The Corpse on the Dike (14 page)

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.”

“Good,” 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.

“A quarter.”

“He was being straight with you, wasn’t he?”

“Certainly,” the Mouse said indignantly.

“Did he take part in the actual theft?”

“No. He told us from the beginning that he would never do any stealing. He only sold the stuff, and only if the job had been properly planned by himself.”

“Go on.”

“Well, that gave us some self-respect, just what we needed. And we went on from there. We got a few truckloads of lumber and some roof tiles. We even got tools, lovely tools. The only thing we paid for was cement, since we didn’t want to steal a cement truck; they’re too obvious with their turning tanks.”

“And nobody talked?” de Gier asked.

“No. Never. I didn’t talk either. The Cat was giving me a bad conscience.”

“Did he know you are an informer?” Grijpstra asked.

“No. Nobody knows. My wife doesn’t know. I don’t even know myself. I don’t want to know. And I won’t inform again.”

“You turned that old friend of yours in,” Grijpstra said; “that wasn’t so long ago. And you told us about the escaped burglar.”

“I know, I know,” the Mouse squeaked. “I had to do something every once in a while, but it’s all over now. Never again. And they had nothing to do with us or the Cat. You would have caught them anyway.”

“The Cat is caught,” the commissaris said.

“Yes. Something went wrong. He warned them, you know.”

“What went wrong?”

“The boasting. It never stopped. The Cat couldn’t kill it. We got our self-respect back and we were doing real proper jobs but it wasn’t enough. Not all of us, mind you; some of us knew how to handle the new situation. But some couldn’t. They wanted to be real gangsters and were going to town all the time to watch the pictures. All these old French gangster movies. The silent types with the guns. Pistols and tommy guns, fast cars and nice women with short skirts and a lot of tit on them. They thought they had to be like that. All silly imagination and film nonsense. There are no such people. The Cat told them and I told them too, but they wouldn’t believe it. They were stealing truckloads, big truckloads by then. Containers. Expensive stuff. Color TVs and electrical household goods. Freezers and big stereo radio combinations and stoves and washing machines. The lot. The Cat was selling it for real money, and handing it out as fast as he got it. They would all meet in somebody’s house—like a party—and he would say, ‘You did this so I think you get so much,’ ‘you did that so I think you get so much.’ He would look around and if everybody said OK he handed over the money.”

“Anybody ever put up a stink?” Grijpstra asked.

“No. The Cat’s propositions were good. They wanted him to ask them for their opinions. That’s all they wanted, and he did.”

“What did
you
do?” the commissaris asked.

“I studied the truck drivers, followed them about, found out where they stopped on the way. I also got their keys and had them copied. One of the men used to be a locksmith. We would go in my car and follow the truck; I would lift the keys, rush them back to the car, and he would copy them. I would put them back again. But I never did the heavy work.”

“Ever get into trouble?”

“No, sir,” the Mouse said proudly. “I have an ordinary car and I look ordinary. Nobody notices me much.”

“Have a drink.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The four glasses were lined up and the landlord filled them. They raised their glasses and drank.

“So tell us about what went wrong.”

“Yes, sir. The boasting as I said. Acting big. Some of them began to swagger about. The houses were all refurnished with wall-to-wall carpets, color TVs, new curtains and furniture and so on. And the gardens were fixed up. And then they bought clothes. And cars, nice cars. Then they began to buy guns. Somebody went to Belgium and came back with an automatic pistol. He showed it around and then some others wanted arms as well. We had been working on an old cruiser, putting in a new engine, and they thought they might do some thieving off ships; that’s why they got the tommy gun. Frightened of the tough sailors, I suppose. The Cat was dead against it. His plans never called for firearms. No violence. Not even when I couldn’t get the keys off one particular truck driver. The Cat used a girl that time. I found out that the driver liked to pick up girls on the way, so the Cat found a nice prostitute in town, made up to her and offered her a good share. She got herself in the way of the driver and he took her; then she suggested parking the truck in a convenient place and going into the bushes. While they were busy out there we emptied the truck.”