De Gier gaped. Asta stopped writing.
"Did I hear you correctly?" de Gier asked. "Or am I going mad too?"
"You heard me correctly, but the man was mad."
"Did you see the car again?"
"No. He wanted to show it to me, but I refused to leave the desk. Damn it all, I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm a hotel manager. There had been all the other nonsense too. His watch disappeared from his bathroom and turned up an hour later in the spot where it should have been all the time. He sent his clothes for dry cleaning and the wrong clothes came back to his room. One of the girls checked, but by that time they had changed into the right clothes again. Mr. Boronski was suffering from some form of paranoia. He hallucinated. He was physically ill too, he complained of stomach cramps and we had to serve him porridge for dinner; he exhausted the room service waiter by phoning for milk every half hour. I'm glad he has left us."
"Yes," de Gier said.
"I'm sorry he is dead, of course, sergeant. Now if there is anything else I can help you with." The manager looked at his watch. "I'm afraid I…"
De Gier got up. "Thank you."
Asta stumbled in the corridor, the sergeant stooped to catch her arm, and she turned and kissed him on the mouth.
"Hey!"
"I've been wanting to do that, do you mind?"
"No."
"Kiss me again."
"You kissed me. I don't kiss colleagues during working hours. Would you like coffee?"
They sat in the coffee shop of the hotel for a while. Asta served the sergeant, she even stirred his coffee for him. He grinned.
"You're a slave. I thought that young ladies don't do that sort of thing anymore."
"What sort of thing?"
"Be servile."
"I love to be servile," Asta whispered. "I'm old-fashioned. I like to be on my back and the man to be on me. I like to oblige. It's a pity you have nothing to carry, I would carry it for you, even if it was very heavy."
"Have you had many men?"
She pursed her thick lower lip and a tiny frown appeared on her smooth forehead. She blew at a curl that hung in her eyes.
"Hmm. Not too many. I tried some young men but they weren't any good, too quick. The older men are usually married, and when they embrace me, I know that they're looking at their watch behind my neck. I can see it in their eyes. They're slow and polite, but they go away when it's over. You wouldn't be like that, would you?"
"I might be. Who did you believe, the manager or Boronski?"
"Boronski."
"Why?"
"I saw his corpse, remember," Asta said. "I didn't like him at all, not with that low forehead and the eyes too close together. I've known men with low foreheads and close eyes that I liked, but Boronski had something nasty about him. But he wouldn't lie like that. And that manager didn't really exist, did you notice that?"
"How do you mean?"
"He was just like the hotel. It looks all right, but once you're in it you can see that it's all hollow. They have tried to recapture the dignity of the past; they've got the right architecture and the right trimmings, but there's nothing in it. Everything is hollow, filled with air. He was too. He's like a doll I once had. I threw it away. Even when I scratched its face and tore its clothes, it wasn't there."
"How do we find out who told us the truth?"
She giggled. De Gier looked up. The giggle was vulgar. It reminded him of the cry of a disheveled parrot in the city's zoo. He would always spend a few moments with it when he strayed into the zoo. The parrot was a jolly common bird, quite unlike its splendid mates eyeing the passing crowd arrogantly from their high perches. So far Asta had impressed Viim as refined, different from the other policewomen he had worked with.
"Are you testing me or don't you know how to find out whether Boronski saw things that weren't there?"
"Let's say I'm testing you," de Gier said.
She reached into her bag and gave him her notebook and her pen. "No. Write the solution down and fold the paper, then I'll tell you what I suggest doing and we'll see if we have the same solution."
He wrote while she looked the other way. "Okay. Tell me what we do."
"Boronski must have parked his Porsche close to the hotel. We'll find it and see which side the steering wheel is on. We know that it had the wheel on the right side when the manager saw it. If it's on the other side now, Boronski spoke the truth."
"Right," de Gier said.
"Can I see what you wrote?"
"No." He crumpled the paper and put it in his pocket.
"Am I right?"
"Let's find the car."
They found the car a few blocks away on the Princes-canal. It had two traffic tickets under the windshield wiper. De Gier made a note of its location, phoned Headquarters from the nearest booth, and told them to tow it away. The car's steering wheel was on the left side.
4
Their eyes are the same color, Grijpstra thought as he watched the communication between the commissaris and the girl. He still referred to her as the girl, and the memory of the divine vision wherein he had given her to de Gier was clear in his mind. The sunlit antique room which the commissaris used as an office should have comforted him, as it had done so many times when the detectives discussed a case under the benevolent guidance of their chief, but it didn't now. At first he felt good again and easily fell into his role as an archangel handing out a sublimely beautiful girl to a special mortal, his cherished friend. The adjutant mused, and sucked on his cigar, which tasted bad but cost too much to throw away. The spotlight of the vision veered away from Asta, whose crossed legs showed enough of her thighs to stimulate Grijpstra's carnal appetite which he had transferred so successfully to the sergeant, to the pond that had formed part of his original fantasy. At that time, the pond was filled with various animal shapes, pleasurably engaged in play. He could see them more clearly now. There were monstrosities. A reptilian bird had caught something that might be a squirrel but had the legs of a frog. There was an evil glint in the bird's eye; it was relishing the frantic movements of its helpless prey. A winged fish was about to leave the water to attack a many-headed bird of splendor preparing to drink from the water that was no longer clear. Another shape, partly fish, partly animal, with a hooded head, floated about, engaged in reading a small book, a book of spells and curses, Grijpstra assumed, as he tried to read the text. He shook himself and tuned in to the conversation.
"So we have an indication," the commissaris said, "a concrete fact we may call it. Very good of you, Asta, we should be grateful to Sergeant Jurriaans for lending you to us. You saved us some work, although I think that the value of Boronski's other accusations should be ascertained as well. Perhaps the sergeant can go back to the hotel this evening and find out what name the lady used when she registered. It may be her true name, and that part of Boronski's tale may be untrue, although if one part of his nightmare connects with reality, the others may… It was you who suggested finding the car, wasn't it, Asta?"