A Death at the Hotel Mondrian (Lotte Meerman Book 5)

by Anja de Jager

  I didn’t have the heart to push her away, so I stayed sitting. The architect’s table in my study was calling me to come and draw what I knew about this case so far, but I didn’t listen. Instead I stared at the dark windows and rubbed the soft spot behind my cat’s ear. It was soothing and I let my thoughts drift. I had nothing to do other than think, because the TV was off as well as the radio, and both my laptop and my phone were out of reach.

  The cat dug her claws into my arm to show me how much she liked being scratched underneath her chin. I rested back against the sofa cushion and Pippi meowed at being shifted slightly, then settled in a more comfortable position on my lap, her head resting heavily on my stomach.

  Before, I’d thought that Andre’s decision to change name and nationality had been a deliberate act to make a completely new life for himself away from the Netherlands.

  Now, I knew that it hadn’t been like that at all. He hadn’t merely changed his name but had taken someone else’s identity. So what was with the corkboard in his office? Did it make any sense? He had looked into his own murder. He had seen the press coverage.

  It meant that he could have guessed what was going to happen as soon as he went public: this could be a huge story. He was the man who had died but who had come alive again. There would have been no hiding, no more privacy for him ever again.

  That was why he’d told Daniel in person, and said that everybody was going to know soon anyway.

  But that press coverage would mean that everything would be out in the open. Including the fact that he’d taken Theo Brand’s identity.

  I thought back to the morning I’d first met Andre, when there’d been a camera crew at the hospital. I’d turned my back towards the cameras to avoid my face being on screen. I didn’t like the publicity my previous cases had brought me and I would much prefer to stay anonymous. Maybe Andre had wanted the same thing. As he’d taken Theo’s identity, he wouldn’t have wanted to go public with this, but he had still had an urge to tell people. His sister needed to know. The family of the man who’d been accused of his murder needed to know.

  This felt like a real possibility: he had come to the Netherlands only to tell the people who needed to know, but had done his best to stay anonymous otherwise.

  He had tried to tell the Brand family too. Did that make sense? I tried to think back to when I’d met him. He’d been calm and collected. Not someone running from the police or trying to hide the fact that he’d murdered someone. So why had he come up to me that morning and said that people needed to know? Why tell the police after he’d worked so hard to change nationality, to destroy the paper trail, to make it seem that Theo Brand had still been alive?

  Why had he come to Amsterdam? Why would anybody do what he’d done?

  I rubbed Pippi’s ear in the hope that this would make me think better. She stretched out on her side, extended a paw and seemed to hug my stomach, making a soft meowing noise when my fingers dug too hard into her fur.

  Once again it dawned on me that Andre had made things worse for everybody.

  Everyone he had spoken to was in a worse position than they had been before he’d come to Amsterdam.

  In my head, I went through the list of the people he’d visited one by one.

  Julia used to have a clear view of who she was: the sister of the boy who had been murdered. She had become a social worker to make up for what her parents had done, to protect other children from what her brother had gone through. She’d felt guilty about the fact that her parents had kicked her abused brother out of the house, and had worked hard to make amends. Just when she felt she’d succeeded, Andre had come back and pulled the rug out from under her. He hadn’t been murdered. He’d moved to London and never contacted his family again.

  I was just glad that she didn’t know about Theo Brand. I was glad she didn’t know that Charlie was convinced Andre had been a murderer.

  When Andre had gone to see Daniel, he’d been very specific about the childhood abuse and had even made Daniel aware that his own mother had known what had happened. She had been complicit. She had blamed the victim and gone to Andre’s parents’ house. She had been the one who’d got him kicked out. Andre had made matters worse for Daniel not just by telling him all this but also by then committing suicide. He hadn’t done what Daniel had wanted. He hadn’t cleared Paul Verbaan’s name. Not only had he given Daniel knowledge that he probably didn’t want, but he had also taken away Daniel’s faith in his father.

  Then there was the Brand family. He’d suggested that their son had died, but hadn’t given them any proof, no evidence. He’d only given them more questions. Why had he talked to them? He could have told them how he’d met Theo after he’d been made homeless. He could have filled in some of Theo’s movements. If he’d wanted to make amends for murdering their son, he should have told them what had happened.

  In fact, he hadn’t given answers to any of the people he’d been to see.

  Had that been what he’d set out to do? Not apologise, but take revenge?

  Had I helped him make everybody’s life worse?

  I moved and wriggled until Pippi decided it was better to get off my lap. I needed to start writing things down, if only to sort out the mess in my head. I went to my study to make that drawing.

  Everything I’d found out about what Andre had been doing in the Netherlands seemed to confuse me. There were really two different, but potentially linked, things going on here, and I thought it would be useful to separate these. First of all, if his friend Carol was to be believed – and I could see no reason why she would have lied – Andre had decided to do some investigation into his background after he’d found out Theo Brand’s mother had died. I chewed the end of my pen. Did I believe this story? It was possible, of course, that it had happened like that. Andre had been completely unaware of everything, wanted to make amends and rushed to the Netherlands to talk to his sister, the son of the guy who’d abused him and the family of a boy he thought might have been the real murder victim. He also met with his ex-partner.

