Tumbleweed (3 page)

"Dead hey?" the commissaris said. "So the Secret Service was right for once. The last time they used us we wasted three weeks on an old army uniform and that was all there was to find. Remember?"

"Yes sir," de Gier said. He had found the uniform. It had been discarded by an American sergeant in a hotel room. But the Secret Service had given the case top priority. There had been no case. There had been no secrets, no spies, nothing. But a lot of work, work in the dark, for neither Grijpstra nor de Gier nor the half dozen other policemen involved in the search had known what they were after. They had been given hazy orders and lots of addresses and they had tramped around until, one evening, they had been told that the alarm was false.

"Yes, I remember, sir," de Gier said again.

"But now they have guided us to a corpse," the commissaris said, "so maybe they have intelligence."

"A murdered corpse," Grijpstra said.

The commissaris smiled his old man's smile. The comers of his mouth moved.

"Well," he said, "I won't go in. They'll be busy for a while in there. I'll take your car and drive myself back and you can come home with the others. The chief inspector will be sorry to miss all this but I won't call him back. You and I will have to solve the case and he can sit in the sun for a few more weeks. Good day."

"Sir," the two men said, and de Gier gave the commissaris the keys of the gray VW.

"Morning," he said to Grijpstra. "She has been dead for two days at least. The knife went right in."

"Could it have been thrown in?" Grijpstra asked.

"Could be," the doctor said. "It's an unusual knife. Never seen one like it. I'll be able to tell you tomorrow."

"Has the body been moved, you think?" Grijpstra asked.

"No."

The doctor was close to his car when Grijpstra remembered the plants. He ran to the car.

"Excuse me, doctor. Do you know anything about plants?"

The doctor looked startled. "Plants?"

"Yes. Plants. Weeds."

"I know a little," the doctor said. "You don't think she was poisoned, do you?"

Grijpstra explained what he meant.

"I see," the doctor said. "We'll have to go back."

Together they studied the potted plants with de Gier, mystified, in the background.

"Hmm," the doctor said.

Grijpstra waited.

"I am not sure," the doctor said. "I'll have to take them with me. They are weeds all right, and pretty nasty weeds, I should say. Poisonous."

Grijpstra grunted.

"How did you manage to notice them?" the doctor asked, turning around at the grunt. "You know anything about plants?"

"Not really," Grijpstra said, "but I had to spend some time in this room by myself and I thought these weeds looked like weeds, not like the sort of plant everybody has around."

"What's all this?" asked de Gier. "What are we? Botanists?'

"Have you never heard about weeds, friend?" the doctor asked, looking at de Gier pleasantly.

"I have heard about
the
weed," de Gier said, "and I have some geraniums on my balcony, and something with little white flowers which my aunt gave me. Asylum I think it is called."

"Alyssum," the doctor said. "Fifty cents a plant on the street market. Bought some myself the other day, very pretty, heavy smell of honey. But these weeds are different. If they are what I think they are they are poisonous. There are three types, you see. I'll check them out with a friend of mine; he also works for the city, assistant chief of all our parks. He should know."

"Poisonous, you say," Grijpstra said.

The doctor lit his pipe and looked at the plants again. "Poisonous, for sure. But perhaps they can be used for other purposes. A witch might make a love potion out of them. Or an ointment. If you rub the ointment in your armpits and all over your penis and balls you may have some interesting sensations."

"Yes?" de Gier asked.

"You might find yourself flying through the sky, my friend, on a broomstick, on your way to a party."

Grijpstra put a heavy hand on de Gier's shoulder. "Wouldn't you like that, de Gier?" he asked.

"I would," de Gier said.

"There would be plenty of fun at the party," the doctor said.

"What sort of fun?" de Gier asked, staring at the plants with bulging eyes.

"Sex," the doctor said. "Good clean sex."

"Boy!" de Gier said.

"You can help me carry them down to my car."

A little later de Gier was staggering down the stairs holding the largest pot. The doctor had a smaller pot, and Grijpstra was carrying a very small pot, gingerly, as if the innocent-looking weed would explode in his face.

"A witch," de Gier was mumbling to himself.

3

"W
HAT I LIKE ABOUT THE POLICE," DE GIER SAID, "IS our teamwork."

Grijpstra looked at the last car leaving the small parking area near the houseboat. He looked thoughtful.

"You shouldn't have lent our car to die commissaris," he said.

"Ha," de Gier said.

Together they walked to the small houseboat which housed their first suspect, Bart de Jong. They walked slowly.

"You have any ideas yet?" de Gier asked.

Grijpstra produced a large dirty white handkerchief and sneezed in it.

"Don't sneeze. Answer me."

Grijpstra sneezed again. De Gier jumped back. It was a loud sneeze and expressed Grijpstra's contempt of the world.

