The Hollow-Eyed Angel Read online

  Baldert nodded. "But it missed him. Maybe it was close, whizzed by the baron, so to speak. Maybe it missed him by just a few inches."

  "So much for a drive," Grijpstra said. "How about another type of shot? Like up"—the adjutant pointed at a cloud—"then down."

  "Like with a mortar," de Gier said. "A howitzer."

  "You mean a chip," Baldert said, "or an approach shot."

  Grijpstra nodded good-humoredly. "The names don't much matter."

  "No velocity that way," Baldert said. "It would have to be a drive."

  "And what kind of distance would you need for a killing shot?" de Gier asked.

  "Would! need?"

  "Would one need," de Gier said, swinging an imaginary golf club himself.

  Baldert was getting nervous again. "You just said it. Within a hundred yards maybe. But I was only taking a practice swing. I didn't know there was a ball on the ground. No idea how it got there."

  They had reached Baldert's office. Baldert kept stretching out his hands towards de Gier, while he talked about the dead baron, who, he claimed, wasn't merely a financial backer. Baron Hilger van Hopper was Baldert Gudde's good friend. He showed them a large photograph, silver framed. The baron, an aristocratic figure in a gold-braided uniform, wearing a tell bearskin hat, was on a horse, held by young Baldert. Baldert was a hussar too, with a corporal's double chevron on the sleeve of his tunic.

  Baldert displayed two more photographs, in a double silver frame, dominating another sideboard. The baron, now a cadaverous-looking old man, smiled down on a dark young man in a spotless white tuxedo. The young man smiled up at him. In the second photograph the scene was mirrored. The baron was the same, smiling the other way down now. The dark young man was different.

  "These guys are princes?" Grijpstra asked.

  Baldert guffawed.

  "They are not princes?"

  "Who knows?" Baldert asked. "It was a joke. The baron wanted a party."

  "I wouldn't display photos of a man I tried to kill with a golf ball in my private office," Baldert said. "You can ask around. I'm a nice guy. Check my horoscope. Aquarius stands for brotherly love. I have some Capricorn aspects, too. Capricorns are loyal." He stretched his arms again, wiggled his fingers at de Gier. "But if you wish to arrest me, please go ahead." Baldert was making funny faces now, like a clown might, Grijpstra thought, even when he knows that his final and hopeless grimace will fail to lift the audience's indifference.

  The detectives tried to forget Baldert's performance as they left the town of Crailo.

  Grijpstra visualized mussel soup, simmering in the immediate future. De Gier composed images of a Chinese take-out meal before going to his Papuan concert. The motorway traffic headed to Amsterdam moved slowly, then came to a stop. Cars honked, and drivers got out and leaned against their vehicles. An all-terrain patrol car nosed along the emergency lane and stopped next to the detectives' Fiat. The Rijkspolitie constable at the wheel stared at de Gier, then motioned to him to lower the window.

  De Gier complied. "What's up?"

  "What's down?" the constable said. "An eighteen-wheeler tank truck is down. There is inflammable fluid over all six lanes of the motorway. This will take hours."

  "Ah," de Gier said, planning to stick his magnetic blue revolving light to the top of their Fiat, use the siren and drive ahead on the emergency lane. "I see. Thank you."

  "No," the uniformed state police constable said. "We're keeping the strip free for fire engines. You can drive back if you like. My lieutenant suggests dinner in Crailo. At the Green Herring restaurant. He'll meet you there." The constable saluted before driving off. His mate smiled widely and waved.

  "This is an unmarked car," de Gier said to Grijpstra. "All our gear is hidden. Are we that obvious?"

  "Never underestimate our pastoral colleagues," Grijpstra said. "Rural incest can achieve miraculous genetic results. Don't you know extrasensory perception is quite common in the country?"

  Crailo is a town of few streets. The restaurant occupied a low building with wide eaves. Small gnarled trees spread their branches protectively in front of the restaurant's whitewashed walls. Flowering impatiens plants, growing from oak half-barrels on both sides of the open front door, made splashes of delicate colors.

  The detectives played three-ball billiards for a while. De Gier kept scoring. Grijpstra thumped the fat end of his stick impatiently on the floor. "Go on, miss!"

  "I would if I could," de Gier said before his ball went wide.

  The Crailo-based Rijkspolitie lieutenant, a wide-shouldered giant wearing a blue blazer and gray slacks and a blue tie over a white shirt, presented himself. He showed his ID.

