Blond Baboon (7 page)

Bergen’s right hand played with die hem of his jacket.

“Yes. He surprised me. He got up and walked over to that typewriter over there and wrote his letter of resignation. It was very decent of him. He had the whole company in the palm of his hand for a minute but he blew it away. Even if he couldn’t have administered the business he could have found somebody else to do that part of the work. We were doing very well. He was, in fact, refusing a fortune.”

“And he left with nothing?”

“Just a few months’ wages. Elaine offered him a year’s income but he refused. I offered to accept his resignation in such a way that he would have qualified for unemployment benefits but he refused that too. He just shook my hand, kissed Elaine’s cheek, and left. I haven’t seen him since.”

“Not even in the street?”

“No.”

“And Mrs. Camet? Did he break with her too then?”

“Yes, but she tried to make contact again. I heard her phone him. He’s a good carpenter and she wanted him to fix something in her house. He may have come and the relationship may have continued in some way but I don’t know, I always preferred not to ask.”

The commissaris got up and walked over to a window. “Not the sort of man who would have pushed her down the garden stairs.”

“No. The baboon isn’t a violent man.”

“Are
you,
sir?” The commissaris had turned to ask the question. It was asked in the same level tone he had used before but bis eyes were fixed on Bergen’s face.

“Violent?”

“Yes. Are you a violent man?”

Bergen’s voice faltered. His left cheek seemed to sag more than before. The underlip had suddenly become slack and he was making an effort to answer the question. “No, no. I don’t mink so. I got into some fights at school and I had a scrap or two when I was in the army but that’s gone now, I think it’s not in me anymore.”

“We’ll have to ask you whether you can prove where you were last night, Mr. Bergen. I realize these are unpleasant questions but we have to ask them.”

“I was at home, it wasn’t the sort of night to go out.”

“Were you alone?”

“Yes, my wife is staying with relatives, she is having a little holiday in the country. My children are married already. I was alone.”

“No visitors? Nobody telephoned you?”

“No.”

“Well, that was only for the record.” The commissaris was going to elaborate on his statement, but the telephone rang and Bergen walked to his desk to answer it.

“Mr. Pullini? Has he come already? Ask Miss Gabrielle to talk to him for a little while, I’m busy now. And don’t send any calls through; if you take the numbers I’ll phone diem back.” He put the phone down with some unnecessary force and turned to face his visitors again. “Pullini,” he said slowly. “It’s a day of problems.”

De Gier’s eyes hadn’t left Bergen’s face for the last few minutes. He was studying the deterioration of the left side of the man’s head with fascination. The muscles of his cheek and mouth were slackening rapidly and he didn’t think that Bergen had modified what was happening to his face. The sergeant thought of drawing the commissaris’s attention to the phenomenon in some way when Bergen began to speak again.

“Pullini. If only the man himself had come again, but he sent his darling son.”

“You’re having trouble with your supplier? Pullini is still your main supplier, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, we buy more than half our stocks from him. A good factory, steady and quick deliveries, excellent quality, but his prices are too high these days. That’s why young Pullini is here, he has been here for two weeks already. I have found another factory in Milan that can supply us and they are more competitive than the Pullini concern. They also give a little more credit—credit is important to us, we have to hold large inventories.”

“And Pullini doesn’t want to come down in price?”

“Not so far.”

“So why doesn’t young Pullini leave? Or is he liking Amsterdam?”

Bergen grinned. The grin was definitely lopsided and de Gier wondered if the commissaris was aware of their suspect’s transformation. “Yes, he likes the high life here. Italians are still old-fashioned. The boy is having a good time, but he is hanging on for another reason. Old Pullini is also retired, like Elaine, and his concern is run by Francesco now, and Francesco has done a little underhanded maneuvering, or so I think, I can’t prove it.”

“Stealing from his father’s business?”

“Perhaps. Papa Pullini is a tough old bird. He keeps his son on a short leash and Francesco has expensive ways, a brand-new Porsche, the best hotels, a little gambling—you know how it goes. Since Francesco took over we are given two invoices for every purchase. An official ninety percent invoice and an under-the-table ten percent invoice. I don’t mind. On the ten percent invoices we have more credit; we keep them in a stack and pay them at the end of the year, in cash.”

