Death at the Orange Locks

by Anja de Jager

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said as soon as I arrived at his table. ‘I know I messed up.’ He drained the wine in his glass.

  I sat down heavily. My legs refused to support me any longer. I didn’t want to believe that he could have killed someone. I forced myself to think about practicalities. If he was going to confess, I should caution him. I should record our conversation. I should probably stop him from talking and get Thomas or Charlie over here. Or even Stefanie.

  Instead I stayed motionless, my body so heavy it was impossible to move.

  ‘Hold on one second,’ he said. ‘I think I need another drink for this.’ He got up.

  It crossed my mind how happy Stefanie was going to be at being proved right. This, of course, was the very least of my problems. What if Arjen was going to tell me but refused to repeat it to the others? If it came down to my word against his, would anybody believe me – regardless of whether I was a police officer or not?

  With Arjen at the bar, this was the perfect opportunity to phone Stefanie to come over, but I didn’t make the call. I did press the record button on my phone, though, so that I had evidence of what he was going to tell me.

  He came back with two glasses of wine. ‘White okay?’

  I nodded. I still drank the same thing; I still had the same telephone number.

  He took a large gulp from his glass and looked down at the table. ‘I might as well get this over with. I know I shouldn’t have done it, but everything was so messed up.’

  My hands started shaking.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Lotte. It just happened. I never stopped to think about what I was doing, and before I knew it, there was no way back.’

  There was no way back? Why? Because at that point he’d rolled Patrick unconscious into the canal?

  ‘And then we found out that Nadia was pregnant …’ He fell silent. ‘I know how much it must all have hurt, and I want to apologise to you.’

  Nadia was pregnant. He wanted to apologise. To me. Realisation dawned. This wasn’t about murdering Patrick. He was talking about his affair.

  I sat back and burst out laughing.

  The shock at my reaction showed on his face, then he smiled cautiously in return. ‘What’s so funny?’

  It wasn’t necessarily funny. Part of my laughter was purely the reaction to the breaking of the tension, I knew that. ‘You call me in the middle of a murder investigation because you need to tell me something, and then you apologise for cheating on me four years ago. I wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.’

  ‘You don’t think I have anything to do with Patrick’s death, do you?’

  I didn’t respond to that, though Stefanie’s reasoning had seemed so sound, right up to the point where she applied it to my ex. ‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘It’s the first time I’ve laughed about you sleeping with Nadia and getting her pregnant, so that’s a major win.’ I laughed again and lifted my glass of wine. ‘Cheers,’ I said. ‘To small mercies.’

  He shook his head. ‘You’ve changed.’

  ‘I hope so. About time.’

  ‘I thought you were going to kill me that night.’

  ‘I could have done,’ I said honestly. ‘But that was four years ago.’

  ‘Are you happy?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I’m happy.’

  ‘That’s good.’ He drank some of his wine. ‘I felt I had to do this, because you’re working on Patrick’s case. I had to clear the air. Now it all seems unnecessary.’

  I frowned. ‘If I hadn’t been investigating your father-in-law’s murder, you wouldn’t have apologised?’

  ‘I would have waited a few more years. Just to be on the safe side.’

  Part of my sense of amusement died away as suspicion came flooding back. I wasn’t too keen on people wanting to get on my good side during a murder investigation. I realised that this all seemed rather conveniently planned.

  I looked at him, this man I knew so well, and tried to decide if he was playing me. I didn’t like that I felt so wary. His body posture was open, his arms rested on the table and his upper body leaned slightly forward. I didn’t think he was lying. I think he wanted me to believe what he was saying. Even if his apology was genuine, it had come at an extremely opportune moment, and that made it feel like a form of manipulation.

  ‘Waiting a bit would have made for better timing,’ I said.

  ‘I wanted to say something when you came to our house,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t know how to bring it up – not with your colleague there.’

  ‘Nadia was there too.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I guess so. But she doesn’t really understand. That’s why she insisted we talk to you when her father went missing.’

  ‘I had wondered whose smart idea that was.’

  ‘Also, Lotte, I get what you were saying about Patrick. But the man has died. Do we have to talk about all the things he’s done wrong? Do we have to drag his name into the gutter?’

  I narrowed my eyes. ‘He was murdered. What he has or hasn’t done could be crucially important. I suggest you cooperate fully with the investigation.’

  He smiled. ‘It’s weird to see you go into work mode.’

  I didn’t return his smile. ‘Arjen, I’m serious. If there’s anything you haven’t told us, you need to fix that. As soon as possible.’

  ‘Please don’t tell Margreet,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell her about that girl. That’s why I wanted to see you tonight, to ask you that.’

  ‘Wow, was that the deal? You apologise and then ask me to keep my mouth shut?’ I wondered if he saw me as anything other than his ex-wife. As if for him it was all personal and he didn’t realise that I also had a job to do.

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ he said. ‘I don’t want her memories of her husband ruined if at all possible.’

  I also wondered if I saw him as anything other than my ex-husband. I did not see him as a suspect, for example. If I had, I wouldn’t be having a drink with him.

