As I step onto the gangplank the Westerkerk bells start ringing ten. On deck I notice Jansen’s package hidden poorly behind the flowerpots, which I keep meaning to plant up but never seem to get round to. I pull it out to see whoever addressed it to me misspelt my name.
First thing I see on board is the envelope with the signed letter dominating the kitchen. It’s like a sign. I suddenly get the feeling I’ve been waiting for, the reluctance melting away. Why has it taken me so long? I wonder. The drive gave me time to think of Joel’s proposal, and I’d come to the conclusion that really the only thing I had to lose was the money. And if it paid off I wouldn’t have to get some shit security job, which is what retired inspectors usually ended up doing if they’d not made pensionable age, which I’m very far off. I put it by the front door, so I remember to post it next time I go out.
I’m still holding Jansen’s file. Really I should just call him now and say I’m not going to look at it.
Sander Klaasen could be innocent. You’re responsible for Marianne Kleine’s death.
I sit down at the kitchen table and take a deep breath. Then I open up the file. The more I read the more my stomach drops away.
Footsteps clatter on the gangplank just as I’ve finished going through it. At the door is a man so unabashedly unconcerned with the fact that I’ve been waiting around for him that he must be the electrician. I lead him to the circuit board, which is located in the former engine room at the aft of the boat. Back at the table I realize I’d left the photos out. Which probably has something to do with the strange looks he gave me on the way down.
There’s a box under the sink unit in the kitchen where I keep copies of a few old files. Only those that were either unsolved, or which were solved but that just never felt right. Lucie Muller’s one of latter. Back at the table I clear Vermeer and Jansen’s file away and start reading through the Muller case, and I’m struck all over again by the similarities. It’s uncanny – there is no way this is a coincidence. None at all.
I take a quick break on deck, rolling a joint with Joel’s white cannabis. Smoke curls up in the strangely still air. I watch a seagull cruise out of the sky, wings hooked, orange feet splayed out haphazardly, adjusting as it comes in to land on the water.
Back at the table, reading faster now, seeing how Hank and I tackled the investigation, watching it unfold on paper. I take the photos of Lucie Muller out, compare them to Marianne Kleine. This can’t be coincidence. It just can’t. I read on, flipping between the two, hoping to find something, some detail which could explain the similarity away, all the while the air around me thickening with dread.
Ten minutes later I find it. There’s a bit of paper stuck to the back of one of the Muller case photos and when I peel them apart I find it’s the tech report on the video itself, the one that featured Huisman and the two hopefuls. I place it in the pile and start putting the whole lot away when something makes me stop and go back to it. I read it through properly. The name of the requesting officer is de Vries, and the technical officer who did the report is Joos Wilders. The report says, in the stiff formal language these things are always written in, that the footage had definitely been taken from the video camera recovered at Akkerman’s house. I turn the sheet over, expecting more, but the other side is blank. There should be more to this, specifically a check that the time and date displayed on the camera were actually correct, the whole point of getting the report done. I search through the rest of the file. Nothing. I search again, my heart beating faster this time. Again, nothing. I tell myself to calm down. I get on the phone to the department responsible, ask to speak to Joos Wilders.
‘He retired,’ the crackly voice tells me. ‘About four, maybe five years ago?’
I give the voice the report reference number and tell him to pull the file and email it over to me. I give him my personal address, saying there’s something wrong with my work one. He doesn’t even bat an eyelid; I wonder if I should tell someone about the lack of security. On deck I go through another joint. Just a small one this time.
‘Mate?’
‘Yeah?’ I turn to see the electrician poking his head out of a porthole.
‘I need to show you something.’
Down in the engine room the circuit board looks like a terrorist bomb mid-manufacture, a multitude of coloured wires spilling out of the box. It seems very far from being fixed. I tell him this.
‘Gonna be a while,’ he says. ‘This thing was wired up by a monkey. You’re lucky it didn’t catch fire.’
