That was no reassurance at all.
Chapter 34
I kept hitting redial on my phone to contact Remco. I pressed down on the accelerator to force my car to get me to Angela’s house as quickly as possible. Rain was still coming down heavily and the windscreen wipers had to work hard to clear the deluge. I found myself leaning forward to see the road in front of me. The puddles were so big that I could feel the car aquaplaning as I went through one of them. After the tyres got their grip back, I hit redial again. This time, Remco picked up my call.
‘Where are you?’ I said.
‘I’m at the airport.’
He was making his escape from the rain, as he’d told me yesterday. ‘Stay there,’ I said. ‘I need to talk to you.’
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t pick up your calls earlier.’ His voice was cheerful, in sharp contrast to my anxiety. ‘I had to switch my phone off as I cleared security.’
‘You’ve gone through security already? Do not board that plane. Wait for me.’
There was a silence. ‘Okay,’ he said finally.
I disconnected the call, swearing loudly as I doubled back on myself and drove through the same puddles. I would have already been at Schiphol if I’d gone straight from the police station and hadn’t first tried to get to Angela Klaver’s.
To my left, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Because of all the water on the side windows, I only saw a small dark shape as it came up to the crossroads. I braked hard and swerved. The car bucked and I was thrown forward, but I came to a full stop just in time to avoid the cyclist, who was crouched low over his handlebars against the rain and wind. His hand gestures as he cycled over the crossing told me only too clearly what he thought of my driving.
My heart pounded at the near miss. I looked up and noticed that I’d gone through a red light. I wouldn’t have minded a brief stop by the side of the road until I’d calmed down, but instead I pushed down on the accelerator again because I knew I couldn’t waste time like that. I also knew that I couldn’t keep driving like a maniac, or I would end up killing someone.
Part of my haste came because I was suddenly worried that Remco hadn’t tried to commit suicide after all. That someone had fed him those sleeping pills and then rigged up the car so that he would die of carbon monoxide poisoning. He must have known who that was. Someone from his family. They must have known that he knew. I had a hard time believing that Angela had tried to kill him. She would probably kill me without a second’s thought, but she didn’t look like someone who’d murder her own son. His brother was a far more likely suspect, especially as he’d tried to punch Remco in the hospital. Still, Dennis seemed like someone who’d act on impulse. Not someone who’d give his brother drugs and then try to kill him in such a way as to make it look like a suicide. More the kind of guy who would hit his father with a car.
I needed to stop speculating for a couple of minutes and concentrate on my driving. I needed to get to the airport and talk to Remco. If he’d gone through security, at least he was safe. Nobody without a boarding card would be able to reach him there.
I remembered that he’d been supporting his family financially all those years, and that he’d seemed comfortable in their company. I could imagine him making a deal with them: he would leave the country and keep his mouth shut, as long as they kept theirs shut as well. Was that why they’d backed off so quickly? Even Dennis had withdrawn his complaint.
I turned onto the ring road and could finally increase my speed. All I needed was for Remco to testify. I silenced the voice in the back of my mind that told me he might not be willing to do that.
I called his mobile again. ‘Where are you?’ I said.
‘Waiting for you, as you told me to.’
‘How long until your flight leaves?’
‘Just over an hour. I got here early.’
I nodded to myself. That was good. It meant I had time to get through security myself, talk to him and persuade him to give me a proper witness statement. If need be, he could get on a later flight. There was a puddle the size of a small lake coming up that covered the majority of my lane. I slowed up a little bit but still felt the tyres lose grip. The car seemed to float for a second, until I reached the other tarmac shore. I slowed down some more. I had time, and I was definitely not going to achieve anything by killing myself here on the road.
A viaduct was coming up and a large plane was taxiing across it. I drove underneath the plane. The airport was clearly visible. I’d be there in five minutes or so. I followed the short-stay signs and parked in front of the entrance, then grabbed my phone and bag and jumped out of the car. I should have checked which terminal he was departing from. I didn’t even know which airline he was on. I hit his number on my phone again.
‘Where are you?’ I said.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Where are you?’ I said it louder.
‘I’m on the plane.’
‘I told you to wait.’
‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I can’t do what you want.’
‘Get off now! When’s the flight leaving?’
‘I’m sorry I lied to you,’ he said. In the background I heard a female voice say, ‘Sorry, sir, please put your phone away now. We’re ready for take-off.’ Then there was silence. He’d disconnected the call.
‘Fuck!’ I screamed.
Around me, people pulling suitcases sped up to rush away from me. Only one person stopped and stared.
He’d lied to me on purpose. An hour. He’d said his plane was leaving in an hour.
As I ran to the departures board, I called the boss.
‘I need to stop Remco Klaver leaving the country,’ I said before he’d even finished saying his name.
‘Is he a murder suspect?’
‘A witness. I need to get his statement.’
‘I thought he’d refused?’
I scanned the board. The departure time of the flight to Dubai was in five minutes. ‘You need to get that plane stopped.’
‘Lotte—’
‘Now! Before he leaves.’
‘Lotte, there are no grounds. We can’t.’
