The Corpse on the Dike

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  “Yes, sir,” the commissaris said, “she is a champion; she is also a lesbian, and the girl making up to the neighbor—a girl living in her house as a lodger—is very attractive. But there is no conclusive evidence, I think. No, not conclusive. The lady swears she didn’t do it. She holds a master’s degree in mathematics and she admits that the chance that another crack shot got our friend is very small. But the chance does exist, we must admit it. There are, after all, other people who know how to handle a gun, even in Holland. De Gier, for instance. De Gier, do you think you could manage a perfect shot like that?”

  De Gier sat up. “Perhaps,” he said. “I have had some very good results in the shooting gallery, and I have also been reasonably successful outside. Last year I hit a running robber in the leg at a sixty-foot distance and it was dark, and I had been running before I stopped to fire. But I think it was a fluke shot.”

  “Yes, yes,” the commissaris said impatiently, “we know about that. The question is whether you could have hit a man between the eyes at a thirty-three-foot distance? With one shot, mind you; we only found one empty cartridge in the garden.”

  De Gier was shaking his head. “I can’t say yes or no, sir. I might be able to do it but there are always circumstances. The wind, the weapon, my state of nerves. I can never hit anything after I have been riding my bicycle; it seems that the vibration of a cycle affects the muscles of my arm.”

  “There must be other crack shots in Holland,” the public prosecutor said, “and perhaps Sergeant de Gier is one of them. We also have to weigh the fact that the bullet wasn’t fired from either of the two pistols that the lady owns and that she surrendered to you.”

  “No,” Grijpstra said, “I don’t think the point weakens our suspicion. Guns are for sale, aren’t they? And members of shooting clubs can get guns easier than others. The people who repair guns often sell arms on the sly. They can buy parts and a full set of parts is a complete gun. And it’s very easy to buy firearms in Belgium. If Mary wanted to buy a gun she could buy one, and if she wanted to remove Tom Wernekink she wouldn’t kill him with one of her own guns.”

  “So?” the public prosecutor asked. “I think your evidence is heavy enough; you can hold her for another two days as far as I am concerned. I have said it before, but you don’t seem very pleased.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” the commissaris muttered, “but I had a second reason to ask for your opinion. You are a doctor of law and a skilled lawyer; you have a different sort of brain, not a police brain as I have. We are investigators but we never judge.”

  “I am not a judge,” the public prosecutor said. “I prosecute, that’s a different discipline altogether.”

  “I know, I know,” the commissaris said, “but still, your angle is different. I am not convinced about the lady’s guilt. Her denials are very straightforward. She isn’t a devious woman either; she is used to saying what she thinks.”

  “Do you like her?” the public prosecutor asked.

  The commissaris got up and began bending his knees and straightening up again. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I think I like her.”

  The public prosecutor looked around, trying to make contact with the three policemen. The commissaris was staring at the wall, Grijpstra was staring out the window and de Gier had closed his eyes. The public prosecutor got up and waved his hands. “Look here,” he said, “what the hell do you want of me? Aren’t you exaggerating the importance of my office? All I can do is give permission twice to hold a suspect for two days. I admit that the first request is no more than a formality; if a police commissaris tells me that he suspects a person of having committed a serious crime I will allow him to hold the suspect for two days for questioning. The second request is more serious and I go into the matter. I did go into this matter. I saw your lady, I weighed the evidence, I really studied the case. So all right, you have another two days. But what is another two days? Forty-eight hours pass pretty quickly, don’t they? She isn’t all that uncomfortable in her cell, is she? Why don’t you wait for the judge? If she still hasn’t convinced you of her innocence after another two days, the judge has to decide. Wait for the judge!”

  “Another two days,” the commissaris said softly.

  “So what the hell?” the public prosecutor said, getting red in the face.

  “It isn’t just that I like her,” the commissaris said; “there’s something else.”

  The public prosecutor sighed. “That’s better. Tell me about it.”

  “We laughed together,” the commissaris said.

  “Laughed?” said Grijpstra. “So that’s what it was? When de Gier and I had been out of the room? I thought I noticed something when I came back, in fact I thought that she had given in.”

