Tumbleweed

6

It was ten o'clock in the morning and it was raining. De Gier had just knocked on the door of a houseboat and was waiting for the door to open. He had put up the collar of his stylish raincoat and was muttering a string of curses, directed at himself who had bought the raincoat and the manufacturer of the raincoat who had forgotten to waterproof it.

The door opened and a fat woman, dressed in a torn peignoir and with her hair hanging down her face, looked at him with bleary eyes. "No, thank you," she said, and slammed the door.

De Gier knocked again.

"Go away," the woman shouted from inside the boat, "whatever it is you want to sell me, I don't want it."

De Gier knocked again.

"Go away," the woman shrieked, "or I'll phone the police."

"I am the police," de Gier shouted.

The door opened.

"Show your identification," the woman said, and pulled the card out of his hands. She studied the card, holding it at arm's length, spelling out the words to herself. "Amsterdam Municipal Police. R. de Gier, sergeant."

"All right," she said, "what do you want, sergeant?"

"Can I come in a minute?"

The woman stepped aside. De Gier gave her a photocopy of the sketch Bart de Jong had made of the man in the red waistcoat and his little son, holding a ball.

"Do you know this man at all, madam?"

"Let me get my glasses."

The fat woman got her glasses, polished them, and put them on. She studied the sketch carefully. "I have seen him," she said, "he only comes on Sundays, Sunday mornings. Walks about with his son. A lot of people come here for walks but I wouldn't remember them but I remember this one because of his silly waistcoat. A red waistcoat. He has a golden watch chain as well. He reminded me of my grandfather, that's why I remember him too."

"Do you know his name?"

"No," the woman said, "why should I? I never talked to him. Why are you looking for him?"

"We want to ask him a few questions," de Gier said, looking around and noticing how well kept the interior of the boat was. Everything was in its place, the furniture looked as if it had been polished a few minutes ago, the windows were so clean that he had to look again to make sure that there was glass in them. "Typical," de Gier thought, forcing himself to look at the woman who was still eyeing him suspiciously. "Ugly woman," de Gier thought, "should go on a diet and spend an hour a day on herself. She can't be thirty yet, could be quite attractive if she tried."

"Nice boat you have, madam," he said sweetly, "must be wonderful living out here on the water."

"I would prefer a nice apartment," the woman said, but she smiled.

"You didn't notice whether the man used to come here in a car and park it somewhere around here?"

The woman thought; the effort made her less ugly. "Yes. He might have come in a car. It's a long walk from the city and he had the little boy with him. Maybe he parked somewhere close by and then went for a walk. But I haven't seen his car."

"Thank you," de Gier said.

"Would you like some coffee, sergeant?"

"No, thank you, madam, I still have a lot of work to do."

De Gier left. It was the seventeenth door he had knocked on that morning. He knocked on another ten doors and finally got an answer. He walked back to the police VW where he found Grijpstra waiting for him, patiently smoking a cigar.

"What kept you?" Grijpstra said. "I have been waiting here for nearly half an hour. I looked for you, did you find a pretty lady somewhere?"

De Gier took a deep breath. "No."

"The man used to drive out here," Grijpstra said, "in a red Rover. I wanted to tell you."

De Gier took another deep breath. He had been training himself in mental discipline lately and had set himself several goals, such as not to smoke before breakfast, not to swear, to stop at orange traffic lights, to be modest. But the exercises were difficult and he didn't win much. He lost now.

"I know," he said.

"What do you mean you know?" Grijpstra asked gruffly.

"The man drove a red Rover."

"So why didn't you tell me?" Grijpstra asked. "I was running around knocking on doors and seeing a lot of old women with curlers in their hair and you knew all the time. What kept you?"

"Nothing kept me," de Gier said. "I was working and I know more than your red Rover. Two girls live in a houseboat right at the end, students. One girl studies English and the other medicine."

"Yes. And they were under the shower and you had to dry their backs and then they made you some coffee and it was rude to refuse. I know."

"You know nothing," de Gier shouted. "They knew something. They had seen the car and they remembered the letters on the license plate."

"So?"

"V.D.," de Gier said.

Grijpstra got out of the car and slapped de Gier on the shouder. "Splendid. Good work. Excellent. That's enough for the clerks at Headquarters. You found our man."

De Gier had his first kind thoughts of the day and thanked his fate. He knew other adjutants. He also thanked the commissaris. The commissaris had made him Grijpstra's assistant.

"I am soaked," Grijpstra said, "and so are you. Let's get back but let's go to your flat first and I'll have coffee while you change your clothes and then we can go to my house a minute so that I can change as well, and we'll phone the commissaris from there."

