DeKok and the Somber Nude

by A. C. Baantjer

  The two detectives got out of the car. Silently they approached the men. There were four broad and strong types from the Amsterdam Municipal Sanitation Department. Their weather-beaten, somber faces were shiny from rain. They moved out of the way. There was a dirty piece of canvas on the ground at their feet.

  A slightly greying man, apparently the oldest of the group, looked up, turned to DeKok, and asked, “You’re from homicide?”

  “Warmoes Street,” confirmed DeKok, nodding.

  The man rubbed the rain from his face with the sleeve of his slicker.

  “Just look,” he said. His voice trembled.

  He leaned over, took a corner of the canvas, and lifted it carefully. Slowly a head became visible, the roughly severed head of a girl.

  DeKok felt the blood drain from his head. His stomach rebelled. He swallowed quickly and took a deep breath to suppress the inclination to vomit. He heard Vledder panting next to him. DeKok pulled the collar of his raincoat closer around his neck, trying to close the gap between the coat and his hat. It was an odd gesture. He just needed time to get over his revulsion. Any confrontation with death brought him to a confused halt. Despite his many years of experience and numerous encounters with violent death, he had never been able to get used to it. Usually he was able to hide his emotions behind an expressionless, cold facade. Bracing himself, DeKok moved to take a closer look at the head. He squatted down and took the fabric from the older man’s hand, lifting the canvas slightly higher.

  The face was waxen. The almost transparent skin was covered with dirt and crusts of coagulated blood. The long blonde hair was flattened by the rain and stuck around the neck, mercifully hiding some of the horror that was visible there. The head had been severed just above the torso. DeKok looked at the half-open eyes. Carefully he lifted the eyelids one by one. The irises were cornflower blue. He looked around. Within his grasp he found a few pieces of a broken clothes hanger. He picked up a piece and used it to lift the upper lip slightly and pressed down on the lower lip. Two rows of straight, pearl white teeth became visible. There were no fillings in the molars.

  DeKok tossed aside the pieces of hanger. Mentally reviewing the description of the missing girl, he knew there was no doubt—none whatsoever—who this was. The severed head was that of Nanette Bogaard.

  DeKok pressed his lips together. His fears had come true. Nanette had been horribly murdered. The murderer had even taken the time and the trouble to sever the head.

  He looked at the man who was squatting down next to him.

  “Is this all you found?”

  The man shook his head.

  “Over there,” he said somberly, “is the rest.”

  Carefully, with a tender, almost devout gesture, he covered the girl’s head with the scrap of canvas. Then he rose and walked away. DeKok, Vledder, and the others followed him. They walked slowly, silently, in single file. It was like a funerary procession in the rain. All that was out of place were the garbage and discarded household items. Their shoes sank in the mud, as if they were crossing a swamp. The damp stink of decay permeated everything. A couple of crows sheltered under a rusty furnace. As the men passed, the birds flew away, screeching loudly. A large yellowed doll missing a leg stared at the sky, displaying a soulless smile.

  The older man halted next to a few pieces of cardboard sheltered by the bulldozer. He waited patiently for everyone to join him. They formed a circle. Then he removed the cardboard. The shock was slightly less this time.

  Placed in one spot were the severed parts of the body: the arms; the long, slender legs; the petite torso. There was no clothing to speak of. The red nail polish on the toes stood out sharply against the pallid limbs. In contrast to the head, there seemed to be less dirt and blood on the remaining body parts. Apparently they had been lying in the rain a little longer and had been washed by it.

  DeKok bent over to take a closer look at the disfigured remains. It seemed a professional with anatomical knowledge had been at work. There was no question of a hasty, panicky butchering. He had seen that too many times in the past. On the contrary, in order to remove the limbs from the torso, only the absolute minimum of cuts had been applied. Yes, concluded DeKok, this took more than a smattering of anatomical knowledge.

  His glance drifted to the petite torso. As far as he could see there were no other outward indications of injury or mutilation.

  DeKok remained in a squatting position for some time. Subconsciously his thoughts went to the large doll they had just passed, the doll with the frozen smile and the single leg. It had been thrown out. Children had played with it. They had walked with it. Had dressed it, undressed it, cared for it, until…

  “My wife,” he said suddenly, loudly, “still keeps the dolls from her childhood.”

  “What?” asked Vledder.

  DeKok looked at him, confused, absentminded. He rubbed his eyes with a tired gesture.

  “Nothing, my boy, nothing,” he answered, evading the question.

  He rose slowly and turned to the older man, apparently the foreman.

  “Did you find all the remains?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Claus…Claus Boer.”

  DeKok turned to Vledder and signaled for him to take notes.

  “What did you find first?”

  The man from the sanitation department did not answer at once. He took the large pieces of cardboard and carefully covered the body parts.

  “First I found a leg.”

  “And then?”

  The man turned and gestured around.

