DeKok and the Sorrowing Tomcat (18 page)

“Have you any news of my husband?”

There was despair in her voice.

DeKok seated himself across from her and rubbed his face with a flat hand. From between his spread fingers he looked at her and tried to gauge her inner strength. DeKok could be guilty of theatrics as well, much to Vledder's annoyance at times. This particular gesture of peeking between his fingers was so transparent that it always surprised Vledder, that few, if any people ever saw through DeKok's pretense.

“Do you have a cat?” DeKok could not have explained why he asked the question.

Mrs. Thornbush became rigid. For a few seconds she stared at DeKok with eyes that saw nothing. Then she closed her eyes and slid gracefully off the chair.

17

“And,” asked DeKok with interest, “did you convey Mrs. Thornbush safely home?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Did you call her physician and did you explain the situation to him?”

“Yes, yes. He would visit her immediately and he promised to keep an eye on her.”

“Very well, then that's taken care of. Did she say anything in the car?”

Vledder shrugged his shoulders.

“She seemed to exhaust herself with excuses,” he said cynically. “She kept harping on the trouble she had caused us. She had not meant to do it. She had never before lost consciousness, as she called it, but the emotions and tensions that had assaulted her during the recent past, had completely broken her resistance to shock.”

DeKok grinned.

“Well, well,” he remarked mockingly.

Vledder made an abrupt gesture.

“But not a word about her dead husband. Not the slightest manifestation of sorrow.” He shook his head. “There wasn't a tear in her beautiful eyes.”

DeKok smiled.

“That's not uncommon. It happens a lot. Usually the reaction doesn't set in until the full realization of the catastrophe has hit them,”

“I don't know,” said Vledder pensively. “I find her attitude strange, a bit weird. I would have expected her to ask all kinds of particulars. Fill her in on the details, so to speak. For instance, how her husband died and under what circumstances. I was more or less prepared for that. But nothing. Milady was too busy with herself, too full of herself. She practically wallowed in self-pity.”

DeKok stood up and started to pace up and down the detective room. Whenever he passed Vledder he would toss a question, a remark, or merely a glance.

“Was there a cat?” asked DeKok on his first pass.

The young Inspector shook his head.

“I didn't see a cat. Of course, I didn't do a formal search, either. After all, I had no warrant and Haarlem is, strictly speaking, outside our jurisdiction. I just poked around a little, while Mrs. Thornbush hunted for the insurance policy on her husband. No sign of a cat. I even changed chairs a couple of times to see if I could pick up any cat hairs.”

“And?”

“Nothing, no hair of any kind.”

DeKok ambled over to the window and stared outside. Diagonally below him a drunk staggered from the Corner Alley, barely missed the stall of Moshe the Herring Man and half walked, half fell into the next bar. It was just one of the familiar sights from the windows of the Warmoes Street Station. How often had he stood here like this? More often than he cared to remember. How many times had he stood like this and despaired of an eventual solution? Even more times than he cared to remember.

There was no question about it. The death of Thornbush, although more or less expected, had been a shock. Of course, he had realized that the Secretary was in danger, ever since their fruitless trip to Schiphol Airport. But he had hoped, had almost been certain, that he would solve the case
before
there would be additional victims. But his thoughts had strangled themselves in a thick, sticky fog. And the mist had not cleared. His theories had become entangled in an unexpected web of intrigue that seemed insoluble. It bothered him, it tortured him, mentally as well as physically. He had the terrible feeling of having failed and his feet hurt. Whenever an investigation lacked progress, DeKok's feet would hurt. For the moment he decided to ignore it.

He turned around.

“Was Thornbush's insurance worth much?”

Vledder grinned broadly.

“Not much … not much at all. Certainly not enough to provide the beautiful widow with an acceptable motive.”

The phone rang.

Vledder picked up the receiver and listened.

“It's for you,” he said.

DeKok moved away from the window accepted the receiver from the younger man.

“Hello?”

“That you, DeKok?”

