Death of a Hawker

14

When De Grier turned the key he could hear Oliver's nails scratching the inside of the door. He also heard the telephone.

"It never stops," he said to Esther, stepping aside so that she could enter first, and bending down. Oliver ran straight into his hand, pressed low to the floor, intent on escape. "Here," de Gier said and caught him. "Don't run away, there's nothing outside there. Just a lot of fast cars and a hot street. Here! And don't scratch."

The telephone was still ringing. "Yes, yes, yes," de Gier said, and picked it up. Esther had taken the cat out of his arms and was nuzzling it, whispering into its ear. Oliver closed his eyes, went limp and purred. The nails slid back and his paws became soft playthings of fur. He pushed a paw against her nose, and kept it there.

"That's nice," de Gier said. "I have never seen him do that to anyone except myself. Silly cat loves you."

"Is it silly to love me?" Esther asked, and before he had time to think of an answer, "Who was that on the telephone? You look all grumpy."

"The commissaris."

"I thought he was a very pleasant man."

"He is not," de Gier said, "and he shouldn't phone me. He is fussing. Did I get the schedule for tomorrow organized? Did I speak to Cardozo about it? Did I do this? Did I do that? Of course I did it all. I always do everything he tells me. Why doesn't he fuss with Grijpstra? But he had Grijpstra with him all day, they had dinner together, while I was sent on an inane errand."

"What errand?"

"Never mind," de Gier said. "Take your coat off and I'll make tea. Or I can open a can of shrimp soup, I have had it in the fridge for ages, waiting for the right occasion. We can have a drop of Madeira in it and eat some hot buttered toast and a salad. And we can look at the geraniums while we eat. The one in the middle is doing very well. I've been feeding it expensive drops and it is responding. See?"

"You like your balcony, don't you?"

"It's better than a garden. I don't have to wear myself out in it. I am growing some cabbage seed now, in that pot in the corner. The little boy in the fiat upstairs gave me the seeds and they came up in a few weeks, just as he said. They are in flower too now. I used to study the buds through a magnifying glass; I could almost see them swell."

"I thought you would be more interested in fingerprints."

"No," de Gier said. "Fingerprints don't grow, they are just there, left by a fool who didn't mind what he was doing. We hardly ever find fingerprints anyway and if we find them they belong to a sweet innocent."

She was helping him in the kitchen and sent him out, once she knew where everything was. He sat down on his bed and talked to her through the open door. She didn't take long and served the meal on a detachable board, which he pulled from the wall and which came down to about a foot from the bed's surface, suspended by hinges on one side and a chain on the other.

"Very ingenious," she said. "This is a very small apartment but it looks quite spacious somehow."

"Because I have no furniture," he said. "Just the bed, and the chair in the other room. I don't really like having people here, they make the place overflow. Grijpstra is O.K., he doesn't move. And you, of course. It's marvelous having you here."

She leaned over and kissed his cheek. The telephone rang again.

"It never stops," de Gier said. "It. The whole thing. It's still moving and I want to be out of it. There should be a way of dropping out of activity. Smashing tihe telephone would be a good start."

"Answer it," she said, "and then come back to me. And to the toast, it's still hot."

"Cardozo?" de Gier asked.

"Yes," Cardozo said, "your faithful assistant is reporting. I am about to start organizing the truck and the merchandise and the permit for the street market and everything, but I thought I'd better run through all the details with you once more before I started."

De Gier sighed. "Cardozo?"

"Yes."

"Cardozo, it's all yours. I want you to prove yourself. Get the whole rigmarole going, Cardozo. Do more than we are asking you to do. Find out what the textiles are worth. We have to sell them at the right price tomorrow. We can't give state property away, can we?"

"No," Cardozo said.

"Right. Besides we don't want the other hawkers to be suspicious. We have to be just right. Think about this business. Try and become a hawker. Think yourself into it. Get the thought into your subconscious. Try and dream about it tonight."