‘Fucking monkeys, they’re everywhere.’
I’m not sure he hears me.
‘So I need to get a few extra parts. These bits here are screwed, probably what tripped the whole thing.’
‘When will you be back?’
‘Later today, tomorrow at the latest.’
‘So what am I supposed to do in the meantime. If it is tomorrow?’
‘Well, you see this switch here?’
He’s pointing to a black plastic switch, the type that flips up or down. I concede that I can see it.
‘Good, so whilst I’m gone, don’t touch this, okay?’
I let him out and find myself back in the engine room. The electrics haven’t been touched since the boat was converted, so I’m not really that surprised. I find myself reaching out for the switch and I wonder why I’ve never been very good at doing what I’m told.
The phone saves me, snaps me out of it. The buzz is an email which turns out to be the report I’d asked for. I go back to the table, ready to compare it with what I’ve got, but when I open the attachment I see there’s only one page, the same one as in the file. There’s no second page, nothing to indicate they performed the most basic of tests. Hank de Vries had been in charge of that; he was a good cop – there’s no way he’d’ve made such a mistake. Mistake being code for Monumental Fuck-up.
I call them back. Same voice as before.
‘Is there any way there’s a missing sheet?’
‘No, I checked. Each page is given a unique reference which is logged on the system. This report only ever had one page.’
‘So whoever did it didn’t check the time on the camera itself?’
‘If they did, they didn’t make a note of it.’
Deck again, another half-joint, and I find my hand shaking a little as I light it. More birds. I look across at the Mustang; one of them’s Jackson Pollocked the bonnet – a massive splodge of white shit, bright and watery against the matt black.
Back inside I stare at the table, the papers spread all over it. I’m overwhelmed by jittery coldness. I go through it again, and again. The feeling only gets worse. I know what it is; I’ve felt it before. It’s denial.
Because from what I can see, Huisman’s alibi, the one that meant he didn’t go to prison for the murder of Lucie Muller, has just crumbled away.
Bit of a Punk
Once I’ve calmed down I get on the phone to Vermeer. Only her phone’s off so I have to settle for Jansen.
‘We need to meet,’ I tell him.
‘What’s this about, sir?’
I’m beginning to think this whole sir business is him being sarcastic.
‘It’s about a unifying theory of everything, which manages to finally bridge the gap between general relativity and quantum mechanics. What the hell do you think it’s about?’
‘I –’
‘Where are you now?’
‘Den Haag, I’m down here with Vermeer.’
‘When are you back?’
‘We’ll be at the station around three or so. But what’s this –’
‘Call me when you’re close. I’ll meet you there.’
I hang up before he can say ‘sir’ again.
The more I think about this, the more I know something’s not right. But calling Jansen was maybe premature. I get on the phone to Gert Roemers, head of the computer crimes unit at the station.
‘I thought you’d left,’ he says once I’ve got hold of him
and made my request.
‘Sort of. But I’m thinking of writing my memoirs and I wanted to speak to a couple of people involved in old cases.’
Roemers makes a noise like liquid’s shooting out of his nose.
‘Memoirs? Jesus. You’re not putting me in them are you?’
‘No, you’re not interesting enough.’
‘Good. All right, give me the names; I’ll call you back.’
‘First is Robert Huisman. He’s on the system already, should be easy to trace. The second is Joos Wilders, who used to work in tech, retired about four years ago.’
I stuff the letter into my pocket and go to the houseboat moored next to mine. Leah answers the door. She’s seventy-ish, grey hair and piercing eyes the colour of which I’ve never quite been able to fathom. Atlantic Ocean in winter might be close. Leah’s been living here since the early seventies when she emigrated from New York to pursue her art, abstract sculptures made from pieces she finds on her frequent wanderings round the city: scrap metal, bits of bikes, plastic bags, branches from trees, used syringes. She finds a use for everything. Her deck has a constantly changing array, and so many tourists stopped to take photos that she eventually bent her artistic principles enough to actually contemplate selling the odd piece. Now if you catch her on a good day she might even take cash. As to men, there’ve been many over the years, but none of them for long. She once told me she felt stifled, suffocated even, if one of them stayed more than four or five days. None of them ever reached six, as far as I could tell.
