‘Now, now, gentlemen,’ de Graaf said soothingly, ‘don’t take it so hard. I appreciate the shock you must feel and in my own view we’re on a wild goose chase. But an official request has been made and we must go through the official motions. We have information that you have illicitly obtained diamonds — ‘
‘Diamonds!’ Muggenthaler stared in disbelief at his partner. ‘You hear that, Jan? Diamonds?’ He shook his head and said to de Graaf: ‘If you find some, give me a few, will you?’
De Graaf was unaffected by the morose sarcasm. ‘And, much more important, diamond-cutting machinery.’
‘We’re crammed from floor to ceiling with diamond-cutting machinery,’ Morgenstern said heavily. ‘Look for yourselves.’
‘And the invoice books?’
‘Anything, anything,’ Muggenthaler said wearily.
‘Thank you for your co-operation.’ De Graaf nodded to van Gelder, who rose and left the room. De Graaf went on confidentially: ‘I apologize, in advance, for what is, I’m sure, a complete waste of time. Candidly, I’m more interested in that horrible thing dangling by a chain from your hoisting beam. A puppet.’
‘A what?’ Muggenthaler demanded.
‘A puppet. A big one.’
‘A puppet on a chain.’ Muggenthaler looked both flabbergasted and horrified, which is not an easy thing to achieve. ‘In front of our warehouse? Jan!’
It wouldn’t quite be accurate to say that we raced up the stairs, for Morgenstern and Muggenthaler weren’t built along ‘the right lines, but we made pretty good time for all that. On the third floor we found van Gelder and his men at work and at a word from de Graaf van Gelder joined us. I hoped his men didn’t wear themselves out looking, for I knew they’d never find anything. They’d never even come across the smell of cannabis which had hung so heavily on that floor the previous night, although I felt that the sickly-sweet smell of some powerful flower-based air-freshener that had taken its place could scarcely , be described as an improvement. But it hardly seemed the time to mention it to anyone.
The puppet, its back to us and the dark head resting on its right shoulder, was still swaying gently in the breeze. Muggenthaler, supported by Morgenstern and obviously feeling none too happy in his precarious position, reached out gingerly, caught the chain just above the hook and hauled it in sufficiently for him, not without considerable difficulty, to unhook the puppet from the chain. He held it in his arms and stared down at it for long moments, then shook his head and looked up at Morgenstern.
‘Jan, he who did this wicked thing, this sick, sick joke — he leaves our employment this very day.’
‘This very hour,’ Morgenstern corrected. His face twisted in repugnance, not at the puppet, but at what had been done to it. ‘And such a beautiful puppet!’
Morgenstern was in no way exaggerating. It was indeed a beautiful puppet and not only or indeed primarily because of the wonderfully cut and fitted bodice and gown. Despite the fact that the neck had been broken and cruelly gouged by the hook, the face itself was arrestingly beautiful, a work of great artistic skill in which the colours of the dark hair, the brown eyes and the complexion blended so subtly and in which the delicate features had been. so exquisitely shaped that it was hard to believe that this was the face of a puppet and not that of a human being with an existence and distinctive personality of her own. Nor was I the only person who felt that way.
De Graaf took the puppet from Muggenthaler and gazed at it. ‘Beautiful,’ he murmured. ‘How beautiful. And how real, how living. This lives.’ He glanced at Muggenthaler. ‘Would you have any idea who made this puppet?’
‘I’ve never seen one like it before. It’s not one of ours, I’m sure, but the floor foreman is the man to ask. But I know it’s not ours.’
‘And this exquisite colouring,’ de Graaf mused. ‘It’s so right for the face, so inevitable. No man could have created this from his own mind. Surely, surely, he must have worked from a living model, from someone he knew. Wouldn’t you say so, Inspector?’
‘It couldn’t have been done otherwise,’ van Gelder said flatly.
‘I’ve the feeling, almost, that I’ve seen this face before,’ de Graaf continued. ‘Any of you gentlemen ever seen a girl like this?’
