A Cold Death in Amsterdam (Lotte Meerman Book 1)

by Jager, Anja de

  Ronald fished a packet of chewing gum from his pocket and took a piece out. As he chewed I could see it move from right to left, collecting all traces of food from between his teeth with each movement of the jaw. I drank the last of my coffee, said goodbye and set off back to Amsterdam.

  I felt safe again when I was in my green car and en route for the police station. Was it by chance that I took a wrong turn and drove past my father’s house? A Freudian slip of the steering wheel? Now that I was here, I thought, I might as well go in, I might as well see him. Mum need never know.

  I rang the doorbell but no footsteps came to the door. Nobody appeared to be at home.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It said 13.57 on the clock on my desk when I walked back into our office. There was too much space around my desk, even though it was days ago that CI Moerdijk had taken my files, papers and photos away. The paperwork on the Petersen case hadn’t taken its place yet. The two white cardboard boxes behind me, pushed up against the wall, were packed again, all the papers that I’d thrown on the floor returned to their green folders. But they were CI Moerdijk’s papers. There wasn’t much filled with my writing. My notepad was covered with circles and squares, not with any evidence of original thought. I’d wasted too many pages, then torn them off, leaving the thin edges stuck to the spiral binding as evidence of my failure. Somehow my brain didn’t want to kick into gear.

  ‘How was Otto Petersen’s mother?’ Hans said.

  ‘I’m really not sure. I thought she had some useful info, but then someone at the Alkmaar police told me she’s not with it any more. I’d like to know what the boss thought at the time of the murder.’

  I straightened the files up, opened the top one and soon found the transcript of the interview. The chief inspector had met up with Otto’s mother in September 2002. She’d been in hospital at the time, having been found in her house two weeks before, undernourished and seriously neglected. How thin her fingers must have been. I rested my forehead in my hand and hid my face behind a curtain of short dark hair while I read. CI Moerdijk had spoken to her but, as with Ronald, she hadn’t made much sense. She must have been placed in the sheltered accommodation when she got out of hospital, I thought. The flat clearly wasn’t bought by her son if she’d still been living in a house, a few months after his death. How much of what she told me had been true?

  ‘They had a whistle-blower. I always said you need a whistle-blower, didn’t I?’ It was Stefanie, marching into the office with a handful of printed pages. She jiggled them at me to celebrate the fact that she’d been right.

  How come she always knew exactly when I was at my desk? I thought irritably. I should check with Hans if she popped in and out every half an hour to see if I was here. Or maybe her office overlooked the Marnixstraat and she could see when I got in.

  ‘I don’t know who it was, though. It doesn’t say.’ She stood opposite me, leaning against the side of Thomas’s empty desk. I didn’t know if he had joined André Kamp’s team permanently or if he was temporarily helping out. The boss would tell us at some point.

  ‘Here.’ She read from one page like an actress learning her lines. ‘This is the mention of an anonymous tip-off.’ She pushed the pages across the desk to me. ‘He or she provided evidence. I haven’t found out yet what it was. Must have been conclusive though. They didn’t testify in court.’

  I glanced over the papers but went back to thumbing through the CI’s notes.

  ‘Not even behind closed doors?’ Hans said.

  ‘No.’

  He motioned that he’d like to see the papers and I handed them over to him. ‘It must have been something in writing,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘something the whistle-blower had access to. Maybe he was a risk manager, or another one of the traders.’

  Stefanie shrugged. ‘Risk manager is a possibility. They have to sign off on those things. Any illegal trading would be their responsibility.’

  ‘And if’, Hans continued, ‘Otto wouldn’t listen . . . Wouldn’t they have gone to Goosens? Get him to talk to Otto first?’

  ‘Goosens said he didn’t know anything about it,’ Stefanie told him.

  ‘Maybe he lied,’ Hans said.

  ‘He definitely lied,’ she agreed. ‘There’s no way he didn’t know. Anyway, I haven’t yet found the particular trade they lost the money on.’