“Yes.”

“All hunky-dory again?”

DeKok recognized Handy Henkie's voice.

“What do you mean?”

“Hey, with you and Lowee, of course.”

DeKok grinned.

“You worried about that?”

“A bit.”

“That's why you called?”

For a while it remained silent at the other end of the line.

“N-no…,” came the reluctant reply. “No … no I, I just wants to tell you something. You see, I just heard on the TV about the stiff you found in the province.” Henkie, too, was a native Amsterdammer.

“Yes.” DeKok was noncommittal.

“Well, you knows, DeKok, since I don't work because of me game leg, you see, I sometimes don't rightly know what to do with meself. I gets so bored I go visit old friends.” It sounded like an apology. “You know what I means, from before. Anyways, yesterday I was with Pistol Pete … you knows him. Well, we're just having a few cold ones and this broad shows up. Nice looking thing, you know. Pete stashed me in another room.”

“Go on.”

“Well, I heard it all.”

“What?”

“The chick wanted a rod.”

“A rod?”

“Yessir, for real. She says she had heard about Pete and looked up his address in the phone book. I almost died laughing. Anyways, she says she lives in the provinces somewheres, real boondocks, you know. And there's this geezer that bothers her, you know. So she wants a rod to scare 'im off, so to speak.”

DeKok laughed.

“Certainly a radical measure.”

“Oh yes, but it weren't true, you see. It weren't no more than a story.”

“How's that.”

“Come on, DeKok. You could
feel
that. It were too glib, you know what I mean? She wasn't the type to be scared by men, nossir. So, I thinks to meself: why does that child need a pistol, right? Anyways, she leaves and I take off too. I follows her, you see. That weren't too easy, me with a gimp leg and all. But she was window shopping from time to time and I could catch up. So I follows her all the way.”

“And?”

“She don't live in the province at all. She lives right here in town. Pilgrim Street. 21 Pilgrim Street. Leastwise, that's where she went in.”

*   *   *

“Is this the third degree?”

She dropped into one of the low, easy chairs, crossed her long, slender legs and gave both men a challenging look. A dangerous light glimmered in her cornflower blue eyes.

“Is this an interrogation,” she repeated, “or a belated sympathy visit?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “Just tell me what you want.”

DeKok did not answer her. He rubbed his gray hair with one hand while he gestured toward the young woman with the other.

“This,” he announced, “is Flossie. The lover of the late, cruelly killed Pete Geffel. I don't think you've met her before.”

Vledder leaned forward and offered his hand.

“My deepest sympathy with the loss of your … your fiancé,” he said in a friendly voice. “Please believe me, I feel for you.”

Ignoring his outstretched hand, she looked up at him.

“Are you another servant of the Law?” she asked mockingly.

Vledder swallowed.

“I … I try,” he stammered, “more cannot be asked of any man.”

She snorted. It sounded like an insult.

“Nice platitudes to hide behind.”

Vledder withdrew his hand. His face was red.

“I don't hide behind anything,” he said vehemently. “Especially not behind the shortcomings of my fellow human beings. I am well aware of my own responsibility.”

There was a momentary flicker of interest in her eyes, then she gave him a sad smile.

“Responsibility … responsibility. It's a dead issue. Psychiatrists have allowed it to die and judges have helped bury it.” She made a graceful gesture with her hand. “If … you had caught the killer of my Peter, then what? Do you think he would have been punished accordingly?” She gave them a pitying laugh. “No,” she continued, “no! A battery of psychiatrists with soft hands and even softer brains would have painted a picture of soul-destroying psychosis, they would have depicted the killer as a sick, deluded person.” She sighed deeply. “And you can hardly expect a humane Dutch judge to send a sick man to jail, to severely punish a person who's not responsible for his actions.”

DeKok looked at her, his head cocked to one side, the melancholy look on his face somehow, subtly intensified.

“And is that why … Flossie, that's why you … punished him?”

