A British lieutenant came up to them with a soldier in tow, who set down four pairs of rubber boots on the grass. The lieutenant was already wearing rubber boots, as was the soldier.
‘Well now, gentleman,’ said the lieutenant, ‘would you be so kind as to follow me? That’s very kind, because I can’t say this is going to be a pleasant undertaking. The storage of the exhumed bodies leaves much to be desired, not least due to their poor state of preservation. The mass grave was discovered purely by chance ten days ago. It’s not far from our base, which has simplified transportation.’
He produced a key, put it in a padlock on the shed door, and said: ‘As far as we can tell, the majority are Belgian and Dutch servicemen.’
‘Were they in uniform, then?’ Osewoudt asked.
‘Some were. The others had nothing on — another kind of uniform, so to speak.’
In a nearby field stood a diesel generator, blowing blue vapour into the misty air. There were cables running from the generator to various sheds, including this one.
The dentist put away Jagtman’s dental chart and put on a pair of rubber gloves. From his case he took a long stainless steel spatula, almost as long as a crowbar, and a curious kind of clamp. The clamp consisted of two flat hooks, as big as spoons and with the convex sides turned outwards. The two hooks could be made to move apart by adjusting a screw. After casting an eye over each of these instruments, he put them all back in the case, which also contained a small mirror on a long handle and a pocket torch.
The door swung open and a sickly stench of decaying flesh mixed with formaldehyde wafted out. The officer turned a switch. Two inspection lamps suspended from the eaves flipped on. The dentist picked up his case.
There were so many bodies in the shed that there was hardly room to walk. Many of them were piled up on each other, so that only the faces of the top ones were visible.
‘Don’t worry,’ said the lieutenant, ‘we’ve marked the one we think fits the description.’
Looking left and right, he led the way for the others. Their rubber boots squelched in the black slime underfoot.
All the way at the back lay the marked body. There was a cross of red lead paint on the pale blue, distended belly. The eyelids were parted, but the sockets were empty. There was thin black stubble on the cheeks. The hair on the head was black, too.
‘Is this Dorbeck?’ Selderhorst asked.
Osewoudt hesitated.
The dentist sank to his haunches, inserted his spatula between the closed jaws and prised them apart. In his other hand he held his torch.
‘I’ve seen enough!’ he said, straightening up. ‘Not a tooth left in his mouth!’
It was mid-November, and many weeks since Osewoudt had last been called for questioning. One morning when Spuybroek came to inspect his cell, he raised the subject.
‘Couldn’t you ask Selderhorst to give me another hearing?’
‘What for? What would be in it for you? Don’t you think they’ve got enough files on you already?’
‘But there are still so many details that haven’t been discussed!’
‘You’re mad. It’s sheer madness on your part to think that more discussions will help. Incriminating evidence is, oddly enough, rather like cork. Sink a ship with a cargo of cork and the cork will come up again, whatever you do.’
‘Still, I’d really like to speak to Selderhorst. Ask him when I can see him.’
At half past eleven that evening he was taken from his cell and conducted to Selderhorst’s office.
Selderhorst’s desk was stacked so high with files that he could barely see over the top, which was probably why he leaped to his feet when Osewoudt came in through the door.
‘You again! What do you want? I didn’t send for you.’
‘That’s exactly why I’m here!’
‘I have no intention of losing any sleep over you. Did you think I still don’t know enough about you to have you sentenced to death three times over?’
‘No, in actual fact you know nothing about me! You never brought up any of the facts that speak in my favour. The country’s been liberated, and yet here I am, behind bars with a bunch of traitors, spies and black marketeers. Don’t I have a right to be free? Did I not do my bit for the liberation? Did I not liquidate the monster Lagendaal?’
Selderhorst stamped his feet with rage.
‘Damn you! How dare you talk to me like that?’
He waved at the files.
‘There isn’t a minute of your existence during the German occupation that is not documented in these files. For every time you scratched your arse I can produce ten sworn statements! What’s the matter with you? Why did you come here? To tell me yet again that it was you who liquidated Lagendaal? Take a look in the mirror, you creep. Look in the mirror and then tell me you’re the kind of man who would have had the guts to liquidate Lagendaal.’
He picked up the phone and shouted: ‘Bring me a mirror! Now! This minute!’
He slammed down the phone, took his chair from behind the desk and set it down back to front before Osewoudt. He sat astride the chair, resting his arms on the back. He was still wearing the same shabby grey suit, his eyes were red from lack of sleep, his cheeks were covered with grey and black stubble, but on his feet he wore a new pair of army boots, brown and lavishly studded with nails.
‘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.’