A Cold Death in Amsterdam (Lotte Meerman Book 1)

by Jager, Anja de

  The prosecutor’s voice cut into my painful reminiscing. ‘Afterwards, when you had him in for questioning . . .’

  ‘I didn’t interview him,’ I said. That time I hadn’t been able to watch.

  ‘No, Hans and Thomas did. I know. But he didn’t want to talk then.’

  ‘So I heard.’

  ‘He refused to sign a statement; he refused to answer any questions. If it hadn’t been for the body . . .’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘He came in with a broken cheekbone.’ The prosecutor waited.

  I didn’t respond.

  ‘You wrote in your report that you hit him out of self-defence,’ he prompted.

  ‘It’s all in there.’

  Prosecutor Kraan picked up his papers. ‘This is what I wanted to talk to you about. The defence team are claiming that the case should be thrown out of court because of police brutality.’

  It was the best news I’d had all day. I felt jubilant but kept it in, because I knew that Michael Kraan would misread it, would think that I was proud of hitting Paul Leeuwenhoek. He wouldn’t understand what I was really happy about.

  ‘I have to say’, Prosecutor Kraan continued, ‘that I am intrigued by the tapes. From your conversations and the way you talked, it seems that you and Paul were getting on very well.’

  ‘I liked him. I have to admit that I hadn’t thought he was guilty. Until he told me and I found the body.’

  ‘But there is no doubt in your mind now?’

  ‘I’m certain he killed her.’

  ‘Any thoughts on motive or method?’

  ‘The mother said in the interview that he must have slapped Wendy. She must have fallen and hit her head on a rock.’

  I had watched Hans and Thomas question her. I had wanted to hear what Monique was going to say but even seeing her from the other side of the window had felt too close.

  ‘She said that her daughter always wanted to play outside,’ I continued. ‘Never wanted to come home for dinner. Paul has a bit of a temper, according to her.’ To me he’d seemed rather cold and calculating.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ the prosecutor said. ‘That’s what she’s going to testify to.’ He paused. ‘But what do you think? Did he say anything?’

  ‘He never said why or how.’

  I understood why Monique was sticking with this version of events. This was what she could live with. In my dreams, Paul would hit his daughter with a brick. He wasn’t angry. He was trying to see if he could do it and if he could get away with it. After a nightmare like that, I would get into my car and drive until I’d calmed down. My dream version and Monique’s theory were equally likely according to the forensic evidence. Mine would get him a longer prison sentence but we would never be able to prove it. The defence would ask why Monique hadn’t seen blood on Paul when he’d come home.

  ‘I agree with Monique. That’s the most likely way it happened,’ I said. At least that was backed up by a statement from his ex-wife.

  ‘So cruel, to hide his daughter’s body, come back from the little park and claim he can’t find her. Then ask Monique to help him look for her. Search anywhere but in the park, as he said he’d combed through that.’

  ‘He kept his wife between hope and fear all those years.’

  ‘A cruel heartless man.’ The prosecutor was trying the words out. They sounded fine to me.

  When he’d dropped his mask, I’d finally seen the real Paul. I’d seen how calculating he’d been and how hard he had worked to put me in the impossible situation I’d found myself in. Every move, every word, had been worked out beforehand. I was so open to his advances – recently divorced, as he’d said, and very insecure – and I’d fallen for his pretence. But his mistake was that he had shown it to me. That he had gloated. That he was smug about having told someone who could never tell anybody else. Or so he thought.

  In the bad times in the middle of the night, I sometimes wondered if I would have reacted differently if he’d continued to show me a loving, caring side. If he’d said that he’d killed his daughter by accident, if he’d asked for my help. In the daylight, I could convince myself that I would always have done what I did. At night, driving along the motorway in the dark, I sometimes worried that I would have kept silent and that I would have covered for him. Luckily for me, that choice hadn’t come up.

  ‘Do you think the mother knew?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Monique kept talking about Wendy as if she were still alive.’ Even though she and Paul had discussed me behind my back, if I believed Paul at least, nothing he’d said had suggested his wife knew anything about Wendy’s death.

