‘There’s no doubt in your mind?’
‘None. I’ll tell you what I told her,’ he said.
I hoped he would tell us things he hadn’t told her. I hoped there was a difference between talking to the police and talking to a woman who had a podcast. I also hoped that there was a difference between talking to the woman who had locked away the murderer of their son and the woman who had tried to prove that he’d been innocent after all.
‘Nancy saw him. She’s a smart girl, she doesn’t make up stories,’ Jelte said. ‘Look, I’m sad that the guy was killed. He seemed to have changed his life. Stopped drinking, I heard. If I trust the law, which I think I do, I have to feel that justice was served, that he’d paid the price for his crime and should be allowed to start again. We’ll never get our son back, of course, but whatever happened to his murderer wouldn’t change that anyway. Don’t you agree?’
‘I guess so. So you had forgiven the guy?’
‘Forgiven? No, not that. But I felt we’d had our revenge. Our revenge through justice.’
* * *
‘He was lying,’ Ingrid said as we drove back. ‘There’s no way anybody feels like that. So little anger.’
‘It’s been ten years. I think he believed what he was saying. Or he wanted to believe it.’ I pulled the seat belt away from my shoulder. ‘I also think there was plenty of anger beneath the surface.’
‘It’s those ones, the ones who bottle up their feelings and don’t accept their anger, who explode. Who press the accelerator instead of the brake and hit pedestrians on zebra crossings.’
I nodded. ‘Sure, but that alibi was solid.’
‘I love to imagine Sandra Ngo meeting that guy,’ Ingrid said. ‘Trying to needle him into getting a reaction and hitting a wall of denial instead. What must it have been like for the parents of the victim to have the case gone through again with a fine-tooth comb?’
‘It must have been horrendous. To have doubt put back into their minds after they’d come to terms with the identity of the murderer. They’d felt that justice had been done, and then Sandra rocks up and says it might have been a mistake all along and the wrong man had been locked up.’ I grimaced. ‘I’m just not sure it would make them want to kill Ruud Klaver. If anything, they’d want to take their anger out on Sandra Ngo.’
‘Unless they thought he was trying to get something out of it. That he wasn’t innocent but was trying to get a payout. Wouldn’t they want the acceptance of guilt in return for their forgiveness?’
‘But didn’t you hear the man? He hadn’t forgiven Klaver; he’d felt he had paid the price. That’s very different.’ It was a feeling I understood. ‘He wasn’t talking about forgiveness, but about legal retribution.’
‘And therefore it was even more upsetting when it was suggested that the verdict had been wrong?’
I had to think about that. If you’d forgiven someone and then it turned out that they’d been innocent all along, that would probably make you feel good about your forgiveness. If the wrong person had been sentenced, that would turn everything upside down. For ten years or so you had believed that the right person had been punished and now you had to accept that that hadn’t been the case.
I shook my head at my own thoughts, because of course that wasn’t what Jelte had felt. He was certain that Ruud had been the killer, because Nancy had seen him. She’d testified. He must have felt that Ruud was lying. That he’d claimed he was innocent when in fact he was the murderer. It would have made him angry, I was sure of that. Angry enough to get someone to kill Ruud whilst he fabricated an alibi? I thought about the scene of the crash. It didn’t look meticulously staged and planned. It looked like a spur-of-the-moment thing.
We got back to Amsterdam and I asked Ingrid to drop me off at the Keizersgracht. Even though it was raining again, I had a coffee at one of the cafés where a bridge met a canal. Cafés and restaurants occupied most of these corners; the bridges worked as funnels that shipped people from one canal to the next, so what better place to have a café? Also, the bridges normally had metal railings, which were perfect for chaining bikes to.
