Death on the Canal

by Anja de Jager

  I massaged the wrinkle between my eyebrows. ‘Natalie Schuurman,’ I said. ‘His neighbour.’ It was possible that nobody in Bauer’s team had read our initial files. That disturbed me. I turned back to Ingrid. ‘Natalie isn’t going to say anything because her fiancé doesn’t know.’

  ‘Are they the two next door that you were talking to yesterday?’ Tim said.

  ‘Yes, I could hear them arguing. Those walls are really thin. He’s so good-looking. I don’t know what she saw in Piotr Mazur.’

  ‘Relieving the boredom at work.’ Ingrid grinned at Tim. ‘I get that.’

  I took a large spoonful of food. I had almost cleared my plate.

  ‘How do you know she was seeing him?’ Tim asked.

  ‘They were sexting. I don’t remember the exact words, but it was something like Where are u, I need it. That kind of thing.’

  Tim laughed. ‘Doesn’t sound terribly explicit to me. Not like …’ He blushed.

  I could fill in the details of what he was going to say. I pushed my plate away. ‘I really ought to get back to work.’

  ‘It sounds more as if they were setting up a delivery,’ Tim said. ‘A deal.’

  I thought of all the texts she’d sent him. I remembered the security footage that had only taken a minute, and Natalie’s delighted grin when she’d come out of the changing rooms. I finally understood what Ronald had been trying to show me. I looked at my watch. If I hurried, I could swing by the department store before it closed. ‘I’m off,’ I said. ‘I won’t crash your dinner any longer.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  When I arrived at the department store, Ronald wasn’t in his usual place by the entrance. He was probably in the security guards’ offices on the sixth floor. It didn’t matter; I’d speak to him later. I took the escalator up to the fashion section where Natalie worked, but I couldn’t see her. Maybe she was on a break, or helping a customer.

  The green dress I’d admired last time was still there. The silky material was as cool and soft as I remembered. I walked up to a full-length mirror with the garment and held it against me. It was no surprise that one of the sales women immediately approached me. I recognised her; she had come into the storage area when Thomas and I were interviewing Natalie last Friday. She was called Alice Fransen, her name badge revealed. ‘Do you want to try it on?’ she asked.

  ‘Can I?’ I had to admit that I was curious what the changing rooms were like. It would also give me an opportunity to ask Alice a few casual questions.

  ‘Of course, follow me.’

  I checked the ceiling for the shining metal eye of a security camera. I spotted the one in the centre aisle that had captured the footage Ronald had showed me. I could see no others in this area.

  If you were going to snort drugs in a changing room, these had more space than most. I got undressed. The efficient air con was on so high that the cold air drew goose bumps on my naked skin. At least it was cool enough that I didn’t have to worry about sweating on an expensive dress. I put it over my head and let the green silk flow over my body. I shimmied in it until the cloth hugged my every curve. It was beautiful and I felt beautiful wearing it.

  The light here was soft and flattering, perfect for the older women who could afford these clothes. Other stores catered for the younger crowd and seemed to frown when someone over the age of twenty dared to try on one of their pairs of jeans. They tried to scare us away with loud music, and used sharp light that highlighted every wrinkle in our faces and every grey hair.

  A discreet knock on the door announced Alice. ‘How are you getting on?’ she said.

  I opened the door. ‘It’s lovely,’ I said.

  ‘That really suits you.’ She sounded surprised.

  I stepped out into the corridor and looked at myself in the large mirror at one end. I turned this way and that. The dress looked as if it was made for me and brought out the green in my eyes that my ex had described as the colour of the North Sea after a storm. He hadn’t meant it as a compliment but I rather liked the description. That had annoyed him.

  ‘You were here the other day, weren’t you?’ Alice said. ‘To interview Natalie.’

  ‘Yes, and I saw this dress then. But I couldn’t really try it on, not while I was working.’

  ‘We have had a few other women try it. One of them might come back for it tomorrow.’

  ‘How’s Natalie holding up anyway? She seemed very upset.’ It was now clear to me what had been going on between Piotr and Natalie, but I was interested in hearing what her colleagues knew.

