Janwillem De Wetering - Death of a Hawker

"Yes, Madam," the Constable said quietly. "Would you mind telling me who you are? And where you are?"

"He is dead," the soft veiled voice said, "dead. He is on the floor. His head is all bloody. When I came into the room he was still breathing but now he is dead."

She had said it three times already.

"Yes, madam," the constable said again. There was patience in the way he said it, understanding. Love, perhaps. But the constable was acting. He had been well trained. He was only concerned about rinding out who was speaking to him, and where she might be. The constable had been working in the central radio room of Amsterdam Police Headquarters for some years now. He took a lot of calls. Anybody who dials two six times gets through to the central radio room. Anybody means a lot of people. Some of them are serious citizens, some of them are mad. And some of them are temporarily mad. They have seen something, experienced a sensation. The experience may have knocked them tree of their usual routine, perhaps to the point where they are suffering from shock. Or they are drunk. Or they just want to talk to someone, to know that they are not alone, and there is someone amongst the million inhabitants of Holland's capital who cares enough to listen. Someone who is alive, not just a taped voice which tells them that God is Good and All is Well.

"You say he is dead," the constable said quietly. "I am very sorry about that, but I can only come to see you if I know where you are. I can help you, madam, but where do you want me to go and look for you? Where are you, madam?"

The constable wasn't planning to go to see the lady. It was five o'clock in the afternoon and he would be off duty in fifteen minutes. He was planning to go home, have a meal and go to bed. He had put in a lot of hours that day, many more than he was used to. The central radio room was managed by a skeleton staff, short of three senior constables and a sergeant. The constable thought of his colleagues and smiled grimly. He could picture them clearly enough, for he had watched them leaving the large courtyard of Headquarters that morning. White-helmeted, carrying cane shields and long leather sticks, part of one of the many platoons which had roared off in blue armor-plated vans. It was riot time in Amsterdam again. They hadn't had riots for years now and the screaming mobs, flying bricks, howling fanatics leading swaying crowds, exploding gas grenades, bleeding faces, the sirens of ambulances and police vehicles were almost forgotten. Now it had started all over again. The constable had volunteered for riot duty but someone had to man the telephones, so he was still here, listening to the lady. The lady expected him to come and see her. He wouldn't. But once he knew where she was, a car would race out and there would be policemen in the car and the lady was now speaking to the police. Police are police.

The constable was looking at his form. Name and a dotted line. Address, and a dotted line. Subject, dead man. Time, 1700 hours. She had probably gone up to call the dead man for tea, or an early dinner. She had called him from the corridor, or the dining room. He hadn't answered. So she had gone up to his room.

"Your name, please, madam," the constable said again. His voice hadn't changed. He wasn't hurrying her.

"Esther Rogge," the woman said.

"Your address, madam?"

"Straight Tree Ditch Four."

"Who is the dead man, madam?"

"My brother Abe."

"You are sure he is dead, madam?"

"Yes. He is dead. He is on the floor. His head is all bloody." She had said it before.

"Right," the constable said briskly. "We'll be right there, madam. Don't worry about a thing now, madam. We'll be right there."

The constable slipped the little form through a hole in the glass window which separated him from the radio operator. He waved at the operator. The operator nodded, shoving two other forms aside.

"Three one," the operator said.

"Three one," Detective-Sergeant de Gier said.

"Straight Tree Ditch Four. Dead man. Bloody head. Name is Abe Rogge. Ask for his sister, Esther Rogge. Over."

Sergeant de Gier looked at the little loudspeaker underneath the dashboard of the gray VW he was driving.

"Straight Tree Ditch?" he asked in a high voice. "How do you expect me to get there? There are thousands of people milling about in the area. Haven't you heard about the riots?"

The operator shrugged.

"Are you there?" de Gier asked.

"I am here," the operator said. "Just go there. The death has nothing to do with the riots, I think."

"Right," de Gier said, still in the same high voice.

"Good luck," the operator said. "Out."

De Gier accelerated and Adjutant-Detective Grijpstra sat up.

"Easy," Grijpstra said. "We are in an unmarked car and that traffic light is on red. They should have sent a marked car, a car with a siren."

"I don't think there are any left," de Gier said, and stopped at the traffic light. "Everybody is out there, everybody we know and a lot of military police as well. I haven't seen a police car all day." He sighed. "The crowd will clobber us the minute they see us go through the roadblocks."

The light changed and the car shot off.

"Easy," Grijpstra said.

"No," de Gier said. "Let's go home. This isn't the right day to play detectives."

Grijpstra grinned and shifted his heavy body into a more comfortable position, holding on to the car's roof and the dashboard at the same time. "You are all right," he said. "You don't look like a policeman. They'll go for me. Crowds always go for me."

De Gier took a corner and avoided a parked truck by forcing the VW's right wheels onto the sidewalk. They were in a narrow alley leading to the Newmarket, the center of the riots. Nobody was about. The riots had sucked people into their vortex while others stayed inside, preferring the small rooms of their seventeenth-century homes to the raw danger of violent hysteria which stalked the streets, changing apparently normal people into robots swinging fists and primitive weapons, intent on attacking and destroying the State which, through their bloodshot and bulging eyes, showed itself as the Police, rows and rows of blue-uniformed and white-helmeted warriors, nonhuman, machines of oppression. They saw the riot police guarding the exit of the alley and a commanding gloved hand was raised to stop the car. De Gier turned his window down and showed his card.

The face under the helmet was unfamiliar and de Gier could read the words on the badge pinned on the man's jacket. "THE HAGUE," the badge said.

"You from The Hague?" de Gier asked, surprised.

"Yes, sergeant, there are about fifty of us here. We were rushed in this morning."

"Police from The Hague," de Gier said surprised. "What next?"

"Rotterdam, I suppose," the constable said. "There are plenty of cities in Holland. We'll all come and help you on a nice day like this. Just give the word. You want to go through?"

"Yes," de Gier said. "We are supposed to investigate a manslaughter on the other side of the square."

The constable shook his head. "I'll let you through but you'll get stuck anyway. The water cannon has just charged the crowd and they are in a foul mood now. One of my colleagues has caught a brick full in the face and they rushed him when he fell. We got him to the ambulance just in time. Maybe you should try to get there on foot."

De Gier turned and looked at Grijpstra, who smiled reassuringly. Inspired by his superior's calm, de Gier nodded at the constable. "We'll park her here."

"Right," the constable said, and turned. The crowd was coming their way, pushed by a charge of unseen policemen on the other side of the square. The constable braced himself, raising his shield to ward off a brick, a heavy man suddenly lurched forward and the constable hit him on the shoulder with his stick. The blow made a dull sound and the heavy man faltered. There were a dozen policemen between the detectives and the crowd now and Grijpstra pulled de Gier onto a porch.