Thomas raised his hand. ‘There’s no evidence of a child, Lotte.’
‘But—’
‘Either way, the confession of Katja Bruyneel is very flawed,’ he continued, as if I hadn’t said anything. ‘We know she could pass away in a few weeks, or even less.’
‘That quickly?’
‘We spoke to her doctor. She could ask to have her life terminated at any point. We would be in a tough situation because we couldn’t refuse. Her cancer is terminal, and as soon as she feels the pain is unbearable, she could ask for euthanasia. We would be crazy not to follow up now while we still can.’
‘We’re not saying that you’re definitely right in your concerns,’ Ingrid said. ‘But Thomas and I agreed that if we’re going to do something, it needs to be now.’
I nodded. That was good enough. ‘Did you tell Moerdijk?’
‘We haven’t told anybody,’ Thomas said. ‘And we should probably keep it like that.’
‘So we should interview Katja again.’
Thomas and Ingrid exchanged a look. ‘We should do that last. If we call her in, and her lawyer, then everybody will know immediately. Bauer will stop us. The boss too. We should find concrete evidence and then talk to Katja.’
I didn’t like it but I knew he was right. I gave Ingrid a quick hug. When she put her hands on my back, it hurt my painful skin but I didn’t pull away. ‘Thank you so much,’ I said. I knew she had chosen me over her boyfriend. I moved across the desk to hug Thomas as well.
But he moved out of the way. ‘Just go to the canteen and get me a coffee.’
‘Sure.’ I grinned.
‘And try not to look so happy. Everybody will know within seconds.’
But before I skipped down the stairs to get his coffee, I called to check that Petra Maasland was at the hospital today.
‘When did you first meet Katja?’ Ingrid asked. She was sunk deep in the person-eating sofa. Even though her tall, angular figure clashed with the softness of the room, it seemed appropriate to just have women in this place that looked like a boudoir. Petra’s appointment was sitting outside, waiting until this interview was finished to get back to their counselling session.
Thomas had stayed behind at the station to check the initial reports on Piotr’s death again. I’d told him that Bauer and his team hadn’t done much with either the forensic evidence or the crime-scene reports. After all, Tim hadn’t even known that Natalie had claimed to be Piotr’s girlfriend. Anything that had come up after the case had gone upstairs could well have been ignored.
‘I met Katja at Sylvie’s funeral,’ Petra said. ‘We didn’t really talk but she said that I’d caused her sister’s death.’ She nodded thoughtfully at her own words, but the way she was clenching her hands together showed that she was nervous.
I could understand that. Katja had thought Piotr Mazur had been responsible for Sylvie’s death too, and Piotr was now dead. ‘Why didn’t you tell us this when I first interviewed you?’
‘You didn’t ask me about Katja.’ I had chosen the chair that Tim had used last time we met with Petra. It was much more comfortable. At that point we hadn’t known that Sylvie’s sister had been in the bar with Piotr. We hadn’t known that she was going to confess to having killed him.
‘You told me she was unreliable.’
‘Yes, she was behaving quite irrationally. Probably because she was angry. She felt guilty about Sylvie’s death,’ Petra continued.
‘Guilty?’That was surprising, given that she wasn’t feeling guilty over what had happened to Piotr.
‘Sylvie came to Katja’s flat a few hours before she overdosed. But Katja refused to let her in because she was asking for money. She told me that Sylvie had a massive bruise on her face and she was worried that she was using again. It was the first time they had met since Katja had kicked her out.’
‘She hadn’t seen her sister in three years?’ Ingrid asked.
‘That’s why she was feeling so guilty. She thought Sylvie must have been at the end of her tether and overdosed on purpose because she didn’t help her. To be fair, she’d kicked her out originally because she realised that Sylvie had taken all the money from her bank account.’
‘So Katja thought that Sylvie had committed suicide?’
‘Yes. We had an argument at the funeral. She said that it was ironic that only the three people responsible for Sylvie’s death had turned up. She said I had clearly failed her sister but that she was the one who’d been ultimately responsible.’ She shrugged. ‘After she told me that, I stopped talking to the police. I thought that maybe she was right.’
