Death on the Canal

by Anja de Jager

  But at least I’d had money. Because I’d given my ex-husband seed capital for his company, he’d had to buy me out after our divorce. It had left me very well off. Money doesn’t make you happy but it’s remarkably useful when your life falls apart. It allows you to buy a lovely apartment on one of Amsterdam’s canals so that even if everything else is wrong, at least you have a roof over your head.

  It seemed that Ronald didn’t even have that. ‘I’ll drive to mine,’ I said. ‘You can leave your stuff there and just take what you need.’

  He glared at me and I thought he was going to refuse. Then he nodded his thanks. I guessed he had no choice, nobody else to help him.

  We got in the car.

  ‘You have no idea how much it cost me,’ he said softly after he’d fastened his seat belt, ‘when I saved your life.’

  ‘How much it cost you?’ My hand automatically went to my right shoulder. ‘You were the one who put me in danger in the first place.’

  ‘Thanks for testifying at my hearing,’ he said.

  ‘You still got fired.’

  ‘But at least I didn’t go to jail.’

  My father told me I owed Ronald my life. Some of the anger I’d felt towards him ebbed away. ‘That security footage of Piotr,’ I said. ‘Why were you showing me that?’

  ‘You couldn’t tell?’

  ‘Tell what? They had sex in the changing rooms. We knew that anyway. Well, I didn’t know they did it in the changing room, so that was very helpful information, thank you.’ I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice. ‘But it doesn’t shine any new light on this case.’

  Ronald didn’t respond. I parked the car along the canal, not too far from my front door, then grabbed a bin bag and carried it up the stairs to my apartment. This was not what I needed with a sore head. I opened the door to the spare room. ‘Just drop your stuff in there.’

  I went back down for another bag. What hadn’t looked like much stuff standing on the pavement was an awful lot when you had to lug it up to the top floor.

  ‘Can I get you a coffee, or some water?’ I offered it on autopilot as if he was a welcome guest. Also, if I was making coffee I didn’t have to go up and down those stairs again. Doing exercise with a hangover really wasn’t great.

  ‘Thanks. I’d love a coffee.’

  I looked at my watch. I had to be at work in an hour. I did my best to ignore the sound of Ronald putting his things in my spare bedroom. He went down the stairs again. I put a fresh filter in the machine and added two scoops of ground coffee, then an extra scoop. I needed it. I filled the water tank and switched the machine on. What had I seen on that footage? Two people going into a changing room. Alex had laughed and said that they had been really quick.

  Ronald came back into the flat after his final trip up and down the stairs and closed the front door.

  The coffee machine hissed and I watched the black liquid drip into the glass jug. I thought about the security tape again. Had that footage really only been a minute? I’d been watching a closed door and time always seemed to go more slowly when nothing moved. But Natalie had come out looking immaculate sixty seconds after Piotr had closed the door behind her. Not a hair out of place. Her white dress – if I’d remembered it correctly – had been exactly as it had been when they went in. What was it she’d said? That sending messages was the best part? The coffee finished dripping. Maybe they’d just kissed. Still, sixty seconds … I needed to see that footage again.

  ‘Do you want milk or sugar?’ I said.

  There was no response. I poured and took both cups into the front room. Ronald was fast asleep on the sofa. I looked down at him for a moment. I couldn’t escape the thought that this could so easily have been me. Ingrid had testified at my hearing, just like I had done at Ronald’s. I knew that if I hadn’t had CCTV to back everything up, I could have lost my job. I could be the one working all hours as a security guard.

  I put the coffee down and shook his shoulder until he opened his eyes. ‘Drink this,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry.’ He sat up.

  I took a seat on the other sofa. ‘I can give my father a call,’ I said. ‘I know he’ll put you up for a week or so.’

  He looked at me with bleary eyes. ‘He would?’

  ‘He seems to have forgiven you.’

  Ronald rested his head in his hands for a second, then looked back at me. If possible, he seemed even more tired than when he was asleep. ‘Alkmaar isn’t a great place for me to be any more. It isn’t big enough to hide.’

