The corporal came back with the lieutenant.
'Is Mem feeling a little better?' Grijpstra asked.
'Yes, Adjutant, Gyske is taking care of her.'
'Pity she has no children.'
'Douwe was her child,' Lieutenant Sudema said. 'He was too jealous of competition. Amazing that she could put up with the sjmunt'
The corporal shook his head. 'They do like to be abused.'
De Gier said that women may perhaps sometimes like to be abused, but that he, for one, would never abuse them.
Grijpstra's nostrils widened. 'And Jane?'
'Sharing is not abusing.'
Grijpstra explained the perfidy of the sergeant's plans for Jane. 'But she didn't fall for it,' he concluded.
'They don't very much, nowadays,' the corporal said. 'It's not as easy as before.'
'I've got to do the cooking,' Lieutenant Sudema said. 'Gyske works half days and I work full days, and I still have to do the cooking. I rather like cooking, but there's the washing up, too, and putting the dishes away. If they gain, we lose. I can't yell at her anymore, either.'
'I never yelled at my wife,' Grijpstra said. 'Why should I? She was deaf, and the TV at full volume.'
'You do yell,' de Gier yelled. 'You yell at me. You're known as the yeller.'
Grijpstra asked the lieutenant to please ask the corporal to please take the sergeant to the dike, right now.
De Gier had to finish his coffee.
'Bit of a bastard,' the corporal asked, steering the Land Rover along narrow dikes, 'that adjutant of yours?'
'A fine fellow,' de Gier said. 'But never tell him I told you that.'
'And a bit of a bastard,' the corporal said. 'The lieutenant is another, but he's been easing up a lot. I can thank Gyske for that.'
'If we don't bend, they'll break us,' de Gier said. 'Take that Scherjoen, for instance. He didn't want to bend.'
The corporal was taller than de Gier, and wider. His chin resembled a granite rock. 'They don't just want to break us,' the corporal whispered.
'Are Frisian women more fierce than ours?'
'I won't say more,' the corporal said.
They might be listening in.'
The Land Rover parked behind the Citroen. De Gier slid behind the sleek car's wheel, and the Citroen flashed away.
\\ 4 /////
The Commissaris, wandering about his elegant office, was not content. A Frisian dies. In Amsterdam. What was the next move? Would he go to Friesland? Why look far away if it happened here?
Because there was this new car and he wanted to drive along the Great Dike? He could indulge himself, but there was also the necessity to sniff about here. He could delegate the local search to his very best men and take off himself. The commissaris pushed out his thin lips. He attempted to whistle.
'The other way round,' he mumbled sadly. His best men were enjoying themselves in Ding…Dingjum. And bothering the widow. He got up and wandered over to his desk, looking for an article in the Police Gazette. 'Instructions for Superior Officers.' He read the relevant passage. Make sure your temperament, skills, interest, and competency fill the job. Wasn't he supposed to be good at interviewing old ladies? So why wasn't he interrogating Mrs. Scherjoen?
His leg glowed and hurt. He rubbed the painful spot, not too hard, for that would increase the trouble. Suppose he went home and immersed his painful body in hot water spiced 37 with herbs? He might as well; maybe this wasn't a day for work.
He limped to the corridor. The uniformed girls in the computer room looked up. 'Sir,' they said. 'Ladies,' the commissaris said. He was given a chair. He thought. The policewomen waited.
'Douwe Scherjoen,' the commissaris said.
'Adjutant Grijpstra asked us to check him out, sir,' a constable first-class said. 'There's nothing on Scherjoen.'
'How good is your computer?' the commissaris asked.
'Our computer,' the constable first-class said, 'knows everything.'
'So what would the computer tell us if you activated it with the key words 'Friesland' and 'crime'?'
'Too much, sir. It would tell us about all the wrongdoings of all the Frisians, it would go on forever.'
'And what if you limited it to Frisian crime in Amsterdam?'
'It would still go on and on.'
'Let's see,' the commissaris said.
The constable first-class typed in the two words. The commissaris watched the screen. A small green square trembled.
'Well?' the commissaris asked.
'The computer is searching, sir. It will tell us about its findings any minute now, at incredible speed.'
The little green square trembled.
'Well?' the commissaris asked.
The constable first-class pressed a few buttons.
'It's broken,' a constable said. The constable first-class stared at the girl. 'Down,' the girl said nervously. 'That's what I meant. Honestly. The computer is down.'
'Not broken?' the commissaris asked.
'Just down,' the constable first-class said. 'It'll be up in a second, it just fell down a little.'
'When will it be up again?'
'It could take a while,' the constable first-class said. 'This does happen now and then. I'll phone and the supplier will send an engineer. He may be busy for an hour or longer- it does take longer once in a while. Maybe the terminal is down too, then we'll have to wait a little while longer.'
The commissaris was back in the corridor. He used a wall phone. 'Can you find me that Frisian detective, what's his name now? Fokkema, maybe?'
'He's in Spain sir, on holiday, with sick leave added. Detective Fokkema may be away for a while.'
'Any other personnel of Frisian origin around?'
'I wouldn't know, sir, did you try the computer?'
The commissaris was back in his room. He thought. Frisian. Frisian what? By happenstance a Frisian cop sees something, and a Frisian park official sees something too?
He picked up the phone.
'Please, dear, Constable First-Class Algra of the Red District Station, and afterward I'd like to speak to Chief Wiarda of Municipal Parks.'
His secretary couldn't find either party; Algra had gone off somewhere and Wiarda hadn't yet returned.
They won't know anything either, the commissaris thought; he thought a little further. Frisian convicts, locked up in jail somewhere? Who could locate Frisian convicts? The computer? Hurriedly he changed thoughts. The new thoughts were pushed back by something else again, burped up from memory. 'Jelle Troelstra,' his memory kept repeating.
'Who?' the commissaris asked.
'You know,' his memory insisted.
'I don't.'
'SS?' his memory asked.
