Outsider in Amsterdam by Janwillem van de Wetering Page A

still and wait. Perhaps the right thought will bubble up. You can’t trace where it comes from but it is there, right in front of you. Has it happened to you?”
    Grijpstra thought and nodded, hesitatingly.
    “Perhaps. A sudden spark, very fast. Too fast sometimes for it is gone before you can grab it. All you know is that you knew it, for a very short moment, but you have forgotten again.”
    “It’ll come back later,” the chief inspector said, “when you least expect it, sometimes.”
    “Perhaps,” said Grijpstra.
    “So what now, Grijpstra?”
    “I am going to have dinner at a Chinese restaurant with de Gier.”
    “And where is de Gier?”
    “Gone home to feed the cat.”
    The chief inspector laughed.
    “Gone home to feed the cat,” he repeated. “A clear motivation. I like that.”
    The mention of the word “dinner” made him finish the conversation. Grijpstra took him to the front door. A black Citroen was parked on the sidewalk, an impassive constable at the wheel. The chief inspector will be a commissaris soon, Grijpstra thought.

Chapter 6
    I T WAS SEVEN thirty sharp when de Gier came into the Chinese restaurant. Grijpstra sat in one of the booths at the side, behind a glass of beer and his notebook. He was scribbling, connecting a number of circles. Each circle had a name.
    “You see that I often come on time?”
    Grijpstra mumbled something.
    “And what conclusions is the mastermind drawing?”
    Grijpstra connected two more circles.
    “Well?”
    “Ach,” Grijpstra said. “What do I know? Bits and pieces, that’s all I have. They all connect, but then anything does. I see the connections but I don’t understand them. And what can I be sure of? The only fact we have so far is the book that girl of yours threw. The constables who are searching the house haven’t found anything, except some dead mice. The search is still on. The detectives who are grubbing about in the underworld haven’t found anything either. The theories we have come up with aren’t very satisfactory. You helped me think today. Have you thought of anything?”
    De Gier sat back and looked at the red lamps decorated with worn tassels. The owner had made use of the talents of a compatriot artist and there were some Chinese landscapes painted on the peeling plaster of the walls. One of the scenes was religious. A pagoda, or temple, inhabited by gods. Fatgods with bulging bellies, overpleasant smiles, bald heads and obscene female breasts. One of them had a thin beard. Fat tubby babies were crawling all over them.
    “Well?” Grijpstra asked.
    “Bah,” said de Gier.
    Grijpstra looked up. “I thought you liked Chinese food.”
    “I do,” de Gier said, “but I was thinking. And I haven’t come up with any good theory. The best one I have heard so far is the chief inspector’s. We shouldn’t think of murder straight off. Murders are rare in Amsterdam. It was suicide. A lot of the facts we have fit in, and the fact I like most is that he looked so neat.”
    “Ah yes,” Grijpstra said. “I know what you mean. The Japanese suicide, wasn’t it. You wash up and tidy yourself before you do it. You think he may have meditated a while in front of the little altar in his room, where we found traces of burnt incense?”
    “Yes,” said de Gier, studying the menu. “He may have been depressed for some time but he still needed a last push, and the girl throwing the dictionary at him set him off.”
    “And the money?” Grijpstra asked. “The seventy-five red backs. Where are they?”
    “Blackmail. Or somebody stole it
before
he committed suicide. Another reason to do it. Or, but perhaps that’s too far-fetched, he destroyed the money to put suspicion on somebody else, somebody we would suspect of having murdered him.”
    “Brr,” Grijpstra said. “No. Let’s not be too subtle.”
    “It could be, couldn’t it?”
    “No,” Grijpstra said.
    “Let’s eat then.”
    De Gier had been given his beer and was blowing into