"You think this is the right way?" Grypstra asked.

"What are you mumbling, sir?" Grypstra asked a few minutes later.

"I'm sinful," the commissaris said. "It's rather weak to manipulate a lady who's having a mental breakdown. Indeed! And did I learn anything?" He banged his fist on the dashboard. "Nothing, Adjutant. But what do you expect? What can anyone expect from someone like me? Bald, small, with one and a half hairs on my naked skull, with spectacles without rims, a suit complete with waistcoat. Pathetic, Adjutant, a clown from long ago, expressing his ignorance in old-fashioned language, rattling a watch chain on his belly."

Grijpstra glanced at the commissaris. "Your neck is not too wrinkled. On the contrary, it's still quite smooth."

Looking ahead again, he read a sign aloud: "Tzum."

The commissaris pondered. "That Gyske," he murmured. "She wasn't too fond of Douwe Scherjoen."

"Tzummarum," Grijpstra said, reading another sign. "Marum means 'sea.' The Romans must have been here."

"We're lost again," the commissaris said. "We shouldn't be close to the sea. The Romans came to collect taxes too. Another bunch of foreigners injecting their evil into my pure soul. Leeuwarden is more inland. Better turn the car, but be careful, this dike is rather narrow."

\\\\\ 9 /////

"I won't have it," Mrs. Cardozo said. "You're not to clean your pistol on my kitchen table. The oil gets into the wood. That's expensive oak, I'll have you know, I polish the top daily."

"Please, Mother," Cardozo said. "Don't bother me now. You've no idea how tricky… look, see what you made me do? You know what I'm doing? I make the light reflect from my thumbnail, like this, and then I look through the barrel. I'm seeing spirals now, gleaming in blue steel. I can see that when the barrel is clean. When it isn't, I see some nasty grit."