‘I can picture the shape of people’s skulls when I look at them,’ he said. ‘It’s because I used to do forensic archaeology before I came here. I looked at a lot of skulls.’
‘Can you see mine?’ I joked.
He scrutinised my head. It was an odd sensation to watch his eyes trace my face’s contours. ‘If we find you dead,’ he said, ‘I’ll know it’s you.’
It made me laugh. ‘If I decomposed to a nameless skeleton, you mean.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So these photos,’ I said.
‘It’s really tricky.’ He looked at them both again. ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t rule either one of them out. I’m really sorry.’
‘You misunderstand.’ I stood next to him and looked at the photos too. ‘I don’t necessarily want you to rule either one of them out. To know that you think both of them are possible is actually very interesting.’ I pointed at the photo of Andre. ‘We know it isn’t him.’
‘Oh, okay.’
‘This is the man who killed himself the other week. Remember him?’
‘The opioid overdose?’
‘That’s the one. Twenty-five years ago, they misidentified this skeleton. I now think it wasn’t this boy,’ I tapped on Andre’s photo, ‘but this one instead.’
Edgar nodded. ‘I can have a look at the skull and check more photos and try and give you a better answer.’
‘The skull no longer exists. All we have is those photos.’
‘Ah. Okay. Well then the best I can do is to say that I wouldn’t rule it out. It’s possible. It’s very possible.’
Back in our office, Charlie was standing at the whiteboard. Even he had come in at the weekend.
‘We can wipe all of this, I guess,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘Thomas told me what you guys discovered last night.’ He sounded disappointed to have missed the big moment. ‘That Andre took Theo’s identity. That Theo might be the Body in the Dunes. That Andre maybe killed him.’
I took the cleaner from his hand. ‘Shall we find some evidence of any of this? Shall we actually try to make sure of it before jumping to conclusions?’
Charlie’s eyes lit up. ‘Do you think he didn’t kill him?’
I took out my phone and showed him the photos I’d taken of the corkboard in Andre’s study. ‘This is all information that’s in the public domain; what anybody googling Andre Nieuwkerk would have come up with. There isn’t necessarily anything suspicious about any of these articles.’
Charlie looked through the images. ‘Did it look as if he had been researching it for a while?’
I thought about that. ‘Actually, no,’ I said. ‘It all looked new.’
Thomas came into the office. He threw a glance at what I was showing Charlie and then sat down at his desk. ‘I’ve been thinking about this all night,’ he said, ‘and to be honest, Lotte, we might not be able to prove anything.’
‘I know that, but I do think we should dig a bit deeper, don’t you? We don’t know anything apart from that Andre used Theo’s identity and that there were two young men who looked alike enough to confuse our forensic scientists at the time.’
‘But would it fit?’ Charlie said.
I got up and went to the whiteboard, tapping on the horizontal timeline at the same dates that I’d pointed out to Charlie before. ‘The skeleton was found in April 1993. They said that to have reached that stage of decomposition, the victim must have died between three and five years before then. Look here.’ I drew a thick line from April 1990, the latest date of death according to Forensics, and February 1989, when Andre had been reported missing. ‘Remember I said before that there was a fourteen-month window? Nobody ever tried to track Andre’s movements after he’d gone missing, because they thought he’d been murdered.’
‘In that time he could have met Theo,’ Charlie said, ‘and killed him.’
‘Exactly. Nobody looked into that.’
‘When did Theo’s parents see him last?’
‘It’s a bit vague,’Thomas said. ‘They believed he had gone to London, because he renewed his passport there in October 1991. They thought he was still alive then.’
I marked that date on my timeline too.
‘But that’s outside the time zone.’
‘Exactly, so if Theo Brand is the Body in the Dunes, he was already dead at this point.’
‘And Andre was using his passport,’ Thomas said. ‘Probably,’ he added before I could say anything.
‘Julia didn’t think her brother had a passport,’ I said, ‘so if Andre and Theo met, it must have been here. In the Netherlands.’
‘Or at least somewhere he could have gone without a passport,’Thomas said. ‘He could have travelled from here to Paris, for example, and nobody would have checked.’
‘I think it would have been tough to get into the UK without a passport.’
‘But he got in on someone else’s passport,’ Charlie said.
‘They looked enough alike for our forensic scientists to have got their identity wrong. I went down to the lab and checked with Edgar Ling just now, and he said he wouldn’t rule out either guy as having been the Body in the Dunes. Of course he only had the photos, but there’s no reason to assume the other team were incompetent when they misidentified him. The two of them looked similar.’
‘And everybody thought Theo was still alive.’
‘Right, so they didn’t even know there were two guys who might have fitted that description.’ I was thinking about how different the two young men looked because they had different-coloured hair. ‘I guess Andre bleached his hair blond and could have passed for Theo easily enough, especially if the photo on his passport was a couple of years old.’
‘That’s a good point,’ Thomas said. ‘Theo was two years older than Andre.’
