Death of a Hawker ac-4 Read online

  "We are police, buddy," de Gier said to the cop, and showed his card, which had got cracked when he fell.

  "Sorry, sergeant," the constable said, "we trust nobody today. How is it going out there?"

  "We are winning," Grijpstra said.

  "We always win," the constable said. "It's boring, I'd rather watch football."

  "Number four," de Gier said. "Here we are."

  The constable wandered off, hitting the canal's castiron railing with his stick, and Grijpstra looked up at the four-storied house, which was number four according to a neatly painted sign next to the front door. "Rogge," said another sign.

  "Took us three quarters of an hour to get here," de Gier said. "Marvelous service we are giving nowadays, and there's supposed to be a dead man with a bloody face in there."

  "Maybe not," Grijpstra said. "People exaggerate, you know. Adjutant Geurts was telling me that he was called to investigate a suicide last night and when he got to the address the old lady was eating nice fresh toast with a raw herring spread on top of it, and there were chopped onions on top of the herring. She had changed her mind. Life wasn't so bad after all."

  "A man with a bloody head can't change his mind," de Gier said.

  Grijpstra nodded. "True. And he won't be a suicide."

  He rang the bell. There was no answer. He rang again. The door opened. The corridor was dark and they couldn't see the woman until the door had closed behind them.

  "Upstairs," the woman said. "I'll go first."

  They turned into another corridor on the second floor and the woman opened a door leading to a room facing the canal. The man was lying on his back on the floor, his face smashed.

  "Dead," the woman said. "He was my brother, Abe Rogge."

  Grijpstra pushed the woman gently aside and stopped to look at the dead man's face. "You know what happened?" he asked. The woman covered her face with her hands. Grijpstra put his arm around her shoulders. "Do you know anything, miss?"

  "No, no. I came in and there he was."

  Grijpstra looked at de Gier and pointed at a telephone with his free hand. De Gier dialed. Grijpstra pulled his arm back from the woman's shoulders and took the telephone from de Gier's limp hand.

  "Take her outside," he whispered, "and don't look at the body. You two have some coffee, I saw a kitchen downstairs; I'll see you there later."

  De Gier was white in the face when he led the woman outside. He had to support himself against the doorpost. Grijpstra smiled. He had seen it before. The sergeant was allergic to blood, but he would be all right soon.

  "The man's head is bashed in," he said on the phone. "Do what you have to do and get us the commissaris."

  "You are in the riot area, aren't you?" the central radio room asked. "We'll never get the cars through."

  "Get a launch from the State Water Police," Grijpstra said. "That's what we should have had. Don't forget to get the commissaris. He is at home."

  He replaced the phone and put his hands into his pockets. The windows of the room were open and the elm trees outside screened the pale blue sky. He looked at their leaves for a while, resting his eyes on their delicate young green and admiring a blackbird which, unperturbed by the weird atmosphere of his surroundings, had burst into song. A sparrow hopped about on the windowsiil and looked at the corpse, its tiny head cocked to one side. Grijpstra walked over to the window. The blackbird and the sparrow flew off but gulls continued swooping down toward the canal's surface, looking for scraps and dead fish. It was the beginning of a spring evening which the occupant of the room would have no part of.

  How? Grijpstra thought. The man's face was a mess of broken bones and thick bright red blood. A big man, some thirty years old perhaps. The body was dressed in jeans and a blue bush jacket. There was a thick golden necklace around the muscular neck and its skin was tanned. He has been on holiday, Grijpstra thought, just returned probably. Spain. North Africa perhaps, or an island somewhere. Must have been in the sun for weeks. Nobody gets a tan from the Dutch spring.

  He noted the short yellow curls, bleached by exposure, and the beard of exactly the same texture. The hair fitted the man's head like a helmet. Strong fellow, Grijpstra thought, could lift a horse off the ground. Heavy wrists, bulging arms.

