‘He was your brother,’ I said.
‘My brother.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s as if we’re talking about a complete stranger. I’m his only family, I should probably arrange his funeral, but the more I think about it, the more I realise I didn’t know him at all. So why do I have to do it?’ She looked at me. ‘Does that make sense?’
‘It does,’ I said. I could have said: he’s got travel insurance, let them deal with it, but I could tell she wasn’t here for advice. She was here to talk and I could listen. I hadn’t listened to her brother.
‘It doesn’t feel as if he was anything to do with me. He was a man I met once, for about five, ten minutes. Who scared me.’
One of her friends came over and handed her a large glass of white wine without saying anything.
‘I’ve already done this once. I’ve already helped arrange a funeral for my brother. The thought of doing it again, a second cremation, a second service, it just sends my head into a spin.’ Her hands started to shake and she had to put the glass down on the table to stop her wine from spilling. She tucked her hands under her legs. ‘I’m not sure what’s real and what isn’t, and that really worries me.’ She didn’t sound like a woman my age. She sounded like a frightened child, scared now that the dead had come alive. Alive and then dead again.
I wasn’t surprised that it had messed with her head.
‘It was all so tidy,’ she said. ‘Very sad, but tidy. I’d long ago figured out how to feel about it. My brother had been murdered but his body had been found and his murderer was dead. That was my story. That was who I was: the brave younger sister of the murdered teenager. Now I have no idea how to feel.’ Her voice was starting to sound angry. ‘My brother wasn’t murdered; he just abandoned us. And then a man who was a stranger came to my front door and I was angry with him and he killed himself and now I have to organise his funeral.’ She suddenly opened her eyes and looked at me. ‘Does any of this make sense? Because it doesn’t make sense to me. I feel as if all my anchors have been cut off and I’m cast adrift.’ She lifted her glass to her lips and took a big gulp. ‘The story I’ve been telling myself has been all wrong and I have no idea who I am any more.’
I understood. There was a story I had been telling myself as well. That I had made the right choice that morning.
‘Daniel told me that you two used to be classmates,’ I said.
‘I used to have this major crush on him.’ She smiled at Mark. ‘When I was about ten. Andre always teased me about him.’ The smile dropped from her face. ‘Before everything changed.’
Before the abuse started, probably.
‘Andre reminded Daniel about the two of you cycling to school together. That’s why he believed him.’ Why Daniel believed him when no one else had.
‘He said he filmed their chat, didn’t he?’
I nodded. ‘He did.’
‘That’s only barely legal.’
‘Andre knew about it. It was with his permission.’
‘Did he say anything …’ she lifted her glass of wine to her lips again, ‘anything about my parents?’
I thought back to how Andre had phrased it, what exactly he’d said. ‘He seemed to imply,’ I picked my words carefully, ‘that your parents had been aware of the abuse.’
Julia put her glass down and pressed her hands against her eyes.
Mark looked at me and very slowly shook his head, warning me to stop.
‘Is that how you remember it?’ I asked.
‘They knew Verbaan,’ Julia said. ‘He was a married man. His wife blamed my brother. My parents believed her.’
Anger rose up from my stomach to my eyes. ‘He was only fifteen.’
‘They kicked him out of the house.’
I tipped my head back to look at the ceiling.
‘They didn’t think they’d done anything wrong until years later when the preacher barred that bastard from the church after the other kids had come forward. Before he could even be convicted of murder. That’s what pulled them up. The fact that the preacher condemned the man whereas they’d condemned their own son.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Mark said.
‘What happened then?’ I asked, trying to keep Julia’s focus on me. To keep her talking.
‘Then Verbaan killed himself on the evening the story was in all the papers. That was the end: the case was closed and the family moved away.’
‘How much did you know about this at the time?’ There was a hard edge to my voice. ‘When your parents threw your brother out of the house, I mean.’
‘I knew my brother was in love with Paul Verbaan. Or thought he was anyway.’ She drank more wine. ‘Half the school was probably in love with him, and he had his favourites. All boys.’
I grimaced. That hadn’t been love. That had been grooming. ‘But did you know why your parents kicked him out?’
‘Yes.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘I overheard. I knew. Sorry. I can’t talk about this any more.’ She got up.
I didn’t stop her, but watched as she joined her friends.
Mark followed her with his eyes. ‘Are you allowed to do that?’ he asked as soon as she was out of earshot.
‘Do what?’
‘Question her.’
‘I wasn’t questioning her. I was asking her a few questions. That’s a very different thing.’ I smiled at him. ‘Plus I had a witness.’
‘It didn’t seem right to ask her all those things. She’s in shock. Shouldn’t you have cautioned her?’
‘She’s not a suspect, Mark. I’ve been wondering about why Andre never contacted his family, and now I think I know. That chat was very useful.’
‘Useful for you, but not for Julia.’
‘I’m trying to do my job here.’
‘And she was out with her friends because she’s upset and confused.’
‘A lot of the people I deal with are upset and confused.’
‘So shouldn’t you be more understanding? I think her brother behaved very selfishly—’
‘Selfishly?’ I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice. ‘Please explain.’