At that moment, the flight status changed to Departed. Because I’d been slow in understanding what had happened, I’d let my main witness leave the country. I took the escalator up to the observation deck and watched a plane taxi by. I had no idea if that was the one Remco was on. What was it he had said a few days ago? That he was good at running away. He had done it again. Instead of giving a witness statement, he had gone as far away as he could. Ten years ago that had been to Maastricht, this time to Dubai. He must think he’d be safe once he’d left the country.
I stuffed my hands deep in my pockets. He was probably right. I couldn’t imagine his family following him to kill him now that they were certain he wasn’t going to testify. If I’d been in his position, I might have done the same. For the time being he was safe, but who knew what would happen in the future?
I watched a few more planes take off and then headed back to the ground floor to return to the office. I had to find another way to prove what had happened. What did I actually know? I knew that Ruud Klaver’s alibi had been fabricated. I knew that the photos that had been handed in as proof were from another birthday party, another year, because Dennis’s hair had been shoulder-length when I’d arrested Ruud but was closely shaved in the photos.
I knew that Ruud had killed Carlo Sondervelt because Remco had told me so.
That was it. That was all I knew and I didn’t have a shred of evidence for it. I could speculate all I wanted, but I couldn’t prove a thing.
I left the airport through the large glass sliding doors and went to where I’d left my car. It was no longer there. There was only a parking warden. I told him the make and colour of the car and the licence plate number.
He told me it had just been towed away.
Chapter 35
Sometimes you reach a point where you think your day cannot get any worse. F
or example, when your main witness has left the country, your car has been towed and you get hit by a penalty fare for not buying a ticket for the train from Schiphol to Centraal. I told the ticket inspector that I had just forgotten to check in when I got on at Schiphol. I even told him I was a police detective. He still made me pay the penalty.
So yes, that was all pretty bad, but then I had a meeting with Chief Inspector Moerdijk and I realised that it could get worse. Because he didn’t find my conclusions as convincing as I did.
My speculations, he called them.
My memory of a haircut from ten years ago didn’t make any difference, he said. No judge would take it seriously. Even when I showed him the photos from when Dennis had been taken into custody, he said that children changed a lot at that age, especially boys, and you would expect a kid to look very different at his birthday party and after he’d been locked away.
He even went so far as to say that he was relieved that Remco was no longer in the country because he wasn’t sure what I would have done if I’d managed to stop him from getting on that plane.
Remembering how I’d doubted Nancy’s statement about what had happened ten years ago, I felt as if my own prejudices were coming back to haunt me. That the boss was doing to me what I’d done to her didn’t make it any better.
After that, I decided to give myself a break from the police station and walked home. I’d liberate my car later.
My cat meowed a happy greeting when I opened the front door. I didn’t normally get home in the middle of the day. She must think she was going to be fed early. I gave her some Felix, really to delay having to open that particular drawer in the front room. She purred happily as she was eating, with a noise that sounded as if she really appreciated her lunch but was really just the sound of cat food being scoffed at breakneck speed. Normally she would lick the jelly off first. Had I forgotten to feed her this morning?
I opened the drawer. Right at the bottom, hidden under long-ago paid bills and old postcards, was an envelope. I fished it out and held it carefully between both hands. It looked so innocuous, as if it might contain a birthday card. I undid the flap. I knew there were six photos inside. They had been in my scrapbook for about a year, until I couldn’t bear to look at them any more and had taken them out, leaving an empty page that was as telling as the photos had been.
I slipped them from the envelope and spread them out in front of me. The first picture showed me on the witness stand, hand in the air as I took the oath, with Barry in his wheelchair in the first row of the audience. The next one was of me and a heavily pregnant Nancy side by side, discussing the case and her testimony. The judge had made a joke, warning her not to go into labour. It had set the scene at the trial, showing everybody clearly whose side he was on.
I wrapped my arms around my stomach, but the pain was bearable. I hadn’t seen these photos for many years. There had been a moment, after my husband and I had got divorced and I was going through my belongings to see what I was going to take with me, when I had held the envelope and considered throwing away the photos. What had stopped me? Not the possibility that they might be important as evidence in a murder case. That had never even crossed my mind. Then what? This selection of photos had always seemed to highlight what had happened. I had kept them in my scrapbook for a while to make sure that I stuck to the commitment I’d made to myself. If I didn’t interfere where I could, this was what could happen. Maybe that was the reason I’d hung onto them.
There was only one photo with Dennis and Angela in it. Dennis had been allowed to attend the trial, but was accompanied by a guard. It had taken four months for the case to come to court. He looked angry but was smartly dressed. He’d also had a haircut. In this photo, his hair was short again, not quite as short as it had been in the footage of the birthday party, but it could easily have grown to this length in four months. Remco sat in the row behind them. He was already separate.
Useless photos.
I took my scrapbook out. I looked at the empty pages. I thought back to Remco telling me that I’d saved him. That by making sure that Ruud Klaver was found guilty, by locking him away, I’d saved all of them.
I undid the plastic that covered the sticky side of the page and slowly put the photos of Ruud Klaver’s trial back where they belonged.