  He squatted down, looked at the man's face again and then began to look around the room. Not seeing what he was looking for, he began to walk around, carefully, his hands still in his pockets. But the brick or stone wasn't there. It had seemed such a simple straightforward solution. Man looks out of the window. Riot outside. Someone flings a brick. Brick hits man in the face. Man falls over backward. Brick falls in the room. But there was no brick. He walked to the window and looked down into the street. He still couldn't see a brick. The helmeted policeman who had stopped them earlier was leaning against a tree staring at the water.

  "Hey, you," Grijpstra shouted. The policeman looked up. "Has there been any stone throwing here this afternoon?" "No," the constable shouted back. "Why?"

  "Chap here has his face smashed in, could have been a stone."

  The constable scratched his neck. Til go and ask the others," he shouted after a while. "I haven't been here all afternoon."

  The stone may have bounced off this man's face here and fallen back into the street. Get some of your friends, please, and search the street, will you?"

  The constable waved and ran off. Grijpstra turned around. It could have been a weapon, of course, or perhaps even a fist. Several blows perhaps. No knife. A hammer? A hammer perhaps, Grijpstra thought, and sat down on the only chair he saw, a large cane chair with a high back. He had seen a similar chair in a shop window some days before and he remembered the price. A high price. The table in the room was expensive as well, antique and heavily built with a single ornamental leg. There was a book on the table, a French book. Grijpstra read the title. Zazie dans le Metro. It had a picture of a little girl on the cover. Some little girl having an adventure on the underground. Grijpstra didn't read French. There wasn't much more to see in the room. A low table with a telephone, a telephone directory and some more French books in a heap on the floor. The walls of the room had been left bare, with the exception of one fairly large unframed painting. He studied the painting with interest. It took him a while to name what he saw. The picture seemed to consist of no more than a large black dot, or a constellation of dots against a background of blues, but it had to be a boat, he decided in the end. A small boat, a canoe or a dinghy, afloat on a fluorescent sea. And there were two men in the boat. The painting wasn't as sad as it seemed at first glance. The fluorescence of the sea, indicated by stripes of white along the boat, and continuing into its wake, suggested some gaiety. The painting impressed him and he kept on looking back at it. Other objects in the room held his attention for a moment but the painting drew him back. If the corpse hadn't been there, dominating the space by its awkward and grotesque presence, the room would have been a perfect setting for the painting. Grijpstra himself had some talent and he meant to paint seriously one day. He had painted as a young man, but marriage and the family which suddenly began to spread around him, and the small uncomfortable house on the Lijnbaansgracht opposite Police Headquarters, drowned in the holocaust of a TV which his deaf wife would never switch off, and the fat ever-present existence of the flabby woman who shouted at him and the children had frustrated and almost killed his ambition. How would he paint a small boat, afloat on its own on an immense sea? He would use more color, Grijpstra thought, but more color would spoil the dream. For the picture was a dream, a dream dreamed simultaneously by two friends, two men suspended in space, drawn as two small interlinked line structures.

  He stretched his legs, leaned back and breathed heavily. This would be a room he could live in. Life would become a pleasure, for a hard day would never be a hard day if he knew he could return to this room. And the dead man had lived in this room. He sighed again; the sigh tapered off into a low groan. He looked at the low bed close to the window. There we
re three sleeping bags on the bed, one zipped and two unzipped. The man would have slept in the one bag and have used the other two for cover in case he needed it. Very sensible. No fuss with sheets. If a man wants sheets he needs a woman. The woman has to make the bed and change the sheets and take care of the other hundred thousand things a man thinks he needs.

  Grijpstra would like to sleep on a stretcher and cover himself with an unzipped sleeping bag. In the morning he gets up and leaves the bed as it is. No vacuum cleaner. Sweep the room once a week. No TV. No newspapers. Just a few books maybe and a few records, not too many. Don't buy anything. Whatever you attract clutters up your life. He might invite a woman to the room, of course, but only if he could be absolutely sure that she would leave again, and would never stick plastic pins into her hair and sleep with them on. He felt his face. There was a scratch which had got there before he had fought his way through the riot. Mrs. Grijpstra had ripped his face with one of her pins; she had turned over and he had screamed with pain but she hadn't awakened. His scream had stopped her snore halfway and she had smacked her lips a few times and finished the snore. And when he had shaken her by the shoulder she had opened one bleary eye and told him to shut up. And no children. There are enough children in Holland.