‘Coming here, talking to all those people, getting everybody upset all over again and then killing himself.’
‘The son of his abuser hit him; his sister didn’t believe him.’
‘Neither did you.’
A small noise escaped from my mouth. It sounded like a laugh but felt like a sob. ‘You’re right.’ I nodded. ‘You’re right, neither did I. And I’m making up for that.’
‘By punishing his sister? Are you angry with her because you’re angry at yourself?’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘I’m punishing her? Really?’
‘She was only twelve at the time. She wasn’t the one who kicked him out of the house.’
‘She didn’t stop her parents either. What do you think happens to fifteen-year-old boys who are sexually abused and end up on the street? Do you think they go back to school, finish their education and live happily ever after?’
Mark opened his mouth.
‘No, they don’t,’ I continued without giving him a chance to speak. ‘They’re the ones who are killed and buried and their bones found after five years.’
‘But Andre wasn’t killed.’
‘He was lucky. He seemed to have made a good life for himself in London. Can’t you see how this makes it all so much more devastating? And you say he was selfish? I’m sure he wanted to make amends.’
‘But he didn’t make amends, did he? People confess in order to feel better about themselves. They don’t think about what it does to the people who have to listen to their confession. And then he killed himself. That seems pretty selfish to me.’
‘People get so depressed that they don’t think rationally.’
‘But he stayed silent all these years. He didn’t tell his parents, or his sister, that he was still alive. Can you imagine what it must have been like for them?’
I shook my head in bewilderment. ‘Did you hear a di
fferent conversation from me? He was raped by his teacher, and when his orthodox religious family found out about it, they kicked him out on the street.’
‘Raped?’
‘Fifteen, Mark. He was fifteen. That’s statutory rape. The man was more than twenty years older than him. He was his teacher.’ I remembered looking at Andre’s school photo and thinking that he was the kind of kid who would stay quiet. ‘That was rape,’ I repeated. I stood up abruptly. ‘Do you want another drink?’
Mark seemed confused by the sudden change in subject. ‘Sure.’
I walked over to the bar, away from the discussion. I got him a drink and paid our bill. I put the glass on the table. ‘I’m going back to work,’ I said.
‘Lotte, don’t be like this,’ I heard him say as I walked away.
As soon as I went out through the door, I saw Julia smoking a cigarette. She saw me too.
‘You didn’t do anything wrong,’ she said. ‘I overheard what he said,’ she gestured with the cigarette in Mark’s direction, ‘about you questioning me. But don’t worry about it. I knew what you were doing. It’s fine.’
‘Thanks.’ I didn’t know what else to say.
Julia took a drag of the cigarette, and the end lit up bright in the dark November night. ‘I’m a social worker,’ she said. ‘I understand how these things work.’
That made everything easier. ‘The commissaris wants to do a press conference,’ I said. ‘He wants you to join him.’
‘Me? Are you kidding?’ She laughed. ‘He wants me to sit there and say how great everything is? No thank you.’
Pippi was happy when I got home. She meowed and demanded to be fed. I filled her food bowl and rubbed her little head and then remembered I had to feed myself too. I should have waited until after we’d eaten before I stormed out in a huff. If only Julia had arrived later, this wouldn’t have happened.
I went into the kitchen and got out a ring binder covered with food stains. Mark had said that I needed to eat better. I needed to look after myself. He’d given me the cooking course as a birthday present. The fact that it was called Cooking for One had an irony to it that I’d liked at the time. Now it didn’t feel so good.
I followed tonight’s recipe. Step 1: chop the onion. Step 2: fry it for fifteen minutes until brown at the edges. I set the timer on the oven clock. I filled the kettle and put it on. The great thing about the course was that it had made me realise that if you just followed the recipes to the letter, you would end up with something edible. I appreciated that this wasn’t like real life, where you could follow all the rules, set your priorities correctly and still find yourself in a total mess. In cooking, you fried the onions for fifteen minutes and they would have a brown edge. You boiled the pasta for twelve minutes – or ten for al dente – and it ended up perfectly cooked. You added half a teaspoon of oregano to the tomato sauce and suddenly it tasted wonderful. Miss out a step – like not adding the salt, as I had done the other week – and it was a disaster. Stick to the rules and you had a nice dinner. It had been a revelation to me.
I had tried to explain that to Mark and he had just laughed. Cooking isn’t like that, he’d said. It’s an art, not a science. It was a science in my experience. I’d now made every recipe in my ring binder at least twice. Maybe, after cooking the same fifteen recipes ten times or more, I would know them by heart, but at the moment, the laminated pages were my Bible, and their steps were rituals that had to be obeyed.
The kitchen clock announced that the pasta was cooked. I drained it and put it on a white plate. I poured the tomato sauce on top. I fished a fork out of the kitchen drawer and started winding the spaghetti around it. It tasted good. In five minutes, it was all gone. I gave the plate a rinse and put it in the dishwasher. I filled the tomato pan with water to let it soak. I hadn’t left the kitchen. It seemed extravagant to lay the table for one person. It was just as easy to eat standing up.
