front. The driver was a blond young woman with heavily made-up eyes. She stopped her huge vehicle soundlessly so that the little old gentleman, walking with some difficulty and the help of a gold-tipped cane, could cross the street at his ease. The commissaris raised his cane in thanks.
The driver waved.
'Strange-looking woman,' O'Neill said, walking next to the commissaris. 'Macabre makeup. Did you see those eyes?'
Chapter 9
Amsterdam's chief-constable wasn't ready to sign the document that Grijpstra had brought along and placed on his superior's desk. The CC was talking about playing golf at Crailo and the sudden death of his friend the baron.
Grijpstra's comments had been conversational. 'Beautiful course, sir,' and 'Yes, that was unfortunate, wasn't it?'
The chief-constable smiled.
Grijpstra felt encouraged. He moved the request for funding further across the desk. 'Could you please sign this, sir?'
The CC looked away.
Grijpstra sighed. 'You are concerned about the possibility of foul play, sir?'
The chief-constable talked at some length. He said that, in spite of what he was doing at his present elevated position, which, as most insiders were aware of, was mostly decorative these days, he was still a cop at heart and therefore curious about human erring. A man had died at the Crailo Golf Club of which the CC was an active member.
Grijpstra's rugged face plied itself into an expression of interest. 'You and the baron were friends, sir?'
Friends…friends…the chief-constable said he didn't known about 'friends.' 'Friends are like clouds in the sky, Adjutant. They float around, they disappear, they come back in different shapes, you reach out and they're gone again.'
Grijpstra said he liked clouds himself. He often tried to paint them.
'Really?' the CC asked. 'I thought you mostly portrayed dead ducks.'
'With clouds above them,' Grijpstra said. 'For contrast, maybe. The dead ducks are upside down in the canals, with bright orange feet which make them sail along.' The adjutant's gestures showed how this was done. 'And the white clouds bring out the bright orange.'
The chief-constable smiled again. He hadn't listened. He was talking in a barely audible voice when he admitted to a personal interest in what he referred to as the 'Crailo murder.' He had known Hilger van Hopper fairly well, had been following the ups and downs of the baron's life at close quarters. 'But it seemed the poor fellow was going mostly down, Adjutant. Which amazed me.' The chief-constable spoke with more enthusiasm now. 'Hilger was a smart fellow, educated, insightful, one might say. A cynic. You know what a cynic is, Adjutant?'
Grijpstra thought a cynic was one who mocked generally accepted human values.
The CC explained that there was no mockery here, but a sincere disbelief, based on observation. A cynic, he said, has found reasons to believe that all human activity is based on selfishness. 'Do you believe that, Adjutant?' The CC's smile was sad. 'I rather do so myself.'
Grijpstra nodded convincingly while he pushed his documents a little further across the vast emptiness of the desk between them.
'Yes,' the chief-constable said. 'Hilger, therefore, was out for himself. In a pleasant way. He was a baron, of course.'
'A nobleman,' Grijpstra said pleasantly. 'Noble.'
'Noble selfishness,' the CC said. He held his long elegant hands back above the polished top of his desk. His fingertips played the scherzo of Chopin's Klaviersonate Nr. 2 b-moll op. 35. Grijpstra knew the sonata because he had been made to play it himself, as a boy, after his teachers determined that he had musical talent. Grijpstra had wanted to try Billy Strayhorn compositions. He still did.
'So,' the CC said, 'here we have a superior sort of chap who has figured out that we are in it for ourselves, and who has the means to indulge himself, and who is all out to make one good time flow into another.'
Grijpstra looked surprised. 'He did not succeed?'
The CC shook his head. He tried to share a congenial grin with Grijpstra. 'No, he just kept losing. But then he was suddenly in the money again, with a loving wife and a handsome lover, and then he managed to suddenly lose his life.'
Grijpstra contemplated his ultimate chiefs appearance. Amsterdam's police commander in chief was a decorative man: tall, slim, silver haired, with an aquiline nose. He was reputed to suffer from depression. After his wife died, crashing her airplane into a peat bog, the CC engaged in brief relationships, often with women he knew through his work. The grapevine reported that they all had the same comment: that the CC wasn't part of the activities he engaged in. Although he performed the correct movements, his behavior was mechanical, all while being polite and charming. The CC took his lovers out to plays and concerts, and paid for good dinners. He listened, laughed at jokes and tipped the waiters. 'But he is mostly dead,' the women reported.
Grijpstra wondered whether he could interact with a man who was mostly dead.
'Baldert's projectile, the golf ball, did miss the baron.'
'Maybe that was just part of what caused my friend's loss of life,' the CC said. 'What if Baldert, after narrowly missing his easy target, and after noticing that the baron was experiencing some sort of attack, stroke or what have you, had called an ambulance?'
'According to the rural lieutenant,' Grijpstra said, 'it seems your golf companion was dangling from the last strand of the end of his tether.'
'A stretched metaphor.' The CC laughed. 'The commissaris is right, you are a card.'
Grijpstra apologized. 'Wasn't meaning to be funny, sir.'
The chief-constable leaned back in his executive's revolving chair. His voice was sad. 'Causing death by omission of some activity, an interesting construction, Adjutant. I wrote my thesis on that.'
Grijpstra moved the document another millimeter. 'Sir?'
The CC's fingers now played the sonata's next movement, the 'Marche funebre.' To be played, Grijpstra remembered, 'lento-attaaa.'
'Missed on purpose?' Grijpstra asked. 'But the ball passed close by the victim's head. The baron now realizes that Baldert, whom he considered to be his friend, is trying to kill him. The shock sets off a heart attack. And then Baldert, still as part of the plan, pretends to panic and doesn't call an ambulance until the crowd returns from watching plastic windup ducks?'
The CC's fingertips were moving.
The chief was talking almost inaudibly again: '… my wife would still be alive if I had made sure that the old Cessna had been properly checked. I knew that the mechanics at the Air Club were sloppy. But I didn't like her, you see.'
Grijpstra stared.
'I didn't like my wife,' the chief-constable said. He smiled. He stopped playing the sonata, pulled the form toward him and signed it with a flourish. 'There you are,' the CC said pleasantly. 'This will pay for de Gier's airfare and expenses. I am glad that you fellows are concerned about the commissaris's welfare.' He looked up. 'So how is the old man doing?'
Grijpstra thought that the commissaris was ill.
'He has been ill for years now,' the CC said. 'He could have been on permanent sick leave since he started using a cane.' He looked at his long slender hands, then dropped them under the desk top. 'But maybe my respected colleague doesn't like doing nothing.'
'What are you going to do, sir?' Grijpstra asked. 'When you retire?'
The chief-constable smiled. 'I will just fade away, Adjutant. I am good at that. I have been practicing for years.'
