Caz sketched the background and told him that the uneasy feeling she had about the French doors and the shoe had made her decide to contact the police.
The frown deepened. “Why didn’t you contact us yesterday?”
“I didn’t want to be a nuisance. And I knew my sister wouldn’t be pleased if she returned and found I had called the police. She seems to have taken the front door key, which made me feel a little less anxious about the things I mentioned. I’m still hoping she’ll show up. I’m just really worried about the shoe.”
Her excuse didn’t go down well. It was probably understandable. The policeman didn’t know Tieneke the way Caz did.
“Please describe your sister to me.”
She did the best she could.
De Brabander looked at the inspector who had accompanied him. The man gave a slight shrug.
The commissioner turned to her again. “You have the key to your sister’s house?”
Caz took the key from the back pocket of her jeans and held it out to him.
“No, you must open up and take us in. Did you touch or move anything?”
It sounded like a premature question to her, but maybe the police over here were just more thorough than at home. “I didn’t move anything, but I must have touched a few things. Including the locks and keys.”
He clicked his tongue and shook his head. “Well, let’s take a look.”
It was only a short distance, but they went in his car.
Inside Tieneke’s home she showed the policemen the French doors with the missing key before they went upstairs to Tieneke’s bedroom, where she pointed out the shoe. Was it her imagination, or did the two men exchange a meaningful look?
“Fetch the camera,” the commissioner ordered his sidekick.
While they were waiting for the inspector to return, De Brabander pulled surgical gloves from his coat pocket and wiggled them onto his fingers.
“I fell over the shoe,” Caz remembered. “It’s not in the same position any more. It was hidden under the corner of the comforter.”
The commissioner sighed, but said nothing.
The photo session turned into a lengthy affair, under the silent supervision of the commissioner.
Caz began to feel more and more uncomfortable. Were they always this serious in Belgium about someone who was merely suspected of being missing?
“Commissioner, I’ll be back in a moment. I just want to get some clothing from my suitcase,” she said after the umpteenth photo. “My luggage is still in the attic.” It felt like a banal thing to want to do while they were being so serious about Tieneke’s disappearance, but her clothing situation was turning into a crisis. And Tieneke’s bedroom was freaking her out.
De Brabander shook his head. “I’d prefer you to wait. We want to go through the entire house before anything is removed. I can arrange for your luggage to be brought to you, but only later.”
Now she really began to worry, but she merely said, “That would be kind, thank you.”
When the inspector had finally ceased taking photos, De Brabander crouched, took a pen from his pocket and used it to lift the corner of the comforter. He used the same pen to lift the shoe and bring it closer to his eyes.
Then, just like Sherlock Holmes, the commissioner took a magnifying glass from his coat pocket, lifted the corner of the comforter again and studied the navy blue fabric.
“The way the comforter is hanging ... Tieneke is a perfectionist.” Why she said it, she didn’t know.
The lump in her stomach grew harder. Something was very wrong. Surely they were being too serious about someone who might or might not be missing? And why had detectives been called to the scene instead of uniformed policemen?
De Brabander looked up at her. “Mrs. Colijn, I have to ask you to leave the house, please.”
“Pardon?”
“We have to summon the crime scene specialists and your presence might compromise the evidence. The house is now officially a crime scene until proved otherwise.”
“But ...” She looked at him incredulously, unable to formulate the right question.
He sighed. “It appears there’s blood on the comforter cover. On the shoe as well. Very fine droplets, but present.”
The inspector lifted the comforter.
“Grevers!” De Brabander chided.
Grevers dropped the comforter, but not quickly enough. The smear on the white sheet under the comforter could only be blood.
Caz needed no further encouragement. She fled from the room, down the stairs and came to a halt outside, covering her face with her hands.
The inspector was beside her before she had regained her breath. “Mrs. Colijn, I’m very sorry. It was thoughtless of me.”
Caz couldn’t utter a word. The image of the bloodstain danced in front of her eyes.
Grevers cleared his throat. “I’m afraid we have to ask you to view a body in the mortuary.”
She looked at him, dazed.
“The body of a woman in her mid-sixties was taken from the Leie in the early hours of this morning. She was wearing only one shoe. The same kind and size as the one in your sister’s room.”
Caz sat down on the pavement. Her legs were too shaky to support her. That was why they had responded so swiftly to Erdem’s call. Why they had sent detectives and approached the matter so seriously. Surely the body in the mortuary couldn’t be Tieneke?
“Babette saw her on Thursday,” she muttered.
“Babette?”
Caz pointed down the street. “The woman from the shop.”
As if she had heard her name, Babette came out of the shop and crossed the street.
Caz felt as if she was trapped in a nightmare. She heard the questions and answers Babette and the inspector were exchanging, but nothing registered. Tieneke dead? It couldn’t be true. Not now that Tieneke was looking forward to her freedom at last, now that she had the prospect of a life without Fien.
Thoughts swirled and eddied, self-reproach searing through her. She should have known on Friday ... What good would it have done? She should have ... What?
