Stiffly, Helen separated the topmost container from the rest of the pile and placed it on one of the empty trolleys. She unzipped the bag and stared inside. A layer of condensation had already formed on the packages; their contents were starting to thaw. Fighting her repulsion, she removed them from her Italian bag one by one and placed them in the container. Then wiped her damp hands on her jeans and lifted the tub to check the weight. It felt heavy. Heavier than something like this ought to weigh?
Heavier than the people from Transport are used to handling?
Footsteps echoed in the corridor, the squeak of shoe soles.
She peered fearfully at the door. Her heart hammered behind her ribs as she hurriedly put the lid on the container, pressing down until it caught with a loud click. At the same moment, she saw the handle on the door move downward.
4
Directly in front of the red-painted door of number 8 stood a dark-gray Mercedes. The gleaming sports car looked out of place on this street—in this whole neighborhood, even.
Out of habit, Ralf scanned the license plate. “That’s Werner Möhring’s car.”
“You mean Sara’s father?”
He nodded.
“Do you know him?”
“No, but I know his car.” His eyes were focused on the Mercedes. “Brian once pointed it out to me when I picked him up at the Horn of Plenty. Or maybe I was dropping him off.”
Naomi made as if to get out, but Ralf grabbed her arm. “Wait a second.”
The red door swung open, and Werner Möhring stepped out of the house. The swelling by his right eye had gone down since Sunday, Ralf saw, but there was still a dark shadow around it. Werner zipped his jacket up to his chin and got into his car.
“That’s him,” said Ralf softly.
“Yeah, and?”
“You told me yesterday that Sara’s father banned her from going out with Brian. So, what’s he doing at Brian’s mother’s house?”
“That’s not what I said. I don’t think he even knew about Brian. Sara just wasn’t allowed to go out with anyone on the staff. She still isn’t, for that matter.” Naomi shrugged. “It makes sense, really. She’s the boss’s daughter.”
Ralf studied the row house. Sheer curtains hung in the front window, but you couldn’t see what was going on inside.
“Maybe he was here to talk about work or something,” suggested Naomi.
“Work?”
She gestured with her chin at the departing Mercedes. “Emily works in the office at the Horn of Plenty.” She frowned. “Doesn’t Brian tell you anything?”
“Not about his mother, no.”
Naomi got out. She rested her forearm on the door and looked him in the eye. “Are you coming?”
5
A woman stepped through the door, a stack of paper in her arms. Solidly built, in her fifties, with a sun-bed tan and bleached-blonde hair pulled back from her face. Helen recognized her instantly: Marjan de Boer from HR.
She flinched when she saw Helen. “Jeez, you scared me to death, Helen! What are you doing here?”
Helen snatched her bag from the floor and tried to look as composed as possible. “Hey—hi, Marjan.”
The woman smiled apologetically. “I didn’t expect to see anyone here.”
Me neither. “You OK?”
“Yeah, fine, thanks.” Marjan regarded her with slight surprise before looking around the room—perhaps to make sure that Helen was alone.
“I need to get going.” Helen pressed her handbag to her side and hurried down the corridor, striding briskly toward the swing doors. She felt Marjan’s eyes boring into her back.
It wasn’t unusual to run into hospital employees outside their normal departments. Sometimes there were meetings to attend, items to collect or dispose of. But what on earth could explain her presence here? And with the door closed, for that matter? The recovery room had its own refuse containers. She had no business in the waste room whatsoever.
6
Emily still didn’t look like anybody’s mother—not someone Brian’s age, anyway. She had large coffee-colored eyes and olive skin, and she wore her thick dark-brown hair in a braid over her right shoulder.
She smiled, exposing a row of white teeth. “Well, if it isn’t Naomi! How are you? And Ralf, I haven’t seen you in a while.” She peered over their shoulders and down the street. “Isn’t Brian with you?”
“Um, no. We were wondering whether . . . um . . .” Naomi glanced at Ralf.
Ralf took a step forward. “Well, ma’am—”
“Call me Emily.”
“Well, Emily, we were hoping you might know that. Where Brian is.”
A shadow fell over her friendly face. “How long has he been missing?”
“Since Friday,” said Naomi.
“Come in.” Emily walked ahead of them through the narrow hallway and into the living room. The walls were painted blue, and the smell of incense hung in the air. Two skinny Siamese cats were sprawled on the sofa by the window, observing the visitors with interest.
“Take a seat.” She gestured toward the sofa.
Naomi plopped down next to the cats, lifted one onto her lap, and began stroking it. Ralf sat down next to her.
“Would you like something to drink?”
“No, thanks.”
“Yes, please.”
Emily chuckled and looked at Ralf. “I’ll bring an extra glass just in case.”
Ralf looked around uneasily. He’d visited Emily just a few times before, and only ever very briefly. Her house was small and contained remarkably little furniture: the sofa they were sitting on, a large floor cushion, and a compact wooden dining table by the back window. As his father would say, a blind horse wouldn’t do much damage in here.
And yet it was comfortable. There were rugs and paintings on the wall depicting Asian scenes. Ralf noticed a Buddha sculpture on the windowsill, and a pot full of sticks next to it from which smoke was spiraling upward. It was pleasant enough, once you got used to the smell of the incense.
