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you say 'murder' just now, Grijpstra?"
    "Yes sir."
    "Tell me the story again. You can say something too, sergeant. Do you have to stare at me like that?"
    "Would you have a match, sir?"
    "You stopped smoking, didn't you?"
    "To chew, sir."
    De Gier chewed. Grijpstra reported. The commissaris dropped his newspaper, picked up a watering can and busied himself with the plants on the windowsills.
    "That's all, sir."
    The commissaris replaced the can in his cupboard. "Yes, the facts, as described by you, don't tally much. But they fit exactly, of course, once you have the pattern and the other facts. Anything that happens consists of intertwining causes and effects and every single one of them can be traced. Some of your missing facts could be criminal, or they could .be harmless. They might very well be harmless. Offhand I would say that Sergeant Jurriaans's approach is correct. Mr. Fortune is having a hard time without you two stepping on his toes. If I tell you to consider him as a suspect he loses some of his liberty, and he has already lost his wife and his possessions."
    "And his dog," de Gier said, smiling inanely.
    "Job," Grijpstra said.
    "Beg pardon, adjutant?"
    "I said 'Job,' sir. The old woman who shared the handcart with me called him that. Fortune is Job. Not on the dungheap but in an empty apartment. A comparison, sir."
    The commissaris was following the edge of his carpet which contained a number of colored squares. He only stepped on the blue squares which were irregularly placed, so that he had to jump here and there.
    "Job. Quite. But Job came out fine. He used the right attitude, passive positivity. The man's faith was impeccable. Hey! You can't be serious, Grijpstra. Are you identifying me with the almighty Father? Are you saying that I have the power to plague the unhappy man further because he'll gain the heavenly kingdom anyway?"
    De Gier grabbed his throat and coughed harshly. He spat out a sliver of match wood.
    "What now?" the commissaris asked, his voice rising. "Are you okay, sergeant?"
    "It's the chewing, sir. Haven't got the habit yet. I shouldn't tear so much; just flattening the match is enough."
    Grijpstra was halfway out of his chair. "Please start smoking again, Rinus."
    "No."
    "A fundamental change of a habitual pattern causes critical effects, adjutant. We'll have to harden ourselves. Job, eh? A most interesting comparison. God and the devil gambling and the suspect is the stake. Let's hope he is intelligent and knows he can't lose. Did I ever tell you about the time that I lost my car?"
    De Gier suffered another attack of harsh rasping coughs and it took a few minutes before the commissaris could entertain his assistants. He had, a few years back, been issued a new Citroen of the expensive variety and was pleased with the classy vehicle. He thought of an errand, drove into town, and parked the car. When he returned the car was gone. His disappointment was mingled with fear. Not only that something wasn't there that should be there, not only that the missing item was the gleaming auto he had been so proud of owning a few minutes ago—the loss could be related to events of the past, he had attempted to twist his car key into thin air before—no, the emptiness confronting him at that fearful moment was more than he could have expected. The Citroen wasn't there and the ground on which it had rested wasn't there either. The commissaris, abruptly transformed from acting object into suffering subject, stared down into a gaping hole. The bright red bricks were replaced by a black aperture that sucked at his very existence.
    "Then," the commissaris declared, "I doubted the benevolence of the creation and I haven't dared to stop doubting since. Another loss that added, in a way, to my liberation. To lose may be frightening, to know that you have nothing can be encouraging."
    "And the car, sir?" Grijpstra asked.
    "The car? It returned. There is always a superficial explanation. I forget what had happened