‘Right, so the fifteen-year-old becomes an eighteen year-old. That must have made things easier for him too.’
‘He was now legally an adult.’
‘So you think Andre killed Theo at some point here?’ Charlie drew a dotted line between the date on which Andre had gone missing and the end point of the decomposing window. ‘That’s roughly a year, sometime between February 1989 and April 1990.’
‘If we could narrow that down, it would be helpful.’
Thomas nodded. ‘If we could find out when he got to the UK …’
‘We know he was there before October 1991, when the passport was renewed.’
‘If Andre had killed him,’ Charlie said, ‘don’t you think he would have gone to the UK immediately?’ He shook his head. ‘He must have been over the moon when he himself was declared dead. It meant he’d got away with murder.’
‘And blamed it on his abuser,’ Thomas added.
‘Was that even true?’ Charlie asked. ‘Maybe he wasn’t abused at all. Maybe all of it was a lie.’
‘I’ll look into that,’Thomas said. ‘Didn’t he tell Daniel that there had been other kids who had reported Verbaan?’
‘But they withdrew their statements,’ Charlie said.
Thomas shrugged. ‘That’s not that unusual. Sometimes people come forward to stop someone from abusing more victims. When that person is dead, the reason will have disappeared. They might no longer feel the need to go through painful memories, to go through something that is difficult for them to talk about. What I’ll do is check the archives. The names of those accusers will still be there. We can follow up with a couple of them. It will be straightforward enough to confirm that.’
I went outside. The rain pummelled the little courtyard garden. This was one of those rare moments when I wished I smoked. A couple of my colleagues were huddling underneath a tiny awning to get their nicotine fix without drowning. A scream of frustration sat right at the bottom of my throat, ready to be unleashed towards the sky. Only the smokers stopped me from letting it out. They were already looking at me full of curiosity. I took another step forward and let the rain wash away some of my fr
ustration. I stayed there until both my colleagues had finished their cigarettes. The rain plastered my hair against my skull. The coolness calmed me, but I would look a mess.
On the way back to our office, I popped into the ladies’ and dried my hair with a paper towel. I stared at myself in the mirror. This was insane. I’d felt guilty for turning away a suicidal man, and now I was thinking that he might have been a murderer. I held my hand under the tap to cool the inside of my wrist. I had a brush in my handbag, but that was in the office. I pulled another paper towel from the dispenser and rubbed it vigorously over my head. I looked like a hedgehog. I combed my hair back with my fingers and tied it at the nape of my neck. It would have to do.
I thought I’d better talk to someone who had knowledge of Andre’s London history. I put a call in to Laurens Werda.
Chapter 23
Charlie and I crossed Amsterdam to go to Laurens’ house. It was Sunday morning. He was at home. There must be something good about having a normal job, because then you didn’t have to work at the weekend.
‘Thanks for seeing us,’ I said.
‘That’s fine. At least I’m not one of those people who goes to church religiously.’ He smiled at his own pun.
I put a polite smile on my face. ‘What did Theo tell you about his life before you met? What did he do?’
‘Are you still calling him Theo? He’s Andre Nieuwkerk, isn’t he?’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I read about it. Someone sent me a link to the story. I couldn’t believe it at first.’
‘You had no idea?’
‘No, none. It was the name you asked me about as well, wasn’t it? Andre Martin Nieuwkerk. When you came to see me.’
‘Yes. Okay, we can call him Andre then. When you met him, he was already in London, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes, I met him in the late nineties.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He worked in a clothes shop. He was the manager. He loved clothes.’
‘Had he worked there for a while?’
‘Yes, he was very proud of that. He left school without any qualifications, started as a sales assistant in London and then worked his way up. He worked as a store manager and was one of their main fashion buyers by the time we split up, ten years later.’
I nodded. That made sense. ‘Do you know when he moved to London?’
‘I’m not sure. But I know that he became a British citizen in 1995 and I think you have to have been in the country for five years before you can apply for that. So maybe in 1990? Sorry, I’m really not sure of the dates, we didn’t talk about that much.’
‘Did he seem reluctant to discuss it?’
‘Reluctant? No, not really. More that it didn’t really come up as such. But I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have wanted to be buried here.’
‘His sister is dealing with that.’
‘His sister? Why?’
‘She’s his next of kin.’
‘I don’t think Andre would have wanted his sister to arrange his funeral.’
‘Why do you say that? Did he say anything like that to you? Did he mention his sister?’
‘No,’ Laurens said. ‘He didn’t talk about her at all.’
‘Did you know he even had a sister?’ I asked him.
‘Well, he mentioned he had, but that they’d lost touch. I always thought she had something to do with his tough childhood.’
‘Did you know that his family thought he’d died? Did you not know about that?’
‘No, I had no idea. Even though he was often secretive, I’m surprised he’d have kept something like that from me.’
‘What do you mean, secretive?’