I give her a spare set of keys – they were Tanya’s and have a ghost of her scent, even just holding them brings back that gnawing regret – and ask her to look out for the electrician.
‘That yours?’ she asks, pointing to the Mustang.
‘Yeah,’ I say and for some reason feel a slight swell of pride.
‘Shame …’ she says, staring at it wistfully over my shoulder.
Back on board the houseboat Roemers calls. He’s got Wilders’ address, which I scribble down quickly. Huisman, though, is going to take him a little longer, he tells me. I ask him how long. He says something smart about a bit of string. I tell him to get on with it.
I’m just getting ready to leave when my phone goes off again. Nellie de Vries, Hank’s wife. I debate not answering for a moment, but we’ve not spoken recently so …
‘Jaap, there’s something I want to talk to you about.’
She sounds different to usual, flatter somehow.
‘Sure, what’s up?’ There’s a stab of fear in my gut.
‘It’d be better in person, maybe we could meet up?’
My antennae are twirling at this point, but I know not to push it over the phone. We agree I’ll drop by her place in IJburg later on today. I hang up feeling queasy, because I’ve got a terrible feeling I know what she’s going to say.
Joos Wilders is first. I check the address, which seems like a retirement complex out near Kasteel Brederode, a building that was of strategic importance in the Hook and Cod wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth century, but has now been relegated to a national monument.
I lock up, get in the car. Then I get out, clean the shit off the bonnet. Leah’s still on deck and I wave as I go past, but I don’t think she can even see me, her focus entirely on the vehicle. It’s like she’s deconstructing it in her head, working out which bits she could cannibalize for the sake of art. I’m going to have to watch her.
My route’s the A10, then A4, before I swing onto the A9 northbound, which funnels me up through expanses of reclaimed land. The sun’s out, and it’s an almost perfect autumn day with a fragile light blue sky and seventeenth-century clouds. My interior weather is not as good; it feels tense like the gathering of a storm. It’s not long before I spot the sign for Sunrise Homes, an arrow pointing to the next right. Sunrise. Who are they kidding? It should be Sunset. I take the turn and motor down a lane that ends in a parking space next to a field. On the other side, buildings are dotted around some manicured grounds, and there are old people everywhere: gardening, sitting on benches, chatting in groups. They don’t look all that unhappy. I resolve not to mention the Sunrise/Sunset thing to anyone.
The reception desk has one of those old-fashioned bells that looks a little bit like a breast, and you have to hit the nipple with the palm of your hand. Next to it a vase oozes with obscenely voluptuous tropical flowers. A stack of leaflets promise a wonderland of fun for anyone lucky enough to live the Sunrise Lifestyle. There’s a distinct lack of receptionist, though, even after I’ve slapped the bell up a bit.
‘She might be a while,’ croaks a voice from behind me. I turn to see an old woman, wrinkled, bent, a half-smile and eyes which, whilst watery, hold a certain power still. She shuffles towards me like a penguin, bringing with her an aura of powdery lavender. She’s wearing a taupe bathrobe with a purple waist tie, and slippers which each have two pink furry balls stitched to the tops. They flop around as she moves.
‘Someone died about half an hour ago,’ she says by way of explanation. ‘And they’re short-staffed today.’ She moves closer and adopts a conspiratorial air. ‘It’s because of the laxative I put into the staff breakfast; two of them have gone home already. Good to keep them regular.’
She chuckles, her shoulders keeping time.
I’m about to ask her if she knows Joos Wilders when we’re interrupted by a voice.
‘Elsie, there you are,’ says a harried-looking woman in uniform heading towards us, a Stepford grin on her face. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you. You didn’t take your medicine this morning; it was found hidden in the flowerpot again.’
