Outsider in Amsterdam by Janwillem van de Wetering Page B

his position. The inspection isn’t very quick. But they would have caught him in the end and fined him right into bankruptcy.”
    Grijpstra looked up.
    “You said ‘we’ just now. If I remember correctly you said ‘but we earned some money.’ Do you mean that you had a share in the business?”
    The accountant laughed. “I see I am dealing with the police. No, no. Nobody is allowed to have a material interest in a society. But an accountant always identifies with his client and talks about ‘we’ and ‘ours.’ You can compare it to a mother who tells her small child ‘now
we
are going to do a little whiddle’ but the mother doesn’t whiddle, the child whiddles.”
    Grijpstra grinned and told himself that he should remember to repeat the explanation to de Gier.
    “So if Piet had continued on the way he was going he would have been in trouble?”
    The accountant made his fingertips touch and looked at his interrogator from above, using his high seat and tall body to advantage.
    “Perhaps. The inspection is busy, and very slow. Their servants are officials, nine-to-five men, moderately dedicated. With luck Piet could have gone on for years and years and evenif the inspection had become suspicious, well, there would have been time. He could have sold out and run for it. He might have made a small fortune and retired on an island somewhere. There are a lot of islands in the world.”
    “Piet was the only director?” Grijpstra asked.
    “Yes. He asked me to join him but I refused. The Society’s foundation was too rotten for me. His wife used to be a director but she never knew what went on. She left him anyway, you know that, don’t you?”
    “Yes,” Grijpstra said, “and what did he do with the money?”
    “Let’s see,” the accountant said and leafed through the ledger. “Here. The money wasn’t spent. He invested some in the house, repairs and so on, improving its value considerably. There is a nice car in the Society, which Piet used, and he bought a small house in the South, in the country somewhere. A good buy, its present value should be three times what he paid for it. His own official income was six hundred guilders a month, plus free board and lodging. He paid income tax on the six hundred, which is next to nothing.”
    Grijpstra looked at the ceiling. The accountant waited patiently.
    “So everything in the house, the stereo equipment, furniture, statues, inventory, stocks, were the Society’s property?”
    “Yes.”
    “And Piet could sell whatever he wanted to sell and pocket the money?”
    “Yes,” the accountant said. “In fact he
was
the Society. A difficult case, even for the inspection. If they had found out what he was doing they would have forced him to change it into a commercial company.”
    “To get a grip on him?”
    “Exactly,” said the accountant. “But what are you hinting at?”
    Grijpstra smiled his special noncommittal smile and managed to put some human warmth in it.
    “I don’t quite know myself,” he said. “I am gathering information, that’s all. Who would benefit from Piet’s death?”
    “His wife,” the accountant said, “but she ran away. To Paris I think; I seem to remember that Piet told me but I am not sure. If she is in Paris she couldn’t have murdered him there. In any case, I know her and she is not the killing type. She is a rather lovely but very vague woman. She wouldn’t hang anyone. And her little daughter is a toddler.”
    “Do you see any reason for suicide?” Grijpstra asked.
    The accountant sucked pensively on his cigar and began to cough. Suddenly he looked ferocious and the soggy cigar stub was killed with savage power.
    “Bah. These cigars aren’t what they are cracked up to be. Wet bags full of nicotine. Yagh.”
    Grijpstra waited patiently for the evil mood to pass.
    “ ‘Suicide,’ you said. I am no psychologist,” the accountant said.
    “I am asking you all the same,” Grijpstra said pleasantly.
    “I am an