DeKok and the Somber Nude

by A. C. Baantjer

  Staaten smiled.

  “You’re entitled to your opinion. Don’t you think, Ronald, it’s an interesting point of view?”

  The young man had seated himself in an easy chair. His legs were elegantly crossed, the fingertips of his slender hands pressed together.

  “Yes, Father,” he answered softly, “it is an interesting point of view.”

  He repeated it monotone, almost mechanically. DeKok looked at both men. Father and son were clearly opposites. Nanette Bogaard had entered into both their lives. She was beautiful, frivolous, fun loving, and, without a doubt, a little cruel.

  DeKok placed his glass on a low table and gestured.

  “For instance, the nude on the red sofa touched me as few portraits ever have. Even had I not been involved in this case, I would have been struck by the painting. It fascinated me from the first time I saw it. There is an intense sadness in the subject’s eyes. The impression created by the nude body contributes to the somber effect. It is as though the woman is without life. The sterile treatment removes any sexual temptation or overtones. It was as if the painter subconsciously detected an aura of approaching doom surrounding his model. He faithfully recorded the shadow of approaching disaster. There is a veil of death over the painting.”

  A long silence ensued. When he finished speaking, DeKok’s words hung in the air. They mingled with the rushing of the rain outside. An English pendulum clock on the mantelpiece ticked away an eternity.

  Ronald looked pale. His hands shook. The elder Staaten moved his feet. He was the first to break the silence.

  “Pierre Popko,” he said in a hoarse voice, “is a gifted painter, without a doubt. But I would not go so far as to say he has paranormal powers—he is no psychic. I believe, Mr. DeKok, you may have been influenced by your rich imagination. You definitely saw more in the painting than there possibly could have been.”

  DeKok gave him a winning smile.

  “But Nanette is dead, is she not?”

  Staaten nodded.

  “Ronald told me. I believe you hinted as much during his interrogation.”

  “Yes, indeed, she was murdered in a most horrible way. I’ll spare you the details. That is…” he paused for effect, “…unless you’re already familiar with them.”

  It took a while before the poison had its effect. Then Staaten jumped up. His fingers writhed as if wanting to strangle something. His eyes flashed.

  “What are you trying to say?”

  Every fiber of DeKok’s body was tense. Just this morning he had bared witness to the unexpected strength of the broker. He remembered the painful streaks on Vledder’s neck.

  He pointed at Ronald. “Your son,” he said accusingly, “had a date with Nanette on the day she disappeared. She’s not been seen alive since.”

  Staaten’s face became a mask. He looked from DeKok to his son, his glance darting back and forth.

  “Ronald?”

  The young man started to tremble under his father’s intense stare. He nodded almost imperceptibly. His mouth opened, but no sound came forth.

  For just a moment DeKok feared that Staaten was about to hit his son. But the broker controlled himself.

  “You…you had a date with Nanette?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Behind my back?”

  Suddenly something seemed to snap in the young man. It seemed to DeKok he finally broke away from the thousands of ties connecting him to the will of his father. He stopped being a puppet on a string. Even his body language changed. Firmly he looked his father straight in the eyes.

  “Yes,” he exclaimed sharply, “behind your back! One day I went to Ye Three Roses and told Nanette I needed to see her, talk to her alone. I wouldn’t have felt at ease in your presence. That’s what I told her. I also told her it really was my right to discuss certain things with her if, eh, if she was going to be my mother. She refused at first, laughed at me, but finally promised to see me.”

  DeKok intervened.

  “So you made a date with Nanette and not the other way around? I mean, you took the initiative?”

  Ronald looked at him with surprise.

  “Yes, I—”

  “Where was she going?”

  “You mean, where were we supposed to meet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here, in this house.”

  “What did you want to discuss with her?”

  The young man started to grin. The result was a strange, joyless grimace.

  “I…I didn’t have anything to discuss with her. I just wanted to kill her…kill…kill…”

  He kept repeating it in a hypnotic cadence.

  The elder Staaten gripped his son by the shoulders and shook him violently.

  “Shut your mouth,” he hissed. “Shut your mouth!”

  Ronald hardly noticed him.

  “But she didn’t come,” he said, wagging his head. “No, she never came, didn’t come at all, she didn’t…”

  An idiotic smile played around his lips.

  The elder Staaten let go of his son and turned to DeKok.

  “When was he supposed to meet her?”

  “Thursday evening.”

  For a few moments the broker remained motionless, standing between his son and the inspector. DeKok saw him think fast. In seconds he inspected, rejected, and considered a number of factors. Then he sat down and sighed.

  “My son,” he said formally, “did not murder Nanette. I can testify to that. I was with him all evening.”

  17

  “What did Doctor Rusteloos have to say?”

  Vledder grinned. “He complained that we always need him during the weekend. He wanted to know if the police were aware that there are other days in the week. Or did they only know about Saturday and Sunday?”

  “So we caught him in a bad mood?” asked DeKok, laughing.

  “No. I’ve actually never really seen him in a bad mood. He knows it isn’t our fault.”

  “And the autopsy?”

