The Corpse on the Dike

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  “OK. I’ll pay. It’ll be a pleasure.”

  They ran but the streetcar driver was too fast for them and the automatic doors closed just as they reached the tram stop.

  “Did you say ‘pleasure’?” de Gier asked.

  “Yes.”

  “When you say ‘pleasure’ you should try to look pleasant. Try again.”

  Cardozo tried.

  “Not bad,” de Gier said, “but it could be better. You need practice.”

  “No,” Cardozo said softly, “no, no, no.”

  “Pardon?” de Gier asked but Cardozo was trying to read his neighbor’s newspaper.

  “Go away,” the man said. “I hate waiting at tram stops and I hate holding a newspaper with the wind blowing, and I detest other people trying to read my newspaper. Buy your own.”

  “No money,” Cardozo said.

  “Then go beg.”

  “Have you got fifty cents, please?” Cardozo whined. “Please, sir?”

  “No,” the man said.

  11

  IT WAS THREE-THIRTY THAT SAME AFTERNOON AND THE commissaris, who had left Headquarters early after having reported sick but still available for urgent matters, felt the temperature of his bath. The pain in his legs had been building up all morning until he felt that he would faint or scream out. He knew, by bitter experience, that only a very hot bath would ease the pain and now the moment was close. He felt the water again and the temperature was right. The water was very hot. He lowered his body gradually and sighed with relief. The pain was oozing away. He was completely detached from anything now. He no longer knew who he was. And at that exact moment of almost complete liberation he knew that Tom Wernekink had been killed by mistake, had been taken for someone else.

  * * *

  De Gier agreed two hours later. He had got his list of Arab meeting places in town and reported at the adjutant’s desk. Grijpstra approved the plan and regretted he couldn’t join his two assistants. He had promised Mrs. Grijpstra to accompany her to her sister’s birthday party.

  “You don’t want to go to a birthday party, do you?” de Gier asked.

  “No.”

  “So why go?”

  Grijpstra had waved him out of the room.

  “Come with us,” de Gier said at the door, “you’ll like it. We can have a drink somewhere afterward.”

  Grijpstra went on waving.

  And now de Gier was at home, walking about in a kimono with Oliver in his arms. Oliver purred.

  “Silly cat,” de Gier said and squeezed the Siamese. Oliver yelled but didn’t try to wrestle himself out of de Gier’s grip. De Gier squeezed again and Oliver reached out and placed a paw on de Gier’s nose.

  “We’ll sleep for a while,” de Gier said and stretched out on the large antique hospital bed that occupied two-thirds of his small bedroom. He released the cat, which jumped on his stomach, felt about for a good position and became limp. De Gier smiled and reached for the bars at the foot of the bed. His toes curled round the thin brass rods and he stretched his body, grunting with pleasure.

  “This is it,” he said to Oliver, who was watching him. “This is it, Oliver. You know I said today that I only care about you?” Oliver moved his ears. “Don’t pretend you’re listening. You don’t have to listen to words. You understand. More than I do probably, but in a way I can’t learn. I said I only cared about you, but it isn’t true. There is something I care about but I can’t reach it, like Grijpstra can’t reach his dream.”

  De Gier’s eyes were closing. Sleep hadn’t yet come but he wasn’t awake either. His own strength of concentration was being reinforced with whatever the cat was contributing. And then de Gier also knew that Tom Wernekink’s death was a mistake. The riddle had been in his mind for some time now and the answer popped. A mistake.

  And Grijpstra agreed as well. There was nothing about Grijpstra’s condition at the time that could have been called special. He was in his office, behind his desk, reading through a list of stolen motorized bicycles. His mind wasn’t registering any of the makes or numbers. There was a drumstick in his right hand and he was touching the smallest drum with it, without making much of a sound.

  “A mistake,” Grijpstra said softly. “He thought he was killing somebody else—somebody important—somebody who was upsetting his plans. The man was mixed up, caught in a scheme.”

  He banged a little louder now.

  “A scheme. What sort of a scheme? Something to do with the dike, of course, with the hijacking and the stealing and the receiving.”