  ‘Well, yes, upset to—’ She cut off her words.

  I tried to meet her eyes in the mirror but she looked away. ‘Upset to what?’

  ‘Never mind.’ She rearranged the skirt that already fitted so well over my hips, tidying up a fold at the back. ‘Would you like to try some shoes with that? Then you could see how the skirt hangs with high heels.’

  ‘No, it’s fine.’ I’d learned how important it was to stay away from temptation.

  ‘Natalie is enjoying her moment in the spotlight. She was never so keen on Piotr as now that he’s dead. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’ This time she met my eyes in the mirror. That hadn’t been an accidental slip of the tongue. ‘Shall I help you undo the zip on the back?’

  ‘Sure.’ I stepped back into the changing room. Alice had clearly decided that I’d worn their expensive dress for long enough. She undid the hooks on the top of the zip. ‘How long have you worked here?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve been here for five years. Why?’

  ‘Do you remember Sylvie Bruyneel?’ I was sure stuff disappeared from the department store often enough, but someone walking out with a number of designer dresses must have been a memorable event.

  ‘Sylvie?’ She paused with the zip halfway undone. ‘She worked here a long time ago. Two years ago, I’d guess.’

  ‘She worked here?’

  She finished unzipping me. ‘For about twelve months. I didn’t know her that well. We didn’t socialise. You should talk to Natalie, she was her friend.’ Her mouth twitched as if she was still annoyed about not being included. ‘They shared a flat until they had a massive falling-out.’

  ‘Did they? I didn’t know that.’ Now at least I knew where Sylvie had lived after her sister had kicked her out. I was slowly piecing her life together.

  ‘The two of them would go partying,’ Alice said. ‘But it wasn’t my scene, you know.’

  I could fill in what she wasn’t saying: party together, do cocaine together. ‘Probably for the best. Do you know what they fell out over?’

  ‘Maybe they were too alike. They were both used to getting all the attention,’ Alice said. ‘And when Sylvie was caught stealing from here, it was the final straw.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ I said. ‘And Natalie was the one who noticed the theft? Not the security guards?’

  Alice glanced sideways. ‘Let me know if you need any help getting changed.’ She stepped out and closed the door to the changing room. I had no choice but to turn back from someone glamorous into someone with a day job.

  I shimmied out of the dress. I checked the discreet card that was attached to the inside by a minuscule safety pin. In fine handwritten numbers it was penned that the dress cost nearly a month’s after-tax salary. I put it back on its hanger with renewed deference. I should count myself lucky that I hadn’t torn it getting in or out. I had a better understanding now of why Alice’s eyes had kept following the dress as if it had a magnetic force field. How tempting that must have been for someone with a drug habit, especially if you could lift them to order. If you worked here, you could easily take the security tag off and walk out.

  I opened the door of the changing room. Alice was hovering right outside.

  ‘Thanks for letting me try it on,’ I said. ‘It’s beautiful, but I would never wear it.’ Over her shoulder I caught a glimpse of a woman with blonde hair approaching us.

  ‘I can put it aside for you until tomorro
w,’ Alice said, ‘to give you time to think about it. Otherwise, if someone else wants it … we don’t have that many in this size.’

  ‘I’ve got it from here, Alice,’ Natalie interrupted her.

  Alice nodded and moved on to talk to two Asian women, possibly Chinese, who were looking at the short jackets in primary colours. I wished I could wear those, but I would only look ill in yellow. In contrast, bottle green was a great shade for me.

  ‘That dress. You couldn’t resist it, could you?’ Natalie held it up again and spread the material wide with the hanger still attached.

  ‘Actually, I came here to talk to you. About Piotr. I know you weren’t having a relationship with him.’ I lowered my voice. ‘You didn’t meet here to have sex. You met to snort coke, didn’t you?’

  Even through her thick make-up, I could tell that Natalie suddenly grew pale. ‘I didn’t do anything.’ It sounded very much like a four-year-old’s refusal to accept responsibility for a broken vase, and it was equally believable.

