A Death in Rembrandt Square

by Anja de Jager

  ‘Did they? Oh good.’ It was a relief. ‘I guess they achieved what they wanted.’

  ‘They showed that Ruud Klaver was innocent.’

  ‘He wasn’t.’ The butter had melted and I carefully added a layer of bacon rashers to the pans, laying them out side by side so that there would be a nice bacon base to my pancakes. Four rashers per pancake was about right. ‘His son saw him after he came home. He shot Carlo Sondervelt.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now nothing.’ The bacon spluttered in the pan. Small spats of fat kept exploding and hitting my bare arms. ‘We’ve scaled down the investigation into his death. We looked in the wrong direction from the beginning. I really thought that he might have been innocent and maybe blackmailing the real killer. It turned out that he’d actually done it.’

  ‘What about the evidence, then? The stuff that Right to Justice uncovered, I mean.’

  ‘She did a good job, Sandra Ngo. The gun had been used to shoot Maarten Hageman, but it was a different killer. Maybe the Arnhem police force can do something with that.’

  The bacon was turning a nice colour. It pulled into small hills and valleys. I hooked the ends with my fork and turned them over. ‘It will be ready soon,’ I said. ‘Do you want to lay the table?’

  Mark laughed again.

  I’d had no idea that cooking pancakes was so funny. Maybe it was amusing if you were the kind of person who actually knew how to cook properly.

  ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘and I’ll open the wine too.’ He took knives and forks from the drawer and carried them through to the front room, together with wineglasses and the nice bottle of Chianti that he’d brought. ‘Do we need candles? Pancakes by candlelight?’

  ‘Are you making fun of my cooking? Are you looking down at pancakes?’

  ‘No, not at all. I wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘Hey, this is the first meal I’ve cooked for you. No pasta with tomato sauce from a jar; proper food, made from ingredients.’

  Mark gave me a kiss on the cheek. ‘Thank you. I appreciate it.’

  There was definitely mockery behind his words. I whisked the batter one final time with the fork. I mashed a few of the biggest lumps and hoped the others would be hidden by the bacon. It would taste the same anyway. I poured batter into both pans. It splattered for a second, then immediately solidified.

  I watched the pans until the edges of the batter browned. Now for the tricky bit: I had to turn them.

  ‘Are you going to flip them?’ Mark was looking over my shoulder. He sounded anxious.

  ‘You can’t flip bacon pancakes. Everybody knows that.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I got the fish slice from the drawer and liberated the bottom of the pancake from the pan. Once I had it entirely underneath, I took a deep breath and counted to three, then turned the pancake over. It folded double and I had to straighten it out with the help of the fork and the fish slice. It was now a bit of a mess, but it would still taste fine. Mark could have the other one.

  ‘Do you want me to help with that?’ he said.

  ‘No, I’m fine.’ The other one came out of the pan more easily and I turned it without any mishaps. It was very satisfying to have done it right. ‘See, told you I could do it.’

  I left the pancakes for a minute to brown on the other side, then loosened them again with the fish slice and slid them onto the plates. I gave Mark the perfect one and kept the slightly misshapen one myself. Bacon pancakes and red wine was a match made in heaven.

  ‘Is this the only thing you can cook?’ Mark asked.

  ‘I can do omelettes too, with a number of fillings. My mushroom omelette is particularly good. And pasta. With tomato sauce.’

  ‘I feel honoured that you cooked for me.’ He took a sip of his wine. ‘What did the family say?’

  ‘They dropped the complaint against me.’

  ‘Not that family. I meant Carlo Sondervelt’s. Didn’t you say they were upset after the podcast?’

  I put my cutlery down. ‘I think I convinced Nancy,’ I said. ‘I haven’t talked to Carlo’s parents yet.’

  ‘But at least you were right.’

