Hard Rain (29 page)

He got into the Citroen and drove slowly out of the parking lot. Halfway home, he stopped and limped to the bushes at the side of the road. When he came back he was wiping his lips, holding his other hand on his stomach.

"Jan?" his wife asked when he stumbled into her arms. "Something bad?" She sniffed at his face. "Were you unwell?"

"Willem killed his own son," the commissaris whispered.

She embraced him. "Do you want to lie down? Grijpstra and Cardozo are in your room. Shall I tell them to go away?"

"Tell them to wait," the commissaris said. "I need a bath, won't be long."

\\\\\ 28 /////

T
HE COMMISSARIS, IN ROBE AND SLIPPERS, GUIDED by his wife, looked old and frail when he shuffled into his study. "Yes," he said softly when he looked around. "Hello, Adjutant, hello, Cardozo. I'm sorry."

Grijpstra sat quietly. Cardozo leaned against a bookcase. "I didn't foresee what happened on the lake," the commissaris said. "It seems logical now. Willem can be quite gruesome. One doesn't like to imagine that sort of thing."

"The others are downstairs," his wife said.

The commissaris turned toward her with an effort. "De Gier came too?"

"Yes."

The commissaris felt his chin. "A showdown, is it? He's calling my bluff."

"De Gier?" his wife asked.

"Yes, dear. But mostly Willem Fernandus, of course. One would like to think that a mishap occurred, that Huip set off the charge by accident, but it didn't go that way. Willem is destroying evidence." He felt for his cigars in the pocket of his robe. "Live evidence. Willem is eliminating his human instruments. First we saw the destruction of the junkies, then Heul's body was dumped in my car. Heul wasn't trustworthy. Willem knew that he would break if we squeezed him too hard. Huip was the next link. We would break Huip too, and Huip would blame his father. There was no love between Willem and his only child. Perhaps Willem wouldn't grant Huip the right of succession; that could be another motive."

"Oh, surely, Jan," his wife said. "It must have been an accident. Don't you think so, Adjutant?"

It became quiet in the room. Voices became audible downstairs.

"Grijpstra?" the commissaris asked.

"No, ma'am," Grijpstra said. "There was no accident. Fernandus knew we were all around him, watching what he'd do next. He pretended to call off Ryder's murder and took Huip's gadget. Then he gave it to the baron. Willem Fernandus trusts only the baron. De la Faille shot IJsbreker and tried to do away with your husband's turtle. He's Fernandus's right hand, like de Gier is your husband's right hand. The others don't matter, they're more like instruments, it seems."

The commissaris opened his tin of cigars and stared at the contents. "I don't like that, Adjutant. We've been working as a group. Your simile is too simple and"—he selected a cigar—"a little nasty perhaps?"

Grijpstra's eyelids fluttered.

"Sir?" Cardozo asked. "I was watching from the shore. I spotted the baron. He left the terrace immediately after the explosion and de Gier went after him. Maybe the sergeant found the detonator in the baron's pocket and we can prove something after all."

The commissaris lit his cigar. "No. This assassination was well planned. De la Faille must have made sure that his device got lost at once. He may have dropped it into the lake. It was probably quite small."

"Now what?" Grijpstra asked. "What do we have left? Carl could testify that Heul picked up the artworks the junkies took from IJsbreker's house, but one witness is not enough for us to move ahead. Celine, who saw de la Faille fire a shot at your turtle, is dead. Huip Fernandus is dead. Nothing now points at Fernandus, except the baron. Do we wait for Fernandus to kill the baron too?"

The commissaris shook his head. "He won't. De la Faille is too valuable to Willem, as you pointed out just now in your lopsided manner. As IJsbreker's replacement, de la Faille will run the Society and the Banque du Credit; Willem doesn't want to be in the midst of things."

The commissaris's wife smiled. "But you're so clever, Jan. You'll come up with something devilish again, set them against each other somehow."

"Devilish?" the commissaris said. "Katrien . . . I'm not devilish. I protect the peace ..."

"Yes, dear, of course." She touched his arm. "I'm sorry."

"Devilish," the commissaris muttered. "Besides, there's no time. I don't know what to do."

"Sir?" Cardozo asked.

"No idea," the commissaris said. "Willem won. I can't go on with this unless I do away with morality again. AH these people in the house." He held his wife's hand. "Poor thing. Inflicting this inconvenience on you."

