The Copycat

by Jake Woodhouse

  ‘Ruudy? Oh god,’ she says as if she’d forgotten about him. ‘He was devoted to her. I don’t know how he’s going to cope.’

  She starts crying again. The thought that this might have been stopped if the investigation into Lucie Muller’s death was handled differently needles at me. As we leave I can’t help thinking that this is all on me.

  Friends in Common

  Jansen drops me off outside the houseboat.

  I’ve lived here for eleven years and have been through so much during that time, it’s like a floating memory bank, good and bad. In those shapeless days and months after the diagnosis it became both my refuge and my prison. And yet I still love the place, love the scuffed paint on the hull, the rich wood of the front door.

  Which, as I’m standing here getting all sentimental, suddenly opens and a man I don’t know steps out.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ I call across.

  The guy squints up, puts a hand over his brow as if I’m blazing light from my body.

  ‘You the owner?’

  ‘Whaddya think?’

  He nods like a puzzle’s just been solved. ‘I work with Willem; he couldn’t make it so he sent me. Your neighbour gave me the key.’ He points across to Leah. She has a welder’s mask on and is attaching spent nitrous oxide canisters to an upturned bath in a brilliant shower of sparks.

  ‘You’re an electrician?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Of course.’

  I step over and give him a Rykel Special Stare, Popsicle Edition. It’s cold, hard and long.

  ‘I mean, I’m not actually qualified,’ he says, his Adam’s apple bobbing a couple of times. ‘But Willem told me exactly what to do.’

  Great. So my real electrician outsourced the job to someone who isn’t.

  ‘All fixed then?’

  ‘Good as gold now. All you have to do is turn on the main switch on the board and you’re good to go. Willem said you’d pay cash?’

  I’m not about to walk in and get myself electrocuted because some amateur doesn’t know his live from his neutral.

  ‘Show me first.’

  He’s as good as his word, though. He flips the main switch and I hear the fridge judder as it starts up. Kush barks from the bathroom.

  ‘What about the cash?’ he asks as I escort him off the houseboat.

  ‘I never said I’d pay cash. Get him to send me an invoice. And tell him there’s no urgency.’

  I close the door and let Kush out of the bathroom. Far from being pleased to see me he nearly knocks me over as he rushes to the kitchen where I find him paws up on the counter nosing around. I suddenly realize I don’t know how much a dog is supposed to eat. I consult the food packet I’d bought earlier, which helpfully gives me the number of grams per day per kilogram of dog. There are two problems with the instructions that I can see. The first is that I don’t know how much he weighs and don’t have a scale so I’ll have to guess. But say I get it wrong and give him a little too much? Surely we’ll get into a positive feedback loop? If I feed him a certain amount and he gains a little weight, then according to the feed chart he should get more food, which will then in turn …

  I tip a load into his bowl and leave him to it. I’ll sort out the exact amounts another day.

  I do a quick check through the houseboat, flicking switches on and off, and, satisfied, make my way back to the kitchen where Kush is still deeply involved with nosing the bowl. It’s like he believes by licking it more food will magically appear. He’s got this technique where he’ll gradually edge clockwise with his back paws whilst keeping his nose buried in the bowl itself. Round and round, the bowl slipping on the wooden floorboards.

  ‘I think that’s it,’ I tell him.

  I drag him away for a quick walk up and down the canal, then I pop him in the bath and close the wooden door. I’m preparing to leave when Kush starts howling and scratching at the wood. I can still hear him as I’m getting into the car. Leah’s back on deck giving me evils. Two minutes later Kush’s jumping into the passenger seat with a wagging tail.

  Dog one, human zero.

  Thing is, it was either piss off Leah or piss off Vermeer. Neither’s really an option but Leah’s the more immediate threat, not least because of the welding torch’s blue flame, so I’ll just have to think of something on the quick drive over.

  The duty sergeant is on an intense-sounding phone call, undoubtedly being dumped due to his personality, and I manage to sneak Kush past him, who then proceeds to drag me up the stairs and direct to the incident room. There are at least eight people at computers, and one wall is taken up with the murder board itself. Which doesn’t have a whole lot on it, other than the photo of Marianne Kleine, which I wish I hadn’t spotted the other day.

