A Cold Case in Amsterdam Central

by Anja de Jager

  Forensics bagged the bones up, ready for transport to the lab.

  What kind of person would stuff a skeleton in a bin bag and then put it in a luggage locker? Even if it was from the Second World War. It wasn’t that unusual for an old war skeleton to turn up. Most were found during building work, when gardens were turned over or fields ploughed. The law told any finder to call us, and they normally did. They’d found a few when they’d dug the new metro line. But Frank Stapel hadn’t called us and he hadn’t bothered to show these human remains any respect. He’d stuffed the bones in a bin bag. As if they were rubbish to be thrown away. Why had he kept them? And what had he planned to do with them?

  We went back to the police station and I just had time to grab a cheese sandwich before I was ambushed by the call that the boss wanted to see me.

  Chief Inspector Moerdijk seemed to have lost even more weight after running the Rotterdam marathon on Saturday. His zealous pursuit of health made him look permanently ill. I paused in the doorway to his office.

  ‘Good afternoon, boss,’ I said.

  ‘Sit down, Lotte. I just need to finish this.’

  I took a seat at the other side of his large dark-wood desk and rested my notepad on my lap. The boss’s head was low behind a stack of paperwork. He’d had a pre-race haircut, and the shape of his skull, every dent, every bump, was covered by only a millimetre of hair, short like a recently mowed lawn. I drew circles. I filled in the outer ring and adorned the edge of the paper with a garland. Behind the boss, rain drops started to blot the window, falling from a grey sky more suited to autumn than April. The nice weather we’d had over the last few days had finished and a week of rain was forecast. I added a square to my notepad and filled it with dots to represent where water was hitting the glass. ‘How was the run?’

  ‘Not bad. Just under three hours fifteen.’

  ‘You wanted to get out of Rotterdam as quickly as you could. I understand.’

  He didn’t smile at my joke but at least put his pen down and pushed the paperwork to the side. ‘How was your first week back?’ He looked at me over the rim of his reading glasses the way a doctor might look at a terminally ill patient.

  The first morning had been awkward; I’d paused on the threshold of the office I used to share with Thomas Jansen and Hans Kraai. Hans was the only one who’d come to see me in hospital, but he had left the police force and moved away from Amsterdam to run his father’s farm. There were things on his desk – a handbag, some files – so someone else had moved in and taken Hans’s old desk by the window.

  ‘It’s as if I’ve never been away,’ I said now.

  ‘Good. That’s good. You’re feeling well?’ the CI said.

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Good. And now there’s this skeleton.’

  ‘Yes, we found it in—’

  ‘I know. I’ve heard. I’m glad Internal Investigations cleared you.’

  ‘Yes, me too.’

  ‘But not everybody sees it the way I do.’ He pulled his glasses from his nose and rubbed his eyes. ‘Some people said that maybe you weren’t coming back.’

  I added dots to my doodle for the new drops of rain that had fallen as the CI was talking.

  ‘I’m glad they were wrong,’ he said. ‘Work with Thomas on this case. Tidy it up. Make everything right.’

  The thought of Thomas’s pretty-boy face made my shoulder muscles tense. I nodded as I weighed up the CI’s words.

  ‘Do your best,’ he said, ‘even with the skeleton. Not much of a chance of identifying it, but with the current drive to name unknown bodies, well, we should definitely try our hardest now that we’ve found a new one.’

  Forensics departments all over the country were busy digging up cadavers previously buried in anonymous graves. From one of Amsterdam’s cemeteries they’d raised seven coffins in one week alone.

  ‘I want to look at Frank Stapel’s accident again.’ It was hard to make identifying an old skeleton my top priority.

  ‘Focus on the bones in the bag. The burgemeester will be on the phone as soon as he hears about it.’

  ‘Don’t you agree it puts a different light on things?’

  ‘We need to know where the skeleton came from, certainly.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant that we should investigate Frank Stapel’s death.’

  ‘Lotte,’ here was that doctor’s look again, ‘identify the skeleton. Don’t waste your time looking into something that was obviously an accident. It’s not worth it.’

  ‘Got it,’ I said.

