A Cold Case in Amsterdam Central

by Anja de Jager

  In the distance I heard the bell that announced the tram was coming around the corner. I lifted the box back on to my hip.

  ‘Promise me.’ Tessa’s eyelashes were darkened by unshed tears.

  ‘I promise.’ It was partially a promise to Tessa, but more than that it was a promise to myself that I would do some good.

  She gave me an awkward one-sided hug over the box of toys. She smiled her gap-toothed smile. I got on the tram and through the window I watched her drift back to her flat. She had her parka wrapped tightly around her and took each step slowly, her head bowed as if she had to examine every blade of grass to decide which one to trample. A group of children ran with a football right next to her, a different species altogether. Then the tram turned a corner and I couldn’t see her any more.

  The tram rattled through central Amsterdam for fifteen minutes then turned the corner that would take me to my stop. As I got off the tram and walked along my canal, I saw the pile of furniture outside our communal door. I lived in a seventeenth-century house that had been split into three apartments, and the downstairs neighbours, an American family, had moved out while I was at work. They’d gone back to the States and abandoned whatever they couldn’t fit in their removal truck. The shipping costs must be high and it was probably cheaper to buy these things new. A nice sofa, four kitchen chairs in good condition, a couple of cardboard boxes and a pet carrier. There were always students who could use free furniture. Most of that stuff would be gone by the morning.

  As I stuck my key in the lock, I heard a sound. A soft meow. Behind the carrier’s fenced front was the black-and-white face of downstairs’ cat, Pippi. She looked just like the one from the Felix ad, but with a black nose. I pushed a finger through the wire and rubbed her forehead. ‘Hello, girl,’ I said. She bumped her head against me.

  Unlike the furniture, the pet carrier was labelled. A big sticker on top said Urgent, animal, treat with care and the address where she was going to go. A cardboard box roughly the same size as the box of toys I was carrying had similar tags and said Pippi’s things on the side. ‘When are they coming to get you, puss-puss?’

  The cat meowed again, as if to indicate that she was tired of waiting.

  ‘I know Pippi-girl, it’s horrid.’ I read the labels, which said that couriers would pick her up to reunite her with her owners in about ten minutes. I gave her another small tickle. ‘Bye, Pippi, good girl, they’ll be here soon.’ I was surprised the neighbours hadn’t taken her themselves rather than leaving her outside.

  I hauled my toys up the stairs, let myself into my flat, sat down on the sofa and hugged the box. I rested my forehead on the cardboard lid and thought about the interview: Thomas questioning Eelke, asking about the skeleton. I’d interrupted and asked about his job. PE teacher. I had broken Thomas’s rhythm to get that really useful information that Eelke was a PE teacher. He’d been carrying a net of footballs when I’d first seen him at Centraal station: I could have figured out he was a PE teacher without asking.

  A guy finds some bones on a building site. He puts them in a bag to throw away later. Then he falls. It wasn’t a suspicious death but an accident. Sure, sticking human bones in a bag is a crime, digging them up without calling the police is even a crime. But a small crime and, as Thomas said, the guy who’d done it was dead.

  I put the box of toys on the floor and picked up the book I was halfway through. I found it hard to keep my mind on Surviving Your Elderly Parents, even though I needed all the help I could find on how to get on with my mother. Frank Stapel’s death kept demanding my attention, more interesting than the page talking about frail health and how that could affect people’s feeling of self-worth.

  I gave up on the book, went to my study and clipped a fresh white sheet of paper to my architect’s table. It was one of the items that the interior designer who’d owned my flat before me had left behind. She needed the money and I needed furniture and a place to live. I took over everything she had. It was the best interior design decision I had ever made: not to change anything in the flat, just to move in with my clothes and my pots and pans and leave it at that. I left all my other belongings behind in the house I’d shared with my ex-husband.

