He looked up from his food. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Should I have?’
‘It was quite a famous murder case twenty-five years ago. The Body in the Dunes?’
He shook his head. ‘Doesn’t ring any bells.’
It was as if someone didn’t know your favourite band.
‘Tell me about the Body in the Dunes,’ he said, as if he was asking me to tell him the plot of a movie.
‘Okay. In the early nineties, a man walking his dog found a skeleton in the dunes near Haarlem: a young man between fifteen and twenty-five who’d been dead for a while.’ I looked at Mark eating his dinner. ‘Stop me if it’s too gruesome,’ I said. I knew my tolerance for these stories was higher than most people’s.
‘No, I’m fine,’ he grinned. ‘There are no bones in the chicken. That helps.’
It made me laugh. ‘Okay. So there were just the bones, no clothes, no bag, nothing. So the police had a hard time identifying him.’
‘What about DNA?’
‘This was before they used DNA. That’s why they dug up all those unnamed bodies from cemeteries a couple of years ago, to try to identify them with new technology.’ I shook my head. ‘Never mind, that’s a complete tangent. Anyway, the investigating team were smart: they looked at the skull, and at photos of men and boys of the right age who’d been missing for at least four years.’
‘That must have been a lot of people.’
‘True. I don’t know how many they checked, but they realised quite quickly from the photos that the remains were those of Andre Martin Nieuwkerk. He’d gone missing four years before, which fitted perfectly.’
‘And that’s the man who told you this morning he was still alive.’
‘Well, that’s who he claimed to be, yes. Because the case was closed. They found the murderer. It was his school teacher. It was a real mess.’
‘His teacher? How old was the kid?’
‘Fifteen.’
Mark pulled a face that was not dissimilar to the one I’d wanted to pull when I’d bitten on that caper. ‘So now this guy says he’s him?’
I nodded.
‘Could that be right? Could they have made a mistake?’
‘I don’t think so.’ I put my knife and fork down. ‘That would have meant they’d misidentified the skeleton, and the kid, the man now, had stayed hidden for over thirty years, officially declared dead.’
‘Didn’t you say this happened twenty-five years ago?’
‘The remains were found twenty-five years ago, but he’d been missing for four years before that. So roughly thirty years in total.’
‘Is it possible to have a normal life,’ Mark asked, ‘after you’ve been declared dead?’
‘Depends on what you mean by normal. If you’ve been declared dead, you can’t get a passport or a driving licence. You can’t even get a bank account. You’d have to live off-grid. Only do cash-in-hand jobs.’ I thought of the man I’d met this morning. He’d been smartly dressed. He hadn’t looked like someone who lived without a bank account. ‘I probably talked to a crazy person this morning.’ I started eating again.
‘Did he say anything else – apart from that he wasn’t dead?’
‘Not really. I had to go and help Ingrid with something.’
‘Is she back in your team? I didn’t know that.’ Mark had come to the drinks we’d had when Ingrid left our department.
‘No, I was just filling in for Tim.’
He winked. ‘Trying to prove that you’re more reliable than him?’
‘Tim’s in hospital. It’s got nothing to do with being reliable.’ Even to myself my voice sounded defensive.
‘It’s okay, I’m not jealous of your colleagues.’
I ate some more of my chicken. ‘She’d been up all night with him, so I thought it was best to give her a hand. In any case, this man’s story was so outlandish that I couldn’t really take him seriously.’
‘So what was Ingrid’s case about?’
‘It’s to do with those violent muggings.’
‘Ah yes, I saw about those on TV.’ He reached out and rubbed my arm. ‘That was probably more important.’ He grinned. ‘And you escaped a crazy person.’
Even though I’d used the phrase myself, it was when I heard Mark say it that I realised the man hadn’t seemed crazy.
He’d been more like someone who had been trying to make a point. I just didn’t know what that point was.
