A Cold Case in Amsterdam Central

by Anja de Jager

  ‘Hey, Francine, I’m in the middle of something.’

  ‘This won’t take long. Listen, my father just told me that he knows where my grandfather was buried. Where Dollander probably still is.’

  ‘Give it to me.’

  ‘Bloemenstraat 82. I’ll meet you there. I’ll get you the search warrant too. We’re going to have to dig.’

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  A kick connected with my stomach and pushed its contents into my mouth. I doubled over. I was on my wrong side. I needed to turn. The old man screamed at his son. Tony kicked my shin.

  The doorbell rang.

  Tony’s assault paused and it gave me the chance to roll on to my left-hand side. I undid the holster on my right hip and got my gun out. I pointed it at Tony’s face. ‘Have another go at kicking me now,’ I said softly. ‘Go ahead.’ I swallowed thick goo.

  He breathed hard and carefully kept both his steel-capped boots on the floor.

  I rolled on to my knees. Something trickled from the side of my mouth. I wiped it with my shoulder without taking my eyes from his, the barrel of the gun firmly aimed at a spot just north of his nose. I touched the side of my face gingerly. Everything to the left of my mouth was tender and swollen. I had trouble focusing and it felt as if someone were pushing a skewer through my eye. My gun never wavered from Tony’s face.

  The doorbell rang again. ‘Police, open the door!’

  With relief I recognized Thomas’s voice. My gun still pointed at Tony’s head, I told him to open.

  Thomas had his gun drawn so I could lower mine. Behind him I could see he’d come with the backup that I should have brought.

  ‘Fuck, Lotte, why were you here? What the hell happened?’ he said.

  It had been worth it. ‘Just cuff him. Get him out of here.’ I dangled the gun by my side. I hugged my stomach with my other arm and moved carefully. I shook out my leg, but it was fine. There would be some bruises, but that was all.

  Ingrid secured Tony’s hands behind his back and led him to the car. She read him his rights.

  I joined Thomas outside the house, to get some air. He held my chin and tipped my face into the thin sunlight. He took out a tissue and wiped the blood from my mouth. It made me want to cry.

  ‘Assaulting a police officer, along with moving human remains.’ I licked my lips and tasted the metallic tang of blood. I brought the back of my hand carefully to my mouth and it came away stained red.

  ‘I had nothing to do with that Nazi,’ Tony said just as Ingrid put a hand on the back of his head to guide him into the car.

  I signalled to Ingrid to hold on. ‘What Nazi?’

  ‘We found a box. It’s on the table in the kitchen.’ He looked at me. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘You said something about my mother. I—’ He stopped himself. ‘No,’ he said, ‘there was no excuse for doing what I did.’ The words sounded like a mantra, as if he’d been going to an anger-management course. Maybe there were other victims of those red knuckles.

  ‘You’re in a whole world of trouble.’

  ‘All because of my brother moving a dead Nazi.’ He sounded bitter.

  ‘What about Tessa?’

  He frowned. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Frank Stapel’s widow.’

  Tony shook his head. ‘Never met her.’

  ‘Young, long hair, gap between her front teeth? She’s missing.’

  ‘No, sorry, no idea.’

  ‘Okay, put him in the car.’

  Ingrid nodded, locked Tony in the back of the car and started making calls.

  As I went back into the house, I heard a sound. It came from upstairs and went from a moan to something louder, a scream, a grown-up version of a toddler having a tantrum: attention-seeking, but the fear behind it sounded real. The screaming stopped. It became a whisper. A woman came down the stairs, swaying side to side like a flower buffeted by the wind. It was the woman from the nursing home. Now she wasn’t wearing a miniskirt and high heels but thick trousers and slippers. She shuffled towards me until she stood next to me in the hallway by the open door.

  ‘Have you come for Barbara?’ she said. Her voice was clear, like a young woman’s.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs van Wiel, my name is Lotte Meerman.’ I started a reassuring smile, but stopped when the movement caused a shooting pain through my lower lip. ‘I’m a police detective.’

  ‘What are you doing with my husband?’ she said. ‘Where are you taking Job?’

  ‘That’s Tony.’

