De Gier’s eyes hadn’t left Bergen’s face for the last few minutes. He was studying the deterioration of the left side of the man’s head with fascination. The muscles of his cheek and mouth were slackening rapidly and he didn’t think that Bergen had modified what was happening to his face. The sergeant thought of drawing the commissaris’s attention to the phenomenon in some way when Bergen began to speak again.
“Pullini. If only the man himself had come again, but he sent his darling son.”
“You’re having trouble with your supplier? Pullini is still your main supplier, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, we buy more than half our stocks from him. A good factory, steady and quick deliveries, excellent quality, but his prices are too high these days. That’s why young Pullini is here, he has been here for two weeks already. I have found another factory in Milan that can supply us and they are more competitive than the Pullini concern. They also give a little more credit-credit is important to us, we have to hold large inventories.”
“And Pullini doesn’t want to come down in price?”
“Not so far.”
“So why doesn’t young Pullini leave? Or is he liking Amsterdam?”
Bergen grinned. The grin was definitely lopsided and de Gier wondered if the commissaris was aware of their suspect’s transformation. “Yes, he likes the high life here. Italians are still old-fashioned. The boy is having a good time, but he is hanging on for another reason. Old Pullini is also retired, like Elaine, and his concern is run by Francesco now, and Francesco has done a little underhanded maneuvering, or so I think, I can’t prove it.”
“Stealing from his father’s business?”
“Perhaps. Papa Pullini is a tough old bird. He keeps his son on a short leash and Francesco has expensive ways, a brand-new Porsche, the best hotels, a little gambling-you know how it goes. Since Francesco took over we are given two invoices for every purchase. An official ninety percent invoice and an under-the-table ten percent invoice. I don’t mind. On the ten percent invoices we have more credit; we keep them in a stack and pay them at the end of the year, in cash.”
“And the ten percent goes into Francesco’s pocket. I see. That’s probably why he can’t lower his prices, he’s taking ten percent off already.”
Bergen was nodding rapidly. He was evidently pleased that the commissaris saw the point so quickly.
“But,” the commissaris said and raised a finger, “you say that you pay at the end of the year and we are in June now.”
“I didn’t make last year’s payment. The money is still here, safely in the bank. I have been complaining about the Pullini price list and I have ignored Francesco when he kept on asking for his ten percent. I’m doing a little blackmailing, I suppose. It isn’t nice of me, but we aren’t always nice in business. I could switch over to the other company in Milan but I don’t really want to do that either. The other company is too big, they might want to start up their own office here sometime and cut me out.”
“Difficult,” the commissaris agreed.
The interview was over, and the commissaris was near the door when he turned around. “Mrs. Camet had a safe, Mr. Bergen, a small wall safe. We opened it with a key we found in her bag. There was a small amount in it, some three hundred guilders. You wouldn’t know if she kept large amounts in that safe, would you?”
Bergen was holding his cheek and massaging it. “No,” he said after awhile. “I know she had a safe and there may have been a lot of money in it from time to time, she did have large amounts of cash sometimes, but I wouldn’t know if there was any appreciable quantity in there last night. It’s not the sort of thing she would talk to me about. Our conversations of the past few years were mostly about what movies to see, we both like the same sort of films.'’
“You never had much social contact with Mrs. Carnet, had you?”
“Not really. I am married, my wife has always been rather jealous of Elaine, and later there was the baboon, of course.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bergen, you’ve been most helpful.”
“Did you notice his face, sir?” de Gier asked as they walked back to the car.
The commissaris was looking at a garbage boat mat was making a sharp corner in the canal. A young man, a boy almost, was turning its large wheel effortlessly and the heavy diesel engine controlling the barge’s screw was churning up a perfect arc of thick frothy waves. Workmen were sawing a broken tree on the other side of the canal, with the boat pulling cables so that the thick elm wouldn’t fall the wrong way.
'Two million trees down in the country, according to the radio,” the commissaris said. “Two million, I wonder how they can guess the number. The whole country is a mess and we have our own to play with. Yes, I noted Bergen’s facial paralysis, sergeant. It must have started before we came, but he was going through a crisis while we talked to him.”
“A stroke, sir?”
“No, I don’t think so, but I am sure he’s telephoning his doctor right now. I thought I would have to cut my questioning off, but I had gone too far already.”
“But if he got upset to such an extent…” De Gier had stopped, but the commissaris kept on walking, and the sergeant had to sprint to catch up with him again.
“He must be guilty?”
“He might be.”
“He might be, sure. And he might not be. We don’t know how involved he was with the lady. And he may have other worries. That Pullini business may be much worse than he made it appear. I would like to see young Pullini. Try and find out where he’s staying after you’ve dropped me off. Don’t ask Mr. Bergen or Gabrielle. Find him through the hotel records. It shouldn’t be difficult to run him down. If he doesn’t expect us to look for him and if we suddenly show up the questioning may be more, what’s the word, ‘deadly’.”
De Gier steered the commissaris’s black Citroen through the narrow alleys near the center of the old city. They got stuck a few times and had to wait for trucks and motorized tricycles unloading, and every now and then they would run into a detour caused by municipal workmen clearing fallen trees. Most of the glass of broken windows had already been swept up. The city still looked desolate, however, and the commissaris’s mood fitted in with the general devastation.
“Bah,” he said as the car turned into its reserved space on the courtyard of police headquarters. “We’ll have to push ourselves, sergeant. I want this case to be over in a few days, in a week at the most. There’s still some time before lunch to find Francesco Pullini. I hope Grijpstra and Cardozo will be back soon with something tangible. With four men on the job we should be able to cut through their nonsense quickly. There are other projects I’d like to be working on.”
De Gier had switched the Citroen’s engine off and was waiting for the car to give its customary sigh before starting to sink down to its lowest point. The vehicle’s fluid suspension system always gave him a sensuous sensation, he was grinning in the split second of anticipation.
“You noticed that Mr. Bergen didn’t smoke?”
“Yes, sir. He didn’t smoke while we were with him but I saw a nicotine stain on his index finger. He smokes cigarettes, I saw a packet of Gauloises on his desk. He’s probably trying to give it up.”
“Giving it up,” the commissaris repeated slowly. “I have been watching the inspector lately. He is also trying to give up smoking but he isn’t making much headway. He told me that he is now smoking a brand he doesn’t like. Maybe Mr. Bergen doesn’t like cigars with plastic mouthpieces, or would that be too far-fetched, sergeant?”
The Citroen had finished its sigh and the sergeant was alert again. He hadn’t understood everything the commissaris said, but the sound of his superior’s words was still in his ears and he could reconstruct the question.
“He could have been at the Carnet house last night, sir, and he might have a reason for wanting to have Mrs. Carnet out of the way. Maybe she doesn’t come to the company often, but she does control it, legally anyway-she had three-quarters of the shares.”
“So we’ll have to find out if there was any tension between them, some recent disagreement, something to do with the company’s policy perhaps. Yes.” The commissaris had been talking briskly and he opened the door and almost jumped out, but he had to hold on to the car as a fresh flow of pain burned through his legs.
“I’ll find this Pullini man and the baboon, Mr. Vleuten, sir. I’ll phone you as soon as I know their addresses.”
The commissaris was limping ahead as the building’s alarm system came on. Short hysterical bursts of a two-toned horn split the quiet of the yard and a glass door burst open, pushed by a young man in torn jeans and a