  I strolled along the long corridor back to our office. Ingrid Ries stood outside. She was the new addition to our team and now had the desk next to mine. She reminded me of an Eastern European high-jumper. Her face had the pronounced cheekbones and wide jaw of a Slavic woman and her body looked stretched to the point where there was no flesh left for any curves. I remembered when half the girls in my class had suddenly shot up and acquired that same shape, all legs and arms, no hips yet and no breasts. Real-life stick figures. How old had we been? Fourteen? Fifteen?

  But it wasn’t Ingrid who made me slow down. It was the fact that she was talking to Justin de Lange right there outside the office.

  ‘Hey, Lotte, congratulations,’ Justin said. ‘We cleared you.’ He smiled, and his small mouth almost disappeared in the shadow of his nose. What must it be like to work for the one department that everybody hated?

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘I hope it wasn’t too difficult.’

  ‘What was? Coming back to work? No, that’s easy.’ Through the open door was the safe sanctuary of my desk.

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ Justin said.

  ‘I know what you meant.’ I turned back to face him. ‘You meant was it difficult to talk to you. About what happened.’

  He seemed pleased that I understood him. ‘Yes, that’s what—’

  ‘It was, so let’s not mention it again. Is that okay with you, Justin?’ I escaped into our office and sat down at my desk. Maybe I should ask him if the files and tapes could be destroyed now that I was no longer being investigated.

  I had just started up my PC when Thomas came in.

  ‘We should talk to Tessa Stapel,’ he said.

  ‘That poor girl,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll go with Ingrid. Then you don’t have to worry about her.’

  ‘No, I’ll come.’ A few days ago I would have gone out of my way not to be alone in a car with Thomas again, but I felt sorry for Tessa. I wanted to look out for her, even though it would cost me.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Sorry about the mess.’ Tessa Stapel’s long hair was pulled back in an untidy ponytail and as many mousy-brown wisps drooped by the side of her face as had been gathered into the elastic band. When we had first told her about her husband’s death, the flat had been tidy. Now it had changed as much as Tessa herself had. Clothes were scattered all over the floor and the drawers of a sideboard yawned half open, its contents obscuring every centimetre of spare surface area around it. If a hurricane had occurred indoors, it could not have caused more complete chaos. She couldn’t have done this in the few hours since she’d come back from the station. This was the work of days. ‘I was trying to find something,’ she said.

  ‘Something you should have told us about last time?’ Thomas asked.

  Tessa didn’t respond. We followed her further into her home and had to step over hammers and paintbrushes. On the table a large toolbox had all its compartments open. Screws and washers, screwdrivers, pencils and pliers were strewn across the white tablecloth. Three screw bits had rolled off the table and dropped on to the floor.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ she said. ‘Tea? Coffee?’ Her fingers caressed a man’s coat – a brown leather jacket – that was hanging over the back of a tall chair.

  ‘No thanks,’ Thomas said. There was nowhere to sit that wasn’t covered with clothes or pieces of paper. To make space, he grabbed a thick blue jumper that had been thro
wn on to the seat of the sofa.

  Tessa shuffled a chair away from the table and picked up a Stanley knife. She pushed the blade out and ran it over the flesh of her thumb. She didn’t flinch when the metal cut through the skin but only looked mesmerized at the drop of blood that welled up from the thin red line.

  ‘Tell us about the ticket,’ Thomas said. ‘Did you know he had something in a locker?’ As he asked the question, he folded the jumper. He turned it into a square, the sleeves secured inside, with three quick movements of his hands.

  She brought her thumb to her mouth and sucked away the blood. ‘I looked for anything.’ She reached behind her for the leather jacket, pulled it from the back of the chair and put it around her shoulders. ‘Anything at all that would make sense.’ Her voice was soft but calm. Her eyes never left Thomas’s hands as he tidied her late husband’s clothes. She pulled the jacket closer around her. The leather was cracked around the elbows. ‘We’d only been married for six months.’

  ‘The locker ticket,’ Thomas said.

  She tugged at the jacket again. ‘It was in the left pocket.’

  ‘Inside pocket?’ I asked.

