The Corpse on the Dike (6 page)

“Yes, miss,” Grijpstra said politely, “and the ammo please.” He was given two cartons. “Thank you, miss.”

“Can I pack a few things in a suitcase?” Mary asked. “Your chief wants to arrest me. I am innocent of course, but I am sure you’ll keep me there for a long while. A prisoner has no rights I believe.”

“You won’t be a prisoner, madam,” Grijpstra said. “You are a suspect and suspects have all sorts of rights. We’ll look after you as best we can.”

“Yes,” Mary said bitterly, “you won’t let me smoke and you won’t let me read and I’ll sit in a small concrete cubbyhole for hours and hours on end. I have heard stories.”

“You’ll be all right, miss,” Grijpstra said, and watched the woman pack pyjamas, books, cigarettes and toilet gear into a battered overnight bag.

When Mary faced the commissaris again she stopped. “Commissaris,” she said firmly.

“Yes, miss?”

“I assure you I am innocent and I promise you I won’t run away. My word of honor. Don’t take me with you. If you want me you can send a message and I’ll be with you within thirty minutes. I’ll take a cab if necessary although I don’t have much money. But I don’t want to go into a police cell. Please.” Her underlip was trembling and both Grijpstra and de Gier looked away.

The commissaris sighed and put a thin old man’s hand on the fat woman’s shoulder. “Believe me, I have to take you with me. All indications point at you. Your prints are in the garden. You failed to inform the police when you discovered the corpse. You are a crack shot and our man has been killed by a crack shot. Very few people know how to handle firearms. There may be a motive. It all adds up to grave suspicion. It is very possible that you are guilty of the most serious crime we know in our law books. If I don’t take you with me I will be guilty of negligence. It’s all very logical; surely you see what I am driving at?”

“And there is no pity in the law?” Mary asked, her underlip still trembling.

“Yes,” the commissaris said gravely, “there is pity in the law. There may be many faults in the way this country runs its affairs but the law is compassionate. But not at this stage of the investigation. We have to arrest you and put you into a cell…”

“All right,” Mary said, “take me then, but you’d better tell Evelien; she’s upstairs.”

The commissaris nodded at de Gier. Grijpstra opened the door for Mary and waved at the uniformed driver in the commissaris’ car.

“Do you want me to come with you, sir?”

“No, Grijpstra,” the commissaris said. “I’ll see you at nine o’clock in my office tomorrow. Wait for de Gier and go home; you can tell the two constables guarding Wernekink’s house to go home as well. The body has been removed and there is nothing else to do over there.” The commissaris stepped back and Mary got into the black Citroën. The driver saluted as he helped her into the car.

3

T
HE RED LIGHT ATTACHED TO THE COMMISSARIS’ OFFICE
door was on and his telephone was, temporarily, disconnected. No one, except the chief constable—who could press a special button that engaged a buzzer near the commissaris’ desk—could disturb him now. The commissaris was facing his three visitors. “Yes,” the commissaris said, addressing the public prosecutor, a man in his late forties, conservatively dressed in a dark blue suit, white shirt and gray tie, “I know this isn’t usual procedure but I asked these two detectives in because I value their insight and advice.”

The public prosecutor nodded, Grijpstra smiled and de Gier looked noncommittal. “I appreciate the company of the two gentlemen,” the public prosecutor said slowly, “and the matter is serious enough. We are, after all, trying to reach a decision about the liberty of a human being, and liberty is the greatest good.”

“Yes,” the commissaris said quietly.

“But there’s something about this I don’t like so much,” the public prosecutor said, and the laugh wrinkles around his eyes suddenly became very noticeable.

“Yes?” the commissaris asked.

“It seems that I am being asked what
I
think about the possible guilt of Miss Mary van Krompen,” the public prosecutor said. “Your approach should have been different. You should have tried to
prove
the guilt of the lady to me. You have been questioning her now for two days and you can’t hold her any longer on your own authority. All right. So now my office has to approve her remaining in custody. Fine. The police tell us about their suspicions, the various facts are outlined, we read through the reports of the interrogators, and we make up our mind.”

“Yes?” the commissaris asked.

“Yes. But this time you ask
me
what I think. Are you in doubt about what you should do?”

The commissaris nodded gravely. “Yes, I am in doubt. Very much so.”

“Why? The facts seem clear enough. Footprints, nice clear plaster of Paris footprints matching the lady’s shoes. The lady admits that she saw the corpse but she didn’t contact the police; that’s a crime in itself and I hope you’ll charge her with it. And on top of it all the unbelievable accuracy of the shot. A thirty-three-foot distance between weapon and wound according to the experts and the victim didn’t just stand there waiting to be shot between the eyes. He must have moved when he realized his life was in danger, the killer can’t have had more than a few seconds to pull the trigger. Wernekink wasn’t tied to a stake was he, or blindfolded?” The public prosecutor was working himself up into a rage, acting his part at court, facing the judges and the lawyer defending the accused.

“Ah, hum,” the public prosecutor said, “excuse me, I was being carried away by the clear implications of the evidence facing us. Still, the evidence
is
undeniable, isn’t it? And the lady is a crack shot; she won a number of prizes and she is the champion of her club.”

