Outsider in Amsterdam

\\\\\ 15 /////

Right," Grijpstra said. "I'll keep him covered while you get the bandages."

"Can I help?" Runau asked.

Grijpstra looked at the yacht, now tied up to the hotter. The surface of the lake was still calm but soon the early morning breeze would start up and small waves would be lapping against the yacht's side, flooding it slowly.

"You see if you can save your boat," Grijpstra said. "Maybe you can block the holes."

"Hey," van Meteren said.

The three men looked at the Papuan's face.

"Look in the bottom drawer," van Meteren said, pointing at the cabin's port wall. "You'll find some rubber sheeting in there I use for repairing the dinghy with, and some cleaning rags. You could twist them into the yacht's holes. She'll still leak, but not too badly."

"Go ahead," Grijpstra said to Runau.

While Runau rummaged through the chest of drawers de Gier fetched the Red Cross tin from the yacht's cabin, staying as far away as he could from the rear of the boat.

Runau joined him, with an armful of cleaning rags.

"I'll wait for you here," Runau said. "Bandage him up and men you can come and stand on the front deck while I try to do something about the holes. It would be better if Grijpstra came as well. He is nice and heavy and can stand on the front deck with you, but somebody will have to watch van Meteren."

"I was lucky," de Gier said. His mouth twitched a little.

"You mean that you didn't shoot him through the head?"

"Yes," de Gier said. "I was aiming for his shoulder but I didn't have much time."

"Maybe you weren't lucky," Runau said. "Maybe you are a good shot. Have you had a lot of practice with the carbine?"

"Yes," de Gier said. "I try to go to the rifle range at least twice a month."

"Keep it up," Runau said. "I don't think I could have hit him in the shoulder, not even when I was in training."

"Very good," van Meteren said.

"What do you mean?" Grijpstra asked.

"You are pointing your pistol at me," van Meteren said, "and I am on the floor, bleeding. A friend of mine got killed in New Guinea because he wasn't paying sufficient attention to a wounded prisoner. The man looked harmless enough, leaning against a tree and bleeding like a slaughtered pig, but he had a revolver and he shot my friend."

"Have you got a revolver?" Grijpstra asked.

Van Meteren tried to change his position and grimaced with pain. "Yes," he said, "under my armpit, very close to the wound."

De Gier had come in. He put his left hand under van Meteren's head, lifting it a little off the floor.

Grijpstra threw him a small cushion.

"That's better," said van Meteren. "Take my revolver and then we can get the jacket off. The wound isn't dangerous, I think. The lung hasn't been touched, it may be just a flesh wound but it's certainly bleeding. Perhaps you can stop the blood."

De Gier worked quietly, bandaging the wound and fastening the gauze with metal clips. He made a sling for van Meteren's arm.

Van Meteren's teeth chattered.

"Are you in bad pain?" de Gier asked.

"It's beginning to hurt now," van Meteren said.

"Shock," Grijpstra said. "Give him one of the pills from the tin."

Van Meteren swallowed the pill and de Gier poured him a mugful of tea from a thermos flask he had found in the cabin.

"I'll be all right," van Meteren said. "I have had shock before. Very hard to control. I have been knifed during a jungle patrol, didn't see the man coming. My teeth chattered for hours afterwards. They were all laughing at me but I couldn't stop."

"To be knifed isn't very funny," Grijpstra said.

"The man who knifed me got shot in the stomach," van Meteren said. "That isn't funny either. He was dead by the time we got back to camp and he had been howling all the time he was on the stretcher. A sergeant from Ambon. Very tough fellow, a commando. Most of the Indonesian commandos came from Ambon."

Runau came back.

"How's the yacht?" Grijpstra asked.

"She won't sink," Runau said, "but our friend did a neat job."

"I am sorry," van Meteren said. He looked sorry and Runau went over and patted him on the sound shoulder.

"Don't worry, friend. The yacht is insured. A bit of welding and she'll be as good as new."

De Gier had been watching van Meteren's face. The Papuan seemed much calmer now.

"You look better," de Gier said.

