Chapter 16
‘Detective Meerman,’ I heard a woman’s voice say. Sandra Ngo was standing on the pavement outside Barry’s house. ‘I didn’t know you were here.’ She tipped her head sideways. ‘You’ve come to see the same person as me.’
‘You know Barry?’
‘I’ve talked to him once or twice.’
That made me feel uncomfortable. ‘What did you talk about?’
Sandra smiled. ‘I’ll tell you if you tell me something about yourself you don’t want me to know.’
Not this again. I didn’t even respond this time.
‘Can you give me what you have on Ruud Klaver?’
‘I’ve told you what I want in return. Let me interview you, and I’ll share my evidence with you. The evidence that proves he was innocent.’
I shook my head. ‘I can’t.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’
‘Did you tell the family that you want me to come on the podcast?’
Sandra narrowed her eyes. ‘What do you mean?’ She rested her hand on the cement post that anchored the front gate.
‘Talk to them. Ask them if they’re okay with it.’
‘Why wouldn’t they be?’
‘I’m serious. Ask them if they are okay with me being interviewed, and if there are any subjects that are off limits. Then get back to me.’
With a puzzled look in her eyes, Sandra stepped out of the way and went towards Barry’s front door.
I texted him. Did you tell her?
The answer came back almost instantaneously. No. A second text followed a few seconds later. I told her I’d been in an accident.
I watched as the wind blew a mass of leaves down the street. They were maple leaves, red and gold. Further down, yellow leaves floated on the water of a pond. The trees themselves were half bare. Any leaves remaining on the branches were no longer a mass of green but a golden cover, the wood now clearly visible amongst them. A single leaf clung bravely to the end of a spindly branch, as if it was holding on for dear life. It wasn’t ready yet to sail away on the wind but wanted to stay rooted to the ground.
If the family agreed, I might talk to Sandra Ngo to get the information she had. It could be a very useful short cut.
The streets were deserted here. The pavement was empty and quiet until a scooter came haring noisily along. I cycled over the wide bridge that signalled the start of the canal ring and got back to the older part of town. I pedalled slowly until I couldn’t drag it out any longer, then entered the police station.
I was relieved to find that Ingrid wasn’t in. The whiteboard in our office taunted me. Ruud Klaver stared at me from the centre. There were other names written there, but one stood out: Carlo Sondervelt. However much I tried to focus on Ruud’s final year, that name kept drawing me in. Whatever Sandra Ngo might have found out about Ruud Klaver would just have to wait, I told myself sternly. I wasn’t investigating Carlo Sondervelt’s murder again; I was investigating Ruud Klaver’s. What he might or might not have done only mattered so far as it had an impact on that murder investigation. Therefore I should be checking his employment record and known current associates rather than old murder cases.
Some days, being a police detective is really boring. Checking Klaver’s employment record was quick: he hadn’t had a job since he’d come out of prison. I moved on to looking at number plates, which I knew was pointless. There was an entire team upstairs going through exactly the same footage right now. I was only doing it because I had nothing else to do. I remembered other cases where I’d done this kind of work and been riveted by it, thinking that every detail I checked brought me closer to the solution. Now, not so much.
That was why I was pleased when I was interrupted by Charlie coming to see me. ‘Tell me something about yourself that you don’t want me to know,’ I said.
‘Okay.’ He paused. ‘Do you know why my parents called me Charlie?’
‘I have no idea.’ Wow, he was actually going to tell me.
‘I really don’t want you to know this.’
I narrowed my eyes. ‘Then don’t tell me. I really don’t want to know.’
He sighed. ‘No, I will. It’s because my father was a huge Charlie’s Angels fan.’
‘Ah.’ I cringed. ‘Really?’ I had to stifle my laughter.
‘It’s so embarrassing. Don’t tell anybody.’
‘Yeah, that’s bad.’ I folded my arms and looked at him. ‘Just curious: why did you tell me?’
He frowned. ‘Because you asked. Now can I be part of this investigation?’