  ‘I know. I think the Sondervelts would want me to push it with Right to Justice, to make sure it got aired that Ruud Klaver killed their son. But for Klaver’s family that would be really hard, and the boss agreed with me that maybe we shouldn’t pursue this any further, especially as we have no evidence. Remco isn’t willing to testify, so that leaves us with nothing.’

  ‘That’s hard,’ Mark said. ‘It doesn’t seem fair somehow.’

  ‘I know. That’s what Nancy said too.’ I wished that Sandra Ngo had never started this. The only thing she’d achieved was to make me look bad and annoy the victim’s family.

  ‘Did you tell her how you knew?’

  ‘No, I just told her that she was right. Luckily she didn’t ask. I couldn’t really say anything without breaking Remco’s confidence.’

  ‘He’s left you in a tough situation.’

  ‘Not really. He wanted to make things right for me. I now know that I didn’t put an innocent man in jail. That’s something. I don’t care what the rest of the world thinks.’

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ Mark said, ‘is why Ruud Klaver would have gone on Right to Justice when he was actually guilty.’

  Later, as it slowly became light again and I listened to the soothing sound of Mark’s deep breathing on the pillow next to mine, I mulled that over.

  Because it was a very interesting question.

  Chapter 33

  It was with that question in mind that I drove the next morning to see the person who might be able to tell me why Ruud Klaver had agreed to go on Right to Justice. It was Saturday morning, so I wasn’t expected at work anyway. I’d told Mark where I was going and he’d joked that he was pleased with how much of an effort I was making to find answers to what had only been a throwaway comment.

  I’d been a bit naïve to hope that Sandra Ngo would just tell me what I wanted to know. Even having saved someone’s life together didn’t stop her from playing her little games.

  ‘You know what I want,’ she said. ‘It’s the usual deal.’

  ‘Just answer my questions,’ I said. ‘You stopped the podcast series, so there’s no need for the massive secrecy any more.’

  ‘Tell me something about yourself, something you don’t want me to know, and I’ll answer your questions.’

  ‘All my questions?’

  ‘Well, I’m not going to reveal my sources, of course, but everything else is fine.’

  ‘And there will be no limits on how many questions I can ask?’

  ‘Oh, I can tell you’re going to take the deal.’ She giggled. I hadn’t thought it possible. It was so unexpectedly girlish.

  If I’d known beforehand that she was going to ask for something like this, I would have given it some thought. I had a choice – there were a lot of things about me that I didn’t want her to know – but I thought it was in the spirit of the deal to tell her something to do with this case. It had to be something that wouldn’t hurt anybody else. It had to only involve me. That limited my options.

  I took a deep breath and then pushed the words out. ‘I was pregnant when we picked up Ruud Klaver. Two weeks later, I lost the baby. I felt I was being punished for what I did during that arrest.’

  Sandra nodded thoughtfully. ‘Ask any question you like,’ she said.

  I was relieved that she didn’t ask what I’d felt I was being punished for. I wouldn’t have told her. ‘Who approached you for the podcast on Ruud Klaver?’

  ‘Dennis did. I thought I’d told you this already.’

  ‘Yes, I just wanted to get everything straight. So he called you out of the blue?’

  ‘He did. I’d never talked to him before. He said he’d listened to the previous series and wanted me to prove his father’s innocence.’

  ‘He gave you all his information? All the files he had?’

  ‘Yes. I thi
nk so. He’d been collecting things and investigating for years, so he had a lot of information.’

  ‘There was still a lot of stuff at his flat,’ I said. ‘All the newspaper clippings on the wall.’

  ‘I went to his place and did a first cut of what I thought was going to be useful. Those newspaper articles are all online anyway, so there was no reason to dismantle his wall.’

  ‘Do you know if Dennis talked to his father before he got in touch with you?’

  Sandra thought for a few seconds. ‘You know, I actually have no idea. Maybe he didn’t.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘It’s not that unusual. The previous series started when the guy’s wife emailed me.’

  ‘Was Ruud eager to cooperate?’

  ‘Not in the beginning, but the longer it went on, the better it got. In the end, he liked the attention, I think.’