  I fished the photo of the young men who’d been together at university out of my bag. Whatever Otto’s mother might or might not have remembered, this photo was real. ‘He also forgot to tell us about—’

  Behind me someone knocked on the doorframe. ‘Excuse me,’ said a familiar voice.

  I turned round to see my father, his nose red from the cold. He took out a handkerchief and gave the nose that was so much like mine a rub. His hair was dotted with flakes of snow.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ It came out harshly in my surprise.

  ‘I came to see Stefanie Dekkers.’ He took his glasses off and wiped the condensation on the arm of his coat.

  ‘That’s me,’ Stefanie said.

  I kept looking at my father, watching his reaction at the sound of Stefanie’s voice.

  ‘No, you’re not.’ His eyes narrowed and his face went pale.

  ‘Give me your coat,’ I said and got up to take it. As I lifted the garment from his shoulders, I saw that his hair was sticking up at the back and I wanted to smooth it down, because he clearly wanted to look smart. He was dressed carefully for the occasion in a pair of sharply creased dark blue trousers and a grey-checked jacket over a shirt and tie. His shoes had thick soles that still carried a trace of snow, but they were the same colour grey as his jacket.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘Well,’ Stefanie said stiffly. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Sorry, I should have introduced you,’ I said from behind my father’s back. ‘This is Piet Huizen.’

  ‘Ah, the famous Piet Huizen.’ Stefanie jerked her thumb at the wall with the photos, her face still carrying a frown. ‘You were on there for a while.’

  My father walked over and looked at the diagrams. ‘You’re exactly as far as I got. Funny.’

  ‘This is Hans Kraai,’ I said.

  My father reached over to shake his hand. ‘Nice to meet you.’

  ‘And you. Have a seat.’ Hans gestured to the empty desk next to Stefanie. ‘The more the merrier.’

  My father went past her and sat down at the fourth desk. He turned to her. ‘You’re not the right Stefanie Dekkers.’

  She raised her eyebrows. She would have raised just one if she’d been able to.

  ‘You didn’t come to Alkmaar, I mean,’ he said.

  ‘I know. That’s what I’ve been telling Lotte.’

  ‘Is there another police officer with that name?’

  ‘No, I think I’m the only one.’

  ‘And Freek Veenstra?’

  ‘Dead now, retired ages ago.’

  My father slumped in his chair. He gazed out of the window where the swirling snowflakes slid down the glass like small white snails, leaving trails of wet behind.

  Stefanie looked at him, a small smile around her lips. ‘What did you do with those files?’ she said.

  He turned his head away from the window. ‘Two people picked them up. Police – Stefanie Dekkers and Freek Veenstra.’

  ‘But I didn’t go, and Freek Veenstra had already retired.’

  My father let several seconds tick by in silence. ‘That’s what they said their names were.’ He sounded tired.

  ‘Did they identify themselves?’

  He shrugged. ‘I expected two people from Amsterdam to collect these files and so they did.’

  ‘Where did you get our names from?’

  ‘They gave me those names.’

  She sat up straighter in her chair, raised herself to her full height. ‘Where did you get our names from? Because nobody turned up to collect those files, did they? You got rid of them.’

  ‘No, two—’

/>   ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Stefanie, shut up,’ I said, more forcefully than I meant to.

  ‘Lotte—’

  ‘Lotte—’ My father and Stefanie said my name at the same time. I flinched at his use of my first name but nobody else seemed to have noticed. Stefanie’s voice was louder than my father’s and probably covered up what he’d said.

  I wanted to go up to him, stand behind him and put my hands protectively on his shoulders. It was a stupid impulse. I remembered the other time I’d wanted to hug him but didn’t, on the first of those excruciating weekend visits.

  I’d seen him as soon as I’d got off the train. He’d been watching the stream of people move past. I’d liked the way he checked every face. I’d wanted to raise my hand, I’d wanted to jump up and shout: ‘I’m here, I’m here!’ but I didn’t: at thirteen I was hypersensitive about how to behave in public. Taking three deep breaths, I walked up to him. ‘Hi, Dad,’ I said. He said something about it being lovely to see me. I wanted to give him a hug or a kiss on his cheek, but stopped: doubts had already started to creep in. If it was so lovely, then why hadn’t he wanted to see me before?

