A Cold Case in Amsterdam Central

by Anja de Jager

  ‘You dug the grave but never saw what happened after?’

  ‘There was someone else too,’ he said. ‘Conny, she was called, I remember. We used to play together. Just a little girl, my age, six, seven years old. Her father was the one who shoved the gun under my father’s chin. I didn’t think he was going to do it, but he pulled the trigger. He made her watch. He said that she should learn what they did to traitors. Then he looked at me and I was sure I was going to be next. But I got away. Only later did I find out that he was the one who took our house.’

  I showed Job the photo. ‘You knew this man was buried in your back garden?’

  ‘Conny told me. When we got married.’

  ‘You didn’t want to tell anybody about that?’

  He shrugged. ‘Her father killed a Nazi. So what.’

  ‘To give him a proper burial?’

  ‘Why? How many people had this man killed during the war?’

  ‘At least to get the skeleton out of your garden?’

  ‘My wife was worried that . . .’ He shook his head. ‘It was stupid. But that we would have to give the house back. To the family.’

  ‘The family of the Nazi?’

  ‘We thought it was better to keep quiet. That’s why we thought we’d always have to stay here.’ He rubbed a hand over his bald head. ‘But the stairs, I couldn’t go up them any more.’

  ‘So you asked your son.’

  ‘He works on a building site. An old skeleton. What difference does it make? Conny told stories . . . more stories recently. About how her father shot a man and then had her help him strip the body. He burnt the clothes but buried some photos.’

  ‘How did she know? Did she see it?’

  ‘Yes, he made the children watch . . . That wasn’t right.’

  ‘Children? Does Conny have brothers or sisters?’

  ‘No, she’s an only child. It was the man’s child. A boy, she said. What she says about the past is clearer somehow. More true than the present.’ Some colour had returned to Job’s face. The ambulance seemed less necessary, but I wasn’t going to cancel it.

  ‘Unlike what she said about Barbara being back.’

  ‘Yes, she’s not.’

  ‘There’s a young woman missing. I think that’s who she might have seen.’

  Job frowned. ‘What young woman?’

  ‘Tessa Stapel. Frank’s widow. Is there anywhere that your wife could have met her in the last couple of days?’

  ‘She stayed at Kars’s house.’ Now that all other questions had been answered, he finally responded to this one.

  ‘Give me the address.’

  He wrote it down on a piece of paper. I didn’t wait for the ambulance to turn up but left immediately. Outside, I saw Francine and her father, but I didn’t stop to talk to them. I called Dispatch, gave Kars’s address and asked for urgent backup there.

  Chapter Forty-one

  I had both my hands folded, almost like in prayer, and the index finger of my right caressed the trigger of my gun. I only took my left hand away to ring the doorbell, then it went back to supporting the wrist of the right. The ring was a five-note chime that intercut the fast beat of my heart pounding in my chest. I stepped sideways so that I was protected by the pristine door frame. There was no answer. The house was as big and broad as Kars himself, with that same facade of respectability: two storeys high, a slanted roof, freshly painted window frames surrounding spotless glass. A property developer’s business card. There was no way of telling what was inside.

  A woman on a bicycle saw the gun in my hand. I waved my badge at her and put my finger to my lips. The last thing I needed was for her to call the police and a fleet of my colleagues to turn up with sirens blaring. When my backup got here, they would at least not try to shoot me.

  I peered through the window. Through a gap in the net curtain I could see a tall standard clock ticking away Tessa’s time, and a plasma screen on the wall where sixty years ago there would have been an oil painting. I didn’t see Kars. I scanned the house from top to bottom for an open window, but found none. I skirted around to the back. Behind me, the ducks in the narrow canal that edged the garden quacked their concern.

  The back door was closed too. The house kept its secrets closely hidden. All the windows were shut. I looked around in the garden. The circular lawn had a bird bath in the middle. A small blue shed with white trim that reminded me of a beach hut seemed the right candidate to yield up what I was looking for. I opened the door and found pots of old paint, a Black & Decker Workmate, a full set of tools hanging neatly on the wall, some lengths of wood and, finally, a small pile of bricks. I picked one up.