  I wrote the first three names on the left-hand side of my paper and Laurens Werda’s name on the right. There were differences between these two groups. The left-hand people had something to do with Andre’s past and his disappearance. The person on the right belonged to a much more recent past. The ones on the left had been visited because he’d wanted to apologise. All three had told me that he’d been very clear about that. He’d said sorry.

  The ex-partner had just been a social call maybe. Laurens didn’t know anything about the Body in the Dunes or that his partner’s real name was Andre Nieuwkerk. There was something that bugged me about this. I scratched the back of my head with the pen, as if that would help me bring the thoughts to the foreground.

  What kind of person wouldn’t tell their partner of more than ten years what their real name was? The answer came to me: someone who had something big to hide.

  Someone who had murdered a man and subsequently stolen his identity.

  It was an answer I didn’t like. It should make me feel better, less guilty about Andre’s death, but somehow it didn’t.

  My doorbell rang and I reluctantly left my drawing.

  It was Ingrid. I hesitated for a second, then buzzed her in. I stood by my door and waited for her to come up the three flights of stairs.

  ‘Come in,’ I said. ‘Can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee?’

  ‘I’ll have a cup of tea if you’re making some.’

  I wasn’t going to but I also didn’t mind. It would only take two seconds. Ingrid plopped down on the sofa and I went into the kitchen.

  ‘We’re going to arrest Yilmaz,’ she said from the front room, as if it was the distance between us that allowed her to say it. Maybe not being able to see me made it feel as anonymous as confessing to a priest.

  I held the kettle under the tap. ‘Ingrid, don’t do this,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t do what, Lotte?’

  ‘You know Erol Yilmaz
didn’t beat up Peter de Waal.’

  ‘You don’t know he’s innocent.’

  ‘It will never stand up in court,’ I said as I put the kettle on. ‘Arresting him now will cost him his job.’ I joined her again in the front room. I would be able to hear the kettle click off from there.

  ‘And not arresting him will cost me mine.’ She turned away from me angrily, maybe because she’d said more than she wanted. ‘It’s easy for you to do this; you don’t care. You’re happy staying a detective all your life. Me, I want a career. I want to get promoted. I do what the boss wants me to do.’

  ‘This is insane. You can’t do this.’

  ‘You were there with me that morning. You saw how angry Yilmaz was. Did he look like an innocent man to you?’

  ‘He looked like a man who was sure we wouldn’t believe him. And he was right, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Don’t interfere, Lotte. Just don’t.’

  In the kitchen, the kettle whirred and bubbled and then clicked to let me know it had finished boiling. ‘Hold on just one second. I’ll be right back.’

  I dipped a tea bag quickly in both mugs and went back into the living room. I put the mugs on the table and sat down. ‘I was there that morning, you’re right. I chose to come with you instead of listening to Andre Nieuwkerk, and he ended up killing himself.’ I wanted to sound factual, but thinking about the choice I’d made that morning made me feel awful. ‘And you know what?’ My voice sounded thick and unnatural however much I tried to control it. ‘I regret that. I’ll probably always regret it. I chose to help out another police officer. I chose to help out my friend.’

  ‘You see me as your friend?’ She picked up her mug, probably just to give herself something to do, and blew the steam away.

  I was quiet for a few seconds, taken aback that she was questioning what to me was the least controversial thing I’d said. Would I have told her how guilty I felt if I didn’t see her as my friend? I wouldn’t have told any other colleague. I would never have told something like this to Thomas or Charlie. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I’m just surprised,’ Ingrid said. ‘You tell me I’m your friend and then you try to persuade me not to arrest this guy. Now I know how you treat your friends.’ She took a sip of her tea.

  I shook my head. ‘I know what the pressure’s like, Ingrid. I know what working for Bauer is like. But I can’t let this go. A man killed himself because I chose to help you.’

  ‘I talked to Bauer. I talked to the commissaris. I told them what happened that morning. They still want to go ahead with this. The prosecutor has signed the arrest warrant. We all want the same thing, all apart from you.’

  ‘I know what I saw is inconvenient …’

  ‘Inconvenient? That’s what you call it?’ Her hands started to shake and she had to put the mug down to stop the tea from spilling. She tucked them under her legs.

  ‘… but I saw what I saw.’

  ‘And so did Peter de Waal!’

  ‘I don’t believe him.’

  ‘I know you don’t, Lotte, and I’ve done my best to work with you on that. I interviewed him again.’

  Pippi sauntered back into the room. I stroked her and she purred. ‘You asked me to go with you to talk to his colleague.’

  ‘Because I wanted you to agree with me! Don’t you see? You say you’re my friend, but to me you’re my mentor. I want you to believe in me. I want you to think I’m doing a good job.’

  ‘You honestly think Yilmaz did this.’ The reality had only just dawned on me.

  ‘It’s what the top people think. It’s what public opinion thinks. It’s best for the police force if we all act the same.’

  ‘The same?’

  ‘Don’t step out of line. Please.’

  ‘But I would be lying.’

  ‘You don’t have to lie. You just have to stay quiet.’

