DeKok and the Dead Lovers Read online

  Suddenly the door of the room opened. A young woman stood in the door opening. DeKok estimated her to be about twenty-five years old. She wore a long purple jacket, white slacks, and red boots.

  Surprised, she whirled around.

  “What? What are you doing here?” Her voice became shriller. “Who are you?” Suddenly her eyes locked on the radiator.

  “Where’s Robert?”

  DeKok stood up and walked closer.

  “You asked four questions,” he said calmly. “Before I can truthfully answer them, I have one question: Who are you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Antoinette Graaf.”

  3

  After a slight hesitation, DeKok entered the small interrogation room and seated himself at the table across from her.

  “I’d like to talk to you,” he said affably.

  She rose from her chair and looked at him angrily. Her eyes spat fire and she banged both fists on the table.

  “You had me locked up!” she screamed. “Downstairs, in a dirty, grimy cell. The air reeks of urine and sweat.”

  DeKok made an apologetic gesture.

  “I know,” he admitted resignedly, “the cells in Warmoes Street Station are not exactly luxury accommodations.”

  Antoinette Graaf shook her head vehemently.

  “You can’t keep me. I’ve done nothing. You don’t have the right to lock me up.”

  DeKok nodded calmly.

  “I do have that right. The law gives me the right to detain you, take away your freedom.” He cocked his head at her. “But you do not have the right to restrict anyone’s liberty, and that is why I reserved a cell

  for you.”

  Antoinette pressed her lips together and sat down.

  “I can’t stay here,” she exploded finally.

  “I understand that.”

  She snorted contemptuously.

  “You understand nothing, nothing whatsoever.” She stood up again and leaned forward with both hands on the table. It was an angry, aggressive attitude. “What have you done with Robert?”

  DeKok lowered his head. Despite his promise to answer her questions, he had not done so. He had introduced himself as a police inspector. That was all. He had consciously said nothing about the true reason for his presence, or the fate of the young man.

  “What have you done with Robert?” she screamed.

  DeKok looked up at her. For some time he had been wondering to what extent the young woman was involved in the gruesome murder.

  “Did you throw him in a cell as well?”

  There was sarcasm in her voice.

  Slowly DeKok shook his head.

  “Robert is dead,” he said evenly.

  Antoinette swallowed. Her eyes enlarged, growing wild and scared at once.

  “Dead?” she repeated, not comprehending.

  DeKok nodded.

  “Somebody was unfriendly enough to shoot a bullet through his head.” He paused briefly. “While,” he continued, “he was powerless. He had no chance to escape, because he was handcuffed to the central heating.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Her voice screeched through the small room.

  DeKok shrugged.

  “How would it make sense,” he asked coldly, “for me to lie about a death?”

  Antoinette look at him in disbelief. It lasted several seconds. Finally the awful truth penetrated her anger. She sank down in the chair and covered her face with both hands.

  “Oh God,” she sobbed. “Oh God…oh God…dear God…help me, please help me.”

  Although the grey sleuth had chosen his words deliberately, her sorrow and sudden vulnerability touched him. Sympathy stirred within. Slowly he stretched out a hand and let it rest on her head.

  “Let’s hope He’ll listen to you,” he said softly, in an encouraging tone. “But sometimes God is so busy, so terribly busy…”

  Her body shook.

  DeKok considered getting her a glass of water, but decided he should remain nearby.

  After a few minutes, when her shaking diminished, he took his hand off her head.

  “Had you known Robert long?” he asked almost tenderly.

  Distracted, she looked at him. It seemed as if his question had not reached her. With the back of a hand, she wiped the tears off her face, ruining her makeup.

  “Did you know him long?” repeated DeKok.

  “No.”

  “How long?”

  “A few days.”

  “Not long.”

  “No.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “I picked him up in the street.”

  “You do that often?”

  “What?”

  “Pick up men in the street?”

  She shook her head.

  “No, I’m not like that. On the contrary, I’m rather a loner.”

  “But you picked him up.”

  Antoinette Graaf nodded slowly, calmer. The quick, short questions seemed to have restored some of her equilibrium.

  “He looked so sad.”

  “Where?”

  “Nassau Quay, on the bluestone steps of an office. I just happened to pass by. I work for an employment agency. I’m the interior caretaker; that’s what they call it today. I’m actually a glorified maid. On the way home I pass by Nassau Quay, from Frederik Hendrik Park, that piece across from Rotterdam Bridge. I thought Robert was sick, or maybe drunk. I stopped in front of him for just a moment. It was idle curiosity. Then he looked up at me and I saw he had been crying.”

  “And you felt pity?”

  Antoinette Graaf suddenly reacted in a pique.

  “Is that so strange?”

  DeKok shook his head.

  “No, no,” he said hastily. “Certainly not. That’s just human.”

  She gestured in dismissal.

  “I asked if he planned to spend the night on those steps. You see, it was almost eleven o’clock, and the night was cold, bitter. He wasn’t wearing an overcoat.”

