A Death in Rembrandt Square

by Anja de Jager

  I reached the elevated section of the tram rail, and went up the stairs to the stop. From there, I could just about see the traffic lights at the intersection of the Johan Huizingalaan and the Comeniusstraat. The intersection that I now thought of as ‘the accident crossing’. Two people were standing under umbrellas, looking at it. The man pointed at something.

  The tram turned up and I got on. It was full. There were no seats available. A young man wearing headphones took one look at me and stood up. I considered refusing the offer of a seat, just for one second, but then thanked him and sat down. I didn’t know why he’d got up. Did I look tired? Ill? Heaven forbid I looked old. It was better not to speculate about that too much. As I watched Amsterdam go by through the rain-streaked windows, I thought that sometimes making assumptions was a lot better than knowing the truth.

  Chapter 7

  ‘Shall we go for lunch?’ I said to Ingrid as soon as I got back to the police station. My caffeine withdrawal was showing itself as a niggling headache. It seemed to be positioned just behind my forehead and made it hard to focus. I hadn’t had breakfast either.

  ‘When is this storm going to stop?’ I collapsed my umbrella and leaned it against the wall of our office.

  ‘Two more days, apparently,’ Ingrid said without taking her eyes from the screen. ‘They’re forecasting force ten winds for tonight.’

  That was just what I needed. My flat was on the top floor of the building and the storm would make the roof rattle even more than usual. I could forget any kind of peaceful sleep. ‘Coming?’ I asked, but she wanted to finish whatever she was typing up before she lost her train of thought, so I went down to the canteen first.

  I’d just fetched a coffee in a brown plastic cup when she turned up with a guy I didn’t know.

  ‘It isn’t often that I get to have coffee with a high-profile member of CID,’ he said, smiling as if to indicate that this was meant as a joke. It was the guy who’d been sitting with Charlie in the canteen yesterday.

  I opened the small tub of coffee creamer and poured it into my cup.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m the traffic cop who investigated Ruud Klaver’s accident.’ He shrugged. ‘Before the powers that be decided it wasn’t an accident.’ He stuck out his hand. ‘Arnaud Groot.’

  ‘Lotte Meerman.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘How are you?’

  I took a sip of my coffee and felt the first hit of caffeine course through my veins. ‘Much better now,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  I’d meant the coffee, of course. I would have been even better if I’d had that without any company.

  ‘We were looking at the footage from other traffic cameras further down the road,’ Ingrid said, ‘to see if we could pick up the car.’

  ‘Any luck?’ I asked.

  ‘None,’ Arnaud said. ‘Where the car veered across, at the intersection, there are no cameras. Then it turned into a side street, so nothing there either. There are no shops or anything like that. And it’s hard because all we know is that we’re looking for a dark-blue or dark-grey vehicle.’

  ‘It’s close to Ruud Klaver’s house. And very close to the Sloterplas,’ Ingrid said.

  ‘You think someone dumped the car there?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Arnaud said. ‘I reckon it’s gone. Someone’s got it out of the country, to Eastern Europe or the Middle East. Like that one last year.’

  I remembered that a car had been stolen and traced to Iran. Not that the owner ever recovered it, but he’d had some satisfaction from finding out where it had ended up.

  ‘I wonder how badly damaged it was,’ Ingrid said.

  ‘It really depends,’ Arnaud said. ‘If it had a bull bar or outsized bumpers, it would have been surprisingly intact. Or at least nothing so severe that it would have shown on a traffic camera. It’s probably just got a small dent.’

  I drank some more coffee. It took the edge off my headache but didn’t clear it totally. That surprised me. Over Ingrid’s shoulder, I saw Charlie Schippers cross the canteen. He was carrying a plastic bag. Arnaud turned round to see who I was looking at, then leaned forward across the table, closer to me and Ingrid, and lowered his voice.

  ‘Do you see that guy? He’s got the desk next to me.’

  Ingrid turned to check out who he meant.

  I picked up my coffee cup to hide my face.

  ‘He’s desperate to get into CID,’ Arnaud said.

  It was just my bad luck that the guy with the desk next to Charlie seemed to be the office gossip.

  Ingrid turned to me with a tight smile and raised eyebrows. ‘Is that right?’ I knew what conclusion she would draw from that.

  ‘I know, right?’ I said, like we were in on the joke together.

  I was saved by my mobile ringing. I had a visitor.

  I wasn’t surprised to see Sandra Ngo here; I had expected her to get in touch ever since I’d seen her in the hospital. If anybody was surprised, it was probably her, because I was keen to talk to her. It just went to show that there was a first time for everything. She was standing in almost the same spot as when she’d been yelling at the duty officer on Wednesday. I wondered if she remembered that too.

  ‘Why were you at the hospital?’ she asked.

  ‘Let me take you to an interview room,’ I said. I didn’t want to talk to her out here in the open.

  ‘Is this official?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’ve got to say. You came to see me. If you want to talk out here, that’s all right by me.’

  ‘No, okay. Fine.’

