The Darkroom of Damocles (13 page)

Osewoudt took Hey You by the hand. At first they looked like they were speed-walking, but soon they broke into a run, their feet landing awkwardly in the soft sand. The other youth leader glanced over her shoulder again, but apparently suspected nothing because she walked on. Osewoudt let go of the girl's hand and raced ahead. A smell of pine trees and manure penetrated deeply into his nostrils. His eyes were fixed on the youth leader. He saw her smile faintly, then her mouth open, but before she could scream his hands were around her neck. He was so quick that his forehead collided with hers and they fell to the ground almost as one. In falling he grabbed the hair at the back of her head so that she fell on top of him, but his feet, close together, were already planted against her stomach. He kicked out his legs without letting go of her hair.
She swung through the air and came down with a thud behind his head.

By the time the other girl came up, Osewoudt was back on his feet, patting the sand off his coat, stooping to retrieve his hat. The youth leader still lay on her back, legs flung wide, coat and skirt rucked up over the tops of her black stockings. Her cap was caught in her hair. Her eyes stared upwards through half-closed lids, her tongue lolled out of her mouth. Her bag lay at the side of the track.

The girl picked it up and looked inside.

‘Empty! For the little boy's clothes, I expect. Is she unconscious?'

‘No, not exactly. Come on, we can't leave her here like this.'

He looked about, nobody in sight. What did catch his eye were his spectacles, snapped in two. He picked up the pieces and pocketed them. The girl put the bag down again and helped him drag the youth leader's body away. Fortunately there was a stand of trees to one side of the track, but it didn't extend very far and the undergrowth was thin and sparse.

‘She'll be found eventually, we just want to postpone the discovery.'

‘Wouldn't it be better to take her clothes off and bury them somewhere?'

‘What do you propose to dig a hole with?'

‘Okay then, not bury them. Take them with us and burn them.'

The girl began undoing the buttons on the uniform. She held the coat while Osewoudt pulled out the limp arms. She folded the coat in four and laid it down.

Osewoudt unfastened the bronze swastika brooch from the dead youth leader's blouse and handed it to the girl.

Then they took the blouse off and started on her underwear,
but before she was naked Osewoudt said: ‘Let's give up on this. Too much of a performance. We can't dig a hole, and where would we dump all her stuff?'

He didn't look at the girl, but kept his eyes on the dead youth leader, thinking how warm she had felt. He leaned forward to sniff her body.

The girl prodded his shoulder.

‘What do you suggest we do then?'

‘Clear off! Leave her! She won't be seen by anyone who happens to pass by. That's good enough. Give me her coat.'

‘No, take mine instead.'

She quickly took off her coat, felt in the pockets to make sure there was nothing in them, and spread it over the dead youth leader. Then she put on the other coat.

‘A perfect fit, I do believe.'

‘Anything in the pockets?'

She checked them: ‘Yes, a wallet.'

She opened the wallet. Five photographs of five different German officers. Osewoudt struck a match and they set fire to the pictures as well as the identity card. The wallet, which wouldn't burn, he tossed away as far as he could. The money (nine guilders in notes, no small change) went into his pocket. Finally he stamped out the flames and they walked back to the road. They paused for a moment and looked back. From where they stood there was nothing to be seen in the undergrowth.

‘She's called Marchiena Siemerink. Quite a name!'

‘Don't you think this coat suits me better than the one I had before?'

Osewoudt agreed without enthusiasm.

‘How did you manage that so quickly?'

‘I used to belong to a judo club.'

‘Very handy.'

‘Yes it is, sometimes. But in some respects it's a nuisance. My feet got completely deformed. I can't just go into a shoe shop and buy a pair of shoes.'

‘Shoes are impossible to find these days anyway.'

‘Not for me. If I want, I can get an extra coupon to have orthopaedic shoes made especially, no problem.'

‘Must be expensive.'

‘Cheaper than getting hold of a shoe coupon on the black market. A lot cheaper.'

‘She was very pretty. Nice figure. Or didn't you notice?'

‘Is this fellow Lagendaal's house still far?'

