‘And then what happened?’ I asked the question as if we were having a casual chat.
‘Then I drove her home. That was it. That was all.’
‘She didn’t talk about what had happened then?’
‘No. She told me yesterday, right after she told you, I think. She said that since she’d told the police, word would get around. She wanted me to hear it from her, not through the office gossip. She should have told me sooner, of course. It’s hard to be angry and pissed off with a dead guy. I wish I’d been the person to help her rather than Nico.’ He stubbed his cigarette out on the wall. ‘But it’s nice for him that he got to be the hero. Every dog has its day.’
Chapter 22
The grey clouds that had been a threatening presence earlier had by now drifted overhead, and inevitably it started to rain. Fabrice rushed into the office. The rain wasn’t too heavy but I would probably be soaked before I got to the police station. Normally I would cycle, holding an umbrella in one hand, but with the stitches, that would be difficult. When Stefanie offered me a lift, I didn’t refuse. I could pick my bike up again later.
We got in the car.
‘What were your questions about?’ I asked.
‘I was doing what you wanted me to do – looking for signs of financial distress. That they’ve been in the same offices for ten years and aren’t particularly overcrowded means they haven’t grown. Getting people to provide their own stationery, their own laptops, their own phones, it’s not a good sign. I think you were right about the financial problems. The next step would probably have been not paying the staff, or hiring people on a commission-only basis.’
‘So that’s what you do? Go around and check out the pencils and stationery cupboards?’
‘Yup. Stationery cupboard police. That should be my new job title.’ Sometimes it surprised me that she had a sense of humour.
‘That guy I was talking to is the boyfriend of the girl that Patrick van der Linde sexually harassed the evening of his death.’
‘You think that’s a motive for his murder?’
‘Could be, couldn’t it? He had her pinned up against the wall and Nico intervened.’
‘Interesting that the boyfriend didn’t seem too pleased about that.’
‘I get the impression that Nico wasn’t all that well liked before this incident.’
‘At least the girl had a witness. These things are so hard to prove.’
‘I didn’t think that was your department’s responsibility.’
‘I’ve come to find it quite a useful warning signal for fraud.’
‘What? Office sexual harassment?’
Stefanie nodded. ‘The kind of guys who do that are often the ones who don’t feel bad about committing other offences. It’s never just about the girl. Or hardly ever, I should say.’
‘You’re branching out from checking stationery,’ I said, but I’d had similar thoughts as well.
‘It’s how we got the guy in our previous case.’
We had just reached the main shipping port. A flow of tourists disembarked from one of the cruise ships; a better class of tourist than the ones that hung out to get drunk in the centre. Maybe it was the boat I’d seen come in as I was at the Clipper.
‘What, stationery?’
‘No, sexual harassment. Just as we were about to give up, I heard that none of the secretaries would go into the kitchen when the main guy was there. It gave me a reason to have another look at his stuff.’
‘Because you felt bad for them?’
‘No, because I thought he was probably the kind of piece of shit who would have siphoned money off. I had another dig around and found his Cayman Island accounts. Very satisfying indeed.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s not always the case, of course, but it’s a very definite red flag for me these days. The immoral ones are always immoral in a number of ways.’
I nodded. ‘I see your point.’
The stream of people coming off the boat were heading towards the station, where they would intermingle with the other tourists. These ones were well dressed, probably American and most likely retired.
‘I hope you do see my point,’ Stefanie said. Her voice had a meaningful tone that I didn’t like.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘Didn’t your ex-husband cheat on you?’
Back at the police station, I checked out the CCTV footage I’d got from the Clipper. Not that I wanted to prove Stefanie wrong – there was no way that Arjen would have killed Patrick – but because I wanted to know exactly what had happened that evening. I wanted to know what had led up to Therese being harassed, what the party at that table would have seen and whether Arjen had been aware of any of the goings-on. The camera had a view along the main room in the restaurant; Patrick and his group were on one side of the picture. I kept wanting to angle what I saw on the screen to get them in the centre, but of course I couldn’t. The image was a bit grainy, but the group were clear to see.
The first to arrive were Patrick, Arjen, Nico and a man I didn’t recognise. I fast-forwarded the footage to where Therese turned up. At that point, there were seven people at the table. She waved at everybody when she entered and took the seat furthest away from Patrick. As far as I could tell, Arjen didn’t even look up from the conversation he was having with the guy opposite him, but it wasn’t easy to see.
I found the moment when Therese got up to go to the bathroom: 9.14 p.m. according to the CCTV. A couple of minutes later, Patrick followed her out. Nico turned around when his boss left the table. He kept looking over his shoulder. Then he got up too. It all lined up with what he and Therese had told us. I had no specific reason to doubt them, but I liked to check everything. What I was interested in was what Arjen did next. He looked up from his conversation a couple of times, but it was hard to tell if he was paying attention to what was happening or just waiting for Patrick to come back to the table.
I forwarded it to the moment when they all left to go home. It was the same four people at the end who had been there at the beginning. They got up, and the footage never showed them again. This camera didn’t show the door. I should check the CCTV recording from the front of the restaurant. Arjen had said that Patrick had stayed behind after the other three left.
