Dekok and the Dead Harlequin

by A. C. Baantjer

  “No harlequin under the tree,” he murmured.

  5

  DeKok nursed his tired feet. He leaned comfortably back in his chair, both feet on his desk, and sucked a peppermint. He thought about the days when under such circumstances he would have taken a perverse delight in tipping the ash from his cigar onto the freshly waxed floor of the detective room. Alas, his smoking days were over. These days he only smoked for a purpose, sometimes to annoy a suspect or to form a bond between himself and an overwrought witness. As much as he disliked role-playing, it went with the territory.

  The sudden demise of the merchant from Utrecht did not cause him any particular sorrow. He was not exactly upset about it. No matter how he searched his conscience, he was unable to discover a trace of pity, sorrow, or grief. Nonetheless, Jan Brets was a murder victim. Now DeKok was professionally involved. In a civilized society it is simply not permitted to break the skull of one’s fellow man.

  He could not, however, fail to be intrigued by the how and why of the deed. Murderers do not, with rare exception, kill on sheer impulse. There had to be a purpose, a goal, a motive. What could it be?

  DeKok pulled a wrinkled, official-looking envelope from his inside pocket. He took out an equally wrinkled note. He handed it carefully to Vledder, who sat across from him and slowly sipped a cup of coffee.

  “What is it?”

  DeKok grinned.

  “Found under the corpse of Brets. I saw it while the attendants moved the corpse.”

  Vledder looked at the note with mounting amazement.

  “Isn’t…isn’t that Brassel’s writing?”

  DeKok nodded.

  “Apparently. It’s a vaguely worded warning to the victim. It may just be enough to keep him legally immune. Just read it.”

  Vledder read out loud: “‘My dear Mr. Brets, I advise you not to enter your hotel room after eight o’clock on Wednesday night. Stay away. Otherwise a deadly surprise will await you.’ He signed it ‘Pierre Brassel.’” Vledder returned the note to DeKok.

  “And you found it under the corpse?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not in one of his pockets?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you find it rather strange? If someone delivered the note to Brets in the usual way, I mean, if somebody handed it to him, he would have put it in a pocket, don’t you think?”

  DeKok nodded thoughtfully.

  “Indeed, it would be the most obvious thing to do. Therefore I suspect Jan Brets never saw this so-called warning himself. Presumably the murderer placed the note at the scene, just as he posed the body—after the murder. He wanted us to find the note during our crime scene investigation.”

  Vledder added, “If it was Brassel, he was trying to ensure we could not charge him for concealing knowledge of a murder. As you explained earlier, he wanted us to believe he fulfilled a legal obligation to warn

  the victim.”

  DeKok nodded approvingly at Vledder.

  “And that’s the way it is, Dick. This murderer planned absolutely everything. It’s perfect in a macabre way. I’m tempted to say almost flawless.”

  Vledder looked surprised.

  “Almost?”

  DeKok rubbed his hands through his bristly hair.

  “Murderers always make mistakes,” he sighed. “Always. There has got to be a mistake somewhere.”

  He made a lazy gesture.

  “If I were suddenly to believe in the perfect crime, I would immediately resign from the force.”

  Vledder sat down at his desk and called central registry in Utrecht. The stream of information seemed unstoppable. He had difficulty making all the necessary notes. When he finally replaced the receiver, he sighed with relief.

  “And what,” asked DeKok, interested, “did our friends in Utrecht tell you about Jan Brets?”

  Vledder grimaced.

  “Well,” he said with a broad grin on his face, “nobody in Utrecht seems to be grieving his death. Tomorrow it seems the commissaris intends to treat the entire force

  to champagne.”

  DeKok laughed heartily.

  “All that bad?”

  Vledder consulted his notes and made some entries on his computer keyboard. Soon a number of sheets came out of the printer. He studied the sheets for a moment and then made a few more entries on his computer. With one of the sheets in hand, he turned to his partner.

