by René Appel
After that came a formal interrogation. We went to another room; the woman detective who had visited me the previous evening sat in. Theo wanted to hear all about Ella and me, about my family connection to Mimi, about my purchase of Spui 13. I explained how Ella had handled the bidding for me at the auction, how brilliant she was.
“Why didn’t the American just use a realtor?” he asked.
“He wanted it over and done with, without a lot of hoopla. That’s the advantage of an auction sale,” I explained. “According to Ella.”
“That’s the connection,” said Theo’s colleague.
He nodded. “Yeah, I think Ella’s kidnapper must have seen her at the auction. Was there a lot of interest? Did she get in a bidding war with someone else?”
Ella had bid so strategically that the other potential buyers dropped out quickly. Later, after too much prosecco at the Luxembourg, I asked her if she’d ever considered leaving journalism for the world of real estate. She looked at me, half smiling, took another sip, and said, “An interesting thought.”
Obviously, what I really wanted to know was if she was researching a story about the Amsterdam real-estate market. But I didn’t ask, because I know Ella would rather die than say a word about whatever she’s working on.
I told Theo and his colleague about the impact the murders of Mimi and Mark had had on our lives. How fear had held us in its grip for years and how, as an antidote against the poison of the atrocity, we had become more ourselves than we had previously been. Already an extrovert, Ella had chosen to fight crime with pen in hand and welcome the limelight, while I—the introvert—had abandoned my dream of becoming the same type of Dutch-language teacher I had once had myself in order to avoid standing in front of groups of students. I withdrew further and further from the world and took refuge in the privacy of a home office, surrounded by manuscripts I was paid to proofread.
“I wanted to go back to Spui 13 to keep Mimi’s memory alive,” I said, acknowledging the guilt that had never left us. “I suppose that sounds crazy.”
Theo almost shook his head.
“The American completely renovated the building,” I went on. “It doesn’t look anything like the way it was.”
When Theo brought his questioning to a close, I asked him something that had been burning in my throat for the last hour: “Are you sure the guys you arrested really did it?”
* * *
Everyone on and around the Spui was shocked by the murders. Ella and I came back from London when we heard. Until they caught the godforsaken bastards, we returned to our parents’ houses and stayed cooped up in our bedrooms behind closed curtains. Later, my coworkers told me that the Athenaeum was mobbed during the weeks after the crime. Regular customers dropped by two or three times a day to see if anyone had new information, and the same was true of the local residents, the other shopkeepers, the bar owners, and especially the journalists who frequented Café De Zwart. Even the right-wing snobs in Café Hoppe thirsted to learn who had the murders on their conscience as much as they thirsted for another round. And the same two words were on everyone’s lips: Hells Angels.
* * *
The day before my house—without photos or even an asking price—was listed in the real-estate website Funda’s Silent Sale section, I found a plastic Media Markt bag hanging on my front doorknob. It wasn’t quite ten o’clock, and I’d just dashed out to pick up a loaf of bread. Inside the bag was a cat, the black-and-white from the Luxembourg, its head severed from its body.
Fear—real, razor-sharp, deathly fear—apparently brings clarity along with it. I went upstairs with the idea that—for the time being, at least—I was safe. They couldn’t kill me, that would complicate the sale of the house. Which gave me the courage to check every room, every drawer. Only then did I lean over the kitchen sink to vomit coffee and bile and weep until I had no tears left to shed.
With the cat wrapped in a hand towel, I crossed the square to the café. I didn’t notify Theo at first, and I lied to the Luxembourg’s owner about where I’d found the poor creature. “Around the corner,” I said, “in the Voetboogstraat.”
He disappeared into his office behind the bar, sobbing, the beheaded cat cradled in his arms. The manager made me a double espresso and asked me if I’d heard anything about Ella yet.
“What a shitty welcome back to the Spui,” she said.
* * *
I called Bert. Because Ella had told me to, and because I couldn’t handle the situation on my own.
“If you hadn’t called today,” he said, “I’d’ve called you tomorrow morning. Ella’s instructions.”
That was all the introduction we needed, all we needed to trust each other. Which was good, because Bert showed up at my door an hour later with a laptop, suitcase, sleeping bag, and rolled-up camping pad.
Bert has worked at the newspaper for half his life. Ella is his boss. Her silence about her work extends to the identities of her colleagues, which is why Bert and I had never previously met. I knew his name from the paper and from Ella’s instructions. I could hear her voice inside my head: He’s tall, clever, and a good man—and that’s exactly what you’ll need.
For the time that he stayed with me, he slept on his pad in the living room, close to the steps that led down to the front door. He watched over me, cooked for me, took on the management of my life.
I told him everything, even the things Theo had warned me not to talk about. They were, after all, my things. Including the cat.
“The message is loud and clear,” said Bert. “They’re watching you. But of course you already knew that.”
He made sure the locksmith did a good job, after double-
checking with his contacts in the security sector, since the lock business isn’t always on the up-and-up. Then we made a shopping list for the day and walked together to the Albert Heijn supermarket on the Koningsplein. “This is how we’ll do it,” said Bert. “We’ll show them you’re still here and not alone. The paper’s paying.”