“Here you go, a nice glass of Coke.” Emily handed each of them a drink and then sat down on the thick cushion. She rolled up the sleeves of her thin flannel shirt. A serious expression suddenly returned to her face. “So. Friday.”
Ralf nodded.
“That was the last time either of you saw him?”
“Yeah, that afternoon,” said Ralf.
“Did he say where he was going?”
He shook his head.
“And neither of you have spoken to him since then?”
“No,” said Ralf hoarsely. “We can’t get ahold of him. I’ve gone up to his room a few times. His phone is there, on the charger, but as far as I can tell, he hasn’t been there himself.”
Emily fingered her braid. “And you both thought he was with me?”
“Well, no. But—” Naomi looked to Ralf for support. “We thought maybe someone should go to the police. None of his friends have heard anything from him. Five days is a long time.”
Emily nodded and shifted her attention to Ralf. Gave him a penetrating look.
Ralf took a sip of his Coke and examined the nearest wall hanging. It was red, with patches of beige and brown, and showed a mountainous landscape dotted with villages and rice paddies.
“Is there anything I should know?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I think you know what I mean. Did he pick a fight with the wrong people? Does he owe anybody money?” Her dark eyes searched his face.
Ralf didn’t move a muscle. “Emily, if I knew what he was up to, I would tell you.”
7
The brightly painted, high-ceilinged room bustled with activity. Wherever you looked, there were people sitting, talking, and eating; their blue and white lab coats hung loosely over their clothes. Helen wasn’t hungry, but to keep up appearances, she poured a little tomato soup into a cup and picked up a cheese sandwich before joining the checkout line.
She had spent the wh
ole morning imagining Marjan carrying out a detailed search of the waste room and ultimately landing on that single, hermetically sealed, blue plastic container—lifting it up, weighing it in her hands, and shaking it from side to side, before slowly realizing that there couldn’t be any clinical waste from the OR at that time of the morning. The labor ward was the only place where procedures were conducted twenty-four hours a day, and the waste that came from the delivery rooms was semifluid. The difference would be apparent the instant you picked up a container like that and shook it.
Helen had expected to be called away at any second. She pictured herself sitting in her manager’s office opposite a detective, answering questions about the contents of the container.
But the morning passed like any other.
“That’s three euros, please.”
Startled from her reverie, she opened the front compartment of her bag to hunt for her wallet. “Sorry, new bag,” she apologized, pushing a bunch of keys to one side.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get it.”
She looked up. “There’s no need.”
Lex pretended not to hear her. Helen watched as he pulled his wallet out of his pocket and chatted with the cashier. He radiated a sense of inner calm. She had never seen him look anxious—not even this morning, when he had nearly lost a patient. Against her will, she wondered how he would react if he were in her position. Or in Werner’s.
He walked over to a small table with a planter next to it. She sat down opposite him.
Lex unwrapped the paper napkin from his cutlery. “Man, what a morning.”
“She made it OK.”
“Thanks more to luck than to anything we did. It’s rare that people react like that.”
“You stayed calm.”
He grinned. “It’s funny I gave you that impression, because I felt anything but calm.”
“I wasn’t the only one who thought so.”
Helen had the feeling that somebody was watching her. When she looked up, she saw Marjan sitting at a large, round table. She seemed not to be participating in her colleagues’ conversation, and was looking directly at her instead.
Helen turned her head away and spooned up a mouthful of soup.
“I shouldn’t have called you,” he said.
“It’s OK. It was sweet that you were worried about me.”
“I sometimes forget we’re colleagues.”
“We’re friends too, Lex.”
He picked up his sandwich and tore off a piece. “There’s no such thing as friendship between men and women. That’s what my mother always said. One of the two always wants more.”
“And was your mother always right?”
He grinned. “If I’m honest, she did miss the mark from time to time.”
“Well then.”
8
Emily wanted to wait a little longer before she reported Brian missing. “One more day,” she had said—but then she had shot Ralf another look and added, “Or is there a reason why we should do it now? Do you know something I don’t?”
Ralf had fixed her with a stony expression and had sworn that Friday was the last time he’d seen her son, and that he had no idea where he’d gone after that. He wasn’t sure whether she believed him, but she’d stopped asking questions.
After their visit with Emily, he had taken Naomi home. He would have preferred to give her another driving lesson, but she had a mountain of homework to get through.
On his phone, he found a message sent by one of his friends earlier that day. Kevin had written that his parents were away, and asked whether Ralf wanted to come over and hang out. Alex was already there, and Rick and Luuk were coming later. Rick was the motorcycle mechanic—exactly the man he needed to speak to.
I’ll be there, he typed, and started up his car.
9
It was seven o’clock, and Werner wasn’t home yet. Helen wondered if he had finished his task. If it was done. She hadn’t seen or spoken to him since she left for the hospital that morning.
She crossed her arms and began to pace up and down. Sara and Thom had gone to visit friends after dinner, and Emma was upstairs, studying for an exam. When the whole family was at home, the house felt different. Less threatening. It made her less conscious of the cold, viscous aura that rose from the basement and seeped into the farthest reaches of her home.