"Ideas," Grijpstra said. "Yes. Why not? The lady is a prostitute, we are told. Supposed she is a prostitute, she probably is, so we can safely suppose. Prostitutes don't like their customers, in fact they hate them. They blame their clients for what they are, and they are right. Everybody is always right, we mustn't forget that. It's a basic truth. So the prostitute hates her client and makes him feel her power. He needs her. He comes back. He doesn't really want to come back but he does, because he has to. His desire is much stronger than his will power. She sees him coming back and she humiliates him. The client doesn't want to be humiliated. The client is right too. He tries to hurt her. And killing is an extreme form of hurting."

They were walking through a piece of virgin land and de Gier stopped. He looked at the weeds growing around his feet. "Do you think these weeds are dangerous?" he asked.

Grijpstra looked at the weeds de Gier was pointing at. "No. I used to work for a farmer when I was a boy, during the summer holidays. I had to clear land for him. I remember some of the weeds. That's pig's grass, I recognize the black spots on the leaves. You see?"

De Gier saw the black spots. "What did she need those weeds for?" he asked.

Grijpstra turned to his friend and looked mean. Grijpstra was good at looking mean for he often had to read stories to his two youngest children and they liked him to pull faces as he read. He now pulled his meanest face, reserved for really wicked characters. He bared his big square teeth, lowered his eyelids and twisted his upper lip so that the ends of his bristly mustache came up a little.

"She wanted to put a spell on her clients," he hissed.

"Sha," de Gier said, "don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Talk like that."

"I wasn't talking like that," Grijpstra said. "I was trying to explain something."

"Do you think she can fly on a broomstick?" de Gier asked.

"Could," Grijpstra said. "She is dead now."

"Her soul is still alive," de Gier said, and shuddered.

Grijpstra didn't reply. He had seen the shudder and was wondering whether the shudder was real. He had never been able to really get to know his colleague, for as soon as Grijpstra had labeled de Gier's behavior and fitted him into a certain pattern, de Gier would do something in direct opposition to the newly found definition. But perhaps, Grijpstra thought, the shudder was real. They had, after all, discovered Mrs. van Buren's dead body that morning and there had been the smell and the three evil blue-bottomed, gigantic flies. And de Gier had been nauseated. Since then they had discovered the weeds, witch weeds, black-magic weeds.

"Sorry it took so long," de Gier said.

Bart smiled. "It's all right, please come in. You can have some coffee if you like."

"That would be very nice," Grijpstra said gratefully.

"You can have some sandwiches as well," Bart said.

"That would be even nicer."

The houseboat consisted of one room only. Bart cut the bread and poured coffee.

The boat's interior was remarkable, remarkable because there was hardly anything in the boat. The walls, made of large strong planks, were painted white and left bare. There was a large table and a chair and a wooden bench on which the policemen were now sitting, looking neat and obedient, like boys at a well-disciplined school. There were some books on the table. De Gier got up and looked at them. Three had been written by highbrow writers and the other two contained reproductions of modern paintings. All five books had been borrowed from the public library. There was a bed in the boat, an army bed, and the mattress and blankets were army as well. A comer of the room was arranged as the kitchen. There was an old fridge, a simple electric stove and a large sink, and another table on which Bart was now preparing a salad. There was also an easel with a half-finished painting.

"You like olives?" Bart asked.

"No, thanks,'
¹
Grijpstra said.

"Please," de Gier said.

"I like to cook," Bart explained as he quickly set the table. "If I had known you would be coming for lunch I would have produced something better. I have two good meals every day, it makes up for being alone."

"You have never been married?" Grijpstra asked.

"Yes. A long time ago now."

"Any children?" Grijpstra asked.

"No. I wouldn't have left her if there had been any children, I think. My father left me when I was a baby."

"I see," Grijpstra said.

"Nice boat," de Gier said, taking a bite out of the thick slice of freshly baked bread which Bart had amply covered with a piece of smoked sausage and a lettuce leaf, "but a bit bare."

"A poor man can't afford to have things," Bart said.

De Gier shook his head. "I don't agree," he said, "I have been poor but I have always had things Too many, in fact. Clutter the place up. God knows where they come from but before you know it the room is full of them and you have to start throwing them away. And
you
live in an empty boat. How do you manage living without things?"

"Oh, I don't know," Bart said. "I
do
have things. Bed, table, chair, a complete kitchen. I paint and I need brushes and canvas and frames and lots of paints, of course. I have all that. And there's a cupboard over there which you haven't seen yet, there's a gramophone in it and an electric heater and clothes and a few odds and ends."

De Gier was still shaking his head. "You have the absolutely necessary," he said, "but where's the rest?"

Bart laughed. "You really want me to explain my way of life? Are you interested in people?"

"I am," de Gier said.