  She stared into the distance as if to recall the scene.

  “He stood up and said that he didn’t know where he was going to spend the night.” With sudden irritation she waved a hand. “I know it sounds crazy, but I took him home to my room. I took care of him, spoiled him. We slept with each other.” She looked into DeKok’s face. “Strange, isn’t it? People would think it idiotic, bad, even sinful.” Her attitude became rebellious.

  DeKok shrugged his shoulders.

  “I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully, “what values your parents instilled in you.” He spread both arms. “But if you did what your heart told you that night, it must be enough.”

  Antoinette lowered her head.

  “He was so impractical,” she said softly, almost whispering. “He was so scared and helpless, I felt compelled to take care of him, as one would a child.”

  She bit her lower lip with strong white teeth.

  “I had a hard childhood myself, many tragedies and troubles. I left home at an early age, so I sympathized with some of his helplessness, sensed his aversions, his distrust. He feared everybody and everything around him.” She swallowed several times and forced some upwelling tears back. “Despite all that, Robert was soft and tender. He didn’t have the possessive, lusting look that men so often have. He was just…a dear.”

  DeKok nodded his understanding.

  “You wanted to keep him.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s why you chained him to the radiator pipe.”

  It sounded hard and uncompromising.

  Antoinette Graaf closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “My dear inspector,” she said in a tired voice, “perhaps I don’t look especially intelligent. You probably see me as naïve. However, I’m not exactly stupid. I realize no woman can keep a man if he doesn’t want to be with her.” She slapped her hand rhythmically on the table. “Even if you chain him to the central heating with a set of handcuffs.” She
emphasized every word with a slap on the table.

  “Then why did you do it?”

  “To protect him.”

  “To protect him?” DeKok looked at her with a cynical smile. “I must say,” he continued, “I don’t get the logic.”

  A brief smile played around his lips.

  “You may say that,” she said bleakly, “after everything that’s happened it doesn’t sound reasonable. But it is the truth. I just wanted to protect him.”

  “From what?”

  She looked down and bit her lip nervously.

  “From people, people who wanted to kill him.”

  “What kind of people would want to kill him?”

  The young woman spread her hands in a gesture of surrender.

  “I don’t know,” she wailed. “I know Robert was really scared something would happen to him. So I told him that here in my room he was safe. ‘Nobody knows you’re here,’ I told him. As long as he didn’t leave, nothing could happen to him.”

  “And he believed that?”

  She shook her head.

  “No, he didn’t believe it. He said they could find him anywhere. Even in my room.” Her lower lip began to quiver. Tears again welled in her eyes. “He was

  right. He—”

  DeKok interrupted quickly. He wanted to maintain the tempo of the interrogation.

  “To keep Robert at home, you chained him to the radiator?”

  Antoinette nodded with a teary face.

  “I didn’t have to do that when I was home. I just locked the door and made sure he couldn’t reach the key.”

  “Did he ever try to free himself?”

  “No, not really.”

  “When did you use the cuffs?”

  She looked sadly at DeKok.

  “Only when I had to leave, to go to work and to shop.”

  “And he willingly let himself be cuffed?”

  A tender smile flashed across her face.

  “Did you take a good look at him? His mouth, the line of his chin, his hands?”

  “Yes.”

  Antoinette smiled again.

  “He was a big child, dear and trusting. If I suggested it was to keep him safe, he allowed me to handcuff him without the least resistance.”

  DeKok remained silent. He pulled his lower lip out and then let it plop back. He repeated the gesture while he pondered what he had learned. All his experience with human vices and passions had not prepared him to fathom the relationship between Robert and Antoinette. He felt his understanding was superficial; the picture was not complete. It was outside his experience.

  “How old was Robert?” he asked suddenly.

  “Twenty-five.”

  “An adult.”

  She again smiled a fleeting smile.

  “Few men are ever truly adult.”

  DeKok took a deep breath and changed the subject.

  “What was his last name?”

  “His surname?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know.”

  DeKok looked at her with disbelief.

  “He never told you?”

  With idle fingers she tucked a few yellow strands of hair behind her ear and shook her head.

  “I never asked. Robert was enough for me.”

  DeKok became irritated. He pointed at her with an outstretched index finger.

  “But you two talked,” he said, with a hint of desperation in his voice. “You were together day and night. He must have spoken of his early years—school, job, home, parents, siblings, friends?” His deep bass voice almost broke.

  Antoinette shrugged.

  “Robert came from a good background, I thought.” It sounded disinterested. “Based on the kind of clothes he wore, his manners and speech, his—”

  DeKok interrupted her and leaned closer.

  “Antoinette,” he said patiently, his brief irritation again under control, “a man has been murdered in your room at Beuning Street. A man chained, by you, to a radiator pipe. I have the unpleasant task of finding the killer. But I cannot produce him by waving a wand. We do not do magic here. We need information, clues, a motive. If you do not cooperate, I can only come to the unhappy conclusion that you personally have something to do with his death.”

