And then I saw his name on one of the forms in the back of the file: Original Investigative Officer for the Alkmaar police: DI Piet Huizen. I weighed the six pages with the staple in my hand, then rolled them up and tapped them on my palm.
When I’d joined the police, I hadn’t told anybody about my father. It was none of their business. Not talking about him had become a habit.
I didn’t want to meet the prosecutor tomorrow. I didn’t want to meet him at all. I would at least postpone that encounter if I went to Alkmaar to see my father. With a bit of luck, someone from the prosecution office would collect the reports while I was away. Afterwards, I could use the clear conflict of interest as the reason to hand the Petersen case straight back to Stefanie.
Chapter Three
I rearranged the cards in my hand and took the five of hearts. It went at the end of a run, leaving me with just three to get rid of. We sat at our usual places at the table, my mother at the head and me to her left, and played our Wednesday evening game of cards.
I sat back in my chair and almost brushed against the Christmas tree in the corner. With the addition of the tree, all the furniture was in intimate contact, the leg of an oak chair touching the arm of the sofa, and there was hardly room to move around. Two strings of Christmas cards dangled down either side of the door, most of them from people who went to my mother’s church.
‘Lotte, you don’t look at all well,’ my mother said as she added a six to my five. She reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
I pulled back. ‘I’m fine.’ Through the gaps in the tablecloth, I could see the large dent in the wood. In an old gesture I rubbed my thumb over the mark in the table, where I had once tried to carve my initials with my knife. It hadn’t been sharp enough to let me succeed but a thick line in the light oak showed the start of a capital L. I was eight or nine. I couldn’t remember why I did it, but I could clearly remember my mother’s anger and the punishment that followed.
‘I’m worried about you,’ she went. ‘I saw the photos – you looked so tired.’
‘Which ones?’ Cards in one hand, I wrapped the other around my mug of tea for warmth. My mother kept her small flat a couple of degrees colder than was comfortable, saving money on the heating. The mug with the smiling clown was the same one I’d had when I was five. My mug, my plate, the cutlery with my initials on it – they all came out as soon as I was here. Even the smell of boiled kale, which my mother had had for her early dinner, mashed together with some potatoes and probably with a sausage or some diced bacon, reminded me of childhood.
‘The ones in the paper,’ she said, and picked up her mug in a gesture mirroring mine, her other hand shielding her cards close to her chest. I hoped the heat warmed up her ringless fingers with their swollen knuckles. ‘In the Telegraaf. I threw it away. You looked just awful.’
‘Thanks, Mum.’ I rearranged the run and slid my four of hearts in between. Two to go. I knew the one she meant. I’d cut it out of the paper and put it in the black ring-binder with my press cuttings, a history of all the cases I’d worked on in my eighteen-year career. They had taken the photo just after the team had carried off Wendy’s skeleton. My head was bowed low, and you could only see one side of me, but the streaks of tears down my cheeks were clear; my plait had come partially undone and strands of hair streamed down. I remembered the flash of the photographer, the annoyance of being caught and eternalised like this.
‘You have to look after yourself. You’re getting too thin.’
I laughed. Who was she to talk? You could see every bone in her skull. Her cheekbones looked so sharp, they might cut through the wrinkled skin that hung off them. At seventy-three she should carry a bit more weight or the first bout of flu would take her away. Her hair, short and curly, was as white as the home-knitted jumper she was wearing. She looked as if she’d melt away against the snow outside.
‘You didn’t like having your picture taken, did you?’ She picked up a new card from the stack, grimaced and slid the card with its red back between two blue ones. The backs of both packs were equally faded, the red cards now the colour of my mother’s cracked lips, the others the shade of her eyes, bleached by age from sky to duck-egg blue. We always used this double set; not a single card had been lost in over twenty years of playing.
‘No, I hated every second of it. All those photographers looking at me, clicking away, lights going off in my face.’
‘Even as a child.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘You’d scream as soon as I got the camera out.’
‘I loathe being the centre of attention.’
‘So much fuss over this one case.’
I couldn’t get rid of either one of my cards and had to pick up a new one – a three of clubs, its corner battered and tattered from over-use. ‘The papers had been writing about it for years. There’d been so much speculation,’ I explained.
‘There’s plenty of other things to write about. Proper news. There’s no need to put you on the front page.’
‘It’s what sells, I suppose.’
‘You sell?’ Her eyes scanned the cards on the table. She took three runs, clubs, spades and diamonds, and rearranged them into three sets of the same numbers. The cards moved over the table with the sound of dead autumn leaves falling to the ground. She added a fourth card. Her smile bunched up the skin on her cheekbones.
‘Well no, not me specifically. But Wendy Leeuwenhoek. Her disappearance had been selling papers for years.’ I picked up another new card, hardly having looked at my old ones.
‘But it’s not front-page news.’
‘Neither is a footballer’s wedding, but that gets on there too. It was more important than a footballer’s wedding, don’t you think?’
My mother put an eight of diamonds on the table. I added a card to my hand.
‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘You’re right. But it’s horrible how they make money out of people’s grief.’ Her eyes were glued to the table.
‘At least we found a body to bury.’ I reshuffled the cards in my hands, breaking up sets and creating new ones. We would never know what had happened. I would never know why Wendy had been killed. Just another thing to keep me awake at night.
‘But at what cost to you? This job isn’t good for you.’ She held her last card between her fingers and checked the ones on the table. She put it back face down on the table and took a sip of tea.
I tried to guess what she had left based on the sets she was examining. It was probably a low number – they were the hardest to get rid of. ‘It’s my job. It’s what I do.’
She sighed and picked a new card from the stack. ‘You went to university. You had so many choices, great opportunities. You still do. Now you see bad things all the time, suspect everybody you meet, nothing good ever happens. It’s hard on you. I can see it in your face.’
‘I just haven’t been sleeping well.’ I had a run of low clubs and could put them on the table, but then she could use my cards to get rid of her last two. Instead I picked a new one and hoped she’d have to do the same. Her eyes met mine. She looked at the number of cards I had left and could probably guess my tactics.
‘I had hoped this new team would be better, because you were looking at older cases. You seemed happy. Much happier than you’d been for a while.’
‘It’s like that. When you first start a case there’s excitement. Something new. A new puzzle. A new challenge.’
She was silent for a bit, then reached over and picked some fluff off the sleeve of my jumper. ‘I’m worried about you,’ she repeated. ‘I’ve never seen you like this. It’s because it was a little girl, isn’t it?’
Amongst other things. His hands on my body, his fingers in my hair.
‘Have you spoken to Arjen lately?’ she asked.
I had no reason to talk to my ex-husband. ‘No, not in months.’ I rubbed my thumb over the tattered corner of the three of clubs.
‘I saw him and his new wife in the Kalverstraat yesterday.’<
br />
I took a gulp of my tea without waiting for it to cool down and let the hot liquid burn the roof of my mouth and the back of my throat.
‘He looked very well,’ she said.
‘Good for him,’ I said. Then: ‘Come on, make a move, you’ve been thinking for long enough. Pick a new card – you know you’re stuck.’
She added a card to her hand. ‘You should stay in touch. You never know.’
I heaved a sigh. ‘You’re crazy.’ I wanted to give her hand a soft squeeze, careful not to squash the swollen knuckles together. Instead I put out my set of low-numbered clubs. Only two more cards to go – a ten and the queen of spades.
‘No, no, I read a book where exactly that happened.’
‘I wouldn’t take him back.’
‘Why not? There’s hardly a queue of men outside your door. You’re forty-two. It’ll take you a while to find someone else.’
‘So you keep telling me.’
She picked up a new card. She had four left; she had finally fallen behind. ‘But there’s a chance, isn’t there? That you might get back together?’
I moved the dead weight of my plait over my shoulder. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, they’ve got a child now.’
‘Oh yes. The child . . .’
I slotted the ten in the middle of a run. We were both silent for a bit. The queen of spades, all alone in my hand, looked at me with her one eye, as if urging me not to say anything. I knew what my mother was thinking anyway, but she didn’t mention it. Kept quiet about my own little lost daughter. ‘You didn’t stay friends with Dad either,’ I said.
‘That was different.’
‘How?’
She put out the four cards in one set; it was a run of diamonds from seven to ten. So much for my theory that she had low numbers.
‘Different how?’ I persisted.
‘It’s time for Lingo,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to miss that.’ She got up, picked up the remote control and switched on the television.
I threw my leftover card on the table. Yes, she couldn’t possibly miss her television programme, apparently the most popular programme amongst the over-sixties, so popular that a previous prime minister had once mentioned his displeasure when it was moved to an earlier hour in the schedule. And in this case, it was the perfect excuse to avoid talking. She’d never told me why she left my father.
Even though the flat was so small that we could see the television perfectly well from where we sat, we moved to the sofa. There were some rules: the table was for eating and playing cards, the sofa for watching the television.
The game show ate up the time until I had to go. I put all my layers back on, my thick coat, gloves, scarf and hat, and made my goodbyes. I descended the concrete steps of the communal staircase, my hand on the red plastic banister. Downstairs, I unchained my bicycle from its attachment to my mother’s fence and pushed the pedals as hard as I could as I cycled through the cold darkness. January was a depressing month at the best of times.
Chapter Four
After another sleepless night, this trip north up the A9 from Amsterdam to Alkmaar didn’t seem like such a good idea any more. The road ahead of me glistened in the morning light and stretched through the snow-covered white flatness of the landscape like a charcoal-grey pencil line on a blank page. Scattered villages broke the monotony of the never-ending fields. Churches pointed their steeples to the sky like warning fingers. ‘Be careful,’ they said. ‘You can see a long way – but that doesn’t mean things are out in the open.’
