Caz was instructed to stand on one side of a glass partition. Someone in a surgical cap and mask approached, pushing a steel trolley on which lay a body covered with a white sheet.
It felt unreal.
The sheet was removed from the face.
A burning, acidic fluid pushed up in her gullet. She swallowed again and again, then turned and ran blindly from the small room and down the long passage.
Outside she spat the sour phlegm into a flowerbed. A man’s hand held out a bottle of water. She emptied it in a few gulps and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“I presume it’s her? Tieneke Colijn?” De Brabander sounded sympathetic.
Caz nodded. “It’s Tieneke.” And not. It was a dead body that used to be Tieneke.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Colijn.”
How many people had heard those words from him during his career? Caz wondered. At what point had he stopped truly meaning them?
“I’m even sorrier that I must ask you to come with us to make a statement and answer a few questions. I understand how awful it must be for you, but the sooner we get the information, the sooner we can track down the murderer.”
“So it was murder?” Stupid question. The bloodstains on the bed had confirmed it. Besides Tieneke is ... was not the kind of person who would voluntarily jump into the Leie.
He nodded. “There’s trauma to the back of her head, but we don’t know yet whether it caused her death. We’ll know more after the post mortem.”
With great effort Caz swallowed again. She wished there was more water in the bottle.
“If you don’t feel up to it, we could wait until tomorrow, but it would really be better if we do the interview now.”
“Let’s get it over with. I have to be in Leuven tomorrow anyway.”
De Brabander raised his eyebrows. “May I ask what you’re going to do there?”
He was probably wondering what could be so urgent after she had just identified her sister’s body. “It’s a private matter. An appointment I must keep.”
“But you’re coming back to Ghent?”
She nodded. “I’ll be here until about Friday. Well, that was the plan. Everything has changed now. I’ll have to make funeral arrangements for Tieneke. Bloody hell, I don’t even know how you do something like that. Especially not here.” Suddenly the tears came, unbidden but unstoppable.
“Steady, Ms. Colijn. One thing at a time. Let’s just take down your statement and clear up a few matters. But I must ask you not to make any travel plans without letting us know. Especially not plans that will take you out of Belgium.”
Was she considered a suspect until proven otherwise? That would be the cherry on the top.
“Shall we go?” asked the commissioner.
Caz nodded. She just wanted to get it over with.
Luc
Leuven
Ammie paused for long moments. At times Luc thought she had retreated behind her veils, but after a while she continued. It seemed to take all her willpower to remain in the present in order to talk about the past. Bit by bit and incoherently at times, her words painted a picture in his mind.
Ammie spoke of Tabia, of her flight with Tabia’s nephew, how she had ended up in Nylstroom, later Pretoria. Of the Colijns. Of malicious Josefien and her equally nasty daughter, Tieneke.
“Hans was relatively kind, but only after he’d been compensated.”
“Diamonds?” Luc guessed.
Ammie nodded, but did not elaborate. “I had to wait until the child was born, but I came here as soon as I could.”
In many ways Ammie was indeed a heartless person, Luc realized while she was talking, but she had loved two people in her life with all her heart. Her father and Elijah.
Her father had died under a cloud of dishonor, while Elijah had died because he had grown to love Ammie. After that Ammie was half a person. It had given rise to her coldblooded approach to life.
Or maybe it had begun with her relationship with her mother, who, Ammie said, had done nothing but complain.
“A beautiful, spoiled woman who thought only of herself and her own comfort,” Ammie summed up Hortense. “Constance, my mother’s sister whom my father married a year after my mother’s death, was the same, only worse.
“I suspect my father got mixed up with diamonds to get Constance to stop nagging.”
Luc felt his ears prick up, but he didn’t want to interrupt.
“Like my mother, Constance wanted to return to Belgium, but she was used to a life of luxury in the Congo. A beautiful villa with a string of servants. She expected to be waited on hand and foot. She didn’t lift a finger, just gave orders. To maintain a similar living standard in Belgium they would have had to be truly wealthy.
“My father earned a good salary, but not that good. In Belgium our living standards would be considerably lower. But Constance would have none of that. She played on Papa’s affections. Mama, who had died of malaria, was one of the aces up her sleeve. Did Papa want her to die just like her sister, simply because he couldn’t give her the life in Belgium that she was used to? It was the kind of blackmail that led to incessant arguments in our home.”
Her father had been an honorable man, but the nagging and bickering had got the better of him, Ammie continued. When Constance introduced him to a local businessman with important connections, Albert abandoned his principles and got mixed up with diamonds. The man’s name was César Janssen.
“I knew nothing about Papa’s business dealings. Nor did I know who César Janssen was. Papa merely introduced him as a friend. It was only much later that I discovered what was actually going on.”