‘I bet you'd have raped her if I hadn't been around! You should have seen your face!'

‘Oh, belt up. I wouldn't mind a drop of cognac, though.'

‘Maybe you'll find some at Lagendaal's.'

She caught his arm.

‘Another two poles, and the one after that is where you cut the telephone wires. A little further on and you'll see the house.'

‘Then what?'

‘You wait for a bit. I go to the house and come back with the little boy as soon as I can. Just beyond the telegraph pole there's a clump of trees where you can hide. Once I've come past with the boy, you can go ahead. Look, here's the pole. And there are the trees. I'd better be off. Will you manage to get up to the wires?'

Osewoudt looked intently in all directions: not a soul. Then he began to climb. It wasn't easy. I should have taken my raincoat off, he thought. Thank goodness his shoes had rubber soles, so he had some grip. The girl looked back at him and smiled. She jigged her thumb to say faster, faster.

At last he was able to grab the iron bracket holding the white porcelain insulators. With his free hand he took the pliers from his pocket. Down below he could see the girl
heading towards the bungalow, swinging the bag as she went. He had never seen telephone insulators up close, had no idea they were so big. As big as a glass of milk. He cut the wires and watched them fall and spring back into enormous coils right across the way. He slithered down the pole, ran over to the wires and tried to get them under control in order to hide them in the ditch. With success. Then he slapped the front of his raincoat, but most of the dirt wouldn't go away. The pole had left a wide vertical black stripe on the pale cotton fabric.

Still slapping his coat he reached the clump of trees. He jumped over the ditch and plunged in among the bare larches, holding the branches away from his face. He worked his way diagonally through the trees. Before long he saw the house, which had to be Lagendaal's. It stood in the open, with just a few Douglas fir saplings dotted about the grounds, which were separated from the wood by a potato field. He saw the girl walking along, still swinging the bag. She had another 150 metres to go, at a guess.

It was a low, wooden structure. Well I never! Shutters painted the Dutch Nazi party colours: red and black!

Osewoudt sat on the ground with his knees drawn up, his hands crossed over his feet. The girl made her way to the house, no longer swinging the bag but with her hands in her coat pockets, including the hand holding the bag.

He took the pistol from his inside pocket, slid the safety catch back and forth and removed the magazine from the butt. He examined the magazine from all sides, blew on it, and slotted it back into the pistol. Then he lifted his eyes and saw a squirrel peering at him from the base of a beech tree, its forepaws poised on the trunk. Osewoudt slipped the pistol into the right-hand pocket of his raincoat and stood up. The squirrel bolted up the tree.

He looked at the house again, and a moment later the girl went in. He couldn't see who had opened the door. He thought: she must have known about Marchiena Siemerink being on the same train, because this fellow Lagendaal is bound to ask her name. Not only that, he is also bound to have been given the name of the youth leader coming for his son. So Dorbeck must have known her name, too, or rather: it was his business to know, and Hey You knew, too. Possible. And yet, I didn't notice a thing. So actually it's more likely neither of them knew, just which train she would be on, and that they counted on me getting rid of her. What if it had gone wrong?

He kept looking at the door of the house, but it remained closed. Ten minutes had already passed. Then he saw the girl emerge from behind the house. She was trundling a bicycle, a child sat on the carrier. The bag hung from the handlebar. Walking alongside was a man. He was bareheaded. Now say goodbye and get on the bike, he thought, for God's sake hurry up! But they did not say goodbye. The girl wheeled the bike and the man walked beside her, talking animatedly, apparently intending to see them to the road. Osewoudt noticed the man was talking more to the child than to her. The child had probably made a fuss about leaving his parents, and the father would be keeping them company to reassure him.

The man was stout and not very tall. He wore nothing on his head, nor had he put a coat on before leaving the house. His nose was sharply pointed, and so long as to run parallel with the creases beside his nostrils, while largely obscuring a small, lipless mouth. This made him seem to snarl every time he said something, but the little boy responded with peals of laughter. Osewoudt couldn't catch what they were saying. They came quite close, a stone's throw away, then vanished among the trees.