  Antoinette Graaf looked just as angry as at the beginning of the interview.

  “I did not kill him!” she yelled out loud. “Do you hear me? I had absolutely nothing to do with it. I’ve tried to explain why I took him home and why I used the handcuffs on him. As for the rest, you’re welcome to figure it out.”

  She leaned back in her chair and stared at him, defiance in her eyes. DeKok also leaned back, baffled. In the course of his long career he had led thousands of interrogations, but he had never met this much resistance from a woman.

  “Did you really believe you could keep a grown man locked up and hidden away?” he asked softly and insistently.

  She stared at the table and shook her head slowly.

  “I knew it could not last long.” She again bit her lower lip. “But I could never have imagined this horrible ending.”

  “Did you really believe he was in danger of his life?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because he said so?”

  She rubbed the back of her head.

  “No, not just because he said so. His fear was palpable. I felt his fear.”

  “Did you at least talk about the fear?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  Antoinette looked up at him. It was as if suddenly all resistance had left her. Her face was relaxed and the hard lines around her mouth disappeared.

  “He was afraid because he was in love.”

  DeKok was careful not to make a movement, and he held his face expressionless.

  “Love made him afraid?”

  She nodded, never losing eye contact.

  “Her name, he said, was Therese.”

  4

  DeKok was leaning far back in his chair. Thoughtfully he raked his thick fingers through his grey hair. This interrogation had not worked out as he had hoped. He was dissatisfied and irritated. Antoinette Graaf had been less than candid. The question he pondered was why. If she was innocent, how did it make sense to hold back?

  Vledder restlessly paced up and down the large detective room several times. He and DeKok happened to be the only two people in the room. It was, after all, well after the shift change. The outgoing shift had completed their paperwork, while the new shift was now spread out over the precinct. With a sudden, impatient movement, Vledder pulled a chair to DeKok’s desk. He sat with a mocking grimace on his face.

  “And you bought her story?” He spoke hard and his tone was sarcastic. “You actually believe the only thing she knows about the dead man is his first name?”

  DeKok made a defensive gesture.

  “I can’t prove the opposite,” he said calmly. “And as long as I don’t have proof I…” He stared at Vledder. “To which morgue did they take him?”

  “Wilhelmina Hospital was the closest.”

  “His clothes?”

  “The attendants undressed him while I was there. I bagged and tagged the clothes before they pushed him inside the cooler.”

  “Did you find any papers?”

  Vledder shook his head.

  “Nothing, absolutely nothing. He didn’t even have lint in his pockets.”

  “Money?”

  “Not a cent.”

  DeKok closed his eyes.

  “It’s strange,” he said after a while, without opening his eyes. “The crime scene did not bring to mind a robbery.” It sounded like an analysis. Then he asked Vledder if he had prepared a description of the victim.

  The young inspector made a vague gesture.

  “Not in any detail, no.”

  “Then you should write one tomorrow.”

  Vledder looked irked.

  “I never had any idea his identity would be a problem. When the watch commander reached
me to say you had Antoinette in custody, I thought everything was in order. I believed the woman would provide you the man’s identity.” He paused. “Did you take a good look at him?” he asked after a while. “Did you notice Robert’s light-blond hair was bleached?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t notice it either. One of the morgue attendants pointed it out to me. When I looked closely, I could see dark-blond roots.”

  “Perhaps that’s why he didn’t carry any identification papers,” opined DeKok.

  Vledder gave him a searching look.

  “You mean,” he formulated carefully, “maybe the bleached hair was meant as a sort of camouflage, part of an effort to hide his identity?”

  DeKok did not answer at once. He was still struggling to sort out the contradictions in Antoinette’s statements. Robert, she had said, was enough for her. Maybe the young man had never revealed his true identity to her. DeKok surmised this young man would have introduced himself properly. Anything less would have been uncivil. Antoinette believed Robert to be a man with a good education and proper manners. DeKok rubbed the bridge of his nose with his little finger. Or was Robert genuinely driven by fear? Did he believe revealing his true identity could place him in harm’s way?

  Still thinking it over, he rubbed his chin.

  “The bleached hair could explain a lot of things,” DeKok said vaguely.

  Vledder pointed a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the interrogation rooms.

  “What are we supposed to do with her?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Vledder gave him a sharp look.

  “You’re not going to release her, are you?” he asked with suspicion.

  “Why not? Absent evidence of criminal wrongdoing, nobody has the right to deprive another of his or her freedom.”

  “But isn’t that what she did?”

  “What?”

  “Rob someone of his liberty?” Vledder laughed out loud. “What else do you want to call chaining someone to a heating pipe—a game?”

  DeKok caught the sarcasm.

  “In order for the act to be punishable,” he said patiently, “the law requires proof the confinement was illegal and without the consent of the detainee. According to Antoinette Graaf, Robert never complained about the confinement and offered no resistance.”