'Had to kill him?' Grijpstra asked.
Van Meteren nodded.
'Perhaps your people in The Hague were right when they refused to accept me into the Dutch police. Perhaps I am still wild. You see, a Papuan chief is killed when his policy of government is wrong. Nobody can judge a chief, he is too powerful. So he is killed at the right moment. The killing is hardly discussed. The tribe decides, but quietly. A certain atmosphere forms itself and everyone agrees. Then one or two men kill the chief, the men who are closest to him. But, it's hard to explain that to you perhaps, those men aren't the killers. The tribe kills.'
The detectives stared at van Meteren.
'Do you understand?' he asked.
'A little,' de Gier said.
'Perhaps I can make it a little clearer,' van Meteren said. 'A Papuan has no individual face, you see. He has a name and people know him by that name, but the name is only for convenience. In reality he has no name, no face, no individuality. He belongs to the tribe, and that's all. He is part of a whole.'
He looked at the detectives who were still staring at him.
'I met with a tribe once who had never been in contact with either the Dutch or Papuans who were working for the Dutch. One of my patrol had a mirror in his pack and he gave it to one of the tribe's warriors. The warrior was a tall, powerful man with a big nose and a bleached bone had been stuck through the nose. He looked into the mirror and laughed. I asked him why he laughed. He said he had seen a funny fellow who lived in the water.'
'What happens if you take a photograph of a group of Papuans and then show it to them?' de Gier asked.
Van Meteren smiled.
'You have understood, I see. Each one will recognize all his friends.'
'Except one man,' de Gier said. 'There'll be one man on the photograph he won't recognize.'
'Exactly,' van Meteren said.
Runau came into the cabin, they had more coffee and lit cigarettes.
'So you waited for the right moment,' Grijpstra said.
'Yes. Therese had thrown a book at him. The book hit him on the temple with such force that he became dizzy. When I came into the room he was sitting on the floor, stunned, with his head in his hands. I ran to his mother's room and made her give me a Pallium pill. She always had a little jar full of those pills. The doctor prescribed as many as she wanted. The pills might be bad for her, but she was old. With a pill in her stomach she would be quiet for a few hours. She is a very difficult woman to handle.'
'Yes,' de Gier said.
'Did Piet know you were giving him a drug?' Grijpstra asked.
'Perhaps, but he didn't have time to think. I told him to swallow the pill and he swallowed. He didn't have much resistance, he wasn't used to drugs. He would never drink more than two beers or one whisky at a time and even when he smoked hash he would stop after the second cigarette. The pill made him very weak, perhaps he was hardly aware when I hung him.'
'But why did you want to kill him?' de Gier asked. 'You had been helping him with his business so you must have approved of what he did. Were you after the seventy-five thousand guilders?'
'He didn't have the money,' van Meteren said. 'He had already spent it.'
Grijpstra shook his head and looked as if he were going to say something but de Gier stopped him, touching his arm.
'What had he done with the seventy-five thousand, van Meteren?' de Gier asked pleasantly.
'He had bought heroin,' van Meteren said. 'Beuzekom was always asking for heroin. Piet didn't have any contacts, he could only buy hash. When Beuzekom kept on asking for heroin Piet contacted Joachim de Kater. Joachim and Beuzekom didn't know each other, Piet always saw them separately. Joachim was interested in the heroin idea. Heroin is very expensive and not as voluminous as hash. Heroin is like gold dust, it's probably the most profitable commodity in the world. Piet told Joachim that he hadn't been able to locate a source of supply, not even in Marseilles, and Joachim became tempted to locate a source himself. He thought he might have a better chance than Piet, and he was right. Joachim de Kater is a member of the establishment, and he had a second asset, he knew his way about in France. I believe he spent a few years in France as a young man, taking a course at the Sorbonne University.'
'We had Joachim checked out,' Grijpstra said, 'but we didn't find out that he had lived in France.'
Van Meteren smiled.
'Joachim was a bit like Piet. Very quiet, very secretive. He never boasted. People who don't boast are very remarkable.'
'And dangerous,' Grijpstra said.
'And dangerous. Joachim found heroin and sold it to Piet. But Piet had to pay in cash. Joachim wasn't going to lend him the merchandise. So Piet mortgaged his two houses, gave Joachim the money and received the heroin.'
'Cash on the barrelhead,' de Gier said.
'Ahoy,' Runau shouted and the detectives joined him. A low gray speedboat was approaching the hotter. Two policemen, carbines at the ready, stood on the forecastle. The boat was approaching them at speed, its bow cutting the silent lake and causing a high sparkling white wave.
'Cut the engine,' de Gier said to Runau, 'or they may fire at us. We have had enough action today.'
Grijpstra went back into the cabin.
'We have company,' he said to van Meteren. 'You'll be in the hospital soon. So you have the heroin now, haven't you?'
'The lot,' van Meteren said, 'and it will never reach the users. Heroin is the end of everything. Piet wouldn't believe me when I tried to tell him. Hash is all right perhaps but I saw a lot of heroin addicts when I walked the streets as a traffic warden. They were all dying. Heroin is the evil spirit itself, it goes straight into the blood and it will never let go. It makes puppets out of us, crazy puppets who won't last.'
'That's why you hung him?' Grijpstra asked. 'Why not tell us?'
'You would have jailed him for a bit,' van Meteren said. 'The police can't change the law. I could, but no judge will believe me when I say that I killed him to stop him.'
The police boat touched the botter.
'What would you have done if we hadn't caught you?' Grijpstra asked.
'Waited for at least a year, sold the botter and the Harley and gone back to New Guinea.'
'As King Doodle the First?' Grijpstra asked. 'Would you have become a king? Or an admiral of a pirate fleet of war canoes?'
Van Meteren smiled.
'Perhaps. I might have become a hermit, who knows. There are a lot of small islands in my country. I might have, retired and lived with the animals.'
'And the heroin?'
'I would have destroyed it. But I always reckoned with the chance that you might catch me so I kept it for the time being. It may still serve a purpose.'
'Morning,' said the policeman who entered the cabin. 'Is that fellow the prisoner?'
'He is,' Grijpstra said.
'Wounded, is he? We'll let him stay where he is and you can follow us. I'll radio for an ambulance. We'll be in the harbor within half an hour. They can take him straight to the hospital.'
'Thanks,' Grijpstra said.
'We have looked everywhere for your boat,' the policeman said, 'and all we found were fishermen, cursing us because we were disturbing the fish with our bow wave.'
'It's a hard life,' de Gier said.
Grijpstra looked at the water policeman, a strong healthy looking giant with a suntanned face.
'What a life,' Grijpstra thought, 'play around on the water all day.'
Van Meteren laughed, he had read Grijpstra's thoughts.