Chapter 5
The next morning, it was still dark as I cycled back to my flat to feed Pippi. It had been hard to get out of the warmth of the bed and Mark’s embrace and I felt that the cat wasn’t suitably appreciative of my efforts. She looked at me with that mixture of gratitude and blame – a mixture that cats seem to specialise in. She ate greedily whilst keeping an eye on my every movement as I cleaned her litter tray, making sure I was doing it properly. I knew that cats slept sixteen hours a day, but I could only imagine that she must be bored when there was nobody home. It wasn’t that I’d never left her by herself for a night before, but it was now becoming a regular thing, and that made me feel guilty.
The look of blame Pippi was giving me clearly worked, because as I got changed, I told her I would be home early tonight and would spend all evening playing with her. The ball of string would get a proper workout. All other cat toys were studiously ignored. Even the wind-up mouse that I thought was quite amusing wasn’t as interesting as string.
I sat down at the table by the window and got my laptop out. I would keep Pippi company for another half an hour or so. I googled Andre Martin Nieuwkerk again, as I’d done in the office yesterday. Not because I believed the man I’d met yesterday morning had actually been the Body in the Dunes, but because there was a possibility that he’d used that name to make a point. Maybe he wanted to flag something else up. All night I’d been turning his words over in my head. When he said that he wanted people to know that he was still alive, it could be taken in another way. Maybe I was over-thinking this, but I’d heard words like those used by other people.
Like cancer survivors.
Like people who survived other kinds of severe trauma.
What if this guy had survived something too? What if it had been the kind of thing that Andre Nieuwkerk had suffered?
What if this guy was another child abuse victim?
I clicked on the first image search result and the murdered boy’s face filled my screen.
Pippi put her claws into my leg for attention and I reached down and scratched her head, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the screen.
He looked so young.
It was obviously a school photo. I remembered when I’d been that age and the photographer had turned up to take individual photos, as well as a class portrait. Photos like the one that was on my screen now, which we’d taken home to hand out to loving parents and grandparents.
You couldn’t always tell much about a kid from those school photos. If the photographer was good, he could make even the most rebellious children look like well-behaved angels. Still, the impression I got from the boy who looked out at me from the screen was that he had been a quiet kid. A shy smile hung around his lips, and his dark hair was cut with a thick, blunt fringe that didn’t do him any favours. He wore a buttoned checked shirt that was more suitable for an old man than a teenager but had the effect of making him look even younger than the fourteen or fifteen he must have been.
I hadn’t worked in the Kinderpolitie myself, the department of the police force that dealt with crimes against and perpetrated by children, but I still recognised the kind of kid who would keep quiet if anything happened to him. It made me wonder if the man who had talked to me yesterday morning had been a kid like that as well.
Even though my decision to go with Ingrid to interview Peter de Waal still felt like the right one, especially in light of Erol Yilmaz’s reaction, I now felt bad about not talking to the man for longer. It could have taken all his courage to come up to me, and I’d just brushed him
off.
I checked my watch. It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet. The man had mentioned the hotel he was staying at. I looked the place up. It was only a fifteen-minute cycle ride away. I shut down my laptop and put my coat on.
I could still hear my cat meowing after I’d pulled the door closed behind me.
There was a chill in the air this morning that reminded me that winter wasn’t far away, but the stars that showed faintly in the sky told me it was going to be a nice day. The sun would come up in an hour or so. At least the stars gave me hope that I would see it today.
The trees along the canal had been stripped of their leaves weeks ago and, lit by the street lights, they threw eerie shadows on the road. Two more turnings and I was at the Hotel Mondrian. I locked my bike up and went inside.
The clientele inside the hotel seemed to be a mixture of business people and tourists. One of the long tables by the entrance was occupied by a group of ten women who were at least a decade older than the rest of the people milling around. They spoke English and were surrounded by a collection of small backpacks and cameras. They seemed ready for a busy day of sightseeing. One of them looked at her watch and sighed.