"So do you, de Gier," Grijpstra said. "You've got some color in your face again. Now let's get going, we'll have to get this chap to the hospital. He isn't coughing blood so his lung is probably all right, as he says, but there is a bullet in him and it should come out. Will you take the boat back for us, Runau?"

"Sir," Runau said and left the cabin.

"Nice military fellow," Grijpstra said. "Calls me Sir and all. Does as I tell him. I wish you'd behave like that, de Gier."

"You'd be in a dinghy now," de Gier said.

Van Meteren laughed.

"How did you know I was on this boat?" he asked.

"Grijpstra's idea," de Gier said. "You remember the map you have on your wall?"

"Yes," van Meteren said, "silly of me. Very silly. Never thought of it. A maritime map. I used to look at it a lot, plan all my trips on it."

"If it hadn't been the map it would have been something else. Somebody would have caught you sooner or later. The State Police were alerted and we knew what you looked like. We found Seket as well, there's always something that connects."

"How did you find Seket?" van Meteren asked.

De Gier told him.

"I couldn't help that," van Meteren said.

"Didn't say you could," de Gier said.

"No." Van Meteren grinned. "Perhaps I should have controlled my greed, but I always wanted to have a motorcycle and a Harley is the biggest motorcycle you can get. Still, you have done very well. My congratulations! It would have been nice to work with you."

"Don't be so modest," said Grijpstra, who had poured himself some tea from the thermos. "We would never have caught you. You let us catch you. You could have shot the lot of us, one by one, like sparrows on the roof of the gardenshed."

"I am not a murderer," van Meteren said.

There was an awkward silence.

"Let's have some breakfast," de Gier said and opened a cupboard at random.

"Where did you get the revolver?" Grijpstra asked and sat down close to van Meteren. He had put his pistol away after de Gier had removed the revolver and left it in Runau's care near the rudder, together with the rifle and the carbine. De Gier wasn't taking any risks. He had been very impressed by the Papuan. Beer in his eyes and a chair kicked to smithereens, within a split second from the expression of infinite sadness on the suspect's face. And the sadness had been real, which made me fast reaction even more amazing. The Papuan was dangerous, even with his wounded shoulder.

"But he didn't kill us when he had the chance," de Gier kept on thinking.

"I'll tell you," van Meteren said, "but first I'll tell you where the food is. We can have breakfast together and de Gier can prepare it."

Soon there was a smell of crisp bacon and fried eggs and fresh coffee. The boat was well stocked.

"I got the revolver in Belgium," van Meteren said when he had eaten. "A Smith amp; Wesson, like the one I had in New Guinea. You know how I got the Lee Enfield, I smuggled it through customs. I also tried to buy a jungle knife, I lost mine just before I left and I haven't been able to find another one just like it. They aren't made anymore."

"You were homesick," Grijpstra said.

"Perhaps. In New Guinea I was somebody. I had a uniform, arms, a task in life. I served the queen. My queen. Here you laugh about the royal family perhaps, the crown is a symbol, a symbol of the past they say, but to us in New Guinea the queen was holy. We saluted every time we passed her portrait. Religion and the law are very close. I still think the queen is a sort of saint. I cried when I saw her in the street. She was all I had when I left my island. But nobody wanted me when I came to The Hague to ask for the queen's orders. I showed them my medals and my papers. They were polite and patient, but they had no time for me. I was a strange black fellow from far away. With a Dutch passport."

"Constable first class van Meteren at your service," de Gier said.

"Exactly. Constable first class of the overseas state police. I thought it meant something. It meant nothing at all. I Spoke to the soldiers from Ambon who came to Holland instead of joining the Indonesian army as commandos and paratroopers. They were treated as I was treated. But there was a difference. They had each other. I was alone."

"That's just the way you feel," Grijpstra said, "but the feeling is wrong. You are human here, just like the rest of us. We don't discriminate against colored people in Holland. You are a Dutch citizen. You have your rights."

"Yes," van Meteren said, "an old-age pension in case I manage to reach the age of sixty-five years. You gave me a job. I became a clerk. It wasn't too bad really. I like writing. In New Guinea I would tear up a report if there was one little mistake in it. I would work overtime to get the wording exactly right. It was appreciated. But nobody appreciated what I did here."

