A Cold Death in Amsterdam (Lotte Meerman Book 1)

by Jager, Anja de

  ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

  Stefanie leaned back on her chair. ‘Two people, well known to you, went to the Alkmaar police station, impersonating police officers.’

  The door clicked open behind me and the sound made me jump. I kept the back of my head turned, hoping they wouldn’t recognise me. After three heartbeats the door closed again. I waited for the sound of footsteps. None came. Whoever had come in must be waiting just outside. They must be staring at me. The skin on my neck crawled with goosebumps. I drew some circles on my notepad.

  ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Karin repeated. Her voice sounded the same as it did before, full of defiance. She turned the large ring on her left hand around and around with her thumb. Her nails were short, last week’s French manicure bitten away. She scratched her skin under the sleeve of the jacket.

  ‘Mrs Lantinga, we need to know what happened to those files. We’re not going to prosecute you if you organised it, we just want to know. It’s crucial with regard to finding the murderer’, Hans paused and gestured with his large hand, ‘of both your husbands.’ He moved to the right and his bulk blocked my view. I turned round carefully, but there was no one there. The corridor behind the observation rooms was empty. Somebody must have changed their mind, or turned up at the wrong room.

  Karin’s face went a little paler as if dusted with a lighter colour powder, but she didn’t say anything, just blinked three times.

  ‘Mrs Lantinga,’ Hans said, ‘could you please tell us if you recognise these people.’ He pushed the two Photofits across the table. At one stage this had been important, these two bits of paper with strange faces on them. Now they were a delay. I ripped the first page with circles off my notepad and made a tear in the corner.

  Karin looked at the photos and her face turned into a mask. The muscles around her jaw tightened. She slowly shook her head. ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Please, have another look. We think they might have worked for you at Omega, or even at Petersen Capital.’

  She pretended to look. I couldn’t tell exactly where her eyes went, but it seemed slightly above the photos. She sat back and shook her head again.

  ‘It’s no use.’ Stefanie leaned forward, her arms folded on the table. ‘We will go through everybody who worked at either firm, every friend of yours, every relative of you or Anton, and we’ll find who those people are. It will just take us longer and that is time we could use in tracking Anton’s murderer.’

  ‘But the police from Alkmaar are working on that, aren’t they? DI de Boer came to see me yesterday and the day before.’

  Stefanie nodded. ‘Yes, we’re working closely together with them. Now please answer our questions.’

  Karin stared at a point over Stefanie’s shoulder. Our eyes almost met; she seemed to be looking at my left ear. I was surprised she’d come into work today, her husband only dead five days, but when it was your business, you didn’t have much choice. And, as my father had said, work helped you forget. Or took your mind off it at least.

  ‘And DI de Boer is coming to the office again this afternoon, isn’t he?’ She looked at her lawyer.

  ‘Yes, at two o’clock,’ the lawyer said. ‘So I would very much like to know why you have my client here now.’

  The door clicked open again. This time there were footsteps too. I sank down in my chair, hoping it was an observer for another room.

  Hans ignored the lawyer and kept questioning Karin. ‘Your husband, Anton, admitted he took those files.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘To DI Huizen.’

  She rested her chin on her hand, the large square-cut stone of her ring on display, and smiled.

  The steps came towards me. I didn’t look up but kept staring at the window, hoping whoever it was wouldn’t know I’d been suspended.

  Her lawyer said, ‘I believe she has answered this question a few times now.’

  ‘She hasn’t answered it,’ Stefanie replied sharply.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ whispered a soft voice behind me, straight into my ear. I nearly jumped up off my chair. It was CI Moerdijk.

  ‘How did you get in?’ he asked.

  I showed him my pass. Without a word he took it out of my hand and put it in his pocket. I expected him to throw me out, any minute now. I waited for his hand on my arm, dragging me out of this observation area. I could almost feel it around my elbow. ‘Please don’t make me leave before I’ve saved my father,’ I breathed, but I didn’t say the words out loud.

  ‘Can you tell me about your working relationship with Wouter Vos?’ Hans was saying.

  The lawyer in the room sat forward. ‘My client isn’t answering that,’ he said.