I sat outside at the leftmost of a single row of round tables that were kept dry by a sunshade and looked out over the canal. The water was somewhere between green and brown. The colour of a toad. The houses were different hues from the same palette. Their reflections on the water were disturbed: straight lines rippled as heavy drops created circles that overlapped and disappeared. Sometimes a drop was so big that it splashed up and created a bubble. All the moored boats had their covers up. I drank my cappuccino slowly to the peaceful patter of the rain on the awning. The water streamed down in a minuscule waterfall close to the table’s edge. A boat came by. Four people rowing. A soothing, rhythmic noise like the sound of sinking your body in the water of a late-night bath. The murmur of car engines was distant and unable to rise above the high-pitched screeches of a coot.
I called Sandra. I asked her again to share her information with me. Again she said she would do it if I came on the podcast to talk about the original case. Again I refused.
Talk about it. My mind was already flooded with memories of it. Investigating Ruud’s death had forced me to think about things I would have preferred to forget. This case that I’d worked on ten years ago had come right back to the foreground of my memory. Now I had to investigate it again.
If Ruud had been innocent, that meant our witness had been wrong.
Could it be possible that Nancy had made a mistake? I really didn’t think so.
Of course I had believed her. It wasn’t just because I’d felt sympathy for her: her boyfriend had just been killed and she was the only witness. Above all else, there’d been no reason to doubt her. I hadn’t treated her any differently just because she was expecting. Her pregnancy had made no difference.
I paid for my coffee and set off home. When I arrived, I went slowly up the three flights of stairs. After I’d fed the cat, I went into my study and put a new sheet of white paper on the architect’s table that functioned as my personal whiteboard. Especially with these old cases, drawing out what we knew helped me focus. I wrote Ruud Klaver’s name in large block capitals in the middle of it with a blue marker pen. Seeing his name was no easier than hearing it. I chewed the end of the pen. Had I ever investigated the murder of a murderer before? Where should I start? In this drawing, which murder should take priority?
On the top right of the page, I wrote: CARLO SONDERVELT.
Pippi sauntered into the study, having had a little nibble of her food, and weaved her way between my legs. She meowed, and I bent down to scratch her little black-and-white face. Then she jumped up onto the architect’s table and stretched out to make herself comfortable on top of the paper. Her tail covered Ruud Klaver’s name, as if she too didn’t want to see it.
‘What are you thinking, Pippi-Puss? That I should stop drawing?’ I stroked her, then gave her a longer tickle at that soft spot just behind her ear. ‘I shouldn’t be working? I should just play with you instead?’
She purred loudly.
It was maybe a mistake to automatically assume that this murder had something to do with Carlo Sondervelt’s death. It could well be the case, of course, especially with Sandra Ngo asking lots of questions, but perhaps it shouldn’t be my starting point. Ruud Klaver had been released from prison over a year ago. What had he been doing since? How many people went from prisoner to model citizen? Even if he’d been innocent, he would have met plenty of people in jail. He could have been drawn into something else.
I bit my lower lip. The only thing I had found on Ruud Klaver had been a ticket for speeding two months ago and another one for jumping a red light a week later. I realised I didn’t know anything about what he’d done during the last year. I didn’t know where he’d worked, how he filled his life or what type of person he was. All I knew was that he’d been hit by a car.
I gave up on my drawing. ‘Thanks, puss,’ I said. She’d stopped me from fo
cusing on only one direction from the start.
Chapter 13
The next morning, Ingrid had clearly been waiting for me to get to work, because as soon as I came through the door, she said, ‘No need to take your coat off, we’re going straight out.’
‘Okay,’ I said. I was slightly surprised, but I liked that she was taking the initiative. She was going to need that attitude once she moved into her new team. ‘Where are we going?’
‘I just got off the phone with Dennis Klaver. I called him after that pointless meeting with his mother, but he didn’t answer. He returned my call this morning and agreed to talk to us.’
‘No.’ I pulled my chair back, ready to sit down at my desk. ‘I’m not going.’ I did my best not to sound like a stubborn child, but I didn’t think I quite managed it.
‘What do you mean, you’re not going? Dennis was the one who got Sandra Ngo interested in his father’s case. We should ask him why.’