‘Three people?’
‘Piotr Mazur came to the funeral. Can you believe it?’
‘Is that when Katja decided that it was Piotr Mazur’s fault and that she would have to kill him?’ I leaned forward on my seat. ‘What did you tell her?’
‘Only that he’d been her dealer.’
‘Are you sure he was?’
‘Yes. During our sessions Sylvie had told me that her boyfriend used to supply her with drugs. She had to break off the relationship to help break her dependency.’
‘And Piotr was that boyfriend?’
‘He asked a lot of questions about where Sylvie had been for the last two years. He came to the funeral.’
‘Sylvie was in a relationship with Piotr Mazur in the years that she shared a flat with Natalie?’
‘Yes, I guess so. She shared with Natalie until they had a huge falling-out. Then Natalie accused her of stealing from the department store.’
I remembered that Ronald had said that Natalie had helped Piotr get a job at the store. She must have first met him when he was going out with Sylvie and they’d shared a flat. Why she’d thought he’d make a good security guard was beyond me.
‘Sylvie was very angry about getting caught stealing.’
‘Wasn’t she guilty?’
‘Oh, she was. She stole the dresses. She just thought that her friend could have helped her instead of reporting her to the police. She was in a messed-up frame of mind. She was a drug addict, you understand.’
‘So why didn’t you tell us about this last time?’
‘I thought I had. Anyway, Sylvie told Katja that she had no choice but to go to her old boyfriend for money.’
She went for money to her old boyfriend, who’d been a dealer. Then she overdosed. It all started to come together. ‘And he came to the funeral. Nobody else?’
‘No, just the three of us. But as I said, I didn’t really talk to Katja or Mazur much. It was a few months later, when I saw her at the hospital, that she started to ask me all these questions. She was crying outside – she’d just had her cancer diagnosis – and I recognised her. I thought that talking about her sister might help her.’ She pulled her hands through her thick curls. ‘I now know that was a huge mistake, because she ended up killing that guy. Even if he was just a dealer.’
It reminded me of Natalie saying that Piotr was ‘just a security guard’. ‘And finally, can I just confirm,’ I said, ‘that this is your grandson?’ I showed her the photo.
Petra held her hand out for it. ‘Yes, that’s Oskar,’ she said.
‘Your daughter’s son?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’ She looked at the picture with a beaming smile. ‘Where did you get this from?’
‘Katja gave it to Piotr. She told us she printed it off from your Facebook page. You should be more careful about what you share online.’
We sat outside, at a café along one of the canals. I was in the shade, as I should have been yesterday.
‘Did that tell you anything new?’ Thomas said when he joined us.
‘Maybe not.’ I pulled out a chair for him. If Ronald hadn’t been staying at my flat, we could have gone there. Instead we had to make the best of things here. I couldn’t go to the police station and draw on the whiteboard there. The boss would be furious if he found out, and I didn’t want to get Thomas and Ingrid into trouble for going so directly
against the CI’s directive. ‘But it’s made the timeline clearer for me,’ I said. ‘Of Sylvie’s past.’
‘You think that’s important?’
‘Yes, because Katja said that Sylvie’s death was her motive for murdering Piotr.’ I got my notepad from my handbag and moved the coffee cups out of the way so that I could put it in the centre of the table. I started drawing a timeline. ‘Three years ago, Katja threw Sylvie out of her flat. She gets a job at the department store and shares a flat for a year with Natalie.’
‘Who then kicks her out when she’s caught stealing. That’s two years ago.’
‘Not only kicks her out,’ Ingrid said, ‘but also shops her to the police.’
‘Did Piotr Mazur already work at the store then?’ Thomas said.
‘No. I checked the dates; he only started at the department store eighteen months ago. That’s six months after Sylvie was arrested. Natalie got him that job. She must have met him when he was going out with Sylvie.’
