?Jim Conver was looking at some slides through his microscope when Ribb arrived at the mortuary. A female corpse was laid out on the stainless steel table in the middle of the room. Ribb sometimes expected to see blood and guts lying on different trolleys, a battleground of bodies and horror, decomposed, cut up, burnt, without limbs, in fact, every possible nasty state imaginable, but it was never like that. This was a world within a world. The white tiled serene surroundings gave the impression of an organized, sober and sterile cutting factory. The only thing that broke the dead silence was the whirr of the ventilation in the background. This was suddenly interrupted by the sickening sound of cartilage and bone cracking as a heavy duty shears sliced through rib and breastbone coming from the adjoining room.
He winced.
Nothing disturbed him more than that sound.
"Problems?" Harry finally asked.
Conver looked up. "I've just finished the heart of this young woman, but I need to carry out more tests." He turned away from the microscope and walked over to the body of the young woman. "You okay?"
"I'm okay."
"I thought you were looking a bit green." Conver said with a grin. "It's that canteen of yours. You should try ours sometime." He held up her lung and studied it carefully. "We've got the best fresh meat in town." He put it down next to her heart that had been sliced in two and motioned to Ribb. "Take a look at this. You know I'm not one to call you down here unless something unusual turns up Harry." Conver picked up one half of the heart. "This is Carola Munk's heart." He turned it in his hand and pointed with his scalpel to a ventricle. "She died of an unusual condition."
"You dragged me all the way from lunch just to tell me that?" Ribb said, shaking his head. "Surely there is something else?"
"It's a heart defect you could only be born with."
"So what's the big deal?" Ribb said, shrugging his shoulders. "When you've something to say Jim it usually has some weight to it, but this sounds ridiculous. I think these white walls and the permanent sound of that ventilation is beginning to affect you."
"Like I said," Conver continued, "this is a defect you can only be born with. You don't pick this up along the way."
Ribb shook his head, then turned and headed for the door. "Another medical wonder."
"Was she poisoned?"
"No."
"As far as I can see she did not die of a gunshot, stabbing, bang on the head or anything else that might be related to a crime. Since we don't seem to have a crime here, this is not the place I want to be right now. If you don't mind, I'll leave you to publish your findings in the medical journals, and I'll get back to the cup of coffee I normally have after lunch."
"One other thing Harry, with this sort of defect she should have been dead a long time ago, or at best extremely ill. I've examined her medical records and there is not a blemish. She was hardly a day sick, and certainly never had a heart complaint."
Ribb stopped at the door, then turned to look back at Conver who stood in the middle of the room with a wry smile on his face.
"Okay, that's different. Not exactly a crime, but different," he said with a sigh. "All right. Give me the details."
Carola Munk's medical file was just as Conver told him - nothing interesting whatsoever or out of the ordinary. As he closed the file, he noticed her address; the Bilderdijkstraat in the Da Costa neighborhood. That struck a note, street Bakker mentioned.
"Is this the only suspicious death from that area?"
"As far as I know. Why, were you expecting more?"
"I know there was another death in the same street."
"Well, if anything suspicious turns up I'll let you know."
?Dop and Kaps sat at a table in caf? Rooie Nelis on the corner of the Laurierstraat, drinking beer and finishing off the ham and cheese sandwiches they bought at the snack bar ten minutes earlier. At least once a week they came here on their lunch break from the station for the last seven years, and Friday after work to round off the week.
"I think we should try the other side of town." Dop grunted, with half a sandwich stuffed in his mouth. "We don't know what type of guy this is? Maybe we should call the station first."
"Don't you listen to anything I say?" Kaps moaned. "We already know what type of guy this is. And we already look like fools, we can't call in.
"Maybe he's already turned up?" Dop said, forcing a smile.
"They would have called us." Kaps replied, sounding more irritated. "I am not going to make that call first. Come on, let's get out of here." They finished the remains of their sandwiches, emptied their glasses and got up to leave.
Just outside the cafe they noticed to the right a small crowd of about twenty people gathered further up the street. Among them, they could hear someone shouting.
"Something's going on," Kaps said. "Let's take a look." With visible effort from their culinary indulgence, they ran towards the crowd.