"Right," de Gier said.

"Yes," the commissaris said through Grijpstra's phone. "IJsbrand Drachtsma is coming at two o'clock, but I would like you to come to my office at one. The detectives have finished their search in Mrs. van Buren's houseboat and I would like to discuss their report with you."

The detectives had lunch in a cheap little restaurant close to Headquarters. They ate quickly and rushed, still chewing their last roll, to a room on the top floor of the police building where two men in shirt sleeves were playing cards.

"Would you like to do a little work?" de Gier asked politely.

"No," the men said.

"Good. A red Rover, new model. The license plate starts with the letters VD, we don't know the number. Who owns it?'

"An interesting question," one of the men said.

"How long will it take you?"

"A couple of minutes or a couple of hours, depends how lucky we are. It isn't urgent, is it?"

"It isn't urgent at all," de Gier said, "but I would like to have the man's name and address within ten minutes and while you are about it you might check if he has a record."

The men stopped playing cards.

"Ha," the commissaris said, "there you are. Did you find the man in the red waistcoat?"

"We know who he is, sir," Grijpstra said. "His name is Holman and he lives in town. He is the owner of a small firm specializing in the nut trade."

"Nuts?"

"Cashew nuts, walnuts, peanuts, any type of nuts. He imports them and resells them to the wholesalers and supermarkets and so on. We telephoned his office and made an appointment for five o'clock this afternoon; he is coming here, to our office. He sounded very upset."

"Did you tell him why you wanted to see him?"

"No, sir."

"Good," the commissaris said, and rummaged through the papers on his desk. "I have the report here on the search of the houseboat. The detectives told me all about it this morning but it is nice to have some facts on paper. Sit down and I'll tell you what we found out."

The detectives sat down and relaxed. De Gier was rubbing his hands. The case was going well, he thought. The suspects were coming in, one by one. They were getting somewhere, but in the back of his mind a little thought was bothering him. He found the little thought and identified it. What if the killer was hired? He had never come across a hired killer before. Hired killers are professional. They have no real motive, they work for a fixed sum of money which will arrive in an envelope when the job is done. They have no personal connection with the victim. They are cool, disinterested. They only pay one visit to the victim's house. How long does it take to throw a knife? And how does a policeman catch a man who leaves no traces? The killer might even be a foreigner, especially flown in for the purpose of finishing Mrs. van Buren's life. He would have been shown the houseboat and a photograph and given a date and a time.

"You look worried," the commissaris said.

De Gier told the commissaris about his little thought.

"Yes," the commissaris said, "it worries me too. Very few people can throw a knife. In the army only special troops are taught to fight with knives. But perhaps the knife wasn't thrown, the doctor wasn't sure. But we shouldn't worry; worry is a waste of time. The woman was killed and somebody killed her. We have certain rules to follow in our investigation, and we are following the rules. We are interviewing the suspects. One of them may give us a clue. And we have searched the boat. Most of the information the detectives gave me this morning is negative. No fingerprints, the handle of the front door was wiped clean on the inside and outside, there were no signs of breaking-in so the visitor had let himself in with a key or Mrs. van Buren opened the door for him. The windows of the boat were closed except for two very small windows which must have been left open by Mrs. van Buren for ventilation. There is no way of entering through the small windows. The railing of the staircase was also wiped clean so the killer wasn't wearing gloves. The detectives found a metal strongbox in the bookcase which was locked. I had it opened and there was over a thousand guilders in cash in it. I have also been given a file with accounts and she had nearly thirty thousand guilders in her bank account. She has been paying taxes on a yearly income of twenty-five thousand guilders, her source of income is described as 'entertainment.' The houseboat is Mr. Drachtsma's property and she wasn't paying rent."

"Well," Grijpstra said, "that's not too bad. We know something anyway."

"There's a little more," the commissaris said. "I asked the detectives to look at her bookcase; I am always interested in what people read. She had a lot of books in Dutch, all novels by well-known writers. They wrote down the titles of the foreign books for me, must have taken them an hour at least. Perhaps de Gier was right, there were two shelves of books on witchcraft and sorcery, in five languages. She could read English, French and German but also Spanish."

"

is close to South America," de Gier said.

"Quite. There is one more item of interest. Look at this."

The commissaris produced two objects and put them on his desk. "What do you think these are?"

"Roots," Grijpstra said.

De Gier was looking at the roots with amazement. The roots were some fifteen centimeters long and looked like dried-out little men with spindly legs and complete with long thin penises. The little men had proper faces with noses and eyes.

"They look like little men," he said.

