The Corpse on the Dike Read Online Free PDF

“Don’t obstruct the road. Nothing to see here now.”
    The police cars finally arrived and the investigation followed its normal course with special attention paid to the garden where two men wandered around holding powerful torches. Some footprints were found and soon the men were kneeling in the wet earth, building boxes out of metal foil, sprinkling gypsum powder into a bucket and stirring the mixture carefully, muttering at the photographers who were also interested in the prints.
    De Gier looked for Grijpstra and found him upstairs in the loft where the commissaris was sitting on an unmade bed. “I agree, Grijpstra,” the commissaris was saying. “Our friend didn’t look after himself much. Dirty sheets, unswept floor, full ashtrays, beer cans everywhere. Did you find a bathroom or a shower anywhere?”
    “No, sir.”
    “So he must have washed and shaved in the kitchen sink. But he was rich, undoubtedly. I was looking at that antique rosewood desk downstairs, a collector’s piece. I’m sure it’s worth a small fortune. And the china collection in the cupboard is worth a fortune too. Yet he didn’t seem to care for the stuff. He didn’t even bother to place the furniture properly. It looks as if the movers plunked it down and that’s where it stayed. Let’s look for his papers; maybe they’ll tell us something.”
    Grijpstra and de Gier began to open drawers and cupboard doors. They found clothes, dirty clothes mostly. “The doctor is probably finished with the body now,” Grijpstra said. “He should have a wallet in his jacket.” The commissaris negotiated the narrow staircase carefully. Grijpstra clomped down and de Gier, after a last look around the loft, followed him.
    “Evening,” the commissaris said to the doctor and shook hands. “Any idea how long he has been dead?”
    “Some time,” the doctor said. “I’ll have to do my tests but I would think that the bullet got him at least two days ago. It’ll be difficult to determine the exact time; the longer the body lies around the harder the case becomes. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
    “Can I go through his pockets?” de Gier asked.
    “Sure.”
    “Let me do it,” Grijpstra said. “You’ll faint and we don’t want more work for the doctor.”
    “Thanks,” de Gier said.
    The commissaris smiled. De Gier had fainted before— twice in fact—and both times when confronted by a corpse, but fainting is not unusual in the police. And de Gier wouldn’t faint when he had to be active in some way—run, or shoot, or think.
    “Here,” Grijpstra said, and gave the wallet to the commissaris.
    The commissaris looked through its contents. He studied the passport, which showed rubber stamps indicating three trips to England, each trip lasting exactly two weeks. Holidays, the commissaris thought. There was also an address in Kralingen, a suburb of Rotterdam. The address was crossed out and a new address given as 131, Landsburger dike, Amsterdam North. The change of address had been countersigned by a clerk of the mayor’s office. “Office employee,” the commissaris said aloud; “so he does have a job, or he did have a job anyway. And he is thirty-one years old. Thomas Wernekink. Well, well. We still know nothing.” There was a driver’s license in the wallet, four hundred guilders and a slip from the bank showing that he had 28,000 guilders in his current account.
    “A lot of money,” Grijpstra said.
    “There may be even more,” the commissaris said. “This is his current account; he may have a savings account as well. We’ll check with the bank tomorrow. Banks usually know something about their clients and he is banking with a small branch office. The Rotterdam police should be very helpful, they always are. We have his old address in Kralingen; isn’t that a very expensive suburb?”
    “Yes, sir,” Grijpstra said, “lots of villas and a big park and some exclusive blocks of flats facing the park. There’s a lake, a nice