little Anne, with his few hairs plastered over his skull, and his wrinkled neck, and his spectacles without rims, only because he happened to be around, with his three-piece suit and with his watch chain across his stupid belly and with his arrogant accent. I took revenge. I committed a sin. Mem doesn't sin.'
'I see,' the commissaris said. 'I wish you strength. Your husband seems rather an excellent fellow.'
'I'm madly in love with Sjurd,' Gyske said, 'but I can't go on like this. It'll have to change. There's your car backing up, I'll help you lifting in the crates.'
'Enough of this,' the commissaris said in the Volkswagen. 'Take me to Municipal Police headquarters in Leeuwarden, Adjutant. Select the shortest route. We've wasted time.'
'You think this is the right way?' Grypstra asked.
'What are you mumbling, sir?' Grypstra asked a few minutes later.
'I'm sinful,' the commissaris said. 'It's rather weak to manipulate a lady who's having a mental breakdown. Indeed! And did I learn anything?' He banged his fist on the dashboard. 'Nothing, Adjutant. But what do you expect? What can anyone expect from someone like me? Bald, small, with one and a half hairs on my naked skull, with spectacles without rims, a suit complete with waistcoat. Pathetic, Adjutant, a clown from long ago, expressing his ignorance in old-fashioned language, rattling a watch chain on his belly.'
Grijpstra glanced at the commissaris. 'Your neck is not too wrinkled. On the contrary, it's still quite smooth.'
Looking ahead again, he read a sign aloud: 'Tzum.'
The commissaris pondered. 'That Gyske,' he murmured. 'She wasn't too fond of Douwe Scherjoen.'
'Tzummarum,' Grijpstra said, reading another sign. 'Marum means 'sea.' The Romans must have been here.'
'We're lost again,' the commissaris said. 'We shouldn't be close to the sea. The Romans came to collect taxes too. Another bunch of foreigners injecting their evil into my pure soul. Leeuwarden is more inland. Better turn the car, but be careful, this dike is rather narrow.'
\\ 9 /////
'I won't have it,' Mrs. Cardozo said. 'You're not to clean your pistol on my kitchen table. The oil gets into the wood. That's expensive oak, I'll have you know, I polish the top daily.'
'Please, Mother,' Cardozo said. 'Don't bother me now. You've no idea how tricky… look, see what you made me do? You know what I'm doing? I make the light reflect from my thumbnail, like this, and then I look through the barrel. I'm seeing spirals now, gleaming in blue steel. I can see that when the barrel is clean. When it isn't, I see some nasty grit.'
'It'll go off. Stop that, Simon. There shouldn't be instruments of murder in the house.'
'I've got it out,' Cardozo said. 'A detached barrel can't possibly fire. You're living in unreasonable fear. Like with the lamp the other day. I had pulled the cord out of the wall and you wouldn't let me fix it.'
'Because there might still have been electricity in that lamp.'
'Oh, Mother.'
'And who lives under stress here?' Mrs. Cardozo said. 'Do you ever hear me complain? Would you ever hear me complain if you stopped complaining yourself for a minute? Your whining wears me down. Chuck your job if you don't like it. You can help your Uncle Ezra in the market, he earns more in a day than you do in a month. Uncle Ezra has no kids, you can take over his stall when he retires to Mallorca. He wants you to have his business, you only have to learn for a year. Ezra said that to me the other day. 'Manya,' he said, 'your Simon isn't serious yet. He can pick up some seriousness from me, why don't you tell that to your Simon?''
'Oh, Mother.'
'And then maybe you can learn how to dress,' Mrs. Cardozo said. 'And have a haircut for a change. Do you have to show yourself as a ragamuffin?'
Cardozo reassembled his pistol and slipped it into its holster. He buttoned up his rumpled jacket. 'Mother, I fight evil. I don't like the way Uncle Ezra evades taxes.'
'Your Uncle Ezra is a serious man.'
'He's a silly man,' Cardozo said. 'He refuses to develop. He's a capitalist during the day and a hedonist in his free time. Greed and luxury will get him nowhere.'
'Oh, Simon.'
'Egocentric,' Cardozo said. '/ work for others. So that others may have a chance to develop and grow too. It isn't easy and I may occasionally be heard to complain. That's a weak trait in my character, and I'm sorry.'
Cardozo dialed the telephone. 'Not outside the city,' Mrs. Cardozo said. 'Your father doesn't like that. The bill is too high already.'
'Sergeant?' Cardozo said. 'It's me.'
'You were dialing too long,' Mrs. Cardozo said. 'You're outside the city. Keep it short, Simon, or your father will be at me again.'
'Do you have Douwe Scherjoen's photo?' Cardozo asked.
'Ask Grijpstra,' de Gier said. 'The commissaris went off with Grijpstra, but something must have gone wrong. They're presently being saved by the State Police, between Tzum and Tzummarum.'
'Is that close to Dingjum?'
'It's in Friesland,' de Gier said. 'Fm not Frisian. I'm not in on this. I cook pea soup from a can and take care of a rat-and of a Frisian lady who'll be fetching me in a moment.'
'I've got to have that photo,' Cardozo said, 'if I am to do my work. Shall I come and get it myself?'
'How?' de Gier asked. 'Grijpstra has the car. The commissaris has lost his car, in a well between gardens. You can't declare expenses because you'd be moving outside your area.'
'A train ticket will cost some money,' Cardozo said.
'You're an idealist, aren't you?'
'Aren't you one too?'
'A nihilist,' de Gier said. 'Nihilists don't give a shit about anything-at that depth one has to be advanced. You aren't anywhere near there yet. Look here, why don't you cycle to Friesland tomorrow? I've just watched the news, the weather should be fine. It's only forty miles or so. Make it a holiday, watch the birds from the dike. Ever seen a cormorant land? They splash down and flop up. A great sight.'
'You're really not in on this?' Cardozo asked.
'No,' de Gier said. He replaced the phone. The sergeant wandered past the flowery wallpaper, the imitation Gothic dining room table, the copy of a Louis XVI recliner, and then past a clothes chest modeled on an antique Eastern Dutch design. The novel by the Frisian woman author was on the table. On a shelf, Chinese knickknacks had been arranged: porcelain rice bowls, plastic soup spoons, stacked together. On another shelf, a foot-long model of a Chinese junk sailed toward a smiling fat god, with happily grinning toddlers climbing up his belly and shoulders. De Gier remembered the calendar in the neatly painted bathroom, with a dozen color photographs of places to see in Singapore.
A holiday in Singapore? Why not? An elderly adjutant of the Leeuwarden Municipal Police who, once in his life, takes his wife to the other side of the earth. Probably a special offer by the local travel agency, there and back for a couple of thousand, hotel included. By now the mortgage would be paid, the children married. 'Dear, we'll be off!'
'Where to?' Mrs. Oppenhuyzen asks, not too sure whether she should be pleased.
The adjutant's eyes twinkle. 'To Singapore!'
She would rather have spent another holiday on one of the islands just off the Frisian coast, but if he really wants to surprise her, okay. She smiles. 'Great!'
A subject that can be discussed on many an occasion, during birthday parties or while visiting neighbors. 'You went to the Italian coast? That's nice. Yes, we were out of the country too. Where? Oh, we hopped over to Singapore.' Detailed descriptions of assorted adventures. 'You know, when we were in Singapore last month…'
'When I was in Friesland…' De Gier picked up the novel and flopped down on the couch. Then he was up