  Jansen waves me over to his desk. He’s looking tired, head resting on one hand whilst he scrolls through what looks like a never-ending bank statement.

  ‘Kleine’s bank account,’ he says. ‘Already been through it once …’

  Vermeer walks in a few minutes later as we’re discussing the case.

  She’s wearing jeans, a shirt undone enough to catch a glimpse of some sort of pendant, and a jacket that fits her like it’s tailor-made. My hoody starts to feel a little scrappy. Jansen’s got a shirt on too, I note. Maybe I need to dust off a few items from the back of the wardrobe, though I’m not sure there’s much there apart from even older hoodies.

  ‘Remember that thing I said yesterday about you doing exactly what I said?’ Vermeer asks when Kush bounds up to her like a long-lost friend, trying to get her attention by any means necessary.

  I just about manage to pull him off her. ‘Look, I know. I’m trying to work out somewhere he can stay, so it’s just for today.’

  ‘Better be.’

  She guides me to a table and sits down opposite me.

  ‘So I spoke to Beving after your little chat, and he’s willing to allow you to work under me until the case is closed, or I deem you’re no longer needed.’ She pauses like that last bit’s significant. ‘Here’s the paperwork.’

  I glance at the document she’s just slid over the table; it’s many sheets thick.

  ‘You will need to sign it and adhere by it.’ Another significant pause.

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘You know what the word “adhere” means?’

  ‘I’ll google it later.’

  ‘Good. Google “appropriate clothing for a police inspector” whilst you’re at it.’

  I again wonder why Beving wants me to spy on her. Is he scared she’s going for his job? She’s certainly confident, and if her reputation is anything to go by, more than competent. Or could it be something else, something to do with the deep current of misogyny that some men swim their whole lives in? Knowing Beving the latter wouldn’t be a total surprise.

  Vermeer spends twenty minutes taking me through the major points of the investigation so far, mostly a rehash of what I already read in Jansen’s file, before asking Jansen about his work on links between the two victims.

  ‘The only things they have in common are that they’re both female, and both relatively young when they died. Muller was brought up in Amsterdam, Kleine in Den Haag, then Haarlem. They didn’t go to the same schools, they weren’t Facebook friends, they never worked for the same companies, nothing.’

  ‘There has to be something connecting them,’ Vermeer says. ‘And so far we’ve not come across anything that would suggest Marianne Kleine had anything to do with Huisman, and yet I think his disappearance, especially given his alibi for his whereabouts at the time of Lucie Muller’s killing isn’t as rock-solid as it was believed to be, is suspicious.’

  ‘Did Roemers ever get anywhere on the charity he donated the money to?’ I ask.

  ‘Not yet, and we’ve come up with no holiday destinations either. He’s vanished. No one knows where he is. Jansen, you were checking up on his property, I assume it was rented?’

  ‘Sort of. It’s actually council-owned. I got the name
of the people it’s supposedly being occupied by, a couple called Sharon and Gerard van Baalen. Turns out they split up and she got another property. I can’t find any trace of Gerard.’

  ‘It’s an old game: get a flat with a wife, pretend to split up so she gets a separate property, both move there whilst renting out the first.’

  ‘Thank you, Rykel. It’s a wonder any of us have been able to do anything without your wisdom and perception. So we should probably talk to them. Don’t know if they’re going to know where he is right now but I’m not sure what else we’ve got. Jansen, address of the poor battered wife’s property?’

  ‘Not yet, working on it.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking maybe there’s someone else we should be talking to, his old friend Jan Akkerman.’

  ‘I already thought of that,’ Jansen says. ‘But I can’t find any trace of him.’

  ‘Which in itself, given the circumstances, is also somewhat suspicious,’ Vermeer says.

  ‘About that …’

  ‘Is there something you’d like to tell us, Rykel?’

  I tell them about my visit to Club 57, and pull the report out from my pocket.

  Vermeer picks it up and reads through it.

  ‘So this Snake, who is he?’