  Most of the windows were double-glazed. The kitchen door had a single pane of glass. I wanted to smash my brick through it and destroy the glass with a loud shattering. As a last precaution before doing that, I tried the door handle. It opened. I felt stupid about the brick now and dropped it on the ground. I went into the kitchen. The marble countertop and fitted cabinets seemed to have stepped right out of the pages of an interior design magazine. Apart from a mug and a teapot on the work surface, there were no signs that anybody ever cooked in here. I waited with my gun drawn to see if anybody would come running. Nobody. I touched the teapot. It was cold. Had Kars popped out? Left the back door open by mistake? The house was filled with silence. Still, I wasn’t taking any chances: gun in both hands, I swung into the lounge. It was empty. The open-plan layout of the house allowed me to check most of the downstairs area in two swings. The large clock didn’t make a sound and showed a time that was two hours and twenty minutes wrong. There was a cupboard under the stairs, but when I pulled it open, it didn’t reveal a person. The downstairs bathroom was all mirrors and stainless steel, but no sign of Tessa.

  The barrel of my gun was cold against my cheek. I took the stairs without making a sound. The doorbell would have drawn everybody’s attention to my presence already, but I didn’t need to make it any easier for them. At the top, I had to take a couple of breaths to steady my nerves. I swung into the hallway, gun drawn. It was empty. I sneaked over the rug that covered the wooden floor, to dampen the sound of my footsteps. I stayed behind the frame as I opened the first door on the left, then swung in. Empty as well. Two teddy bears on the windowsill, a pink bedspread and a poster of One Direction on the wall. First door on the right. Also empty. Four glass tanks with lizards. The scaly creatures blinked slowly at me. The next door on the right was locked. A flimsy padlock kept it closed. I was about to move on when I heard a sound from behind the door. Not a voice as such, but a groan. I rammed the door with my shoulder but it refused to budge. Then I took a step back and kicked right next to the handle with all my force, frustration and weight backing my foot from my hip. The wood cracked and tore with the sound of a branch breaking off a tree in an October storm. The door swung open, the padlock dangling and the hook it had been tied to torn out of the frame.

  Tessa was barely conscious. I was at her side immediately, crouched between two single beds. She was still breathing. Under my hand I felt a faint heartbeat in her chest. I tapped her face but there was no response. I could see an empty pot with a white prescription label on the front. I put my gun on the floor and tried to get her upright.

  ‘Tessa? Tessa!’ Was I too late again, as I’d been for Mark’s sister? I could have guessed sooner that she was here. Why had I stayed at Kars’s parents’ house? Fuck, fuck. I grabbed my mobile from my pocket and dialled Dispatch again. Kneeling next to Tessa, I moved her hair out of her face. Her eyelashes flickered but she didn’t have enough strength to open her eyes. She whispered something. I brought my face close to hers and felt her faint breath touch my chin.

  The same operator answered and I told him I needed an ambulance too. ‘It’s an emergency.’

  ‘Most units are attending a large accident on the ring road but I’ll get you one,’ he said. ‘And I’ve got someone on their way to you.’

  I disconnected the call and stuck my phone in
my pocket. For a second, I closed my eyes. This time I hadn’t been too late and Tessa would be fine as long as we got her to a hospital in time.

  Then I felt a solid weight pressing against the back of my head.

  ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ Kars said.

  I couldn’t get to my gun. I’d put it down when I tried to get Tessa upright and it was now a metre or so away. It seemed like a ravine separated me from it. Whatever Kars was holding against my skull, it felt as if it was metal. Knowing his background, I was pretty sure it was for real.

  ‘Did you do this?’ I gestured at Tessa.

  ‘What does it matter?’ Kars’s hands were steady. The pressure against my head didn’t waver.

  ‘It matters to me.’

  ‘She did it. I only gave her the necessary means and opportunity, if you know what I mean.’

  The sensible thing was to do nothing, I knew that. I was out of options. I had to wait until my backup turned up. Or the ambulance. That would be my window to act. ‘We got the skeleton. Dollander. We found it.’