  I tilted the table. I hadn’t thought it would be useful, but what a great tool it had turned out to be. I moved my hand over the pure white sheet of paper and started to write in large letters with a blue felt pen. I wrote Frank Stapel in the middle of the page. I drew a box around his name. Something didn’t make sense: if you wanted to get rid of an unwanted skeleton, where better than at a building site? Why dig it up and put it in a locker if you could, for example, just pour cement over it and be done with it? People did whatever was easiest, and in Frank’s case, surely the easiest thing would have been either to call the police and take a week’s delay on the project, or maybe even less; or otherwise leave it in the ground and ignore it. Instead he dug it up. He put it in a locker. There must have been some other reason.

  I linked Tessa and Eelke to the box with arrows. I made a note, in pencil, of the two places where Frank had worked. From there, I drew a squiggly line to the word skeleton. I knew I didn’t have anything to go on, but standing here, looking at the drawing, I could see so many questions that there might even be something to investigate.

  I woke up at 3.57 a.m. Pale light was peeking around the corner of the curtains. There was noise outside. Men’s voices. Loud, boisterous. On their way home after pub closing time. I got up and yawned as I opened the curtains just a fraction. Apart from a narrow pavement, the curved one-way streets on either side of the canal were just wide enough for a car. The canal was like an extreme central reservation at twice the width of each lane. In the seventeenth century, when the canal had been dug, it had been a moat around the city and had doubled up as the main route of transport. The water had been important, the road an afterthought.

  Two men stood by the leftover pile of furniture, lit by the street light above them. One of them sat down on a kitchen chair. Their laughter was raucous. I opened the window and their voices streamed in.

  ‘Here, puss-puss-puss,’ one of them said.

  ‘Let’s chuck it in the canal.’

  I switched on the light and looked for my slippers.

  ‘Think it’ll swim?’

  ‘Dude, it’s in a cage. It’s not going to swim.’

  I grabbed my keys and ran down the stairs. I pulled the outside door open.

  The guy on the kitchen chair jumped up.

  The other one, who held Pippi in her basket, stood and stared at me. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Put the cat down.’ Even to my own ears it sounded silly. Two men. Both taller than me. The one who’d jumped up from the chair at least didn’t have a shaven head. He made eye contact. Not aggressive. The other one was the problem. A tattoo snaked around his neck.

  ‘What’s it to you? It’s not your cat, is it?’ Mid-twenties. Drunk. Pippi meowing loudly in her carrier in one hand, can of beer in the other. Two of his friends, who had been further up the canal, came back and joined in now that there was some excitement.

  Four against one. The odds were getting bad. ‘Put the cat down.’ The front door was right behind me but I had no intention of backing off.

  ‘I was thinking of taking it home.’

  ‘Mate, you weren’t. I heard you. You were going to throw her in the canal.’

  The guy with the hair said, ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Yes, boys, go. Give me the cat.’

  ‘Who are you to tell us what to do?’ Tattoo took a step in my direction.

  All remnants of sleep left my body. ‘I’m a police officer. I’ve got a gun upstairs. Don’t make me get it.’

  Tattoo stood his ground. ‘I’m not doing anything illegal. This stuff’s abandoned. The cat would die if it was just left here. I’m rescuing it.’

  Tattoo’s two mates stood in the road. There were no cars at this time of night. Nobody else was walking along the canal. Tattoo’s eye
s moved down from my face. I didn’t fold my arms over my front but stood up straight and tall in my light-blue fluffy slippers. I was acutely aware that I was wearing a large T-shirt with Nighty Night printed on the front, matched with a pair of stripy pyjama bottoms. Tattoo moved into my personal space. His breath smelled of booze and his chin was covered with a mixture of blackheads and dark stubble.

  I put out my hand. ‘Give me the cat.’ My voice was as strong as it had been four months ago when I’d asked for someone’s gun. I pushed the thought to the back of my mind that that had got me shot.

  The guy with the hair put a hand on Tattoo’s arm. ‘Come on, Jack.’

  Tattoo waited, staring at my hand, as if to show that he wasn’t afraid of me. My shoulder muscles tensed. He was a good head taller and a lot wider than me, so I was convinced that I didn’t worry him in the slightest. He swung the pet carrier towards me. I reached out to grab it.