  "How did your constable spot us?" de Gier asked.

  "Aren't you in my territory?" the widely smiling lieutenant said. His rumbling voice and strong, perfect teeth impressed the detectives.

  The lieutenant guided his guests to a round table in the rear of the room. He hovered over his guests.

  "May I recommend the stewed eel," the lieutenant said as he sat down between his guests. "Your dinners are on me. French fries included. You pay for the beer.

  "I caught the eel, you see," the lieutenant said as the dish was served. "I keep quite a few eel traps. I'm sorry to keep you from going home but because of that overturned truck..."

  "That was true?" Grijpstra asked. "You're not just waylaying us?"

  The lieutenant looked hurt.

  "Maybe we should have told you ahead of time that we were going to see this golf gent, eh?" Grijpstra asked.

  The lieutenant agreed. He talked for a while, after ordering Heineken Export. He frowned while he toasted them. He suggested that maybe city detectives should alert Rural Law Enforcement before meddling with a local suspect. He suggested that maybe city detectives, if they didn't want to attract notice, shouldn't drive a brand-new compact, of such a poisonous green color, that a Rijks-politie helicopter, checking traffic on the Al motorway, could identify the car at once.

  "Baldert contacted you?" de Gier asked, peering at the lieutenant across the foam of his beer.

  "We had no idea Baldert was your suspect," Grijpstra said. "The Amsterdam chief-constable sometimes plays golf here. To us, Baldert is an expert. We were told to research whether, and how, a golf ball can kill. Our commander in chief recommended..."

  The lieutenant wasn't pacified yet. He accused his guests of being secretive busybodies. Referring to higher authority could not be considered as an excuse. Besides, if the chief of the Amsterdam police didn't trust local judgment, he could tell local judgment that to its face. To send sneaky types in a bright green toy compact...

  "I like this place," de Gier said, looking around him. "The low solid beams, the antique tool collection displayed on the walls, the history embodied in these ancient surroundings." He looked at the lieutenant. "You know I exist in a concrete apartment?"

  "Why would Baldert inform you about our visit?" Grijpstra asked.

  The lieutenant shrugged. "The asshole feels guilty. He was brought up with narrow values. This is still the Bible Belt here."

  "But did Baldert actually kill the baron?"

  "I think the baron killed himself," the lieutenant said. "You know the definition of intelligence? Making optimal use of a given set of circumstances? Baron Hilger van Hopper went even further. He actually manipulated—" He looked at de Gier. "Do you know how difficult it is to manipulate circumstances?"

  "Very tricky," de Gier admitted.

  "Almost impossible," the lieutenant said. "Things happen. The best thing we can do is happen along as best we can. But the baron set up that perverted wedding." He moodily stirred his stewed eels.

  "Did Baldert want to kill the baron?" Grijpstra asked.

  The lieutenant nodded. "That's the whole thing. The baron holds a huge mortgage on Baldert's golf club. Baldert is late with two or three payments, the baron forecloses. We have a recession going on. The bank won't refinance."

  "And the guy is gay," de Gie
r said. "Is that what you mean by the baron setting himself up? He intended to drive Baldert crazy with jealousy?" De Gier also stirred his stewed eel moodily. "This is getting complicated. A master-servant relationship. A gay relationship. And all of it twisted."

  "How sick can we get?" Grijpstra asked.

  "The baron wasn't feeling well," the lieutenant said.

  "So you treated the case as a potential murder?"

  The lieutenant mentioned availability of key ingredients: ample motivation, opportunity, Baldert's presenting himself all the time, getting in the way, saying it wasn't his fault, lying. He was taking practice shots. There was a ball there. No, there wasn't. Well maybe there was.

  "Okay," Grijpstra said. "So champion Baldert aimed a murderous golf ball at his former master's head and missed and felt guilty, either about aiming or missing, or both, but why do you suppose that we knew anything about that? Had we known, we would have come to see you, but the chief-constable said..."

  "We were set up too," de Gier said. "You see, our own chief, who is working on a case in New York, has us researching the concept of driving a golf ball as a means of effecting death. Neither the adjutant nor I play golf. The Amsterdam chief-constable is the only golfer we know. Maybe our own chief knew that. Maybe he also knew of our chief-constable's being concerned about this murder in Crailo. Maybe our chief planned this, steering us toward the chief-constable. Now the chief-constable directs us toward his own golf club, the Crailo Club, and sets us up to stumble into your case, to bring about a fresh approach. Maybe our own chief, chief of detectives, a sly old mouse, tried to kill two birds with one goddamn stone..."