  ‘She’s going to find out anyway,’ I said. The least I could do was remember that he was my cheating ex-husband, regardless of the apology. ‘Too many people know what Patrick got up to.’ I finished my wine and pushed my chair back. ‘There’s no point hiding the truth from her.’

  Chapter 24

  The next morning, I was in the office before Charlie and Thomas. It had been my plan to steal a quick glance at the files on Thomas’s desk, but he arrived before I had a chance. He was early today even though it was Sunday. The stitches on my finger were itching and I tried to rub it as gently as I could. Scratch without disturbing the wound. I should mention meeting with Arjen last night, but then it came to me that I really had nothing to tell. We hadn’t talked about Patrick. Plus, Thomas would give me a ticking-off for seeing him by myself. He would be right to do so, but that didn’t mean I wanted to hear it.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine. You?’

  ‘Busy.’

  ‘I asked Stefanie Dekkers to help me out with the financial side,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, I heard. Well, that’s good, I guess. I didn’t think you two got on.’

  ‘She’s good at what she does,’ I said. And her suspicion of Arjen might end up helping me understand the case against him. ‘What have you guys been working on?’

  ‘Still piecing together what happened that night.’

  ‘I checked the CCTV footage from the Clipper.’

  ‘There isn’t any.’

  ‘There aren’t any cameras at the back, but this is inside.’

  ‘Anything interesting?’

  I shrugged. ‘It all lines up with what we’ve been told. It’s hard to make out, but it seems that Patrick did follow Therese out. That’s what the waiter at the Clipper confirmed as well. It’s what I’ve been concentrating on. It still strikes me as a motive for murder.’

  ‘Good,’ Thomas said. ‘You do that and the finances.’

  My mobile rang. It was Karin Lems at Linde Lights. That she was supposed to have cal
led me as soon as her meeting with the bank manager finished had completely slipped my mind. ‘Hi, Karin,’ I said. ‘Do you have all the information from the bank now?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t call you last night, but there was something I needed to double-check at the office.’

  ‘Okay. We’ll come right over.’

  ‘I can just tell you on the phone.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’ll come with my colleague. She’s a financial expert. We’ll be there in twenty minutes or so.’ I was keen to get out of the office, and there was no point in talking to Karin without Stefanie anyway.

  She asked me to come to their workplace because then she would have all the paperwork to hand and there wouldn’t be anybody else there today.

  When we got to Linde Lights, Karin was waiting in Patrick’s old office. I introduced her to Stefanie. Today Karin wore square orange earrings. There were dark circles under her eyes.

  ‘What did they say at the bank?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re overdrawn to the limit and they won’t extend our line of credit.’ She gripped a couple of sheets of paper as firmly as if they were a life buoy. ‘Apparently it had happened before, but Patrick had shored up our financial situation each time.’

  ‘Did you know about those problems?’ Stefanie asked.

  ‘I had no idea.’

  Stefanie shot me a look. ‘I thought you were in charge of the finances,’ she said to Karin.

  ‘Not really. I’m in charge of invoices,’ Karin said. ‘I’m more an admin assistant.’ She was already distancing herself from the mess the company found itself in.

  ‘Did you know that Patrick shored up the finances?’

  ‘The bank told me he’d injected large sums of money, but I didn’t know about that.’

  ‘If you do the invoicing, surely you see all the money that comes into the account? Including the inflow of capital.’

  ‘The bank said it came into the second business account.’

  ‘Ah, I see.’ Stefanie got a notebook out. ‘And there was money flow between the two accounts?’

  ‘That’s right. Whenever the balance in our regular account went over a certain amount, I would move the money to the other account. Not that this had happened recently.’

  ‘And Patrick’s credit card was linked to this second account?’

  ‘He called it the capital reserve account. I didn’t know he had a card linked to it.’

  ‘So he used the second account for personal expenses?’ I asked.

  Karin shook her head. ‘It was the company’s saving account.’

  ‘It’s not that unusual,’ Stefanie said. ‘And you didn’t have access to this account?’

  ‘I could have checked the balance, I guess, but I never did. I’m busy and I don’t have time to look at random things.’

  ‘But you are a signatory to that account.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did the bank tell you how often Patrick shored up the financial situation?’

  ‘Only twice. He made two lump-sum payments. Once in 2016 and once two years ago.’

  ‘Could you give me the exact dates?’

  ‘Hold on a second.’ Karin leafed through a pile of paper. ‘The fourteenth of April 2016 and the twenty-fifth of September 2018,’ Karin said. She turned the page around and gave it to Stefanie.

  ‘Thank you, that’s fine.’ Stefanie wrote it all down. ‘Where does this leave you guys?’ Her tone had changed. Instead of being a sharp interrogator, she sounded sympathetic. The questioning part of the interview was apparently over.

  ‘I don’t really know what we’re going to do now. We can’t pay any of our invoices.’ Karin started to tear up, moved by the death of the company as much as the death of her boss. ‘I didn’t know about any of this.’

  ‘Will the bank extend you a line of credit?’

  She shook her head and the orange earrings flashed like warning signs. ‘They said it wasn’t possible any more. That they had told Patrick the same thing a month ago.’

  ‘He didn’t mention it to you?’ I asked.