  ‘Surely she can tell us if she knows him.’

  Karin turned the large ring round and around her finger with her thumb before folding her hands in front of her.

  ‘We’ve got him here as head of IT at Petersen Capital in 1995. He’s on the list of the tax office,’ Hans went on.

  I didn’t look away from her defiant face. ‘Vos was Alkmaar’s witness,’ I said aloud. ‘He worked for Petersen Capital. Was their head of IT.’

  ‘So I heard. Did your father know that?’ The CI spat out the words. It was an accusation.

  ‘They arrested my father last night,’ I said. I shouldn’t have been asleep.

  In the shadowy light of the observation area I turned to look at the CI. His thin preacher’s face didn’t smile at me. He got a small notepad from his jacket pocket and put it on the ledge in front of us. I moved mine further along, then looked back to the window.

  ‘You’ve got to leave, Lotte.’ Moerdijk’s voice sounded weary. ‘You can’t be in here.’

  I couldn’t respond.

  ‘Lotte, did you hear me?’ Here was the anticipated hand on my arm, the pressure I had been expecting. I nodded and got up, tears in my eyes because I hadn’t achieved anything, hadn’t heard anything that made a difference. I had failed. Failed my father.

  ‘Yes, he worked for us.’ In the room, Karin said it so softly that I only just caught the words over the sound of my chair scraping the floor as I pushed it back. I didn’t know why it was different to hear her say it. I’d seen his name on that list, I knew he’d worked there, but to hear it coming from Karin’s mouth made it more real. Wouter Vos with a motive to kill Otto Petersen. Ronald’s schoolfriend. Concern about my father made my breakfast of biscuits stomp around in my stomach.

  The hand on my arm propelled me towards the door, away from the window where all the important things were happening. I had to count on Hans and Stefanie to finish what I’d started.

  On the other side of the door, the hand let go of my upper arm. The CI closed the door and removed any view of the observation area from my field of vision. Everything was lost and over, and I felt sick as I walked towards the exit with my boss. I was lost for words until we got to the garden. This was my last chance to ask something before I was evicted through the white gates.

  ‘Who went to collect them?’ I asked.

  He frowned. ‘Collect what?’

  ‘The files on the Otto Petersen case.’

  He stayed quiet. A blackbird hopped around the roots of the plants, black against the snow. ‘I went by myself,’ the CI said. ‘I drove to Alkmaar, to the police station, spoke to the receptionist and she gave me one cardboard folder.’

  ‘Gave it?’

  ‘Yes. I asked her if there was more, but she told me that was it.’

  ‘What did the receptionist look like?’

  ‘Lotte, it was more than ten years ago . . .’

  The blackbird flew from the ground and landed in a tree, calling out his displeasure at our presence in beautiful tones.

  The CI said, ‘I think she was young, with blonde hair, creamy skin – looked like a farmer’s daughter.’

  Ronald’s wife had already been on Reception then? Ronald’s friend the witness had admitted to us that Ronald had been at Petersen
’s house just before Petersen was shot. His wife made those files disappear. Two sets of footprints were actually three sets of footprints after the investigating police officer had walked to the shed to check on the files. All the important information had been in my boss’s hands, the hands that now shoved me through the gates, the hands that closed it with a bang behind me. From the other side of the white bars the CI looked at me, his angry face cut into segments by the vertical bars, waiting until I walked away.

  I didn’t go far, just turned left and left again, until I was at the other side of the canal at the back of the police station. I texted Hans: CI caught me, call me, and waited. The statue on the wall of the new part of the station was Lady Justice, but a vengeful one, leaning her weight on the Sword of Power, ready to wield it when necessary, almost inviting enemies to attack her, so that she could strike and get the sword’s edge bloody. She glowered at me for my lack of progress, annoyed by my attitude. ‘Don’t you dare give up,’ her eyes told me. ‘Don’t you dare.’ I smiled grimly at her: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll keep going.’ I waited for a few minutes. I knew where Stefanie and Hans had to go next.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  There had been discussions before we’d headed north to Alkmaar: all about procedures and rules and regulations, none about where we were going. Stefanie didn’t want to use the recording equipment without the proper paperwork, but she agreed when I apologised for shouting at her after I’d been suspended. She in turn apologised for trying to pin something on my father. I was about to thank her when she followed up by saying that I couldn’t blame her for thinking as she had. I explained that my father had made all his money from marrying a rich wife, to which she laughed and meanly replied, ‘Like father, like daughter then.’ It washed away any good feelings I had towards her.