  ‘Hide?’

  ‘Well, get some anonymity. Everybody knows what happened. Everybody has an opinion.’ He took a cigarette out of a half-empty pack.

  ‘You can’t smoke in here.’

  He put the cigarette back in the packet. ‘What did you tell them when you testified? I’m truly curious. That I shot a man to save your life?’

  ‘Something like that.’ I sat with my cup of coffee tight between both hands.

  ‘You didn’t tell them that you thought I’d shot to kill him? That I pulled the trigger on purpose? That I murdered him?’

  I hated that those were the exact words that I had used with my father. This was so close to how I saw myself. ‘You had to shoot. To protect me.’

  He laughed. It sounded harsh and ended in a cough ‘Oh that’s good. I’m surprised they didn’t keep me in the force.’

  ‘You put my life in danger.’ My voice rose and I sat forward on the sofa. ‘That was reason enough to fire you.’ I stood up. ‘I was stupid to help you out. Don’t worry, I’ll let you leave your stuff here. But only because I can’t bear having to carry it down the stairs again.’

  ‘You put me in a position where I had no choice but to kill a man. I was fired from the police force and am now working as a security guard at a department store. No pension, no permanent contract.’ His voice wasn’t even angry. He sounded calm, as if he was just stating the facts. ‘This is how it turned out. Yes, I’m glad you testified, otherwise I would have ended up in jail. But this is me now.’

  I fought the hangover nausea. I fought the sense that my life was just as fucked up as his was. Whatever feeling of superiority I might have had, it was draining away. There was only a thin line between my position and his. ‘You know,’ I finally said, ‘we’ve got something in common, you and me.’

  ‘We do? What’s that?’ He kept looking at his coffee cup.

  ‘We’ve both taken a life. We both killed a man.’

  He put the cup back on the table. ‘We’ve both saved a life.’ He grabbed his backpack and started to get up. ‘A colleague’s life.’

  Even though it was factually correct, that was not something I could accept yet.

  Because I was working so hard not to throw up, I lost the fight not to feel sorry for him. ‘I know you’ve got no money for a hotel tonight. If I kick you out, you’d have to sleep on a park bench somewhere. I can’t do it. My father would be so pissed off with me. You can stay here.’

  He looked at me with a grimace and shook his head.

  I was relieved. I’d done the right thing; had offered and got away with it.

  He wrapped his arms around himself. ‘It will only be for a week or so,’ he said. ‘I sleep during the day, work at night. You won’t even see me.’ He sounded as if he was convincing himself just as much as me.

  Oh, he was accepting it after all. However much I wanted to, I couldn’t go back on my offer. I dug the spare keys out of the cupboard and threw them on the table. ‘I’ve got to go to work.’

  I cycled to the police station, where the multicoloured rainbow flag flew to celebrate the fact that it was the Gay Pride parade next Saturday. Oddly enough, I felt good about having helped someone I didn’t like. That’s true altruism for you. Even the people at my mother’s church would be impressed.

  Tim looked pointedly at his watch with a smile as I came into the office. ‘Hello, part-timer. I’d arranged to interview one of the witnesses but I had to call him to say we wer
e going to be late because I was still waiting for you.’

  ‘Sorry, something came up.’

  ‘Something like a hangover?’

  ‘Something I had to take care of. But I’m ready to go now.’ I didn’t think my stomach was up to handling lunch anyway.

  Tim drove us. We were heading west. We crossed the bridge where Ingrid and I had been kept waiting for the sailboat to cross on the night that Piotr died. We turned off the bridge to drive along the canal and I pushed my lips together, because suddenly I knew where we were going.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘Why are we here?’ I said. I didn’t get out of the car but stared straight ahead. I didn’t even want to look at the house. Like any addict, I should stay far from temptation.

  ‘We need to take Mark Visser’s statement,’ Tim said.