  "...with one goddamn golf ball," Grijpstra said, "and here you apprehend us, goofing around your Mister Bad Conscience "

  The lieutenant, drinking more beer, picked up on Bad Conscience. He was, somewhat incoherently, but staying within certain limits, talking about how bad guys get caught. Bad guys want to get caught and therefore deliberately trip themselves up, and all law enforcement has to do is pick the suckers up, handcuff the suspects, take them to trial. The only reason that law enforcement works is because of suspects tripping themselves. But Baldert had tripped himself up twice. Baldert's fate would therefore be the ultimate horror. No human punishment for the baron killer. Limbo forever. Baldert in purgatory.

  De Gier reminded the lieutenant of basic police law. "We, the police, are required to do our utmost to restore the citizens' peace of mind. We are supposed to work toward mutual benefit. The law actually says so. We are supposed to take care of the needy: emotionally, physically, whatever is needed. If Baldert wants to regain his peace of mind by getting arrested you might..."

  The lieutenant poured more beer.

  Grijpstra, in between drinking more beer, saw a way out. There were the circumstances. Baldert kept providing incriminating evidence. Yes, suspect admitted to organizing the plastic wind-up duck race. Why? Because it would attract all the partying guests down to the pond. From there they couldn't see Baldert swinging his club. Yes, it was ridiculous for Baldert, the golf club's owner and manager, and the organizer of the so-called wedding party, to practice his drive at that moment. Yes, the hundred-yard distance between Baldert swinging his club and the baron lolling in his chair in the pavilion would enable the ball to arrive at killing speed. Yes, Baldert was gay. Yes, the baron was gay. Yes, the baron and Baldert went back a long way, to glorious army days. Yes, the baron was known to sit in the cane chair in the pavilion, drinking and smoking and sniffing, until he fell over. Yes, Baldert missed him on purpose, just by a few inches, to shock the baron into sudden death.

  "If that isn't cold-blooded planning," Grijpstra said, "if that isn't premeditated first-class murder.

  The lieutenant, drinking more beer, doubted the underlying strength of his case. Baldert's championship shot had missed. He didn't know about missing. Didn't murder require hitting?

  "Attempted murder?" Grijpstra pleaded.

  The lieutenant wouldn't risk that. He hated being made a fool of in court.

  "Poor Baldert," Grijpstra said.

  De Gier shook his head. "The way that poor devil kept offering me his wrists for handcuffs."

  Grijpstra wouldn't give up yet. "The autopsy didn't help? Would you tell us about that?"

  The lieutenant wished for nothing more than a chance to share that experience. Somehow he hadn't gotten to see an autopsy until Baron Hilger van Hopper's emaciated corpse was stretched out on the morgue table in the nearby city of Bussum. He ordered more stewed eels. The waitress served, making a bit of a mess, because she looked the other way as she dug about the seemingly writhing bodies.

  Grijpstra, who had phoned Nellie with a request to freeze his portion of the mussel soup, liked seafood. He didn't mind so much that the stewed eels seemed to be moving about in "their juice." That's what de Gier was saying. De Gier was fond of seafood too but the eels looked strange.

  "Their juice," the lieutenant laughed. He sucked up a fat piece. "Delicious," the lieutenant said. "You know how come they grow so nicely in these parts? You'll never guess. It's because we have fur farms nearby. As there is no market for the fur-bearing animals' carcasses the waste product gets dumped into the sea around here. Eels thrive on carrion."

  "The autopsy?" Grijpstra asked.

  The lieutenant described how a small circular saw had cut into the baron's skull, and how long knives cut out the dead man's entrails.

  De Gier gently pushed his plate away.

  "The autopsy's result?" Grijpstra asked. "Any signs of severe bruising? Broken ribs?"

  Not a sign, the lieutenant said. If there had been a ball whizzing by, and he personally believed there had been, it traveled clear through the open pavilion.

  Grijpstra sighed. "So what did Baron Hilger van Hopper die of?"

  The pathologist's verdict had been "depletion of all life systems due to total physical exhaustion, due again to overstimulation by a lethal combination of alcohol and other drugs."