  ‘I asked, just waiting for a callback.’ She looks at me with eyebrows raised. ‘All right, I’ve been busy. I’ll do it now.’

  Ron is there now, I discover when I ring him, so I’m not sure why he didn’t return my call. Not like he’s rushed off his feet at his job. I put him on speaker.

  ‘The report mentions someone called Snake. Any idea who that is?’

  Ron laughs. ‘Snake? Yeah, I know who he is. Guy practically lives here.’

  ‘What’s his real name?’

  ‘Don’t actually know. Claudia, what’s Snake’s real name? No? Really? No, she doesn’t know either.’

  ‘We need to speak to him.’

  ‘Well, like I said, he practically lives here. He’s in the lower bar mid-afternoon most days.’

  ‘Do me a favour, call me when he turns up.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Vermeer says once I’ve shut down the call.

  I get the uncomfortable feeling she can read my mind.

  I tell them about Akkerman’s mother’s address. ‘If anyone knows where Akkerman is, it’s a good bet his own mother does.’

  ‘And Akkerman might know where Huisman is.’ Vermeer looks round. ‘Anyone got anything better?’

  It seems not.

  ‘Let’s do it then,’ she says. ‘We’ve got a few hours before “Snake” is supposed to appear anyway.’

  I’m up already, Kush leaping into action, followed by Jansen, when Vermeer speaks.

  ‘Wait,’ she says to me. Then she turns to Jansen. ‘I’ll go with Rykel; you carry on working on a connection between the two victims.’

  ‘But I –’

  Amazingly she actually silences him with a stare.

  Just before I leave I lean across to Jansen. ‘Check friends in common.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Facebook. You said they weren’t friends, but did they have any in common?’

  ‘I didn’t check that.’ Jansen’s cheeks colour. ‘I’ll do it right now, sir.’

  As Vermeer and I exit through the front reception area I hear an angry voice.

  ‘Oi, I said there were to be no dogs other than official police dogs in here. My job’s bad enough as it is without having to sit here smelling dog piss all day.’

  I turn to see the same duty sergeant as yesterday. He’s got the gaunt look of the long-distance runner, and the clamped jaw of a pedant.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, but he’s young and I’m sure –’

  ‘He’s doing it again!’ the man screams.

  I turn round to see that Kush has returned to the scene of the crime and is wantonly committing the exact same offence in the exact same spot.

  Once outside I give him an ear scratch. ‘Good boy,’ I tell him.

  ‘That’s hardly responsible dog ownership,’ Vermeer points out.

  ‘No, but the guy’s a bit of a dick. Drama queen. Should be made of sterner stuff.’

  ‘Agreed. He is a bit of a dick.’

  She mimics his pissy reaction so well I can’t help laughing.

  ‘By the way, I do the driving,’ she tells me.

  ‘Whatever you say, boss.’

  According to Hank’s note the house number is twenty-seven and we’re currently sat outside three. A short walk down the street shows us we may have a problem. There’s a gap in the row of houses, from twenty-one to twenty-nine, a canal glittering beyond. I check the address; this was definitely it.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ Vermeer asks.

  ‘Crane fell on them,’ says a voice behind us.

  We turn to see an old couple who’ve just squeezed out of the door of number twenty-one. They’re ruddy-cheeked and sparkly-eyed with the kind of grins you usually associate with the criminally insane. Break out the pointy hats and you’d have a perfect pair of garden gnomes.

  ‘What? The houses?’

  ‘Flattened them completely,’ the man adds, nodding his head a bit too fast. There’s a fixed quality to his gaze which speaks of some inner pain, despite the grin.

  Now that they mention it there’s a ghost of a memory, from maybe last summer. Not that I can remember much. Things were at their worst. The black wolf fully in control. I lost days back then. Weeks. The anxiety ferocious, unrelenting. Sleep a thing of the past. I’d had flashbacks. I’d also had periods of time unaccounted for, complete blanks in my memory. I’d suddenly find myself somewhere with no knowledge of how I got there, or what I’d been doing. In a way those were even more scary than the flashbacks. I feel like those days were stolen from me.