  I checked the system. Interview Room 2 was empty. I texted Ingrid surreptitiously that we were going there. She could watch us from the observation area.

  Sandra sat down at the table. She looked relaxed. Her hair wasn’t tied back today but hung loose, and the front skirted the edge of her jaw. It was straight and swept sideways. She took her jacket off and hung it over the back of her chair, then leaned back in her seat, crossed her legs and rested her ankle on her knee.

  ‘I heard you suspect Ruud Klaver’s accident wasn’t an accident.’ She looked as if she thought she was in control. These interview rooms could intimidate some people, or make them more nervous. It had no such effect on Sandra. Or maybe if you were as tiny as she was, everything was intimidating and you had to get used to it.

  ‘Where did you hear that?’ I said.

  ‘Someone called the family. They told me.’ She looked around her as if it was fascinating to be here. As if the recording equipment hanging from the ceiling and the microphone in the centre of the table were details that she had always been keen to see. Maybe she was trying to memorise the room so that in her next podcast she could talk about this meeting and describe the surroundings in detail. I had to watch what I said.

  ‘The accident appears suspicious, so we’re having another look at it,’ I said.

  ‘That’s why I thought I’d come and see you; we might be able to help each other.’

  ‘I appreciate that,’ I said. Cooperation would make a nice change from shouting in the police station. ‘In your podcast, you mentioned something that would prove Ruud’s innocence. Is there anything you want to share with me?’

  ‘Ah, so you are one of the many people who download our podcast every week. That’s nice to know. I’m broadcasting a special one tonight.’ She tipped her head sideways. ‘Share, you say. That depends. Is there anything you’re willing to share with me?’

  ‘You’ve been investigating him for a month at least.’

  ‘Try two. None of this is quick, you know that. It’s been two months since Dennis got in touch.’

  ‘Dennis did?’ I wondered how much he had told her. There were many things that weren’t in the case files, things that had never come up during the trial. I was sure the family hadn’t shared any of them with Sandra Ngo. ‘I’d assumed it must have been Angela.’

  ‘No, Dennis called me after the first series of Right
to Justice. Quite a few people did, in fact.’ Her voice was smug.

  ‘I can imagine,’ I said. ‘There are quite a few people in prison who claim that they are innocent.’

  ‘Maybe some of them are.’

  I didn’t even bother to react to that. Even though we could always close more investigations, the Dutch police solved 80 per cent of murder cases. To imply that we were often wrong was just ridiculous. ‘So, Dennis Klaver contacted you. To say what? That his father was innocent?’

  Sandra nodded.

  ‘What made you look into this one, especially as so many people contact you?’

  ‘I was at university when Ruud was on trial. That’s where I first met Remco. So I was intrigued.’

  ‘You were at university with Remco? Did he tell you anything about his father’s case?’ I remembered overhearing Dennis say in the hospital that Remco hated his father.

  ‘No, he didn’t talk much about his family. He’d moved out of his parents’ house and lived in student accommodation.’

  ‘In Amsterdam?’

  ‘No, Maastricht.’

  That was about as far away from Amsterdam as he could get without leaving the country. He really must have wanted to put distance between himself and his family. ‘That’s quite a way.’

  ‘He went even further after he graduated. He lives in Dubai now.’

  That explained the tan. ‘But at university he told you who his father was?’

  Sandra shrugged. ‘No, not really. I think he wanted to hide it, but I found out. It was easy enough.’

  Remco had been a student himself when his father had gone to prison for shooting a student. That couldn’t have been easy for him. It was often hard on the kids. I wondered how much he had enjoyed having to talk to Sandra about it. When she’d greeted him in the hospital, he’d hesitated before shaking her hand. Their past was probably the reason for the animosity I’d sensed between them.

  ‘Isn’t this nice,’ Sandra said, ‘the two of us having this chat.’

  She fished an elastic band out of the pocket of her jacket, turned round to check her face in the two-way mirror that hid the observation area, and then tightened her hair back into the topknot that was her trademark look. I hoped Ingrid was watching from behind the glass.

  ‘If only you’d been willing to talk to me over these past months,’ she said once she was happy with her hair. ‘There’s so much we could have discussed.’

  There was no way I would have talked to her about this case if I hadn’t had to. It was only because someone had tried to kill the guy, and had tried to make it look like an accident, that I had no choice. ‘You can’t use any of this in your podcast.’

  ‘I’m going to talk about the accident. The family asked me to.’

  ‘You think the family are really open with you?’

  ‘Dennis has shared all his information with me.’ Her smile was complacent.

  I could have said something that would have wiped that smile from her face, because I very much doubted that he’d shared everything. There were many facts about this case that were in a closed file. If Sandra knew about them, she would have mentioned them in her podcast, so that meant the family had kept quiet about them.

  It didn’t surprise me. Dennis would only have talked about facts that he thought would prove his father’s innocence. That was his sole aim. He would not have mentioned anything else. That’s human nature. People tend to voluntarily share only the information that makes them look good or that supports opinions they already have.