  "Why the hell…" he said aloud now but he didn't bother to finish the question. He had slipped into the mess so gradually that he had never been able to stop and twist free. The girl had looked all right when he stumbled across her path, and her parents too, and he was making a bit of a career in the police, and it was all dead right. His oldest son had gradually grown into a lout, with long dirty straight hair and buck teeth and a shiny screaming motorcycle. The two little ones were still very nice. He loved them. No doubt about it. He wouldn't leave them. So he couldn't have a room like this. All very logical. He looked at the corpse again. Had someone come in and hit the giant with a hammer, smack in the face? And had the giant stood there, seeing the hammer come and catching its impact full on the nose, without even trying to defend himself? Drunk perhaps? He got up and went over to the window. Three constables were poking at the cobblestones with their long truncheons.

  "Anything there?"

  They looked up. "Nothing."

  "Did you find out about the stone throwing?"

  "Yes," the constable who had been there earlier shouted back. "It has been quiet here all day. We were only here to stop people getting to the trouble spot."

  "Have you let anyone through?"

  The constables looked at each other, then the first one looked up at Grijpstra again.

  "Plenty. Anybody who had business here."

  "A man has been killed here," Grijpstra shouted.

  "Have you noticed anyone running about? Behaving in a funny way?"

  The constables shook their heads.

  "Thanks," Grijpstra shouted and pulled his head in. He sat down again and closed his eyes, meaning to feel the atmosphere of the room but gradually drifting off into sleep. The sound of a ship's engine woke him. He looked out and saw a low launch of the Water Police moor outside. Some six men got off, the commissaris, a small dapper-looking elderly man first. Grijpstra waved and the men marched up to the door.

  "Nice coffee," de Gier had been saying meanwhile. "Thank you very much. Drink some yourself, you need it. Please tell me what happened. Are you all right now?"

  The woman sitting opposite him at the kitchen table tried to smile. A slender woman with dark hair, done up in a bun, and dressed in black slacks and a black blouse with a necklace of small red shells. She wore no rings.

  "I am his sister," she said. "Esther Rogge. Call me Esther, please, everybody does. We have lived here for five years now. I used to have a flat but Abe bought this house and wanted me to move in with him."

  "Looked after your brother," de Gier said. "I see."

  "No. Abe didn't need anyone to look after him. We just shared the house. I have the first floor, he has the second. We hardly ever even ate together."

  "Why not?" de Gier asked, lighting her cigarette. She had long hands, no lacquer on the nails, one nail was broken.

  "We preferred not to fuss with each other. Abe kept the refrigerator stocked and he just ate what he liked. If we happened to be both in I might cook something for him but he would never ask me to. He often ate out. We lived our own lives."

  "What did he do for a living?" de Gier asked.

  Esther tried to smile again. Her face was still white and the shadows under her eyes showed up as dark purple stains but some life had returned to her mouth, which was no longer a slit in a mask.

  "He was a hawker, sold things in the street. In the street market, the Albert Cuyp Market. You know the Albert Cuyp, of course?"

  "Yes, miss."

  "Please call me Esther. I sometimes went to see him in the Albert Cuyp. I have helped him too when I had a day off. He sold beads, and all types of cloth, and wool and colored string and braid. To people who like to make things themselves."

  "Creative," de Gier said.

  "Yes. It's fashionable to be creative now."

  "You say your brother bought this house? Must have cost him some money or did he get a substantial mortgage?"

  "No, it's all his. He made a lot of money. He wasn't just selling things in the street, you see, he dealt in a big way as well. He was always going to Czechoslovakia in a van and he would buy beads by the ton, directly from the factory, and he would sell to other hawkers and to the big stores too. And he bought and sold other things as well. The street market was for fun, he only went there on Mondays."

  "And you, what do you do?"