Osewoudt left the wood and sprinted in a wide arc across the potato field towards the house. He looked over his shoulder: the man was obviously still accompanying the girl and the child. Osewoudt trained his eyes on the windows, but could only make out the shapes of furniture inside. None of the windows had net curtains. The bungalow's name, De Hazenwal, was painted on the façade. Suddenly he noticed that the place was less isolated than he had thought. To the left, beyond the wasteland, was a farm; a white cow grazed nearby.

Miraculously, he made no sound as he advanced. Just as well there was no gravel surrounding the house. No effort had been made to create a garden, either. The house stood in the middle of a stretch of heath, which was only worn away in the immediate vicinity.

He had seen them emerge from behind the house, so there had to be a door there, probably to the kitchen. There was also a shed at the rear, he now noticed. Having come this far he could see the entire rear of the house. The eaves came low over a door, which was open. He ran to it. When he stepped inside, the kitchen seemed dark; all he saw was the light of a paraffin stove, then a woman turning to face him. Before she could make a sound she was on her knees. He held the back of her head by the hair and broke her neck on the edge of the draining board. Then he let her fall to the floor. A door stood open. He came into an unlit passage. This passage led to a small space that served as a hallway, because the front door was at the end. He posted himself by the door. It wasn't a proper front door; it had six small panels of glass, like the other doors in the house. No net curtain here either. Osewoudt looked outside, but the man was still nowhere to be seen. Would he be going all the way to the station with his boy and the youth leader? Plenty of time either way to get the woman out of the
kitchen and hide her somewhere. Then the man would enter the kitchen unsuspectingly and go on in to look for his wife. If he saw her lying in the middle of the kitchen floor he might do a runner.

Risky to have to shoot him outside … Osewoudt took out his pistol and looked in all directions again. The cow on the farm was no longer alone: there were two men in cloth caps walking around it. What were they up to? Would they spend the next half-hour inspecting the cow, or would they move even further away from the farmhouse? Would they come this way? Drop in for a chat maybe? For the first time that afternoon it occurred to Osewoudt that he could still call it off and have another go the next day, or even the day after, when circumstances might be more favourable.

But the two farmers continued to occupy themselves with their cow. For a moment Osewoudt let his eyes wander, having made up his mind now to drag the body out of the kitchen. Then he saw Lagendaal approaching the house. Every thought of postponement vanished. It had to be done now, in the next few minutes. Come here! he ordered under his breath, recoiling from the door as far as possible while keeping Lagendaal in sight. As if he was afraid that Lagendaal would turn tail as soon as he took his eyes off him, the very
notion
of moving the body from the kitchen went from his mind.

Lagendaal took long, slow strides. He was poking around in his mouth. Something lodged between his back teeth, no doubt. Then he chewed his thumb. He kept his head down. His hair was thinning and greasy, his pink scalp showing through. He kept to the path, inasmuch as you could call it a path. Abruptly, he took a few steps to one side. He had seen something, and bent down to pick it up. Pliers! He stood still
for a moment, lifted the pliers with both hands to eye level and opened and closed them. Then he returned to the path leading to his house. The pliers were in his right hand, and he kept opening and closing them. Osewoudt felt his teeth begin to chatter. He now had a clear view of Lagendaal's face, the thin elongated nose, the creases on either side. He also saw Lagendaal's eyes. The sockets were huge, and deep. He had thick eyebrows which were joined in the middle, each eyebrow a well-defined circumflex accent. Each eye seemed to sit in its own little house with a pitched roof. Watery, dull eyes they were, even the surrounding skin looked bloated. Without a glance towards the door, Lagendaal moved out of sight.

Osewoudt turned round, the pistol in his trembling fist almost level with his eyes. He positioned himself with one foot forward while keeping watch on the door to the kitchen, which was slightly ajar. He couldn't see into the kitchen because the door was at right angles to the passage. He should have left it open, he now realised. He listened intently, but could hear only the muffled sound of Lagendaal's footsteps approaching. Then came the thud on the kitchen floorboards. A cry: ‘What on earth?'