  ‘And you couldn’t have done that without me?’There was a hard edge around my voice. ‘You had the entire morning.’ I felt as if I was a prisoner locked up inside this metal box and dragged here against my wishes.

  ‘I waited for you.’ He had a puzzled look on his face. ‘I thought you would want to come. Aren’t you seeing him?’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘Very much not.’ I was trying my hardest not to see him and now Tim had brought me right to his doorstep.

  ‘Someone told me last night that you were.’ He looked at me with a sheepish smile. ‘And I thought it would be fun.’

  ‘Fun.’ I was starting to see why Bauer didn’t like him. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Never mind.’ Was he blushing? ‘But you’re friends, aren’t you? You were having a drink together.’

  ‘We were friends.’ I emphasised the past tense. ‘And we were having drinks because I was trying to make amends, and that didn’t work out too well.’

  ‘I called him to say we’re on our way. It will only take five minutes.’

  ‘I should wait outside.’

  He frowned. ‘Did something happen between you?’

  ‘I thought you’d done your homework on me.’ I sank down against my seat and wrapped my arms protectively around myself. Because I had to admit that I had made it far worse by being so obsessed. I’d been stalking him. What had I even wanted from him? Absolution? Forgiveness?

  I was only slowly starting to understand my own messed-up reasoning. I had made some kind of bargain with myself that if he could love me again like I still loved him, and desire me again, then I wasn’t really a killer. I’d wanted him – no, needed him – to confirm what the Bureau of Internal Investigation had decided. Because even though they’d ruled I’d been completely justified in discharging my weapon, it still didn’t feel like that.

  In my dreams, Mark was always watching. Judging me. As if his opinion was the one that counted, not the ruling of the BII.

  How fucked up was that?

  ‘I don’t want to taint his statement,’ I said. ‘I don’t want him to feel uncomfortable about saying certain things.’

  ‘You can’t sit outside his house in the car. That’s ridiculous.’

  I nodded. ‘Agreed.’ It was.

  Even though an extra ten minutes would make no difference compared to the hours I’d already spent here, in exactly the same spot but in a different car, I didn’t want to add to my transgression. ‘I’ll leave,’ I said. ‘I’ll pick you up in about half an hour.’

  ‘That’s crazy. If we were at the station, you could have observed. Just come in.’

  It was ironic that Tim had parked at the ideal spot from which to watch Mark Visser’s movements. That was how I’d figured out at what time Mark was going to walk past the bar last Thursday. He was a creature of habit who left work every day at the same time, went to the gym then walked to the tram stop to go home. Came past that bar at ten minutes to eight almost every Thursday.

  I decided it would be weirder to stay here than to come in. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Fine. But I’m not going to ask any questions. You can lead this interview.’

  ‘I’ll be brief.’

  I nodded and got out of the car.

  Mark opened the door before Tim had even rung the bell. He must have been waiting for us to arrive. He looked at me and sighed.

  It was the first time I’d seen him since he’d said I scared him. I’d hoped to apologise, but instead I was here on official police business. He probably thought I was trying to intimidate him.

  ‘Sorry we’re late,’ Tim said.

  Mark looked at me. ‘Is this your new colleague?’

  ‘I moved teams to investigate Piotr Mazur’s murder.’

  He looked Tim up and down. ‘I see.’

  ‘This won’t take long,’ Tim said.

  ‘Come in.’ Mark led us through to the kitchen. ‘Have a seat.’

  We sat around the table like the world’s most uncomfortable dinner party.

  ‘What did you notice that evening?’ Tim asked.

  ‘Nothing special,’ Mark said.

  ‘Tell us about the people at the table next to you.’

  ‘There were four of them and the guy with the beard was rather obnoxious. He got drunk and started talking about drugs.’ Mark went through the events of that evening, told Tim what he’d seen. How often he thought Karl had gone into the bar. What else he’d heard them talking about. As he spoke, he avoided looking at me. I could tell I was making him nervous.

  ‘Did you see this woman?’Tim showed him the photo of the woman in the floral dress.

