well, but he wasn’t a complete policeman yet. The commissaris remembered words spoken by his superiors, who had, since then, turned into old men and doddered into then-graves. A policeman is cunning but moderate. Sly as a snake, innocent as a dove. He said the word aloud. “Sly.” A good word. To be sly without malice. He would need his slyness now, to sort out this mess caused by uncontrolled but very human emotions. A poisoned dog and a clownish, frumped-up woman, dead in a pool of rainwater. He wondered what else they would find, for the emotions weren’t curbed yet. He knew that his main task was to prevent further manifestations and he would have to solve the present riddle to be able to do so.
A large white motorcycle whizzed past, ridden by what looked to be a mechanical man, completely wrapped in white leather, his face hidden by a plastic visor. The Amsterdam police emblem, a naked sword resting on an open book, was painted on the motorcycle’s metal saddlebag. It also showed on the policeman’s helmet. The motorcycle’s presence kept drivers in line. The commissaris looked at his own image mirrored in a store window. The image peered back at him, a small man dressed in grays with a thin face and a glint of gold-rimmed spectacles. Chief of the murder brigade, gliding through the city almost transparent, completely unnoticed. “A sneak,” he said aloud. What could a sneak prevent? But he would do his best, this very best, and his mind was locked on the case again as he opened the door of the Citroen.
\\ 11 /////
The Commissaris pointed the sleek nose of the Citroen away from the curb and waited patiently for an opening. He sat poised at the wheel. The opening came and the car lurched forward and immediately lost the impact of its leap as it settled sedately, nudged into the homeward stream. The commissaris grinned at the success of his maneuver, but the grin faded away as pain activated the nerves in his thighs. He knew he should be home in bed, with his tube of medication on the night table and his wife hovering around, speaking to him soothingly, fluffing up his cushions, caring. The radio crackled.
“Commissaris?”
“Yes.”
“The adjutant has telephoned, sir. They found their suspect, Mr. Vleuten, and are now on the river in the suspect’s boat. The interrogation will take place at Mr. Vleuten’s house, Amsteldijk One-seven-two.”
“Thank you, I’ll go there now.”
“Do you want your secretary to stay in your office, sir?”
“No. Thank her for her assistance. Over and out.”
He was almost home, but he took the first road on the left and headed for the river. To be driving around, straining himself, pushing a case that could just as well be solved by his assistants, was pure idiocy. Or sanity, if his choice was between activity and the slow senseless existence of some delicate plant in a greenhouse. He had been ill for a long time now, with no real hope of recovery, although he kept trying to convince his wife of the opposite. Activity might kill him, but it would keep him alert meanwhile.
The car shot through an orange light, turned again, and began to follow the river. He glanced at the house numbers; another block to go. He found the mooring and parked under a row of elms that had survived the gale. The pain in his thighs had reached a steady level and he could bear with it. He got out, content to wait. A tanker came chugging up the river and he admired its strong sturdy lines under the superstructure of artfully intertwined tubes painted a brilliant white. He leaned against a tree and returned the tanker’s greeting, a slow solemn wave of the man at the wheel. A heron, balanced on a partly submerged log saw the commissaris’s arm move and lifted a long leg but decided to stay where it was and pointed its beak at the water again. Some fat coots were rowing about busily, only a few yards away, headed for a patch of duckweed, rippling in the river’s flow. The commissaris was still leaning against the elm when the baboon’s boat arrived and touched the quayside with a tire hung over its gunwale.
An ape man, definitely, the commissaris thought as he watched Vleuten move the tiller. De Gier was standing next to the suspect; the baboon’s golden mane stood out against the sergeant’s uniform. The commissaris caught the rope thrown by Grijpstra and held it while he waited for the three men to join him.
“Mr. Vleuten, sir. Mr. Vleuten, please meet our chief.”
They shook hands and crossed the street in pairs, Grijpstra and the baboon going ahead.
“Have you arrested him, de Gier?”
“No, sir. He has been very well behaved.”
“The radio room says that you fell into the river. If that event was caused by your suspect an arrest would be warranted.”
De Gier explained and the commissaris nodded. “Good. No vengeance.”
The commissaris thought back. He was a young inspector again, long ago, thirty years ago. He had been beaten up by a suspect and the suspect was subsequently caught. When he went to the station a constable had taken him down to the cell block where his man was chained to a pipe, cowering. The constable had told him to go ahead and had turned and left the basement. He had been tempted, but he had released the suspect and taken him to a cell and gone upstairs.
“No vengeance,” he said again. “That’s very good, de Gier.”
Some surprise showed on the sergeant’s face. “I thought it would be better not to ruffle him, sir. This way he may talk easier.”
“You’ll lay charges against him later?”
De Gier looked uncomfortable. “I can’t, sir. I more or less accepted his apology. A case of mistaken identity, really. He mistook me for an officer from the court. He has some parking fines he has been protesting and the court constables have been bothering him.”
“Good. Is this our man’s house?”
“Yes, sir, and that’s his car.”
The commissaris took a moment to observe the seventeenth-century house and the Rolls-Royce.
“A nineteen thirty-six model I would say, sergeant, but very well kept. It should be worth some money, and the house is very valuable, of course. So he isn’t badly off, your baboon. That would explain why he resigned so easily from Carnet and Company. Still, he did refuse unemployment benefits, Mr. Bergen told me. Most unusual. He would qualify and they are eighty percent of previous income and will be paid for several years now, I believe. And he turned it down. Most unusual.”
The baboon had opened the door and gone in with Grijpstra, and the commissaris and the sergeant began to climb the stairs slowly, pausing on the landings. Even so the commissaris was exhausted when they finally reached the seventh floor. The baboon’s apartment was open and the commissaris sunk into the first chair he saw. The baboon was busying himself at the kitchen counter.
Grijpstra looked at the commissaris. “Do you want to ask the questions, sir?”
The commissaris shook his head. He had closed his eyes, his breath was still coming in gasps. “Go ahead, adjutant.”
The baboon served coffee and sat down. “Gentlemen?”
Grijpstra phrased his questions slowly and precisely and the baboon’s answers connected promptly.
“Yes, I visited her last night, early in the evening.”
“Why, Mr. Vleuten?”
“To repay a loan. I shouldn’t have borrowed from her but I didn’t want to increase my mortgage on the house. The bank has always been very helpful, it’s the same bank Carnet and Company uses and I know the manager well, but even so, mortgages take time and I needed money promptly. I had miscalculated on the remodeling costs of two of the apartments below and the workmen expected to be paid, of course. In a weak moment I asked Elaine to lend the cash to me, that was six months ago. Since then I sold a boat and made some money again, so last night I took the money to her.”
“How much?”
“Twenty thousand. She gave me the money in cash and I returned it in cash. She didn’t ask for interest. I’ve often done repairs in her house and I never charged her and I think she wanted to repay the favor.”
“You have a receipt, sir?”
