and I went with him. Corin Kops, one of Abe's girlfriends, went too. We played around all afternoon. He let us drive some of the machines. We even chased each other.'
'Must be nice,' de Gier said, 'like playing with toy cars at the fair.'
'Those machines aren't exactly toy cars,' Zilver said. 'Some them must weigh a few tons. I was driving a mechanical digger that afternoon which had a mouth the size of a killer whale's.'
'The yard is in Amstelveen, you say,' the commissaris said. 'Amstelveen isn't a suburb of Amsterdam.
It's another city and outside our territory. Well, we can always plead that we were in hot pursuit.'
Grijpstra looked doubtful.
'Yes, perhaps we shouldn't. If Mr. Zilver gives us the address we can alert the Amstelveen police. They can send a car out too. We'll make them feel they are in it as well.'
Bezuur saw them coming, which was unfortunate. The yard was big, fifty by a hundred meters, and surrounded by a high brick wail, partly overgrown by a profusion of plants. Bezuur was standing right in the middle of the yard as Grijpstra and de Gier came in through the large swinging gates.
'Good day,' de Gier shouted, and Bezuur was about to return the greeting when he caught a glimpse of Louis Zilver, getting out the black Citrosn's rear door. He also saw the nose of the white police van which the Amstelveen constables were parking on the other side of the street.
Bezuur stopped, turned and ran.
'Halt,' Grijpstra boomed, but Bezuur was already climbing onto a bulldozer. As the bulldozer's diesel engine started up, Grijpstra drew his pistol.
'Halt! Police! We'll shoot!'
The commissaris was with them now. The constable had come with him but turned and ran toward the Citroen as he saw the bulldozer coming closer. The constable opened the trunk of the Citroen and grabbed a