  ‘You know your role will come under close scrutiny during the trial.’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘Is there anything I need to know? Before we go to trial?’

  ‘Nothing I can think of.’ I saw the photo of Wendy and for the first time in a while I saw her for what she was: not an older version of my Poppy, but a little girl in her own right. The photo was turned round and Wendy was facing me, holding her watering can and staring at me with eyes full of reproach above her gap-toothed smile. I could imagine how she’d spit the words through the hole of the missing tooth. ‘My father killed me, and you didn’t realise it. You were too engrossed in your own problems, your own hopes and desires, to worry about me. You only saw me as a replacement for the child you’d lost.’

  I couldn’t have saved her, she had already been dead for fifteen years before I first met her father, but that didn’t make me feel any the less depressed. I couldn’t face that photo any longer and wondered how I could have held it and gazed at it and caressed the place where it showed her pigtails, only last week.

  The questions had stopped and I almost ran out of the prosecutor’s office. I needed to escape those photos and leave that little girl behind. I dashed into the toilets and made it just in time to be violently sick. I sank to the floor and knelt on the almost-white, almost-clean tiles, my hands together on the toilet and my head bent over it as if in prayer. The smell of urine and vomit mingled and I reached out and pressed the flush. Tears ran down my cheeks, and my stomach and throat burned from bringing up the cheese sandwich and coffee mixture.

  As I read the predictably disgusting graffiti on the stall wall from my lowly position on the toilet floor, about the size of so-and-so’s privates and what so-and-so had done and with whom, I realised I’d been right to try to avoid this meeting: it had been just as painful as I had known it was going to be.

  That evening, I didn’t eat anything. I didn’t cook anything. I couldn’t face food, still nauseous from the onslaught of my memories. I stared at the walls with the lights out as I sat on the sofa and waited for the minutes to creep past. Then I put on my coat and went out.

  It was half past ten, still early for a Thursday evening, and the bars were heaving with students on their main going-out night, before they’d all go home to their parents for the weekend, and with people out for a quick drink after their dinner or after having been to the cinema. The Grand Café Luxembourg, which I’d come past in the tram with my father on the way to Centraal Station the other day, was warm and noisy. It felt like being a student again, as if I was twenty years younger and still naively sure that I knew everything and could do anything. The sound created by many people talking surrounded me like a comfortable blanket. I ordered a glass of white wine at the bar. I knew that somebody would talk to me within ten minutes or so, since everybody had had enough to drink to make them more sociable than they’d ever be normally. I would only have to look at someone for long enough to make them come over.

  The man I picked was quite attractive, in that slightly fleshy, just past his prime kind of way. He bought me two more glasses of wine in a forty-five-minute period. We chatted about the weather, the news, the Ajax Football Club and work. His work, never mine. He was an accountant for one of the big firms and was out with a group of his colleagues to let off steam after a day’s hard work. He gestured
towards the other end of the bar, where those colleagues were supposed to be. I couldn’t see anybody who was looking at us but there were enough groups who could have been his colleagues. I didn’t care if he was lying to me or not.

  The inevitable moment came when he said he was going outside for a cigarette and asked if I wanted to keep him company. I said I would. It took me about five minutes of standing outside in the freezing cold to decide that this had been a really stupid idea. I pushed him away as he tried to kiss me. He tried a bit harder and I pushed a lot harder. ‘Frigid bitch,’ he shouted after me as I jogged for the tram.

  It was well after midnight that I emptied the contents of the pot of prescription sleeping tablets in my hand and was surprised by how light the pills were – and how heavy the decision not to swallow them all.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The walk to the boss’s office never got any easier. He hadn’t said what he wanted to see me about, but the tone of his voice was a warning not to take it lightly. It was going to be bad. I had a painful headache directly behind my right eye, probably caused by drinking on an empty stomach, that even three cups of coffee hadn’t been able to take away.