  ‘There were two cranes lifting a huge steel plate to fix the bridge,’ the woman says, pointing across the water. ‘The first one fell, and it took the second one with it. Totally destroyed the houses.’

  I turn to look at the gap again. The ground hasn’t been completely cleared. A loose layer of rubble is accumulating wind-blown rubbish. A seagull lands and starts jabbing at something I can’t see.

  ‘We’re looking for Marit Berkhout,’ Vermeer tells them.

  ‘Hers was one of them,’ the woman replies with grim satisfaction. So much for survivor’s guilt. ‘She’d just got back from the doctors. I was talking to her not five minutes before it happened.’

  ‘That must have been terrible. Did you know her well?’

  The woman looks at both of us in turn, suspicion in her eyes for the first time. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Police.’ Vermeer shows her badge. ‘Did you know her son?’

  ‘Jan? Never met him, but we heard about him a lot, didn’t we? She was so proud of him, never talked of anything else. Jan this, Jan that, Jan’s getting big in the film business. I never believed her, and he never came and visited. Must have been too busy making a name for himself.’

  ‘Do you know where he lives now?’

  ‘No idea.’

  Back in the car Vermeer again takes the wheel.

  ‘That was a bust,’ I say as she pulls out into traffic. ‘What now?’

  ‘If she left a will, there’s a chance she named her son in it.’

  ‘Doesn’t necessarily mean there’ll be contact info in it, though.’

  ‘No, but I’m not sure what else we’ve got.’

  Alphen aan den Rijn is a small town, and as such it takes us just over an hour to find the firm of lawyers who’d dealt with Marit Berkhout’s affairs. Vermeer has sent me in on my own, saying she had some calls to make.

  From the outside it looks imposing, a double-fronted unit with smoked-glass windows. Inside the carpet is threadbare and there’s a hint of damp or mould in the air.

  ‘How cute,’ says the receptionist as Kush gives her proffered hand a thorough forensic analysis with his nose. She’d come out from behind her desk the moment we walked in, and squatt
ed down, waiting for Kush to approach.

  Soon there’s baby talk and stroking, Kush lapping it up like he’s been starved of affection his whole life.

  ‘Hi,’ I say.

  She reluctantly leaves Kush and goes back behind her desk. ‘How can I help?’

  I explain that my colleague had called less than twenty minutes earlier.

  ‘Oh, you’re the police?’ She seems dubious, but picks up the phone and has a quick conversation with someone.

  ‘Henny Beernink can speak to you. Thing is, he’s scared of dogs but you can leave him here with me if you want?’

  A good liar she is not. But it’s kind of sweet she’d go to such lengths so I hand Kush over and follow her directions to Beernink’s office, which I find at the end of a corridor where the smell of mould is even stronger.

  By the looks of things Beernink’s overdosed on whatever supplement gives you an abundance of jovial bonhomie, and before I’ve even sat down I know the name of each of his three kids, his wife, and that he enjoys windsurfing at the weekend. What an exhausting amount of effort for him to go to just to get me to like him. Especially as it was doomed to fail right from the start.

  ‘So you’d like to make a will?’ He finally gets down to it and I see all the bonhomie was pure salesman. As is his suit, tie and side-parted hair, which he keeps sweeping back with a nervous hand. I also see that the pretty receptionist was so busy plotting out how to get some quality time with Kush she’d clearly not given this man the full story. I lay it out for him now. He listens, adopting a more sober mask as I go through exactly what I want.

  ‘Of course we can get the files for you. I will need to see some ID, though.’ He flashes me a pained smile, which tells of a world of rules that he’d love to be able to break because what a pain in the ass they are, but his hands are unfortunately cable-tied behind his back by the system.

  When I go back outside, Vermeer’s deep in conversation with someone on the phone, so much so that she doesn’t see me until I’m right close by. She covers her discomfort well once she spots me, holding her hand over the phone’s mic whilst she talks to me.

  ‘Lost your dog?’

  ‘They definitely handled her affairs, but they’re not going to give them up without a bit of badge waving.’