  Hans and Stefanie got out of the car at Wouter’s apartment block and I moved to the front seat. It looked less suspicious that way. Stefanie’s car smelled of stale cigarette smoke, and sweet wrappers littered the floor.

  ‘Can you hear us?’ Hans asked.

  I raised my thumb to him through the windscreen. It was odd to be without the weight of the gun on my hip. There was an empty packet of cigarettes on the dashboard. I watched Hans and Stefanie as they entered the apartment building. Stefanie reached no higher than his armpit and Hans took small slow steps to make sure she could keep up with him. They went up the stairs Ronald and I had gone up two weeks ago.

  What a risk Ronald had taken, I thought now, introducing me to Wouter so early on. If he had played things differently, if he hadn’t tried to get me worried about my father, would I have dropped the case? After that first trip to Alkmaar it had been clear that Otto Petersen’s murder wasn’t committed by Ferdinand van Ravensberger, whatever his nephew might have said. I could imagine a situation where we would have realised early on that Ben van Ravensberger had been using a lot of coke and had tried to blackmail his uncle. We probably would have dropped the case at that point. Otto Petersen’s murder would still remain open and Anton Lantinga would still be alive. But because Ronald had tried to frame my father for the stolen files, to get me to abandon this case, I’d stuck with it and he’d achieved the complete opposite.

  However, I also remembered the conversation with the CI where I’d told him about Alkmaar’s witness and I had to admit to myself that if I hadn’t been trying to cover up what had happened in the Wendy Leeuwenhoek investigation, I would probably have done what Ronald had intended. When I’d continued to investigate Otto Petersen’s murder, Ronald had upped the ante, got me suspended and my father arrested.

  What a shame that this was all speculation and that I didn’t have a shred of evidence to support my case. There was nothing to say that Wouter Vos had really been the whistle-blower other than that he would have had the opportunity and that he had kept quiet about working for Petersen Capital. But I would obtain the facts because that would get my father out of jail.

  I sat in Stefanie’s car, in Stefanie’s seat behind the steering wheel and waited. I heard the doorbell ring. I heard the door open. I stayed silent. It felt as if they would be able to hear me if I talked.

  ‘Good morning, Wouter,’ Stefanie said. ‘Amsterdam police. Can we come in for a minute?’ Her voice rang loud in my ear.

  ‘Of course. I haven’t got much time, but come in.’ Wouter sounded relaxed, just as he’d done when we met. He’d been such a credible witness. As Stefanie had said, we all liked the geek-done-good.

  Footsteps down the hallway. I could picture them moving past the art collection into the sitting room.

  ‘Good to see you again. Where is your colleague who was here the other week?’ Wouter asked.

  ‘Detective Meerman? She came here with Ronald de Boer as well, didn’t she? You know him well?’ This was Hans at his least threatening, his this-is-just-a-little-chat tone of voice.

  ‘Yes, we were at school together.’

  ‘Friends?’

  ‘Best friends.’ He said it with a hint of laughter in his voice. ‘You know what it’s like at that age.’

  ‘Some of those friendships are made for life.’

  Wouter didn’t say anything.

  ‘Anyway,’ Stefanie went on, ‘we’re here to check some details on your testimony.’

  ‘Of course. Well, I saw Anton Lantinga’s car—’

  ‘No, not that witness statement.’ She was silent for five or six seconds, gave him just enough time to realise what she was talking about. ‘We want to ask about an earlier case, the one that put Otto Petersen in jail. The Petersen Capital fraud.’ The tone of her voice didn’t change. It sounded like a throwaway remark, an unimportant question, wanting a quick unimportant answer. ‘You were the whistle-blower, weren’t you?’

  ‘No.’ The response came too quickly after the question. I’d expected him to be more polished, to claim he didn’t know anything about it. Without Ronald in the room, he seemed to have lost his cool.