  I’d seen it that morning, I’d seen how tired Ingrid was. I’d gone with her because I’d been worried that lack of sleep would cause her to make wrong decisions. Of course everything would be easier if I hadn’t done that, but I had. I couldn’t undo it. I couldn’t unsee what I’d seen.

  ‘I wish you’d made another choice that morning.’ Her voice was bitter.

  ‘So do I, Ingrid, so do I.’ But I hadn’t. I’d seen Erol Yilmaz, and I couldn’t stay quiet.

  ‘Maybe then I also shouldn’t ignore what I saw that morning. I saw you refuse to talk to a man who ended up killing himself. But you haven’t told anybody about that. I’ve been keeping quiet about it for you, but maybe I shouldn’t any more.’

  IV

  The Victim

  Chapter 28

  The next morning, I was still in bed, scanning the news headlines on my phone, when the outcome of the commissaris’s way of dealing with things stared me in the face.

  Body in the Dunes finally identified, one headline said.

  Andre Nieuwkerk stole victim’s identity.

  Was assumed victim really the killer?

  I called Julia’s phone, but there was no answer. I jumped out of bed and got dressed as quickly as I could. I didn’t know when he had briefed the press, but I could read their reaction on my screen.

  I rushed down the stairs. I had my car keys in my hand, ready to drive over to Julia’s, but I paused at the car door. Going on my bike would be slower than getting a clear run in the car, but the chances of that were slim at this time of day. The chances were that I would be stuck in traffic. The cold of the morning was starting to bite, but I put my keys away, fished my gloves and hat out of my handbag and got on my bike.

  The air felt like winter, cold and crisp, but cycling to Watergraafsmeer would warm me up in no time.

  In the end, it took about twenty-five minutes, crossing from old areas to new. I turned into the road of small houses, and if I hadn’t already known where she lived, I would have been able to guess it from the crowd of people outside her door.

  I hadn’t expected the invading army in front of her house. I’d thought there’d be one or two reporters and that was it. On both sides of the street, net curtains twitched as neighbours tried to find out what was going on.

  ‘What’s it like to find out that your brother was a murderer?’ one woman shouted loudly in the direction of her window. The curtains were pulled tightly closed and not a trace of light escaped from inside the house. ‘Talk to us, Julia.’

  I remembered that she had told me her flat did not have a back door. I remembered how small the place was. I could only too easily imagine her sitting at her table trying to ignore the noise outside. I pulled back a little way – I didn’t want the reporters to see me – and called her again.

  ‘You must be shocked,’ a man shouted. ‘Or do you still think he was innocent?’

  Her voicemail picked up. ‘Are you inside?’ I said. ‘Call me back if you want me to get you out of there.’ I wasn’t going to barge through a mob of journalists if Julia wasn’t even at home. Plus, if I was going to ring her doorbell and she wasn’t going to open up, there was no point anyway.

  ‘Give us your side of the story.’

  Maybe she was trying to ignore everybody.

  When the commissaris had told me I’d given him information he could work with, what he’d meant was that he could spin it to the press. They had drawn their own conclusions. That these conclusions were not that far away from my own didn’t make it any better. And that the commissaris had told the press before I’d told Julia only made it worse.

  Should I have realised that this was what he was going to do?

  I called her again, but she still didn’t answer.

  I didn’t want to get unnecessarily worried. Just because her brother had killed himself, that didn’t mean Julia would do the same. She hadn’t seemed suicidal at all the last time I’d seen her. She’d been her own grounded self. She had probably switched off her phone.

  I called her landline number, the one that Andre had had in his diary, but she didn’t answer that either. It did
n’t even ring; just went straight to voicemail. That was the number that was in the phone directory, so I hadn’t expected her to answer. Disconnecting the phone from the wall was the first thing you did when journalists tried to contact you.

  On the other side of the street, I saw a car pull up. It stopped close to the swarm of journalists. The door opened and a man got out. It was Daniel Verbaan. He was wearing his baseball cap again, but this time with the peak pulled low to hide his face.

  It concerned me that he was here. I monitored the journalists’ faces closely, but none showed any sign of recognising him. They hardly gave him a glance; they were too focused on Julia’s front door. Daniel must have seen the newspaper headlines too. What was going on in his head? Not only had his father been innocent of murder, but the man who was presumed to have been the victim had actually been the murderer?

  I could only imagine how angry he must be right now. He’d punched Andre in a fit of rage.

  I propped my bike against a lamppost and quickly pushed the lock shut. I shoved the key into my pocket and walked up to Daniel. To my surprise, I saw Julia’s front door open. The journalists pushed in, cameras at the ready. She held a hand in front of her face. Daniel stepped up to her and put his arm around her shoulders.

  I barged in and showed my badge. ‘Police. Let these people through.’ I recognised Monique Blom. I was surprised she was here.

  ‘Do you have a comment for us? Anything?’

  I shook my head. I did my best to guard my face with my arm to stay out of sight of the cameras and helped Daniel shepherd Julia out of the house and towards his car. She got in the back and I followed her.

  She turned to me. ‘Why are you here?’ she said. ‘This is all your fault.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I had no idea this was going to happen.’