They had to get rid of the body.
As soon as possible.
Two packages down. That left around ten or eleven risky journeys to the waste room still ahead of her. Eleven chances of being caught red-handed.
There had to be another way. One that was quicker, and let her take more at once. But how?
The loud bang of the gate against the house made her jump. She saw Werner walk past the kitchen window toward the back door, his head bent against the rain. Shortly afterward, she heard the door close behind him, followed by the quiet jangle of the metal hangers in the closet.
He didn’t kiss her when he came into the room, but walked over to the coffee machine instead. “Well?” he asked.
She looked at his back. “I did it. How about you?”
The appliance hissed and buzzed as he murmured, “It’s all packed up.”
“All of it? Really—already? How many packages are there?”
He turned to face her. “At least a couple dozen. I didn’t count them properly.” His mouth took on a grim expression. “The thing is, they aren’t all small, unremarkable packages like this morning. Make sure you take that into account.”
“Are there any that won’t fit in my bag?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you—”
“There’s a limit to what I can cope with,” he answered brusquely.
She opened her mouth to ask what he meant, then closed it again.
10
Perhaps he shouldn’t have had anything to drink. Or not as much, anyway. Alcohol always made him irritable. But even so, he would have felt a lot better if Luuk and Alex hadn’t been so goddamn annoying. Luuk was the worst of the two, claiming that Ralf owed him twenty euros when in fact it was the other way around. Ralf had come very close to pounding that smug grin off his face with his fists.
Luckily, Rick had dropped by. Their arrangement for tomorrow was still on. He would make sure he had money at home—cash up front.
Ralf crossed the deserted street, jingling his keys. He didn’t mind walking home. He thought of Brian and his DUI. Ralf would go completely nuts if that happened to him. Without his car, he’d be stuck at home with his mother, who always looked at him like he was the biggest mistake of her life.
A bicycle was leaning against the façade of one of the buildings. Plastic flowers hung in a garland from the handlebars, and there was a toddler seat on the back. The bike was fastened to a drainpipe with an expensive lock. Impulsively, Ralf pushed it over. Stamped on the rear wheel and the chain guard, then kicked the rear light until it broke. He cursed under his breath and hurried on.
11
“It’s eleven o’clock, Sara. Bedtime.”
Sara pretended not to hear her, sitting with raised knees on one of the leather armchairs by the kitchen table and watching an American show on her laptop. She wore a thin pair of flannel pajamas that would have been cute when she was twelve, but which now emphasized her curves. None of Sara’s clothes were cute anymore, Helen realized. She had become a woman. And it had all happened overnight.
“I’m talking to you.”
Sara’s tweezed eyebrows shrank into a frown. “Mom, I don’t have class until second period tomorrow.”
“Then you can read awhile in bed.”
Sara rolled her eyes.
Helen opened her mouth in reprimand, but managed to swallow her words just in time.
“What are you guys planning to do on Saturday, anyway?” asked Sara, her eyes still fixed on the screen.
“I don’t know yet.”
She looked up in alarm. “You aren’t staying home, are you?”
“Well, it just so happens to be our home, you know. I don’t really feel like being kicked out by you and your friends. Your father might have to work, and I—” She stopped halfway through the sentence.
Sara looked at her expectantly.
Yeah, Helen, what are you going to do when your children throw you out on a Saturday night and your husband is at work, like he always is? The idea of going for a drink with Lex, just as friends, flashed through her mind. She dismissed it. “I don’t have any plans yet,” she said finally. “But if you don’t go to bed right now, I can guarantee you that you’ll find me sitting next to you guys on the sofa on Saturday night. I could do with a nice relaxing evening.”
Sara closed her laptop with a sigh and stood up. “You can be so exhausting sometimes, Mom.” She looked back over her shoulder at the door. In a bored tone, she added, “Good night.”
“Good night, honey.”
Helen watched her daughter in silence. No, she wasn’t a child anymore. Soon enough, Thom and Emma would go the same way as their big sister, and after that, she would be able to observe her children’s lives from the sidelines only.
And yet it still felt like just yesterday that she was pregnant with Sara. She and Werner had been terribly nervous and yet excited at the same time. Soon enough, a baby arrived—their baby. A child who would unite all their best qualities: Werner’s aristocratic jawline, and her blonde curls; his drive to achieve something in life, and her desire to mean something to other people. In their naiveté, neither of them had stopped to consider that this adorable little pixie who depended on them for everything might one day grow into a teenager with very different standards and ideas from those of her parents.
Helen thought back to May, when she had by chance discovered that Sara was stealing from her. It transpired that she had been sneakily taking a succession of small amounts of money out of her purse. All those small amounts had added up to a substantial sum, which Sara had used to buy makeup, perfume, and a handbag. Helen hadn’t confronted her daughter straightaway. She’d wanted to be absolutely certain. So she’d started counting the money in her purse at night. A few bucks had gone missing almost every morning, and very occasionally a bigger note too. And nothing was ever taken when Sara wasn’t at home.
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