‘Why?’
‘Wasn’t that the deal? I tell you something . . .’
I glared at him until his voice faded away.
‘About the car,’ he said, and his voice pulled me back into the present. ‘We haven’t found it. We looked through all the CCTV footage and it isn’t there. We don’t know where it came from and we don’t know where it went after it hit Klaver.’
‘So we’re stuck?’
He nodded. ‘It seems that way.’
There was one easy answer. One simple short cut. Maybe I owed it to Barry to take it.
Chapter 17
All weekend I weighed up the reasons for and against being interviewed for the Right to Justice podcast. In my study, I made a list of pros and cons. The cons list was much longer. There was only one pro item, but it was of crucial importance. Hours later, I still hadn’t decided, so I called Mark and asked him if I could pick his brains about something. He said he’d be right over.
Even though I wanted to rush up and kiss him as soon as I heard his footsteps on the stairs, I forced myself to stay in my chair for the sheer pleasure of watching him let himself in with his key. It seemed more intimate even than sleeping together. It was nice to have him here. We had been spending a lot of time at his place.
‘I’m thinking about going on the Right to Justice podcast,’ I said.
Mark hung up his coat and took a seat next to me on the sofa. He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. I snuggled up and curled my legs under me. Pippi was eyeing him up as if to decide whether to jump on his lap. He wasn’t that keen on cats, but she loved him. Not as much as she loved me, I told myself, but he was a close second. Go figure.
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ he said.
I wanted to talk to him because he was always the voice of reason. I needed him to say that I was doing the right thing. I was also fully aware that I couldn’t ask for his opinion without telling him why I didn’t want to go on the podcast, because I had to balance that with the reasons for doing it.
He reached for my hand and wrapped his fingers around mine. ‘Sandra Ngo isn’t going to be sympathetic towards you. She’ll grill you.’
‘I know. The thing is, I really need her information and this is the only way to get it. She says she’s got proof that Ruud Klaver was innocent.’
‘Yes, I heard that on the podcast. But you didn’t think he could have been.’
‘I never found any evidence for it.’
‘Are you starting to doubt that now?’
‘Maybe the witness didn’t see what she said she saw.’ My voice was sharper than I intended it to be. I didn’t want to seem defensive. In the back of my mind I thought that maybe this was a rehearsal for the real thing.
‘But you had forensic evidence too.’
I nodded slowly. He had been listening to the podcasts closely, as well as to my muttering afterwards.
‘Are you worried there was something you missed?’ he asked.
I pulled my hands through my hair. The problem about checking your own work was that it was so hard to judge whether you’d done a good job. Maybe I should never have agreed to work on this case. It had seemed like a bad idea from the start. ‘If I missed something, then I should definitely go on Right to Justice and admit to it, don’t you think?’
‘So that’s a yes?’
I took a deep breath to tell him, but the words didn’t come ou
t. ‘I need a drink,’ I said. ‘Do you want one?’ Without waiting for his reply, I got up and walked to the kitchen. ‘I’m just a normal human being,’ I said loudly. ‘It was an early case for me; I wasn’t as experienced. So it’s possible that I made a mistake.’ I grabbed two glasses and put them on the table. ‘And if I did, I should try to make it right.’
‘Do you want to tell me what was going on with this case?’
I opened the fridge and got out a bottle of Chablis. I rummaged in the drawer for the corkscrew.
‘I’ve seen how you react to the podcast,’ Mark said. ‘I can tell it’s making you upset. I’m . . . worried.’
I sat back down. ‘Worried about what?’ I looked away and concentrated on cutting the foil on the top of the bottle.
‘About you, of course. Did something happen during that case? Something that shouldn’t come out?’
Shouldn’t? I guess you could say that. ‘Yes, I suppose there’s something that shouldn’t come out.’ Even thinking about it hurt. I pulled the foil from the neck and exposed the delicate cork underneath.
‘Is it something you did?’