My car still smelled new, leather mixed with that odour of burnt dust you get when you first turn on the heating in late October. Its paintwork was poison green, and I imagined my ex-husband, Arjen, naming my car The Frog and joking about hopping to the shops or hopping into town. The car dealer hadn’t understood. ‘Stupid woman,’ his eyes said. ‘Fancy choosing a car just for its colour.’ Maybe he hadn’t known green was the colour of envy.
A long left-hand curve, which pressed me closer into my seatbelt, led to the roundabout on the ring road approaching Alkmaar. The lights were in my favour, no wished-for delay, no other cars. I changed gears. The engine hummed louder, as if I’d disturbed a nest of wasps with the gear-stick. I moved my foot off the accelerator and it quietened down. The thin pink folder lay on the passenger seat, the only evidence that this solitary trip was a flagrant breach of police procedures.
I consulted the map that I’d printed out last night – second right, first left – and parked my car behind a dark blue BMW that had the understated look of money. I double-checked the address but found I was in the right place. When I opened the car door, cold air rushed in. It hurt to breathe. I grabbed the folder and my bag and swung my legs out. Someone had sown salt on the path and the snow had turned to mush.
The white triangle of the house would have blended in with the snow, had it not been for the cedar guardians on either side of the path and the No Entry-sign red front door. I rang the doorbell, which sounded oddly non-electric, like a bicycle bell. Footsteps were approaching – I wished they weren’t. I wished I couldn’t see the door swing inwards. But I did.
He had changed since the last time I’d seen him, at my wedding fourteen years ago. His short-cropped hair still resembled a newly harvested field, but it had gone from steel to ice. His face was now a roadmap with lines showing which route laughter took and where frowns turned up.
‘Hi, Dad,’ I said.
* * *
My father took my coat and put it on the same hanger as a short scarlet jacket that had to belong to his new wife. My coat embraced hers and my first instinct was to grab it back. Instead I wrapped my hands around my folder. I did my best to stamp the snow off my boots on the rubber mat. I didn’t want to leave traces of myself behind on their sterile off-white ice rink of a carpet. A clump of snow remained stuck in the sole and I gave up, took my boots off and left them by the door.
My father pointed me to the large L-shaped rat-fur-brown leather sofa. I made sure to sit in the middle of the long leg of the L, leaving him no room to sit next to me. I wanted to see his face as I talked to him.
‘Can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee?’
‘Coffee would be nice.’ My hands felt numb and cold.
He walked away, showing me the slope in his back, the upper half rounded and hunched.
The loud whine of grinding beans travelled from the kitchen, followed by a hiss and the smell of coffee. It mingled with the hint of lemon that came from fresh cleaning. The place was pristine.
After a bit, he returned with the coffee.
‘Do you take sugar?’ he asked, handing me my cup. He surely must remember I never took sugar. I shook my head. With a click he added sweeteners to his. The cups were from the police station. I recognised the flame, the symbol of the police force, in relief on the white porcelain. The police was the only thing we had in common.
He sat down.
‘You look well,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’
‘How’s Arjen?’ His eyes moved to my right hand, which for over a year had been ringless.
‘Fine.’
‘Good, good.’
I returned the cup to the table and picked up the pink folder. I opened it and took out the first piece of paper.
‘Not a social call, then,’ he said.
‘We’re re-investigating Otto Petersen’s murder.’
‘My last case.’ He smiled and showed perfect white teeth. I was sure they used to be yellow and stained. ‘I read about Wendy Leeuwenhoek. Saw your name. Saw you on the front page of the Telegraaf.’ He picked up his cup and took a sip. ‘Almost called to congratulate you.’
‘But you didn’t.’
He rubbed his hand through his white hair a couple of times. It was so short, it didn’t make a difference. ‘I didn’t think you’d want me to.’
I flicked the page as if I needed to read it. ‘We were disappointed by the work of the Alkmaar
police.’
‘Sorry?’ The line between his eyebrows deepened from a gully to a full-blown ravine.
‘You had the Petersen case for four months and all you did was this.’ I got the six pages out of the folder and waved them at him like a fan. The one with the photos was thicker and snapped against the other sheets with each forward and back motion.
‘We worked hard.’
‘And only wrote six pages?’
‘We nearly closed it.’
‘On which page does it say that?’ I made a show of studying each one.
‘That can’t be all,’ he said. ‘There was more. Boxes more.’
He leaned further forward to get at the papers. I snatched them back towards me and put them in the folder. Then I handed him the whole thing abruptly before I could change my mind. He picked out one page after the other and turned them over. When he’d run out of pages, he pushed his glasses higher up his nose and faced me. ‘What have you done with the rest?’ he asked me softly.
‘What have I done with the rest? There is no rest! That’s what I’m telling you. This is all I got from the archives.’
‘They must have misfiled it.’
‘The CI noted that there wasn’t much from Alkmaar.’ I took the papers back. ‘Here,’ I pressed my finger on the page. ‘12/09/02 request for more information from DI Huizen. And here,’ my finger found another place, ‘09/11/02 follow-up request. This wasn’t misfiled – it was never there.’
A Cold Death in Amsterdam (Lotte Meerman Book 1) Page 3