The Corpse on the Dike Read Online Free Page A

and a corpse in the park, and there has been a fight in a pub somewhere. The doctor is busy and the photographers are and the fingerprint people too. We may have to wait some time. The chief inspector is off duty; his mother is very ill. The commissaris will come. He is visiting friends and they couldn’t reach him straight off.”
    “No,” Grijpstra said. “What about the famous city service? There should be two cars racing around, two cars full of officers. Inspectors and subinspectors. Where are they?”
    “Busy,” de Gier said. “It’s a hot evening.”
    “Well, sit down,” Grijpstra said. “This is a funny place. Look around.”
    “Grijpstra,” de Gier said.
    “No. Let me think. I was thinking something when you came in and now it’s gone again.”
    Grijpstra closed his eyes and the heavy eyebrows came down and almost hid the sockets of his eyes. He frowned and his hands became big powerful fists. What? Ah, yes. The hole. The bullet hole. Right between the eyes. Not a scorched wound, so there had been a fair distance between gun muzzle and victim’s head. A good shot. A very good shot. An excellent shot, considering that the dead man must have been standing close to the window, looking out. And the killer was in the garden. A crack shot. Professional. That had been the thought that flitted through his slow dense brain. Nobody carries firearms in Holland. To carry a firearm is a crime. Even an unloaded gun in a man’s pocket draws a heavy fine and a stretch in jail. To threaten with a toy gun is a crime. Nobody gets a license to carry arms. For sport, yes. But only to take the gun, suitably wrapped up, directly from one’s house to the shooting club, and straight back again. And even a sporting license is hard to get. There are forms to be filled in, and memberships to be obtained, and the police want references. But here a man had been shot, from a distance, and right between the eyes. A gangster? And why, pray, would a gangster shoot a man who works in his garden during the day and who watches his TV in the evening? A man who doesn’t even work? Who only goes out to do a little shopping? Grijpstra groaned. What had they stumbled into now? Into a maniac who hides a horrible secret and another maniac comes and kills him from the garden? No. Amsterdam is a quiet town. A nice quiet town. Grijpstra had spent the afternoon reading through police reports covering nearly three full weeks of daily events. Thefts, burglaries, a few street robberies, a knife fight, suicides, plenty of fires, a house that had collapsed of old age and crushed the leg of a child. The worst that had happened during the last two months had been an Italian bankrobber trying to fire an ancient Sten gun, which had jammed after the third cartridge. The police never stopped talking about it. “Tommy guns,” the young constables had said in the canteens. “It’ll be cannon next and all we have is 7.65 pistols with six cartridges.” The officers had smiled at the constables, patted their heads and said, “Now, now, now.” And here was a man with a hole between his eyes.
    “Grijpstra,” de Gier said again.
    “Yes, yes.”
    “He was shot from the garden,” de Gier said, “through the open window.”
    “I know.”
    “Look at all those empty beer cans.”
    “I have seen them.”
    “This is an antique shop,” de Gier said. “Where did he get all this stuff? It’s valuable too. If the whole house is filled with this type of furniture, he must have owned a hundred thousand guilders’ worth of antiques. So why didn’t he get someone to clean up for him? And why didn’t he polish his shoes? Or get a new color TV instead of that croaky old thing? Or buy a shirt?”
    “Yes,” Grijpstra said.
    “Crazy,” de Gier said. “A crazy man. And why kill him?”
    “And why be neat in the garden and sloppy in the house?” Grijpstra asked.
    “I don’t know,” de Gier said. “I’m sloppy on the balcony and neat in the house. Other