  ‘I knew that would happen, ever since your colleague came to ask questions about him. I always knew this day would come. I’m prepared.’

  ‘You won’t get far.’

  ‘No? Easy with all these open borders.’

  I’d called it in as an emergency, so the ambulance would arrive with sirens blaring. It would give Kars time. Time to pull the trigger and make his escape. I was aware of everything around me as if my brain wanted me to savour this room. Tessa was pale and her breathing seemed even shallower. The duvet covers on the two single beds on either side of her matched the curtains. Tea-rose pink. The kind of decor you would choose for an old woman. The padlock on the door. He didn’t have this installed for Tessa. It dawned on me who had stayed here before her. ‘You had your mother in here?’ I said. ‘Locked up like this?’

  ‘She was safe here.’

  ‘Did your father know?’ It was impossible to keep the anger out of my voice, even though I didn’t want to antagonize him. I remembered his father saying that he didn’t know how Kars had done it, looking after his mother so well. Here was the answer.

  He laughed. ‘It was fine for him, being pampered by everybody in that nursing home. All the old women doting on him. I had to deal with my mother. She’s not easy.’

  ‘He’s dealt with her all his life.’

  ‘He should have put her in a home years ago.’ His voice sounded rough. I remembered how she held his hand when I saw them together in the nursing home. She’d adored him. ‘He should have put her away when we were still kids. You think it’s the dementia, but she’s always been crazy. It’s what made my sister leave. Turn round. Slowly.’

  I felt the barrel of the gun scrape my scalp as I did as he said.

  ‘Just making sure you know what’s against your head.’

  His face was pale. His eyes were on mine. I had my hands out by my sides. He should have kept me facing the other way if he was planning to shoot me. ‘You locked Tessa in here too. That’s why your mother thought her daughter had come back.’

  Kars smiled. ‘Mum liked her. Called her Barbara. The girl was scared enough to play along with it.’

  The casual tone made me even more angry, but the minute I moved, he’d put a bullet in my brain. If I didn’t move, he’d kill me anyway. My heart refused to accept what my brain was telling me: that I was out of options.

  Then I heard something downstairs. Was it my backup? I forced myself to keep looking at Kars and not turn my head towards the sound. Every muscle in my body tensed.

  ‘I’ve got it all figured out,’ Kars said. ‘I’ve got a house.’

  He was stalling. It was difficult to kill someone in cold blood. Pulling the trigger wasn’t that easy. Had he not heard the sound? Was his hearing damaged from all those years in the noisy building trade? Or was I imagining it? The door behind Kars opened slowly.

  I’d never been happier to see Ingrid’s spiked-up hair.

  ‘Police, put the gun down,’ she said.

  Relief coursed through my veins with the thought that we were done. My shoulders dropped. Kars lowered his gun and moved round to face Ingrid. Even though it was probably unnecessary, as soon as the gun moved away from my head, I dropped down. Crouched low.

  ‘Drop it. Drop the gun,’ Ingrid shouted.

  I fitted my fingers around my own weapon. The heft of it had never been more delicious.

  Kars had his gun pointed at Ingrid’s feet. ‘It’s funny,’ his voice was soft, ‘this is what I had been trying to avoid. I turned my back on this, but it came looking for me again.’

  ‘Kars, this is over,’ I said.

  ‘All because I wanted to keep my life the way it was. Away from the violence.’

  ‘Put the gun down, Kars.’

  ‘My wife, my kids, they never knew. Never knew about my past. And then Dollander came back with his demands. I paid him for a while. But he didn’t stop. They never stop.’

  ‘So you killed him.’

  ‘For two years after he’d been released from prison, he came to my door every month like a rent collector. Demanding money. Then I shut him up permanently. That was six years ago. Six years.’

  ‘Is that why you didn’t meet with Frank and Eelke?’

  Kars laughed. ‘I thought they had the bones of a Nazi. Why would I want those back?’

  I looked along the barrel at the head on the thick neck, which was bent forward. ‘You knew about that?’

