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you are thinking now. Plato, for instance, and others before him."
    "There have been clever shadows on the planet,"
    Louis said and smiled.
    "Yes. But you have helped us nevertheless. We know a little about the dead man now and we know a little about you. We are simple people, deluded probably, as you have pointed out already. We work on the assumption that the State is right and that public order has to be maintained.
    "And we work with systems. Someone, some human who meant to harm Abe Rogge, has killed him. He had the opportunity to bash his face in and he thought he had a reason to do it. If we find somebody who had both the opportunity and the motive we will suspect him of a crime and we may arrest him. You, Louis Zilver, had the opportunity. You were in the house at the right time. But from what you have told us we may assume that you had no motive."
    "If I was speaking the truth," Louis said.
    "Yes. You have told us he was your friend, your savior in a way. He got you out of a rut. You used to spend your time lying in bed all morning and drinking all evening and trying to make a beady man all afternoon. You weren't happy. Abe made your life interesting."
    "Yes. He saved me. But perhaps people don't want to be saved. Christ was a savior and they hammered nails through his hands and feet."
    "A hammer," Grijpstra said. "I keep on thinking that Abe was killed with a hammer. But a hammer would have made a hole, wouldn't it? The face was bashed in over a large area."
    "We'll find out what killed him," the commissaris said. "Go on, Mr. Zilver. You interest me. What else can you tell us?"
    "Tell me," de Gier said, still holding Esther's hand, "why was your brother killed? Did he have any enemies?"
    Esther had stopped crying and was caressing the table's surface with her free hand.
    "Yes. He had enemies. People hated his guts. He was too successful, you see, and too indifferent. He was so full of life. People would worry and be depressed and nervous and he'd just laugh and go to Tunisia for a few weeks to play on the beach or to ride a camel to a little village somewhere. Or he would sail his boat onto the great lake. Or he would take off for the East and buy merchandise and sell it here and make a good profit. He was a dangerous man. He crushed people. Made them feel fools."
    "Did he make you feel a fool?"
    "I am a fool," Esther said.
    "Why?"
    "Everybody is. You are too, sergeant, whether you want to admit it or not."
    "You were going to call me Rinus. O.K., I am a fool. Is that what you want me to say?"
    "I don't want you to say anything. If you know you are a fool, Abe wouldn't have been able to hurt you. He used to arrange dinner parties but before anyone was allowed to eat anything, that person had to get up, face the assembled guests and say, "I am a fool."
    "Yes?" de Gier asked, surprised. "Whatever for?"
    "He enjoyed doing things like that. They had to state that they were fools and then they had to explain why they were fools. Some sort of sensitivity training. A man would say 'Friends, I am a fool. I think I am important but I am not.' But that wouldn't be enough for Abe. He wouldn't let the man eat or drink before he had explained, in detail, why exactly he was a fool. He would have to admit that he was proud because he had some particular success, a business deal for instance, or an examination he had passed, or a woman he had made, and then he would have to explain that it was silly to be proud of such a feat because it had just happened to him. It wasn't his fault or merit, you see. Abe believed that we were just being pushed around by circumstances and that man is an inanimate mechanism, nothing more."
    "And people had to admit it to him all the time?"
    "Yes, that was the only way to start doing something." "So they could do something after all?"
    "Yes, not much. Something. Provided they admitted they were fools."
    De Gier lit a cigarette and sat back. "Shit," he said softly.
    "Pardon?"
    "Never mind," de Gier