A Death in Rembrandt Square

by Anja de Jager

  I hadn’t seen her since I’d given my testimony in the court case. Then, as I’d answered the prosecutor’s questions, I’d had a clear view of her. She’d been sitting motionless in the row behind the murderer, like a gorgon, with hatred blazing out of her eyes.

  Chapter 2

  It was pitch dark by the time I got back to the police station. I could have gone straight home, but I knew that without the rest of my team in the office, I could get the couple of minutes by myself that I needed. I wanted to know why that woman had been in tears, but I also knew that I’d be better off not looking into it tonight. I sat at my desk, pushed the palms of my hands against my eyes and slowly counted to ten as I conjured up a picture of a cardboard box full of fluffy kittens. Just as I was putting the finishing touches to my mental calming exercise by adding a red bow to an imaginary white ball of cuteness, I heard footsteps coming up behind me and turned quickly.

  Standing in the doorway was the one person I didn’t want to speak to.

  The fluorescent yellow of the traffic police uniform was extremely bright, and it made me blink after the self-created darkness. The man carried his motorcycle helmet under his arm. He smiled, but seemed uneasy.

  ‘Can I talk to you for a minute?’ He was solid enough to keep a motorbike upright.

  ‘You’re traffic police, right?’ I said.

  ‘Sorry, yes. I’m Charlie,’ he said. ‘Charlie Schippers.’

  The parents of my first boyfriend had had a cocker spaniel called Charlie. Apart from giving my boyfriend and me a great excuse to be together by taking the creature for a walk, my main memory of that dog was its endless ability to fetch the same stick from the same place over and over again without ever getting bored.

  ‘Lotte Meerman,’ I said.

  ‘I know.’ Charlie did his best to look serious, but a grin kept creeping onto his face. I could tell he was delighted to be here. ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Ruud Klaver’s been in an accident. He’s in a bad way. He got hit by a car.’

  I couldn’t say anything for a second. The fluffy kittens were running away really quickly.

  ‘We’re still treating it as a hit-and-run for now, but there are some doubts. It looks like he was targeted on purpose. Have you kept tabs on him at all since he was released from prison?’

  I could understand why he was here, because when a murderer is hit in a traffic accident, you do get curious. ‘I haven’t followed him since his release, but I checked his record earlier today, and he’s been clean. No incidents, no contact with the police. A couple of traffic tickets.’

  ‘Any threats against him? Anybody saying they wanted to kill him as soon as he came out?’

  ‘The victim’s parents were pretty upset at the time, of course. They were angry with him, but they didn’t seem the killing type. Still, you never know.’

  My phone rang. It was my mother.

  ‘Where are you?’ she said. ‘You haven’t forgotten, have you?’

  ‘No, I’m on my way now.’ I looked at my watch. It was later than I’d thought. ‘I’ll be there in five minutes.’ I was grateful to her for giving me an excuse to cut short my conversation with Charlie.

  As I reached the canal where my flat was, I could see my mother standing outside my front door. We used to play cards together once a week, but we’d now changed that to having dinner every Wednesday night. I wanted to keep an eye on how much she was eating. She was too skinny for a woman in her mid seventies. Her cheekbones were so sharp that they looked as if they could cut through the loose skin that covered them. Her white hair was so short that even the storm outside hadn’t managed to disturb it.

  She’d come bearing food: she was carrying a white plastic bag filled with boxes. It probably came from the toko on the corner. I didn’t hold out much hope that she’d ordered my usual, but at least she’d saved me from having to cook. Luckily it wasn’t raining, because then I would have felt even guiltier.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I got held up.’ I chained up my bike and opened the communal door. My flat was the top floor of a seventeenth-century canal house. When it was built, the tax on houses was decided by the size of the footprint of a building, so like many of the others along the canal, it was high and narrow. The stairs were steep. My mother followed me up the three flights. She looked petite and fragile but I knew she was strong underneath, and she wasn’t even out of breath when she got to the top. It was probably all that cycling she did.