She did not answer. She lowered her head until her hair almost fell in her lap, she nervously adjusted the hem of her dress. The bright red color, that had marred her appearance while she was speaking, had drained from her face. She looked paler and more like the kind, nice girl so eloquently described by Mother Geffel.

“Did you punish him?” repeated DeKok.

She slowly shook her head.

“He didn't come,” she answered hoarsely. “He didn't show up.” She kept repeating it, like an echo, softer and farther away. “I waited all night for him,” she added in a whisper.

DeKok lowered himself into an easy chair across from her.

“You had invited him?”

“Yes.”

“You gave him a note with your address?”

“Yes.”

“He promised to come?”

Again she nodded slowly.

“I never doubted it for a moment. I was convinced he'd show up. It wasn't until real late that I understood that someone else had gotten to him
before
me.”

DeKok's eyebrows rippled briefly.

“
Before
you?”

She pushed her blonde hair away from her face and slowly raised her gaze until she looked him full in the face. A wan smile played around her lips. Then she broke eye contact.

“Men … you men have no feelings. They've been dulled. Totally blunted. Atrophied! We women have some left. In reality we're closer to nature, the basic instinct. We have retained our animal roots since time immemorial … through the ages, a feeling, a feeling that warns us, prepares us and alerts us, that tells us … without knowing.”

“Intuition?”

She took a deep breath and let the air escape slowly from her lungs. It seemed an affirmation and a release.

“You
would
call it that,” she answered.

They remained silent for a long time. DeKok rubbed his eyes in a tired gesture. Vledder tried to find a more comfortable place for his shoulder against the wall. Flossie remained immobile. Finally DeKok broke the silence.

“As it became later,” he condensed, “and Thornbush didn't show up, you knew immediately that someone else had punished him?”

“Yes.”

DeKok looked at her evenly.

“But you did invite him in order to punish him?”

Her tongue darted across dry lips.

“To kill him,” she admitted softly. Her voice sounded distant, pre-occupied.

“To kill him,” repeated DeKok. He leaned forward and stretched out a hand toward her. “Flossie, give me the pistol.”

It seemed as if she had not heard him, as if the words broke over her like a series of sounds without meaning. She seemed far removed from what was happening in her immediate surroundings. Vledder briefly thought of the word catatonic, but then decided that her absent-mindedness was different, although not less real.

“Give me the pistol, Flossie.”

DeKok's voice was friendly, but compelling.

She finally tilted her head slightly and looked at him silently. The look from her clear blue eyes was cold, chilly, without pity. Nervous tics pulled at the corners of her mouth. Slowly the hands fell off her lap, the long fingers disappeared between the cushions of the chair, groping, feeling, touching. Suddenly, in a flash, she withdrew her hand and DeKok stared at the threatening barrel of the pistol. Her finger was around the trigger.

DeKok swallowed. He felt a rivulet of sweat drip from his head and find its way down the side of his neck. His outstretched hand almost touched the pistol. For a moment, a brief instant, he contemplated taking the weapon with a quick grab. But he remained motionless, for fear of startling her and have her fire accidentally. She could not possibly miss him at this distance.

With the utmost of self-control he caught her eyes in his gaze and he stared deep into her soul. Suddenly her face changed. The expression became milder. A faint smile appeared around the lips and reflected to a lesser degree in the eyes. For just another instant she seemed to hesitate. Then she placed the weapon into his outstretched hand.

DeKok heard Vledder's sigh of relief as if from a distance. Without looking at the younger man, DeKok knew that he was replacing his gun into the shoulder holster. Vledder had always been a quick draw and despite DeKok's disapproval of guns, Vledder seldom was without one.

DeKok looked at her empty right hand.

“Could you have?” he asked softly.

“You?”

“Yes.”

“No, not you.”

“But Thornbush?”

She nodded slowly, with emphasis.

“He killed my Peter.”

18

“Intuition … intuition.” Vledder raised his hands in despair. “That girl makes me sick with her intuition.”