  She shook her head, pursed her lips. Her long straight hair flew around her face. ‘Barbara’s come back, you know.’

  ‘She has? Can I talk to her?’

  ‘She can’t come to your daughter’s party.’

  ‘Mrs van Wiel,’ I said.

  ‘She’s got to study. She can’t come outside.’ Her voice grew louder. ‘She can’t leave her room.’ She shouted the words. Her husband moved to her side and held her, her eyes tearing over.

  ‘Conny’s confused,’ he said. ‘It was difficult when I was in the nursing home.’

  ‘Who are you?’ the woman said, removing his hand from around her shoulder.

  ‘Conny, I’m your husband.’

  ‘You’re not my husband. My husband is right there. Why is he handcuffed? You’re not my husband. You’re an old man.’

  ‘That’s your son. That’s Tony.’

  ‘My son’s at kindergarten. Who are you?’ Her voice was shrill and made my head thump. She brought her hands to her mouth, her eyes wide as she stared at her husband. ‘Who are you?’ She looked at me. ‘Who are you?’

  She blinked a few times, rapidly, and it seemed to clear the clouds from her eyes. ‘She’s come back. Barbara. I never thought she would.’

  ‘Conny, darling,’ Job said with his eyes closed, ‘Barbara isn’t back. I spoke to her last week. She’s in the States.’

  ‘She’s back. I saw her.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Conny, she isn’t.’

  My heartbeat sped up. If she thought Tony was her husband, then maybe the girl wasn’t Barbara but another woman. ‘Mrs van Wiel, where did you see Barbara?’

  ‘In my room. She was staying with me.’

  I rushed up the stairs and pulled open the door to a bedroom. A green bedspread on a double bed, copper lights with white lightshades on either side. A large wardrobe filled with suits and dresses emitted the smell of mothballs. The bedroom was empty. So was the second. So was the bathroom. A wooden staircase led to the attic. I held my gun out in one hand. I was very aware that I hadn’t seen Kars in the house.

  ‘Lotte, are you okay up there?’ Thomas shouted.

  I kept quiet, counted to three in my head and pushed the hatch open.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  My gun entered the attic before I did. It was empty. An even layer of dust showed that nobody had been up here in months. I closed the hatch behind me and went down the stairs. I checked every room. Tessa wasn’t in the house.

  Conny van Wiel’s words, that her daughter had returned, hooked themselves into my brain. Yes, she was crazy, so maybe she’d just been rambling, but why could I not shake the thought that she’d been talking about Tessa? At the moment, what else did I have to go on?

  After the fruitless search, I joined Thomas in the sitting room. The clock on the wall ticked slowly. The sofa was covered in brown corduroy. It was easy to tell which seats had been used most. Two shiny circles were worn out of the fabric on the two closest to the arm rests. Only the middle cushion was still ribbed. If this had been my mother’s sofa, she would have rotated the cushions so that they wore out evenly.

  ‘Mrs van Wiel,’ I forced myself to stay calm and my voice to be even, ‘where were you last week? Did you go on a little holiday? Stay with one of your sons?’

  She frowned. ‘I didn’t go anywhere.’

  I rested against the windowsill, where there was space between two azaleas and a peace lily.

 
; ‘How long has your wife been like this?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘A long time. It’s slowly getting worse. She gets upset when I correct her. I normally just go along with her, but when she gets me and Kars, or me and Tony, muddled up, I don’t know, too Oedipal to let pass, I guess.’

  ‘Frank Stapel,’ I said. ‘He gave everything a new coat of paint here, didn’t he?’

  ‘He hated the colours.’ The old man bent over to pet a sleek Siamese cat who’d come into the room. ‘He did a nice job but wanted to paint it yellow or white or magnolia. Anything but this. Light brown wasn’t to his taste.’ He picked the animal up and put it on his lap. ‘Or so Kars told me anyway. He did it while I was in the nursing home.’ He scratched the cat behind its ears. It started to purr loudly, stretched out its claws and hooked them through his trousers, into the knees. Job van Wiel grimaced, undid the claws from his legs. He stroked the cat. It started milking the flesh on his legs again.