  ‘Dennis’s stuff made no difference. It was all about the bullets. The second murder.’

  ‘The fact that the same gun was used. Yes.’

  ‘And I’m guessing you’re not going to tell me how you found out about that.’

  She just smiled and drew her fingers across her mouth to indicate that her lips were zipped shut on this topic.

  ‘Okay. That’s fair. When was it?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Yes, what was the exact date you realised it was the same gun?’

  ‘Let me check.’ She opened up her laptop but angled it in such a way that I couldn’t see the screen. I could only guess that she’d received an email with that information and didn’t want me to be able to read the sender’s name. ‘The third of October.’

  ‘The third? A week before Ruud’s accident?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Did you tell him straight away?’

  ‘No, I had a friend of mine double-check it first.’

  ‘That must have taken some time.’

  She looked at the screen again. ‘My friend got back to me on the eighth.’

  Two days before the accident. ‘Did you call Ruud then?’

  She stopped smiling. ‘To be honest, that’s when I got worried. I thought I might have been interviewing a double murderer. I realised that there’s a difference between working with someone who’s still in prison and someone who’s been released.’

  Her answer pulled me up. She was being extremely honest with me. I could imagine it was disconcerting to talk to someone and then think that maybe he’d killed two people.

  ‘What did you do?’ I asked. The sensible thing of course would have been to call the police, but I understood that Sandra would never have done that. Because that would be to accept that she needed us for something. And she would have lost her scoop.

  ‘I talked to Dennis. I gave him a call and said that I might have found something that incriminated his father.’

  ‘Dennis? Really?’ Of course she didn’t know anything about his background.

  ‘Yes, because he was the one who contacted me in the first place. He was the one who was convinced that his father was innocent, and I wanted to know . . . well, how he’d react if maybe he wasn’t.’

  ‘Did you tell him what you had?’

  ‘No. I didn’t.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He was incredulous. He said that there was no way, and insisted that his father was innocent. He didn’t believe it for a second.’

  ‘But at some point you told him what you knew.’

  ‘I realised that Maarten Hageman had been murdered on Dennis’s birthday – his last birthday before his father went to jail. I was certain that he would remember that day.’

  ‘This was when? When did you tell him?’

  She didn’t have to check her laptop for this one. ‘I spoke to Dennis and Angela the day after Ruud’s accident.’

  ‘What was their reaction?’

  ‘They were very relieved because they could give Ruud an alibi for that day, so they knew he hadn’t done it.’

  ‘So the day after you’d been burgled.’

  ‘Was it?’ She looked at her diary. ‘Yes, I think you’re right. Actually, I met with them a couple of hours after I’d come to the police station.’

  I wondered if Angela and Dennis had been on their way to talk to Sandra when I’d seen them leave the hospital that first day. I took careful notes of this timeline. ‘You told Dennis that there might be something that proved his father was guilty, then there was the burglary, and then you met with them the next day and told them what you’d found?’

  She paused and looked at me. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was really shaken up after the burglary. I went to the police station and you all just laughed at me.’

  I remembered seeing her in the police station that day. She’d been screaming and the duty officer had told her to calm down. I had realised that she was having a complete meltdown, but instead of helping her, I’d been tempted to take a photo. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘I thought it was possible that I was dealing with a real murderer,’ she said. ‘My house had been broken into, and I was worried that it had been him. I didn’t know about his accident yet. Angela and Dennis told me about it when they came to see me.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say—’

  ‘Say what? Come to my house, please, police officer? I’m pretty sure I did say that.’

  ‘You’re right.’ Would she have told me everything if I’d talked to her then? She seemed young suddenly. No longer an adversary, but someone we should have protected. Someone I could have worked with. ‘I’m really sorry,’ I said again.

  She sighed. ‘It was such a relief to me when it turned out that he was innocent after all. That the family could give him that alibi.’