“And the ten percent goes into Francesco’s pocket. I see. That’s probably why he can’t lower his prices, he’s taking ten percent off already.”

Bergen was nodding rapidly. He was evidently pleased that the commissaris saw the point so quickly.

“But,” the commissaris said and raised a finger, “you say that you pay at the end of the year and we are in June now.”

“I didn’t make last year’s payment. The money is still here, safely in the bank. I have been complaining about the Pullini price list and I have ignored Francesco when he kept on asking for his ten percent. I’m doing a little blackmailing, I suppose. It isn’t nice of me, but we aren’t always nice in business. I could switch over to the other company in Milan but I don’t really want to do that either. The other company is too big, they might want to start up their own office here sometime and cut me out.”

“Difficult,” the commissaris agreed.

The interview was over, and the commissaris was near the door when he turned around. “Mrs. Camet had a safe, Mr. Bergen, a small wall safe. We opened it with a key we found in her bag. There was a small amount in it, some three hundred guilders. You wouldn’t know if she kept large amounts in that safe, would you?”

Bergen was holding his cheek and massaging it. “No,” he said after awhile. “I know she had a safe and there may have been a lot of money in it from time to time, she did have large amounts of cash sometimes, but I wouldn’t know if there was any appreciable quantity in there last night. It’s not the sort of thing she would talk to me about. Our conversations of the past few years were mostly about what movies to see, we both like the same sort of films.'’

“You never had much social contact with Mrs. Carnet, had you?”

“Not really. I am married, my wife has always been rather jealous of Elaine, and later there was the baboon, of course.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bergen, you’ve been most helpful.”

“Did you notice his face, sir?” de Gier asked as they walked back to the car.

The commissaris was looking at a garbage boat mat was making a sharp corner in the canal. A young man, a boy almost, was turning its large wheel effortlessly and the heavy diesel engine controlling the barge’s screw was churning up a perfect arc of thick frothy waves. Workmen were sawing a broken tree on the other side of the canal, with the boat pulling cables so that the thick elm wouldn’t fall the wrong way.

'Two million trees down in the country, according to the radio,” the commissaris said. “Two million, I wonder how they can guess the number. The whole country is a mess and we have our own to play with. Yes, I noted Bergen’s facial paralysis, sergeant. It must have started before we came, but he was going through a crisis while we talked to him.”

“A stroke, sir?”

“No, I don’t think so, but I am sure he’s telephoning his doctor right now. I thought I would have to cut my questioning off, but I had gone too far already.”

“But if he got upset to such an extent…” De Gier had stopped, but the commissaris kept on walking, and the sergeant had to sprint to catch up with him again.

“He must be guilty?”

“He might be.”

“He might be, sure. And he might not be. We don’t know how involved he was with the lady. And he may have other worries. That Pullini business may be much worse than he made it appear. I would like to see young Pullini. Try and find out where he’s staying after you’ve dropped me off. Don’t ask Mr. Bergen or Gabrielle. Find him through the hotel records. It shouldn’t be difficult to run him down. If he doesn’t expect us to look for him and if we suddenly show up the questioning may be more, what’s the word, ‘deadly’.”

De Gier steered the commissaris’s black Citroen through the narrow alleys near the center of the old city. They got stuck a few times and had to wait for trucks and motorized tricycles unloading, and every now and then they would run into a detour caused by municipal workmen clearing fallen trees. Most of the glass of broken windows had already been swept up. The city still looked desolate, however, and the commissaris’s mood fitted in with the general devastation.

“Bah,” he said as the car turned into its reserved space on the courtyard of police headquarters. “We’ll have to push ourselves, sergeant. I want this case to be over in a few days, in a week at the most. There’s still some time before lunch to find Francesco Pullini. I hope Grijpstra and Cardozo will be back soon with something tangible. With four men on the job we should be able to cut through their nonsense quickly. There are other projects I’d like to be working on.”