We all shook our heads slowly and none more slowly than I did. The old leaden feeling was back in my stomach again but this time the lead was coated with a thick layer of ice. It wasn’t just that the puppet bore a frighteningly accurate resemblance to Astrid Lemay: it was so lifelike, it was Astrid Lemay.
Fifteen minutes later, after the thorough search carried out in the warehouse had produced its predictably total negative result, de Graaf took his farewell of Muggenthaler and Morgenstern on the steps of the warehouse, while van Gelder and I stood by. Muggenthaler was back at his beaming while Morgenstern stood by his side, smiling with patronizing satisfaction. De Graaf shook hands warmly with both in turn.
‘Again, a thousand apologies.’ De Graaf was being almost effusive. ‘Our information was about as accurate as it usually is. All records of this visit will be struck from the books.’ He smiled broadly. ‘The invoices will be returned to you as soon as certain interested parties have failed to find all the different illicit diamond suppliers they expected to find there. Good morning, gentlemen.’
Van Gelder and I said our farewell in turn and I shook hands especially warmly with Morgenstern and reflected that it was just as well that he lacked the obvious ability to read thoughts and had unluckily come into this world without any inborn ability to sense when death and danger stood very close at hand: for Morgenstern it was who had been at the Balinova night-club last night and had been the first to leave after Maggie and Belinda had passed out into the street.
We made the journey back to the Marnixstraat in partial silence, by which I mean that de Graaf and van Gelder talked freely but I didn’t. They appeared to be much more interested in the curious incident of the broken puppet than they were in the ostensible reason for our visit to the warehouse, which probably demonstrated quite clearly what they thought of the ostensible reason, and as I hardly liked to intrude to tell them that they had their priorities right, I kept silent. Back in his office, de Graaf said: ‘Coffee? We have a girl here who makes the best coffee in Amsterdam.’
‘A pleasure to be postponed. Too much of a hurry, I’m afraid.’
‘You have plans? A course of action, perhaps?’
‘Neither. I want to lie on my bed and think.’
Then why — ‘
‘Why come up here in the first place? Two small requests. Find out, please, if any telephone message has come through for me.’
‘Message?’
‘From this person I had to go to see when we were down in the warehouse.’ I was getting so that I could hardly tell whether I was telling the truth or lying.
De Graaf nodded, picked up a phone, talked briefly, wrote down a long screed of letters and figures and handed the paper to me. The letters were meaningless: the figures, reversed, would be the girls’ new telephone number. I put the paper in my pocket.
‘Thank you. I’ll have to decode this.’
‘And the second small request?’
‘Could you lend me a pair of binoculars?’
‘Binoculars?’
‘I want to do some bird-watching,’ I explained.
‘Of course,’ van Gelder said heavily. ‘You will recall, Major Sherman, that we are supposed to be co-operating closely?’
‘Well?’
‘You are not, if I may say so, being very communicative.’
‘I’ll communicate with you when I’ve something worth communicating. Don’t forget that you’ve been working on this for over a year. I haven’t been here for two days yet. Like I say, I have to go and lie down and think.’
I didn’t go and lie down and think. I drove to a telephone-box which I judged to be a circumspect distance from the police headquarters and dialled the number de Graaf had given me.
The voice at the other end of the line said: ‘Hotel Touring.’
I knew it but had never been inside it: it wasn’t the sort of hotel that appealed to my expense account, but it was the sort of hotel I would have chosen for the two girls.
I said: ‘My name is Sherman. Paul Sherman. I believe two young ladies registered with you this morning. Could I speak to them, please?’
‘I’m sorry, they are out at present.’ There was no worry there; if they weren’t out locating or trying to locate Astrid Lemay they would be carrying out the assignment I’d given them in the early hours of the morning. The voice at the other end anticipated my next question. ‘They left a message for you, Mr Sherman. I am to say that they failed to locate your mutual friend and are now looking for some other friends. I’m afraid it’s a bit vague, sir.’