"They do, don't they? They are mandrake roots."

De Gier looked up. "Commissaris," he said in a low voice. "These things look evil; they are used in sorcery, aren't they?'

"They are. I asked the doctor to look at them and he recognized them at once. He told me a strange story. The plant these roots are part of is considered to be the most powerful sorceryweed known. In the Middle Ages the weed was often found at the foot of a gallows, and it was said that they wouldn't grow from a seed but originated from the sperms ejected by criminals hanged at the gallows as they went into their final struggle with death."

"Bah," Grijpstra said.

The commissaris gazed at the adjutant. "You have been in the police a long time, Grijpstra, you should be used to this sort of talk. The traces we find often come from the human body. It's like the songs small children sing. 'Shit and piss. And blood, and sperms and slime and vomit and pus and snot and sweat.'"

"Yes," Grijpstra said. "Sorry, sir."

"Never mind. And you are right of course. The picture I was painting isn't very nice, but anyway that's how the plant was supposed to be born. And the sorcerers always went for the roots. The roots are so powerful that a man cannot dig them up without risking his life. As you can see the roots look human, and they are human, the sorcerers say. When you pull the root out of the ground it will utter a fierce yell and the yell may drive you crazy or kill you outright so the sorcerers would dig very carefully and attach a piece of string to the root and tie the other end of the string to the leg of a dog. Then they stopped up their ears with wax and called the dog and the root popped out of the ground."

De Gier was still studying the roots. He hadn't touched them but had bent down to get a close view.

"And what are the roots supposed to do?" he asked.

"The doctor wasn't sure. He thinks that they were worn around the neck as a talisman, giving the sorcerer special powers, but they can also be ground up and mixed with other weeds and dried mushrooms. I suppose one could make a brew out of them."

"It seems the lady was a witch," Grijpstra said, shaking his head. "I thought they had gone out of fashion."

The commissaris was going to say something but the telephone rang and he picked it up.

"Show Mr. Drachtsma in," he said. As he put the phone down he quickly swept up the roots and put them into the drawer of his desk.

IJsbrand Drachtsma had sat down in the indicated chair and was looking at the commissaris. He seemed enveloped in an imperturbable silence, built around him the way an egg envelops and protects the chick. De Gier was admiring this newcomer in the intimate circle of suspects. Drachtsma, de Gier was thinking, had to be an unusual man. He had been described as a tycoon, a leader. Drachtsma was chairman of a number of well-known companies. He would be very rich. He would also be very powerful, more powerful perhaps than a minister of state. Companies led by men like Drachtsma employ thousands of people. Whole fleets of merchant vessels move about the oceans because men like Drachtsma have picked up a telephone. The advertising companies which they own tell us what to buy and do; they shape the routine of our lives.

But, de Gier was thinking happily, if we simple policemen pick up a phone men like Drachtsma come to see as. We manipulate the manipulator.

"Glad you could come," the commissaris was saying. IJsbrand Drachtsma inclined his bald head slightly to acknowledge the remark. De Gier knew that Drachtsma was nearly sixty years old but the body sitting so close to him now radiated more energy than its age should allow for. Drachtsma's pale blue eyes had an eager glint in them as if this interview was a new experience he was planning to enjoy.

Drachtsma had taken a cigar out of the box on the table in response to the commissaris' hospitable suggestion and his strong suntanned hands were lighting it now, using a solid-looking gold lighter. His movements were sparse as if he was controlling his activity. The lighter burst into flame at the first flick. De Gier thought of his own lighter, which never worked properly and had to be coaxed to come to life in a different way each time.

"Just a few questions," the commissaris was saying and "we won't detain you any longer than we have to," and Drachtsma had inclined his bald head again. The thin fringe which framed the polished skull hadn't gone altogether gray yet.

"Last Saturday night," Drachtsma answered in a deep voice, reverberating in his wide chest, "I was with my wife, on Schiermonnikoog. I often spend the weekends on the island. We had guests, business friends from Germany. I took them sailing during the afternoon and we listened to music during the evening. I'll give you their names and addresses if you like."

"Please," the commissaris said.

Drachtsma scribbled on a page of his notebook, a leather-bound notebook which came from his inside pocket. He tore out the page and gave it to the commissaris.

"Would you mind telling us what your relationship with Mrs. van Buren was?" the commissaris asked.

"She was my mistress."

"I see. I wonder if you could give us some details about the lady's life. Somebody killed her and he must have had a good reason. If we know who the lady was we may know who killed her."

"Yes," Drachtsma said. "I would also like to know who killed her. She didn't suffer, did she?"