When Thomas and Charlie returned from wherever they’d been – they didn’t bother filling me in – I told them what I’d been doing: that I’d spoken to Fabrice and that it seemed there had been a problem with Patrick’s credit card.
When I finished, nobody said a word. The silence felt oppressive. I sat staring at my screen for a few more minutes, rewinding the footage a bit, but didn’t see anything that didn’t line up with Therese and Nico’s version of events, or that implied anybody had seen what had happened to Therese.
I stopped watching the screen, decided that sometimes you had to make the first move to make amends. It was nearly time to go home anyway. I called my mother. I didn’t actually apologise, but I asked her if she wanted to go shopping for a dress.
We met outside the Bijenkorf, Amsterdam’s smartest department store. My mother looked at my finger, now only covered by a plaster.
‘That was a whole lot of drama for nothing,’ she said. ‘Mark was acting as if it was a major wound.’
‘Four stitches,’ I said.
‘You ruined their kitchen.’
‘I did not.’ I took her by the arm and guided her through the doors. ‘I went to see Elise this morning and I can report that their kitchen is fine and not in need of any repairs.’
‘That’s good to hear. What was that all about anyway?’
‘I dropped a glass. It was a stupid accident, that’s all.’
‘Michael thought he’d upset you. He’s such a nice guy, I don’t think he’d ever upset anybody. Not on purpose anyway.’ She shot me a look that told me clearly it was entirely my own fault for taking things out of context.
‘He didn’t say anything to upset me,’ I said. It was best not to mention that it h
ad been the moment that I’d realised Arjen was being seen as a suspect.
‘So you met with Elise this morning.’
‘I had to pick up my bike and we had a chat.’
‘A chat?’ She stopped in front of the perfume counter. ‘It was about work, wasn’t it? You do that: talk to people only when it has something to do with a case you’re working on.’
I didn’t answer her. She was right, after all. I just pulled her arm and dragged her along before the woman by the counter could spray us with the latest scent.
We took the escalator up to the first floor, where the women’s fashion was situated, but a quick look round made it clear it was all a bit too young for my mother. About five decades too young. The trick was always to find the brand that was fashionable but not too youthful. And also affordable.
‘Let’s ask someone for help,’ I said.
‘I can pick a dress by myself.’
‘Fine. Pick something.’ I grabbed a dress from the nearest rail. It was a black affair, slashed to mid thigh. ‘Something like this?’
‘No,’ she scoffed. ‘Clearly not that.’
I put it back. You’d have to be under thirty and extremely skinny to carry off a dress like that. ‘Do you have something in mind?’
‘Something tidy,’ my mother said.
‘Tidy,’ I said. ‘What does that even mean? Who wears something tidy to their wedding? What you’re wearing now is tidy. You can save money by wearing this.’
‘Richard says he’ll pay for it, but I don’t want that.’
‘I’ll buy you an outfit,’ I said. ‘As long as it’s not tidy.’
My mother walked towards the escalator to go up to the next floor. ‘I’ve got money,’ she said.
‘I’m not saying you haven’t. I’d just like to buy it for you.’
‘I know you always had some strange ideas about Arjen and Nadia coming to see me.’
‘Mum, let’s not talk about that now.’
‘But they pay me. Babysitting their daughter – it’s a job.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does matter. They were looking for someone right around the time you were in the news a lot. Arjen came to see me because he wanted to check that you were okay, without actually having to talk to you. But then he ended up telling me that Nadia was going back to work and they wanted someone to babysit and were having difficulty finding someone they could trust. I offered. It was an easy job; they paid well. It allowed me to afford little extras.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘You’d have said I should stop doing it and that you would give me money instead. Which was very much what I didn’t want.’
There was no denying she was right. ‘Why didn’t they ask Nadia’s mother?’
‘How do I know? Maybe she was busy, maybe they didn’t want to bother her, maybe she hates kids. Sometimes it’s easier to pay someone for help. Not to be beholden to anybody. The same way that it’s easier to work for money than to ask for it.’
‘I’d rather have paid you than have Arjen and his wife employ you.’
‘I know. That’s why I didn’t tell you. I knew you’d be like that. You don’t want anything to do with them any more and have gone out of your way to avoid them. You should talk to him.’
‘I talked to him the other day.’
‘Okay. Well, that’s good,’ my mother said. ‘It’s good that you’re talking again.’
It was best not to tell her that we talked as part of a murder investigation. ‘Why is it good?’ I asked instead. ‘What difference does it make?’
‘Because now you won’t get too angry if I use the money I saved up from babysitting to pay for my dress.’
That made me smile.
I wondered what it said about Arjen that he’d employed his ex-mother-in-law as a babysitter. He must have known she could do with some extra money. I knew I was trying to refute the thought that Stefanie had put in my head earlier, but surely he’d been helping my mother out? That must make him a decent person, mustn’t it? Not the kind of man she would investigate and find embezzling company funds. He couldn’t have done it to create problems between my mother and me because why would he have wanted to do that?