  “Elise,” the commissaris called.

  “Yes, dear?”

  His wife was standing next to the bath, bowing down to him.

  “How is the pain now, dear?”

  “It has gone, Elise. Would you mind…”

  “Yes, dear,” his wife smiled and left the bathroom. She was back in a minute with a tray. There was a big glass of orange juice with ice cubes floating in it on the tray, and an ashtray, a tin of cigars and a box of matches. She took a cigar and lit it, trying to keep the smoke out of her mouth, puffing it away.

  “Shame,” the commissaris said. “You don’t have to do that you know. You can put the cigar in my mouth and light it for me.”

  “No, it might get wet. And I like doing things for you; it’s only that I don’t like the taste. Cigarettes aren’t so bad. Here.”

  She put the cigar between his thin lips and left the tray on a stool.

  “I’ve got some coffee going. I’ll bring it when it is ready.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  I’ve got it, the commissaris thought. Something anyway. It’s the old trick, the trick of the clever leader. He smiled, and the cigar moved and nearly fell into the hot water. It’s the trick I use myself sometimes. I’ll say, “Certainly, I will mention your idea to the chief constable,” and then I will say later, “Ah, yes, I suggested your idea to the chief constable, but he isn’t in favor, not just now.”

  He reached out and took hold of the glass of orange juice. But I would never have spoken to the chief constable. It’s always good to create an obstacle, an obstacle they can’t reach themselves. That’s what the Cat must have done. Somebody must have suggested something to him. He couldn’t say no straight out but he wasn’t going to do what they wanted him to do either. So he stalled them and said he would ask his boss. In the Cat’s case the method was even better than what I try to do sometimes. The detectives know the chief constable but they’ll never ask him anything directly; they go through us, their immediate superiors. But the Cat invented a boss. He didn’t tell anyone who the boss was. He said he would ask the boss, but there was no boss. And then later he would say that the boss wasn’t in favor, not just now.

  “Thank you, dear,” the commissaris said and his wife put the cup on the tray and left.

  The commissaris sat up, put the empty glass back and started on his coffee. He continued thinking. So they got tough. They shadowed the Cat and found out that he was always visiting Tom Wernekink. They say Wernekink’s posh sports car and they must have looked through the windows and seen his wealth inside. A very rich man with no occupation. And the Cat goes to see him all the time. They wanted something of the Cat. They probably wanted him to join them, to give in somehow, to drop part of his profits by lowering his prices. The Cat was stalling them and he was still too strong to tackle. So they decided to shock him.

  The commissaris twisted his toe around the hot-water tap and shifted his legs so that he wouldn’t get burned by the sudden stream of steaming water. He shifted his body and the warmth spread right into his bones. There was no pain now but he didn’t feel his usual contentment that began to glow immediately after the pain ceased. He felt dread, the dread that the Cat must have felt when he heard about Tom Wernekink’s death. They had wanted him to feel dread, not just fear. They had wanted him to wake up to the horrifying implications of their conduct. They wanted the Cat to know that they were prepared to kill a man on incomplete evidence.


  The commissaris maneuvered his foot and the hot-water tap closed again. He lit another small cigar after drying his hands carefully with the towel his wife had left on the floor.

  * * *

  Yes, de Gier thought on his way to the kitchen. He had slept and now it was time to eat. Soon he would be going to town to meet Cardozo. Wernekink was killed by mistake. They figured it all wrong, the bastards. They merely thought that Wernekink might be connected with the gang on the dike. They never bothered to prove their theory. Perhaps they didn’t even care. But whose mind constructed this bit of terrorism? They wanted to get at the Cat, of course, but they killed his friend. His friend was of no use to them. He had no active part in the gang. They needed the Cat, but they needed a scared Cat, not a confident Cat.

  Maybe it was my friend Sharif, Grijpstra thought as he was dressing in front of his small bathroom mirror. My friend Sharif, the wise man from the East. The man who has become a millionaire in a foreign country by selling stolen household appliances at a twenty-five percent discount, importing aromatic oils, and exporting secondhand clothes to the blacks in Africa.

