The Darkroom of Damocles

  ‘There is no proof whatsoever that you killed Lagendaal! All the records pertaining to his murder come from German sources. How can we trust them? Those same Germans who had you abducted from the hospital by their own people so you would lead them to the Resistance – how reliable can their version of who killed Lagendaal be? It’s far more likely they did it themselves; maybe he was asking for too much money. Maybe it was the girl who did it, Annelies van Doormaal, the poor girl the Germans arrested with one of your photos on her! What the Germans have to say about Lagendaal’s murder is of not the slightest interest to us.’

  ‘What about Lagendaal’s young son?’

  ‘The Lagendaal boy said you took him to Amsterdam by train, along with Annelies van Doormaal. She was arrested on the way, and you abandoned the boy on some pavement, on Rokin it was, I believe. And besides, even if it’s true that you killed Lagendaal, how is that going to back up your Dorbeck story?’

  ‘Lots of people knew Dorbeck. They can’t all be dead, and even if they are, they must have mentioned him to other people before they died.’

  ‘Who would those people be?’

  ‘For instance the people I did the job in Haarlem with, at Kleine Houtstraat 32.’

  ‘Aha! Aha! At last!’

  Selderhorst jumped up from his chair; the chair teetered.

  ‘At last Mr Osewoudt here has decided to be more forthcoming! Kleine Houtstraat, number 32! Let’s hear what he has to say for himself.’

  ‘It was one of the first jobs I did for Dorbeck. He’d called at the shop a few days earlier. I asked the policeman who was there when we dug up the uniform, remember, and he said he’d seen him.’

  ‘He saw that the light was on in the shop, that’s all.’

  ‘He saw someone leaving the shop. Dorbeck had been to see me; he’d given me a pistol. A while before that, he’d sent me a couple of Leica films to develop. Which I did, but there was nothing on them.’

  ‘Really? Nothing? Are you sure? How could you tell in your darkroom?

  ‘I didn’t have a darkroom.’

  ‘You didn’t have a darkroom? Go on, tell me more.’

  ‘There was nothing on those Leica films. Dorbeck came to see me and told me the films had been planted on him and his friends by the Germans, by German provocateurs. He had decided to liquidate them. So he had made an appointment with them in Haarlem, at Kleine Houtstraat 32. He wanted me to help. So I did. There were three of us: Dorbeck, Zéwüster and me. Dorbeck stayed outside, on the lookout. Zéwüster and I went inside. We were received in a back room by three people. We shot them immediately.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Selderhorst, taking out a file. ‘Do you know the names of the victims?’

  ‘No, we didn’t bother with introductions.’

  Selderhorst opened the file and flicked through it.

  ‘Well, as it happens, I do have their names. They were Olifiers, Stoffels and Knijtijzen. Ringing any bells?’

  ‘Why would those names mean anything to me?’

  ‘They don’t? Then I’ll explain. Olifiers was on the level, Stoffels and Knijtijzen were working for the Gestapo. Olifiers didn’t know that, through no fault of his own. Why was Olifiers shot too?’

  ‘How was I supposed to know Olifiers was on the level?’

  ‘I’ll tell you something else. Those films came from Olifiers originally. And there was something on them all right. Photos of secret German documents. But after they’d been developed, the films were blank. How did that happen? You know more about this. Did you or did you not develop those films?’

  ‘I developed them, it’s true.’

  ‘Did you develop them properly?’

  ‘I didn’t have a darkroom.’

  ‘Ah, you didn’t have a darkroom. So perhaps you made some mistake, causing the images to be lost. Did you mention that when you sent the negatives? Did you put a note in with them saying: there’s nothing on them, but that could be my fault?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And when you heard that those people had to be liquidated because there was nothing on the films, you still didn’t say anything?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I didn’t say anything, because Dorbeck had sent two men to tell me there was no need to develop the films since there was nothing on them.’

  ‘Dorbeck! Not Dorbeck again?’

  ‘Dorbeck knows exactly how it all went. Anyway, even if there had been anything on those films, it doesn’t change the fact that Stoffels and Knijtijzen got what they deserved. You said yourself they were working for the Gestapo.’