  "Opium up his ass," the lieutenant said. "There was that too. He used suppositories. Too vain to suffer needle marks. Can you imagine? And as for the contents of the baron's intestines—"

  De Gier got up abruptly.

  "Are you okay now?" Grijpstra asked, after de Gier had gotten back into the Fiat, some five miles out of Amsterdam, near a cluster of dwarf pines decorating the bank of the Al motorway.

  De Gier wasn't sure.

  "It will be hard to find emergency lanes closer to the city," Grijpstra said. "Try those pines again. You'll have something to hold on to. It's hard to vomit out of a car's window."

  A municipal police patrol car stopped. Grijpstra showed his identification. The constable sniffed. "Beer? How many?" Grijpstra told the constable about stewed eel, carrion and an autopsy related to a murder case he and the sergeant had been forced to imagine in progress. He went into details while de Gier vomited within hearing distance.

  "Yech," the constable said.

  "Our colleagues should be informed that they handle their vehicle too roughly," de Gier said, after watching the patrol car jump back into traffic. "I hope you noted a number."

  De Gier had, while holding on to a tree, been thinking, about golf.

  Grijpstra had been thinking too, about Central Park.

  The detectives agreed that they had chased a red herring.

  "Not fish," de Gier said.

  "Goose," Grijpstra said, "wild goose. You think he really set us up to go to Crailo? Or could this be stupidity?"

  De Gier still didn't feel well.

  Grijpstra drove for a while. "You have been to New York."

  De Gier had, twice. On both occasions he had walked through Central Park. It's what you did in New York. The park had impressed him. He had listened to jazz, rowed some ladies across a pond, watched caged wild animals, observed children on a carousel, dodged bicyclists and joggers. He was sure nobody would be allowed to play golf there. Golf would be too dangerous, like having people taking rifle pra
ctice. He had seen folks playing baseball and football on playing fields behind the Metropolitan Museum, so maybe Uncle Bert had been hit by a random ball that covered some immense distance. But why think of golf?

  "Immense distance?" Grijpstra asked.

  When de Gier interviewed Johan Termeer, the nephew, Jo had placed the death of his uncle near the Sheep Meadow. The Sheep Meadow, as de Gier recalled, was over a kilometer from the ball playing fields he remembered.

  "You didn't tell me," Grijpstra said.

  It hadn't occurred to de Gier to question the cornmissaris's line of thinking. It did now. De Gier liked that. "It's nice not being able to hold on to things, isn't it?"

  "Bah," Grijpstra said. "Now then. If anyone in Central Park were playing golf, which you say no one would, they would hit their balls nearly a mile from where Termeer was found. So we are wasting our time. And the chief is wasting his."

  Relying on the given situation and their knowledge of the cornmissaris's personality and capacity of endurance, Grijpstra and de Gier diagnosed temporarily impaired judgment due to stress, plus depression about his forthcoming retirement. The old man was ill. He had been limping and coughing when de Gier saw him off at Schiphol Airport. He would now be required to run about in strange territory while attending fatiguing lectures. Pursuing the Termeer case had to be an unbearable extra burden.

  "He needs help," Grijpstra said.

  Chapter 8

  The commissaris had planned to see, and to interrogate if possible, the mounted female officer whose horse had been in contact with the older Termeer, and to pay a visit to Termeer's neighbor Charlie, but the codeine had worn him out and he had trouble getting up. His dreams had been bothersome again. He dragged himself to Le Chat Complet where Mamere served him coffee instead of the tea he ordered, saying, "You mess too much with tea, monsieur." She brought him crisp croissants and fresh strawberry jam. He was told to have patience regarding the boiled eggs he had ordered.

  While eating his breakfast he reflected on his nightly adventures. His dreams the previous night seemed more complicated than before. Once again the tram driver played the leading part. The commissaris was a little boy, on his way to school. He wore short pants and a jacket that were hand-me-downs from his older brother, Therus The boy-commissaris was carrying his lunch in a foldable metal lunchbox, closed with a red band of elastic. The tram driver wanted to share his lunch, after asking him, via the tram's intercom, to come over and sit next to her "Little boy in the hand-me-down clothing, come and sit up here with me," hidden speakers in the car said. It was embarrassing. It also made him jealous. He didn't want to share the tram driver's wonderful presence with his fellow passengers.