  "I work for the university, I have a degree in literature." De Gier looked impressed.

  "What's your name?" Esther asked.

  "De Gier. Detective-Sergeant de Gier. Rinus de Gier."

  "May I call you Rinus?"

  "Please," de Gier said, and poured himself more coffee. "Do you have any idea why this happened? Any connection with-the riots, you think?"

  "No," she said. Her eyes filled with tears and de Gier reached out and held her hand.

  "They threw something at him," the commissaris said, looking down at the corpse. "With force, considerable force. From the impact you would almost think they shot something at him. A stone perhaps. But where is it?"

  Grijpstra explained what he had been able to deduct from his investigations so far.

  "I see," the commissaris said pensively. "No stone, you say. And no bits of brick, I see. They were throwing bricks on the Newmarket Square, I am told. Red bricks. They break and pulverize when they hit something. There is no red dust on the floor here. Could have been a proper stone though and somebody may have found it and thrown it into the canal."

  "There would have been a splash, sir, and the street has been patrolled all day."

  The commissaris laughed. "Yes. Manslaughter and we are sitting right on top of it, have been sitting on it all day, and we never noticed. Peculiar, isn't it?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "And he can't have been dead long. Hours, no more. A few hours, I would say. The doctor'll be here in a minute, the launch has gone back to pick him up. He'll know. Where's de Gier?"

  "Downstairs, sir, talking to the man's sister."

  "Couldn't stand the blood, could he? You think he'll ever get used to it?"

  "No sir, not if he is forced to look at it for some time. We were in the middle of the riot and he put up a good fight and he didn't mind the blood on my hand but if blood is combined with death it seems to get him. Makes him vomit. I sent him down just in time."

  "Every man has his own fear," the commissaris said softly. "But what caused all this, I wonder? Can't have been a bullet for there is no hole, but every bone in the face seems to have been smashed. Hey! Who are you?"

  He had seen a man walking past the door in the corridor, a young man who now entered the room.

  "Louis Zilver," the young man said.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "I live here, I have
a room upstairs."

  "We are policemen investigating the death of Mr. Rogge here. Can we come to your room? The photographers and print people will want to have a look at this room and we can use the opportunity to ask a few questions."

  "Certainly," the young man said.

  They followed Zilver up a flight of narrow stairs and were shown into a large room. The commissaris took the only easy chair, Grijpstra sat on the bed, the young man sat on the floor, facing them both.

  "I am a friend of Abe and Esther," Louis said. "I have been living in this house for almost a year now."

  "Go ahead," the commissaris said. "Tell us all you know. About the house, about what went on, about what everybody does. We know nothing. We have just come in. But first of all I would like you to tell me if you know how Abe died and where you were at the time.''

  "I was here," Louis said. "I have been in the house all day. Abe was still alive at four o'clock this afternoon. He was here then, right here in this room. And I don't know how he died."

  "Go on," the commissaris said pleasantly.

  3

  LouisZilver's room was almost as bare as the dead man's room one floor below, but it had a different quality. The commissaris, who hadn't spent as much time with Abe Rogge's body as Grijpstra had, didn't notice the difference. He just saw another room in the same house, a room with a bare wooden floor and furnished with a neatly made bed and a large desk, cylinder-topped, showing an array of cubicles, stacked with papers in plastic transparent folders, and a bookcase covering an entire wall. Grijpstra defined the difference as a difference between "neat" and "untidy." Zilver had to be an organized man, or boy rather, for he wouldn't be much older than twenty. Grijpstra observed Louis, squatting patiently opposite his interrogators, and noted the large, almost liquid, dark eyes, the delicately hooked nose, the tinge of olive in the color of the skin stretched over high cheekbones, the long blue-black hair. Louis was waiting. Meanwhile he wasn't doing much. He had crossed his legs and lit a cigarette after placing an ashtray in a convenient place so that the commissaris and Grijpstra could tip the ash of their small cigars into it. The ashtray fascinated Grijpstra. It was a human skull, molded in plastic, a large hole had been left in the cranium and a silver cup fitted into the hole.