‘The Oosterhook,’ the attendant beamed. ‘On a coal barge.’
Van Gelder nodded. That’s right. With a bottle — an empty bottle — of gin beside him. The gin was all inside him. You know what a splendid combination gin and heroin is.’ He pulled back the sheet to reveal an arm similar to the one I’d just seen. ‘Suicide — or murder?’
‘It all depends.’
‘On?’
‘Whether he bought the gin himself. That would make it suicide — or accidental death. Someone could have put the full bottle in his hand. That would make it murder. We had a case just like it last month in the Port of London. We’ll never know.’
At a nod from van Gelder, the attendant led us happily to a slab in the middle of the room. This time van Gelder pulled back the sheet from the top. The girl was very young and very lovely and had golden hair.
‘Beautiful, isn’t she?’ van Gelder asked. ‘Not a mark on her face. Julia Rosemeyer from East Germany. All we know of her, all we will ever know of her. Sixteen, the doctors guess.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘Fell six stories to a concrete pavement.’
I thought briefly of the ex-floor-waiter and how much better he would have looked on this slab, then asked: ‘Pushed?’
‘Fell. Witnesses. They were all high. She’d been talking all night about flying to England. She had some obsession about meeting the Queen. Suddenly she scrambled on to the parapet of the balcony, said she was flying to see the Queen — and, well, she flew. Fortunately, there was no one passing beneath at the time. Like to see more?’
‘I’d like to have a drink at the nearest pub, if you don’t mind.’
‘No.’ He smiled but there wasn’t anything humorous about it. ‘Van Gelder’s fireside. It’s not far. I have my reasons.’
‘Your reasons?’
‘You’l see.’
We said goodbye and thanks to the happily smiling attendant, who looked as if he would have liked to say, ‘Haste ye back’ but didn’t. The sky had darkened since early morning and big heavy scattered drops of rain were beginning to fall. To the east the horizon was livid and purple, more than vaguely threatening and foreboding. It was seldom that a sky reflected my mood as accurately as this.
Van Gelder’s fireside could have given points to most English pubs I knew: an oasis of bright cheerfulness compared to the sheeting rain outside, to the rippled waves of water running down the windows, it was warm and cosy and comfortable and homely, furnished in rather heavy Dutch furniture with over-stuffed armchairs, but I have a strong partiality for over-stuffed armchairs: they don’t mark you so much as the understuffed variety. There was a russet carpet on the floor and the walls were painted in different shades of warm pastel colours. The fire was all a fire ever should be and van Gelder, I was happy to observe, was thoughtfully studying a very well-stocked glass liquor cupboard.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘you took me to that damned mortuary to make your point. I’m sure you made it. What was it?’
‘Points, not point. The first one was to convince you that we here are up against an even more vicious problem than you have at home. There’s another half-dozen drug addicts in the mortuary there and how many of them died a natural death is anyone’s guess. It’s not always as bad as this, those deaths seem to come in waves, but it still represents an intolerable loss of life and mainly young life at that: and for every one there, how many hundred hopeless addicts are there in the streets?’
‘Your point being that you have even more incentive than I to seek out and destroy those people — and that we are attacking a common enemy, a central source of supply?’
‘Every country has only one king.’
‘And the other point?’
To reinforce Colonel de Graaf’s warning. Those people are totally ruthless. Provoke them too much, get too close to them — well, there’s still a few slabs left in the mortuary.’
‘How about that drink?’ I said.
A telephone bell rang in the hallway outside. Van Gelder murmured an apology and went to answer it. Just as the door closed behind him a second door leading to the room opened and a girl entered. She was tall and slender and in her early twenties and was dressed in a dragon-emblazoned multi-hued housecoat that reached almost to her ankles. She was quite beautiful, with flaxen hair, an oval face and huge violet eyes that appeared to be at once humorous and perceptive, so striking in overall appearance that it was quite some time before I remembered what passed for my manners and struggled to my feet, no easy feat from the depths of that cavernous armchair.
‘Hullo,’ I said. ‘Paul Sherman.’ It didn’t sound much but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Almost as if embarrassed, the girl momentarily sucked the tip of her thumb, then smiled to reveal perfect teeth.
‘I am Trudi. I do not speak good English.’ She didn’t either, but she’d the nicest voice for speaking bad English I’d come across in a long time. I advanced with my hand out, but she made no move to take it: instead she put her hand to her mouth and giggled shyly. I am not accustomed to have fully-grown girls giggle shyly at me and was more than a little relieved to hear the sound of the receiver being replaced and van Gelder’s voice as he entered from the hall.
‘Just a routine report on the airport business. Nothing to go on yet — ‘
Van Gelder saw the girl, broke off, smiled and advanced to put his arm round her shoulders. ‘I see you two have met each other.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘not quite — ‘ then broke off in turn as Trudi reached up and whispered in his ear, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye. Van Gelder smiled and nodded and Trudi went quickly from the room. The puzzlement must have shown in my face, for van Gelder smiled again and it didn’t seem a very happy smile to me.
‘She’ll be right back, Major. She’s shy at first, with strangers. Just at first.’
As van Gelder had promised, Trudi was back almost immediately. She was carrying with her a very large puppet, so wonderfully made that at first glance it could have been mistaken for a real child. It was almost three feet in length with a white wimple hat covering flaxen curls of the same shade as Trudi’s own and was wearing an ankle-length billowy striped silk dress and a most beautifully embroidered bodice. Trudi clasped this puppet as tightly as if it had been a real child. Van Gelder again put his arm round her shoulders.
‘This is my daughter, Trudi. A friend of mine, Trudi. Major Sherman, from England.’
This time she advanced without any hesitation, put her hand out, made a small bobbing motion like the beginnings of a curtsy, and smiled.
‘How do you do, Major Sherman?’
Not to be outdone in courtesy I smiled and bowed slightly. ‘Miss van Gelder. My pleasure.’
‘My pleasure.’ She turned and looked enquiringly at van Gelder.
‘English is not one of Trudi’s Strong points,’ van Gelder said apologetically. ‘Sit down, Major, sit down.’
He took a bottle of Scotch from the sideboard, poured drinks for myself and himself, handed me mine and sank into his chair with a sigh. Then he looked up at his daughter, who was gazing steadily at me in a way that made me feel more than vaguely uncomfortable.
‘Won’t you sit down, my dear?’
She turned to van Gelder, smiled brightly, nodded and handed the huge puppet to him. He accepted it so readily that he was obviously used to this sort of thing.
‘Yes, Papa,’ she said, then without warning but at the same time as unaffectedly as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she sat down on my knee, put an arm around my neck and smiled at me. I smiled right back, though, for just that instant, it was a Herculean effort.
Trudi regarded me solemnly and said: ‘I like you.’
‘And I like you too, Trudi.’ I squeezed her shoulder to show her how much I liked her. She smiled at me, put her head on my shoulder and closed her eyes. I looked at the top of the blonde head for a moment, then glanced in mild enquiry at van Gelder. He smiled, a smile full of sorrow.
‘If I do not wound you, Major Sherman, Trudi loves everyone.’
‘All girls of a certain age do.’
‘You are a man of quite extraordinary perception.’
I didn’t think it called for any great perception at all to make the remark I had just made, so I didn’t answer, just smiled and turned again to Trudi. I said, very gently: Trudi?’