dirty jacket. He was running toward the gate, where two uniformed constables had lowered the beam and were protecting it, their guns out.
De Gier was running too. He cut the young man off and dived for his legs, bringing him down with such force mat the dust of the yard came up in a small cloud. The commissaris had frozen in his tracks and watched the commotion. The constables pulled the prisoner to his feet and handcuffed him. De Gier was sadly inspecting a tear in his jacket. Plainclothes detectives and more constables surrounded the prisoner and half marched, half carried him back to the building. The commissaris stopped a detective.
“What are the charges against your man?”
“Robbery, sir, attempted manslaughter, drug dealing. We may come up with a pimping charge too, a girl brought in a complaint this morning.”
“Bad case eh?”
“Yes, sir, a hopeless case. It might have been better if he had got himself shot, he’ll spend the rest of his life in jail or the nuthouse. The psychiatrists have been looking at him but they don’t seem to be able to classify the trouble. As far as we’re concerned he’s dangerous. He keeps on attacking the guards, he bit the chief guard just now.”
The detective ran after his colleagues: the commissaris turned around. De Gier was still looking at his jacket.
“Are you all right, sergeant?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll have to get another jacket, I’ll do it now. I have a suit at the dry-cleaning place around the corner. This jacket has had it, I think. Even if I have it repaired the tear will still show.”
“The police will pay. I am going to my office, de Gier.”
The commissaris’s mood didn’t improve until he was back behind his desk and looking at his fern, which was catching the sun and showing its leaves in an almost unnatural glitter of sparkling green.
“Very nice,” the commissaris said. “But you are one aspect of nature. I am dealing with another, and it’s rotten, brown, dog-eared, moldy, smelly with disease.”
He made the moves that had never failed to restore his equanimity. He lit a small cigar, telephoned for coffee, and began to walk around his office. He fed his plants after having mixed the right quantity of fertilizer into a plastic watering can. He sprayed the fern with slow bursts of a small glass atomizer. His telephone rang.
“I have the hotel, sir, the Pulitzer. Francesco Pullini is in his room now, according to the desk clerk. I also have the baboon’s address, he lives on the Amsteldijk. According to the number he lives on the best part of the dike, where it overlooks the river close to the Thin Bridge.”
“You haven’t spoke to either of the suspects?”
“No, sir.”
“We’ll go and surprise them. I’ll meet you in the courtyard in a minute. We might tackle young Pullini first.”
The commissaris finished his coffee and rested his eyes on the fern again, the central ornament of the bright room.
The sergeant was waiting for him in the Citroen and got out when he saw his chief cross the yard.
“How did the gale treat your balcony last night, de Gier?”
The sergeant smiled ruefully. “Badly, sir. I’ve lost almost everything. The lobelia bush survived, but it sat on the floor in a concrete box Public Works let me have some time ago. The rest have gone. The geraniums and the begonias are torn to shreds. Some of mem were blown away, pots and all, and the window of my bedroom is cracked.”
“So?” There was some poignancy to the single word, and the sergeant’s expressive eyes stared gently at the commissaris.
“I’ve ordered new plants, sir, but the greenhouse won’t deliver them. The garage sergeant said he could let me have one of his pickups for a few hours, maybe I’ll get the plants later in the day. I also ordered a new window but it may take weeks to arrive, the glass merchants are having the time of their lives right now. What about your house, sir?”
“Some damage. My wife is taking care of it.”
“And the turtle, sir?”
The commissaris grinned. “The turtle is fine. I saw him trying to plow through the rubbish in the garden this morning. The ground is covered with broken branches and glass and the garden chairs of the neighbors, but the turtle just plows on. He looked quite cheerful, I thought.”
“Maybe he’ll be reincarnated as a police detective.”
The commissaris touched de Gier’s sleeve. “He has the right character. Let’s go, sergeant.”
“Yes, sir.” The Citroen moved to the gate, where the constables were raising the barrier. De Gier braked to give way to a police truck loaded with a platoon of constables dressed in riot uniforms and armed with carbines. The truck had all its lights on and was sounding its siren.
“What’s up?” he asked the constables at the barrier.
“Turks, they are having a gunfight somewhere, or Moroccans, I forget now, I heard it on the intercom just now. This is the second truck already. A big fight, automatics and everything.”
De Gier sighed. He thought of Gabrielle’s bowed legs. There wouldn’t be a gunfight in this case. But as he followed in the wake of the screaming riot truck his feeling changed. Something might happen to make the case worth-while, something usually happened. He looked at the small neat body of the commissaris and had to restrain himself not to pat the old man’s shoulder affectionately.
\\ 6 /////
Cardozo sipped his tea and smiled politely. He had been listening to the old lady for quite a while now. She was telling him about her recent hospitalization. The old lady’s sister was waiting for a chance to say something too. A related subject, no doubt, something to do with varicose veins or the cartilage between the spine’s vertebrae that wears away in old age and causes pains. Cardozo put his cup down and picked up a cookie and nibbled on it.
“Yes.” he said. He arranged a proper expression of commiseration. It sat on his face like a thin plastic mask. Underneath there was nothing but raw impatience, but the mask fitted well. The ladies’ birdlike voices prattled on. He had to go through all of it. He even knew their ages now. Seventy-eight, eighty-two. That’s old. They wouldn’t live much longer, but they were alive now and they had seen something and their statements would be acceptable to a judge, and Constable First Class Cardozo meant to get those statements.
He felt his pocket. The pen was there, so was his notebook. He would write out two statements and have them signed individually-the judge wouldn’t like a joint statement. Whatever the two ladies had seen they had seen on their own, and the judge would want to know what they had seen in their own words. They had said they had seen something. They had seen Mr. de Bree, that nasty, ill-mannered man with the fat face. Men shouldn’t have fat faces, didn’t the detective think so? Sure, he thought so. As nasty as his cat. Mr. de Bree’s cat also had a fat face. And he was always catching the nice little birds; he had even caught the thrush that sang so beautifully, and chomped on the poor little thing and spread its feathers all over Mr. de Bree’s garden. The old ladies had watched the onslaught through their binoculars. Weren’t they nice binoculars? Alice had specially fetched them to show them to the detective. Beautiful copper binoculars, they don’t make them like that anymore these days. She and her sister used to take them to the theater and to the opera. But that was a long time ago.
“Yes,” Cardozo said. He wasn’t going to ask more questions. He had asked them already, they knew exactly what he wanted, and they would tell him, in their own time. He glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes gone, and another two hours on the rest of his search. He had been everywhere, in any house that had a view of the Carnet garden. Nobody had seen anything, but everybody knew Mr. de Bree. A nasty man, he knew that by now, he knew it by his own experience. He hadn’t forgotten the red scowling face glaring at him before the door banged with such force that a particle of plaster from the porch’s ceiling had dropped at his feet.
He had been given several descriptions of the de Bree cat, a pampered monstrosity with a half-orange, half- black face, which gave the beast two appearances, depending on which side he was approached, but they were