“Yes, sir,” the commissaris said, “she is a champion; she is also a lesbian, and the girl making up to the neighbor—a girl living in her house as a lodger—is very attractive. But there is no conclusive evidence, I think. No, not conclusive. The lady swears she didn’t do it. She holds a master’s degree in mathematics and she admits that the chance that another crack shot got our friend is very small. But the chance does exist, we must admit it. There are, after all, other people who know how to handle a gun, even in Holland. De Gier, for instance. De Gier, do you think you could manage a perfect shot like that?”

De Gier sat up. “Perhaps,” he said. “I have had some very good results in the shooting gallery, and I have also been reasonably successful outside. Last year I hit a running robber in the leg at a sixty-foot distance and it was dark, and I had been running before I stopped to fire. But I think it was a fluke shot.”

“Yes, yes,” the commissaris said impatiently, “we know about that. The question is whether you could have hit a man between the eyes at a thirty-three-foot distance? With one shot, mind you; we only found one empty cartridge in the garden.”

De Gier was shaking his head. “I can’t say yes or no, sir. I might be able to do it but there are always circumstances. The wind, the weapon, my state of nerves. I can never hit anything after I have been riding my bicycle; it seems that the vibration of a cycle affects the muscles of my arm.”

“There must be other crack shots in Holland,” the public prosecutor said, “and perhaps Sergeant de Gier is one of them. We also have to weigh the fact that the bullet wasn’t fired from either of the two pistols that the lady owns and that she surrendered to you.”

“No,” Grijpstra said, “I don’t think the point weakens our suspicion. Guns are for sale, aren’t they? And members of shooting clubs can get guns easier than others. The people who repair guns often sell arms on the sly. They can buy parts and a full set of parts is a complete gun. And it’s very easy to buy firearms in Belgium. If Mary wanted to buy a gun she could buy one, and if she wanted to remove Tom Wernekink she wouldn’t kill him with one of her own guns.”

“So?” the public prosecutor asked. “I think your evidence is heavy enough; you can hold her for another two days as far as I am concerned. I have said it before, but you don’t seem very pleased.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” the commissaris muttered, “but I had a second reason to ask for your opinion. You are a doctor of law and a skilled lawyer; you have a different sort of brain, not a police brain as I have. We are investigators but we never judge.”

“I am not a judge,” the public prosecutor said. “I prosecute, that’s a different discipline altogether.”

“I know, I know,” the commissaris said, “but still, your angle is different. I am not convinced about the lady’s guilt. Her denials are very straightforward. She isn’t a devious woman either; she is used to saying what she thinks.”

“Do you like her?” the public prosecutor asked.

The commissaris got up and began bending his knees and straightening up again. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I think I like her.”

The public prosecutor looked around, trying to make contact with the three policemen. The commissaris was staring at the wall, Grijpstra was staring out the window and de Gier had closed his eyes. The public prosecutor got up and waved his hands. “Look here,” he said, “what the hell do you want of me? Aren’t you exaggerating the importance of my office? All I can do is give permission twice to hold a suspect for two days. I admit that the first request is no more than a formality; if a police commissaris tells me that he suspects a person of having committed a serious crime I will allow him to hold the suspect for two days for questioning. The second request is more serious and I go into the matter. I
did
go into this matter. I saw your lady, I weighed the evidence, I really studied the case. So all right, you have another two days. But what is another two days? Forty-eight hours pass pretty quickly, don’t they? She isn’t all that uncomfortable in her cell, is she? Why don’t you wait for the judge? If she still hasn’t convinced you of her innocence after another two days, the judge has to decide. Wait for the judge!”

“Another two days,” the commissaris said softly.

“So what the hell?” the public prosecutor said, getting red in the face.

“It isn’t just that I like her,” the commissaris said; “there’s something else.”

The public prosecutor sighed. “That’s better. Tell me about it.”

“We laughed together,” the commissaris said.

“Laughed?” said Grijpstra. “So that’s what it was? When de Gier and I had been out of the room? I thought I noticed something when I came back, in fact I thought that she had given in.”

“No, no. She never gave in. But something funny happened and I laughed and she laughed with me. Suddenly she became relaxed, normal, pleasant even.”

“Funny?” de Gier asked. “What were you and the lady laughing about, sir?”

“Never mind.”

Grijpstra grinned. “Must have been something about you, de Gier; I am never funny.”

The mustache of the public prosecutor began to bristle. “What’s all this now? So she laughed, so something funny happened, so what?”

“Fear and amusement do not go together,” the commissaris said.

The public prosecutor’s mood changed. He remembered the many conversations he had had with the commissaris, both at Headquarters and at home. He also remembered his admiration for the frail old man who so often approached a problem from an unusual, but often correct, angle. He sighed again. “Well, we’ll have to go on with her. We can’t let her go. I don’t see any possibility of that at all. If she killed that unfortunate young man it must have been an act of insane jealousy; that she appears to be reasonable and normal now means nothing. If she is an aggressive person—and we have every reason to believe that she is—she may become violent again, when the circumstances are right. She may have been jealous of the young man because he was making an impression on the girl. The girl is still alive. We don’t want Mary van Krompen to kill the girl as well, do we?”

Grijpstra was nodding.

“You agree, adjutant?”

“I am afraid I do,” Grijpstra said. “The girl will suspect Mary of having killed Tom Wsmekink. She may say something to that effect.”

“Yes,” de Gier said.

The commissaris was still doing his gymnastic exercises. He stopped now and looked at his visitors. “Thank you for your time, gentlemen,” he said softly.