'Willem got her before the principal?'
'Willem lied,' the commisaris said. 'Miss Bakker had to step out a minute, and I wanted to see the mice, so Willem said, 'Go ahead, she won't be back for a while.' Of course she came back straightaway and Willem pointed at me. Willem knew she'd only be a minute. I had to stand in the corner for half an hour.'
'And you never got back on her lap?'
'No. It got worse from then on. You have no idea what Willem would do. Later, when I got good at gymnastics, there was a girl we both liked. I would do my best to impress her. Willem never bothered about gymnastics. There was an exhibition, and just before it was my turn, he tripped me on the stairs. I hurt my ankle and had to drop out.'
'Willem got the girl?'
'He took her to the party,' the commissaris said. 'It took me forever to find out how truly evil Willem was. I always excused him. He would come over to the house, we'd play together, we studied too-or rather, I'd study and he'd copy my notes, or borrow them and never give them back. And then, at law school, we shared a holiday in Paris. Willem had a car by then.'
'Another love story?' the commissaris's wife asked. 'You lost again? You got me, you know. I didn't really like Willem. I was very pleased you seduced me when we went out sailing that day, in his brother Ernst's boat.'
'Katrien,' the commissaris said softly, 'will you admit it now? You wanted Ernst Fernandus. Go on, let's have it out at last. That was thirty-five years ago. You can be honest, we're all old dodderers by now.'
'Maybe,' his wife said. 'It was such a lovely day and Willem had been rude again and you asked me to your room afterward and I knew I shouldn't go, but you said it was just for coffee, and then it was kind of stuffy in your room and you said there was no need to be overdressed.'
'Ernst looked like Tarzan,' the commissaris said. 'Tarzan with a golden beard. He'd had his first poetry published by then. He owned that wonderful sailboat. Ernst was everything a romantic girl could wish for. Every time he looked at you, you squeaked.'
She took his hand. 'I squeaked a lot in those days. I was a silly girl. You know who got Ernst that night? Fleur. Willem went home by himself, on two wheels in his stupid car. Wasn't he pathetic? And you got me. It was the first time for me. Now tell me what happened in Paris.'
'Yes,' the commissaris said, 'maybe I won that time. And maybe I won in Paris, too, but that's a bad tale. You sure you want to hear it?'
She squeezed his hand. 'Yes. Keep talking, Jan, the plane is going down, I never like it when airplanes land.'
'We went dancing on the Champs Elysees,' the commissaris said, 'and I met a girl. Jacqueline, she was called. A pretty girl. Her father had a small grocery in the Fourteenth District. I wrote her phone number down, intending to call her the next day-she was going to show me a museum, I think-but when I woke up in the hotel, Willem had taken the piece of paper from my jacket. He wasn't there. He had phoned her, saying I was unwell, and taken her for a ride in the Bois de Boulogne. A motorcar was very special in those days. I didn't see much of Willem for the rest of the week, because he kept taking Jacqueline out. It turned out that she was rather old-fashioned and he couldn't get close to her unless he met her parents. Then she still wouldn't give in, so Willem said he'd marry her.'
'Are we about to land now?' his wife asked.
'Not yet.'
'Tell me when I can open my eyes.'
'Willem got her pregnant,' the commissaris said. 'He lost interest at once. That was about a year later. Before then Willem kept driving up and down to Paris. Jacqueline was really a rather lovely girl. He brought her up to Amsterdam a few times, to impress all of us -and to annoy me, of course.'
'Are we landing?'
'Now,' the commissaris said. 'Open your eyes. We're safe. Do you want to hear the rest of it?'
'So Willem has a child in Paris?'
'He killed it.'
'An abortion?'
'Much worse,' the commissaris said. 'He tried to kill Jacqueline. We had become philosophers by then, and Willem was reading Nietzsche. I didn't care too much for Nietzsche, but even so, the man made some good points. I won't bore you with the argument, but Willem and I somehow agreed that all morals were nonsense. Morals were merely rehashed tribal laws, and enlightened souls such as ourselves didn't have to bother with good and evil. We could do as we liked. I agreed in theory-maybe I still do-but I insisted that we should never hurt others.'
'You've hurt me many times, Jan.'
He patted her shoulder. 'Yes, but that was in spite of my good intentions. I didn't put rat poison in your porridge because I'd made you pregnant, did I, now?'
'Oh, Jan, did WHIem do that to the poor girl?'
'He certainly did,' the commissaris said, waiting for impatient passengers to file out of the plane. 'And mostly to prove a point. You see what I'm getting at?'
'No, Jan. Shouldn't we get out?'
They walked through the airport's main building, arm in arm, a small, dapper old man with a slight limp, and a tall, silver-haired, dignified woman. 'Katrien,' the commissaris said, 'don't you see? Willem wanted to show me how ruthless he was. He set me up. We were playing snooker one evening in the university cafe and he told me that Jacqueline would die that very night and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Willem had done his homework for once. A medical student gave him literature on arsenic. Jacqueline was the only member of her family who liked to eat porridge. Willem put the rat poison in a container she kept in the kitchen. He was supposed to be the future son-in-law and was free to wander about her parents' house. They trusted him; they didn't know their daughter was pregnant. Then Jacqueline got ill.'
'Willem intended her to-lose the baby?'
'He intended her to die, Katrien.'
'Did she?'
'No. I took the train to Paris that same night and found Jacqueline in very poor shape indeed. The family doctor didn't know what was wrong. The poor girl was dying by then. I told the doctor about the poison. She was rushed to the hospital and her stomach was pumped. She lost the baby but regained her health.'
'And the police?'
'I was questioned,' the commissaris said. 'They wrote to Willem and ordered him to visit them, but he never did. There was no proof. The police had a weak case.'
They were waiting for the luggage. 'So you won, Jan.'
'Yes,' the commissaris said, 'and I broke with Willem. From then on, I only saw him during class. Willem didn't go to too many lectures, but we graduated at the same time.'
'There are our bags,' his wife said. 'You missed them.'
'They'll come around again.'
'Did Willem graduate cum laude too?'
'No,' the commissaris said, 'but he became an attorney, and in due course replaced his father as president and main shareholder of the Banque du Credit. He set up that Society for Help Abroad, which exploits illegal gambling clubs and drug joints for the young.'
'And keeps the profits,' the commissaris's wife said. 'I read that long magazine article to you about the Society. The gambling clubs are brothels, too. The journalist said he could prove that. Why don't you close the Society down?'
The commissaris grabbed the bags. 'I can't. Willem operates in a hole in the law. Nonprofit societies are protected. It's not my department, either. His bank is bad, too, and again outside my reach.'
'Fleur has a half-brother,' his wife said. 'Bart. We met Bart once. Baron Bart de la Faille. Maybe he has shares too.'
'All I remember is a little boy,' the commissaris said, 'a spoiled little brat, a late child by old de la Faille's second wife. She died of cancer. Watch the luggage, please, I'll go and find a cart.'
'And young IJsbreker must have had some shares,' his wife said when he came back, 'and he's dead.' She