  I could hear my cat meowing from the other side of the front door, but as soon as she saw my mother, she froze in silence, then ran away to hide in the study.

  ‘How are you?’ my mother said.

  ‘I’m fine. Come in.’ I held out a hand for the food. ‘I was going to cook for you.’

  ‘I got a set meal for one, but that should be plenty for both of us.’

  I wasn’t going to argue. She had a bird-like appetite, and however often I urged her to eat more, she never did. The portions from the toko were always on the generous side, and buying one meal would have saved her money as well.

  I tidied up the table and removed the papers that always seemed to congregate at one end of it, then closed the curtains, blocking the view of the canal. I loved my flat. The walls were painted pale blue and soft grey, colours that were picked out again in the curtains. I had bought the place from an interior decorator in financial difficulties. I had been a cash buyer and she had needed the money. The deal, which included most of the furnishings, was done quickly. She’d had great taste and I’d had a lot of sense when I changed as little as possible.

  I told my mother to take a seat at the table and went into the kitchen to get plates and cutlery. The rest of the country might eat Indonesian food with a spoon, but my mother liked chopsticks, Chinese style. It was more of a challenge and made a meal last longer. I also filled Pippi’s food bowl, so that she’d have something to eat once she’d got over the shock of seeing her arch-enemy on her territory.

  In the meantime, my mother opened the plastic boxes. Boiled white rice, chicken satay, prawn crackers and beef rendang. Even though she knew what my favourite was, she’d actually got hers. Well, she’d paid for it, she was entitled to. She bowed her head and said a quick silent prayer, meeting my eyes again when she said ‘Amen.’

  ‘Bon appetit,’ I responded.

  ‘I’ve been listening to that podcast.’ She spooned a helping of rice onto her plate.

  ‘Right to Justice?’ I said, taking the smaller of the two skewers of satay. ‘I didn’t think podcasts were your kind of thing.’

  If anything, I would have expected my father to get in touch and talk to me about it. He was always interested in my cases. Maybe he didn’t listen to Right to Justice – as an ex-policeman he probably wasn’t a fan – or maybe he didn’t know that I had been the lead detective on that case. My parents had got divorced when I was five years old and I had lost touch with my father. We’d only started to get close again about a year ago.

  My mother looked at me with her duck-egg-blue eyes. ‘Wasn’t that the case you were working on when—’

  ‘Don’t,’ I interrupted her sharply. I didn’t want to hear it.

  ‘But it was, wasn’t it?’ She looked at the plastic boxes as she said it, as if she was fully concentrating on the food and this was just a throwaway comment.

  Of course she knew exactly when the Carlo Sondervelt case had been. She never liked that I was a police detective, thought there was something wrong about me wanting to follow in my estranged father’s footsteps, but during that particular case it seemed as if she was waging an all-out war against my profession. Every time she saw me, she would tell me that I had my priorities all wrong, that I should be thinking about my health and not chasing after criminals. I’d laughed at her concerns.

  She helped herself to the beef rendang – three pieces of beef, with the tiniest amount of sauce possible.

  ‘That’s not a proper meal.�
� I took the spoon from her and scooped some more onto her plate.

  ‘In yesterday’s episode they said that maybe he was innocent.’ She frowned at the food, as if that would make it disappear. ‘I know you like to think you’re always right, but that time,’ her voice was hesitant, ‘maybe you weren’t thinking as clearly as you normally do?’

  At least she made it sound like a question. ‘The guy did it,’ I said. ‘There was a witness.’ I gripped a piece of chicken between my chopsticks and twisted the wooden skewer with my other hand to loosen it. When the meat was free, I pulled it from the stick. It was good. The sauce was rich and peanutty.

  ‘The witness was the victim’s girlfriend.’ My mother locked eyes with me. She didn’t even have to say it.

  ‘Yes. Nancy.’ I spooned rendang onto my plate.

  ‘Wasn’t she pregnant at the time?’ She used her chopsticks to mix rice and sauce together on her plate.