"Now, now," Grijpstra said.

Van Meteren fingered his shoulder.

"All right. I am telling you what I used to think. Since then I have changed a lot. At that time I wanted to rejoin the police, I don't think I ever stopped being a policeman. I am an expert on all arms, including the bren. I am very good with a knife; I can throw a knife too and I learned judo. But I am not just a fighter. I know the law. By heart. Call a number and I'll recite the article to you."

"More eggs?" de Gier asked. "More coffee?"

"More coffee," van Meteren said.

"You could have gone back," de Gier said, filling the mug, careful not to step between Grijpstra and the Papuan.

"I thought about going back, but I needed money. It would have taken me a few years to save up for the ticket, but I wanted more than the ticket. I wanted to return in style."

"I don't understand this about the police," Grijpstra said. 'There are Indonesians in the Dutch police, aren't there? And Chinese too."

"No Papuans," van Meteren said. "Not one. They think we are cannibals. We'll eat the prisoners."

"So you came to Amsterdam?"

"Yes. And they gave me a job as a traffic warden. I have a cap again, and a rubber truncheon."

De Gier wanted to say something but van Meteren raised his hand.

"You are a nice man, de Gier. And very likely you are right. Perhaps I should have been content, after all, there are plenty of Dutchmen in the parking police. It's an honest job, very useful. Perhaps I am too ambitious. Don't argue with me. If you let me talk you'll have a confession. You can make notes if you like and I'll sign the statement. It'll save time."

De Gier didn't say anything.

"I was content, in a way. I didn't like The Hague. It reminded me of a cemetery, full of shadows. In Amsterdam I began to live again. People talk to each other here, even in the street, and there are a lot of Negroes in Amsterdam. I stopped feeling black. People thought I came from the colonies in South America, I didn't have to explain myself. And it got even better when I met Piet Verboom. The people of the Hindist Society accepted me.

"Yes," Grijpstra said, "Verboom. Tell us about your relationship with him."

"What do you think our relationship was?" van Meteren asked.

"Drugs." Grijpstra said. "You both dealt in drugs."

Van Meteren smiled.

"I wasn't a dealer," he said. "I was a bodyguard. Piet had convinced himself he wasn't a mere drug dealer. He had combined it with mysticism. Meditation and self-discipline were part of his ideas, but the whole process should be combined with drugs. Drugs accelerate the opening up of the mind. He kept on telling me that drugs were part of our evolution. And drugs, like mysticism, come from the Far East. It all sounded very logical when you listened to him. But drugs are dangerous, mere are a lot of criminals in the trade. He felt safer when I was around."

"And you kept your job as a traffic warden?"

"Of course," van Meteren said. "It gave me something to do during the day. A traffic warden is a respectable person. Piet's activities were always limited to the evenings and the weekends."

Van Meteren was speaking very slowly now. The pill had begun to work. De Gier lit a cigarette and gave it to him. It was very quiet on the lake, the rhythmical muffled explosions of the diesel engine created a peaceful atmosphere. Runau had relaxed, and was steering the hotter as he listened. A covey of waterfowl almost touched the mast with their wings. The coasdine had become visible.

"Not a bad life, eh?" van Meteren asked. "I have spent days in the boat like this, during the weekends mostly. I have always felt very good on the water, doing nothing in particular, watching the birds and the clouds and fishing a bit, maybe."

Grijpstra had stretched out on a bench, de Gier was sitting on the floor next to van Meteren, he was scribbling in his notebook.

"How's the yacht?" van Meteren asked Runau.

"All right. The cleaning rags have done the trick. She isn't leaking anymore and I have hosed most of the water out."

"I am really sorry," van Meteren said. "I hope I haven't ruined her."

"Don't worry," Runau said. "I came of my own free will. I knew something might happen."

"Go on," de Gier said.

Van Meteren smiled. "You want to know it all, hey? You'll get it all, all you need is a little patience."

"How do you feel now?" Grijpstra asked.

"Better. That pill must have been very strong. But let me tell you the rest of it. Piet had made a few long trips. He had been to Pakistan and he had been offered hash. Piet was a good businessman. He made a plan, got the stuff into the country and kept it for a while. He didn't want to run too much of a risk and preferred selling to a wholesaler than directly to the consumer."