‘And of course he was Sylvie’s dealer,’ Ingrid said. ‘If Natalie continued to do coke, she was probably buying from him all that time.’
‘That makes sense. And then six months ago, two years after Sylvie got kicked out of Natalie’s flat and the department store, she decides to go to her ex-boyfriend Piotr to get money from him.’
‘And dies from an overdose,’ Ingrid said.
‘Right. Then Katja meets with him and shows him a photo of a child. A child who’s about two years old.’
‘You think that’s Sylvie’s child,’ Thomas said. It wasn’t a question.
‘No, we know he’s Petra Maasland’s grandchild,’ Ingrid said. ‘But Katja could have pretended, couldn’t she? She could have said he was Sylvie’s child. Piotr Mazur’s child.’
‘So Sylvie tried to get money out of him by saying he had a child and he gave her heroin?’ I said.
‘He gave that German heroin instead of cocaine,’ Thomas said. ‘What if he did the same with Sylvie? She came to him but he wasn’t keen on paying for his child and decided to kill her instead?’
‘He was happy when he saw the photo.’ I remembered that clearly. ‘He smiled so widely that it made his face light up. He’d had this intense, maybe even worried look on his face before.’
‘Let’s go back to the station,’ Ingrid said. ‘We can check the registers. See if Sylvie ever had a child.’
We rushed back to the office and checked the birth certificates, but our theory was ruined when we could find no mention in the register that Sylvie Bruyneel had ever given birth to a child. My best guess was that maybe Katja had known about the lie that Sylvie told Piotr and just run with it. Everything we’d found out confirmed the story Katja had been telling us all along. She’d killed Sylvie’s old boyfriend. Her dealer.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The next day was my favourite Saturday of the year: the day that Amsterdam’s centre turned into one big party. I was having lunch quietly so as not to wake Ronald. They’d finally hired more staff at the department store and he’d warned me that it was the end of double shifts. I’d heard him get back to the flat around 4 a. m. That meant he’d had eight hours of sleep by now, probably the first normal night since Piotr had been murdered. I was just examining the skin on my arms, which almost matched the fuchsia pink of my polo shirt, when he burst out of the bedroom dressed in a T-shirt and jeans that looked as if he’d been wearing them yesterday too. I didn’t blame him; I did that often enough myself, just putting on what I’d dropped by the side of the bed.
‘Aren’t you going?’ he said.
I didn’t have to ask him what he was talking about. Enough people were already walking along the canal dressed in pink. They were going to the bridge to cross onto the Prinsengracht. It was just after twelve, so there was another hour and a half before the boats would even get going. I had the day off, but the news that yesterday someone had been stabbed at Jerusalem’s Gay Pride parade meant that I felt we could do with an extra pair of eyes. Not that I expected trouble – this was Amsterdam, not Jerusalem – but I also knew from experience that problems always came up when I didn’t expect them.
‘I was planning on it. There’s plenty of time. Have lunch. I’ve got a space lined up.’ I gestured at my polo shirt, ‘Why do you think I’m dressed like this?’ This shirt only saw the light of day once a year. Pink wasn’t really my colour.
‘Good.’ He sat down.
‘Please tell me you have a nice reason for asking that.’
‘I just got a text from Khalil telling me to come to the parade. He’s asking where I’m going to be.’
‘The guy who was at Piotr’s funeral?’
He was quiet for a bit, as if figuring out what to say. ‘He was a friend of Piotr’s.’
‘A friend of your drug-dealing colleague wants you to come to the parade.’
‘Yes.’
‘His name sounds Moroccan.’
‘He is.’
‘Is this going to be trouble?’
He shook his head. ‘You shouldn’t believe all the stereo-types. But to be honest, I don’t know. I really don’t know.’ He went into the kitchen to get a plate, then sat down and helped himself to some bread. ‘I talked to a friend of yours yesterday,’ he said. ‘Really tall guy. He seemed interested to know why I was staying at your place.’
‘When was this?’ I spread some butter on a slice of bread and pretended that that needed my full attention.
