Floodgate (16 page)

'Cause of death, doctor?' de Graaf said.
'Multiple, massive injuries, of course. Cause? An autopsy will reveal -' 'Autopsy!' Van Effen's voice was as cold as the mortuary itself. 'I do not wish to be personal, doctor, but how long have you held this post?' 'My first week. 'The slight pallor in his face suggested that Dr Prins was, himself, having some problems with his internal economy. 'So you won't have seen many cases like this. If any. This man has been murdered. He hasn't fallen off the top of a high building or been run over by a heavy truck. In that case the skull or chest wall or pelvis or the femoral bones or tibia would have been crushed or broken. They haven't. He's been battered to death by iron bars. His face is unrecognizable, knee-caps smashed and forearms broken - no doubt when he was trying to defend himself against the iron bars.'
De Graaf said to the doctor: 'He was, of course, wearing clothes when he was brought in. Anyone been through them?'
'Identification, you mean, Colonel?'
'Of course.'
'Nothing that I know of.'
'It doesn't matter,' van Effen said. 'I know who it is. I recognize that scar on the shoulder. Detective Rudolph Engel. He was shadowing a man known as Julius Caesar - you may remember Annemarie mentioning this character in La Caracha.'
'How do you know this?'
'Because I was the person who told Engel to do the shadowing. I also warned him that there was more than a degree of danger attached and that he was on no account to be in a position where he would find himself without people around. I reminded him what had happened to the two detectives who had trailed Agnelli. He forgot or disobeyed or was carried away by curiosity or enthusiasm. Whatever it is, it cost him Ws life.' 'But to murder him in this savage fashion?' De Graaf shook his head. 'Even to kill him at all. Well, it does seem an unbelievable instance of over-reacting.'
'We'll probably never know the truth, sir. But if we do we'll probably find out that he wasn't disposed of just for shadowing but because he'd found out something they couldn't let him live to report. High stakes, Colonel.'
'High indeed. It might help to have a word with this - ah -Julius Caesar.'
'Probably couldn't find him in the first place. He'll have gone to ground, left Amsterdam for healthier climes or, most likely, shaved off his pepper-and-salt beard and got himself a wig for his bald pate and a pair of dark glasses to conceal his squint. Besides, even if we did pull him in, what have we got to charge him with?'
They thanked Dr Prins and left. As they were passing through the entrance hall a man at the desk called the Colonel and handed him a phone. The Colonel spoke briefly, handed back the phone and rejoined van Effen. 'Not destined to be our afternoon, I'm afraid. Office. just heard from the hospital. One of our men there. Just been fished out of a canal, it seems.'
'What's he doing in hospital? You mean he's not drowned?' 'No. Touch and go, it seems. We'd better have a look.' 'Identity?'
'Not established. Still unconscious. No papers, no badge. But carrying a gun and a pair of handcuffs. So they guessed it was a cop.' In the hospital they were led to. a private room on the first floor, from which a grey-haired doctor was just emerging. He saw de Graaf and smiled, 'My old friend! You don't waste time, I must say. One of your men has just had a rather unpleasant experience. A very close thing, very close, but he'll be all right. In fact, he can leave in an hour or two.' 'So he's conscious?'
'Conscious and in a very bad temper. Name of Voight.' 'Mas Voight?' van Effen said.
'That's him. Little boy saw him floating face down in the water. Luckily there were a couple of dock-workers close by. They fished him out and brought him here. Couldn't have been. in the water more than a minute or so.'
Voight was sitting up-in bed and looking very disgruntled. After the briefest of courteous enquiries as to his health de Graaf said: 'How on earth did you come to fall into that canal?'
'Fall into the canal!' Voight was outraged. 'Fall into -' 'Shh!' said the doctor. 'You'll just do yourself an injury.' He gently turned Voight's head: the blue and purple bruise behind the right ear promised to develop into something quite spectacular. 'Must have run out of crowbars,' van Effen said.
De Graaf frowned. 'And what is that meant to mean?' 'Our friends are being active again. Detective Voight was keeping an eye on Alfred van Rees and
'Alfred van Rees?'
'You know. The Rijkswaterstaat man. Locks, weirs, sluices and what have you. Unfortunately it would seem that Detective Voight couldn't watch van Rees and his own back at the same time. Last report, Voight, was that you had lost van Rees.'
'A patrolman found him again. Gave me the address. I drove down and parked by the canal, got out
'What canal?' van Effen said.
'The Croquiskade.'