“Maybe you should take a look next door,” she heard Babette say when the commissioner joined them. “It’s a rental home that belongs to Tieneke. There were people there, but they left early on Friday morning.”
The commissioner said something Caz didn’t follow and turned to her. “Mrs. Colijn?”
Caz got up with an effort. “Ms. I’m not married.” Why it suddenly mattered, she didn’t know. Maybe because to her Mrs. Colijn was Fien.
He frowned. “Ms.? It means you’re not married?”
She nodded. Then realized all mature women were addressed as “mevrouw” in Belgium, married or not.
“Very well.” He acted as if he was indulging a naughty child. “Ms. Colijn, I’m very worried about your sister. Nothing is certain until the identification of the Leie body has taken place, but whether it’s your sister’s body or not, something serious has happened to Miss Colijn. Under the comforter the bedding appears to be heavily bloodstained. I’m really sorry.”
Caz could only look at him in silence.
“Do you know where we can find the keys to the house next door?”
Caz shook her head, staring at the inspector, who was cordoning off the two buildings with police tape. She made an effort to focus. “Maybe on the key rack in the broom cupboard. I think Tieneke kept all the spare keys there. That’s where I found the spare key to the front door.”
The commissioner disappeared back inside.
Babette put her arm around Caz’s shoulder and said something comforting, but Caz barely heard.
The front-door key. Tieneke had just gone somewhere. She couldn’t be dead. Caz covered her eyes with her hands.
“I’m going to give her something to calm her down,” s
he heard Babette say from afar. “You can come and find her in my apartment when you’ve finished. Above the shop.”
The inspector must have agreed, because Babette led her away. In a daze Caz saw her lock the door of the shop before she took Caz upstairs to her apartment and fed her sugar water in her tiny kitchen.
“I’ll make some tea,” said Babette.
“The balcony. I want to go out on the balcony, please.” Caz said. She was in urgent need of fresh air.
Babette led her to the balcony and pulled out a chair from under the table. “Sit, girl. You look as if you’re about to keel over. I’ll be back in a minute with the tea.”
Caz obeyed. Through the railings she saw De Brabander come out of the rental home’s back door and begin to inspect the hedge.
Of course that had to be how the killer removed the body. Out through the French doors. Over the hedge. It must have been dark, otherwise Babette and the other neighbors ... But the tenants weren’t necessarily the culprits. It was a wild assumption. Or was it?
Tieneke didn’t just go somewhere. Tieneke was dead.
Her difficult, pain-in-the-butt sister was dead. Suddenly Caz’s heart wanted to break. If she and Tieneke hadn’t had those last few conversations she might have been less emotional. They would never have liked each other, but in the recent past they had grown to understand each other better. The mutual hard feelings had begun to mellow.
In the neighboring houses Caz saw people peering through the windows. Those with balconies came out one by one, leaning over the railings to get a better view of what was going on, speculating amongst each other, from balcony to balcony.
How could no one have seen or heard anything? The neighbors on Tieneke’s right had been on holiday, but what about the rest?
Why was it happening now? While she was here? Had she brought death to Tieneke’s door? But how? Why? What was it about?
Should she tell the detectives about TU’s allegation that her cellphone was being monitored? It would be the right thing to do, but how would she explain it? She didn’t know what had made TU say it. And how would she explain to De Brabander why she was communicating with an unidentified person? Someone called Tijl Uilenspiegel?
Twenty-three
Luc
Leuven
“Good day, Luc. So here you are.” Ammie looked and sounded reasonably lucid but her expression was one of distrust. As if she had not been the one to request this visit.
“Good day, Mother Ammie. Lovely autumn weather we are having.”
“That’s to be hoped, after the gray summer. But you’re not here to talk about the weather. What do you want from me?”
“Pardon?” Ammie’s direct approach caught him off-guard.
She did not condescend to repeat the question.
He sat down, facing her. “I want to ask about your health.”
“It’s fine. What else?”
“Just talk.” Did he really have to sound so awkward?
“About what?”
Luc knew he had to pull himself together and quickly. Ammie wasn’t born yesterday. “If you feel up to it, we might talk about your time in Elisabethville. One of my students said she would like to know what it was like to live there and I thought you could give me some background.” It sounded like a safe place to start. Regrettably it wasn’t very convincing.
“That’s all?”
He nodded, but doubted she believed him. “She’s especially interested in the relationship between the indigenous people and the Belgians,” he tried another angle.
“Elisabethville.” The grip on her walking stick visibly relaxed and a far-off look came into her eyes. “The whites lived well. For the blacks who lived in the cité indigène, it must have been hell. I didn’t realize it as a child or even as a young woman. Like everybody else, I didn’t think of them as anything other than domestic or garden help. Someone to do the hard labor. To be sent on errands. To fulfil our wishes.