  At the last moment he skipped away, towards the canal, as if he was in a bowling alley, rocked the carrier back with the momentum and let it go at the highest point.

  The splash when it hit the water was followed by Pippi’s loud howl.

  ‘Woo-hoo!’ Tattoo shouted. ‘Bull’s eye!’ He ran away. His friends followed him, whooping as if throwing a cat in the canal was a major achievement.

  ‘You fucking cowards,’ I shouted after them. Then I rushed to the water’s edge. The carrier plunged but bobbed back up, partially afloat. ‘Shit shit shit.’ The image of submerged shopping trolleys and junkies’ needles shot through my head. The pavement was sharp under my feet after I’d kicked my slippers off. I dropped my keys. During freshers’ week, one of my university classmates had dived into a canal and broken his neck. He’d never returned to class. I jumped after Pippi.

  The cold water took my breath away and my skin contracted closely around my bones. My feet never reached the bottom and the dark water closed above my head. I kept eyes and mouth closed until I kicked my way back to the surface. I scanned around me to locate Pippi in the dark. To my left I heard her low-throated yowl. The carrier was sinking quickly. My T-shirt had engorged itself and tried to drag me under. The brown water came up to my chin. I closed the distance and scrambled to grab the handle on top before I couldn’t see it again. I was barely staying afloat with only one arm free to swim. My muscles were shaking. I lifted the pet carrier as high as I could. Hopefully it would let Pippi keep her head above the water. The canal pulled on my feet.

  ‘Help, somebody.’ No reply. The cowards had run away and left me here. The light from the street lamps bounced off the water and showed me where to go. ‘It’s okay, girl. Don’t be scared.’ Water slopped into my mouth. I spat out as much as I could. Four more strokes and I would be at the canal’s edge, an arm’s-length above my head. ‘I’ve got you.’ This was nothing like dragging dummies to safety in a swimming pool. For one thing, the dummies never moved. Something brushed against my arm. I hoped it was a fish or a semi-decayed plastic Coca-Cola bottle, but it could just as easily be a used condom. My fingers burnt with the strain. There was silence inside the carrier.

  ‘Pippi?’ I said softly. ‘Pippi?’

  Nothing. Had she drowned? My eyes stung from the canal water.

  I was nearly at the edge, pushed myself as high out of the water as possible and swung the carrier on to dry land, less carefully than I wanted to.

  I held on to the canal wall and rested my forehead on the cold stone. Then Pippi growled. Relief surged through me and came out in the form of a laugh. I waited a few seconds to get the strength back in my arms. I was worried about what my fingers would touch on the bank, but I felt only brick. I pulled myself out of the canal as from a swimming pool. On dry land, I stayed kneeling down, head bent, with water streaming from my hair. Pippi whimpered. I got to my feet and picked up the carrier. She was as soaked to the bone as I was.

  ‘The worst is over now, sweetie.’

  She meowed bravely.

  I wanted to take her out and hug her, but I was worried that she’d make a dash for it. I left a trail of water behind as if I was a swamp monster that had been cut at each step by the sharp pavement. Worse than the cold and the discomfort of the cobbles under my bare feet was the smell of rotten fish that clung to my hair, skin and clothes.

  It was a miracle that my slippers were still there with my keys inside.

  As I carried her up to my flat, Pippi whimpered hoarsely, as if she’d given up. My legs were shaking but I went down the two flights of stairs once more to get her box of things, then I put her carrier in the bathroom and unhooked the metal grille. Pippi looked like a cross between ET and a rat, but then I didn’t look much better. I sat down on the floor. Her green eyes were enormous now that all her fur was plastered against her skull. I dried her a little with my towel until she told me with a pathetic little hiss that she’d had enough and took over herself. I opened the cardboard box, found bowls, cat food, litter and a tray. I put it all out and gave her water. Then finally I had a shower. It took a lot of shampoo before I could no longer smell the combination of algae and fish in my hair.