  Tessa nodded and turned the left-hand side of the jacket over to show a pocket that could be closed with a zip. ‘This one. I only found it this morning. I was in bed, wearing it.’ She looked at me. ‘It was his favourite. It still smelled of him. I couldn’t sleep. I’d checked all the pockets of his clothes already but I hadn’t noticed the inside one.’ She was quiet for a bit. ‘I hadn’t noticed it until I felt the zip against my skin.’

  ‘You opened it and found the ticket?’

  ‘I thought maybe the answer would be in the locker. And it was, wasn’t it?’ She looked at me. Asked me to confirm that the skeleton in the locker had somehow helped us to understand why her husband had died.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Thomas said.

  She nodded. ‘You don’t know. Of course.’

  ‘Did your husband mention anything—’

  ‘About the skeleton? He didn’t talk about it over dinner if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Did he talk about it at all?’

  ‘Hold on, I nearly forgot.’ Tessa got up and came back with her handbag. She rummaged around in it until she found her wallet. ‘Here, Detective Meerman.’ She held money out to me.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Thomas said.

  ‘She paid for the locker,’ Tessa said. ‘I like to pay my debts.’

  I hesitated before taking the notes. I looked for the receipt for the luggage storage. I offered it to Tessa.

  ‘What’s that?’ Thomas said.

  ‘Luggage receipt.’

  ‘We have to keep that. It’s evidence.’ He pushed back the floppy fringe that had fallen into his eyes.

  The only information the receipt showed was the exact time I’d opened the locker. ‘It doesn’t really tell us anything—’

  ‘Yes it does. Time, amount paid, we need to keep it.’

  There was nothing important on the bit of paper, but I went through my wallet again and found the second part to the receipt, which showed the transaction on my card. ‘What about this one?’ I said. ‘Evidence as well?’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘No, but you might not want to give that away. You should shred it.’

  I ignored him and wrote on the card receipt: Paid back by Tessa Stapel.

  Thomas turned back to Tessa. ‘So, where were we before this little financial transaction took place?’ He was making an effort to keep his voice light. ‘Did he talk about the skeleton at all, I think I asked.’

  Tessa sat back down and smiled at me. She had a gap between her front teeth. I hadn’t noticed that before. I hadn’t seen her smile before.

  ‘Did he mention the skeleton, Tessa?’ The lightness in Thomas’s voice was becoming more strained.

  ‘No, no he didn’t. Never.’

  ‘Do you know where he got it from?’

  ‘No.’ She put the receipt in her wallet. As it opened, I could see a small photo.

  ‘That’s Frank, isn’t it?’ I said. I had only seen him after he had died. I wanted to see what he had looked like when he’d still been alive.

  She held the wallet out to me. It was a passport photo. Frank looked like a child; an annoying child, the one who would always be in trouble.

  ‘Let me show you a better photo of him. You can’t smile in those.’

  We followed her out of the room, across the hall and into the bedroom. A large photo of Frank was garlanded by flowers, and a semicircle of tea lights threw moving shadows over the image. He looked happy in the photo. Young and healthy. He was on the beach; the wind had ruffled his hair, his bare feet were dug into the sand. The sunlight had thrown freckles over his cheeks. His hair was paler than his brother Eelke’s, more reddish blond than polished copper. He had his arms extended, cigarette in one hand, ready to hug whoever was holding the camera. I tried to push to the back of my mind the image of how his body had looked after the fall, but my brain kept slipping it over the photo. Blood had splattered from his mouth, his neck had snapped, and those fingers that held the cigarette in the photo had been broken. The impact had killed him instantly.

  ‘Anything he was involved in that was—’ I started to say.

  ‘No, nothing. Never.’ Tessa picked the photo up, moved into its offered embrace and kissed the glass in front of Frank’s face.

  The duvet on the bed had been kicked to the bottom. A pile of clothes pushed into the shape of a person covered the left-hand side of the bed. Only the right pillow was dented.

  ‘Nothing apart from this skeleton,’ Thomas said.

  She put the picture back. Ran a finger along the frame. ‘Maybe it wasn’t even his. Maybe the ticket, the locker, they weren’t his.’