  “No, no. She never gave in. But something funny happened and I laughed and she laughed with me. Suddenly she became relaxed, normal, pleasant even.”

  “Funny?” de Gier asked. “What were you and the lady laughing about, sir?”

  “Never mind.”

  Grijpstra grinned. “Must have been something about you, de Gier; I am never funny.”

  The mustache of the public prosecutor began to bristle. “What’s all this now? So she laughed, so something funny happened, so what?”

  “Fear and amusement do not go together,” the commissaris said.

  The public prosecutor’s mood changed. He remembered the many conversations he had had with the commissaris, both at Headquarters and at home. He also remembered his admiration for the frail old man who so often approached a problem from an unusual, but often correct, angle. He sighed again. “Well, we’ll have to go on with her. We can’t let her go. I don’t see any possibility of that at all. If she killed that unfortunate young man it must have been an act of insane jealousy; that she appears to be reasonable and normal now means nothing. If she is an aggressive person—and we have every reason to believe that she is—she may become violent again, when the circumstances are right. She may have been jealous of the young man because he was making an impression on the girl. The girl is still alive. We don’t want Mary van Krompen to kill the girl as well, do we?”

  Grijpstra was nodding.

  “You agree, adjutant?”

  “I am afraid I do,” Grijpstra said. “The girl will suspect Mary of having killed Tom Wsmekink. She may say something to that effect.”

  “Yes,” de Gier said.

  The commissaris was still doing his gymnastic exercises. He stopped now and looked at his visitors. “Thank you for your time, gentlemen,” he said softly.

  4

  IT WAS THE FOURTH TIME DE GIER PASSED THE HOUSE AND he still hadn’t found a parking place. The unmarked Volkswagen was a police vehicle, of course, and he didn’t have to worry about getting a ticket, but he did worry about the huge truck behind him, hooting impatiently.

  “Yes,” de Gier muttered, “I’ll get out of your way, but where do I put the car?”

  The truck driver honked his horn again. De Gier accelerated. “Walk,” he said in a loud voice. “Walk! It’ll be good for you.”

  Houses crowded the dike on both sides and any free land had been fenced in. He drove to the end of the dike where the road widened and parked under a “No Parking” sign. Then he walked back. The walk took ten minutes. He passed Mary van Krompen’s house and began to count. “Here,” he said and stopped on the narrow footway. The house looked in good repair, a two-storied cottage painted dark green.

  “Cat with Boots On,” de Gier muttered. It was all he knew. A friend of Thomas Wernekink. The only visitor ever seen in Wernekink’s house. So far the people on the dike had been of very little help. Even Mary hadn’t told them much, not even during the third interrogation. The commissaris would be talking to her again right now but she would probably be repeating herself: “No, I didn’t kill him.”

  Evelien Dapper hadn’t told them much either. This Cat with Boots On would be some strange type, a man who always dresses in corduroy suits. Unusual suits. Gold colored, or violet
, or some other weird shade. Wears boots, high boots, very shiny. Long black hair and a heavy mustache. Big brown eyes. A large nose. Lives with his girlfriend, a beautiful woman. Mary claimed the Cat was in business; Evelien didn’t know or care. And de Gier knew the Cat’s age. Around forty years old, as old as de Gier himself.

  “And there’s something else I know,” de Gier said as he pressed the bell again. “He isn’t in.” There was no name-plate on the door. “Pity Grijpstra isn’t here,” de Gier thought, but Grijpstra was in Rotterdam, checking up on Wernekink’s background. Headquarters was short of detectives. The corpse in the canal and the corpse in the park had both proved to be baffling cases and the possibility of crime couldn’t be ignored, so Geurts and Sietsema and even young Cardozo—the new detective who had been assigned to the “murder squad"—were ferreting about, sniffing for tracks and connections.

