The Corpse on the Dike

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  “It would happen to you, wouldn’t it?”

  “It could have happened to you as well,” de Gier shouted. “That woman isn’t after any particular kind of man; she just wants a man, a boom-boom man, and you’re more boom-boom than I.”

  Grijpstra slapped his thigh. “Never!”

  “Here,” de Gier said and braked.

  They jumped out of the car and pounded on the door. There was no answer.

  “Round the back,” Grijpstra shouted.

  De Gier ran. The pistol was in his hand. The Cat hadn’t reached the river when de Gier shouted at him. The Cat looked very silly with half his mustache shaved off. He was only wearing a pair of jeans and was barefoot.

  “Stop,” de Gier shouted and fired, pointing the pistol at a cloud.

  The Cat stopped.

  The Cat surrendered in style to de Gier and four uniformed constables who had come running when they saw the commotion.

  “Shit,” the Cat said; “you were quick, weren’t you, sergeant. Why are you shooting guns in my garden? Tell me the charge.”

  “Why were you shaving off your mustache?” Grijpstra asked, pulling the Cat’s arms round his back and clicking handcuffs on his wrists.

  “Got tired of all the hair,” the Cat said. “What’s the charge? And who are you?”

  “Adjutant Grijpstra,” Grijpstra said, “at your service. The charge is receiving stolen goods and theft, perhaps, and other crimes maybe. We’ll work it out at the station. You’d better get dressed.”

  “I can’t dress with irons on my wrists,” the Cat said indignantly.

  “We’ll take them off again.”

  De Gier pointed his pistol at the Cat as Grijpstra took off the handcuffs in the Cat’s bedroom. The Cat opened cupboards and drawers and dressed leisurely.

  “Don’t you want your golden suit and your boots?” de Gier asked.

  “No. But I want to shave off the rest of my mustache.”

  “No,” Grijpstra said, “not yet. I’d like the commissaris to see you like this, and the photographer. Fighting on the dike, arresting thieves, a tommy gun blazing away with the street full of police and detectives going from house to house, and here you are shaving off your mustache. And you run—in your jeans and bare feet—when we come to see you. I think it’s strange, don’t you?”

  “No,” the Cat said, “and I want some coffee before I go. Ursula!”

  Ursula, dressed in a housecoat, came from the kitchen. Her long legs were partly uncovered and the full breasts were standing under the flimsy garment.

  “Watch it,” Grijpstra said as de Gier’s eyes strayed.

  “Yes, watch it, sergeant,” the Cat said; “you have a murderous weapon in your hand and your finger is very close to the trigger, and the barrel is very close to my chest. Besides, she is mine, not yours.”

  “Mine,” Ursula said, “what mine? I’m not a cow. And what’s all this, Cat? Are they taking you away?”

  “I am afraid we are, miss,” Grijpstra said.

  “Who are you?”

  “Detective-Adjutant Grijpstra, Amsterdam municipal police.”

  Ursula inclined her head and the long hair fell over her face. She shook it back.

  “Look after him, adjutant,” she said. “He is nice and he means well. What are they charging you with, Cat?”

  “It’s my mind,” the Cat said; “they don’t like what’s going on in my mind. I’m different, and they represent the common law. I am not common; that’s my trouble.”

  “Were you in the fight this morning?” Grijpstra asked.

  The Cat laughed. “Me? I have never been in a fight in my life. I buy goods and I sell goods and I talk and listen a lot.”

  “But you are friendly with the people on the dike,” de Gier said, “and they did fight. They even wounded two policemen, I hear, one in the foot and one in the arm. They were firing away as if there were a war on. And the dike is full of stolen goods. I would like to go through your house.”

  “No,” the Cat said. “Your rank is too low. You can’t search the house without a warrant. You’re lucky I let you in as it is. Get a warrant, sergeant.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Ursula said. “There’s nothing in the house.”

  “OK,” the Cat said and smiled. “Search the place if you like.”

  De Gier found nothing. “Where is your warehouse?”

  “In town, but it’s no use going there; it’s locked and I have the key. I’ll go with you if you like.”