Something I didn’t do. Something I could have stopped, maybe. Something a child did and that was therefore classified. I stabbed the point of the corkscrew into the cork. ‘My boss got injured during the arrest. A life-changing injury, we’d call it now.’ I drove the point down and for a second wondered if a cork had feelings, and if being stabbed like this hurt as much as this conversation was hurting me. ‘I think Sandra Ngo knows something the family aren’t willing to share with the police.’
‘Why wouldn’t they tell you? Wouldn’t they want to prove his innocence?’
‘Now that he’s dead, they’re angry and probably feel there’s no reason to cooperate with us. But I need to know.’ I turned the corkscrew and watched the cork being penetrated further and further, until I could ease it out of the neck of the bottle.
‘For most people,’ he said, ‘having to admit they were wrong would be enough to make them not want to be interviewed. But you seem to be okay with that.’
If I couldn’t talk about this tonight, I couldn’t do the podcast on Monday. It gave me an indication of how hard the interview was going to be. I put pressure on the corkscrew to lever the cork out of the neck. When it finally gave up its grip on the bottle, it came out with a satisfying pop.
I used to wonder when the right time was in a relationship to talk about the most painful things in your life. Now I knew the answer was: when you could bear it, when you were strong enough to talk about it.
‘I was pregnant at the time,’ I said. ‘Four months pregnant.’ I filled both glasses. I handed Mark his and then took a large gulp from mine. The flinty coldness filled my mouth.
Mark looked at me but stayed silent. He looked surprised. This wasn’t what he’d expected to hear at all. In the back of my mind, I wondered what he’d thought I was going to confess to. That I’d tampered with evidence maybe? Framed the suspect? That Ruud’s confession had been coerced after all?
He must have seen how much the memory was affecting me, because he reached out for the hand that wasn’t clutching the wineglass. He didn’t say anything. I appreciated that he let me finish the story. It would have been so easy for him to interrupt, to say that he didn’t know I’d had a child, to ask where it was now.
To ask why I hadn’t told him this before.
Instead, he gave me time.
‘I lost the baby.’ Part of me was proud of myself because I didn’t cry. I gulped down the entirety of my glass of wine, then freed my hand to fill it up again. ‘Two weeks after the arrest. And even though the doctor said there was nothing I could have done about it, I was sure that it was because of what happened that night. And every time I hear about this case, every time I think about it,’ I took another big gulp from my glass, ‘I keep thinking that it was my fault, that I shouldn’t have gone into the house, that I shouldn’t have run the risk.’ Because my choice had put everybody else in danger. It had hurt Barry. I put my glass down and pressed the palms of my hands against my eyes. ‘And the worst thing was that the main witness, Nancy, was pregnant too. I went to Carlo Sondervelt’s parents’ house and saw all these photos of their granddaughter, and I knew that this was how old my daughter would have been.’
Mark wrapped his arm around my shoulder and pulled my face to his chest. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’ He slowly rocked me from side to side.
I fitted into his embrace and tucked my face in the corner between his shoulder and his neck. I held him tight, as if he was my life buoy. As if only the touch of his body was going to keep me from drowning. I slid my right hand under his jumper to feel the warmth of his skin under my cold hand. He didn’t flinch.
Even though I wasn’t going to mention any of this to Sandra, it was possible that being interviewed was going to hurt. This was the price I was going to have to pay to get the information she had. But didn’t I owe it to the dead man to do at least this much? If he’d been innocent, shouldn’t I try to obtain the information that would make all the difference to the case? And most of all, didn’t I owe it to Barry?
I made up my mind. I wasn’t going to back out.
I took my phone from my bag. I called Sandra Ngo and set up a time for the interview. We agreed that I would see her tomorrow.
After I’d disconnected the call, I poured myself a final glass of wine.
Mark stayed, and it wasn’t just having someone else in my bed that made me lie awake for most of the night. I was going through the case again in my head, running through the events of Ruud Klaver’s arrest. I remembered that arrest so clearly.
