Death of a Hawker by Janwillem van de Wetering Read Free Book Online Page B

tinkle.
    "Easy," the doctor said, and began to pound Grijpstra's solid back. "Easy, put that cigar away!"
    "No. I'll be all right."
    "Syrup," Nellie said. "I have some syrup, dear."
    The thick liquid filled a liqueur glass and Grijpstra swallowed obediently.
    "All of it," Nellie said.
    Grijpstra emptied the glass and began to cough again, the cigar smoldering in his hand.
    "Stop coughing," de Gier said. "You have had your syrup. Stop it, I say." Grijpstra hiccupped. "That's better."
    They drank their second glass of jenever and Grijpstra quieted down.
    "We'll have to talk business," the commissaris said to Nellie. "I hope you don't mind, dear."
    "Do you want me to go away?"
    "Not unless you want to. Now, what did you think, doctor? You had time to study the body, did you?"
    The doctor rested his eyes on the lowest point of Nellie's cleavage. "Yes," he said slowly. "Yes, quite. I had enough time although we'll have to do some standard tests later, of course. I have never seen anything like it. He must have been killed this afternoon, at four o'clock perhaps, or four thirty. The blood was fresh. I would think he was hit by a round object, small and round, like an old-fashioned bullet fired by a musket. But it looks as if he was hit several times. There were marks all over the face, or over the remains of the face, I should say. Every bone is smashed, jaws, cheekbones, forehead, nose. The nose is the worst. It seems that the object, whatever it was, hit the nose first and then bounced about."
    "A musket," the commissaris said. "Hmm. Somebody could have stood on the roof of that old houseboat opposite the house and shot him from there. But it's unlikely. The Straight Tree Ditch has been patrolled by riot police all afternoon. They would have noticed something, wouldn't they?"
    "Your problem, it seems," the doctor said. "All I found was a corpse with a smashed face. Perhaps someone clobbered him with a hammer, jumped about like a madman and kept on hitting him. How about that?"
    He looked at the fingerprint man. The fingerprint man was shaking his head.
    "No?" the commissaris asked.
    "Don't know," the fingerprint man said, "but I found funny prints. There was blood on the windowsill, not much, traces of blood really. But there was also blood on the wall above the window, small imprints of a round object, like the doctor said. Round. So the madman must have been banging away at the wall as well, and on the windowsill. With a hammer with a round head. There were imprints on the floorboards too."
    "Sha," de Gier said.
    "Pardon?" the commissaris asked.
    "No," de Gier said, "not a hammer. But I don't know what else."
    "A ball," Grijpstra said. "A little ball which bounced about. Elastic, a rubber ball."
    "Studded with spikes," the fingerprint man said.
    "That would explain the imprints. I photographed them and we'll have them enlarged tomorrow. There were marks, groups of red dots. Say you hammer a lot of spikes into a rubber ball, the heads of the spikes will protrude slightly. We can do a test. Leave some open places so that the rubber can still touch whatever it hits and bounce back."
    "But there would have been a lot of balls, wouldn't there?" the commissaris asked. "One ball wouldn't do all that damage, so somebody would be pitching them from the roof of the houseboat, one after another, assuming Abe Rogge was standing in the window and taking them all full in the face. And we found nothing. Or did I miss anything?"
    "No, sir," Grijpstra said. "There were no balls in the room."
    "Silly," de Gier said. "I don't believe a word of it. Balls ha! Somebody was there, right in the room, and hit him and went on hitting him. The first blow knocked him down and the killer couldn't stop himself. Must have been in a rage. Some weapon with spikes. A good-day."
    "Yes," the commissaris said thoughtfully, "a good-day. A medieval weapon, a metal ball on the end of a short stick and the ball is spiked. Sometimes the ball was attached to the handle