  He brushed his short hair and patted the bald spot, which the hairs, no matter which way he brushed them, would no longer hide. Fat, old and bald, Grijpstra said to his image, and stupid. Can you imagine Sharif creeping about in Wernekink’s river garden, aiming, firing a pistol, and sneaking out again?

  He saw the smooth gentleman again, with the large, almost liquid, eyes. Grijpstra shuddered, as he had shuddered in Sharif’s office that day. “What’s under the mask, adjutant? I don’t think you know. Neither do I. We are both men, we both live on the same planet. We have the same questions. You have a dream that escapes you, yet it seems within reach. The Prophet had the dream, and he was a man like us, adjutant.”

  Would a man like that, a man who could read Grijpstra’s dream, whose eyes were so soft and deep and whose hands were so long and slender and quiet, kill Tom Wernekink—a harmless eccentric—just for the hell of it? Just to shake another man who might be of use to him in a scheme of mere material profit? Grijpstra thought.

  Some forgotten knowledge surfaced in Grijpstra’s mind. Infidels, he thought, that’s what we are in their minds. Their faith is deep but it is pushed on others. They are prepared to draw a sword, to point a pistol, only to convince. They will kill if the infidel refuses to be convinced. To kill is nothing to them; it’s still a sport, a gesture. Embrace the faith or lose your head.

  He tried to brush his hair the other way but the bald spot was still there. But that’s the faith, he said to his uncooperative image, and the faith is not a washing machine, or a twenty-five percent profit. Hadn’t Sharif said to him, only a few hours ago, “Adjutant, we are both men"? Would Sharif the philosopher be prepared to put a bullet into Grijpstra’s large heavy head if he, Grijpstra, frustrated a deal in used clothes?

  He didn’t know the answer to his question and shook his head helplessly. His body had filled itself with submerged nausea. The incongruity of the case made him feel as if he were walking in a desert of twilight.

  Apply for a transfer to some small city, he told himself. Amsterdam is too subtle for you. What do you know about Arabs? Or Chinese?

  He sighed. What do you know about the Dutch? he asked himself and knotted his tie and stamped into the corridor where his wife was shouting for him.

  “Yes,” he shouted back. “I am coming. And if your damned brother-in-law is going to switch the TV on I am going to drink all the beer in the house and you can carry me home.”

  “I won’t,” his wife shouted.

  “You will,” he said. “Oh yes, you will, because if you don’t you’ll have no one to shout at tomorrow morning.”

  12

  TEN O’CLOCK ON A SUMMER NIGHT IN AMSTERDAM. SUMMER was creeping into autumn but the hot heavy weather held on and the city was limp after an exhausting day. The terraces had been full and the shops empty. Girls had displayed their crossed legs on the metal or cane chairs of the terraces but the men had been too sweaty and irritable to show much interest. Even the mini skirts that showed all, the belly buttons that accentuated naked waists decorated with thin golden chains, even the pink, brown, yellow and black breasts pushed up cleverly by invisible plastic structures had failed to raise more than a quick glance. The newspapers bought out of habit remained unread, left on the tables of cafés and on the seats of streetcars and buses. There had been no queues at the cinemas, and theaters and concert halls were empty that night. Only beer trucks and Italian ice carts were busy. The water in the canals was green and stagnant and the pigeons on the Dam square only moved when a human foot almost crushed mem. Even men they didn’t bother to fly away but only moved over with an angry or merely disturbed “korroo, korroo.”

  De Gier leaned against the pedestal of the Northern Lion, an unlikely looking stone animal. Together with its mate, the Southern Lion, it had been built by a well-meaning architect who had designed the immense white concrete phallus pointing at heaven to remind everyone that the War had been terrible and had taken many Dutch lives. The gray steps surrounding the phallus were crowded, as ever, with sweet-eyed hippies, leather-jacketed drug dealers and mentally deranged youngsters who were hugging each other for company. Several guitars clanged in sad disharmony and some elegant black beauties were talking to each other in the dialect of Surinam, the last Dutch colony on the South American continent. Now threatened by independence, it was losing its population in a steady trickle via Schiphol airport at the rate of at least one full four-engined jet plane a day. Dutch welfare provided these young people with their bell-bottomed trousers, striped shirts and high-heeled boots. And here they were in the shadow of the phallus enjoying their sudden freedom from the claws of hunger and disease, trying to get used to a new environment that, so far, showed few signs of accepting them. De Gier had been looking at them for some time, the great-great-great-grandchildren of slaves taken some hundreds of years ago by Arab and Dutch vessels from the west coast of Africa to the new promising colony of sugar and cotton fields—slaves who died like rats on ships and plantations but who were always replaced by fresh deliveries. De Gier sighed.