  ‘Yes, and that was great for us because she hadn’t been drinking.’

  She must have finally been happy with how well mixed the food was, because she scooped up a mouthful of it, sticking out her tongue as she brought the chopsticks to her lips to stop any rice falling on the table. She chewed slowly and I was pleased at the respite in the questioning.

  Eventually she swallowed. ‘I don’t know why they were even there if she was pregnant.’

  ‘Mum, it’s where students go on Thursday nights.’ I knew that well, because when I’d been at university I’d often gone clubbing around Rembrandt Square with my friends. I grabbed a prawn cracker. Pippi reappeared in the room. She glowered at my mother, then fled to safety behind my legs. She wasn’t a fan. The feeling was entirely mutual.

  ‘Don’t give any to that cat,’ my mother said.

  ‘I wasn’t going to.’ Pippi didn’t like spicy food. I reached down and scratched her behind her ear.

  ‘Have that other satay skewer too.’ She pointed at the one I’d left behind.

  ‘No, that one’s yours. I’ve had mine.’

  She took it reluctantly. She shouldn’t have ordered it if she didn’t want it, I thought. She grabbed the meat with her teeth and pulled on the skewer. I grimaced, because that always seemed a precarious way of eating it. I was concerned that her teeth could give way at any minute.

  ‘What a waste of a life,’ she said.

  And now the murderer had been in a car accident. I thought of what his family had looked like when they’d come out of the hospital: the woman with the young man following the traffic cop. He’d come to see me afterwards, hopefully just to get some background information on the initial case.

  Both my mother and I stopped eating.

  ‘Do you think,’ my mother finally said, ‘that it’s possible he didn’t do it? That he was innocent? That’s what they said on that podcast.’

  ‘I really don’t think so.’ I pushed my plate away.

  ‘But if there’s evidence . . . It’s possible, right?’

  ‘Do you doubt me too?’ I got up from my chair. Instead of becoming annoyed, I focused on clearing the table.

  ‘I wouldn’t normally, you know that, but I know when this case was. And with that girl being pregnant—’

  ‘Don’t go there. Don’t say it.’ I pushed a plastic lid hard onto one of the boxes until it snapped shut.

  ‘You would have automatically believed her whatever she said.’ My mother got up from her chair to stack the plates, because that way she could avoid my eyes.

  ‘Leave it,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it.’

  She put the plates back down on the table. ‘How’s Mark?’ Her hands dangled by her sides now that they didn’t have anything to carry or clear.

  ‘He’s well.’

  ‘Does he know?’

  I shoved the boxes in the fridge and closed the door so that they were out of sight. If only I could store my memories away as easily.

  ‘You should tell him.’ She grabbed her coat as though she’d decided that if we weren’t going to talk about it, she had better things to do.

  After she’d left, I tried not to think about what she’d said. As I wiped the table clean to remove the last bits of food, I decided I was going to stop listening to the podcasts. Thinking about the case felt like picking at the scab of a recently recovered wound until you made it bleed all over again. I no longer wanted to remember it. I felt good about being sensible at last.

  I opened my laptop and Skyped Mark. We chatted about his new project for a bit and discussed the colour scheme for the house he was working on. I mentioned that my mother had bought me food. I didn’t mention anything else.

  I went to the bookshelves and dug out my scrapbook. It contained clippings of all the cases I’d worked on. I opened it and turned to the two blank pages near the front: the pages where the photos of that trial used to be.

  Chapter 3

  The next morning, I walked to the police station through rain that came down so hard it was practically a curtain of water. I’d abandoned the idea of cycling, as I’d only get to the office looking like a drowned rat. The wind pulled at my umbrella, fighting me for control, and I had to hold on with both hands. Keeping it as low as possible above my head gave me better odds. My feet and the lower half of my legs getting soaked was the price I had to pay for keeping my hair dry. It hadn’t stopped raining all night and I had to jump over a puddle that was the size of a lake.

