Outsider in Amsterdam Read Online Free PDF Page A

alive, they had “tjingtjanged” him, cut him up with their razorsharp “krisses,” starting at the feet.
    “Your father came from Holland?” Grijpstra asked.
    “My grandfather,” van Meteren said. “My grandmother wasa Papuan, a chief’s daughter. My grandfather worked for the government, he was only a petty official, but a petty official is very powerful in New Guinea. My mother is also a pure Papuan, she is still alive and lives in Hollandia. I arrived here eight years ago. I had to choose in nineteen sixty-five whether I wanted to be an Indonesian or Dutch. I chose to be Dutch and had to run for my life.”
    “And what do you do for a living?”
    “I am on the force,” van Meteren said, and laughed when he saw surprise glide over the faces of his investigators. He had a nice laugh, showing strong, even, very white teeth under the small pointed mustache and the flat wide nose.
    “Don’t let it upset you,” he said. “I won’t arrest you. I am a traffic warden. All I can do is give you a ticket for parking your car on the sidewalk and you won’t have to pay the fine anyway.”
    “Traffic warden?” Grijpstra asked.
    Van Meteren nodded. “I joined the department five years ago. In New Guinea I was a real policeman, constable first class because I could read and write and my name was Dutch. I commanded thirty men. Constable first class is a high rank even there. But when I came out here they told me I was too old for active duty. I was thirty years old. They gave me a job as a clerk in one of their bureaus in The Hague. I kept on asking to be allowed to join the force and eventually they made me a traffic warden and assigned me to street duty. I have two stripes now and I am armed with a rubber truncheon. Every six months I apply for a transfer to the real police but they keep on finding reasons to refuse me.”
    “A traffic warden is a real policeman too,” Grijpstra said.
    Van Meteren shrugged his shoulders and looked at the wall.
    “What exactly was your job in the New Guinea police?” de Gier asked.
    “Field duty. During the last few years I served with the Birdhead Corps, in the South West. We watched the coastand caught Indonesian commandos and paratroopers sneaking in by boat or being dropped. We caught hundreds of them.”
    De Gier looked at the large linen map of New Guinea that had been pinned on the wall. The map looked worn and had broken on the folds. There were two other maps on the wall, a map of Holland and another of the IJsselmeer, Holland’s small inland sea, now transformed into a large lake by the thirty-five kilometer dyke that stops the rollers of the North Sea. “Could I see your traffic warden’s identification?”
    The little document looked very neat. Van Meteren showed his New Guinea identification as well, yellow at the corners and spotted by sweat, its plastic cover torn right through.
    Both Grijpstra and de Gier studied the documents carefully. A Dutch constable first class from the other side of the world. A memento of the past. They looked at the imprint of the rubber stamp and the signature of an inspector-general. They spent some time on the photograph. Van Meteren was shown in uniform, the metal strips had glinted in the light of the photographer’s flashbulb. A strong young face, proud of his rank and his responsibility and of his Corps, the Corps State Police of Dutch New Guinea, part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
    “Well, colleague,” Grijpstra said, “and what do you think? Did anyone help Piet when he was being hanged?”
    Van Meteren’s eyes were sad when he replied.
    “It is possible. He may have fallen. I studied the room and I have thought about what I saw but it is always dangerous to come to a conclusion. Piet may have knocked his head against something. And there may have been a fight, it wouldn’t be unlikely because he had a very short temper. His state of mind wasn’t good, not lately anyway. His wife and child have left him and refuse