"Out of the way, police." Dop shouted as they forced their way through and came face-to-face with the first thief fastened to the lamppost. A middle-aged woman handed Dop the post-it.
"This was stuck to his back. It is in English."
"Wanted for a pizza restaurant robbery," Dop read aloud. "Three-thirty, Monday afternoon. Signed, D. H. W." Dop scratched his head. "What does that mean?"
"Detective Harvey Wall." Kaps replied, looking dumbfounded.
Dop stared at his partner in disbelief. "He can't do that," he said, nearly choking. "He's not allowed to make arrests in Amsterdam, right?" He handed the note to Kaps.
"And that's not the only problem?" Kaps replied. "He's made a bigger fool of us." Kaps studied the note further. It was difficult to make out Walls handwriting.
"Going after the other two," he said, looking dumbfounded. "Jesus Christ." He looked around in the hope he could spot Wall in the vicinity, but he was nowhere to be seen. Dop pulled a small penknife out of his pocket. "I'll cut him loose."
"Great?" The thief said, sounding relieved. "Get these off, they hurt."
Kaps immediately blocked him from opening the penknife. "Forget him. We better find this Detective Harvey Wall and quick," he said, with disdain. "Put the knife away, we have to go." He turned and shouted into the crowd. "Anybody see the man who caught this thief or noticed which way he went?"
"I did, I saw everything." An old man replied, and pointed with his thin liver spotted hand towards the Rozengracht. "He took off that way."
"You live around here?"
The old man, with gray, greasy hair and a ragged well-aged but alert face, stood in the street in his house slippers.
"Number 45," he said, pointing to the dark green door next to the lamppost.
"We have to go. Whatever you do, this man is not to be cut loose. He's a dangerous criminal. We will be back shortly to pick him up."
Dop and Kaps took off. A hundred meters further up the street they looked back to see the old man in the distance trying to hold back the small crowd. He was pleased he made at least one correct decision that day. Dop was out of breath and not looking too well.
"We'll have to move fast, are you ready for it?"
Dop bent over, totally exhausted. Apart from being a heavy cigarette smoker, he was grossly overweight.
"Why didn't you call a car to pick him up?" Dop asked, wiping the sweat from his brow. "I don't get it."
"Because we already look like idiots. We need to do this ourselves."
Dop looked at Kaps in disbelief. "I knew I should have called in sick today. Nothing is going right. This morning the charts read: Financially you are in the money this week. Friends and colleagues look up to you and appreciate many of your suggestions. They never warned me of the day like this."
"I told you to stop reading that shit. Anyway, what difference does it make? I can hear Ribb screaming at us already." He grabbed Dop by his leather jacket and pulled him towards the Rozengracht. "Come on. We've got to move before the American ends up face down in one of our beautiful canals."
/> "The asshole should have stayed in New York," Dop moaned. "I don't care if they take him home in a box tomorrow."
"You will when Ribb puts you on suspension."
"Blaming me?" Dop said, astonished. "What about you?"
"I'll be all right because I'll tell him you were not pulling your weight."
"Great partner you are."
Dop and Kaps ran out onto the busy Rozengracht, a couple of hundred meters from where they left the cuffed youth. To the left, they spotted another crowd in the distance gathered on the footpath.
"Come on," Kaps shouted. "That could be number two." The gathering was larger and had drawn the attention of trams and automobiles that had slowed down to witness the scene. The second thief was more than pleased to see them coming to his aid when they pushed their way through the crowd.
"Hey, any chance of getting me out of here? I'll make it worth your while."
Kaps flashed his police badge.
The thief slumped. "Just what I need."
"Which way did he go?" Dop asked.
Kaps removed the post-it from the thief's back.
"Hey, where did that come from?" The thief gasped,
"From the same guy who cuffed you to the drainpipe." Kaps replied. "Which way did he go?"
"I didn't do anything. Just get me out of here."
"Just tell me which way he went and we'll let you go."
The thief nodded in the direction of the Marnixstraat. "He went over the bridge and turned left." Kaps slapped the post-it back onto the back of the thief and took off.
"We will be back shortly to pick you up," Dop shouted, as he tried to keep up with Kaps.
"Hey, you said you'd let me go."
"We will, when we get back."
"Thanks, assholes." The thief shouted. "What's on the goddamn note?"
They were gone.
Chapter Seven