  “Yes, that bad,” he answered seriously. “Over the years Mr. Brets has given the Utrecht police a run for their money. Here is a sample of his rap sheet. In his relatively short life, he managed to break almost all of the Lord’s commandments—theft, breaking and entering, robbery, everything, even murder.”

  DeKok grinned.

  “Nice guy.”

  Vledder nodded.

  “A prince of a guy. As far as I can see, he’s spent more time in jail than out.”

  DeKok looked thoughtfully at nothing in particular.

  “Did I understand correctly,” he said, “did you say there was a murder on his sheet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it give details?”

  Vledder studied his notes again.

  “Let’s see. Yes, here it is. He was seventeen and incarcerated. The youth reform institution in Haarlem gave him a weekend pass for good behavior. Brets and an eighteen-year-old accomplice from the institution broke into a house. The victim, an elderly man, resisted the illegal intrusion. They murdered him. The take from the robbery, according to the report, was less than ten euros.”

  DeKok shook his head sadly.

  “Shocking,” he sighed, “just terrible. Less than ten euros for a man’s life.” He sighed again. “He was not on parole or anything?”

  Vledder nodded.

  “Oh, yes, he hadn’t escaped. When Jan Brets was killed, he was free as a bird.”

  DeKok moved into a more comfortable position.

  “Why,” he asked, slightly puzzled, “wasn’t he punished for the murder?”

  Vledder shrugged his shoulders.

  “I readily assume he was punished,” he answered bitterly. “In a manner that has lately become the norm in our friendly little country: with the utmost of humanity and understanding. He was underage, you know. He was arrested several times after the murder but has gone to trial only twice. Both trials related to a series of burglaries.”

  Lost in a sea of thought, DeKok stared out of the window for a long time.

  “Ach,” he said finally, his voice grave. “What do you expect? Crime, punishment, vengeance, they’re all old-fashioned concepts. We live in a new era. It’s more fashionable to feel pity for the criminal; it seems we’ve become more and more forgiving.”

  “You mean we’ve spawned more and more criminals,” Vledder said grimly. “Crime is getting people in the spotlight. It’s almost a respectable hobby.”

  The young inspector snorted.

  “Sir,” he spoke suddenly in a strange, high-pitched voice, “what do you do in your spare time? Who, me? Well, I’m sort of a criminal. You know, every Saturday night I do a little breaking and entering, maybe hold up a gas station, just to calm down. Then, perhaps once a month, a murder helps me relax completely, get rid of the stress. Well, don’t the police do anything about that? Of course they almost always try to stop me. You see, I have a number of phobias and other complexes. The psychiatrists and judges usually set me free immediately. I seldom even need bail. You see, my criminal escapades help me socially.”

  DeKok laughed.

  “Come, come, Dick,” he said in a friendly, soothing manner, “don’t be so cynical. It isn’t quite that bad. You exaggerate. Anyway, the sentencing and punishing of criminals has nothing to do with us. As policemen, it’s none of our business—happily so. Let’s concentrate on Jan Brets and his untimely demise.”

  Vledder nodded sober agreement.

  “You’re right,” Vledder assented reluctantly. “It truly is a waste of time to get upset about the judicial system. Also, I adm
it to being a bit prejudiced.”

  DeKok smiled.

  “I once knew an old detective who would go crazy every time he had a case. His greatest desire was to put everybody behind bars so that the police could live quietly.”

  Amazed, Vledder looked at his mentor.

  “Did he mean that?”

  DeKok grinned.

  “I think so, but it occurred to me that he was also very, very lazy.”

  The phone rang at that moment and Vledder lifted the receiver.

  “For you,” he said after listening to the voice at the other end of the line. “It’s the concierge from the Greenland Arms.”

  DeKok relieved him of the receiver.

  “Yes?”