  ‘Yes, I saw her inside the bar, when I had to go to the toilet. She was on her mobile.’

  ‘Did you catch what she was saying?’

  ‘Something like “I can’t do this.” But I didn’t really listen in.’

  ‘“I can’t do this”?’

  ‘Something like that. I’m not exactly sure. Sorry, I don’t pay as much attention as you guys always do. But she was standing next to the men’s room. That’s why I remember her. She looked quite nervous.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  Mark threw me a worried glance, as if this was an exam question he couldn’t afford to get wrong.

  ‘Approximately,’ Tim said. ‘Just to get our timeline right.’

  ‘After Lotte had got the next round of drinks in. Maybe half an hour before the guy was stabbed? Something like that.’

  ‘So a little before ten?’

  ‘I’m really not sure. Sorry.’

  ‘But she was by herself, this woman? Piotr Mazur wasn’t with her when she made the call?’

  ‘No, just her. That’s why I noticed her, because she was alone outside the men’s toilets. It was odd.’

  ‘Did you see them leave?’

  ‘No, I was facing the other way.’

  ‘Well, thank you.’Tim handed Mark his card. ‘If anything else comes to mind, please let me know.’

  ‘Of course.’ Mark got up. He squared his shoulders and looked me in the eye. ‘You really shouldn’t send people messages when you’re drunk, Lotte.’

  I frowned. ‘Sorry?’

  Tim laughed. ‘I got one too.’

  ‘I bet you did,’ Mark said.

  ‘Mine was punctuated and everything.’

  I had no recollection of sending either of them a text. I got my phone out, opened Skype and clicked on Mark’s name to read what I’d written. Oh fuck. I clasped the phone against my chest as if hiding the text would make it go away.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I looked at him. ‘I’m so sorry. About everything.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Mark said. ‘I’ve deleted it. Are we done?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, we’re done.’ It felt like a break-up all over again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I got in the car and closed the door, to shut myself in with the blessed coolness of the air con. It was artificial, but who cared about that? I took my phone from my bag and opened Skype. I tapped the three dots and chose ‘Remove Contact’. I had to go cold turkey. Are you sure you want to remove mvisser from your contacts? the phone unhelpfully ask
ed. Yes, I told it. Yes, I’m sure. Already I felt withdrawal. I’d enjoyed that kinship when I could see that we were both online. Or, late in the evening, watching the green dot by his name turn yellow and knowing that he’d gone to bed. I had to stop making a note of what time that happened each night.

  For two months now, observing Mark had been my drug of choice. It didn’t make me feel good about myself especially. Once I could think again, I knew I’d hate that I had been following him round. I’d hate that I’d watched him and that just seeing him had made me happy. Sometimes my two-hour vigil would be rewarded with a sighting of his tall frame at the window. The delight of this glimpse gave me an even more intense high because it was tainted by the worry that he would see me. I’d simultaneously dread and hope that he would look my way.

  Fear and desire made a particularly toxic blend.

  ‘We should see Katja Bruyneel,’ Tim said.

  ‘Sure.’

  He drove me away from Mark’s house, but I could close my eyes and still be there.

  ‘If you’re going to puke,’ Tim said, ‘let me know and I’ll stop the car.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. I only felt sick with self-loathing.

  From my handbag I took a copy of the photo that Piotr had carried in his wallet. The original was bagged up to preserve the fingerprints. How old was this toddler? Eighteen months, two years maybe. The little boy held a sailboat in his chubby hands, stretched out towards the camera, a broad smile on his face. That grin showed either pride in his toy or love for the person behind the camera. I completely understood why the picture had made Piotr smile.

  My own daughter hadn’t lived to this age. I’d found her lifeless in her bed. She’d looked asleep but would not wake up again. Cot death.

  If I was ever brave enough to trace back the start of this spiral of guilt and my destructive behaviour, I would have to admit that it was when my child died. Dangerous relationships, obsessive desire, unsuitable men. And still none of it had filled the huge crater that the loss of Poppy had blown inside me.