"Of course he is," Grijpstra added, "he is very interested in people. So am I."

"You are policemen," Bart said, "representatives of the State. Have you ever realized that we, ordinary citizens, think of you as representatives of the State? That we think, every time we see a cop, 'there's the State'?"

"We do," Grijpstra said.

"Yes," Bart said, "perhaps you do. You are probably intelligent. It's a pity. A civilian may think 'there's the State' but he will also think 'ah well, cops are stupid.' But maybe he is wrong. Perhaps cops are not so stupid."

"Please explain your way of life," de Gier said.

Bart poured more coffee from his tin jug. "I am a misfit, that's my explanation. But I know I am. I'll never be able to hold a job. I start working, I try to fit in, I do my best but after a while it goes wrong and I get fired. When I do work I earn the minimal wage and when I lose the job I only get a percentage, so whatever I do, I'll never have any money."

"So?" de Gier asked.

"So I don't spend any. It's possible to live quite comfortably on little money. It's a discovery I made a long time ago. It needs discipline, that's all. I say 'no' all the time. I buy food, of course. Good food. And tobacco. Food and tobacco have their price and I have to pay it. But all the other stuff I don't buy."

"You bought the furniture," Grijpstra said, "and the kitchen utensils, and the blankets and whatever you have in your cupboard."

"I did. But I paid very little. It came from auctions and dump stores. I save half of what I get, wages and unemployment money. I have an old bicycle for transport. This boat I built myself, years ago. The boat itself I stole from the ship's cemetery on the river. I think the man in charge saw me take her but he didn't mind. There are a lot of boats over there and they are rotting away. I had to rebuild the superstructure and I had to buy some materials but not much. I don't think I spent more than half a year's savings and since then it has saved me a good sum in rent."

De Gier had got up and was looking out of the window. A large barge came past, being pulled by an energetic little river tug.

De Gier was thinking of his own flat in the suburbs. He was also thinking of all the money he had wasted over the years. The day before, in fact: two striped shirts he didn't need, and at a very fancy price.

"What the hell," he thought and turned around. "But you paint," he said.

"Yes. I do, and I have never been able to figure out a way of buying paint cheaply. I try not to waste paint."

Grijpstra had walked over to the easel. "Can I look at your work?"

"Sure."

The painting showed a building. Grijpstra recognized the building, it had never occurred to him that there was anything special about it, a large lumpy heap of bricks and plaster, built during the depression of 1929 by the city for one of its many departments. The painting was very realistic, minute in detail. But Grijpstra found that he liked the painting and he kept looking at it.

"Do you paint yourself?" Bart asked.

"No. But I would like to."

"Why don't you then?"

"Ah!" Grijpstra made a gesture. "Why don't I paint? I work, I come home, I read the paper, I go to sleep. There are lots of things I would like to do, but the children take time and my wife talks to me and the TV is on. I go fishing sometimes, but that's all."

"Pity," Bart said.

"Yes, pity. I like your painting but I don't know why."

"Look again," Bart said.

"The contrast maybe," Grijpstra said. "The grays and the whites. It makes the building look like it ought to have looked."

"No," Bart said. "It does look that way. Late in the day, just before the light goes. It has a life of its own and I am trying to catch it. It also has a row of ventilators on its roof which turn around all the time. I haven't done the ventilators yet, it'll be very difficult to get their movement. The best thing would be to cut small holes into the canvas and make little metal ventilators and build them in, and make them turn around. I could install a little electric motor."

"No, no," Grijpstra said, "it would become a pop thing. You'll cheapen it."

"Perhaps."

De Gier was now also looking at the painting. "It might be very good," de Gier said, "but it's not original. I have seen paintings of windmills and the mill's sails turned."

"Nothing is original," Bart said. "Whatever you do has been done before. Only our combinations are our own but even combinations have been done before. I am sure someone else, at this very moment, is thinking of building rotating metal miniature ventilators into a two-dimensional painting."

"Yes," Grijpstra said.

"You really want to know about Mrs. van Buren's death, don't you?" Bart asked.

"And about her life," de Gier said.

Bart was rolling himself a cigarette from a dented tin. His hands weren't shaking.

"I can't tell you about her death. Do you know when she died?"

"Not the exact time," de Gier said, "but the doctor will be able to tell us tomorrow."

"Well, whatever the exact time was, I am sure I won't have an alibi. I am always by myself and it would be easy for me to sneak over to her boat and kill her. Easier for me man for anybody else for I can see her boat from my windows and I could find out whether she was alone or not. How did she die?"

"I told you already," de Gier said. "Somebody put a knife in her back."

"Ah yes, a knife. I would never use a knife."

"What would you use?"

"Nothing, I wouldn't kill. I would let them kill me. Perhaps I would kill to protect my child but I don't have a child. I wouldn't protect myself."