‘As I was going to work. Who is he? Your boyfriend? I’m sorry, I never asked.’
‘No, nothing like that.’ I reached out for the cumin cheese.
‘He’s clearly interested in you.’
‘I don’t want to talk about him, Ronald.’
‘He seemed like a nice guy.’
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘You split up?’
‘In a way, I guess.’
‘You didn’t split up? This is getting more and more mysterious by the minute.’
‘I don’t think we were ever really in a relationship.’
‘You should talk to him.’
‘Why?’
‘He clearly likes you enough to want to get me out of your flat. Seems to me like he’s trying to make up for something.’
‘No, you’re wrong. It’s me who has to make up to him. I got a bit obsessed. It wasn’t particularly healthy. I wasn’t behaving sensibly around him.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I sat in a car outside his house for hours on end just to catch a glimpse of him.’ I buried my face in my hands. ‘It’s so embarrassing.’
Ronald grinned. ‘My daughter did that with a boy she fancied.’
‘You’re telling me I’m no better than a lovesick teenager?’
‘Some people take a while to grow up.’
‘Very funny. I think I was more like a crazy stalker. What we did to him was awful.’
‘What did you do?’ Without waiting for my answer, he went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. He was getting far too comfortable in my flat.
It did give me time to think about how honest I wanted to be with him.
When he sat back down, I still hadn’t made a firm decision but the truth came out of my mouth anyway. ‘I slept with him. And then we wrongfully arrested him.’
To give Ronald credit, he didn’t spurt his water all over the table at this. In fact, he stayed remarkably calm. There was just a little grin on his face that I could tell he was doing his best to suppress. ‘When was this?’ he asked.
‘Three months ago.’
He slowly nodded his head. ‘You never cease to amaze me. Let me get this straight. You really like this guy, you had sex with him, and you feel bad for having arrested him by mistake.’
‘I didn’t personally arrest him.’
‘Whatever. But you haven’t actually spoken to him about any of this and instead sat outside his house in your car.’
‘Something like that.’
‘Y
ou have to talk to him.’
‘No, I need to stay well away from him.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I scare him.’
‘When did he say that?’
‘We were on a picnic. He told me how hard it had been for him to see Piotr Mazur’s body, and me covered in blood.’
‘That’s perfectly understandable.’
‘And it made him throw up.’
‘You had been drinking all night and he was confronted with a rather bloody scene. I don’t blame him. And that’s when he said that you scared him?’
I nodded.
Ronald narrowed his eyes. ‘You rushed to a murder scene. It scared him. Isn’t that perfectly normal?’
‘He didn’t mean that he was scared for me, but scared of me.’
‘Okay, so he said you were scary. What did you do?’
‘I left.’
‘What?’
‘Well, it wasn’t great to hear.’
‘You stormed off.’
‘And then he said he’d seen me outside his house,’ I said softly to my coffee cup.
‘You’re an idiot. You need to talk to him. If you’re interested in straightening things out with him.’
‘And I sent him some drunken texts.’
‘I’m sure that improved matters enormously. Here’s what you do. You go to his house and you have a conversation. None of this immature teenage behaviour. You need to apologise.’
‘I did.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said that I was sorry. When I took his statement.’
‘When you were on official police business. Nice. That’s not a proper apology.’
I kept quiet.
‘Seriously, go talk to him,’ Ronald said. ‘Up you get. On your bike.’
I didn’t move.
‘What’s keeping you?’
‘I’ll do it later.’ I took a sip of my coffee. ‘We need to watch the Gay Pride parade first.’
‘When I gave my daughter this same advice, she said she was scared to talk to this boy. But surely that can’t be the case with you.’ His voice was sarcastic and teasing. ‘You can’t be scared to talk to this man.’
‘It’s not funny.’
‘Oh it really is. I’m enjoying this tremendously.’ He grabbed a book from the shelves. It was Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. ‘I don’t think those books are helping you at all.’
Death on the Canal Page 20