  ‘He didn’t say a thing.’

  ‘Would anybody else have known?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Because I had to process all the invoices, Patrick would have told me before anybody else.’

  I wasn’t sure if that was true. For example, he could have told people when he’d drunk too much at the company do. He could have let it slip to Nico over coffee. In my opinion, it was absolutely possible that he would have wanted to keep this quiet from the person in charge of the invoices.

  If it hadn’t been for the shape of the wound on the back of Patrick’s head, suicide would have seemed a possibility: a businessman who knows his company is about to go bankrupt is refused credit by the bank and kills himself after having bought his employees drinks one last time. Only people don’t commit suicide by bashing their heads backwards against a sharp-edged object.

  Karin and Stefanie were talking about money: invoices, debt repayment schemes and ways of filing for bankruptcy that would not involve firing all employees immediately. Stefanie asked about selling the company: what assets there were, what the position was with the creditors. It was all rather boring, but the two of them seemed to find it riveting. I guessed that if your livelihood was about to disappear, all these numbers became hugely important. With no one officially running the company, the woman in charge of invoices had suddenly had this huge weight dumped on her shoulders. Talking to Stefanie was probably helpful.

  When they’d finished, after what seemed ages, I asked Karin what Fabrice’s surname was.

  ‘Timmer,’ she said. ‘Fabrice Timmer.’

  Stefanie and I walked from the Linde Lights offices to the Clipper. She’d asked if she could have a look at the scene of the company dinner. Despite her high-heeled shoes, it didn’t take us longer than ten minutes to get there. We crossed the ground floor of the restaurant and went down to the patio at the back.

  ‘Do you still smoke?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve almost given up.’

  ‘Almost?’

  ‘I’m doing my best. I thought I had a lot of self-control, but it’s been hard. Places like this help.’ She gestured at the dismal little patch of ground with the bins for cigarette butts. ‘It’s purely functional and a bit depressing: the outdoor equivalent of a smoking room. Do you remember when we used to have those?’

  It was surprising that the restaurant hadn’t made more of this area; the wide expanse of water was rather amazing. I guessed it was too small a space to do anything much with. ‘I remember we used to have a smoking room in school, where all the cool kids hung out.’

  ‘I didn’t know you used to smoke,’ Stefanie said.

  ‘I didn’t. I was as far from being a cool kid as possible.’

  ‘That figures. So is this where it happened?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ I pointed at the railing. ‘It would have taken a lot of effort to get a man over this balustrade.’

  ‘You’re saying that because you don’t want Arjen to have killed him here.’

  ‘That’s not the point. Forensics went over the area. Sure, it was a week since he’d been killed, and it had rained, but they didn’t find any evidence of blood. No signs of a struggle. Nothing to show that someone had bashed a man’s head in with a brick.’

  ‘Nobody saw him leave the restaurant, though. He’s not on CCTV.’

  The area was largely enclosed by the railing; clearly the restaurant wanted to ensure that people didn’t just do a runner from this space that wasn’t covered by CCTV. I pointed to the path that I’d seen the previous time I’d checked the patio. ‘Here’s my guess. It would have been a short cut for him, instead of going through the restaurant and out again.’

  We both squeezed through the gap in the railings and followed the little path along the water, past the back of the restaurant and the neighbouring shops. The path was made from red gravel, a colourful strip in the otherwise barren soil. ‘You
see my point,’ I said. ‘If you can do it in your shoes, there’s no reason Patrick couldn’t have done the same. And this path leads straight to the Barcelonaplein.’

  ‘It’s a bit grim, isn’t it?’ Stefanie said. ‘Imagine this as your route home.’

  ‘It isn’t too bad. At least there are no cars. It’s a quiet walk. It would be deadly quiet at night.’

  ‘He could have met anybody here.’

  ‘My point precisely. I’m betting the murder took place somewhere along this path, where there’s nothing to stop you from pushing an unconscious man into the water.’

  ‘He was still alive when he went in?’

  ‘Yes, there was water in his lungs. He drowned. It’s only knee-deep at the edges here.’

  ‘You think someone hit him on the back of his head and then pushed him in?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I think, and it would be really hard to do at the Clipper.’

  Stefanie nodded. ‘But really easy here.’

  ‘Exactly. We could test it out if you like. I could give you a push and see how far you’d go. It’s a nice downhill roll.’

  ‘Very funny,’ Stefanie said, but she took a step back from the edge. ‘A push and momentum would have taken him directly into the water. I don’t want to see your point, but I definitely do.’

  ‘See, I can teach you something.’

  The path opened out a little. We’d come to a building site.

  There was no activity there; nobody was working. Even the building materials themselves looked derelict. Maybe the company developing the site had gone bust. A blue tarpaulin rattled in the wind. As it billowed back, it revealed a pile of bricks.

  ‘We need to get forensics out here,’ Stefanie said.

  I nodded and made the call.

  In the car on the way back, Stefanie did her best to explain the financial issues at Linde Lights to me. We’d pointed out the path at the rear of the Clipper to the forensic team and then headed out. They’d made it clear we’d only be in the way as they checked for residue of blood splatter.