After the incident, I stayed upstairs. Someone else went with Barry to the hospital. Dennis was taken away. I volunteered to watch Angela and Remco. I stayed behind and looked at the blood on the floor, and for the first time understood how terrible it felt to put your own safety before that of a colleague. Guilt washed over me, even as I still thought that Barry would probably be fine. I would never do this again, I promised myself.
As I’d told Mark, two weeks later, I had a miscarriage.
What I hadn’t told him was that it was the day after I’d found out that Barry would never walk again. He’d been unlucky: the knife had severed one of the main nerves in his spine. A couple of centimetres either side, and he would have been fine.
If I’d done something, grabbed the kid’s arm, he would have been fine.
I never told anybody how I felt. My husband thought I was depressed because I’d lost the baby and was extra nice to me. That only made me feel worse. Because I definitely didn’t deserve it.
All those memories tumbled through my mind as I lay awake that night.
The fact that Sandra had sounded triumphantly pleased when I’d spoken to her was the least of my worries.
Chapter 18
‘Don’t do it,’ Chief Inspector Moerdijk said when I went to see him first thing Monday morning.
Up to that point I’d felt rather good about doing the right thing and asking the boss for permission to be interviewed by Sandra Ngo. You’d have thought that by now I’d know that bowing to authority was a mistake. ‘Boss, I don’t know if we’ve got a choice.’
‘Of course you do. Don’t do it. Don’t get involved with that Right to Justice lot.’ He grabbed some papers from his desk.
‘Has something happened?’
‘They asked for comments on the first case they covered.’
I remembered that. At that stage, the police had worked with Sandra Ngo. We’d very quickly learned the error of our ways. ‘I know, but this is a bit different.’
‘I don’t see how. She asked for a comment, and the police’s official stance is that we do not cooperate with Sandra Ngo and her programmes any more.’
‘She says she’s got something that proves Ruud Klaver was innocent of Carlo Sondervelt’s murder.’
‘And?’
‘Well, it could be crucial
for finding out who killed Klaver.’
The boss frowned. ‘And?’ he said again.
‘Don’t you see?’ I said. ‘If Ruud Klaver didn’t kill Carlo Sondervelt, then someone else did.’
‘And you think this person could have killed Ruud?’
‘I really don’t know. I’m still pretty sure Klaver was guilty, but I need to see what Sandra Ngo has dug up.’
‘Lotte, I trust you. Whatever Sandra has found, you’ll find too.’
I shook my head. ‘Not this time. The family refuse to speak to me and Sandra seems to be treated like a beloved daughter. If it’s based on something they’ve told her, they’re not going to share it with me.’
‘Lotte, I want to be very clear: don’t do it. We know she can’t be trusted. We know that she likes stitching people up. She’ll pretend to be nice and then knife you in the back.’
The expression made me feel sick. ‘I don’t think she’s going to do that with me.’
The boss gave me a dubious look, as if to say that I was overestimating myself.
I remembered the acrimonious conversation that Sandra and I had had a couple of days ago. ‘At least I know what I’m getting myself into.’
Moerdijk shook his head. ‘I don’t understand why you’d even think of doing it.’
‘I’ve got nothing much to lose,’ I said.
‘Sandra thinks she’s found some evidence that proves we were wrong. She says that you locked up an innocent man, and you think you’ve got nothing to lose?’
‘She’s going to broadcast that anyway. I can’t stop her from putting her podcast and her opinion out there.’
‘So just wait. Wait for the podcast and then you’ll have the information.’
‘You’re asking me to wait for a week, or two weeks, in the middle of a murder inquiry?’
‘The murder of a convicted murderer.’
‘Does that matter?’
‘It makes it all a little less urgent.’
I shook my head. ‘If he was actually innocent, we wouldn’t be talking like this.’
‘Seriously, Lotte, do what you do best. Get digging. Look through the old case notes again. Forget it was you who originally investigated this. Imagine it was Bauer’s case, for example, and try to stitch him up for taking one of our team.’
A Death in Rembrandt Square Page 11