  ‘No? We have the files here.’

  I heard the whispering sound of turning pages.

  ‘You were the head of IT at Petersen Capital in 1995, weren’t you?’

  ‘No, not the head. I just worked there.’

  ‘It says head of IT in the company’s tax records.’

  ‘I suppose . . . I was the only one in that department, so that must have made me the head. It didn’t feel like it, and they didn’t pay me like one either.’ I heard a laugh that turned into a cough. I assumed it was Wouter.

  ‘Someone sent a computer disk to the Financial Fraud department of the Amsterdam police in 1995. It contained two spreadsheets – one, I assume, Otto’s official numbers, which he sent out to the investors – and the other, the real numbers, showing the losses he’d made and was so desperately trying to hide.’

  ‘Let me see that disk.’ A short pause. The rustle of the padded paper envelope Stefanie had brought with her. ‘That’s not right.’ His voice sounded purposeful, maybe some relief mixed in. ‘We didn’t use this type of disk in 1995. Whatever evidence you have, this isn’t it.’

  ‘No, of course not. This is our copy of the disk. The original is filed away. What happened, Wouter? Did you see that Otto had two spreadsheets? Did he ask you for help, maybe asked you to retrieve one from the back-up? When did you notice he was cheating?’

  Still more silence.

  Hans said, ‘Otto figured out who ratted on him. So when he got out of jail he wanted to meet you, is that it? He asked you to come to the house.’

  I was reminded of Otto’s mother’s words, that this had all been about betrayal and that Otto Petersen had cared more about his company than his wife.

  ‘But you saw Anton’s car there. Did he see you too? He might have done. And when things went wrong and you killed Otto – where did you get the gun from, by the way?’ She waited for a bit longer but Wouter didn’t respond. ‘Then you thought up a plan to throw the suspicion on Anton instead. His word against yours. Was that what you thought? And as long a
s we didn’t know you were the whistle-blower, nothing linked you to Otto Petersen. You were just an innocent bystander. And as you were Ronald’s friend, the police – Piet Huizen and Ronald de Boer – would always believe you, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘I want a lawyer.’ I’d known he’d say that; it was only a matter of time.

  ‘Fuck. Sorry.’ The sorry was more to me than to Wouter. ‘Of course, feel free to make the call.’

  I heard Wouter say, ‘I think we’re in trouble.’ His voice was getting softer – he must be walking out of the room.

  Condensation drew in from the corners of the car window, turning it opaque. I made no effort to wipe it away. I didn’t have to see out anyway and I’d be here for a while. Stefanie and Hans would have to wait for the lawyer to turn up before they could continue their questioning. The snow outside melted on the car. Water ran from the windscreen. I looked at my watch: it was just after midday. We still had two hours before Ronald met with Karin. Ronald, who might have advised Wouter to act as a witness and to use that as a cover. Ronald, who could have arranged for those files to vanish with help from his wife on Reception. He could have called Anton as soon as he’d heard my father was off the case. That must have been a nasty surprise. He must have trusted that he’d take over, but when that didn’t happen he’d reacted quickly and got Wouter’s name out of the equation. Taking the files made Wouter’s witness statement disappear so that CI Moerdijk never even knew that Wouter existed. Ronald had never responded to CI Moerdijk, not to cover for my father, but to cover for his friend. Then he’d tried to manipulate me by throwing suspicion on my father, suspicions I was all too ready to believe. I rested my head against the window. The cold of the glass soothed my mind.

  I could check if any of this speculation was fact by talking to Ronald’s wife, Ilse, on Reception.

  I could talk to her, I calculated, and be back here before Hans and Stefanie would even notice I’d gone.

  I switched on the car heater to blow over the windows and demist them, hearing the minutes tick away while I waited for visibility to return. I found the lever at the bottom of the driver’s seat and used it to push the chair back until I could reach the pedals without bumping my knees on the steering wheel. I clicked the seatbelt in place, turned the key in the ignition of Stefanie’s car and checked the mirrors before adjusting them, so I could put them back in their original position before handing the car back to Stefanie. Then I eased the car into reverse and drove to the Alkmaar police station.