I pushed the thought out of my head. I didn’t want to think about Arjen any more. ‘You’re honestly not going to let me buy you a dress?’ I said to pull my mother back to the matter in hand.
‘No.’
‘Can I get you anything else? Shoes? A hat?’
‘All you need to do is come to the wedding.’
‘Of course I’m going to come to the wedding,’ I said and hooked my arm through hers. ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’
‘Richard is a good man.’
‘I didn’t say otherwise.’
A sales assistant came up to us. ‘Can I help you at all?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We’re looking for a dress for my mother. For a wedding.’
‘You’re going to a wedding? That’s nice.’ There was a hint of condescension in her voice that rubbed me up the wrong way.
‘She’s not going to a wedding, she’s getting married.’ I hooked my arm tighter around my mother’s. ‘And we’re planning on spending all the money she’s earned over the past years on something really nice.’
‘Sure,’ the woman said, not missing a beat. ‘Let me help you find something special.’ She rummaged through the rails of dresses for something she deemed appropriate and came up with a full-length dress in pearl grey. ‘How about this?’
‘It’s too long,’ my mother said. ‘I don’t want a long dress. And I don’t want grey either. A wedding is festive. I want to wear a happy colour.’
I didn’t think I’d ever seen my mother wear a happy colour.
‘I want a red dress,’ she continued. Being condescended to seemed to have driven her towards making extravagant choices. I liked the attitude – so much better than ‘tidy’ – though I wasn’t sure red would be a good colour for her.
‘How about pink instead?’ I suggested.
‘Pink is for old ladies,’ she said. ‘Or little girls.’
There were some arguments you just couldn’t win, so I let her get on with buying a red dress.
As the saleswoman checked various dresses for size, my mother studied the price tag on the one closest to her. I expected her to walk away quickly, because this section was expensive, but she nodded to herself as if that was exactly how much she’d been planning to spend on a dress for her wedding. If she wanted to blow all the money she’d made from years of babysitting on this one dress, then who was I to stop her?
The woman came back with a dress in a soft red that bordered on pink but stayed on the right side for my mother to be okay with it. It definitely was not an old woman’s dress. It was a little longer than knee-length, but not too long.
She held it up in front of my mum. ‘What do you think? Would you like to try it on?’
I thought she’d made a good choice. I accompanied my mother to the changing area. She went into the changing room by herself and came out five minutes later wearing her not-pink dress.
She looked great. She looked happy.
Had I ever seen her glow like this? Whatever I might think about her getting remarried, however much I might think it was unnecessary, if this was how it made her feel, I should support her. I should be grateful to Richard for making her happy. I definitely had never managed that. I had seen my parents’ wedding photos. She’d looked happy then too, snuggled up against my father. That happiness hadn’t lasted.
Maybe this wouldn’t last either.
But did that actually matter? Should you write something off from the start because it might all end in tears? Should I be upset with her for babysitting for Arjen and Nadia all these years if it allowed her to buy her this ridiculously expensive dress? That was her choice.
I decided that she could do whatever job she wanted. She’d kept quiet about babysitting for a long time because
she knew it would hurt me. She’d probably thought that doing it in secret would get her the best of both worlds. I shouldn’t be upset; I should be happy that it allowed her her little extras.
I should be happy because my mother was happy.
It felt right to think that way.
‘What’s up with you?’ she said.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘You look nice.’
Chapter 23
I was playing with my cat, getting her to chase a length of string over and over again, when my phone rang with a number I didn’t recognise. It was probably Stefanie trying to annoy me by telling me again how my ex-husband was suspicious because he’d cheated on me. I should store her number so that next time I could avoid her calls.
But instead of Stefanie, it was a man’s voice. A voice I knew extremely well.
‘Lotte? It’s me. Can we talk?’ he said.
My initial response was to say no. Even before I had known that Arjen was a suspect I would have been reluctant, and now I should tell him that it was totally out of the question. ‘Why?’ I said instead. I dangled the string in front of Pippi and smiled as she leapt at it.
‘I’m at the bar on the corner of your canal. I can wait here for you if you’re not home yet.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘There’s something I need to tell you.’
I pulled the string back. ‘Whatever you want to tell me, let’s do it at the police station tomorrow’ would have been the sensible answer. ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘I’ll come down.’ I grabbed my coat and handbag and went down the stairs.
The bar on the corner had a circular beer advertisement hanging outside. I didn’t come here that often because it was always busy with tourists. Arjen had only chosen it because it was the nearest place to my flat, though I didn’t remember ever having told him where I lived.
I pushed the door open and quickly scanned the bar. A group of well-dressed elderly tourists, the type who would have come from one of the cruise ships, were ordering drinks in English. A Spanish couple were arguing loudly in a corner. Arjen was sitting at the table at the back, an almost-empty wine glass in front of him. He must have started drinking before he’d even called me, as it hadn’t taken me much more than a few minutes to get there.
Death at the Orange Locks Page 15