  ‘It’s time to start telling the truth.’

  She gripped my arm and pulled me away from the racks. ‘Not here. I’ll lose my job.’ She walked towards the discreet door and typed in the security code.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure your employer doesn’t want you doing drugs in the dressing rooms. They can ask security for the tapes as soon as I tell them.’

  Natalie laughed bitterly as she opened the door. ‘Security. That’s a joke.’

  I followed her in. ‘It’s very clear to see on a security camera.’ We were alone with the railings full of dresses wrapped in plastic and the piles of boxes that formed a second wall.

  She shut the door behind us. ‘They’re the ones selling in the first place.’

  ‘They’re all in on it?’ Somehow I couldn’t believe that Ronald was, whatever I might have said to him in anger the other day, but I couldn’t help but wonder, for a second, what was in some of the bin bags that were now in my flat.

  ‘No, just Piotr Mazur. I’m surprised you ever believed I had an affair with that Polish drug pusher.’

  ‘You were the only one sending him text messages.’

  Natalie sighed. ‘He wanted more money and I gave in. Told him I’d give him what he wanted. Using those words … it was just a bit of a laugh, you know? Getting him to speed up his rounds.’

  ‘Who was his supplier?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Was it someone else here?’

  Natalie was silent for a bit. She straightened out a dress and pushed it back between the other garments, as if the physical activity of tidying up made it easier for her to think. ‘It can’t have been, can it?’ She looked back at me. ‘Because then someone else would have taken over.’

  ‘Thanks, Natalie, you’ve been very helpful.’

  ‘Will you tell the police?’

  ‘Did you forget I am the police?’

  ‘You know what I mean. Will I lose my job?’

  ‘We’ll see. Maybe we can arrange something.’

  ‘I can’t give you the dress.’ Natalie sounded even more like a petulant schoolgirl.

  ‘I hope you’re not suggesting I was asking for a bribe. Help me find out who Piotr’s supplier was.’

  Natalie looked at me. ‘This would be a good time for me to stop, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘A very good time. Tell me if someone tries to sell to you and we’ll forget all about it.’

  She nodded, her face as serious as if she was taking an oath. ‘I’ll do that.’

  ‘Do you remember Sylvie Bruyneel?’

  ‘Why are you asking about Sylvie?’ Natalie said. ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘Yes, I know. She worked here, didn’t she?’

  ‘She stole from us. The stupid bitch.’ The word was incongruous out of the pink mouth under the tearful eyes. ‘She put all our jobs in danger.’

  ‘And she was also taking drugs?’ I said.

  ‘Snorting coke all the time. It’s all her fault.’

  ‘What about heroin?’

  ‘Not then. She must have moved on to that later.’ She straightened another dress. This was clearly what she did when she needed time to think.

  ‘She was your friend. Did you ever talk to her after she left here?’

  ‘No, of course not. She was a thief.’ She turned back to me. ‘She was really angry with me when I contacted the police. She said I’d stitched her up.’

  ‘Why did you call us? Why didn’t you leave it to security?’

  ‘I didn’t want them to let her go with a warning. And they might have done, you know. She could be very charming when she wanted to.’ I could tell that Natalie was getting angrier as she was talking. ‘She deserved to be punished. She’d been stealing from me all the time. She would take money from my wallet or stuff from my room and sell it.’

  ‘You shared a flat?’

  ‘And a great success that was. When I kicked her out, that’s when she moved on to taking stuff from here.’

  ‘Where was she living then?’

  ‘I don’t know. Then she was in that rehab centre. And who knows what she got into there with all those addicts together.’

  I thanked her again for her help and reminded her to contact me as soon as anybody else tried to sell her drugs.

  There was fifteen minutes before the shop would close, and Ronald had returned to his spot by the exit. He had his back towards me and stared at the door. Next to him stood a good-looking Moroccan guy in a sharp suit. I came closer but didn’t want to interrupt their conversation in case this had anything to do with Ronald’s work. The guy could be the manager of the store for all I knew. Then I caught part of the conversation.

