The Rattle-Rat by Janwillem van de Wetering Page A

you should take care of this gentleman first."
    "I'll take you," de Gier said, pointing at the Volkswagen.
    "Is that your vehicle?" a policeman asked.
    "Belongs to the Detective Department," Grijpstra said. "Amsterdam, used exclusively by the Murder Brigade."
    "You sure it's not dead?" the policeman in charge of the squad car asked. "We saw it just now and phoned it through to our wrecker. It should be here any moment."
    "Alive," Grijpstra said.
    The police wrecker drove into the street.
    "Hey!" Hylkje shouted. The suspect had run off. De Gier ran after him.
    "I'll take you now, sir," Grijpstra said. "I don't like the way these colleagues are looking at my car."
    De Gier brought the suspect back. One policeman pushed him into the squad car while the other spoke to the wrecker's driver, apologizing for the mistake.
    "Take the lieutenant's list," Hylkje said, "before anything else happens. I need a shower and some sleep. I'll be back at eleven."
    "Right," de Gier said.
    "A rat!" Hylkje yelled, pointing at the threshold.
    De Gier picked Eddy up and held him against his cheek. Eddy waved his paws at Hylkje. The corporal staggered back. She replaced her helmet, slid into the Guzzi's saddle, and pressed the starter. The motorcycle reared up briefly, came down, and shot off.
    De Gier put Eddy down and pushed the rat gently across the threshold. He went inside, cleared the dining room and kitchen tables, and washed and dried the dishes.
    Eddy was back on the couch, curled up on a cushion.
    "Move up, please," de Gier said. "I want to read for a while."
    The rat squirmed around.
    "If I read aloud, will you stop rattling?"
    Eddy, soothed by de Gier's voice, became quiet. De Gier read in Frisian, guessing at the meaning of the foreign words, which resembled English here and there, but the verbs were conjugated according to German grammar. The story he had selected was called "Optimal Functioning."
    "He weighs heavily on my stomach," de Gier read. He closed the book. Eddy was asleep. De Gier slid his finger under the rat's tail, flicking it up. "Did you follow the general trend of the tale?"
    Eddy rearranged his tail.
    "She has just eaten her husband," de Gier said. "This author who calls herself Martha when she writes." Because Eddy wouldn't wake up, de Gier addressed the plants as he watered them, being careful not to slosh the water. While he poured and talked, he read Mrs. Oppenhuyzen's instructions. "Ten cc, primula, twelve cc, fuchsia." He poured from a measured watering can.
    "The Frisian character," de Gier said. "Consciously pure, so the impurities are repressed. In order to function optimally, Martha has to eat her husband. A literary joke? Not at all. A revelation, rather. This is serious stuff, true art, well written. The author is telling me, the intelligent reader, that here in Friesland, where true goodness reigns, evil is active under pressure. So how is it released?"
    De Gier returned the sleeping Eddy to the terrarium upstairs.
    He went back to the couch and immersed his mind further in the Frisian female aspect. Woman eats her man. De Gier penetrated into the next short story, where Martha beats her man to death. In the next tale she drowns him in a bath of black paint that, once he's quite dead, takes on a brilliant green color.
    The book dropped away. De Gier dropped away with it. He changed into a spider. So did Martha, but she was three times his size. She rang a bell at him while she ate him slowly. He woke up with a shriek and was no longer being eaten, but the ringing persisted. De Gier rolled off the couch and reached for the telephone.
    "Hello?"
    "We dropped down a dike," Grrjpstra said. "Save us, Sergeant."
    "Where are you?"
    "Between the towns of Tzum," Grgpstra said, "and Tzummarum. In a village, but it's closed. In a phone booth without a phone book. Do something, Sergeant."
    "You'll be all right," de Gier said, "but do tell me how you got there."

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    D O YOU TWO REALLY HAVE TO CONTENT YOURSELVES