‘I know. You should. I shouldn’t.’
‘Until Thomas comes back, you’ve got no choice.’
‘Just take that traffic cop with you. He’ll be so happy.’
‘Are you annoyed with me? Is this because I’m moving out of the team?’
‘Look, Ingrid, I don’t have a good history with this family. I was thinking about it yesterday when we met Angela and Remco. It’s best if I don’t talk to them any more. I could see how she clammed up as soon as she saw me. Take Charlie, or wait for Thomas to come back and go on Monday.’
‘Seriously? We’re in the middle of a murder investigation and you’re telling me to go on Monday instead? That’s stupid. Let’s go now, and if we don’t get anything, I’ll go back with Thomas after the weekend.’
I was tempted to tell her what had happened during Ruud Klaver’s arrest, but I knew it had no relevance to his death.
‘I’ll do the talking,’ Ingrid said. ‘You can hang back.’
It was only for one more day, I told myself. Thomas would be back on Monday and I could focus on working on Sandra Ngo to give me her information. For today I could follow Ingrid around.
I was quiet as she drove us to Dennis’s place.
I was quiet as we walked up the stairs to his flat.
I was quiet as he opened the door and looked at me with unguarded anger.
I would have liked to tell him that I didn’t want to be here either. I couldn’t even imagine what it must be like for him to have me here on his doorstep. The first time he’d seen me in the hospital, he’d looked as if he was going to throw up. Now he looked as if he could kill me quite easily. My hands were shaking, and I clasped them together behind my back and straightened my spine. I made eye contact and didn’t look away, because this feeling was entirely mutual.
He let us in.
I recognised an obsessive when I saw one. I managed to limit my drawing to the architect’s table in my office, but Dennis hadn’t constrained himself. Everything in this room was small apart from the collection of newspaper clippings behind the bed. They dominated the place. It was as if Dennis had wallpapered his room with newspaper to save money. The stories were all about his father. Ruud Klaver’s face stared at me multiple times. I scanned them to see if there were any other faces I recognised. If I was trying to prove that my own father was innocent, I would start by finding another culprit; someone with a motive for shooting Carlo. But the first thing my eyes landed on was the photo from the trial, the one that I’d removed from my scrapbook.
Dennis had cut away the people in the background, so that only I was left. I reached out to grab it.
‘Don’t touch that.’ His voice whipped out.
I retracted my hand.
There had to be something here. I scanned the rest of the wall. It didn’t take me long, because I was familiar with most of what Dennis had put up here. At the time, I had cut out many of the same articles. I had followed the newspaper coverage closely to make sure that none of the classified information got out. It hadn’t. We’d done a good job of keeping it under wraps.
I found nothing of interest on the wall. There also were no gaps, so it wasn’t as if he’d taken any clippings down before we arrived or passed any on to Sandra. Unless he’d quickly stuck up other articles, of course.
Row upon row of binders filled the bookshelves. I didn’t have to open one to know that these were about his father as well. It was as if that was all Dennis’s life was about. He had dedicated himself to proving his father’s innocence.
This one room was his entire flat. His bed took up one end, and a row of bookshelves created a divider between the sleeping area and the eating area and kitchen. There was a single comfortable chair opposite a flat-screen TV hanging on the wall. He must never have visitors, because there really wasn’t anywhere for Ingrid and me to sit. We stayed standing until Dennis pointed towards the two bar stools under the tiny table. I pulled mine out and nearly bumped into the fridge.
‘Thanks for making the time to speak to us,’ Ingrid said.
‘Did I have a choice? I could have refused? I didn’t know that.’
I didn’t think I had ever come across a victim’s family so unwilling to talk.
‘You were the one who contacted Sandra Ngo?’ she continued.
‘Yes. I knew she could prove that my father hadn’t killed Carlo Sondervelt. I clearly wasn’t smart enough.’ He pointed at the wall and the binders. ‘I tried. But it needed someone like Sandra to actually do it.’