"What are you going to do?" Cardozo asked.

"I am going to be here, right here in my flat and think with you. Don't feel alone, I am with you, right behind you, Cardozo. Every step of the way."

"When I am carrying those heavy bales out of the police store?"

"Yes."

"Heaving them into the van?"

"Yes."

"That'll be nice."

"Yes. And if there's any problem you can't solve-I don't think there will be any, for you are competent and well trained and an asset to the force-then grab the nearest telephone and dial my number. I'll advise you."

"About how to cany those heavy bales into the van?"

"Yes. Take a deep breath before you lift them. Then stop your breath while you move your arms. Get your shoulder and stomach muscles to help. Heave-ho! You'll find it easy if you go about it the right way."

"I am glad you have faith in me," Cardozo said. "Maybe I will tell the commissaris about your faith in me, sometime when I happen to run into him and we'll be chatting about this and that."

"Oh, no, you won't," de Gier said. "I read the report in your file. The character report. You were picked for the murder squad because you have all the right qualities. Initiative for instance. And an inquisitive and secretive mind. And you are ambitious. You can be trusted to react properly when in a difficult spot. And you are reliable. Did you know all those things about yourself?''

"No," Cardozo said, "and I don't believe that report. It must have been made up by the psychologist who interviewed me. A rat-faced long-haired nervous wreck. I thought he was a suspect when I met him and I was watching him very carefully.''

"Psychology is a new science, a long-haired rat-faced science. They all look like that. They have to, or they are no good. And please stop arguing, Cardozo. Haven't you learned by now that nothing is gained by arguing?"

"Yes, sergeant," Cardozo said. "Sorry, sergeant. Forgot myself a moment, sergeant. Won't happen again, sergeant. Do you want me to report when I've got it all arranged, sergeant?"

"No," de Gier said. "That won't be necessary. I'll see you tomorrow morning, at the police garage at eight-thirty sharp. Good luck."

He put down the telephone and went back to the bed.

"Excellent young man," he said to Esther, "and clever too."

"Aren't you clever?"

"No," de Gier said.

"Are you a good detective?"

"No."

"Do you try to be?"

"Yes."

"Why?" He laughed, leaned over and kissed her.

"No. I want to know. Why do you try to be a good detective?"

He kissed her again. He said something about her hair and how well the kimono looked on her and how glad he was that she had changed her clothes while he was talking on the telephone. And how slender her body was.

"Yes," she said. "You are a charmer. But why do you try to be a good detective?"

"To please the commissaris," he said, trying to make the remark pass off as a joke.

"Yes," Esther said seriously. "I had a professor once I wanted to please. He seemed a very advanced little old man to me, and I loved him because he was so ugly and because he had such a big bald head. His mind was very quick but it was also deep, and I was sure he knew things that I should know. He was a strangely happy man and yet I knew that he had lost everything he cherished during the war and lived by himself in an old, untidy and very depressing house. I did very well in his class although his subject hardly interested me when I began. He taught medieval French and he made it come alive again."

"Crime interests me," de Gier said. "It interested me before I began to work under the commissaris."

"Why?" He lay back, stretching out an amorous arm which she didn't resist. "Why do you like crime?"

"I didn't say I liked crime, I said it interested me. Crime is sometimes a single mistake, more often a series of mistakes. I try to understand why criminals make mistakes."

"Why? To catch them?"

"I am not a hunter," de Gier said. "I hunt, because it is part of my work but I don't really enjoy it."

"So what are you?"

He sat up, looking for his pack of cigarettes. She gave him the pack and flicked her lighter. Her kimono opened and she adjusted it.

"Must we talk?" de Gier said. "I can think of better things to do."

She laughed. "Yes. Let's talk for a little while, I'll shut up in a minute."

"I don't know what I am," de Gier said, "but I am trying to find out. Criminals are also trying to find out what they are. It's a game we share with them."