'The Croquiskade! And van Rees. You astonish me. Hardly the most salubrious part of our fair city.'
Voight rubbed his neck. 'I didn't find it very salubrious either. I saw van Rees and another man coming out of this doorway and then they went back in again. Why, I don't know. I wasn't in a police car and as far as I know they've never seen me, never suspected I was following them. And then - well, the next thing I knew I was in this bed. Never even heard a footstep behind me.' 'Did you get the house number?'
'Yes. Thirty-eight.'
Van Effen picked up a bedside phone, told the switchboard it was police and urgent, gave them his office number and said to de Graaf. 'I don't suppose that anyone will still be at number thirty-eight. But we may find something there - if, that is, they didn't see Detective Voight being fished out of the canal. If they did, it'll be as clean as a whistle. Question of search warrant, sir?'
'Damn the search warrant.' De Graaf was obviously rather shaken that his old friend van Rees could be involved in illegal activities. 'Effect an entry by any means.'
Van Effen was through to his office almost immediately, asked for a certain Sergeant Oudshoorn,got him in turn just as quickly, gave him the address and instructions and listened for a brief period. 'No, Sergeant. Take four men. One at the front door, one at the back ... No warrant. The Colonel says so. Yes. Take the damned door off its hinges if you have to. Or shoot the lock away. Detain anyone you find inside. Don't leave there. Radio report to station and await instructions. 'He hung up. 'Sergeant Oudshorn seems to relish the prospect.' They told Voight to cA home, have dry clothes brought, go home and rest and said goodbye. In the passage-way de Graaf said: 'It can't be. Impossible. Man's a pillar of society. Good heavens, I even put him up for my club.'
'Could be a perfectly innocent explanation, sir. The state of Voight's neck and his immersion in the canal seems to suggest otherwise. Remember, I suggested in Schiphol that perhaps he was a Jekyll by day and a Hyde by night. Maybe I got it wrong. Maybe he's a daylight Hyde.' As they approached the hospital entrance van Effen stopped abruptly. De Graaf stopped also and looked at him curiously.
'One rarely sees an expression of concern on your face, Peter. Something amiss?'
'I hope not, sir. Something's been nagging away at the back of my mind but I haven't had time to think about it. Not until now. This call you got while you were lunching - at least, when you were about to have lunch - did it come from the station?'
'Of course. Sergeant Bresser.'
'Where did he get his information from?'
'The hospital I presume. Bresser said he'd tried to find first you, then Lieutenant Valken and failing to find either he'd contacted me. Does it matter?'
'This matters. Young Dr Prins at the mortuary is neither experienced nor very bright. For all he knew or suspected to the contrary, Engel might have fallen off the top of the Havengebouw, or been the victim of a street or industrial accident. The mortuary does not call in senior police officers unless they know or suspect that the victim did not meet a natural end. So the chances are that the call did not come from the hospital. Bresser's a stolid unimaginative man. Thinking is not his forte. Was it your idea to call me up at Julie's and ask me to come along?'
'You're beginning to get me worried now, too, Peter, although I don't know why. Your name had been mentioned in the call but whether it was Bresser's suggestion you come along or mine I'm not clear. Damn these lunches.'
'Moment, sir.' Van Effen went to the nearest telephone and dialled a number. He let it ring for perhaps fifteen seconds then dialled again while de Graaf watched him at first in perplexity, then in apprehension then with the sick dawning of understanding. He was at the front door and holding it open when van Effen replaced the phone and came running towards him.
Van Effen didn't even bother to knock on Julie's door, which he unlocked with the key he'd fished out coming up in the lift. The living-room appeared to be in perfectly normal condition, which meant nothing. Julie's bedroom was also as it should have been but her bathroom told a different story. Thyssen, the guard, was lying on the floor, perfectly conscious and in apparent danger of suffering an apoplectic stroke, whether from rage or an effort to free himself from the ropes that bound wrists and ankles it was difficult to say. Perhaps he had been having difficulty in breathing through his gag. They freed him and helped him to his feet for he was unable to stand: if the blued hands were anything to go by the circulation of his feet must have been almost completely blocked off too. Whoever had tied him had worked with a will.