‘It’s not medicine,’ Elsie stage-whispers to me. ‘It’s poison. They’re trying to poison me. All of them are.’
‘I’ll be with you shortly,’ Stepford Receptionist says, leading away Elsie who is protesting verbally but complying physically. A few minutes later she’s back.
‘Sorry about that,’ Stepford says, inserting herself behind the desk, her walk oddly stiff. She’s wearing a light blue polo shirt with an embroidered rising sun, shooting rays all over her left breast. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I’m looking for Joos Wilders, I believe he lives here?’
‘Are you the dog warden?’
‘What? No, I’m … an old friend of Joos, I was passing and thought I’d drop in.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she says, tempering her forced smile a little. ‘Joos Wilders died earlier this morning. That’s why everything’s a bit chaotic here at the moment. And I’ve got two staff off sick as well, both gone down with a stomach bug, so it’s hard holding it all together today.’
I start to understand her pained grin, and I suddenly wonder about what Elsie said.
‘How did he die?’
‘Probably just old age. It’s not uncommon. He adopted a dog only last week and it was barking really early this morning. That’s how we found him. Anyway, I don’t mean to be rude, but I really need to –’
‘I’m actually from the police,’ I tell her, hoping she’s not going to be officious and ask for some ID. ‘I needed to talk to him about an old case but that’s obviously too late. I would like to see where he lived, though.’
Chances of me finding something important, like a memo from him saying he had actually verified the time stamp are infinitesimally small. But I’m here, and what else can I do? Her grin’s getting ever more pained.
‘Look, if you point me in the right direction I can let you get on.’
She thinks it over. Her stomach gurgles. Then she tells me how to get to Joos’ bungalow and swiftly disappears behind a door marked STAFF.
I walk through the grounds. There are probably forty or so small bungalows spread out, each with their own little garden. Some are vegetable plots, others are more ornamental. One is a square of grass trimmed to precisely 2.5 millimetres; I’m guessing the occupant used to work in government or for a local council. I’m a rare beast in this terrain, and the local
fauna check me out, mostly with friendly smiles, though I spot a few pairs of medicine-dulled eyes.
Joos’ bungalow is easy to spot. A cleaning crew is hanging around outside with mops and cigarettes and slumped postures.
As I step closer I hear muffled barking from inside. The door opens and a man, who must be the one Stepford mistook me for, steps out with a dog on a leash. I’ve seen enough police dogs to know what it is, a Malinois, though it doesn’t seem fully grown yet and it’s almost entirely black. It looks like a black wolf. Oh god.
The Malinois abruptly finishes barking, and decides it would like to sniff pretty much everything in the world. The man holding the leash is in danger of having his shoulder dislocated.
‘Are you a relative?’ he asks me as the dog lunges forward and sniffs my shoes.
‘Of the dog or the dead man? Neither.’
‘You don’t want a dog, do you?’
‘Why, what’s wrong with it?’
The dog’s moved on from my shoes and is exploring my leg.
‘There’s nothing wrong with it – it’s just in all likelihood it’ll end up being put down. The shelter’s already oversubscribed. I took seven dogs in yesterday, know how many of those are alive today?’
I don’t know because I’m not a mind reader. I hate being posed rhetorical questions, so I don’t say anything or give any indication that I care about the answer and yet he makes a zero with his thumb and forefinger anyway.
‘Sorry, I can’t.’
The dog’s worked his way up my leg and is now poking its snout right at the pocket where my vape is, making a series of loud snorts.
‘He likes you,’ the man says. ‘First time he’s stopped moving since I got here.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I tell him again.
The man shrugs. ‘C’mon boy,’ he says, gently tugging the leash to get the dog moving. The dog’s less than keen, but the man ends up dragging him behind him. They pass another man, in a uniform similar to Stepford’s, who’s heading in my direction with righteous purpose in his step.
The Copycat Page 6