  My father frowned, looked over my head and asked where my mother was. I had to admit that she’d got off at the stop before Alkmaar. He was getting annoyed, was starting to have a go at her for letting me come here by myself. The impulse to hug him left me in the need to defend my mother. I explained that she had had to go back to Amsterdam, but he didn’t listen, only called her irresponsible, unsuited to take care of me – well, there was nobody else willing to do it, I answered silently – and that I was only twelve and shouldn’t be travelling on my own. He had got my age wrong: I was thirteen. I stuffed my hands back in my pockets and told him she had a doctor’s appointment. That she had to get home or she would have been late. He said it wasn’t safe for me to travel by myself, but of course it was. This was provincial Alkmaar, and I was used to cycling around Amsterdam on my own. ‘You wouldn’t know how dangerous it is,’ he said.

  We walked down the stairs, me in silence by his side. And then, as if nothing had happened, he asked me what I wanted to do that day. I shrugged. By now, I just wanted to go home.

  Hans moved his eyes from me to my father and back again. Ronald had said he could see the family resemblance, but then he had known we were daughter and father.

  ‘Let’s keep this civil, Stefanie,’ Hans said. ‘The man is a colleague of ours, after all.’

  ‘Ex-colleague.’ She swivelled her chair towards him and crossed her legs, looking him up and down.

  ‘Two people came to pick up the files?’ Hans resumed.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You said you were expecting them?’

  ‘Yes. Our commander told me Amsterdam were coming in to take the case over. I asked Ronald de Boer, my colleague, to help me pack the crates. We had a couple of hours, the commander said.’

  ‘And then they turned up.’

  ‘Yes. Our receptionist called to say they were there. A little early, if I remember right.’

  ‘How early?’

  ‘I don’t know, an hour or so. But I remember thinking you were clearly keen to get your hands on my case.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then I took the stuff down. Both crates. They picked them up, carried them to their car and drove off.’

  ‘Uniformed?’

  ‘No. No, plainclothed.’

  Hans addressed me. ‘Could have been anybody.’

  I nodded but didn’t say anything. I didn’t understand why my father was here, talking about this, putting himself in the middle of everybody’s attention, blatantly lying.

  ‘Why didn’t you ask for ID?’ Stefanie said.

  ‘I expected two people; two people turned up. I suppose I didn’t want to make it more awkward than it needed to be.’

  ‘Awkward?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t want to hand them my case on a silver plate. You can understand that, surely. There was some pride involved.’

  ‘Hardly a silver plate.’

  ‘We had the witness. We traced the same path you’re tracking now.’ He pointed at the wall behind him. ‘You got no further than we did. If I hadn’t told you about our witness, you wouldn’t even have come this far.’

  ‘We are equally stuck,’ Stefanie said. ‘We followed your red herring so we land up in your dead end.’

  ‘The chief inspector didn’t get anywhere either,’ I said, immediately biting my tongue.

  She directed her attention at me. ‘And you keep dragging us off at a tangent to look at the Petersen Capital case.’

  ‘All I’m saying is that the boss—’

  ‘Let’s do a Photofit,’ Hans interrupted. ‘Do you remember what the two Amsterdam policemen looked like?’

  ‘Hans, there is no point; those two people don’t exist,’ Stefanie said heavily.

  ‘I remember,’ my father said.

  ‘Am I the only one here who sees he’s lying? For goodness’ sake!’

  ‘Stefanie . . .’

  ‘Don’t Stefanie me, Lotte,’ she snapped. ‘You’ve got me running around, checking all the finance part, and when I find something, you ignore me and listen to what a lying, conniving old man’s got to say instead.’ She stood up and dropped the files she’d brought in on top of the CI’s reports on Otto Petersen. ‘Don’t count on me to do any more of your legwork.’ She stomped out and slammed the door shut. We could hear her footsteps all the way down the corridor.