  “Look, mister, when the garbage is dumped from the trucks or lifted from the barges by the crane, we get heaps, big heaps, of garbage. The first task is to smooth it out. I use the bulldozer to distribute it equally, so to speak. Of course everything you can imagine is in the garbage. We find the craziest things. So we usually don’t even notice all that spills out. It’s all just garbage, you see. But this morning, suddenly I saw a leg sticking out of the dirt. At first I thought it was the leg of a mannequin, you know, a store dummy. That happens sometimes. But it looked so real, you know…too real. Well, I stopped the machine and took a closer look. It was for real, you know, a real leg, I mean.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I wanted to call the police right away. But we’re sorta isolated here, you know. There’s no phone nearby. It’s a good twenty-minute walk from here to the main gate. So I decided to wait for somebody. There are no barges due today, but the trucks do come in all the time.”

  The man wiped the rain from his face, then continued.

  “Anyway, I lifted the leg from the garbage and put it aside. A little later I found an arm. I really started to look then, you know. It wasn’t too difficult. It took me less than fifteen minutes to find all the pieces.”

  “Did you find the head at the same time?”

  “No, I found that later, you know. That was after, I mean after I had asked somebody to call you.”

  DeKok nodded.

  “Did you find the pieces far apart?”

  “No, I mean, not so far. They were all more or less, eh, within a thirty- to forty-five-foot area. Not farther, anyway. You know, I think it all came from the same truck.”

  “When, do you think?”

  “Yesterday…yes, yesterday afternoon, I think. You see, we work alternately—alternate days. What is dumped today is equalized tomorrow, you know. Today I’m equalizing what was dumped yesterday, you see. I was working here, and here I found it. So it was dumped yesterday.”

  Slowly DeKok glanced around the enormous mountains of garbage.

  “Mr. Boer,” he said after a while, “do you have any idea where this particular garbage could have originated?”

  “You mean, eh, the garbage with the body parts?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s a bit difficult to say, mister. It’s probably from West. Yes, Amsterdam West. But where exactly, I don’t know. Could be
any one of lots of neighborhoods. Take your pick: Ditch Canal, Mill Lake, Ox Village, Halfway. Good luck figuring out exactly. If the load had come by barge, it might have been easier. The crane driver usually knows where the barges come from, but that’s usually the old part of town, you know. West all comes by truck.”

  DeKok smiled faintly.

  “That’s quite an area. Half of Amsterdam lives in West.”

  The man made a helpless gesture.

  “Yes, I understand,” he said sympathetically. “Yes, I know, I mean, it’s important for you to know where to start looking. You need that information. Believe me, I would be only too glad to help. The thing is, even if I knew exactly what truck had dumped that particular load, it wouldn’t solve the problem, you know. I mean, the trucks we use today have a much larger load capacity than they once did. They cover large areas.”

  “Do you think it safe to assume the body parts, along with the garbage in which they were found, all came from the same truck?”

  The sanitation man nodded emphatically.

  “Oh, yes, that’s correct.”

  “Thus I can rule out the possibility that the corpse, the pieces of the corpse, came to be here in any other way?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Excellent.”

  The closing of a car door made DeKok look around. A special unit of the municipal medical service was arriving. It was one of the units usually sent out for drowning incidents. There must have been a mix-up in the dispatch office. The coroner’s van would have been more appropriate, although the crew seemed to know what was needed. The paramedics left the ambulance, approaching slowly. They carried a large galvanized kettle between them.

  Vledder pointed at the body parts.

  With impassive faces they gathered the head, arms, legs, and torso. As they placed them in the kettle, there was no sign of emotion. The sanitation workers looked ill.

  “Please take everything directly to the pathology lab,” said DeKok.

  The older of the two paramedics nodded.

  “You know the name of the victim already?” he asked.

  “Nanette Bogaard,” DeKok swallowed a lump in his throat.

  The paramedic took out a notebook and wrote it down.

  “Do you claim ownership in the name of justice?” he asked formally.

  “Yes, my name is DeKok, with, eh, a kay-oh-kay. Homicide, Warmoes Street.”

  The paramedic closed his notebook and placed it in the breast pocket of his uniform coat. He and his colleague lifted the kettle between them and walked back to the ambulance. Their free arms swung back and forth to equalize the load.

  After the ambulance had disappeared with its grim load, the older man took DeKok by the sleeve.

  “Did I hear you mention the name of the girl?” he asked.

  “Yes…”

  The man hesitated.

  “Was it…eh, was she a bad girl?”

  DeKok looked at him searchingly.

  The man was shamefaced and embarrassed.

  “I, eh, I have a daughter. This girl’s face…it reminded me a bit of my daughter, you know. Sometimes parents don’t know what to do or think. We can’t watch them night and day, you know.” He shook his grey head and sighed. “No, not night and day. I just hope for the best a lot of the time.”

  DeKok placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  “Just do that,” he said encouragingly. “Hope for the best. Luckily only a few wind up in the dumps—literally, I mean.”

  He bent down. The large yellow doll with the missing leg was at his feet.

  He picked it up. “May I have this?”

  The sanitation man looked at him with surprise.

  “But of course, go ahead.”

  “Thank you.”

  He turned and walked back to the police car. The doll swung from one hand.

  Vledder followed.