  ‘But Olifiers was straight, and Zéwüster has testified that it was you who shot Olifiers!’

  ‘Is Zéwüster still alive then?’

  ‘He was caught later on by the Germans; he was shot. But I have the statements he made to the Germans right here. Zéwüster said he didn’t trust you from the start. He even said he’d seen you again some time later, at the University Library in Amsterdam. He had the impression you were following him. Zéwüster was studying accountancy. He thought: what’s someone like him doing in a university library? He must be looking for me.’

  ‘What did the Germans say to that?’

  ‘They said you’d already told them everything.’

  ‘They just said that to mislead Zéwüster, to get him to make a confession.’

  ‘By that time you and Ebernuss were rather good friends, weren’t you?’

  ‘Zéwüster lied,’ said Osewoudt. ‘He may have lied to save me, because the man I shot was Knijtijzen. The Germans removed the bullets from Knijtijzen’s body, and they were traced to my pistol.’

  Selderhorst slapped the papers down on the desk, and in doing so upset the pile. The whole mass of files toppled over, spilling on to the floor in a large, multicoloured fan.

  This was ignored by Selderhorst, who seated himself astride his chair again, his forearms on the back and his chin in his hands. ‘Tell me, Osewoudt, what did the man you shot look like? Can you remember? You’d better tell the truth, because those people weren’t killed outright, they had time to make statements before they died.’

  ‘It was the man who let us in, a man with a red, bald head. He was standing to my left. I had the pistol in a rolled-up beach towel, which I held in front of my chest.’

  ‘Damn you!’ said Selderhorst, rising once more. ‘All right then, so it was Knijtijzen you shot at. What’s the difference?’

  Osewoudt gulped for air; his face oozed perspiration.

  For the next few minutes they stared at each other wordlessly. Then came a knock at the door.

  ‘Yes!’ said Selderhorst.

  A guard entered with a small, somewhat tarnished mirror.

  ‘You asked for a mirror, sir?’

  ‘Yes! Hold it up to that man’s face, will you?’

  The guard went up to Osewoudt and obediently held up the mirror.

  Was this the face of a man who could ever have been mistaken for Dorbeck?

  He looked like an office girl, the kind who knows she’ll never get a man, thirtyish – and he was only twenty-four. His nose was upturned and small, with wide, thin nostrils. His eyes seemed to be narrowed even when at rest, and yet they were not the eyes of a keen observer, they had the blank, uncomprehending look of the short-sighted. The pale, thin skin around the eyes was crinkled, and his mouth, with its thin upper lip and non-existent lower lip, appeared to be permanently set in cantankerous mode. He lifted his eyebrows, making lines appear on his forehead, which continued to shine with the white gleam of a porcelain washbasin. And then there were the thin bat’s ears, still rosy even now. And the pale, silky hair, which was still pale though greasy and matted. The cheeks smooth and round as a baby’s bottom, the jaw seemingly boneless. And to cap it all: the dimple in the middle of the chin.

  He pushed the mirror away, and said: ‘But don’t you have the photo circulated by the Germans with my name next to it? That wasn’t a picture of me, it was a picture of Dorbeck. It was quite obvious that it wasn??
?t me in the picture. Surely you could use that to track Dorbeck down with instead of a photo of me?’

  ‘Did you honestly think we didn’t have that photo? We showed it to twenty experts, side by side with yours, and eighteen out of twenty were positive that it was the same person in both photos.

  ‘What good would it do to start circulating the other photo at this stage? We’d only get more people coming forward saying that they’d met Egbert Jagtman at some point in their lives, and where would that get us?

  ‘Because Egbert Jagtman was the officer who ordered the summary execution of two Germans during the bombing of Rotterdam in May 1940! After the photo was published in the papers he gave himself up to the Germans; he said: here I am! Do what you like with me, but I’m not sorry! I’m an officer in the Dutch army. When the bombs were falling on Rotterdam the German lines were still a long way off, so I was authorised to have any German soldier shot as a franc-tireur; I don’t care if he was dropped by parachute or not, your modern techniques of warfare don’t change a thing. That is what Egbert Jagtman said in his statement, it’s all in the files.’