"You're just impatient, dear." She, held his hand. "I don't mind."

"Miss Antoinette too," the commissaris said. "Maybe I can lodge her with my sister. Where is Miss Antoinette, anyway?"

"On the porch, dear, helping Carl with that cute ark he's building. They've smashed some bottles and are building the sides of glass, so that the animals inside can be visible."

The commissaris gestured with his cigar. "On the porch? Perhaps de la Faille is out there with his rifle again. I can't have this, Katrien."

"Sir?"

"Yes, Cardozo, is your computer connected now?"

"Izzy Sanders is here too," Cardozo said. "Whenever you like, perhaps we can do more than you expected."

"Who
is
this Izzy?" the commissaris's wife asked. "Isn't anybody going to tell me anything?"

The commissaris squeezed her hand. "Izzy used to work for the Banque du Credit. Cardozo has been very clever indeed." He looked at Cardozo. "I forgot to ask, who paid for all that gear?"

"I did, sir. It wasn't much. It's some phased-out model that Izzy knew about."

"You'd better give me the bill." The commissaris turned back to his wife. "With Izzy's knowledge, we have access to the bank's financial records now. I was hesitant to go that far, but we did have the raid, we may as well go all the way."

"Some sort of spying, dear?"

"More than that, I'm afraid. Well, shall we go downstairs?"

Karate, Ketchup, Sergeant Biersma, and Constable Ramsau got up when the commissaris came into the living room. De Gier stood near the window. A computer was set up on the table. Izzy Sanders sat behind the machine. "Sorry about this afternoon," the commissaris said.

His audience mumbled. "You couldn't have foreseen that," Sergeant Biersma said. "Nobody in his right mind kills his own son."

"Fernandus hasn't been in his right mind as long as I've known him." The commissaris smiled grimly. "If only I had thought a little deeper. We could have rushed the terrace the minute I saw Huip get into that boat."

The mumbling started up again and died down. "But I didn't think," the commissaris said. "Now we're faced with another infernal gadget. On our side, this time. Izzy? Can you show us?"

"Yes." Izzy worked on the computer's keyboard. The telephone receiver next to the screen crackled. "What's that?" the commissaris's wife asked.

"I'm making a connection with the bank," Izzy said. "Now I'll punch in the codes. Here we are."

The computer's screen lit up. Letters formed. "It wants a command," Izzy said. "Okay." He touched more keys. "I want to see Fernandus's private account. I have to tell it who's asking. Here we go, I'm pretending I'm Fernandus now, these letters represent his ID."

Figures appeared.

"But that's nothing," Sergeant Biersma said. "A few thousand guilders."

"So Fernandus doesn't keep his money in his own account," the commissaris said. "Let's see what the Society owns, Izzy."

More figures appeared.

"That's better," Grijpstra said, "but it still isn't very much. That's probably the takings of a few days. Where does the real money go?"

"We figured that out yesterday," Cardozo said. "We had to go through just about every account in the bank."

Izzy held up a notebook. "I have all the codes. The biggest account is in the name of Ernst Fernandus— about twenty million, plus securities, stocks, bonds, what have you. Here you are."

The screen showed figures and lists.

"But that's a fortune," the commissaris's wife said. "Ernst is a poet who floats around the world in an ancient sailboat. Ernst has no millions."

"Probably not," the commissaris said. "Izzy tells me that Willem can manipulate his brother Ernst's account."

"Maybe Ernst won a lottery, Jan?"

The general mumble rose up again. "Unlikely." "There aren't prizes that big." "A poet!"

"Can we do it now, sir?" Cardozo asked. "We can have the shares sold and all the cash transferred."

"You can do that with the computer?" Grijpstra asked.

Izzy looked up. "Easy. This works like a Teletype too. I can connect with other banks, brokers, anything you like."

"Theft," the commissaris's wife said. "Jan, you can't do that."

He took her hand again. "We did have the raid there, dear, same thing. You didn't mind the raid."

She shook her hand free. "But this is so
sneaky.
"

Grijpstra grinned.

"Anything funny, Adjutant?" the commissaris snapped.

Grijpstra put up his hands.

"You mean I am sneaky?"

"Don't get cross with Grijpstra now, dear." The commissaris's wife held his shoulder. "You can be very sneaky at times. Taking money from poor Ernst."

The commissaris put his hand on the computer. "Hold off a minute now. Where could Ernst be? Sailing the seven seas? Who would know?"