  ‘We’ll test the ticket, we’ll test the locker. Test for fingerprints.’

  ‘Then you’ll see they probably weren’t his.’

  ‘Did you find anything else? When you searched the flat? Anything that showed he was depressed?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have left me. He was happy.’

  We followed Tessa out of the bedroom. In the hallway, she paused. ‘But you’ll have to investigate it properly now, won’t you? My husband’s fall?’

  ‘We’ll investigate where the skeleton came from, why it was in his locker. It’s a crime to move human remains,’ Thomas said.

  Tessa went straight to the sofa, took the folded jumper from its arm and put it on top of the toolbox.

  ‘Did your husband only work on that site, the one in Zuid?’ I asked.

  She moved her eyes from the jumper to me. ‘He worked on two different sites. He did specialist work, carpentry and decorating, and they didn’t need him all the time.’

  ‘Could you give me the other address, please?’

  ‘I don’t know. Hold on.’ She pulled a pile of papers towards her. ‘Here. Two sites. The one in Zuid . . .’ She fell silent.

  We all knew that ‘the one in Zuid’ was the one where he’d died.

  She took a deep breath and expelled the air again slowly, pulling her ribs closer together as if that would keep her emotions inside. ‘These two here.’ She gave me a piece of paper covered with a man’s handwriting. ‘Maybe some others.’

  ‘Can I keep this?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  I didn’t argue. We’d already met Kars van Wiel, who ran the site where Frank had fallen to his death. The name of the second property developer made me pause before I wrote down his telephone number, but Mark Visser was a common name. There had been two Mark Vissers in my school alone.

  ‘You said that the ticket, the locker, could have been someone else’s,’ Thomas said. ‘Any idea whose? Any friends your husband was close to?’

  ‘What do you mean, close?’

  ‘For someone to give you the ticket to a locker with a skeleton inside, I guess they have to trust you particularly well,’ he said.

  ‘Not his colleagues.’

  ‘His
brother?’

  ‘Yes, they were close. But why would Eelke have a skeleton?’

  ‘Anybody else?’

  ‘Maybe Robbert. Robbert Kloos. It could be a kind of joke. Robbert, of course.’ She nodded to herself and smiled. ‘Robbert likes to play jokes. Maybe it wasn’t a real skeleton. Just to scare Frank?’ She looked at Thomas, somehow hopeful.

  ‘It seemed human, but Forensics are testing it now.’

  She took the jacket from her shoulders and hung it over the back of the chair again. She walked to the large window that overlooked the grass at the back of the blocks of flats. She hummed softly to herself for a few seconds. ‘Can you talk to Eelke?’ she said. ‘He lives next door.’

  Chapter Six

  We talked to him around his kitchen table, Thomas and I at one end, Eelke at the other. I’d positioned my chair so I could watch Thomas and Eelke simultaneously.

  ‘Tell us about your brother,’ Thomas said. ‘What was he like?’

  ‘Hard-working, normal guy.’ Eelke looked so much like his younger brother that I could picture him lying on that pavement instead of Frank, beads of blood staining his mouth and chin.

  Eelke sprawled on his wooden kitchen chair, one arm draped over the back, fingers stained yellow. He was fidgeting. Maybe he’d like to light up but didn’t think it was polite to do so even though he was in his own home. His eyes darted between me and Thomas like a mouse trapped between two cats.

  ‘Just a normal guy? What about this skeleton?’ Thomas shifted his body forward, suddenly looking alert, to indicate that this was what he really wanted to know. ‘Is that normal?’

  ‘Why are you here? Why are you accusing my brother?’ The colour shot to Eelke’s face, an instant flash of red. He sat up straighter. It hadn’t taken much.

  ‘We’re not accusing anybody.’ Thomas sat back. He pulled a hand through his floppy hair and smoothed it back.

  ‘What about the site manager, Kars van Wiel? Why aren’t you talking to him?’ Eelke slouched back in his chair.

  ‘We went to the building site,’ Thomas said, ‘immediately after your brother’s death. There were warning signs all over. Their safety records were exemplary.’ He looked back through his notebook as if he were searching for inspiration for what to ask next.