  I rolled into bed but found it hard to sleep. Even after the long hot shower, my teeth chattered so loudly that the sound could have kept the neighbours awake. At some point in the night, Pippi curled up against me and started to purr. Her fur had dried but she reeked like week-old sushi. I stroked her little face. I’d have to get a book on looking after cats. Cleaning her would be a job for tomorrow.

  A call on my mobile woke me at 8.57 a.m. I must have turned off my alarm.

  ‘When you have a second,’ Edgar Ling said, ‘could you pop down to the lab?’

  ‘I’m in the middle of something but I can be there in half an hour.’ I tried to sound as if I was at my desk instead of still lying in bed. ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s a problem with the skeleton.’

  Chapter Eight

  In the basement lab, I shivered and hugged my arms around my waist. I was sleep-deprived and in desperate need of coffee. After Edgar’s call had woken me up, I’d thrown on a suit, fed Pippi and dashed over here. It had taken me a little less than the half an hour I’d told Edgar, as I hadn’t stopped by the office.

  ‘It was when I’d laid them all out.’ Edgar Ling’s eyes shone even more than when I’d talked to him at Centraal station, and his face was flushed pink. His blond hair showed the tracks of a comb. ‘When I put them together like that, it was immediately obvious.’

  I looked at the skeleton to see what ‘immediately obvious’ looked like. They were just bones to me. The forensic lab’s artificial bright light didn’t show me much difference between them.

  ‘Do you see it?’ he said.

  I shook my head. Some of my colleagues were squeamish about bones, but for me there was nothing revolting about them. Dead bodies were no different. Only the very first forensic examination I’d watched had been tough. Our class had been warned beforehand not to dress in our favourite clothes, as we’d always associate them with the smell.

  ‘Oh, well.’ His excitement didn’t falter just because I was too blind to grasp what he was trying to explain to me. ‘Look at this.’ He pointed at a bone. ‘Can you see now?’

  I tried, just for the guy’s sake. ‘It looks different.’ It seemed the most logical thing to say.

  ‘Exactly. It looks different because it is different. It isn’t from the same body.’

  That didn’t make any sense. ‘Are you kidding me?’

  ‘It’s actually not even the right bone. Humerus. Upper arm.’

  ‘So this is another old bone? Does that mean the skeleton came from some Second World War mass grave? Have you managed to get that confirmed? That this is from the war.’

  ‘The main skeleton is from around that time. There could be five years either side, but it seems most likely. But this extra bone isn’t. This is much more recent. It’s between five and ten years old. I’ve run a couple of quick tests this morning, as it took some time to find someon
e from your team. This bone is from a man. And can you see this line here? That’s where it was broken before. It’s the bone of a man who’d once had a broken arm. Isn’t that amazingly interesting?’

  ‘Five years? That’s all?’

  ‘That is the earliest, but yes. These bones were buried directly in the ground. That’s why it decomposed to a skeleton in a relatively short time. When a body’s properly buried in a coffin, it takes a lot longer.

  ‘And there’s only one bone?’

  ‘No, these as well.’ He pointed at two more. ‘The ulna and radius. All from the right arm.’

  ‘Age?’ Last night’s lack of sleep was still hindering my ability to think, but I was slowly realizing this could be a significant find.

  ‘Not sure yet. We’re doing some more checks. Not young I think, though.’

  A middle-aged man with a broken arm. ‘Was the arm cut off?’

  ‘Oh no, there are no signs of trauma on any of the bones. No cuts. No sign of knife markings.’

  I rubbed my face as if that would help me understand what Edgar was showing me. ‘So the man whose arm we have here is dead?’

  ‘That’s a distinct possibility.’

  There were a number of men who had gone missing over the last ten years, if we used Edgar’s upper limit. Maybe we had found one of them. Someone who had been killed and buried together with a war victim? Or just an arm that had gone astray. That didn’t make sense. ‘And the rest of that skeleton?’ I asked.

  Edgar shrugged. ‘Who knows. Still buried, maybe, or in another bin bag.’