  De Gier cursed. He had read the reports on the two corpses and felt certain there had been no crime. The dead girl in the park would be an ordinary heroin case, killed by her own needle. The old lady floating in the canal was sure to have fallen in. She had been full of alcohol. Perhaps she had been pushed but why push an old drunken woman who would fall into the canal by herself if left alone long enough? She had been well known in a number of cheap pubs. And the girl with the needle pricks on her arms was also known.

  Maybe this Cat is mad, de Gier thought. Maybe he’ll come charging out of the house firing an old muzzle loader. If he dresses like that he may be deranged in other ways too. And everybody who lives on this crazy dike knows I’m a policeman. They probably warned him off. I’ve been driving the VW to and fro for the last half hour and everybody knows the police use VW’s; it’s high time we changed our taste. They should give us Porsches like the state police use on the speedways, or Ferraris. A Ferrari would be just the thing to race around in. They are small and fast, and they look all right and…

  The door opened. “Yes?” the beautiful woman asked.

  Beautiful, de Gier thought. God shit almighty she is beautiful. That’s all he thought. The definition was unavoidable. She really was beautiful.

  “Morning, madam,” de Gier said. “I am a policeman. Can I come in?”

  “Of course,” the woman said. “You don’t have to be a policeman to come in. By all means come in—even if it’s only for your own safety. That footway is dangerous. People are always being hurt by motorized bicycles here. These young men have no sense. They race around and if there’s a car or something obstructing their way they take the footway. I hate them. Come in.”

  She walked ahead of him in the narrow corridor and de Gier kept on repeating his original thought but something had been added to it. He had noticed the size of the woman. De Gier was a little over six feet tall but the woman was taller. Six-foot-three perhaps.

  It doesn’t matter, de Gier thought; the proportions are right. It doesn’t matter at all. He noted the firm buttocks accentuated by her well-fitting slacks and the shapely bare feet. He also saw the long dark brown hair hanging down her back.

  “In here,” the woman said; “this is our best room. It has a view of the river. You are just in time for coffee. Have you come about the death of that poor man on the dike?”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “My name is Ursula,” the woman said. “Ursula Herkulanovna. I am Russian. You can call me Ursula. What’s your name?”

  “De Gier.”

  She pulled a face. The large sensuous mouth pouted. “Bah. I hate names starting with a G. You pronounce them so horribly, as if there were a live fly in your throat. What’s your first name?”

  “Rinus.”

  The mouth still sulked.

  “You don’t like ‘Rinus’ either?”

  “No,” she said.

  “You can call me sergeant,” de Gier said hopefully.

  “Sergeant?” Ursula asked. “Is that all you are? My grandfather was a colonel of the Czar.”

  “That’s all I am—sergeant,” de Gier said. “Sergeant Rinus de Gier.”

  “Never mind,” Ursula said. “You still get coffee, sergeant. I’ll never get used to this country. Low ranks are important here I think. There was a man here the other day; he said he was a clerk, but he came from the Tax Department and he threatened to confiscate the house and the car and everything the Cat and I own because we hadn’t paid tuppence halfpenny to some official or other. He was very nice too.”

  “The clerk?” de Gier asked.

  “Yes. A big man. He said he rows boats on the river for fun. You do that as well, sergeant?”

  “No,” de Gier said firmly.

  “But surely you go in for some sort of sport?”

  “No,” de Gier said. “All I do is feed my cat and water my plants on the balcony.”

  Ursula laughed, a full-throated laugh. She was standing very close to de Gier and suddenly she bent forward and brushed his cheek with her lips. “I like you, sergeant. You don’t show off. This rowing man sat here for hours and told me all about himself. A champion rower. I couldn’t get rid of him. He looked nice, with his wide shoulders, narrow hips and strong face, but he bored me to tears. The Cat was upset too when he came in and found this clown in the house. He gave him his pennies and showed him the door.”

  “Isn’t the Cat in?” de Gier asked.

  “No. As a matter of fact I am supposed to go fetch him. He is in town somewhere and hasn’t got his car, but there is no hurry. Sit down and smoke a cigarette and look at the boats on the river; I’ll get the coffee. I have some cake too. What sort of cake do you like?”

  “Whipped cream and pineapple,” de Gier said.