I didn’t pay them close attention, but instead turned to the receptionist. He was a tall young man with close-cropped dark hair. His desk was enclosed at either side by large bunches of tulips in glass vases. Behind him hung a print of a Mondrian painting, blocks of primary colours edged with thick black lines. He was clearly keeping one eye on what was going on around him at the same time as talking to a man who was checking out, because as soon as I took a step towards the desk, he caught my eye and asked if he could help me.
I showed my badge. ‘I’m Detective Lotte Meerman,’ I said. ‘I’m here to talk to one of your guests.’
‘Of course,’ the receptionist said. ‘What’s his name?’
Now that was a good question. ‘Andre Nieuwkerk.’ I didn’t think he would have used the middle name at check-in.
The receptionist checked his computer. ‘We don’t have anybody here under that name,’ he said.
I wasn’t entirely surprised. ‘Maybe it’s under Martin. Martin Nieuwkerk.’
The man behind the desk shook his head. ‘There isn’t anybody here with that surname at all.’ He seemed relieved that he couldn’t help me, so that we wouldn’t cause problems in his hotel.
‘He’s Dutch,’ I said. ‘Probably in his early forties?’
‘Dutch? I don’t think we have many Dutch people staying here at the moment. An elderly couple in their seventies …’
‘No, not them.’
‘Two men in their twenties …’
‘Not them either.’
‘And that’s it. No other Dutch people.’
‘Did anybody leave a note under that name?’ The man had specifically said I should come to this hotel. Had he changed his mind? Decided not to talk to the police after all? Maybe there was more than one Hotel Mondrian. I might just be at the wrong place.
The receptionist did me the courtesy of looking through a pile of papers and checking the pigeonholes for the various rooms. ‘Ah, here’s something,’ he said. ‘“If anybody asks for Andre Nieuwkerk, it’s Room 14.”’
‘I thought you said he wasn’t here,’ I said.
‘Well, he’s not registered under that name.’
‘Can you call him for me?’
I waited as he dialled the room. After a minute or so, he shook his head. ‘No response.’
He must have gone out already. Yesterday he’d been up early too. It had been well before eight o’clock when he’d spoken to me. I gave the receptionist my card. ‘Please call me when he gets back.’
The manager of the Hotel Mondrian contacted me four hours later. ‘I’m sorry to call,’ he said, ‘but you left your card with us this morning.’
‘Is Andre Nieuwkerk back?’
‘Well, the guest in Room 14 had his Do Not Disturb sign on his door and he should have checked out by ten a.m. It’s midday now. We’ve knocked and there’s no response …’ His voice petered out.
I understood what he was saying. It wouldn’t be the first time this had happened in a hotel. They probably preferred to have a police officer discover what was on the other side of the door than the cleaner.
‘Is the guest Dutch?’
‘No, he’s British. He’s got a British passport.’
‘What’s his name?’ I didn’t have to go myself. I could just send some cops in uniform. I could even insist that the manager open the door himself.
‘His name is Brand. Theo Brand.’
I was about to say that I would get someone over there, but something about that name pulled me up.
Brand. Nieuwkerk.
Brand Nieuw. Brand New.
Someone who wanted people to know that he was still alive.
‘I’ll be right there.’ I ended the call and grabbed my handbag. ‘You’re coming with me,’ I said to Charlie.
Charlie drove us to the Hotel Mondrian through the midday sunshine that the stars had promised this morning. A girl waiting for a traffic light had her eyes closed and her face turned towards the rays of the low-hanging sun as if this was the last fix she was going to get before winter hit.
I had to narrow my eyes to slits in order to see anything where the beams crept over the top of the houses. I should have worn my sunglasses. Even the street cleaner probably didn’t need his woollen hat and two scarves today.