Amsterdammers of my generation are sure to remember the Spui Murders, but it was different for Bert, who was about ten years my junior. After an hour’s research—with his phone on speaker so he could ask questions of his sources at the same time his skilled fingers danced across the Internet—he’d brought himself up to speed on Mimi and Mark’s case. He told me what he’d learned, so I could provide additional details and make corrections. Everything seemed to indicate, he said, that the police had arrested the real murderers. “But of course you already knew that.”
Bert is the kind of guy who can say things like that without being annoying.
I wasn’t so sure. “There has to be a reason they want me to sell the house.”
“Those brothers were released after doing fifteen years, did you know that?”
“No, and I wish you hadn’t told me.”
“No worries, their friends got rid of them . . . um, about twelve years later. Huh, I wrote that story myself.”
Bert explained that motorcycle gangs were part of his beat, even back then. “Now I understand why Ella didn’t want that assignment.”
“They weren’t in the Hells Angels,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“They always denied it, and so did the actual gang members.”
“Bullshit. The police were able to identify the brand of the bicycle chain Mark was beaten with. Hells Angels all the way.”
A minute later, he held up his left hand and said, “Wait a second.” He studied the screen of his laptop, the fingers of his right hand working the touch pad. When he looked up, he told me he had a new idea. “Is it possible they broke in to prove something? Could it have been some kind of initiation rite that spiraled out of control?”
* * *
Three days later, the realtor called to tell me that J. de Vries had offered a hundred thousand euros above the asking price.
I was speechless, and after a moment the man added, “As compensation for your loss.”
They’d kidnapped Ella to blackmail me out of my house, but now they were being generous about it?
“Do you believe that explanation?” I demanded.
The realtor didn’t respond. Instead, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, he asked if I had any questions about the formal settlement. He knew I knew he was just an errand boy.
I told him I wanted to sign the papers as soon as possible.
“They’ve proposed the middle of next week.”
“Make it sooner. And I want a guarantee from the bank.”
“I’ve already got it,” he said.
* * *
Something the realtor said got me thinking, and Bert agreed with me that it was strange.
“No one would talk about ‘your loss’ in a situation like this,” Bert said. “Compensation for damages or inconvenience, that I would have bought.”
Today, as I look back and try to figure out when and how things went wrong, it seems to me that this choice of words, which sounded almost intentional, was a clue. I still can’t figure out, though, how we could have made better use of it.
* * *
The contract seemed perfectly straightforward. Bert—who like Ella had connections with the Amsterdam police—forwarded the buyer’s address and passport number to Theo.
“This Jan de Vries—that’s his full name—is seventy-four and a filthy-rich old geezer,” Bert told me, after an hour of research. “I can’t find anything unusual about him, which is unusual all by itself. They know him on the business desk. A smooth operator, avoids publicity.”
“I want you to go with me to the signing,” I said that evening, as he stood in the kitchen slicing vegetables for a ratatouille. “But of course you already know that.”
There was no way Bert would have allowed me to go by myself, so the next afternoon we strolled arm-in-arm to the realtor’s office around the corner. Theo had suggested I think of it like any other business transaction, so that’s what I did. There’d be plainclothes cops in the area, he assured me, quiet and invisible, ready to step in if they were needed.
* * *
The prospective purchaser of my house wore a fine Italian suit—Corneliani, Bert told me later. His face seemed vaguely familiar, like other people with money and power. The realtor asked him if he’d read the contract carefully.
The man nodded.
“Any questions or amendments?”
We both shook our heads.
After we signed, the realtor quite properly congratulated de Vries on his purchase and me on my sale.
“Now I have a question,” I said to de Vries. “Why did you want me out? Why couldn’t I go on living there?”
De Vries, the realtor, and Bert all looked at me with raised eyebrows.
De Vries got up, gave the realtor an ice-cold glare, and headed for the door.
“When will Ella be released?” I called after him.
He turned and said, “You never should have bought that building in the first place.”
And he left the office.
* * *
Bert was furious at me. Theo too, though he did a better job of holding it in. They were right, of course: I should have just played the game for the sake of Ella’s safety. However, a week later—as promised—a new video was delivered to De Telegraaf. Bert and I watched it together with Theo at the Lijnbaansgracht police station.
No Ella. Where I’d expected to see her face, light with relief, I saw instead myself, in tears, Bert’s arm around me. We were crossing the Spui, approaching my house. Bert squeezed my shoulder, I wiped my cheeks. Without our noticing, someone had managed to film us on our way back from the realtor’s office. The video ended with one sentence of typed text: She will be released the day after the closing.
* * *
That evening, I thanked Bert for taking care of me by cooking dinner for once. We raised more than one glass to Ella’s upcoming release, but we didn’t talk about it much, as if our words might jinx her. After the third toast, I dared to ask when he planned to publish his story.