"I thought he was an idealist," de Gier said.

"He was, in a way. I am sure he believed what he preached, or perhaps it was the other way around, he wanted to make a lot of money so he thought of a high-minded theory to fit his facts."

"So you hung him," de Gier said.

The Papaun's eyes fixed de Gier's.

"Yes. So I hung him. The hash was all right. I have smoked it myself. Often. Here on the lake, for instance. I don't think it does any harm. I made the contact with Beuzekom. I found him by chance. He had parked his little Mercedes bus on a sidewalk and I gave him a ticket and noticed that he had a lot of tins in the car. Ringma was with him and became very nervous when I asked about the tins. I opened one of them and they offered to bribe me but I made an appointment instead and introduced them to Piet. Piet's stuff was better and cheaper than what they had been buying so far. They bought everything Piet had to offer and asked for more. They paid cash as well."

"How much?" de Gier asked.

"A lot," van Meteren said. "Beuzekom is the most important hash dealer in Amsterdam. And he is hard to catch. He has been caught once but the man who gave his name to the police has disappeared."

"Who financed Piet's business?" Grijpstra asked.

"Joachim de Kater. Piet had no money, not much anyway. Short-term loans at very high interest. I was always around when there was money in the house, money or drugs. I would report sick at work or take a day off. Usually we could organize it all in one day."

"How much were you making yourself?"

"Not as much as you would think," van Meteren said, "about fifty thousand a year, maybe, and free board and lodging. And that was more than Piet had intended. I made him pay me. He was frightened of me. And he needed me, of course. He wouldn't go anywhere without me. I spent the money on the motorbike and on this boat and I intended to save a hundred thousand. Take it to New Guinea with me."

"With a Dutch passport?"

Van Meteren laughed.

"I may be a clown here but in New Guinea it would have been different, it is a very big island and I know it well. I would have found a nice spot and I had made some plans. Wild plans. I might have become a pirate, an admiral with thirty or forty canoes under me, each canoe with a crew of thirty cutthroats. I could have been a king."

"King Doodle the First," de Gier said. "But why did you read all that Dutch history?"

"Curiosity," van Meteren said. "I lived here and I wanted to know where I lived. I read about your tribal wars and about the Romans, and the Spanish, and the French, and the Germans. Your history isn't all that different from ours. Our wars are still tribal but there is only a difference in scale. I have been studying your methods."

"And what did Piet make out of it?" Grijpstra asked.

"More than I did. But he was spending a lot. He was eating in expensive restaurants and spending money in the red quarter. And some of it went into the house at the Haarlemmer Houttuinen. The Society was making some money, but not enough for all the building going on. A new roof alone cost him fifty thousand."

"And Joachim de Kater kept on lending money?"

"Sure. He was making a fortune without lifting a finger. He took the risk that Piet wouldn't repay the loan but he always insisted on guarantees and Piet was using the house as security, and that other house he owned in the south."

"Did Piet have anybody else working for him?"

"No," van Meteren said. "I was his only assistant. He didn't believe in having a lot of people working for him. The Hindist Society was also run with the absolute minimum in manpower. He was a good merchant, he didn't believe in spending his profit on wages. He also didn't believe in sharing his secrets."

The Papuan groaned. Grijpstra sat up and climbed onto the small roof of the cabin. A thin ragged fog seemed to protect the hotter.

"Beautiful," Grijpstra thought. "A pleasure trip. Perhaps I should hire a boat and take the children for a day on the lake."

He sighed and climbed down into the cabin again.

The Papuan had closed his eyes but opened them again when he heard Grijpstra come in.

"It was, in a way, a pleasant, easy business," he said. "Beuzekom was a dangerous man perhaps but he knew I carried a revolver and he was always very polite. When the casks had to be handed over I made him and Ringma do all the carrying. I watched them, and that was all. Piet liked that. 'You are my nice sweet Papuan' he would say. He also used to call me his 'pet tiger.'"

"But you killed him," de Gier said.

"Yes," van Meteren said. "I waited for the right moment. I had to kill him, but it had to be a good kill."

"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.