The hotel manager was waiting for us on the other side of the revolving door with a calm expression on his face, as if this was an everyday occurrence. ‘Police? Please come in.’ His voice was soothing in the midst of the chaos. Dark suit over a grey waistcoat, short blond hair. Nothing would faze him. Deaths were not uncommon in hotels but had to be kept quiet at all costs. Nobody wanted to sleep in a room where someone had died the night before.
I followed him up the stairs and into a smart corridor with Charlie close behind me. A woman rattled down the hallway dragging a wheelie bag. The manager said a friendly good morning as if nothing unusual was happening at all. It was clear which room we were after: the red Do Not Disturb sign dangled from the door handle. The manager waited, swipe card in hand, until the woman with the bag had stepped into the lift. Then he opened the door and let me go through first.
A man was lying on the bed, fully clothed. It amazed me that his shoes were still on his feet. He hadn’t even undone them to get into bed. His tie was perfectly done up too. He’d just fallen backwards. Had he died as he was sitting on his bed? There was no sign that he had struggled for air; the bed covers were undisturbed. A bottle with a white label that screamed prescription medicine stood on the bedside table.
I was looking at those things because I wanted to delay looking at the dead man’s face.
‘We should secure the scene,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ll call Forensics.’
I didn’t stop him.
There was no doubt that the body on the bed was that of the man I’d refused to speak to yesterday. The man I’d come to see this morning. I felt a pressure behind my eyes that wasn’t caused by being confronted with a dead person. It was the feeling I got when I was driving along the motorway and someone suddenly cut in front of me. The feeling that said: you couldn’t have waited? It was so urgent that you couldn’t have waited for a few seconds?
You couldn’t have waited until the next day?
Suddenly I was that school outcast again. I was the kid whose feelings were out of sync with everybody else’s. A better person, a normal person, would feel sorry for the guy, that his life had got so bad that he’d killed himself. They would feel sad that they hadn’t been able to help him.
I didn’t feel any of that.
I felt anger. Anger that he hadn’t waited for me, anger that he had put me in this position, that he had made my choice a mistake.
I stepped out of the room and scanned the ceiling of the hallway for the cat-eye that would have recorded all the comings and go
ings on this floor. It was located in the middle, only a few doors away from Theo Brand’s room. I turned to the manager. ‘Can you get me the footage from that camera?’
‘I’m sorry, we’re having some problems with our CCTV at the moment.’ He could just as easily have been telling a guest that the hot water wasn’t working. ‘We contacted the company, but just having them there is a deterrent, don’t you think?’
I wanted to swear, but I kept a professional face on. It might be a deterrent, but it was also a hindrance to this investigation. We relied too heavily on the surveillance that individual firms were providing us with.
I heard a noise behind me. It was a chambermaid, trolley stacked high with towels and replacement shampoo. ‘Sorry,’ she said. She was African too, her hair tidied away under a pale green scarf, her eyes cast down to the floor just in front of the trolley. It was hard to get a job that didn’t involve cleaning if you didn’t speak the language.
I realised I was hindering her progress along the corridor. I took a step sideways to let her pass. These hallways were really narrow. She went past without looking into the room.
Edgar Ling was one of the first members of the forensics team to turn up. He was short and bulky and the plastic coveralls weren’t particularly flattering. His eyebrows and eyelashes were so fair they were barely visible, and his eyes were glossy, as if marbles the colour of wet soil had been inserted into his skull.
I pointed out the key that was lying on top of the desk in the room. ‘Check what time that was used,’ I said to the hotel manager. ‘How long had Brand been staying here?’
‘Five nights, Friday through to Wednesday. He’d prepaid the whole amount.’
As if what was important was that the hotel got their money.
Thomas turned up fifteen minutes later when the forensic investigation was in full swing.
‘How nice of you to let Charlie call the entire circus for a suicide,’ he said.
I didn’t tell him that it was as much for my benefit as Charlie’s.
A Death at the Hotel Mondrian (Lotte Meerman Book 5) Page 4