“Pretty soon. It’s almost done. When they let her go, she’ll call you first, then me. As soon as I hear from her, I’ll post the article online. We’ll save her piece for the print edition. That’ll be the most important account, obviously.”
In his journalist’s mind, he was already looking beyond the actual release. That didn’t surprise me: Ella is exactly the same.
* * *
Movers came to put my things in storage, and I carried a suitcase of clothes and toiletries to Ella’s apartment on the Singel without looking back.
I didn’t want to go to the closing, and I could have given a notary my power of attorney. But I went. The buyer ignored my stare, signed the final papers, and left without a word.
I walked back to the Spui for a sort of final goodbye, and saw him sitting on a bench outside the bookstore.
“Do you have a place to go,” he asked, getting slowly to his feet, “or will you squat again?”
It was only then that I recognized him from all those years ago. Jan de Vries had begun his career as a slumlord on the Spui.
“I didn’t like the two of you then,” he said, “and I don’t like you now.”
And he turned away and crossed the square to a chauffeured limo that was waiting for him.
The brothers who murdered Mimi and Mark had told the truth. They weren’t Hells Angels, and what happened wasn’t an initiation gone out of control. They’d been hired to toss a pair of squatters out of a house, and that was what had gone out of control.
* * *
Theo cursed up a storm, immediately assigned a team of detectives to investigate de Vries, and promised me the man would never get away with it. That was a comforting thought, although I knew it was an empty promise as long as Ella was still in the man’s hands.
Bert rewrote his lead and came up with a new headline: “REAL-ESTATE MAGNATE SUSPECTED OF SPUI MURDERS.”
The article would go live the moment Ella was released.
After the closing, I decided to clean Ella’s apartment, just to have something to do. The next morning at daybreak, I began preparing for her return.
* * *
April 2017
It’s now a year since Bert’s article nailed the ex-slumlord to the cross. After he published it, he went on to write an entire series of stories about the Amsterdam real-estate mafia, partly with the help of Ella’s notes.
But Theo Mann was unable to keep his promise: Jan de Vries made a clean getaway before the police showed up to arrest him. He’s now living large—and not exactly incognito—in a country that has no extradition treaty with The Netherlands.
* * *
On the first Sunday of every month, early in the morning, while the city sleeps, I’ve gotten into the habit of walking down the Spui and along the Rokin to the Doelensluis, where I can stand on the bridge and watch the Amstel River flow slowly by.
It’s been so long since I last heard from Ella that I imagine her prediction must have come true.
This story was inspired by an actual Amsterdam murder case.
ANKLE MONITOR
by Herman Koch
Watergraafsmeer
Translated by Sam Garrett
Maybe it was a mistake to go back to my old neighborhood on the very first day of a weekend leave. I could have been imagining it, but I seemed to read it off the faces of the people I came across on the street: how they glanced up at me, walked on, then took another look. I avoided the butcher shop and the bakery I used to go to. I bought a couple of buns, some sliced liver, and salted beef at the Albert Heijn on Christiaan Huygensplein—the girls at the registers were too young to remember, they were just as friendly to me as they were to everyone else.
When I walked into Elsa’s Café, though, conversations literally slammed to a halt. That’s what I was that first day: a conversation killer. I’m not a complete bonehead, I was more or less prepared for it, but it’s still weird when it actua
lly happens. At Elsa’s they have these swinging doors, like a saloon in an old western. That’s the way it felt to me: as though I was coming through the swinging doors, six-guns drawn, to settle an old account. And in a certain sense I was, but not with the people who were there, not with anyone who was at Elsa’s right then.
I don’t know what I would have done, though, if he had been standing there, prattling at the bar with a beer in his hand. Then I wouldn’t have been fully accountable. In fact, I’ve never been accountable for my actions—not being accountable is the thin red line in my life that’s taken me everywhere, from the maximum-security facility to here again, now, in my old neighborhood.
* * *
There are about twenty of us in there, in what you’d probably call an “open block.” Open to the extent that we don’t have to stay in our cells between nine and six, but can just wander the corridors. In fact, it’s only one corridor, a broad one, sure, more than thirty feet across. Everyone on both sides of it has his door open, some of us hang our laundry out to dry on a rack in the corridor. When you look in, the cells are like you’d expect: girlie posters on the walls, a little desk with a couple of books, an outdated desktop computer. A few of the guys don’t have any photos or posters at all, so that’s clear enough: posters of half-naked men or boys would send the wrong signal on our block.
At one end of the corridor is the rec room, with Ping-Pong and foosball tables and a row of shelves with games: Risk, Monopoly, that kind of thing. And about five decks of playing cards, with a couple of cards missing from each deck.
At the other end of the corridor is the point where our open block stops, clearly marked with bars and the kind of massive wired glass you couldn’t bust through, not even with an ax. As though anyone here has an ax in his cell! No, but we do have other things, things I’m not going to talk about here, I’m not out to rat on anyone. What am I saying: I’m not out to rat on myself! Later, when I go back on Monday, maybe I’ll need those things again—I hope not, but you never know. It’s good to have them, the mere thought of those things and what you can do with them is what keeps you calm.