  The look on his face was one of pure anger. His eyes were narrowed and his mouth looked as if he got a nasty taste in it as soon as he saw me. ‘Shut the door.’

  My stomach started to flutter. I sat on the chair, back ramrod straight, my body under control.

  ‘Lotte, some information came to me that I hope you will deny.’

  The flutters intensified and I started to feel sick.

  ‘What the hell were you thinking? Are you insane?’ He hit his desk with the flat of his hand.

  I jumped at the sudden sound. My heart thumped in my chest, as much from the shock as from the anticipation of what was to come. I’d known they’d find out sooner or later. When Thomas had first told me about the meetings he knew I hadn’t recorded, I’d known.

  All energy left my body and my shoulders sagged. I was exhausted, but in a small part of my mind there was relief, now that the need to pretend was gone. For weeks I’d lied – to the press, to the CI, to my colleagues, and to everybody who congratulated me on finding Wendy Leeuwenhoek’s body. Maybe she would stop haunting me in my dreams when I told the truth. This must be why people went to confession. You confessed all your sins and faced the consequences.

  Oh my God – the consequences! I’d lose my job. I might even go to jail. I . . .

  ‘It’s about DI Piet Huizen. Somebody told me he’s your father. Is that right?’

  It took me some time to register what he was saying. I just stared at him, speechless.

  ‘Come on, Lotte, it’s a simple enough question. Is Piet Huizen your father?’

  For a second I considered saying that he wasn’t. But that thought left my mind as quickly as it came. There was no way the CI wouldn’t be able to find out the truth. There were such things as birth certificates. I knew Moerdijk well enough to know that he would have checked the facts before calling me into his office. He already knew what my reply was going to be.

  ‘Yes, it’s true.’ The knot that had been unravelling in my chest began to knit up again.

  ‘What were you thinking of?’

  I had been thinking of confessing. I had been thinking of telling the truth, of admitting . . . I had been on the brink of telling CI Moerdijk what I had been trying so hard not to remember, but now . . .

  ‘I didn’t think there was anything—’

  ‘Anything wrong with what you did?’ His face was growing redder and redder, like a stick of dynamite ready to explode.

  ‘No, I wasn’t going to say that.’ I inhaled deeply. It took time to adjust to this different reason for being shouted at. ‘I didn’t think there was anything in Ben van Ravensberger’s tip-off.’

  ‘But when you found there was?’

  ‘There wasn’t, though. We know that Ben made it up. Ferdinand van Ravensberger explained—’

  ‘For fuck sake!’ The sudden swearword made me sit up. ‘Stop making excuses. I’m sick and tired of covering up for you. You lie to me, you never keep me informed, I need to go to the prosecution with all the evidence in the Wendy Leeuwenhoek case, you work on a case involving your father, who is now the main suspect . . .’

  My father the main suspect? Anton Lantinga had been killed because I was poking around in Otto Petersen’s murder. Now I’d made my father the main suspect? I spoke before I could consider the wisdom of my words. ‘He can’t be.’

  ‘That is precisely why we don’t get involved in cases concerning members of our family. You can’t see straight. You can’t be objective. You defend him. Piet Huizen was at Anton Lantinga’s house half an hour before Anton was shot. How can you still say you were right to stay on this case? To keep me in the dark?’ He raked a hand through his hair and took a deep breath. ‘Does Hans know?’

  ‘No. No he doesn’t. I haven’t told anybody.’ He didn’t ask if Stefanie knew, which was significant.

  ‘That’s some good news at least. Means I don’t have to suspend him as well.’

  ‘Suspend?’

  ‘For a month. After that we’ll talk. See if your position here is tenable at all.’

  ‘But we’re so close to solving this case!’

  ‘Don’t argue, Lotte. You’re lucky I’m not firing you on the spot.’

  ‘But . . .’ But what am I going to do, was what I wanted to ask. However, it wasn’t up to the CI to answer that question. Tears burned in my eyes. This had been such a small mistake. I’d made some really big ones, but now I was suspended for breaking a stupid rule, when I could have made a real contribution. Yes, I knew I should have told Moerdijk, knew the risk I’d been taking. ‘Those files,’ I began.