  I looked at my watch. How long would it take for Forensics to turn up? I hated the waiting but I also knew I shouldn’t start digging in the garden until they were here. ‘It must have been tough for Kars, looking after his mother.’

  ‘I don’t know how he did it, I really don’t.’ The cat turned on its side, stretched out along the length of the old man’s thighs. ‘He did an amazing job. His wife probably helped, but still.’

  ‘Your wife always lived at home?’

  ‘No, she was in an institution for a while. Early on. We missed her, the boys and me.’

  ‘Was Kars here, in your house, when you were in the nursing home?’

  Job didn’t answer, because a fleet of cars had turned up outside and screeched to a halt. The digging could begin.

  ‘Job,’ I said more urgently. ‘Your wife, where was she?’

  Edgar Ling came in with a team carrying equipment, shovels. The old woman keened in a high-pitched tone at the army marching through her house. Job didn’t answer my question.

  I followed Edgar to the garden and Job stood beside me. He had a piece of paper and a pen. He was drawing something. I asked him what he was doing and he said that he wanted to be able to put the garden back exactly the way it was. For his wife.

  Edgar Ling’s first step was to cut some of the tulips’ stamens, taking samples of the pollen as evidence to match with the bones. I shouted at him that he was being unnecessarily careful, that all he had to do was dig. The sooner we had this second skeleton out of the ground, the sooner I could start looking for Tessa again. And the sooner it would be obvious that Mark was innocent. Edgar straightened his back and walked over to Thomas with some of the tulip pollen in a plastic bag.

  ‘You might want to get the old man out of here,’ he said. ‘For when we start to dig.’

  The clouds were gathering in the sky; the dry weather wouldn’t last. The sun’s rays peeked around the edge of the clouds and hit the ground exactly on the tulip patch, a spotlight to show where they should be digging.

  ‘I want to stay,’ Job said.

  Thomas shook his head.

  ‘Mr van Wiel, where was your wife while you had your hip operation?’ I said.

  Job didn’t respond, but stood there with his eyes glued to the patch of tulips.

  ‘Come inside,’ I said. ‘Could you give me Tony’s address? Or Kars’s? Or was your wife somewhere else?’

  ‘I’m staying here,’ Job said.

  I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and give him a shake. Edgar looked at me with his bulging eyes. ‘If we find nothing, we’re destroying his garden. If we find something . . .’

  Frustrated, I threw up my hands. I’d tried. Job was not going to leave until the garden had given up his secrets. All I could do now was wait and observe his reaction. I’d seen Tony’s flash of anger; I’d more than seen it, I’d actually felt it. Job had a dangerous criminal buried in his garden. Had he known about that?

  Edgar took out a device shaped like a flat, square metal detector. He floated it over the ground. The garden looked freshly weeded. The plants were neat: tulips grew in unnaturally shaped squares, busy Lizzies and sweet Williams edged a smartly mowed lawn.

  I walked over to the tulip patch. The squares were regimental, with equal distance between plants in each direction.

  Edgar signalled that there was something there, in the back corner behind the tidy row of bedding plants, underneath the tulips. He took a shovel. I couldn’t take my eyes from the blades as they carefully dug their way to the skeleton. The old man started to sway but continued drawing the location of each tulip. The result was strangely like my drawing of the raindrops on the CI’s window. Thomas grabbed the sleeve of Job’s coat. I wanted to look away, to avoid seeing another set of bones being dug out of the earth, but somehow the shovels were like magnets to my eyes. I followed the plants as they were removed and the tulips taken away and put on a pile. Kars must have done the same thing; he’d dug up a natural-looking patch of tulips. When he put them back, he had used a tape measure in each direction and planted them equidistant. And Frank Stapel watched Kars dig up the skeleton as he decorated this house.

  ‘Stop!’ Edgar shouted. ‘Careful.’

  I moved forward. Pushed someone out of the way. The sooner I did this, the sooner I would prove Mark’s innocence.

  ‘Lotte, get away from here.’

  I ignored him and moved closer. Behind me I heard a soft keening that turned into a loud moan. A clatter as the notepad hit the ground. I looked round. Thomas’s hand on the old man’s arm had been enough to break his fall. He hadn’t fainted, but his hip seemed to have given way, tipping him sideways and on to his knees.