  13

  Young Vledder floored the gas pedal of the old VW. He drove wildly, as one possessed. Leaning forward over the wheel with a determined look on his face, he forced the old car to the limits of its capabilities. The engine whined in protest.

  DeKok looked at him from the passenger seat.

  “What’s the matter, my boy?” he yelled over the sound of the engine. “Why the rush?”

  Vledder did not answer. Staring at the road he proceeded at an undiminished speed. The long road ran alongside the canal. At the end of the road he sideslipped onto the wet pavement of the main highway, barely missing a truck as it came from the opposite direction. Ignoring traffic, Vledder casually brought the skid under control as though it were a routine move.

  DeKok shook his head and grinned.

  “What are you trying to do?” he asked cynically. “Are you trying to overtake death, or are you fleeing it? It doesn’t matter, you know. No matter what, death always wins in the end.”

  “Funny,” spat Vledder. “Inspector DeKok makes jokes, real funny jokes about death.”

  DeKok pushed his lower lip forward, otherwise he did not react. He had not meant to be funny, not at all. He’d meant it as a good-natured warning against speeding. He doubted Vledder had actually taken it as a joke. It was clear Vledder just needed to lash out at something, someone. He knew his pupil well enough to have some idea how he was feeling right now. The horrible discovery at the dump had touched him; it had disturbed his equilibrium, so to speak. DeKok had seen this before. The boy took things too much to heart. Besides being sensitive, he had not yet learned how to disassociate his emotions and feelings from the unpleasant aspects of the job.

  Nearing the city they encountered the usual gridlock. They were able to proceed at barely a snail’s pace. DeKok did not mind at all. He slid comfortably down in his seat and inspected the doll he had picked up at the dump. Vledder looked at him and grinned sarcastically.

  “A young girl has been put to death in a most horrible way,” he said. “So horrible that the pieces had to be gathered from all over the place. And what occupies the brain of the great sleuth?” He snorted derisively. “The great sleuth asks the garbage man, oh so politely, if he can please have an old, dirty broken doll.”

  He moved the car a few more feet and shook his head in desperation.

  “Dammit, DeKok, there are more important things to be concerned about than an old doll with one leg.”

  “Such as?”

  Vledder gave him an angry look.

  “Such as solving the murder,” he said tersely.

  DeKok sighed a deep sigh.

  “You see,” he said resignedly, “that’s exactly what occupies me at the moment.”

  Corporal Bykerk was acting as desk sergeant. As DeKok and Vledder entered the lobby of the old Warmoes Street police station, the corporal hefted his considerable bulk from the chair behind the desk.

  “What about the report from the dump?” he asked. “Can I cancel the APB for the Bogaard girl?”

  Slowly DeKok nodded.

  “Yes, you may. We don’t have to find her anymore. We found her in pieces…murdered.” He grimaced in Vledder’s direction. “All we need now is the murderer,” he concluded.

  Corporal Bykerk grinned.

  “Is that all?” he asked.

  “Ach,” said DeKok, “it shouldn’t take my partner too long.”

  Vledder looked angry. With a face like a thundercloud he turned and started to climb the stairs to the detective room. Bykerk called him back.

  “There’s somebody waiting for you in three,” he called. “I think he can tell you a thing or two about the Bogaard girl. He’s been waiting more than an hour already.”

  Vledder looked at him suspiciously.

  “Who?”

  Bykerk looked at his notes.

  “One Ronald Staaten. He asked for Inspector DeKok, told me he came in connection with the disappearance of Nanette Bogaard. If your old mentor permits you to question him, he’s in interrogation three. At least you could start the ball rolling.”

  DeKok nodded agreem
ent.

  “All right, it’s a good idea. I have the feeling that our friend Vledder would just love to ask him a few penetrating questions. Isn’t that so, my boy?”

  Vledder growled something inaudible.

  Bykerk laughed out loud.

  Ronald Staaten seemed very sure of himself. As Vledder and DeKok entered the interrogation room he stood up, made a polite bow, and calmly reseated himself.

  “My father,” he spoke in an affected voice, “imparted to me the knowledge that the gentlemen of the police were vitally interested in my humble self.” He made a small artistic gesture with his hand and showed two rows of even white teeth. “Well, as you perceive, here I am,” he concluded.

  DeKok nodded slowly.

  “We can see that,” he conceded. He pointed in the direction of Vledder.

  “My colleague will ask you a few questions. You must understand that this is routine. But I strongly urge you not to take liberties with reality.”

  Staaten grinned.

  “The truth and nothing but the truth?”

  He seemed to be amused by his own wit. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and presented a picture of self-satisfaction.

  DeKok rubbed his hand over his face.

  “Truth,” he said with emphasis, “is never a subject for jokes. It is seldom funny.”

  Ronald shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly and Vledder pulled a chair closer.

  “You still live at home with your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No.”

  As Vledder started the interrogation, DeKok took the opportunity to study Ronald Staaten at length. Ronald, he thought, had little in common with his father. There was no similarity in either behavior or appearance. Ronald was a slender young man with blonde shoulder-length, wavy hair, green eyes, and soft, almost weak facial features. He was handsome in a slightly repugnant, effeminate way.