"I don't think so. She was killed from the back and the knife went right in. She probably died immediately without knowing what had happened to her."

"Good," Drachtsma said.

The three policemen were watching him.

"Please tell us," the commissaris said.

"Ah. I am sorry. I was thinking about Maria. What can I tell you? I knew her when she was still married, her husband runs a textile plant which is part of the organization I work for. I met her at a party and I think I fell in love with her. She had her own boat and we would meet on the lakes. She got a divorce."

"I am sorry," the commissaris said, "but I will have to ask personal questions, I hope you don't mine the presence of my two assistants. They are charged with the investigation of this murder and I like them to be part of its various stages."

"That's all right," Drachtsma said, and smiled at the two detectives. The smile was pleasant. Drachtsma knew how to handle the lower echelons.

"Why didn't you marry Maria van Buren?" the commissaris asked.

"I didn't want to marry her," Drachtsma said, "besides, I was married already. I have a son and a daughter and they are very fond of their mother. I am fond of their mother myself. And I don't think Maria would have married me. She liked her privacy. I bought a houseboat for her because she liked being on the water. At that time her boat was the only one in that part of the Schinkel River. There are a lot of boats around her now and I often suggested that she should move but she got used to living there."

"If she was your mistress living on your boat I presume that you were sending her a monthly check."

"I was," Drachtsma said.

"Did you know that she had other lovers?"

"Yes. I didn't mind. I always telephoned before I came to see her and she would telephone me at my office."

"I hope you don't mind my saying so," the commissaris said gently, "but you don't seem upset at her death."

There was no answer.

"You don't mind that she is dead?"

"It is a fact now, isn't it?" Drachtsma asked. "I can't change it. Everything comes to an end."

The blunt statement took some wind out of the commissaris' sails and it was a little while before the conversation found its course again.

"The knife," the commissaris said, "worries me. I have it here, let me show it to you."

Drachtsma handled the knife." A fighting knife," he said thoughtfully.

"Do you know what sort of a knife it is?" Grijpstra asked suddenly.

Drachtsma turned and looked Grijpstra in the eyes. "Yes," he said, "it is a British commando knife."

"Very few people would know how to throw such a knife, I think," the commissaris said hesitantly.

"I think I can throw it," Drachtsma said. "We were trained with knives like this during the war. I had one when I landed in France and I killed a German with it."

"Would you know anyone who knew Mrs. van Buren and who could throw a knife like that?"

"No," Drachtsma said. "With the exception of myself," he added almost immediately.

"Would you know anyone who wanted her dead?"

"No," Drachtsma said again. "I don't think she had any enemies, and her lovers weren't jealous. I think she had only three, including myself, and one of them I know personally, an American colonel called Stewart. The other man is a Belgian. I have met him at a party but only for a few seconds; he seemed a very careful polished type, not at all the sort of man who would throw a knife into a woman's back."

"We have already questioned the two gentlemen," the commissaris said.

"I suppose they both have alibis?"

The commissaris ignored the question. "Just one more thing, Mr. Drachtsma," he said, "would you mind telling us how much you paid Mrs. van Buren?"

"Twenty-five thousand a year," Drachtsma said. "I was going to pay her a little more because of inflation. She never asked for money."

"Any extras?"

"Yes, I have bought her some jewelry and clothes and twice a year I would give her a ticket to . Her parents live near Willemstad."

"Did you ever go with her?"

"I have little time," Drachtsma said. "The only island I really like is Schiermonnikoog."

"Thank you," the commissaris said, and briskly rubbed his hands. "The final question: we found that Mrs. van Buren was interested in plants and herbs. I wonder if…" He didn't finish the question.

"Plants," Drachtsma said, and began to laugh. "Yes, I know about her plants. She always took me to special little shops where medicinal herbs are sold and she used to read a lot about her weeds as well. It was a source of irritation to me for often she would talk about herbs all night, and I didn't visit her to hear about herbs. We had a few fights about it and I have threatened to leave her if she wouldn't give up her silly witchcraft, but it was an empty statement, I don't think she would have cared if I had left her. She was a strong woman."

"A strong woman who got killed," the commissaris said. "Thank you, Mr. Drachtsma, I hope we won't have to bother you again."

"I don't think anybody could rattle fern," Grijpstra said after Mr. Drachtsma had left.

"We'll see," the commissaris said quietly. "He is a Frisian, and Frisians have strong heads. And he isn't the only Frisian in the world. Weren't you born in the North, Grijpstra?"

"I was, sir, in Harlingen."

"I was born in Franeker," the commissaris said.

"One should never underestimate the provincials," de Gier said.