OUTSIDER IN AMSTERDAM Also by Janwillem van de Wetering FICTION The Grijpstra-de Gier series: Outsider in Amsterdam Tumbleweed The Corpse on the Dike Death of a Hawker The Japanese Corpse The Blond Baboon The Maine Massacre The Mind Murders The Streetbird The Rattle-Rat Hard Rain Other. Inspector Saito's Small Satori The Butterfly Hunter Bliss and Bluster NONFICTION The Empty Mirror A Glimpse of Nothingness CHILDREN'S BOOKS Hugh Pine Hugh Pine and the Good Place Hugh Pine in Brooklyn Little Owl OUTSIDER IN AMSTERDAM Janwillem van de Wetering Copyright © 1975 by Janwillem van de Wetering All rights reserved. Published by Soho Press, Inc. 853 Broadway New York, NY 10003 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Van de Wetering, Janwillem. 1931-2008 Outsider in Amsterdam. I. Title. PZ4.W537180u3 [PR9130.9.W4] 813'.5'4 75-12579 ISBN 978-1-56947-017-6 Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 FOR JUANITA Table of contents Preface Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 About the Author PREFACE ONCE, SOME TIME AGO NOW, I WAS A CHILD AND MY PARENTS Would ask me what I wanted to be. I always gave the same answer. I wanted to be an Indian, and a cowboy in my spare time. When fate, which according to Buddhist thought is the result of previous actions, brought me back to Amsterdam after a trip which took me to a large number of countries and lasted a long time, I received a letter from the army. The letter gave me an address and a name and a date and I found a middle-aged lady behind a desk who told me that I would have to be a soldier. I pointed out that I was over thirty years old but she wasn't impressed. A little later I received another letter from the army. It told me that I would have to consider myself to be in "extraordinary service." The letter puzzled me and I put it in a drawer. Then there was another letter that told me that I would have to join the "civil reserve." I saw another middle-aged lady and told her that I didn't want to join the civil reserve, whatever it was. She told me to join the police. I told her that I already had a job. "In your spare time," she said. The idea staggered me. I never knew that one can be a policeman in one's spare time. But one can, and for several years now I have been a member of Amsterdam's Special Constabulary and serve the Queen in the uniform of a police constable. I have been in a number of adventures in the inner city of the capital and some of them inspired me to write this story. My imagination has, here and there, carried me away and the result is that the police routine as described in this book is not, in every instance, based on established police technique. OUTSIDER IN AMSTERDAM \\\\\ 1 ///// T HE VOLKSWAGEN WAS PARKED ON THE WIDE SIDEWALK of the Haarlemmer Houttuinen, opposite number 5, and it was parked the way it shouldn't be parked. The adjutant* had switched the engine off. The adjutant hesitated. He had arrived at his destination, Haarlemmer Houttuinen, number 5, and the high narrow gable house was waiting for him. He studied the gable house and frowned. The house had a body in it, a dead body, suspended. The body was bound to be turning slowly. Bodies, suspended by the neck, are never quite still. The adjutant didn't feel like doing anything. He didn't feel like getting out of the car, running through the rain, watching a corpse move slowly, dangling, turning. "Hey," said sergeant de Gier, who sat next to adjutant Grijpstra. "Hey what?" asked Grijpstra. De Gier made a helpless gesture. Grijpstra could explain the gesture, the waving arm with its connected stretched-out hand, as he wanted. But he still didn't move and adjutant and sergeant listened, peacefully and unanimously, to the fat raindrops that pattered from the heavy juicy spring sky onto the tin roof of the Volkswagen. "Yes," the adjutant said, and got out of the car. De Gier had parked the car on the edge of the sidewalk and Grijpstra was forced to step into the street, a main thoroughfare, busy at all times of the day and the night. He didn't pay attention and a large American limousine approaching at speed had to turn suddenly to avoid the door of the car. The limousine, suddenly indignant, honked its powerful horn. De Gier laughed and shook his head. He got out of the car as well, on the safe side, and locked the door carefully while the rain hit him in the neck. In Amsterdam nothing is safe, not even a police car, and mis Volkswagen didn't look like a police car. No expert would recognize the VW as a means of transport reserved for officers of the criminal investigation department. Its radio set was hidden under the dashboard and the antenna was a mere twig, slightly rusty. No one would suspect that the back seat contained a well-oiled carbine,