  “Later,” Grijpstra said.

  “I want my coffee.”

  “Later. We have coffee at the station. Sorry, miss, for the intrusion. We’ll have to go now.”

  “Be nice to him,” Ursula said.

  8

  BICKERS ISLAND USED TO BE A FORGOTTEN CORNER OF THE city of Amsterdam. Its maze of narrow streets, quays lined with high sixteenth-century warehouses, wharves where hundreds of years ago the flat-bottomed sailing and cargo vessels were built, canals, gardens, and even a few merchant mansions, had all rotted, sagged and fallen together into crumbling heaps where rats were no longer frightened of the few people who refused to move. But the city had come to life again and cared about itself. The island had been rediscovered by architects and artists, backed by the Public Works Department, and gradually the warehouses were being restored, the gardens cleaned up and replanted with shrubs and trees and the canals dredged. It was still a quiet place, however, for it was out of the way; one could walk about in peace and concentration without jumping about like a demented monkey for fear of being crushed by the onslaught of modern traffic.

  The commissaris, having stumbled onto the island during a murderous adventure when he was still a sub-inspector in his early twenties, had made the place his favorite haunt. He could often be found there, during weekends and holidays, wandering about the alleys, sitting on a wooden bench in a public garden, standing on the quay craning his neck to admire a gable top or dreaming in the courtyard of a deserted mansion. He always ended up in the same small pub, the last of its kind, where a very old landlord—a living skeleton—still poured jenever for his few guests from a stone bottle. It made a gay tinkling sound as he filled the delicate tulip-shaped glasses with the amber-colored, syrupy, almost frozen, explosive. The tinkling sound was caused by a narrow metal spout, screwed onto the bottle and as old as the pub itself. The pub was three times as old as its present owner and its weird lugubrious atmosphere never failed to excite the commissaris, whose pleasures, although few, were always intense.

  It was five o’clock in the afternoon, on the day after the arrest of the Cat and the release of Mary van Krompen, set free by the commissaris himself. He had carried her bag to the door himself and sent her home in his own chauffeur-driven car. The day had been spent so far in clearing up odds and ends, left over by the commotion on the dike. Apart from the Cat’s, nine arrests had now been made, and most of the detectives on the Force were engaged in typing reports after having interrogated their suspects. A disturbed mayor had called a meeting at City Hall where he asked the chief constable questions and later the commissaris and two of his colleagues were summoned by telephone to come and explain how such a boisterous act of aggression could have occurred in their pleasant and tolerant town. The commissaris hadn’t said much apart from a remark that he meant to go into the matter further.

  The four guests had the small pub to themselves. At the request of the commissaris the landlord had locked his door and hung out a dirty crumpled cardboard sign saying that the pub was closed because of death. The owner had written the sign thirty years ago when his wife died.

  De Gier, impeccable in a new blue denim suit, made by a Turkish tailor—an illegal immigrant and a friend—sat on a high barstool, studying a little man with a pencil-lined mustache and a bald head sitting opposite and below him on a low chair. Grijpstra was leaning against the bar, holding a small glass of jenever in his hand and chewing a sausage. He was also studying the man on the low chair. The commissari
s was looking out the window, contemplating the shape of the wreck of a botter and imagining what it would have been like to go to sea to catch a load of shrimp in such a small craft, thirty feet long at the most, with only two men in the crew and no engine to help maneuver the vessel.

  The botter, its mast still intact, had been moored at the quay for as long as he could remember and he had often thought that he should find out who owned her. He could buy the boat, have her repaired—rebuilt if necessary—and take her sailing on the great inland lake with de Gier and Grijpstra as a crew.

  He smiled at himself. A dream of course. The pain in his legs, his everlasting rheumatic affliction would kill the fun. It would be worse on the water.

  The pub was very quiet. The small man got up and, looking at the landlord, placed his glass on the counter. The landlord grabbed the bottle and the jenever tinkled into the glass. The small man sat down again. Nobody said anything.

  “Stop staring,” the little man suddenly squeaked. “Stare at something else, will you? Look out the window. Look at the nice botter the commissaris is admiring. Isn’t it a nice botter?”