De Gier had switched the Citroen’s engine off and was waiting for the car to give its customary sigh before starting to sink down to its lowest point. The vehicle’s fluid suspension system always gave him a sensuous sensation, he was grinning in the split second of anticipation.

“You noticed that Mr. Bergen didn’t smoke?”

“Yes, sir. He didn’t smoke while we were with him but I saw a nicotine stain on his index finger. He smokes cigarettes, I saw a packet of Gauloises on his desk. He’s probably trying to give it up.”

“Giving it up,” the commissaris repeated slowly. “I have been watching the inspector lately. He is also trying to give up smoking but he isn’t making much headway. He told me that he is now smoking a brand he doesn’t like. Maybe Mr. Bergen doesn’t like cigars with plastic mouthpieces, or would that be too far-fetched, sergeant?”

The Citroen had finished its sigh and the sergeant was alert again. He hadn’t understood everything the commissaris said, but the sound of his superior’s words was still in his ears and he could reconstruct the question.

“He could have been at the Carnet house last night, sir, and he might have a reason for wanting to have Mrs. Carnet out of the way. Maybe she doesn’t come to the company often, but she does control it, legally anyway—she had three-quarters of the shares.”

“So we’ll have to find out if there was any tension between them, some recent disagreement, something to do with the company’s policy perhaps. Yes.” The commissaris had been talking briskly and he opened the door and almost jumped out, but he had to hold on to the car as a fresh flow of pain burned through his legs.

“I’ll find this Pullini man and the baboon, Mr. Vleuten, sir. I’ll phone you as soon as I know their addresses.”

The commissaris was limping ahead as the building’s alarm system came on. Short hysterical bursts of a two-toned horn split the quiet of the yard and a glass door burst open, pushed by a young man in torn jeans and a dirty jacket. He was running toward the gate, where two uniformed constables had lowered the beam and were protecting it, their guns out.

De Gier was running too. He cut the young man off and dived for his legs, bringing him down with such force mat the dust of the yard came up in a small cloud. The commissaris had frozen in his tracks and watched the commotion. The constables pulled the prisoner to his feet and handcuffed him. De Gier was sadly inspecting a tear in his jacket. Plainclothes detectives and more constables surrounded the prisoner and half marched, half carried him back to the building. The commissaris stopped a detective.

“What are the charges against your man?”

“Robbery, sir, attempted manslaughter, drug dealing. We may come up with a pimping charge too, a girl brought in a complaint this morning.”

“Bad case eh?”

“Yes, sir, a hopeless case. It might have been better if he had got himself shot, he’ll spend the rest of his life in jail or the nuthouse. The psychiatrists have been looking at him but they don’t seem to be able to classify the trouble. As far as we’re concerned he’s dangerous. He keeps on attacking the guards, he bit the chief guard just now.”

The detective ran after his colleagues: the commissaris turned around. De Gier was still looking at his jacket.

“Are you all right, sergeant?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll have to get another jacket, I’ll do it now. I have a suit at the dry-cleaning place around the corner. This jacket has had it, I think. Even if I have it repaired the tear will still show.”

“The police will pay. I am going to my office, de Gier.”

The commissaris’s mood didn’t improve until he was back behind his desk and looking at his fern, which was catching the sun and showing its leaves in an almost unnatural glitter of sparkling green.

“Very nice,” the commissaris said. “But you are one aspect of nature. I am dealing with another, and it’s rotten, brown, dog-eared, moldy, smelly with disease.”

He made the moves that had never failed to restore his equanimity. He lit a small cigar, telephoned for coffee, and began to walk around his office. He fed his plants after having mixed the right quantity of fertilizer into a plastic watering can. He sprayed the fern with slow bursts of a small glass atomizer. His telephone rang.

“I have the hotel, sir, the Pulitzer. Francesco Pullini is in his room now, according to the desk clerk. I also have the baboon’s address, he lives on the Amsteldijk. According to the number he lives on the best part of the dike, where it overlooks the river close to the Thin Bridge.”

“You haven’t spoke to either of the suspects?”

“No, sir.”

“We’ll go and surprise them. I’ll meet you in the courtyard in a minute. We might tackle young Pullini first.”