  Two drug dealers ambled up to him. They didn’t look at him but their lips moved. “Hashshshshshshshsh. Hashshshshshshsh.”

  The hissing sounded uncanny and vaguely threatening. The dealers were young, wide-shouldered and long-haired. Evil yogis, perverted fakirs with black souls full of hatred and greed and spite.

  “Fuck offfiffffff, fuck offffffffff,” de Gier hissed.

  The dealers turned and came straight for him. A blue VW bus, parked at the curb, showed a ripple of interest. The three uniformed constables in the bus had been watching the dealers; they now sat up, ready to slide their door open. De Gier’s body moved too. He stood with his legs apart, his arms dangling. His chin was down. He had already worked out his attack. A quick feint to the one on the left and a kick in the shins to the one on the right that would floor the young man and put him out of the fight for a few seconds. Then he would hit the one on the left with a backhanded slap and punch him full in the stomach. Turning again toward the one on the right, who should have been on his feet by that time, practicing the best possible judo throw, de Gier would jump, put his right foot against the man’s chest, grab him by the shoulders, fall back and propel the body over his head. The man might break his neck if he didn’t know how to fall but de Gier wasn’t concerned. The sympathy of the nation would be with him. There was no way to catch these ghouls. They carried no drugs or proper weapons. They might use a screwdriver or a paint scraper, arms that kill if they don’t maim and are legal as long as they aren’t used in actual violence. If he followed them they would walk him to a parked car, or a hole in a wall and sell him drugs. They might also rob him.

  Go on, de Gier thought, attack me. Please.

  But the dealers spat at him and changed direction. They had seen the constables in the bus. They had also seen the way de Gier was waiting for them.
They wouldn’t attack. They only went for the weak, the helpless, the hopeless. De Gier looked at his watch. Five past ten. No Cardozo. A throng of hippies passed, chanting a song of love. When they thinned out he saw Cardozo, leaning against the pedestal of the Southern Lion.

  De Gier walked over and approached Cardozo from the back, making no sound on his thick rubber soles. Cardozo turned around just before de Gier’s hand touched his shoulder. Cardozo was also ready, legs apart, arms dangling.

  “It’s you,” Cardozo said; “you’re late. Funny atmosphere here this evening, don’t you think? There’ll be a fight soon I bet. The dealers are wandering about everywhere and they seem nastier than usual. I’ve had a few girls making up to me as well; heroin must be in very short supply all of a sudden. When they raise the price the activity increases immediately. They’ll be busier than usual at the station tonight.”

  “I am not late,” de Gier said, “you’re in the wrong place. This is the Southern Lion, we were supposed to meet at the Northern Lion.”

  Cardozo smiled. “Sorry, sergeant. I never knew the difference.”

  “There is south,” de Gier said, pointing, “and there’s the north. Direction of the Central Station. Didn’t they ever make you find your way during the exercises at the police school?”

  “They did,” Cardozo said, “the works. They have dumped me from a moving truck right in the middle of nowhere.”

  “So what happened? Did they pick you up in the forest a couple of days later? Wandering about in a daze?”

  “No,” Cardozo said.

  “So?”

  “I always carried some money,” Cardozo said, “and there are five hundred Dutchmen to the square kilometer. I could always ask, couldn’t I?”

  “You shouldn’t have asked and you shouldn’t have carried money.”

  “Should,” Cardozo said.

  “Every man has his weaknesses,” de Gier said. “You’ll find out about mine if you live long enough. How did it go with the Arabs?”