  Grijpstra and de Gier stared.

  “Isn’t it?” the small man said hopefully.

  “Mouse,” Grijpstra said, his deep voice filling the small room, “tell us why you didn’t tell us.”

  The Mouse looked at Grijpstra and wondered if he should ask, “What?” He didn’t, but got up instead, intending to place his glass on the counter again.

  Grijpstra stopped him.

  “Can’t I drink?”

  “No,” Grijpstra said. “Tell us why you didn’t tell us. You can drink later. At home or somewhere. Here you have had enough.”

  The Mouse licked his lips. “I’m thirsty; my mouth is all leathery. Can I have a lemonade or something?”

  Grijpstra looked at the landlord and nodded.

  The Mouse sipped his lemonade.

  “Well?” de Gier asked.

  But the Mouse said nothing.

  The commissaris stopped looking at the botter and joined his two colleagues at the bar, climbing painfully onto a stool and rubbing his legs when he had managed the feat.

  “Well, Mouse?” the commissaris asked.

  The Mouse put his glass back and waved his hands.

  “You have nothing on me, sir,” he squeaked indignantly. “All right, so I’m an informer. But I am not obliged to inform, am I?”

  “You are obliged,” Grijpstra boomed, “to inform the police if you have knowledge of a crime. You live on the dike and you were right bang in the middle of all the stealing and receiving and the whatever-else-goes-on there. You saw it all; you helped them most probably. And you didn’t tell.”

  “Can you prove I was in it?” the Mouse asked fearfully and enthusiastically at the same time. “Did you find anything in my house? Did you meet anyone who said anything about me that can incriminate me? Did you? Did you?”

  Grijpstra was silent and de Gier adjusted the colored scarf that he had knotted around his neck.

  “You didn’t,” the Mouse said triumphantly. “You did NOT.”

  De Gier put his glass down and the jenever bottle tinkled. Grijpstra lit a cigar, a fat black cigar, and a cloud of vile smoke drifted in the direction of the commissaris, who began to cough.

  “Sorry, sir,” Grijpstra said and patted his superior on the back; “I’ll put it out.”

  “No, no,” the commissaris said as he stopped coughing and looked at the Mouse. “Mouse,” he said, “we pay you. And if you take money you are under obligation. You have to tell. You should have refused the money but you took it. Taxpayers’ money.”

  “Ha,” the Mouse said.

  The commissaris shook his head. “No, Mouse. It may seem silly to you but taxpayers’ money is holy money. To me it is. And to many others, More others than you expect. This is a decent city. If something is given, something is expected. You failed. But you can still make up for it.”

  “What if I don’t,” the Mouse said defiantly.

  “I don’t think much will happen if you don’t,” the commissaris said softly, “not just now. Later maybe.”

  “You are threatening me.”

  “No, Mouse. I am not threatening. There is the Law.”

  “Ha,” the Mouse said but his voice sounded sad.

  “Not, ‘Ha,'” the commissaris said. “And I don’t mean the law of our law books. The law books only show the shadow of the law, the law as we can understand it, but our understanding changes all the time so the law books change as well. I mean the Law.”

  “God?” the Mouse asked; “you talking about God?”

  “No, Mouse. I don’t know God.”

  “I think you are talking about God,” the Mouse said stubbornly.

  “Not having met God, I can’t talk about Him,” the commissaris said, “but I have seen a little of the Law. The Law is very beautiful.”

  The Mouse put his glass on the counter, waited, and drank the lemonade in one gulp. He sat down again and began to rub his bald head.

  “The Law,” he said hesitantly.

  De Gier wanted to say something but the commissaris raised his hand. Grijpstra inhaled his cigar. He began to cough and threw the cigar on the floor and stamped it out.

  “Right,” the Mouse said, “I’ll tell. But I won’t repeat it in court. It isn’t a statement. You can’t hold me to it. Right?”

  “Yes,” the commissaris said.