  ‘Let’s spark up that computer.’ Hans crossed the office to the desk my father was sitting at. ‘It has the Identifit software on it. Do you know how to use it?’

  ‘If it’s made for policemen, how hard can it be?’

  ‘I’ll give you a hand,’ Hans said.

  ‘Would you both like a coffee?’ I wanted to leave the room. I couldn’t sit here and watch while my father made up some faces. He looked and sounded so sincere. He was so good at hiding what had really happened. I was reminded of my own thoughts in Alkmaar’s police station a few days ago, when I realised that I could lie easily about what had happened in the Wendy Leeuwenhoek investigation because I’d told the same untruths so often. Maybe my father believed what he was telling us because he had managed to convince himself in the intervening years that he hadn’t done anything wrong, that the two people he’d invented had really existed.

  ‘Milk and sugar?’ I asked my father. He nodded.

  When I came back, they’d created perfect Photofits of a man and a woman I’d never seen before.

  After he’d finished his coffee I walked my father to the tram stop. It wouldn’t take too long to get back to the station for the train to Alkmaar. It had stopped snowing and patches of blue were unveiled between the clouds. He slid on the snow-covered pavement and I hooked my arm through his to stabilise him, just like I’d done with Otto Petersen’s mother, just like I’d do with any stranger who needed help.

  ‘How’s your mother?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s fine. I told her I’d been to see you.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Yes. She was pissed off that you saw my new car before she did.’

  He laughed, a rumbling sound that started in his stomach and that I could feel through my skin. I pulled my arm back. We looked at each other.

  The smile died on his lips. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s not funny.’

  ‘It’s OK, it is really.’

  The tram stop was at the Leidseplein. The bars’ outside tables looked empty and cold, and the lights that tried to tempt drinkers inside were gaudy and desperate in the broad daylight. I turned my back on the bar where I’d had drinks with Paul Leeuwenhoek and where I’d first realised how attracted I was to him.

  The tram came screeching around the corner, sounding its bell to grab the attention of anybody who hadn’t heard the contact of the iron wheels on the iron rails.

  The doors opened and my father went up the steps at the back. On a sudden impulse, I
jumped on and followed behind him. He looked over his shoulder and smiled. We forced our way through a group of Japanese tourists, who’d probably got on the tram at the Rijksmuseum, a couple of stops earlier. They were wrapped up in scarves and hats and must have had a cheap deal to come to Amsterdam at this time of year. He put the card against the reader to pay for the trip to Centraal Station. We took a seat behind a young girl talking in English on her mobile. She finished her call and started another one, speaking German this time.

  The doors opened again and the sweet floral smell of marijuana drifted in with a group of young students.

  ‘Ronald told me about your heart attack.’ I turned to look at my father. ‘I’m really sorry. I didn’t know, otherwise I would have given you a call. Before coming to Alkmaar last week, I mean.’

  He gave a sigh and rested his arms on the back of the seat in front of him. The slight hunch in his upper back became more pronounced. ‘Not a problem. I’m perfectly fine now. It was twelve years ago.’

  ‘Just after your retirement?’

  ‘Had a heart attack the day I was told my retirement date. How sad is that? I was so attached to my job.’

  ‘I understand.’ Wasn’t this what I too had been afraid of for the last month? ‘It would be the same for me. Work’s all I have.’ And now I’m risking it for you. I didn’t say the words out loud.

  ‘What about. . .’ He gestured at my hand.

  ‘He went off with another woman.’ The tram started again. He left me for someone younger and I looked in the wrong direction for a replacement.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s been a year now. Plus you didn’t like him anyway.’

  ‘I didn’t know him. Not the same thing.’ He coughed. ‘Work is a good way of forgetting.’

  ‘How did you cope when work wasn’t there any more?’ I asked him quietly, my voice barely rising above the rattling sound of the tram. If the CI ever found out this old man sitting next to me was my father, I would soon have to find out for myself.