Albert’s unsullied reputation through the years had made him the ideal front man for César to exploit. To make extra sure Albert remained under his control, César began to court Ammie. He acted like a true gentleman. When he asked her to marry him, she agreed, not because she was head over heels in love with him, but chiefly to escape from her home.
“I didn’t know what love was then,” she said with a rueful smile. “I only found that out when I met Elijah, but by then it was too late. In the late fifties no one got divorced. I would have been an outcast. If you married an évolué besides, you might as well go and banish yourself to an island.”
“Elijah was an évolué?” Luc couldn’t help being surprised.
“It was only one of the things that had shocked Jacq to the core.”
Luc could imagine. Jacq would probably not have admitted it, but he was definitely aware of class distinctions. Not that royal houses and blue blood meant anything to him, nor wealth either. To him, intelligence, knowledge and a certain level of civilization determined class. He would have regarded an évolué as inferior. Actually he was quite an arrogant man, Luc realized, surprised.
Ammie began to speak again. She described how César had corrupted her father more and more, making him undertake ever-bigger risks. When he no longer needed Albert, having robbed him of a consignment of diamonds, César did not hesitate to have his father-in-law, his wife and the pilot killed in a plane crash.
“I found out about it a few years after the incident. Like so many other things as well.” She sat for a while with her eyes closed. “I’m tired now. Come back later this afternoon, Luc. I want to lie down for a while.”
Luc called Lieve and helped Ammie to her room.
When he was satisfied that she was comfortable, he closed the door of the apartment behind him, frustrated. He hoped Ammie would be as lucid later in the afternoon. It was his last chance to find out more before meeting Caz.
Caz! He glanced at his phone, which had been on silent, and gave a sigh of relief. She had sent a new number. There was no message, but that was not important. She had a new phone and remained in contact. That was enough.
He would have to tell her face to face that
her biological father had been a scoundrel of note. A murderer, who had had his wife’s father and stepmother killed, and had her lover shot by corrupt police officers. Also that he was the reason why her mother hated Caz with every fiber of her being.
How did one do that? How could one look someone in the eye and give her that kind of news?
Mercifully, it wasn’t the real Caz Colijn’s friendship he wanted to gain. It was the woman with the long gray curls he had seen at the Graslei that he wanted to get to know. The one who existed only in his imagination.
Erevu
Leuven
Erevu breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Dove’s name among the emails he was downloading. There was something from Jela as well, but Dove was more important now. He had to be in Leuven tonight.
For the umpteenth time he cursed the idiot boy. He had endlessly complicated things. But he was young. Inexperienced. He understood that the boy had panicked when the Colijn woman had caught him in the house.
They both knew that she usually put her shopping bags in the hallway before driving to the garage to put the car away. It would have given Dove enough warning to slip out before she came in through the back door. But this time she didn’t unload anything.
Dove had only realized she was in the house when he heard the stairs creak. He was so startled that he dropped the jewellery box he had just picked up. She was there in moments. When she saw him, she screamed, and to shut her up he had grabbed her and clapped his hand over her mouth. She had put up such a fight that she’d cracked her head against the bedpost. The wound bled profusely. Dove lost his grip and she began to scream. It was while he was trying to silence her that he unintentionally strangled her.
“She kept staring at me, Nkoko. That was why I put her on the bed and covered her with the comforter,” Dove had told him in tears on his arrival after the boy’s frantic call.
Erevu sighed. The scene was etched into his memory. The blood on the walls. The body under the comforter, the pale, limp hand protruding. Dove, crouching in the corner like a naughty child who knew he would be punished—shivering, his hands covering his head.
The first time you take a life is always the worst. Erevu knew that. Every subsequent time is easier, until after a while you can approach it clinically. Decide without emotion what has to be done and how to get away with it.
But Erevu knew he had also been at fault. Because it was Dove. His Dove. That was why he had lost his head as well. He had washed the blood from the walls and the headboard, but failed to clean the rest of the room as thoroughly as he should have, and he forgot to go up to the attic. Dove’s terror had been contagious.
Initially he thought of getting Dove out of there, taking him next door to clean himself up, then phoning the police himself to say they had heard a ruckus next door. But Dove would never have passed the test. He could hardly come out of the toilet.
The only option was to get rid of the body and flee. Probably the dumbest thing they could have done, but it was water under the bridge now.
They had to get out of the country as soon as possible, that he didn’t doubt for a moment. But first they had to get to the old woman. Find out what she had done with the nkísi.
Erevu brought the tablet closer to his eyes to read Dove’s email.
Nkoko, with everything that has happened, there’s something I forgot to tell you. To be honest, I forgot about it until I checked my cellphone diary today.
