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Piet wanted to make a profit and he wanted the profit for himself. He was the owner of the business. We intended to leave him and find some other place with a bit of idealism behind it, or maybe start one of our own. Piet crooked us. I don’t really hold it against him. It’s my own stupidity, I should have seen it. He made us work for the great purpose but all we worked for was his wealth. Did you see the gold strap on his wristwatch?”
    Grijpstra nodded.
    “There are other things as well. There is a new station wagon parked outside. We earned it for him. He was a capitalist but he didn’t tell us.”
    “You don’t like capitalists?” de Gier asked.
    “I don’t mind them,” Johan said. “It’s a way of life. Free enterprise is a philosophy. It isn’t mine. I am against fascism and I would fight it if I had to, but I wouldn’t fight capitalism.”
    “So you think it was suicide?” de Gier asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Enough,” Grijpstra said. “You need some sleep. All of us do. Tomorrow is another day. Try and remember anything that may be relevant and tell us about it tomorrow. The peace of the citizens has been disturbed and we, criminal investigators of your police department, have to repair the peace again. And you have to help us. Such is the law.”
    He grinned, got up, and stretched his aching back.
    * * *
    Within a few minutes the detectives were walking toward their car. A late drunk came swaggering toward them, and de Gier had to jump aside.
    “Out of my way,” the drunk shouted and grabbed a lamp post.
    “Bah,” Grijpstra said. The drunk was pissing on the street and all over his own trousers.
    “Watch it,” de Gier shouted. The drunk had fallen over and rolled off the sidewalk into the street.
    Grijpstra, who was getting into the car, grabbed the microphone.
    “An unconscious man on the sidewalk of Haarlemmer Houttuinen opposite number five. Please send the bus.”
    “Drunk?” the voice of Headquarters asked.
    “Very,” Grijpstra answered. “No need for an ambulance, the police bus will do.”
    “Bus coming,” the voice said. “Out.”
    “We better wait,” de Gier said. “I have pulled him off the street but he may roll over again. He is fast asleep.”
    “Sure. We’ve got nothing else to do.”
    They waited in silence for the small blue bus with its crew of two elderly police constables who dragged the drunk inside, cursing and sighing.
    “Nice job,” de Gier said, waved at the constables and started the engine.
    “So have we,” Grijpstra said, “nice and complicated. Murdered innocence dangling from a piece of string, surrounded by dear sweet people of which one is a black cannibal trained in guerilla warfare and another a crazy old female bag of bones.”
    “I hope his mother has done it,” de Gier said.
    “You love people, don’t you?”
    “I don’t like jails,” de Gier said. “I had to visit some of ourclients in their cells this week. Cold, drafty and hopeless. Jail will get you if nothing else does. A day in jail means a year of crime.”
    Grijpstra turned his heavy neck and stared at his colleague.
    “Well, well,” he said, “have you forgotten how many people you have directed to the cold, drafty and hopeless cells?”
    “Yes, yes,” de Gier said and lapsed into silence.
    The silence lasted until they entered their office and he had to help Grijpstra to phrase the exact short sentences that framed their report and that they both signed, mentioning in cool print that everything the report contained was the truth as they, officers of the Queen’s law, saw it. Grijpstra typed, slowly, with four fingers, without making a single typing error.
    De Gier didn’t speak when he left but Grijpstra didn’t mind. He had been working with de Gier for a number of years and they had never really fallen out.

Chapter 3
    T HE NEXT MORNING de Gier was in his bed. It was eight o’clock, he should have been up and in any case he should have been awake.
    He wasn’t