  “And I don’t want money. No obligation. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK,” the Mouse said and the pub changed. It seemed much lighter now and de Gier was scratching his back and grinning. Grijpstra lit a fresh cigar and the commissaris smiled. Even the skeleton behind the counter relaxed and the jenever bottle’s tinkle had its old happy gurgly ring.

  “It’s the Cat,” the Mouse said. “The Cat is a genius. I like him. I admire him too. He is the blessing of the dike. Or was, perhaps. It’s gone all wrong now but it isn’t the Cat’s fault. And you won’t catch the Cat. You’ll catch him a little bit maybe. A few months, or a year at the most. He’ll get time off. Everybody will like him. He’ll enjoy himself in jail. You’ll see.”

  He was looking at de Gier and de Gier was nodding at him. “You’ve met him, sergeant?”

  “Yes.”

  “You like him?’

  “I like him,” de Gier said, “so far anyway.”

  “You couldn’t rattle him, could you?”

  “We didn’t try to rattle him,” Grijpstra said; “we just asked him a few questions.”

  “Did you talk to him about the Law, sir?” the Mouse asked.

  “No, Mouse. I haven’t seen him yet. And if the Cat is so nice and so clever he may know a little about the Law.”

  The Mouse looked at the commissaris, the look was almost hungry.

  “The Law,” he repeated, “yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Go on, Mouse,” de Gier said.

  “Yes. When the Cat came to live on the dike, the dike was a mess—everybody on social assistance and the houses falling to pieces, the wives getting fat and lazier every day, and the children dirty. Drink—that’s all we did—and talk. Silly talk, boasting. There was nothing to boast about but we played the game, you know. I listen to your bullshit and then you listen to my bullshit. You know?”

  “I know,” de Gier said.

  Grijpstra laughed.

  “You know it too, adjutant?”

  “He knows it too, Mouse,” de Gier said.

  The Mouse looked sad again. “We all do it, you mean. But it couldn’t have been as bad as on the dike. It made me sick; it made everybody sick.”

  “And then the Cat came,” the commissaris said.

  “Yes, sir. The Cat got a rotten little house and fixed it up. We looked on and nobody helped him at first, but he asked advice, you see. He would come up to you and ask you how he should do this and how he should do that. Before we knew it we were all helping him.”

  “Goo
d,” the commissaris said.

  “Yes. And we got to know him and he got to know us. And his girl, Ursula, would make tea in the garden. We would sit there and drink it and then go back to work. We had that house fixed up in a few weeks: new beams, a new roof—a new wall even—proper brick laying and plastering. And we painted all the woodwork and tiled the floor. All the time the Cat was asking us about what we were doing on the dike.”

  “You weren’t only drinking and boasting,” de Gier said; “you were stealing and burglarizing as well.”

  “Sure, sure,” the Mouse said. “Not me, mind you. I have my pension and I’m quiet. The others were.”

  “Sure,” Grijpstra said.

  “So we told him and he listened very carefully and didn’t say much. For months he didn’t say much. Even when we began to fix up our own houses and he was helping us.”

  “Where did you get your materials,” the commissaris asked.

  “Stole it, sir. Some of it came from the river but all the good stuff we stole and that’s how it all started. He told us to organize ourselves. We wanted a lot of paint, for instance. In the old days we would have stolen a can here and a can there, but he told us not to be silly. If you steal one miserable can of paint and you’re caught, it’s proper theft all right and they throw the book at you. He told us to steal everything we wanted in one go and we made a plan, or rather, he made a plan. We began to watch a wholesale place in town, checking the times of their delivery trucks. Then we lifted a whole truck. We knew what the truck was carrying before we lifted it. It was a beautiful bit of work. Someone got the keys copied while the driver was in a café weeks before we did the actual job. All we had to do that particular day was to wait for the driver to make a small delivery, jump into the truck and drive off. Nice and quiet. No rush. No going through red lights. We had another truck waiting and we changed the load, leaving the stolen truck neatly parked at the curb somewhere, and drove home in the other truck. A hired truck. The job took a little time and a little money but it gave us a wallop of a profit. We couldn’t use all that paint so the Cat sold what was left. And he got a good price. And he shared it.”

  “How much did he take tor himself?” Grijpstra asked.