  Vledder grimaced, showing disgust.

  “I’ll never get used to it. It was unusually gruesome this time. All those separate parts…”

  “What did the doctor say about the mutilation?”

  Vledder took out his notebook.

  “I wrote it down for you. It was rather interesting. Just a moment, here it is: The amputations were performed with a certain amount of professionalism. The perpetrator—as evidenced by the condition of the skeleton, the placement of the cuts in relation to the direction of muscle and attachment of tendons—must have been possessed of more than the usual amount of anatomical knowledge.”

  He closed the notebook with a slap.

  “What do you think of that?”

  DeKok made a vague movement with his shoulders; it was not quite a shrug.

  “What do you want me to think about it?”

  Vledder sighed heavily.

  “Just think about Brother Laurens,” he cried, irritated by DeKok’s apparent obtuseness. “What do you think about his ‘anatomical knowledge’? Nurses are sometimes almost as knowledgeable as doctors.”

  DeKok nodded slowly.

  “What did the good doctor say about the cause of death?”

  Vledder was offended by the scant interest DeKok seemed to display.

  “Strangulation,” he said grudgingly.

  “Strangled?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “The murderer used a scarf or a nylon stocking. It could have been done by hand, but because of the mutilation that was less easily established. Doctor Rusteloos was convinced, however, that the young woman was strangled first. The amputations happened later.”

  “How much later?”

  “Perhaps several hours, according to the doctor.”

  “Were there traces of a fight, a struggle?”

  Vledder shook his head.

  “There were no indications of that. No visible damage to the skin, no subcutaneous bleeding or bruising.”

&
nbsp; “Loss of urine?”

  “Probably not, there was still urine in the bladder.”

  DeKok nodded thoughtfully.

  “Excellent,” he said, “really excellent. Did you ask the doctor, in view of possible drug abuse, to look out for puncture marks?”

  Vledder grimaced.

  “If you wanted to know all that, I would have thought you’d go to the autopsy yourself.”

  Amazed, DeKok looked at him.

  “But why? I have an excellent assistant.”

  Vledder showed the beginning of a smile.

  “There were no puncture marks,” he said with in affected voice, “that is to say, no recent puncture marks on the skin indicating drug use. Of course, a toxicological investigation has not yet been completed. Satisfied?”

  “More than content,” laughed DeKok.

  Vledder pushed his chair closer to DeKok’s desk and sat down comfortably.

  “I’m always glad when such an autopsy is behind me. How did it go last night? Did you get ahold of Ronald?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “He admitted he had made a date with Nanette. He waited for her all night Thursday evening, but Nanette did not show up.”

  Vledder grinned.

  “That’s easy to say.”

  “Indeed, but his father provided an airtight alibi. He says he can testify that Ronald didn’t kill Nanette. He was with Ronald all Thursday evening.”

  Vledder frowned, a deep crease on his forehead.

  “So,” he said hesitatingly, “those two provide each other’s alibis—difficult to break.”

  DeKok rubbed his hands over his face.

  “Father and son,” he said pensively, “united, perhaps for the first time in their lives.”

  He stared a bit dreamily at nothing at all. His elbows rested on his desk, his hands under the chin. He stared at a lost fly that tripped across his desk blotter. It stopped from time to time and rubbed its front legs together. He followed the movements of the fly subconsciously. When it finally flew away, he rose with some difficulty. He walked over to a closet and took something out. Then he shuffled over to the peg where he kept his raincoat.

  “When you have recovered sufficiently from the autopsy,” he said, lightly mocking, “I think I’d like to hit the road again.”

  “Hit the road? Where do you want to go?”

  “Amsterdam West, Ox Village. They’ve got an apartment building there, Woodwind or Wood House…”

  He fished a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and looked at some chicken scratches.

  “Oh, it’s Wood’s Edge.”

  Vledder’s face showed complete incomprehension.

  “Wood’s Edge?”

  DeKok grinned broadly. It was his most endearing expression.

  “While you were at the autopsy I wasn’t exactly doing nothing, you know. I had a long visit at the city registrar’s office.”

  “On a Sunday? It’s closed, isn’t it?”

  DeKok nodded.

  “Yes, but I found a Mr. Slosser prepared to sacrifice a few hours of his Sunday to help me look up a number of things.”

  Confused, Vledder looked at his mentor.

  “Things, what sort of things?”

  “If you had been thinking clearly,” said DeKok, mildly reproachful, “you wouldn’t have had to ask that question. You would have known. In any case, Wood’s Edge was the result. And that’s where we’re going.”

  Vledder followed his mentor from the room with his head low, a bit glum after the correction. He thought about the how and wherefore.

  Suddenly he saw something hanging from DeKok’s hand. It was the old doll with the fixed smile and the missing leg, the one DeKok had picked up at the city dump.

  “What do you want with that dirty thing?”

  The question had been asked too quickly. Vledder realized immediately he should have thought about it first. Everything DeKok does has a purpose. The doll, too, must serve a purpose.

  DeKok turned around slowly and looked at Vledder. An almost sad expression was in his eyes.