"Fleur."

He looked at his wife. "Willem's ex-wife?"

"Fleur," his wife said. "I met her a few months ago, in the street. We had tea together. She mentioned Ernst."

"Would she know where we can find him?"

"I could visit her. She lives close by."

\\\\\ 29 /////

"E
RNST?" FLEUR FERNANDUS, N£E DE LA FAILLE, A plump woman in her sixties, asked. She was dressed according to younger taste and heavily made up. Her bejeweled fingers reminded the commissaris's wife of fat garden worms, splattered with luminous paint. "Ach, Ernst."

The commissaris's wife, in an effort to be polite, complimented Fleur on the elegance of her apartment. "Yes," Fleur said. "Wasn't I lucky that I still had those shares of Willem's bank? Willem always badgered me to have them transferred into his name, but I didn't want to weaken my position. When we divorced, he had to buy me out. Ernst sold his shares much earlier, and was bamboozled royally, but I got a bundle." She shrugged. "Can't expect a business head on the shoulders of a poet."

"Poor Ernst," the commissaris's wife said.

"No money," Fleur said, "but so what? I would have paid him just to have him around." She breathed heavily. "Ernst is such a wonderful man, but of course I had to settle for his greedy brother ..."

"Ernst is doing well?"

". . . and for his brother's retarded son," Fleur finished.

The commissaris's wife fidgeted with her handkerchief.

"Ernst . . ." Fleur clasped her hands together. "Do you know that he asked me to go sailing with him? A hundred years ago? Around the world? And I, like an idiot, refused. We could be living on Mauritius now, and I would have been a nature woman, eating coconuts off trees, splashing about in lagoons, listening to his rhymy wordage." She grinned at her guest. "I have no ear for the stuff, poetry passes me by completely, but I'm good at pretending. I'll bet Ernst's present woman doesn't give half a hoot for his poetry, either."

"Ernst has a woman?"

"Bah." Fleur offered a tray of bonbons. "Have one, they're expensive. Yes. Some native wench who works as a waitress. Ernst was here a month ago, actually looked me up. He sailed in from Mauritius to ask Willem for a loan to buy his girlie a restaurant. Didn't get a penny. Willem tried to interest him in smuggling drugs, but Ernst is too naive for the real world. I bought him dinner, a few times, and clothes so that he could take me out; he dresses rather sloppily."

The commissaris's wife's teeth broke through a thin coating of chocolate. She winced at the oversweet taste. "Not attractive?"

"
Very
attractive," Fleur said. "Sun-bleached jeans, big pectoral muscles, a tattered shirt, straw sandals, unkempt beard. The depth of the sea is in his eyes and he wears a golden earring. Katrien, Ernst is a dream. But I couldn't get him into one of my favorite restaurants looking like that."

"Fleur?"

"I tried to seduce him."

"Fleur?"

Fleur stroked the armrests of her chair. "With money, of course." She kneaded her thighs. "These won't work anymore. I would have liked to keep him here. I wonder if he noticed. Tried to get him to stay here with me, but he'd rather sleep in his boat. Crummy boat."

"Fleur?"

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry to have to tell you this," the commissaris's wife said, "but your son is dead."

"Huip?"

"You only have one son."

"Good," Fleur said. "The hateful monster. I could never stand him; he didn't even have his father's amusing side. Graspy little baby, hurt me a lot, and when he grew up it was even worse. How did he die? Got killed by his cronies? Huip never kept good company. You should have seen the human offal he dragged home from school."

"A boating accident," the commissaris's wife said. "Jan heard about it. I think he even saw it, on the Vinker Lakes earlier today."

"Good," Fleur said. "I always hated those damned lakes. That's where Willem enjoyed himself. Did Willem die too?"

"No, Fleur."

Fleur pushed a large bonbon into her mouth.

"Fleur?"

Fleur swallowed. "So Willem is still out there, making trouble? Why don't you send Jan after him? Jan could catch the miserable sod. Willem isn't all that clever, you know, he does have weak points."

"I think that Jan considers Willem a suspect in a murder case," the commissaris's wife said.

Fleur's eyes bulged. She sucked in her lips. "Hm. He does? Wasn't there something about Jan in the papers? An investigation of some sort? Did your husband turn out badly too?"

"No," the commissaris's wife said. "The other way around. Corrupt officials tried to get him out of the way, but that's all right now, Jan is working again."