Outsider in Amsterdam by Janwillem van de Wetering

never know what to do. And men are always so difficult, they flirt and make silly jokes and Piet didn’t. He said he wanted to go to bed with me and asked me to take my clothes off. The first few times I said ‘no,’ but one evening I did.”
    “Not bad,” de Gier thought. He had heard about the method but had never met it in actual life. “Perhaps I should try it on the girl in the bus,” de Gier thought. I look her straight in the face and say, “Miss, my name is Rinus de Gier. I want to go to bed with you. Here is my card. Could you come to my flat tonight? I’ll be home from seven P.M . onward but don’t come after eleven for then I am usually asleep.”
    “Are you listening to me?” Thérèse asked.
    “Sure, sure,” de Gier said.
    “Can I go then? Or do you still think that I killed Piet?”
    “You can go,” de Gier said. “If anything comes up I’ll phone you. I have your address and your number.”
    “What could come up?” Thérèse asked. “Piet is dead and I am pregnant and I must find a way to stop being pregnant.”
    Grijpstra had come in and de Gier told him what he had found out.
    “Well, well,” Grijpstra said. “Throwing books, hey?”
    Thérèse said nothing.
    “Never mind,” Grijpstra said. “Have a good trip to Rotterdam,” and he gave the girl a kind look.
    Together they searched the house again, room by room. They had plenty of time and worked slowly. They were disturbed by voices and went to investigate. The men from the city’s health service had come to collect Mrs. Verboom. They were going to take her to a clinic for neuroses, near the coast.
    Mrs. Verboom allowed herself to be taken away quietly. She didn’t recognize the detectives. Van Meteren had given her another Palfium tablet and the old lady was only partly conscious and could hardly walk. Van Meteren carried her bag.
    “How did you manage that so quickly?” de Gier asked when van Meteren returned.
    “The physician helped. He wanted Mrs. Verboom to go to a clinic anyway and now that Piet isn’t here to frustrate the idea, it was very easy. She’ll never be allowed to live in a normal house again. She is really mad, you know.”
    “In what way?” Grijpstra asked.
    “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said she is mad,” van Meteren said sadly. “What is madness? She only thinks of herself, perhaps that is mad enough. And she can’t look after herself. She is over eighty and needs opiates. An elderly drug addict. They won’t cure her but perhaps they can keep her happy until she dies.”
    “You are right,” Grijpstra said. “We live in a socialist country and suffering is prohibited by law.”
    “Suffering,” van Meteren said disdainfully.
    “You don’t believe in it?” asked de Gier.
    “No,” van Meteren said. “Suffering is very egotistic.”
    “Nothing is important,” said de Gier, who had learned a lot that day.
    “Come off it,” said Grijpstra, who had had enough. “This Eastern philosophy is all very well but we have work to do. We are dealing with a corpse, and with breaking and entering, andwith theft. Maybe it isn’t important but I would like to know who we have to arrest, just for the hell of it.”
    “That’s all right,” van Meteren said. “Work is all part of it. Do what you have to do, as long as you don’t think it is important.”
    Grijpstra looked furious and van Meteren smiled and went up to his room.
    A little later, in Piet’s room, Grijpstra began to growl. De Gier recognized the sound; it reminded him of Oliver’s growl when he was on the balcony and sensed the presence of the neighbor’s Alsatian dog, separated by a thin glass plate. At such moments de Gier was frightened of his own cat, silly Oliver, suddenly transformed into a puffed up ball of rage, with a thick sweeping and twisting tail, spitting pure hatred.
    “Yes, adjutant, what is it?” he asked sweetly.
    “This,” Grijpstra growled and pointed at a file that he had found on one of the bookshelves.