Blond Baboon

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The Commissaris wouldnt let Gabrielle accompany him to the front door but said good-bye at die door of her room. He held her shoulder lightly as he said his good-night, having nudged Cardozo into the direction of the staircase. There was a gentleness in his touch that seemed to reach her. She no longer purred; her voice had become slightly hoarse instead. She left the door open as she walked back into her room and he closed it, for he had heard the constables come in to fetch the corpse. They were maneuvering awkwardly, bumping the stretcher against a wall. A trickle of water ran from die sodden body and the head flopped. The victory that Grijpstra had seen in Elaine earner’s face earlier in the night was still there, but the joyous expression wasn’t very substantial as her head moved past the commissaris. A thin victory, reached through great agony, the agony of a useless life. The commissaris had only a glimpse of the victim, but the moment cut into his perception and the shock bared his long yellowish teem and aggravated the cold pain in his legs so mat he stumbled and had to support himself against a wall.

Death was his game, of course, and as the officer in charge of Amsterdam’s murder brigade he dealt with it continuously, but he had never made his peace with death. On a few occasions he had seen people die and seen fear change into surprise, a surprise mingled with horror. This was the first time he had seen surprise mingled with joy, or was joy the wrong definition?

The question stayed in his mind as the car made its way carefully through the southern part of the old city. Grijpstra and Cardozo were on the back seat, both sunk into apathy, and de Gier was steering, trying to see something through the waves of water that the nervous little wipers couldn’t deal with. After a few minutes the rain suddenly stopped, and the commissaris saw die torn and broken trunk of a weeping willow that had graced a small square for as long as he could remember. Large puddles of inky water were almost brought to foam by a sweep of the gale. He still saw Elaine Camet’s head, the bedraggled clown’s mask of a middle-aged woman. Who cares? he thought. The dead are dumped and we tear into the living flesh of the killer if we can find him and frazzle the nerves of a number of suspects in the process. His gloom, cold edged with razor-blade cuts of the pain in his legs, increased and he braced himself in defense. He had to find refuge in the calm that he knew to be in his mind as well. This was a murder case like any other and it would have to be approached by normal methods. He would go into die mess tomorrow, for a mess it was. He only hoped that it was a simple mess that could be cleared quickly. Like de Gier and Grijpstra, he felt sure mat there had been a crime, although he wouldn’t forget the easier explanation of a combination of accidental causes.

Gales are known to unsettle people’s minds. Mrs. Carnet had probably been a nervous woman, lonely and fearful. Her favorite spot was the porch with die ugly chairs and the TV set and a gramophone and old records mat reminded her of her glamorous past. She also drank. The doctor would be able to tell him how much she drank, once he had done his tests. She had been drinking that evening. She might have fallen down her garden stairs, why not? The broken wineglass in the garbage container, the cigar butts with plastic mouthpieces, the wedding ring on the floor… clues that might lead to nothing.

But he didn’t think so. The meeting with Gabrielle had only deepened his suspicions. De Gier was probably right, she had been acting too well. Grijpstra, as usual, wouldn’t commit himself. Cardozo was too young and inexperienced, he would only say what he had heard, seen, smelted, felt, tasted, as a young detective should. But Cardozo’s assistance would be important, for he had met Gabrielle before her mother died.

The commissaris was organizing his attack on the knot of lies, schemes, hidden emotions, suppressed fears, mat had already shown itself in part, but he got caught up again in the gale and in what the gale was doing to the city that had been his hunting ground for over forty years. He knew Amsterdam was warm, friendly, comforting as a mother. He was used to riding through her streets, recognizing odd corners, feeling the spreading protection of old trees, the cool of waterways nibbling at quays built centuries ago out of cobblestones, each individually faced, each with its own growth of minute, fuzzy plants forming a green border to the small, blue-gray, lapping laves. Now the canals were hellish sewers, covered in yellow spray where they were lit up by swinging streetlights.

The sign of a drugstore came flying, and de Gier turned the wheel so that it sailed past and hit the street and broke, exploding into a cloud of plastic particles. He could hear Grijpstra grunt behind him. Two fire engines hurtled toward the Volkswagen and de Gier drove onto the sidewalk. The engine stalled, and they could hear the sirens of the red trucks, howling emptily.

“Must be on their way to a collapsed house.”

The commissaris didn’t acknowledge the sergeant’s remark but struggled on with his thoughts.

They came to the avenue where the commissaris lived. The sergeant had guided the car onto the sidewalk again to avoid the fallen trees and to minimize the commissaris’s exposure to the weather. When de Gier switched the engine off he looked at the commissaris’s face and smiled. His chief seemed his usual calm self, slightly amused, neat, gentle. The discipline of a long life of continuous effort had reasserted itself, the commissaris’s fear had been forced back into its lair, where it sat, cramped and uncomfortable, wrapped into itself, a black shapeless monstrosity, powerless and pathetic.

“I’ll see you three gentlemen tomorrow at nine,” the commissaris said cheerfully. “Don’t think about the case tonight, we’ll tackle it in the morning, it’ll still be fresh.”

“Sir,” the three men said. The sergeant wanted to get out of the car to open the commissaris’s door, but the little old man was in the street already, stumbling to the front door that was being held open by his wife, whose house-coat was being blown to the side. They saw her reach out and pull him in.