His voice had gone up and Oliver woke and yowled.

"Oliver!" Esther said.

The cat turned his head and looked at her. He made a series of sounds, low sounds in the back of his throat, and stretched, putting a forepaw on her thigh.

"Go and catch a bird," de Gier said, as he picked him up and put him on the balcony, closing the door after him.

"Don't be jealous," Esther said.

"I am jealous," de Gier said.

"Don't you have any idea what you are?"

"Yes," he said and lay down on die bed, pulling her down, "a vague idea. A feeling rather. But it will have to become a lot clearer."

"And you became a policeman to find out?"

"No. I happened to become a policeman. I wasn't planning anything when I left school. I have an uncle in the police and he mentioned the possibility to my father and before I knew what I was doing I had signed a form and was answering questions and saying*yes' to all of them and then suddenly I was in uniform, with a stripe on my arm, and eight hours a day of classes."

"My brother also wanted to find out what he was," Esther said. "It's dangerous to be like that. You'll get yourself killed."

"I don't think I would mind," de Gier said and tugged at her kimono.

They fell asleep afterward and de Gier woke up an hour later because Oliver was throwing his body against the glass balcony door, making it rattle. He got up and fed the cat, cutting the meat carefully into thin slices. He lay down again, without disturbing Esther, who lay on her side, gently breathing. Her breathing excited him again. He turned over and looked at the geraniums and forced his mind to concentrate. He wanted to think about the spiked ball, the ball which had smashed the life out of Esther's powerful brother. He knew this was the best time to think, when his body was almost all asleep, leaving his brain to function on its own. It had made him conclude, early that morning, that the ball had been connected to a line, probably an elastic line. He had remembered some little boys playing ball on the balcony of a hotel in France. He had been watching them from the lounge, several years ago now, during a holiday shared with a police secretary, who had turned out to be very high-strung and possessive and who had changed the promised pleasure of the trip into a series of fights and withdrawals. He had been trying to get away from her that day and had been on his way out through the lounge when he saw the kids. They had a ball attached to some heavy weight and they were hitting it with miniature bats. They couldn't lose the ball for it could only travel a certain length. He hadn't been trying to think of kids playing, he had only concentrated on the mystery of the spiked ball and the picture of the kids and their gadget had suddenly popped up.

The ball had been thrown or shot into Abe's room but it hadn't stayed there. He was sure that the killer had never been in the room. If he had, there would have been a fight. Esther and Louis Zilver were in the house at the time. They would have heard the fight. There would have been shouts, furniture would have been pushed around, bodies would have struggled and fallen. The killer would have had to leave the house after Abe's death. He would have had to take the risk that either Esther or Louis would see him. De Gier was sure that the murder had been planned. Planned with a hellish machine. He had seen an exhibition of hellish machines at the police museum. Fountain pens that spout poison, rings with hidden steel thorns moved by a spring, very involved machines that will trigger off an explosion, trapdoors, heavy weights that will fall at the right moment. But not a spiked ball that disappears after it has done its work. And yet he knew that he knew the answer. He had seen something once, something that was capable of moving a spiked ball. Where had he seen it?

It would have to be something ordinary, innocuous. Something the riot policemen could see without having second thoughts. And it had to be noiseless. A bang would have alarmed the constables who were uneasy anyway that day. Something the killer could carry through the Straight Tree Ditch and smile at the constables as he carried it.

His eyes were closing. He struggled. The answer was close; all he had to do was grab it.

He fell asleep and woke up two hours later. Esther wasn't on the bed. He heard her in the kitchen. She was stirring something in a pot. The smell reached him, a good smell which touched his stomach. A stew. She must have found the minced meat and the fresh vegetables. He got up and stuck his head into the small kitchen. She had some rice at the boil too.

They ate, and listened to records. De Gier felt happy, unbelievably and completely happy. He also felt guilty and he opened a can of sardines for Oliver.