‘That was probably the wrong word. It’s just that he was a very private person. He never talked about his parents much, or his sister. He didn’t want to discuss his childhood, even though you’d think we’d talk about Dutch things together. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I knew his relationship with his parents was terrible, but that was all. I had no idea about the abuse or that he had been thrown out of the house.’ He rubbed his hand over his head. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t interfere. I should let her get on with it. I’m sorry to have mentioned it to you,’ he added.
Chapter 24
Julia called me the next day. She had come back to the Netherlands and told me that one of her old classmates had got in touch, a man who’d been in the same class as her and Daniel in Elspeet. He said he wanted to talk to her. He’d read about Andre and thought there were things she needed to know. I asked her if she remembered this man, remembered what kind of kid he’d been at school.
Quiet, she said. The kind of kid who wouldn’t have talked.
It was when she said things like that that I was reminded she was a social worker. She was looking at things differently today than she would have done at the time.
I cycled to my flat to pick up my car. Last night, I’d gone to Mark’s house to spend the evening with him. I’d told him about my London trip with Julia and how I’d talked to her and made amends. He said that he trusted my professional judgement on whether to ask someone questions or not. Then we hadn’t talked about the case any more and had sat down for a nice dinner.
I picked Julia up at her place and drove both of us to the guy’s house in one of the small villages not far from Amsterdam. As we sped through the relentless flatness of the polder, the early-morning sun created golden edges along the thick dark clouds and I could see as far as I wanted; nothing interrupted my view. The long, straight road followed a small canal from field to field. There were no other cars. There was just Julia and me on this road late in the morning.
When the door to the farmhouse opened, we were greeted by a woman who only came up to my shoulder. I was conscious of wanting to bend down to speak to her. Her blue trousers were clean and she wore pink slippers with pompoms at the front.
‘Hi, I’m Julia Nieuwkerk. Kars called me. I arranged to see him?’
The woman stuck out her hand. ‘Frida Borst,’ she said.
‘Detective Lotte Meerman,’ I introduced myself. I wasn’t sure what exactly Kars had to tell us. It could be purely personal, but I wasn’t going to run the risk of being accused of subterfuge.
She showed us through to the kitchen and called her husband on his mobile. He would join us in a few minutes, she said.
We sat at the large table and were offered cups of filter coffee, which I gratefully accepted. One wall of the kitchen was adorned with photos of family holidays; they all seemed to be in winter. Smiling children and parents. Three children. I got up and looked at the pictures more closely. Dark-haired mother, blond father, two dark-haired children, one blond.
‘You like winter sports?’
‘It’s busy on the farm in summer.’
There was silence again and I drank my coffee. ‘This is a lovely house,’ I said, looking around the kitchen.
She made a disapproving noise, as if I’d said something out of order. Her mouth tightened until it looked like a prune, pulled into wrinkles that hadn’t been there before. ‘We liked it here,’ she said. She poured more coffee into her mug, but spilled it over the edge. She grabbed a dishcloth from the sink and scrubbed the coffee away with more force than was needed.
I didn’t know what I’d said to upset the woman. I stopped the small talk, as it wasn’t doing any good, and took a gulp of coffee.
The outside door opened and the farmer, Julia’s classmate, came in: a man in his early forties, in blue overalls. He took off his wellies in the corner of the kitchen that was specifically used for this: multiple pairs stood underneath a row of coats. He stepped into a pair of slippers and came further into the kitchen. His wife poured him a coffee without asking. I wouldn’t have automatically picked him out as a farmer; like his wife, he seemed too slight a figure, a man who would depend on tractors rather than dig himself. But then what did I know about farming?
‘Julia,’ he said. ‘It’s been a while. Do you rem
ember me?’
‘Of course I do.’ She introduced me and we shook hands. His hands were clean but I could feel the rough skin and calluses when he gripped mine.
‘I never really talked about what happened,’ he said as he pulled out a chair to join us at the table. His wife put his coffee in front of him, then sat next to him and put her hand on his thigh. ‘When the story about your brother initially broke, when they identified the skeleton, the police came to school. Do you remember that?’
Julia nodded. ‘I do.’
‘I talked to them then. We weren’t taught by Verbaan any more at that point – we’d moved to another class years before – but I told the officers some of what had happened. Then, when he killed himself, it seemed that everything was in order. It was all fine. There was no point dragging his name through the mud any further.’
‘How old were you then?’
‘Seventeen, the year we were all graduating.’
‘Not dragging his name through the mud,’ I said. ‘Was that your decision?’
‘It was what my parents said. I think they also wanted to protect me. They were shocked when they found out.’ He looked at Frida. ‘It was harder to tell them than to tell the police. I hadn’t told them about it before, it all happened because we weren’t getting on.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘Verbaan preyed on kids who were lonely. Outsiders. Like I was, like your brother was.’ He nodded at Julia. ‘You knew that, right?’
‘I didn’t at the time,’ Julia said.
‘You knew your brother didn’t fit in.’
‘I knew that. I didn’t know about the abuse.’
A Death at the Hotel Mondrian (Lotte Meerman Book 5) Page 17