  Someone passed me a pair of nitrile gloves and I slid them on. I took a large stone out of the soil with my fingers and put it behind me. I found more stones. There was a layer of them. I wiggled my fingers underneath the biggest one. A sudden sharp pain hit as my nail gave way under the pressure, but I dug my fingers in deeper until I felt the stone loosen. I lifted it and saw a flash of ivory underneath. I paused. Edgar crouched beside me. He lifted a skull with a clear bullet hole right between the eyes. I straightened and looked at Job’s face. It was so pale it was almost blue. He grabbed his chest. I got my mobile out and called an ambulance.

  Chapter Forty

  I supported Job van Wiel and helped him back inside the house. He sat heavily on the corduroy sofa.

  ‘Lotte, now that it’s confirmed that the rest of the skeleton is still here, we’re going back to the police station. Coming?’ Thomas called out to me from the open front door. ‘We’ll interview Tony. He’ll talk now.’

  ‘I’m going to wait here with Job. Make sure he gets in the ambulance safely. Our priority now is finding Tessa,’ I said. ‘If Tony says anything about her, call me straight away.’

  He nodded. ‘We’ll find her.’

  After they’d left, I sat down on the sofa next to Job. His face was as pale as Tessa’s had been when we first told her that her husband had died. Outside, the Forensics team were digging up the rest of his garden. Conny stood by the window overlooking the activity, humming contentedly to herself, as if they were a group of landscape gardeners that she had employed to create this destruction.

  ‘Where did your wife stay?’ I asked for what felt like the tenth time. ‘She wasn’t here, was she? Your son Kars, why couldn’t he pick you up earlier on? Where is he?’

  Job’s eyes opened. ‘I didn’t know,’ he said.

  ‘I understand, Mr van Wiel. You were in the nursing home. There’s no way you could have known what Kars—’

  ‘The Nazi I knew about. Not that second body.’

  ‘The Nazi? What Nazi?’

  He closed his eyes.

  ‘What Nazi?’ I repeated. I’d forgotten about the box that Tony had mentioned. I went to the kitchen. It was there as he had said. I put on a pair of gloves and opened it with trepidation. The lid was rusted and the hinge at the top bent where someone had forced it open. Soil was stuck in the hinges, as if it had been b
uried with the body. Edgar Ling would be able to confirm that later. There were a number of photos in the box. Photos of a couple, the man in an NSB uniform with a woman on his arm. Photos of multiple NSB-ers together. Who were these people? Were they people that Francine’s grandfather had killed? Was that why he had been shot? Then I looked more closely at the face of the woman in the photo. She had wild dark hair. I saw the family resemblance.

  ‘That’s how you knew,’ I said to Job. ‘That’s why you asked me when I was going to check that story.’

  Francine drove with her father to the small house where her grandfather’s body had been buried. She parked behind the police cars. Her father got out and stood outside the house: an old man with tears streaming down his face. ‘I remember it so well.’ His voice was steady through the tears, as if his vocal cords and his eyes weren’t driven by the same brain and emotions. ‘I was there,’ he said. He rested his hands on the gate next to the climbing roses. ‘I was here when my father died. I dug the grave.’

  ‘Oh Daddy.’ She put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She worried about her father most on these clear days. She’d read somewhere that most people with dementia got stuck mentally in their twenties and thirties, in the days when they had been most active. She’d hoped her father would just think he was going to work, with her mother still alive and she and her brother young. Happy days before Sam went off the rails but long after the war had finished. She remembered her own childhood as a happy time. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like for her father, to have memories of his father being shot, of digging his grave, of his mother being dragged off and put into a concentration camp, of the long walk north to escape, of changing his name and identity to hide from the political choices that his parents had made. Of knowing that his parents had been on the wrong side. The evil side. All at seven years old. How could he have left his father buried here all these years? But then she remembered his reaction when she’d told him there’d been no clothes. He’d thought his father had still been wearing his uniform. He could never have unearthed his father, because that would have shown the world the lie he’d told to his wife and children and all his friends.