  “You still don’t understand, do you?”

  Soberly Vledder shook his head.

  “No,” he said timidly, “I have to confess.”

  The old inspector smiled.

  “Just come along, my boy,” he said jovially. “I’ll explain everything. I promise.”

  Wood’s Edge in Ox Village was the outermost of a series of inviting apartment buildings placed in an L shape among abundant greenery. Eight stories high, centrally heated and cooled, the building featured spacious elevators and more than a hundred similarly shaped units per building. Each apartment had a large living room, two bedrooms, kitchen, lobby, and bathroom. The individual entrances were located along spacious galleries. It was a development typical of Northern Europe. The development was reminiscent of long rows of townhouses, one on top of another, a wide gallery in front of each house instead of a street.

  Vledder parked the VW Beetle behind the building. DeKok got out of the car, doll in one hand. Vledder closed the car and followed him. Together they approached the entrance.

  In front of the elevators DeKok halted and took the crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. He showed Vledder a row of numbers.

  “These are the numbers,” he explained, “of the units in which live families with children, girls. I excluded units of families with just boys.”

  “You got that from the registrar’s office?”

  DeKok nodded.

  “First I want to make sure that Wood’s Edge is the right building.”

  “Oh!”

  “You see, an old doll has certain characteristics. Like any well-loved toy, it develops its own individuality after a time.”

  He shook his head and looked almost tenderly at the fixed smile of the doll.

  In the round porthole of the shaft, the light of a descending elevator became visible. The doors hissed open and a number of men, women, and children emerged.

  A boy of about eight looked at DeKok and the doll in his hand while passing. He walked on for a few paces. Then he stood stock still, turned, and came back hesitatingly. Before DeKok could enter the elevator, he spoke. “Where did you find the doll, mister?”

  The inspector looked down at the boy. The little guy looked neat and well cared for. He wore grey slacks, a blue blazer with brass buttons, and a baseball cap.

  “Why?”

  “That’s my little sister’s doll.”

  “So, well, well.” He was shaken by the sudden success. “You see,” he continued after a moment, “I would like to return the doll to your mother. I’m looking for her. Of course, I don’t know in which flat you live.”

  The boy laughed politely.

  “Ninety-three, mister. You want me to show you the way? It’s on the third gallery.”

  “Yes, please.”

  They entered the elevator. The boy ran ahead on the third gallery. He left the front door of unit ninety-three open.

  “Mother, Mother,” they heard him call, “there’s a man outside, and he’s got Elly’s doll.”

  It took a few moments. Then a young woman appeared in the door opening. DeKok estimated her to be in her early thirties. She looked attractive, fresh, in a flowery summer dress. She looked from DeKok to Vledder. The look was full of suspicion. A small blush of excitement was on her cheeks.

  DeKok smiled his best smile. It was not as good as his grin, but still very winning.

  “This is Elly’s doll, I understand?”

  “Yes, that’s Bibette,” nodded the woman.

  “Who?”

  “Bibette, that’s what my daughter calls the doll. She is rather wild with it. You have to watch her all the time—given half a chance and an open window, she throws the doll out of the window. You found the old thing in the street, I imagine. To tell the truth, I haven’t seen it for a few days now.”

  “Since when? Can you remember?”

  Her face took on a p
ensive expression.

  “Let’s see…I think Thursday, yes, it had to be Thursday. She was still playing with it then.”

  DeKok nodded encouragement.

  “Excellent, really excellent.” He handed her the doll. “Well, here’s Bibette again. Home, safe and sound.”

  The woman accepted the doll and looked at it carefully.

  “Where did you find it?”

  DeKok hesitated. He did not want to answer that question. A bit reticent, he scratched the back of his neck.

  “At the city dump, near Canal F.”

  “At the dump?”

  “Indeed.”

  The young woman looked at him. An expression of astonishment mingled with disbelief on her face. She dropped the doll and smoothed her dress with both hands.

  “H-how?” she spluttered. “How did the doll wind up there? And how did you…”

  DeKok raised a restraining hand.

  “Perhaps,” he said gently, “I’ll tell you, one of these days. Just one observation: Watch more than just open windows when your daughter is playing with her doll. Also watch the flap of the garbage chute in the kitchen.”

  He bowed in farewell.

  The woman looked after them as they walked down the gallery.

  “Next time,” she called, “please come when my husband is home.”

  DeKok waved.

  “Prudes,” he snarled, “here in Wood’s Edge.”

  Vledder grinned at his mentor.

  “You’re losing your touch. You’ve lost your charm, that’s what it is. Besides, I wonder how your wife would have reacted if two guys suddenly appeared on her front door with a dirty old doll that they found in the garbage.”

  DeKok did not answer.

  He looked diagonally up at the numbering of the units. It took his complete attention. The last unit on the third gallery was number 105. Beyond that the gallery ended with a bank of elevators.

  “If I’m right,” he murmured, “we’ll find one hundred and twenty-three just above ninety-three.” He spoke more to himself than to Vledder. “I’m almost certain,” he concluded.

  Vledder shrugged his shoulders.