  Selderhorst gestured behind him.

  ‘What happened to Egbert Jagtman?’ asked Osewoudt.

  ‘They sent him to a concentration camp without trial. We can’t prove that the body we saw in Oldenburg was Egbert Jagtman’s, but that the man is no longer alive is not in doubt.’

  ‘What if he was posing as Dorbeck, what if he’d managed to escape from Germany? That way he could have gone on being active in Holland until the end of the war, couldn’t he?’

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish! When did you first meet Dorbeck? Was it on 10 May, yes or no?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he call himself Dorbeck then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What reason could Jagtman have had to introduce himself as Dorbeck in the first shop in Voorschoten he happened to go into?’

  ‘Maybe he liked a bit of mystery.’

  ‘Rubbish. You’re the one with a taste for mystery. Let’s see, that shooting incident in Haarlem – was Dorbeck there, yes or no?’

  ‘Yes he was, he was on the lookout.’

  ‘Ah. The shooting took place on 23 July, 1940. Yes or no?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right. But we know that Egbert Jagtman had already turned himself in to the Germans on 20 July, and that he was deported to Germany two months later. In other words, Egbert Jagtman was behind bars on 23 July. In other words: the man you saw in Haarlem on 23 July cannot have been Egbert Jagtman. Do you follow?’

  ‘Christ almighty! It wasn’t my idea that Dorbeck and Jagtman were the same person! I never said he was Egbert Jagtman. I said his name was Dorbeck. And if Jagtman and Dorbeck were in fact the same person, how do you explain the following? As I told you before, when I first met Dorbeck he gave me a roll of film he wanted me to develop. That’s where those three stupid photos came from: the snowman with the rifle, the three soldiers in gas masks, and the soldier in pyjamas behind a machine gun. But there was a fourth exposure.’

  ‘So where did it get to? You never mentioned it before – all your statements refer to three photos, not four.’

  Osewoudt paused before replying. He lowered his eyes, put both thumbs in his mouth and chewed them like a little girl.

  ‘Well? What was the fourth photo of then?’

  ‘It was of Dorbeck. He had two girls with him, and it was taken outside Kleine Houtstraat 32. The number was clearly visible, and also the street name, because the house is on a corner. If Dorbeck was in fact Jagtman, and Jagtman had no connection whatsoever with that address or with what went on there, why would he have had his picture taken in front of that particular house?’

  ‘That depends. First tell me what happened to the photo.’

  ‘Something went wrong. Just as I was taking it out of the developer, my mother came in and switched on the light. I switched it off at once, but the photo was ruined – it had gone completely black.’

  ‘Dear me, how sad! How could you have had such rotten luck! The only photo with Dorbeck on it … and that was the very one that didn’t come out.’

  ‘And yet I swear to you on everything sacred to me that I saw it.’

  ‘Swearing won’t get you anywhere. Listen here, you halfwit, if we had just one photo of someone who might possibly be Dorbeck I’d be prepared to think again.’

  ‘But there is one of Dorbeck! I just remembered! I took a photo the morning after Dorbeck rescued me, on 6 April, in the house he took me to in Amsterdam! We’re in it together, in front of a mirror!’

  ‘Really? So where is it now?’

  ‘I lost my Leica when I fled. I had a shoulder bag, it was in there. I lost the bag on the way.’

  ‘Christ, I’m exhausted. I never get to bed before three nowadays. If you promise to stop whingeing, I’ll see if we can do something about your lost Leica.’

  ‘You’re just saying that to get rid of me. What do you expect? That camera was swapped for cigarettes with some Canadian soldier ages ago. It’ll never turn up. And anyway, if it did turn up the film would never still be in it.’

  Selderhorst stood up, groaning with fatigue. He took a sheet of paper and picked up a pencil from his desk.

  ‘What did that Leica look like?’

  ‘I can even remember the exact serial number,’ Osewoudt said. ‘It was a Leica IIIa, number 256789, and the lens was a Summar 222456.’

  Selderhorst wrote down the numbers and then held the paper under Osewoudt’s nose.

  ‘That right?’

