suggested he should see a doctor. There was something wrong with his stomach.'
De Gier sat up. 'Trouble with a lady. Would you explain?'
'Of course. When was it? Last Thursday, I believe, or Wednesday. It'll be in the register. A lady checked in. I was at the desk that night, I remember her well, a rather lovely lady. She just wanted to stay the night, well dressed, good-quality suitcase, demure, didn't say much, didn't have a credit card, so she paid cash in advance. That night I wasn't on duty, I left shortly after she arrived. The night staff reported in the morning that there had been trouble with Mr. Boronski. A strange tale indeed. It seemed that he tried to get into her room, did get into her room, in fact, and somehow bothered her.'
'Attempted rape?' de Gier asked.
'No, no. I tell you, it's a strange tale. He claimed that she was in his room, that he knew her, that he had arranged with her that she would stay the night with him, and the lady claimed that she had never set eyes on the man. She phoned the desk, my assistant went up. Boronski had lost all self-control, man was foaming at the mouth, I believe, and then my assistant discovered that Boronski's room was next door. Quite an upheaval. The lady was so upset that she packed her bag and left. My assistant tried to reassure her and offered excuses, free breakfast and so forth, drinks, anything she liked, but she insisted.'
'Did she get her money back?'
'Oh yes.'
'And Boronski?'
'He came to see me the next morning and stated that his room had been switched in some devilish manner, for all his belongings were arranged precisely as he had left them, but they were in the other room. I didn't believe him, of course. I even showed him the register. He had room 14, not 12, he had room 14 from the start. Boronski also told me that the lady had been in his room that afternoon. He had met her in the street somewhere, she was a prostitute. The, eh, meeting was most satisfactory and she had promised to come back in the evening at ten. He went to his room before ten and she was there all right but she didn't know him.'
'Wouldn't somebody here have noticed her in the company of Mr. Boronski?'
The manager hid a yawn behind a dainty hand. De Gier noticed that he had polished fingernails.
'Excuse me, no, nobody noticed; we have sixty-four rooms here, there's a lot of coming and going.'
'How could she have got into his room? Boronski had the key, didn't he?'
The manager yawned again. 'Do excuse me, I haven't had much sleep lately. I wouldn't know.'
'Amazing,' de Gier said. 'You also mentioned other trouble, something about a car?'
'Yes, another tall tale. He came to see me and said that his car, a brand new Porsche that he had just bought, tax-free, to take with him to South America suddenly had the steering wheel on the wrong side. I ask you. Fortunately, I knew by then that the man wasn't in his right mind; this was after the business with the lady, you see. I didn't want to listen to him, but he practically dragged me into the street. The car was there, a lovely job, silver color, red leather upholstery, must have cost him a fortune. The registration plates were special, Colombian, must have got them through the local consulate. The steering wheel was on the right side, and he said it was on the left when he bought the car the day before. Quite impossible. To change a steering wheel is a major operation, not the sort of thing somebody does with a screwdriver and a couple of wrenches in a few minutes. This was in the morning. He said he had parked the car in front of the hotel, had worked in his room for an hour, come out, and noticed the change. He had phoned the agent where he bought the car and the agent confirmed that the wheel was on the left side. So Boronski said he wanted me to phone the agent but I refused. I didn't want to listen to him. It was his car and his mind. We only provide rooms and meals.' The manager laughed. 'Anyway, the next day the wheel was back in its correct position so the mishap was taken care of.'
De Gier gaped. Asta stopped writing.
'Did I hear you correctly?' de Gier asked. 'Or am I going mad too?'
'You heard me correctly, but the man was mad.'
'Did you see the car again?'
'No. He wanted to show it to me, but I refused to leave the desk. Damn it all, I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm a hotel manager. There had been all the other nonsense too. His watch disappeared from his bathroom and turned up an hour later in the spot where it should have been all the time. He sent his clothes for dry cleaning and the wrong clothes came back to his room. One of the girls checked, but by that time they had changed into the right clothes again. Mr. Boronski was suffering from some form of paranoia. He hallucinated. He was physically ill too, he complained of stomach cramps and we had to serve him porridge for dinner; he exhausted the room service waiter by phoning for milk every half hour. I'm glad he has left us.'
'Yes,' de Gier said.
'I'm sorry he is dead, of course, sergeant. Now if there is anything else I can help you with.' The manager looked at his watch. 'I'm afraid I…'
De Gier got up. 'Thank you.'
Asta stumbled in the corridor, the sergeant stooped to catch her arm, and she turned and kissed him on the mouth.
'Hey!'
'I've been wanting to do that, do you mind?'
'No.'
'Kiss me again.'
'You kissed me. I don't kiss colleagues during working hours. Would you like coffee?'
They sat in the coffee shop of the hotel for a while. Asta served the sergeant, she even stirred his coffee for him. He grinned.
'You're a slave. I thought that young ladies don't do that sort of thing anymore.'
'What sort of thing?'
'Be servile.'
'I love to be servile,' Asta whispered. 'I'm old-fashioned. I like to be on my back and the man to be on me. I like to oblige. It's a pity you have nothing to carry, I would carry it for you, even if it was very heavy.'
'Have you had many men?'
She pursed her thick lower lip and a tiny frown appeared on her smooth forehead. She blew at a curl that hung in her eyes.
'Hmm. Not too many. I tried some young men but they weren't any good, too quick. The older men are usually married, and when they embrace me, I know that they're looking at their watch behind my neck. I can see it in their eyes. They're slow and polite, but they go away when it's over. You wouldn't be like that, would you?'
'I might be. Who did you believe, the manager or Boronski?'
'Boronski.'
'Why?'
'I saw his corpse, remember,' Asta said. 'I didn't like him at all, not with that low forehead and the eyes too close together. I've known men with low foreheads and close eyes that I liked, but Boronski had something nasty about him. But he wouldn't lie like that. And that manager didn't really exist, did you notice that?'
'How do you mean?'
'He was just like the hotel. It looks all right, but once you're in it you can see that it's all hollow. They have tried to recapture the dignity of the past; they've got the right architecture and the right trimmings, but there's nothing in it. Everything is hollow, filled with air. He was too. He's like a doll I once had. I threw it away. Even when I scratched its face and tore its clothes, it wasn't there.'
'How do we find out who told us the truth?'
She giggled. De Gier looked up. The giggle was vulgar. It reminded him of the cry of a disheveled parrot in the city's zoo. He would always spend a few moments with it when he strayed into the zoo. The parrot was a jolly common bird, quite unlike its splendid mates eyeing the passing crowd arrogantly from their high perches. So far Asta had impressed Viim as refined, different from the other policewomen he had worked with.
'Are you testing me or don't you know how to find out whether Boronski saw things that weren't there?'
'Let's say I'm testing you,' de Gier said.
She reached into her bag and gave him her notebook and her pen. 'No. Write the solution down and fold the paper, then I'll tell you what I suggest doing and we'll see if we have the same solution.'