  I felt sorry for Remco. He’d been trying to be an anonymous student whilst his father was on trial for murder, and then this girl had found out the truth about him anyway. ‘So even when you were a student, you liked digging up secrets,’ I said.

  ‘It interests me. Doesn’t it interest you? Those things that people don’t want to tell you, isn’t it fun finding them out?’

  ‘Have you found out anything now? Anything that might give some insight into why someone might have wanted to kill him?’

  ‘I think we’re really alike, you and I. From what I’ve seen of your cases, you want to get to the truth too.’ From behind her black-rimmed glasses, her dark eyes stared at me intently.

  She was silent for a bit as if to gauge my reaction. I kept my face neutral. Sure, we might both like to find out the truth, but I had a feeling we had very different motives for it. I shook my head.

  She seemed disappointed that I wasn’t agreeing with her, because her voice was harder when she said, ‘Anyway, I found out something. I believe Ruud is innocent.’

  I tipped my head sideways this way and that to release some of the tension in my neck. The only result was that the headache shifted from my forehead to my temples. I sat back upright again. ‘You believe? Or do you have evidence?’

  ‘What will you do for me if I tell you?’

  ‘If you don’t tell me, and you’re obstructing the course of justice, you’ll be in a lot of trouble.’

  She sat back in her chair and folded her arms. ‘Such a shame,’ she said. ‘You’re going with the threats. I’d thought you might be willing to make a deal.’

  ‘Threats?’ My headache started to throb. ‘I’m not going with threats, I’m going with the law.’

  ‘Going with the law. Interesting.’ She nodded slowly.

  Sandra’s needling had made my headache so bad that I had trouble focusing. When the witness is a stone-cold-sober pregnant woman and there are traces of the victim’s blood on the suspect’s clothes, you have a solid case.

  It had been as simple as that.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘if you’re interested in talking to me further, if you want to know what I’ve found out, for example, give me a buzz. You’ve got my number.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve got it. You’ve given it to me often enough.’

  ‘You know the family won’t talk to you. Ruud Klaver’s family, I mean.’ She pushed her chair back. ‘So maybe you need to call me this time. Hopefully we’ll talk later.’

  I rubbed my head but the pain wasn’t shifting. I got up and showed Sandra out. I felt like a giant next to her. She didn’t even reach my shoulder.

  She paused on the threshold of the interview room. ‘You know what first interested me in you?’ She rested her hand on the door handle.

  I shrugged. ‘Probably nothing.’

  ‘It was how Remco talked about you.’

  ‘Talked about me?’ I could only imagine what kind of names Ruud Klaver’s son had used for me.

  ‘I’ll tell you some other time. Actually, I’ll make a deal.’ She grinned. ‘I’ll tell you if you tell me something about yourself that you don’t want me to know.’

  I frowned. ‘Something I don’t want you to know about me?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  She smiled. ‘You don’t have to. That’s fine by me too. Then you’ll just have to ask Remco. Maybe he’ll tell you. But I’m guessing not.’

  I knew what she was implying. She seemed very keen to rub my nose in it. But her words rang true. It was likely that the family would refuse to cooperate with me even though someone had tried to kill Ruud. They might well have given Sandra something that they would withhold from me. Seeing them in the hospital this morning had definitely given me the impression that they were capable of that. But if they wanted to find out who had tried to kill their husband, their father, they might change their minds. I would have to have a proper talk with Angela and her sons, then I would know much more about their position.

  It could be bad.

  I sat down on the sofa at reception and rubbed my forehead. I’d got off to a terrible start. I had been too preoccupied with my memories of that family to actually do my job. The sofa was normally occupied by people coming in to tell us about burglaries and robberies. That thought reminded me that Sandra Ngo had been here yesterday to report that someone had broken into her house the previous day but hadn’t stolen anything. That had been on Tu
esday, the same day that someone had tried to kill Ruud Klaver. As I watched her leave the police station, talking on her phone and looking up to the sky, probably to gauge the need for an umbrella, I felt uneasy.

  If the family wouldn’t talk to me, it could be hard to get the crucial information that Sandra seemed to have. Once again, it struck me that I was the wrong person to work on this case. It surprised me that the boss hadn’t understood that. It wasn’t purely about my own preferences, but those of the victim’s family too.

  What must they have thought when they’d seen me? I hadn’t even had a chance to clarify that I was there to investigate the accident; to ask if they knew of anybody who might have wanted to kill their husband and father. I hadn’t told them that it wasn’t about me, it was about them. That I was there to help them.

  I checked my watch. I could get back to the hospital in time for the afternoon visiting hours. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right.

  And if it all blew up, that would be okay too. It would be the perfect excuse to prove to the boss that he had to take me off the case.

  Chapter 8

  I walked down the hospital corridor, following the blue stripe to the lifts. If only I’d done it right the first time round, I wouldn’t have had to come back. As the lift doors opened, I saw an elderly woman standing in the corner furthest away from the door. She was looking down at the bunch of flowers that she was holding in both hands. She resembled my mother, equally skinny and delicate, but there was something in her eyes that was very different from my mother’s focused, intelligent gaze.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I said.