“Their insistence on independence was a bother, instigated by the évolués—a dirty word to many Belgians, who regarded évolués as macaques, monkeys putting on airs. It was unthinkable that they should imagine themselves equal to whites. That they could presume to get training, work themselves up in a job and accept the European lifestyle. ‘Honorary whites’ they were called when they met certain standards.” She gave a snort.
“It was a humiliating business to qualify, I found out later, when I was wiser. ‘Immatriculation,’ it was called. The candidate had to get a letter of recommendation from his employer, after which he underwent a practical test to see to what degree he had been Europeanized. A commission of inquiry was sent to his home to inspect things like the tableware and linen. Find out whether he ate at the table with his wife, whether he spoke French to his children.”
Luc listened. None of it was news to him, though the story sounded different from Ammie’s lips than from textbooks and academic articles. More realistic. Even more humiliating. He also knew the so-called immatriculation status had had a minimal effect on the prospect of promotion and a raise in salary. Immatriculation thwarted, rather than promoted, integration with the world of colonial power, prestige and privilege. It led to a desire among the “civilized Africans” to terminate the colonial system rather than be assimilated into it. Independence became their catchword.
“There were two kinds of white people in the Congo,” Ammie continued. “The incomers who arrived to plunder the wealth of the country to line their own pockets, and those who were born there or had lived there since childhood and loved the country. Not even the whites who had been born there and considered themselves part of the Congo regarded the évolués as equals or respected them for what they were. Myself included.
“I was not born there but I knew no other country than the Congo. I can’t even remember the five years before we moved there. I spent two years in Antwerp when I was fifteen, sixteen. My father felt I had to learn more about the country of my birth. Belgium was still being rebuilt after the Second World War and that might have been one of the reasons why I didn’t take to it, but I actually suspect it was the weather. I’ve never been one for misery.”
“You were still Amelie de Pauw then?” Luc dared to ask when she paused.
She looked him in the eye. “I was, but she died. In 1961.”
The admission itself was no surprise, yet he was shocked by her frosty tone.
Lieve got up nervously and offered to make coffee.
Ammie waited until she had gone into the kitchen before she continued.
“Jacq was wrong. What I had with Elijah wasn’t whoring. It was love in its purest form.”
Where on earth did that come from?
“Who was Elijah, Mother Ammie?” he asked calmly.
“Elijah?” She gave him the sweetest smile he had ever seen on her face. Then the dam wall broke. She spoke about their meeting, how stealthy they had to be so that César wouldn’t find out about their relationship.
Lieve brought the coffee and something to eat.
“Thank you, Lieve, please leave us alone now.” Ammie sounded preoccupied.
Lieve glanced at Luc and he nodded. “I’ll call before I go.”
When Lieve had left, Ammie told Luc about Elijah’s friendship with Patrice Lumumba and his political involvement. The home for orphaned children. Of their adorable little son, Kembo. How it had broken her heart that she could never show him greater affection than any of the other orphans. How Elijah could not give him any special attention either. No one could know that Kembo was their son.
“Kembo means ‘be overjoyed’ or ‘rejoice’. Elijah chose the name.” She stared into the distance. “After Elijah’s death no one would have believed me that he was our child. I had to leave him behind. Tabia, the woman who saved my life when César assaulted me, promised to take care of him.”
He
knew he shouldn’t mention Caz now, but he really wanted to know why she had left one child behind with so much regret and deliberately rejected the other.
“How did Elijah die?” he asked at last, softly.
She told him a tale of such gruesome cruelty it made his stomach turn. She recounted the events so graphically that Luc saw in his mind’s eye the man trapped in the headlights of his killers’ vehicles, heard the shots echo.
“That’s the kind of man César Ronald Bruno Janssen was, Luc. Do you understand now why I wanted nothing to do with his daughter? Just couldn’t raise her? I may be heartless, but at least I’m honest. I would have hated every fiber of her with every fiber of my own being.”
Caz
Ghent
It might be the last thing she felt like doing, but she would have to go to Leuven tomorrow. Meet Tijl Uilenspiegel in the flesh, find out from her or him what the hell was going on so that she could tell the police her phone was being monitored. They would think she was batty if she told them what she knew at this point.
Caz stared unseeing through the window of the vehicle. She had no idea where they were. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they were on their way to a mortuary.
She felt nauseous. She would have to look at a dead body. Whether it was Tieneke’s or not.
De Brabander had warned her that it wouldn’t be a pretty sight. The body had been in the water at least two days. He added that it could have been worse. They might never have found the body. It was actually a small miracle that things had worked out the way they had.
A man whose dog had chased him out of bed to answer the call of nature was taking a walk beside the Leie when he had spotted the body floating in the water and called the police. There had been no identity document or anything to identify the body. Erdem’s call had been a godsend.
When they reached the building, Caz asked to go to the bathroom. She was light-headed as well as nauseous. She reached the toilet just in time. When she rejoined the others, she was shivering, but at least there wasn’t much left in her stomach that could come out. The smell of the place had a devastating effect on her.
Sacrificed Page 24