  ‘Lotte, just shut up. Shut up! You’re just making things worse every time you open your mouth.’

  I knew that if there was any way to explain my situation, any way I could make him see that I wasn’t doing anything wrong, then I could stay at work. Then I wouldn’t lose my safe haven. I could of course still confess to the CI – but the words wouldn’t come, only tears – and there was no way I would let him see how upset and scared I was. I got up from my chair.

  ‘The main reason I’m not firing you’, the CI said tightly, ‘is that I need you here to testify in Paul Leeuwenhoek’s trial.’

  I could have laughed at the folly of it all. My job was saved only because I needed to repeat my lies in front of a judge!

  ‘The prosecutor told me the defence team is definitely claiming police brutality. It’s such a shame you don’t have the tapes of that last meeting, of the confession. I want you back here in time for the trial. We need to make sure you can testify. I’ll let you know the date.’

  I almost ran down the corridor to my desk, to grab my stuff and head out. I didn’t want much, only a handful of pens and my pencil.

  Hans watched me from his seat. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I’m suspended.’ He wanted to know what had happened but my throat swelled up and I couldn’t talk to him. I couldn’t talk to him and still keep things together.

  ‘Your gun, please.’ CI Moerdijk had followed me to the office.

  I picked up my Walther P5 in its holster – I had been going to leave it here anyway – and put it into his outstretched hand. Through the noisy traffic of my heartbeat, I heard Hans ask the CI what the hell was going on.

  Stefanie came and stood in the doorway, in my way, just as I left. She was surely here to watch the outcome of her interference. She must have checked up on Piet Huizen in her attempt to blacken his name, and found out about me instead. I pushed her aside.

  She looked shocked, her mouth an O of surprise when my hand connected with the flesh of her arm. ‘Lotte, are you OK?’

  Of course I wasn’t OK. I was not OK because she had grassed me up to the boss. You bitch, I thought, how did you find out? Did Ronald tell you? Did you check my birth certificate? I turned my back on her; I didn’t t
alk to her, scream or shout at her, because, right now, I couldn’t stand the sight of her.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  My mother didn’t like going out when the weather was this cold. When I saw how thin and pale she looked, I was glad she was staying indoors.

  I followed her to the kitchen. She didn’t ask me why I was here but put on a pair of yellow Marigolds and piled dirty dishes in the sink. It worried me that she hadn’t done them last night. I briefly hesitated, wondering if I should tell her what had happened, but then came out with it as I thought she’d take it as good news. ‘I’ve been suspended.’

  She stopped still, one of her hands holding a plate half-submerged, half above water. ‘What did you do?’ Her other hand rose to her mouth and she pushed the yellow rubber against her lips as if to keep more questions inside.

  I didn’t understand why she looked so upset. ‘I covered for Dad and they found out.’

  ‘Covered? Why?’

  ‘Because of the money.’

  She didn’t seem to understand me. ‘What money?’

  ‘The money you told me about last time.’

  ‘Oh Lotte, I thought we were through with that.’ She plunged her hands back in the soapy water.

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

  My mother’s duck-egg-blue eyes returned to the washing-up bowl where white foam covered the dirty plates underneath. Her hands started scrubbing. ‘No, I’m not pleased you’ve thrown away your career. Especially for your father. Is it permanent?’

  I picked up the plate she’d just cleaned and wiped a blue-and-white-checked tea towel in careful circles to remove the water. ‘I’m not sure. Not yet.’ I put the white plate, without frills, without patterns, in its usual place in the cupboard. ‘Just tell me what happened between you and Dad.’ She kept trying to avoid my questions, but I needed to hear her say it. I had to know that I’d done the right thing; I wanted her to tell me how she’d found out about the money, the first time she’d realised he was on the take, maybe the first notes she’d found. I wanted to know, because this was what I gave up my job for.