  From the daily newspaper Het Vrije Vaderland, 18 October, 1945:

  HERO OR TRAITOR? (from our special correspondent)

  Of all the insalubrious episodes that have inevitably come to light during the post-war administration of justice, the mysterious case of tobacconist O. is by no means the least significant. We have the impression that the investigation, in so far as it has been effectively conducted at all, is sorely lacking in logical reasoning.

  O. took part in various underground missions during the German occupation. Keen observers did not fail to notice that sooner or later everyone who had dealings with O. fell into German hands, while O. himself always managed to escape in miraculous fashion. Indeed, shortly after his arrival in the liberated provinces of our country in April 1945, he was taken into custody by the Allies on suspicion of high treason.

  O., for his part, denies everything, claiming that a man named Dorbeck was behind it all. This Dorbeck has never been found, despite repeated efforts to trace him. According to O., Dorbeck is a Dutch officer working for the British, and by coincidence they resemble each other like two peas. No lack of coincidences in this affair! A third mysterious figure has since surfaced: one Egbert Jagtman, likewise a Dutch officer and likewise bearing a striking resemblance to the apparently chameleonic O. Because a photograph published in the press (of O.? of Dorbeck?) was recognised by none other than Jagtman’s dentist! Prior to that, O. had already claimed to have sent secret documents to the said Jagtman’s address, which he alleged had been passed to him by Dorbeck.

  Whatever the case, it is now generally accepted that Jagtman himself is no longer alive and that a body found in a German mass grave is indeed Jagtman’s. Is it fair to infer from this that the third pea in the pod, so to speak, has been eliminated? Possibly.

  There is more.

  According to O., Dorbeck asked him to develop some photographs, which he, after having heard nothing from Dorbeck for four years, posted to him. Only four days after doing this, O. was contacted by a young lady by the name of Elly Berkelbach Sprenkel, who called herself Sprenkelbach Meijer. She identified herself with one of the pictures O. had put in the post, claiming that it had been given to her in England. But the photo had still been in O.’s possession three days earlier. She also claimed to have been put ashore the previous night at Scheveningen, where she had gone to stay with an aunt. But by June 1944 Scheveningen had already been evacuated by the Germans, and th
e beach was heavily guarded in anticipation of the Allied invasion. Moreover, at that time communications between England and occupied Dutch territory were hardly good enough for a photo to be able to travel there and back in two days. A mystery … Elly Berkelbach Sprenkel was in effect a British agent, but how she had obtained the picture O. could not explain. Did the man called Dorbeck exist after all? Was it he who played it into Elly Berkelbach Sprenkel’s hands (in Holland, presumably), instructing her to tell O. that it came from England? Theories abound, but what is the truth? Not long after this, Elly B. S. was caught by the Gestapo, and later shot. To make matters worse, it transpired after the war that the Germans possessed multiple copies of the relevant photographs …

  Whatever the case, the possibility of Dorbeck’s existence should not, in our opinion, be ruled out.

  But then where is he?

  The answer to that question appears not to be forthcoming from the authorities. We, for our part, believe it is incumbent upon us to take the matter in hand.

  Women

  Numerous women are implicated in the present affair. One is O.’s girlfriend, named Mirjam Zettenbaum, who went into hiding during the war as Marianne Sondaar. She is now residing in Palestine and efforts to contact her appear to have been unsuccessful. Why is this? Why has she not come forward to clear her former lover’s name?

  The judiciary have shown remarkably little concern about this situation, possibly with good cause, as we shall see.

  Mirjam Zettenbaum owes her life to the treachery of O.

  She was apprehended by the Germans in Leiden along with O. Being Jewish, she was promptly imprisoned in the Westerbork concentration camp, and her fate in a German Vernichtungslager would have been sealed had O. not saved her.

  O. saved her life – this is, by all accounts, not in dispute. For the Germans had come to the conclusion, on the basis either of O.’s statements or their own findings, that the arrest of O. had not dug out the root of the plot. They believed (or knew???) that although O. was behind bars there was still someone at large who matched O.’s description! So they said to O.: tell us who this person is, and we will ensure that your girlfriend Marianne comes to no harm. Thus they persuaded O. to betray Dorbeck.