Once everything was tidied away, I went to my study and clipped a fresh sheet of paper to my architect’s table. It was one of the items the previous owner of my flat had left behind. She’d been an interior designer who’d needed the money; I’d needed furniture and a place to live. I’d taken over everything she had. The only thing that had changed recently was that some of Mark’s possessions had turned up, things he’d brought here so that he didn’t have to shuttle them back and forth with each visit.
I hadn’t thought the table would be useful, but it had turned out to be a great tool. I now used it for every case I worked on; it gave me space to sort out my thoughts, away from the office and in the privacy of my own home.
I tilted the table.
What I most wanted to make sense of was what Andre Nieuwkerk had been doing whilst he was in Amsterdam. I drew a long horizontal line on my paper. I marked in the days he had been here: Friday through to Tuesday.
On Friday evening he’d had dinner with Laurens Werda.
On Saturday evening he’d gone to Julia’s place.
His talk with Daniel had been on Monday afternoon.
On Tuesday morning he’d called Laurens. He’d met me. I had refused to talk to him. He’d killed himself maybe an hour later.
The words stared at me from the page and I tore the paper from the table.
What did this tell me? Nothing apart from that he didn’t meet anybody on Sunday. What had he been doing? Somehow I couldn’t believe he’d spent the day in church.
This wasn’t even the right thing to focus on. Thomas’s reminder that there had been another victim, that another young man had been murdered thirty years ago, stuck in my head.
That might be a much more interesting angle to look at. After all, suicide wasn’t a crime.
Daniel might think Andre could be blamed for his father’s death, but really he couldn’t be. When people killed themselves, that was their choice. Their responsibility.
What someone else might have done leading up to it was completely irrelevant.
As I drew another horizontal line on a fresh piece of paper, I accepted that I didn’t actually believe that.
Don’t think about it, I admonished myself. Focus on the person who was murdered thirty years ago. Think about the family of that young man, a family who needed to know what happened to their son. Julia Nieuwkerk had thought she’d scattered her brother’s ashes all those years ago, but it had been someone else’s brother. Someone else’s child.
I would work on what I could control. There was nothing I could do to turn back time to Tuesday morning. I could not meet Andre again, I couldn’t stand in the red-light district and have a long chat with him instead of going to the hospital to talk to Peter de Waal.
What I could do was try to find out who had been murdered. I could give a family some answers, and thinking about what Andre Nieuwkerk had done while he was in Amsterdam wasn’t going to help me with that.
Instead I should go through the boxes that were coming up from the archives and find out where the original investigating team had gone wrong.
That would be my job for tomorrow.
I put the cap back on my marker pen, picked up my phone and WhatsApped Mark. Sorry, I wrote. This case is getting to me. It wasn’t entirely truthful, but it was as good an explanation as any. What I should apologise for was letting my boyfriend see what my job actually entailed. Giving him an insight into my mind. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.
My phone beeped a reply. I’m sorry too.
I stared at the screen to see if there was going to be a follow-up message to tell me what he was apologising for.
It didn’t come.
That night I dreamed of Andre Nieuwkerk. He was standing on the bridge at the edge of the Lange Niezel with a pot of pills in his hand. I told him I didn’t care. I told him I didn’t believe he was going to take them. I told him I had more important things to do, and stood in the darkness of a November morning and watched him as he swallowed the pills. In my dream, I waited with him as he lost consciousness and died.
Chapter 14
When I got into work the next morning, I saw that the files had been brought up from the archives. I opened one of the boxes and spread the photos out in front of me. They were all of the remains that would become known as the Body in the Dunes. Close-ups of the bones and the skull featured prominently. All that forensics at the time had been able to say was that the dead man had been between fifteen and twenty-five years old, based on the bones in the wrist. The cause of death had been ruled as strangulation, based on the fractures of the bones in the neck. On the desk next to mine, I put down the photos of Andre Nieuwkerk. I was eerily reminded that this was probably exactly what the original team had done over twenty-five years ago: they had also compared these photos. Based on the shape of the skull and the length of the bones, they had decided that it was Andre Nieuwkerk’s body.
Now we knew that they had been wrong.
I looked at the photos. If this young man wasn’t Andre Nieuwkerk, then who was he?
The detectives at the time didn’t think he’d been killed where he’d been found. They thought he’d probably been transported to the dunes in a vehicle. The burial site hadn’t been that far away from a path that would have been easily accessible by car. The theory was that the murderer had gone there in the middle of the night, dug the grave and dumped the body, which had been stripped of its clothes. I nodded in agreement as I read the report. The body had been found downhill from the path. That made sense. Dead bodies were heavy to carry and nobody would have wanted to go uphill in the dunes if there was a convenient hollow nearby.
There had been nothing on the body to identify who he was. I totally understood the difficulties in solving this case. Today we would have taken a DNA sample and compared that to the DNA of the families of the missing men. Even now, though, we still found bodies that we couldn’t identify, especially if the person in question had not been reported missing. A couple of years ago, there had been a drive to unearth unidentified bodies from a number of cemeteries, to see if, with modern technology, we could now find out who they were. Give them a proper burial and give the families closure.
A Death at the Hotel Mondrian (Lotte Meerman Book 5) Page 11