‘Do you know of anybody who wanted to kill your father?’ Her voice was calm and sympathetic.
‘No, nobody.’ Dennis’s short answers showed that he had no interest in talking to us, however nice Ingrid was trying to be.
‘Any problems you were aware of?’
‘No.’
‘Money problems? Something at work?’
‘Work?’
‘Didn’t he have a job?’
‘No, he didn’t. It isn’t easy for a man over fifty with a criminal record to get a job.’
‘So how was he doing for money?’
‘Remco helped. He’s got a good job.’
‘Were there any threats?’
‘Every now and then he’d get a narky email, but nothing serious. Nothing recent.’
‘But someone killed him.’
‘It could just have been an accident.’
‘You were very angry with your brother. You said he hated your father?’
‘That was nothing.’ He stared at me again. He probably wanted to call me a bitch.
That was what he’d called me that night.
After we burst through the door of Ruud’s living room, Dennis was the first person I saw. Then he’d been a spotty teenager with shoulder-length hair, dressed in green pyjamas. He was twelve or thirteen.
I should have got him out of the way first, but before I could reach him, a door to my right opened with a click. I whipped round. A man came out. I recognised him immediately as our guy: Ruud Klaver. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Maybe he’d planned to make a run for it.
I pointed my gun at his head. ‘Freeze!’ I shouted. ‘Police, don’t move!’
He slowly raised his hands. ‘What’s this about?’
His hands were empty. He wasn’t armed. ‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Carlo Sondervelt. You have the right to remain silent.’ I rattled through the rest of his rights as I holstered my gun and clipped the handcuffs around his wrists.
‘You bitch,’ the kid ranted. ‘What are you doing to my father?’
This was as clean an arrest as we could have hoped for. My shoulders lowered a couple of centimetres as I relaxed.
I put my hand on Ruud’s arm to lead him towards the door. Then a second door opened. Another teenager came out, this one a bit older, eighteen maybe. He wore jeans and a T-shirt. I wondered if he’d got dressed when he heard us come in, or if he’d still been up. Unlike his younger brother, he didn’t scream or shout. He only stared at me, his face immovable as
a mask.
‘Be quiet, Dennis,’ Ruud said to the younger boy. ‘I’ll be back soon.’
I passed Ruud over to Barry, who was waiting on the other side of the door, at the top of the stairs. The kid started to scream loudly, his words forming an endless stream of profanities.
I turned.
One of my colleagues should have held him back, but, like a football team just after they’ve scored, our concentration lapsed for a second. Maybe they thought a twelve-year-old kid wasn’t a threat. I didn’t blame them. I wish I could have. It would have made my life easier. But I only blamed myself.
Now that kid had grown into a man and he was still talking. ‘Remco and my dad just didn’t get on, that’s all.’
‘You said that Sandra Ngo had proved that your father was innocent. How did she do that?’ Ingrid asked.
‘Ask her.’ He grinned. ‘Or listen to the podcast like everybody else.’
I was starting to get really fed up with this family. Talking to them was like talking to a brick wall. ‘Don’t you want to know who killed your father?’ I said.
‘I’ve been thinking about it and I really think it was just an accident. Nobody wanted to kill him. Is that what I need to say to get you guys off my back?’
‘An accident? Someone hit him with a car,’ I said.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ingrid flinch.
‘But hey, if you want to ignore that,’ I continued, ‘and just think we’re all done here, then be my guest.’
‘Yeah, we’re all done. Or at least I’m done talking to you lot.’
Ingrid shot me an annoyed glance. I turned and left the flat, pausing outside the front door so that I could hear what was going on inside, in case she needed my help. I fought to get my breathing under control. Getting angry didn’t help at all.
Ingrid said a polite goodbye, ‘I’m sorry about that,’ I heard her say before she joined me. Together we walked towards the stairs.
‘That family are impossible,’ I said, as soon as Dennis was out of earshot.
A Death in Rembrandt Square Page 9