  “There are two long-distance calls in the records for Mr. Brets,” said the concierge. “Both calls were to Utrecht, to number 271228. We discovered the charges while we were in the process of closing out Mr. Brets’s account. The entire bill is a loss, or do you think the family…”

  DeKok ignored the remark. He was a master at ignoring things when he felt like it.

  “Utrecht,” he repeated, “two-seven-one-double two-eight.”

  “Does it help you?”

  “That’s difficult to say. In any case, many thanks.”

  He broke the connection.

  “You heard the number, Dick?”

  Vledder nodded.

  DeKok began to pace up and down the large detective room. Something was bothering him. He halted at his favorite spot, in front of the window. He looked toward Corner Alley. His eyebrows danced dangerously, a deep frown wrinkled his forehead. He pondered a number of strange facets of Jan Brets’s murder. There weren’t many things he’d never encountered, at one time or another, in his long career. Again, he let the known facts pass through in his mind.

  “Jan Brets,” he murmured to himself, “a character with, let’s say, a certain notoriety, checks into a hotel. Upon returning to the hotel one day, someone brutally attacks and murders Brets in his hotel room. The killer probably waited behind the door, approached him from the rear, and bashed in his skull. There was no evidence of a struggle. Brets was completely surprised. The murder weapon, a hockey stick, had been prepared sometime in advance. Therefore the murderer carefully planned his crime. We have the strange note from Brassel confirming his plan to murder Brets. The motive, the only thing that could possibly shed any light on it all, is a complete mystery.”

  He paused to sigh, then resumed his soliloquy.

  “We do not know a great deal about the victim, except he specialized in burglaries during the last few years. We found the tools of his trade in the hotel room. We could presume the victim was in Amsterdam to commit a burglary.”

  Again he paused, rubbed his hands through his hair.

  “But then,” he said louder and more slowly, “the question remains whether he was alone.”

  Vledder shrugged his shoulders.

  “Possibly,” he answered. “Or perhaps Brets was only here to reconnoiter the terrain and wait to meet his accomplices. Maybe he was just on a fact-finding tour, so to speak.”

  DeKok nodded.

  “Yes,” he said thoughtfully, “that’s possible. Jan Brets’s sheet indicates he wasn’t the type to do jobs on his own. He always had accomplices. Thus there must be others who are aware of the plan.”

  “A plan for a break-in somewhere?”

  “Exactly, Dick, the plan for a break-in, as you put it, a burglary, a robbery, somewhere in Amsterdam. It must have been something big, requiring careful planning. Let’s face it. Brets didn’t leave his normal haunts in Utrecht to come to Amsterdam for something minor. It is interesting, too, when a man like Brets takes a room in the Greenland Arms. It is certainly several levels above his normal choice of lodgings. It must mean something.”

  Vledder stared at nothing in particular. “You’re right,” he said slowly. “It had to be something special. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if his sudden death had something to do with it.”

  DeKok gestured.

  “It seems a bit premature to come to such a conclusion. We really should wait until we know a little more. For instance, if Brets came here intending to commit a crime, was there a plan? If so, what did he or they plan to do? Who were the participants? More important, what induced Brets to come to Amsterdam? Did he get a tip? If so, who was the tipster? Remember, Brets is an unknown in the Amsterdam underworld. This is the first I’ve heard of him.”

  Vledder shook his head.

  “Same here, although that doesn’t mean much. But what worries me is how Brassel fits into all of this.”

  DeKok sighed.

  “Perhaps he’s the brain behind it all, the designer of the plan. Who knows?”

  Vledder looked searchingly at his older colleague.

  “Then how do you explain the murder?”

  DeKok did not answer. He stared outside. His face was expressionless. Suddenly he turned around and walked to the peg on the wall.

  “Come on, Dick,” he said, surrounding himself with his old raincoat. “I think we should make a trip to Utrecht.”

  Vledder’s face betrayed his astonishment.

  DeKok showed a serious face.