  As I got to the final bridge before the police station, I sped up to a jog. The entrance was a welcome sight, as I would finally be protected from the rain. I stopped under the overhang and folded up my umbrella. But before I could swipe my card through the reader and push open the gate, I heard footsteps behind me.

  I turned and saw Charlie Schippers holding a large golf umbrella. ‘Do you have a few minutes?’ he said. ‘There’s something I need to talk to you about.’

  I checked my watch. It was still early. I had half an hour before my official starting time. Not that anybody stuck to that. ‘How about a coffee?’

  ‘Sure.’ He seemed relieved.

  ‘Canteen?’

  ‘No.’ He looked around him. ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’

  The protection of the police station was so near. ‘Only if it’s close.’ I was fine with canteen coffee if that meant not getting drenched further.

  Charlie pointed to the little café by the bridge behind the police station.

  I nodded. That was close enough. I slipped my swipe card back into my pocket and put my umbrella up again. The wind was strengthening. I turned up the collar of my coat to keep the gusts from driving the air down my neck.

  We crossed the bridge to the café together. The wind whipped up the surface of the canal until there were little foam-capped waves on the normally languid water. The trees on the canal’s edge swayed in the storm. A lone cyclist had to work hard against the wind; one gust was so strong that he almost came to a complete standstill.

  The green circular beer-sponsored advertising hung over the doorway. I’d had coffee a few times here before. It was good. I took a seat by the window and watched Charlie order our cappuccinos at the bar. The place was almost empty. I played with one of the beer mats that covered the round wooden table, spinning it on its edge. A gust of wind drove the rain against the window; it sounded as if someone was throwing a bucketful of water against it. The rivers flowing down the glass distorted the outside world, alternately obscuring it and revealing it again. The houseboats moored along the canal wall were shaken by the storm, moving as if they were chomping at the bit to leave, eager as horses at the start of a race.

  I knew how they felt. I checked my watch just as Charlie put both coffees on the table and pulled back his chair. The metal legs scraped on the wooden floor. He slid a sachet of sugar in front of me.

  ‘How’s the guy doing?’ I asked. I didn’t even need to say his name. We both knew why we were here.

  ‘He’s still in a coma in intensive care.’

  He’d mentioned last night th
at it was serious, but I hadn’t realised that the injuries were that severe. ‘And you said he was hit by a car?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you found it?’

  ‘Not yet. It may well turn up.’ He gave me a nervous smile, as if he was reporting to a rather demanding boss. ‘Whoever did this is hiding it well. Often we find the car crashed into something else later on, but not in this case.’

  ‘Nothing from garages? No repairs?’

  ‘There might not be much wrong with it. Maybe it’s only got a broken headlight. Then it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. It really depends on what kind of vehicle it was, and how it hit him. A pedestrian was killed by a car last year and it only had a few scratches.’

  I nodded. I’d seen something similar myself. ‘Where was the accident?’ I took a sip of my coffee. It tasted as if it was made from proper coffee beans and with real milk, not like the instant stuff they served in some other places.

  ‘The corner of the Johan Huizingalaan and Comeniusstraat. He was on foot. The car must have hit him at speed.’

  ‘Is there CCTV on that junction?’

  ‘No, unfortunately not.’

  ‘Have you got any witnesses?’ I scooped up some foam with my spoon and licked it off.

  ‘Two people saw the accident. One was an elderly lady who lives in the flat above the takeaway place. She said the car was dark blue but had no idea of the make or the shape. A “nice car”, she called it. The other was a guy who was walking along the pavement opposite when it happened. He called the ambulance – that’s how they got to Klaver so quickly. He said it was a dark-grey car: an Audi or maybe a BMW, but he wasn’t sure. He didn’t see a number plate.’

  ‘Did he see the driver?’

  ‘No. It was already dark and things happened quickly.’ He glanced down at his notepad.

  ‘Dark? Wasn’t it yesterday morning?’ I had assumed the accident had happened just before I saw Charlie and his colleague in the canteen the previous lunchtime.

  ‘No, it was on Tuesday night, around eight p.m.’