They helped him through to the living-room and into an armchair. Van Effen massaged circulation back into hand and feet - not a pleasant process if one were to judge by Thyssen's repeated winces and screwing-shut of the eyes - while de Graaf brought him a glass of brandy. He had to hold it to the man's lips as Thyssen had yet to recover the use of his hands. 'Van der Hum,' de Graaf said referring to the brandy. 'A universal specific and, in the circumstances, despite regulations -'
Van Effen smiled. It wasn't the strained smile of a man deliberately repressing emotion: he seemed quite remarkably unaffected by the turn of events. 'The man who makes the regulations can break the regulations. It wouldn't conic amiss, sir.'
They had barely sipped from their glasses when Thyssen recovered enough strength to seize his, lift his trembling hand to his mouth, and drink half the contents in one gulp: he coughed, spluttered, then spoke for the first time.
'God, I'm sorry, Lieutenant! Most damnably sorry! Your sister - and that other nice lady.' He drained his glass. 'I should be taken out and shot.' 'I don't think it will come to that, Jan,'van Effen said mildly. 'Whatever happened is no fault of yours. What did happen?'
Thyssen was so overcome with anger, bitterness and self-reproach that his account was so disjointed and repetitive as to be at times incoherent. It appeared that he had been approached by a Dutch army major - who would ever have harboured suspicions about an Army major? - who had produced a pistol fitted with a most un-Army silencer, forced Thyssen to produce his key and open the door, pushed him inside, followed and advised the girls not to move. He had been followed into the room almost immediately by three furniture-removal men: at least, they were dressed in heavy leather aprons of the type much favoured by their profession: what was atypical about them was .at they wore hoods and gloves. Beyond that Thyssen could tell them nothing: he had been taken into the bathroom and tied, gagged and left lying on the floor. Van Effen went into Annemarie's bedroom - the one that had formerly been his - took one quick look around and returned.
'There's a pile of Annemarie's clothes lying on the bed and a wardrobe missing. They were tied, gagged and carried out in it - to anyone watching an obvious case of legitimate furniture removing. They must have been keeping tabs on me, sir, about the time you made the call to me from the restaurant. They would have had a furniture van parked nearby and would have moved in as soon as they saw me departing. Very neat indeed. A most uncomfortable trip for the young ladies - but I suppose they must have been too terrified out of their wits to worry about discomfort. Ironic, isn't it, sir, that both of them this morning were full of gloom and woe and foreboding - and prophecies of disaster. Feeling fey was what they called it. They were both convinced that the something terrible was going to happen to me: unfortunately for them they picked the wrong subject for concern.'
De Graaf, a second glass of Van der Hum in his hands, paced up and down. Even forty years in the police had left him without van Effen's ability to mask his emotions: anger and worry fought for dominance in his face. 'What are those devils up to? What did they want - and who did they want? Annemarie? Julie? Or both?'
'Julie.' Van Effen handed him the postcard he and Julie had looked at earlier in the afternoon. De Graaf took it, examined both card and envelope and said: 'When did this arrive?'
'Just after lunch. Julie was very upset but I just pooh-poohed it, laughed the matter off. Clever van Effen. Brilliant van Effen.' 'So your friends have returned, the Annecys back in Amsterdam. Lost no time in making their presence known and got at you in the very best way possible. God, I'm sorry, Peter.'
'Feel sorry for the girls. Especially for Annemarie. It was just her fiendishly bad luck to be here when they came for Julie. It was that towering genius, van Effen, of course, who had insisted that she remain here for her own safety. The demands should be arriving quite soon. You will not have forgotten, Sir, that the Annecys were - and doubtless still are - specialists in blackmail.' De Graaf shook his head and remained silent. 'It's kind of you not to say so, sir, but you will also not have forgotten that they are specialists in torture, which was the real reason I hunted them down.'
'We haven't been very clever so far,' de Graaf said. 'Things are uncommonly confusing.'
'Kind of you to say "we" sir. You mean me.' Van Effen refilled Thyssen's glass, did the same for his own and sank into an armchair. After perhaps two minutes, de Graaf looked at him and said: 'Well, surely there's something we should be doing? Shall we start by making enquiries among the flat neighbours, the people living opposite?' 'To check on the modus operandi of the kidnappers? A waste of time, Colonel. We wouldn't find out any more than we already know. We're dealing with professionals. But even professionals can make mistakes.' 'I haven't seen any so far.' The Colonel was gloomy. 'Nor have 1. I'm assuming that Julie was the target.' Van Effen reached for the telephone. 'With your permission, sir, I'll find out. Vasco. Sergeant Westenbrink. He was the only one who knew where Annemarie lived. They - whoever "they" are - may have put a tail on him and found out by methods I don't care to think about.'