  “It’s never too late to console an old mother on the loss of her son.”

  6

  Vledder and DeKok stood on the sidewalk belonging to a long line of row houses on a dismal street in Utrecht. They approached one of the houses and rang the bell several times. They banged on the door for good measure. Finally, an unkempt female appeared at one of the windows. DeKok looked up in the gloom.

  “Mrs. Brets?”

  “Yes.” She sounded cross, not to say belligerent.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” said DeKok in a friendly tone of voice. “I’m really sorry to wake you. But we need to talk to you.”

  “Now, in the middle of the night?”

  “Yes, it’s very important.”

  “I’m not home for nobody,” she yelled from above. “Nobody, you hear? If you don’t go away, I’ll call the police.”

  DeKok coughed.

  “We, eh, we are the police.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you want?”

  “It’s about your son.”

  “About Jan?”

  DeKok started to get a crick in his neck from staring up at the window.

  “Yes,” he yelled back, “about Jan!”

  “What’s the matter with him?”

  DeKok sighed deeply. This shouting match on a quiet street was not to his liking. Before long the whole neighborhood would be awake.

  “Would you mind letting us in?” he asked compellingly. “This is a bit difficult, like this.”

  “All right then, hold on a minute.”

  The head disappeared.

  A few minutes later they could hear stumbling on the ground floor. A light appeared in the corridor, and after a lot of rattling of chains and bolts, the door finally opened.

  “Come in and don’t look at the mess. I haven’t had a chance to clean downstairs.”

  She shuffled away.

  DeKok murmured something along the lines of “Who cares?” and waddled after the woman into the house. Vledder followed.

  The woman was skinny and rawboned. Gray, thin hair framed her face in stringy strands. She’d hastily thrown a raincoat over her nightgown, a pale pink ruffle peeked out of the placket. Thin white legs emerged from beneath the raincoat and ended in old formless slippers. The slippers were several sizes too large, causing her to slide rather than walk. She led them to a small parlor where she sank down, shivering, on a stained sofa in front of a cold fireplace.

  “Sit down,” she invited with a grand gesture. “Put the dirty laundry on the floor somewhere. I should have washed today, but I didn’t get to it. I haven’t felt at all well the last few days. I may have something wrong with my back; arthritis, I think.” She sighed deeply. “Ach,” she added sadly, “when you get older
, these things happen. The years take their toll, you can’t stop it. Old churches have dim windows.”

  DeKok nodded agreement. He pushed the pile of laundry aside and sat down next to her.

  “My name is DeKok,” he said amicably. “DeKok with, eh, a kay-oh-kay. This is my colleague Vledder. We’re police inspectors from Amsterdam.”

  “Oh,” she said, “from Amsterdam?”

  She seemed used to police visits. It was a matter of supreme indifference to her. Only the fact that they came from Amsterdam seemed to arouse a vague curiosity.

  “Amsterdam,” she repeated, “Amsterdam.”

  DeKok nodded. Meanwhile, he bit his lower lip nervously. He was still looking for words, had not formulated his thoughts properly. The old woman looked at him. In order to escape her questioning glance, he looked around at Vledder, who leaned against the mantelpiece. The woman felt his hesitation.

  “Well, what’s up with Jan? Arrested?”

  She cackled.

  DeKok rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth. It was difficult to define the situation with Brets. He thought about it.

  “No,” he answered slowly, “he’s not been arrested.”

  “What then?”

  She scooted a little closer.

  “It, eh, it’s something else. We found Jan in a hotel earlier tonight. He…he’s not well. Not well at all.”

  She looked at him with sharp eyes.

  “What’s the matter with him?”

  DeKok swallowed.

  “What’s the matter with Jan?” she asked again in her belligerent voice. “You can tell me, you know. I don’t get shocked that easily. Not anymore. I’ve learned to roll with the punches. With Jan it’s one thing or another, and most of it isn’t good.”