I returned my scrapbook to its place in the cupboard, then went into my study and looked at my drawing of the case. I now understood why Ruud Klaver had confessed to Carlo’s murder. We’d had forensic evidence and a witness, so he must have been sure he was going to get convicted for that murder anyway. But Nancy’s lie had given him the opportunity to claim that it had just been the result of a stupid fight. He must have been worried that we were going to find out he had also killed Maarten Hageman. His sentence would have been much longer if we had realised he’d murdered two people and was involved in organised crime. Who knows what else had been hidden in his past. Did he kill Carlo because he’d found out about Maarten’s murder? Had Carlo seen Klaver and Maarten together, maybe? He had worked on the nights that Maarten came to the restaurant. If Maarten had been keeping more than his share of the money that was laundered through his restaurants and Carlo had been in the kitchen when Ruud had come to take him to task about it, that was absolutely a motive for murder.
Ruud’s lawyer had probably advised him to confess to this one murder, for a lesser motive, as our evidence was such that he wouldn’t get away with it anyway. I completely understood all the actions from the past.
What had happened more recently was a different story. It must have been soul-destroying for Dennis and Angela when they found out that Ruud had been guilty all along. That he had lied to them all these years. Especially for Dennis, who had spent his youth, his entire life really, defending his father, researching his past and piecing everything together. I didn’t think he had gone to school after high school. He had devoted himself to proving his father’s innocence, only to find he had killed two people.
His father hadn’t been at his birthday party because he was in Arnhem murdering someone.
That must have hurt.
Had it hurt enough to kill him? To hit him with a car?
And now Remco had literally fled from his family.
He had made the right choice, I acknowledged to myself. I had no evidence for anything. I couldn’t even prove that the birthday-party alibi was fake. The only thing I could do was to get someone to admit what had happened.
There were three people who knew the truth. One was on a plane right now and wasn’t going to tell me anything because he thought his life was in danger. One had had his life destroyed by his father’s lies.
The obvious choice was to start with Angela.
On my fourth visit to the Klavers’ house, I was no less uncomfortable. Unlike last time, at least today Angela opened the door and let me in. She didn’t say a word, but turned round and went up the stairs, certain that I would follow her. She sat down on the sofa, crossed her arms, crossed her legs, but still didn’t say anything. She wasn’t going to offer me a cup of tea. There were no pleasantries.
That worked for me.
‘Remco’s left,’ I said. I picked my words carefully. ‘He’s safely on his way back to Dubai.’ I looked at her face to see if my choice sparked something in her, but her features seemed frozen.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I dropped him off at the airport.’
‘Do you remember the night I came here and arrested your husband?’
A surprised gasp escaped her lips. ‘Do I remember? Of course I remember.’
‘I remember it too. I remember it really clearly. In fact, I can close my eyes and see it all in front of me again, like an old movie.’
‘Are you here to apologise for what you did?’
‘Apologise?’ So that was why she had let me in this time. That was what she thought I was here for. I smiled. She couldn’t be more wrong. ‘Of course not. I’m here to tell you that I know.’
‘Know?’
Her eyebrows pulled together in a frown. ‘Know what?’
‘It’s that stabbing that makes my memories of Dennis so crystal-clear. I still know exactly what he looked like. I know, for example, that he wore green pyjamas. He was barefoot.’ I watched Angela closely. ‘And he had shoulder-length hair.’
‘So?’ She paled a bit under her make-up.
‘So this.’ I placed the photo of the birthday party in the middle of the table and turned it so that it was facing her. ‘This is fake. Or no, not fake, but it’s of another year.’ I tapped on Dennis’s face in the photo. ‘He’s got short hair. This wasn’t taken three weeks before I arrested your husband. My guess is that this photo is from the previous year. Is that right?’
Angela pursed her lips but stayed silent.
‘Even if I have to contact every parent of every child in these photos, I will find someone who has evidence of what year this was. A parent with a photo with a date stamp shouldn’t be too hard to find. Or maybe with a birthday card with an age on it. Happy eleventh birthday. That must be in a photo somewhere. Or perhaps there’s one taken from such an angle that I can count the candles on the cake.’ I took the photo back. ‘This was the party for when Dennis turned eleven, not twelve.’
‘You bitch.’ Angela’s hands were gripping the edge of her seat.
‘Where were you on the evening of the tenth of October?’ That was the evening that Ruud had got hit by that car.
‘I was here. With Dennis,’ she added quickly.
‘With Dennis,’ I repeated. Of course she was going to give her son an alibi; Angela Klaver was the queen of the false alibi, after all. This would be the third one she’d supplied. ‘I don’t even know why I bothered to ask. Are you sure you don’t want to just tell me what happened? After Sandra told Dennis that she had information about a second murder, did Dennis break into her house? That gave you a couple of hours’ warning, didn’t it? Time enough to fabricate an alibi. But I’m really curious.’ I put the photo back in my handbag. ‘Did you tell your husband? Did you tell him that you now finally knew that he’d been guilty? Or had you known all along?’ I leaned forward. ‘Maybe it was only Dennis who believed in his father’s innocence. Maybe he was the only one who felt betrayed. Because you’d known all along.’
A Death in Rembrandt Square Page 23