The old man crumbled his last piece of bread.
'What sort of a man am I?' he asked in a clear high voice. 'I'm a feeder of red-beaked geese. I am what I do and I do what I am.' He sprinkled the crumbs like a stingy farmer sowing his field, nodded, and shuffled back into his boat.
Grijpstra laughed. 'He's a shuffler-into-boats. And I'm a haver-of-hunger.'
Kiran trotted on to the bridge.
'And so is the dog. Care to join us in a visit to a sandwich shop? Or don't you dare?'
Kiran stood against the door, imploring de Gier. The sergeant opened the door. Kiran fell/jumped inside. The dog placed his front paws on a stool and slobbered two meatrolls off the plate of a client. Then he ate another meatroll out of the hand of another client. The clients objected and the dog growled. He stopped growling and embraced a young woman who entered the shop.
The detectives found a booth in the rear. Protected but invisible behind its high partitioning, Grijpstra shouted for service. He shouted twice again before a square woman with a granite face growing from a starched dazzling white coat inquired after the purpose of his powerful exclamations.
'A roll with warm meat, another with chopped steak, another with ox sausage, and another with two meatrolls.'
'A hundred,' the woman said. 'Pay now.'
'What?'
'You let the dog in. The dog stole twenty guilders' worth and is now outside gobbling a liver worth eighty that I had to give him so that he would leave.'
'Are you out of your mind?'
'Out,' the woman said.
They walked along for some distance, then they walked back.
'If only we could find somebody who knows Fortune well,' Grijpstra said. 'I could ask Borry Beelema, and the man who tends bar in his nighties, and Titania, but I believe, with the certainty provided by almost total probability, that they are all interchangeable parts of the same thing and not on my side. I need somebody on the outside, which is my side, outside the lost lady and the dead dog but still within the boundaries of the suspect, if such a person existed.'
'A relative?' asked de Gier.
They faced the display window of the sandwich shop. Kiran had returned to his opening position and implored the detectives over his shoulder.
'Again,' Grijpstra said. 'Shall I…?'
'No, he'll be stealing and raping,' de Gier said. He's done it already, we shouldn't allow him to step into the same river twice.'
Grijpstra stopped. 'I can find him a similar river. A relative you say. An aunt or an uncle?'
'Both. Aunt Coba and Uncle Henry.'
'True. I forgot. I'm getting old. Those people live on the Emperorscanal. This is the Emperorscanal. We need a number. You know what, I think I'll open the door for that dog. Like this he looks pitiful. This is not a normal attitude for a dog, he'll get cramps in his paws. Maybe he won't be so hungry for he ate that liver. The girl has gone so there's nothing to rape. He might communicate with the woman who wasn't polite to us and with the big men sitting at the counter. What do you think?'
'The decision is yours. There's a public telephone over there. I'll find Uncle Henry's house number. Let's hope he's a paternal uncle and that his name is Fortune too.' De Gier left.
Grijpstra opened the door. Kiran barked and fell/ jumped inside. Grijpstra walked on. A slowly passing coach, filled with Japanese tourists being instructed through loudspeakers, drowned a disharmony of sounds erupting from within the restaurant.
6
Aunt Coba smoked a cigarette, Uncle Henry smoked a pipe, Grijpstra smoked a small cigar, and de Gier didn't smoke. The four protagonists sat on armchairs, upholstered with green velvet, on the back porch of a mansion built and kept in an exuberance that would surely have been liberating if Calvinism and the urge to make both spiritual and material profit hadn't imposed certain limits. The open garden doors offered a view of rhododendron bushes gracefully curving around a sea of lowly flowers. A choir of invisible songbirds engaged in a fairly steady melody embellished with trills and twitters. Aunt Coba and Uncle Henry were stately miniatures, and their faces were nicely chiseled by age and determination. They looked alike, under silvery hair cut and combed in identical fashion, and wore about the same clothes. Antique unisex, the sergeant thought, observing and admiring their narrow trousers and flowing jackets of old shiny velours.
Uncle Henry talked around the stem of his pipe.
'Nephew Frits did something wrong?'
'No, Mr. Fortune, not that we know of. But we're looking for his wife, who seems to have disappeared. All household goods, I beg your pardon, the contents of the house, disappeared as well. So did the dog, we retrieved the dog; it was dead, however.'
'Still had its head?' Aunt Coba asked.
Grijpstra stared.
Aunt Coba repeated her question loudly, articulating the syllables.
'Yes ma'm. But somebody knocked it on the head. The skull broke. The dog was on the roof.'
Aunt Coba nodded happily.
'Never was much good.'
'The dog?'
'Nephew Frits. If you knew what experiences we had with him! But how could you know?'
Uncle Henry coughed painfully. Aunt Coba's beady eyes pierced her husband's forehead. He coughed again and patted his chest.
'You want a glass of water?'
'No. Isn't it coffee time yet?'
'Not for a long while. Why don't you go and write some checks? You always write checks on Saturdays. I'll take care of these gentlemen.'
Uncle Henry didn't move. Aunt Coba's steady gaze increased in strength. He got up, excused himself and left the room.
Aunt Coba sighed. She restrained her hands that were about to rub each other.
'So Rea has gone, has she? Doesn't surprise me, no, not at all. What isn't needed anymore is put away. Such a nice woman too, serving, servile even. And married to Frits!' She sighed again, sadly this time, also a little longer and deeper. 'Ah well.'
'Yes ma'm.'
'But that's the way it had to go. His father was a Fortune and his mother was crazy too. Whenever she got too crazy, the child came here. Little Frits is going to spend some time with Coba. She always said that with such conviction. I was never asked whether I wanted to put up with that child, the child just came.'
Empathy flooded Grijpstra's face.
'And what would little Frits do, when he stayed with you, ma'm?'
'What wouldn't he do?'
'What wouldn't your nephew do, ma'm?'
'He would wet the bedclothes. He wouldn't eat cauliflower, with or without white sauce, the sauce didn't matter to him. He would use half a roll of toilet paper at a time. If that garden fence was locked, it always was locked, and if he wanted to get his push-bike into the garden, he would break the lock, again and again. He picked his nose, at mealtimes preferably. He didn't do well at school. He stole money.'
'Your money, ma'm?'
'No. He stole at home. But he wasn't home much, he was mostly here.'