  Back in the car, I thought about what Sandra had told me. If Dennis had started this, had Ruud Klaver felt powerless to go against him? What was he going to tell his son: I’m sorry, I did it? It had been a gamble on Ruud’s part to go with what his son wanted, and most likely it had got him killed. Maarten’s murderer might have been worried that he was going to say something else, like where he’d got the gun, for example.

  I leaned my elbows on the steering wheel and pulled my hair back from my face. Dennis had only been a kid at that point, a slight kid in green pyjamas, with shoulder-length hair. I thought that maybe I should feel bad for that twelve-year-old, who had been so convinced that his father had been innocent of Carlo Sondervelt’s murder. I felt sorry for the two brothers, who’d never been able to talk about it. Should I feel worse for Dennis than for Remco? At least Remco had moved on, whereas Dennis had been stuck for years, trying to find evidence that would vindicate his father.

  I drove to the police station and parked. Upstairs, I had another look at the photo of Dennis’s birthday party. The happy family around the table, Remco conspicuously absent. Dennis’s classmates laughing and eating cake. His father standing behind his son with his hand on his shoulder, smiling. It was bittersweet, this image of a boy at the last party before his father was locked up, the last time they were still one family. A boy with his hair shaved at the sides.

  Shaved.

  Wait.

  I thought of what he’d looked like when we’d arrested Ruud Klaver; hadn’t he had shoulder-length hair?

  I pulled up the files from the Kinderpolitie, the section of the police force that dealt with crimes against children, but also with those perpetrated by children. I opened the file on Dennis Klaver. I hadn’t wanted to look at this because it reminded me too much of what had happened. Now that my anger against Dennis had abated, I could actually open his file. I could examine the photo of what he’d looked like immediately after he’d been taken into custody.

  It was as I’d remembered it: he’d had shoulder-length hair. It was greasy and matted – he probably hadn’t combed it in days – and he wore it with a centre parting.

  I looked again at the photo of the birthday party. The hair on the sides of Dennis’s head had definitely been shav
ed. I held the photo up against the screen so that I could easily compare it with the photo after the arrest. Nobody’s hair grew that much in three weeks. But it wasn’t just the hair. Dennis’s face in the police photo was wider, and his features larger. Sure, it was definitely the same kid, but there was no way there had only been three weeks between the two photos.

  That birthday party hadn’t taken place three weeks before the arrest. It was at least a year earlier. It was the wrong party. The wrong year.

  It was suddenly clear what had happened. Sandra had told Dennis that she’d found something that made her think that Ruud might have been guilty. Then there had been the break-in to find out what this evidence was. A burglary that had taken place because Dennis panicked. Did he tell his mother? Did he confront his father at this point? Because with the second murder, Sandra hadn’t proved Ruud Klaver’s innocence; she had proved his guilt. His family must have known that he hadn’t been at that particular birthday party, otherwise they wouldn’t have given us the photos and footage of the one the year before. Whose idea had it been to fabricate the evidence so that it showed Ruud Klaver’s innocence?

  The two people who had supported Ruud all these years, his wife and his younger son, now knew that he had lied to them.

  Angela had given him a false alibi the first time round too. She’d claimed he’d been home at midnight, whereas that clearly hadn’t been the case. The thoughts continued to tumble in my mind as I rushed back downstairs to my car.

  I was suddenly really worried about Remco.

  Because while his family had probably been in panic mode, trying to control the damage, he had been in Dubai, ignorant of what was happening in Amsterdam. The fingerprints on the inside of the garage had been his mother’s and his brother’s. There was nothing strange about that – his mother lived there, his brother visited often enough – but had they known what Remco had seen on the night of Carlo Sondervelt’s murder? They had known that he was going to meet me; maybe they’d been worried about what he was going to tell me.

  And I remembered that if I hadn’t arrived ten minutes early for our meeting, he would have died.

  I called his mobile, but there was no reply. I called the hospital. The nurse told me that Remco had been discharged first thing this morning and had left with his mother.