Outsider in Amsterdam by Janwillem van de Wetering Read Free Book Online Page B

nodded.
    “And later, if you pass the test, you are allowed upstairs. You can enter the meditation room. Have you been there?”
    “Yes, sir,” de Gier said. “A large empty room with low seats of scraped pine topped with foamrubber cushions. And an altar. And a special higher seat with a cushion with an embroidered cover.”
    “Sure,” the chief inspector said, “for the chief nut. And candles of course. And there they sit, legs crossed. A row ofholy men. Piet is the high priest, the illuminated sage. I have read a little about it. There are various degrees apparently, first degree of the silence, second degree of the silence and so on. The more silence, the deeper the whatever. Perhaps they were wearing funny robes. Did you see any funny robes?”
    “No, sir,” Grijpstra said.
    “Probably hidden in a cupboard.”
    The chief inspector thought.
    “And after a while the whole thing falls to pieces. The sage becomes transparent and you can see through him. He has come to the end of his new value. At first he blames the others, which is usual human procedure, but finally he grasps that he, himself, is the fool. A crazy man. And, worse, a silly crazy man. So he takes one of his mother’s pills, falls over, stays on the floor for a bit but manages to get up and finish the job. And when you came he was dangling from a deal beam that had been created for a nobler purpose, namely to support a merchant’s ceiling.”
    There was silence in the room, a nice noble silence. Perhaps a second degree silence, de Gier thought.
    “Well?” the chief inspector asked.
    “Perhaps,” Grijpstra said, “but I would prefer, if you are agreeable, to look into the matter.”
    The chief inspector grunted. “You have suspicions?”
    “No,” Grijpstra said, “but I can’t imagine how he got that bump on his temple. He wouldn’t have got it from a fall on the floor. He must have fallen
against
something, if he did fall. There wasn’t much furniture in the room. It’s a pity the wound didn’t bleed, we might have been able to find traces somewhere in the room. I keep on thinking that he was hit, and if he was there may have been murder.”
    “Homicide,” the chief inspector said. “Murder is always hard to prove although we can try, it’s the least we can do. But the youngest silliest lawyer can convince the wisest judge it’s been homicide, whatever we prove.”
    He sighed.
    “And it might not even be homicide,” resumed the chief inspector. “That Papuan of yours, is he really a Papuan? I didn’t see him.”
    “Yes, sir,” de Gier said. “His name is Dutch, van Meteren, but he is only one-eighth white, a rare specimen, an almost full-blooded Papuan in Amsterdam.”
    “There’ll be others,” the chief inspector said. “You can find anything in Amsterdam when you look for it. But I seem to remember that van Meteren pointed out that someone might have picked a fight with Piet and that Piet, after the fight, in a fit of depression had committed suicide. You might work on that for a bit. Murders are rare in this city. A homicide, well. But murder … And your theory would point to a murder, what with a fist-fight and a noose.”
    He shook his head.
    The detectives recognized the sign and knew that the meeting was over.
    Coffee break was getting close. They were waiting in their room, the trolley would be due any minute now. Their normal patrol duty was suspended.
    All available time could be spent on thought.
    “We have a case,” Grijpstra said.
    De Gier nodded. The trolley’s wheels squeaked near the door, he jumped to open it and smiled at Treesje, the coffee-and-tea girl, a mini-skirted nineteen-year-old. Grijpstra coughed; he didn’t approve of the beaming contact de Gier and Treesje had built up over the last few months. But even Grijpstra had to admit that Headquarters’ coffee had much improved since Treesje’s appearance had put a glint in most of the officers’ eyes.
    They were busy for a while,