  ‘Yes, though I never knew for sure that it wasn’t just one of those stories. My parents never dug that patch over, not even when they were really into gardening. They had those tulips growing there but didn’t even lift the bulbs. I found the other skeleton. Buried Dollander beside it.’ He grinned, but he was still looking down at the floor. ‘It was fine for years. Then my father had to have his hip replaced. If only he could have stayed in that house. I thought they would live there for ever, but no, he was talking about moving into a bungalow. So I had to remove the bodies. I started with the Nazi. The one that didn’t matter.’ The gun was still pointing at Ingrid’s feet. ‘Only that little red-headed bastard saw me. Still, I thought it was under control, as it was only the Nazi’s skeleton, but then you,’ he nodded towards Ingrid, ‘turned up to ask about Dollander.’ He grinned ruefully. ‘That’s when I realized I had messed up. Even more so when Tessa turned up on my doorstep, screaming that I had killed Frank. I hadn’t.’

  I moved to the side of Kars. ‘Put the gun down. There’s an ambulance coming for her.’ The sound of the siren was audible in the distance.

  He seemed to nod. ‘I had to keep her here to make sure Eelke wouldn’t tell on me. It was a stupid idea.’ He grinned. ‘But it worked for a bit, didn’t it? You arrested Mark Visser.’

  I thought that was it. But then his gun arm moved up. ‘Sorry,’ he said to Ingrid. He took the safety off. She had to take the shot. He raised the gun until it was pointed at her head. She stood there, frozen. For a millisecond I wasn’t sure what he was trying to achieve, then I saw his finger twitch on the trigger and I reacted before my brain was even in gear. The bang reverberated through the silent house.

  Kars fell to the floor.

  Some of his blood had splattered on Ingrid. She lowered the gun, still clutching it in both hands. ‘I couldn’t do it,’ she whispered. ‘I knew I had to and I just couldn’t.’

  The previous times I’d pulled the trigger, a certain adrenaline rush had coursed through my veins. Now I was just filled with an enormous sadness.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Ingrid said. ‘I heard the call from Dispatch, that you needed backup. I wanted to be the one to help you.’

  ‘If you hadn’t come, he would have killed me,’ I said.

  The ambulance pulled up outside. I put my gun on the dressing table. I had never taken a life before.

  ‘Lotte, wait,’ Ingrid said, ‘you could never have saved Agnes Visser. I checked in the file: he killed her the day he abducted her.
’

  She offered it to me as a consolation prize. There was too much going on in my head to take it in properly.

  Chapter Forty-two

  I would have liked to go with Tessa in the ambulance, but I knew I should stay at Kars’s house until the rest of the police turned up. I was taken to the police station and answered seemingly endless questions as through a cloud of fog. What had happened still didn’t feel real.

  It was two hours later that I finally made it to the hospital. It was the same one from where I’d picked up my mother only a few days ago. I normally hated the smell of disinfectant, but right now it seemed in tune with the way I was feeling. I tried to tell myself that this was the outcome I’d wanted. That this hospital visit was proof that I hadn’t been too late this time. It was just that the price I’d paid for it was too high. The price that Kars van Wiel had paid.

  Tessa seemed small in the hospital bed. She was pale and curled the edge of the blanket with nervous fingers. ‘This was all my fault, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No.’ I sat down by her side and took her hand. ‘Not at all.’ If anything, it was mine. ‘How are you?’

  ‘They pumped my stomach.’ She grimaced. ‘Everything hurts. And it’s a surprise to still be here, you know? How’s the old lady? Where did that man take her? Your colleague was here earlier but he didn’t tell me much.’

  ‘She’s fine. You know she was Kars van Wiel’s mother, don’t you?’

  ‘She was so confused all the time. I didn’t know who she was. She called me Barbara.’

  It was because Conny had continued to think that Tessa was Barbara that I had found her in time. It was odd to feel grateful for an old woman’s mental problems.

  ‘How can he have locked his mother up like that?’ Tessa continued. ‘She was crazily grateful whenever he came round. Told me not to shout at him.’