  ‘It was a young woman,’ Ronald said. ‘White. Dutch apparently.’

  ‘Okay. If you’re sure.’The Moroccan man nodded slowly. ‘I’ll make it worth your while. That place you’re living, it seems you can do with some help.’ He laughed. ‘I can at least help you with the housing. I’ll call you.’ He left the shop through the revolving doors.

  ‘Hey, Ronald,’ I said.

  He turned around sharply.

  ‘I’m not happy with your housing situation either.’

  ‘I fed your cat, by the way.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have told me that Piotr wasn’t sleeping with Natalie?’ I said.

  ‘I did, remember, but you wouldn’t believe me.’

  ‘Something blatant like “they’re not having sex, they’re snorting coke” would have been useful.’

  ‘I told you they weren’t having sex. As you didn’t take my word for it, I thought you would want something more concrete, so I tried to give you evidence.’

  ‘Was that what that security footage was all about? That one-minute sequence?’

  ‘Exactly. But there are no cameras actually inside the changing rooms.’

  ‘The next time be more obvious. Less cryptic.’

  ‘Will you believe me next time?’

  I didn’t answer him but left the department store to go back to the office.

  The evening was turning into night and a hint of coolness had appeared in the air by the time I left the police station. It was pleasant to be out on my bike. Instead of turning right down my canal, I took a left. I kept pumping my legs. The movement was almost effortless and allowed me to think as I cycled along canals and down little streets in the dark for half an hour. Why I’d ever thought that Tim fancied me I could no longer understand. I’d completely misread those signals. He and Ingrid made a nice couple. Mark Visser deserved to be left alone and I should just live by myself with my cat.

  As if my thoughts of loneliness had carried me there, I took one more turning and came to my mother’s flat. I looked up to her floor and saw that the light was still on.

  She opened the door with a flushed face. ‘Hi, Lotte.’ She looked surprisingly well. Her white hair was immaculate, as if she’d taken time to comb it properly. I even thought she might have put on a little bit of weight since I’d seen her las
t. She had been getting too skinny. ‘What brings you here so late?’

  ‘Were you going to bed?’ I checked my watch. It was just after ten o’clock. I kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘No, no, come in.’ She looked over my shoulder into the hallway. For a second I wondered if she’d been expecting someone else.

  ‘I thought I’d see how you were.’

  She wore a red scarf in the neck of her white blouse. Even though the material was thin, it was surely too hot for it. I knew she hated it when her wrinkly chest, as she called it, was on display, but why bother if she was here by herself? ‘I was going to do the same,’ she said. ‘You beat me to it.’ She poured me a glass of water.

  I sat down at the table, at my usual place. My mother had lived in this flat for over forty years now, ever since she divorced my father. She still had some of the furniture we’d had then.

  ‘Your father called me. He asked if I could see you. He sounded worried.’

  ‘Since when are you guys talking again?’ All the windows were open and the lights were on, and it attracted the mosquitoes. I could see a number of them drifting into the flat, slowly, inconspicuously, as if they had no intention of sucking our blood. A particularly large one landed on my arm, casually, as if it was just taking a little rest there. I knew what it had in mind and squashed it under my palm. Lotte 1, Mosquitoes 0.

  ‘We only ever talk about you.’ Her cheeks were bright red. She could of course have been in the sun too long, but she was also smiling too much. ‘He said you seemed down.’ And then there was that scarf.

  ‘Things haven’t been great. I was having drinks with Mark Visser—’

  ‘Are you still chasing after that man?’

  ‘Mom!’ Another mosquito flew past me and I caught it and crushed it in my hand. Lotte 2, Mosquitoes 0.

  ‘Well, I did my best for you.’

  ‘I know, I screwed it up. You should get some curtains,’ I said. ‘To keep the mosquitoes out.’

  ‘They never go for me,’ my mother said. ‘I know they bite you all the time but I don’t think my blood is sweet enough.’ She ignored one that flew right past her face. I found it hard to think when they buzzed past me, but my mother seemed completely capable of tuning them out. ‘I think Mark really liked you at one point. It was great to see him after all those years.’