  “That’s what goes on top of the cake; I just have cake.”

  “No cake, please,” de Gier said, and stared as Ursula slid out of the room. She slid, de Gier thought and lit a cigarette. His hand shook a little; he could feel the after effect in his spine of the brushing lips. She didn’t walk, she slid, he mused. Girls do that on Grijpstra’s TV but they always look ridiculous—this woman looks very elegant when she moves. And did you see her breasts?

  He looked out the window without seeing the antique sailing craft tacking upstream. The boat looked most impressive carrying all her sails, mainsail, foresail and jib. De Gier liked boats; he could spend hours watching them, but he didn’t see this boat even though it passed close by the windows.

  Yes, he told himself, I saw her breasts. Men always go for breasts. Of course I saw them. And her shoulders. But everything is perfect about her. Her hands too.

  He pushed his lips out and blew all the air out of his lungs. It was a trick the judo instructors had taught him in the police gymnasium. When you fall or get pushed suddenly or find yourself in an unexpected and difficult position, breathe out. Then breathe in slowly again. Shake your head. Start again. He shook his head. This, definitely, was a sudden and difficult position to be in. He hadn’t expected Ursula.

  Ursula, de Gier thought and frowned. He had known a girl called Ursula, a long time ago when he was still at school. A dumpy little thing with a faint mustache and pimples. A girl who always got top marks. He would have to get used to this new association. The other Ursula had been a powerful girl as well and he had disliked her wholeheartedly.

  The breathing exercise cleared his brain and he now had an opportunity to study his surroundings. The room was well designed and well furnished. Stone tiles, white plaster walls, a modern oil painting showing two little boys shooting marbles in what seemed to be a desert. There were a lot of flowering plants—some of them delicate—that reminded him of pictures of a clearing in a tropical forest. Orchids. He remembered that orchids require a lot of care. Perhaps Ursula cared for the plants, or would it be the mysterious Cat? He looked around for photographs but there weren’t any. Strange, he thought, everybody displays photographs, with silver frames, on the piano. There was no piano either. The furniture was heavy, three chairs grouped around the window, large comfortable chairs with a profusion of cushions. A dining table h
ad been pushed against the wall. He was admiring a subtle and intricately designed Persian rug that covered half the floor, when Ursula came back carrying a tray.

  “Here,” she said, “pineapple with whipped cream.”

  “I was only joking,” de Gier said.

  “You aren’t going to eat it? I whipped the cream specially for you and opened a can.”

  “Sure, I’ll eat it,” de Gier said, and scratched his bottom.

  “Thanks a lot. Very nice of you.”

  “Hey,” Ursula said.

  “Pardon?”

  “You’re scratching your bottom,” Ursula said. “Do you always do that? What a disgusting habit!”

  De Gier stopped scratching and blushed. Ursula giggled. “You mustn’t mind what I say. Go on, eat your cream. I’ll watch you. I’m on a diet.”

  De Gier began to eat, closing his eyes with every spoonful and grunting to himself with delight. “Marvelous,” he muttered. “Delicious. Absolutely delicious. This is the best cream I have ever eaten and the pineapple tastes as if it were picked an hour ago.”

  “Stop that,” Ursula said, watching him carefully.

  But de Gier didn’t stop and when he was halfway through his plate Ursula screamed and pulled the dish out of his hands. “You’re driving me crazy,” she said and gobbled what he had left.

  De Gier grinned.

  “You are evil,” Ursula said, opening her eyes until they glared from above the high cheekbones. “Can you imagine what I’ll look like when I grow fat? I’m enormous already and with fat on my bones, horrible yellow grease, I’ll be a pudding of flesh. Do you want me to change into a gigantic pudding? Do you?” She almost screamed the last words at him.

  “No,” de Gier said happily, “and you shouldn’t worry about your size. You are big, of course, but you don’t look bad.”

  She put the dish down with a clatter. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “Don’t look so innocent,” Ursula said. “You are being pretty nasty you know. Men either flatter me or they run. You are doing neither. What do you want anyway?”