Before the woman arrived and everything went so terribly wrong, I was in the attic, going through Caz’s stuff. There was an envelope. Inside was only a note, but the impression of a key was clearly visible on the outside of the envelope. The note said something about a key to a safe-deposit box. I entered the most important information in my e-diary. The name of a bank, the branch in Pretoria and so on. The box is registered in the name of Josefien Colijn. The contents are described as a canvas bag with wooden objects.
I’m so sorry about everything, Nkoko. Maybe this information will go some way toward making up for it.
Your loving grandson.
Erevu gritted his teeth. The stupid, stupid fool! He had a good mind to ... How could Dove forget the most important thing he found?
He took a walk around the block to calm down before he replied.
Dove, there’s only one way to make up for the indiscretion you committed, not to mention the crucial information about the key which you kept from me. Send the details at once.
You must come to Leuven today so that we can plan. Limit your luggage to the absolute minimum. Destroy the rest of your things. My mvet as well, no matter how hard it is for me. Going forward, we must travel light and leave no traces.
I’m afraid we can no longer spare anyone. I know you have a soft spot for the Caz woman, but you can’t allow sentiment to stand in your way. We can no longer hesitate about who or what has to be sacrificed. The cause is more important than human lives and the cause will suffer if we don’t get the key.
Fortunately, we no longer have to bother with the old woman. She has nothing we want, though I would have liked to look her in the eye while I extinguished the flame of her life. But it would be stupid to satisfy that selfish need. We must leave the country as soon as possible.
Back in Lubumbashi we’ll be safe, but it’s a long way to go. A journey we can’t undertake without the key in our possession. A journey that will have to take us to Pretoria first. Jela will be able to help.
If I don’t hear from you by tonight, I will have no choice but to regard you as one of the enemy.
Your loving grandfather.
Erevu sat back. Could he do it? Sacrifice Dove for the cause?
Yeshua expected it of Abraham and Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son. That’s what the Bible says. If Abraham could do it, so could he. But he prayed that Yeshua would provide a way out, send him a lamb to sacrifice, instead of his grandson.
Twenty-four
Luc
Leuven
Luc felt dizzy when he collected the key from Herman’s neighbor after a light lunch and walked to the house next door.
Since he’d left Ammie, his mind had been whirling. He tried to grasp what Ammie had told him, tried to see the bigger picture, but also remember the details. Tried to interpret. Understand.
Luc put his overnight bag in the guest room and went to the living room, where he poured himself a stiff shot of Herman’s cognac before he walked out onto the patio and called Lieve.
“Sorry, Professor, but Miss Ammie isn’t strong enough to see you again this afternoon. She’s exhausted—emotionally rather than physically, I think.”
He understood. For all these years she had been bottling up secrets, trying to forget, and suddenly the scabs were being pulled off.
“I have an appointment tomorrow morning, but can I drop in again in the afternoon? After that I’ll have to return home.” On Tuesday morning he had to be in the lecture hall and that evening was the first VGK event he and Laura had to run. The Godparents’ Evening. On Wednesday it was parents’ evening. He had left almost all the arrangements in Laura’s hands. It embarrassed him, but in truth she was just so much more efficient at that kind of thing than he was. Actually, she was just more efficient. Period.
“I’m sure it’ll be okay, Professor. Just check again before you come.”
Luc sat down on a patio chair and stretched his long legs. For the moment he didn’t want to think about his conversation with Ammie. He would rehash it later. Neither did he want to think of what Caz Colijn would say. He did, however, have to decide where to meet her. Or whether to meet her at all.
He devised a workable plan and typed a message.
Thanks for the number.
Meet you 10:30 at Zwarte Zusters entrance to Groot Begijnhof.
From there we can walk to the Arenberg Castle and have lunch.
Okay
?
It took a small lifetime before the reply came.
Okay for now. Will confirm shortly.
It would have to do, but he wondered why she was hesitant.
His thoughts turned to the man at the Graslei. He might be the one who was monitoring Caz’s text messages. Then there was her conversation with the young black student. Evidently she knew him from somewhere. And Ammie had been in a relationship with an évolué.
Surely there couldn’t be a connection?
Caz
Ghent
“Will you please come back in, Ms. Colijn?” De Brabander held the door of the interview room. Fifteen minutes ago, after her statement had been taken down, Caz had been asked to wait in a smaller room.
Probably for them to confer. Or perhaps to verify some of the information she had given them. She hoped it was only a formality or two that lay ahead. She was worn out in body and soul.
Inspector Grevers was with De Brabander, and two more people had joined them: a woman in her thirties, who was introduced as Agent Verhoef, and a man whose name she couldn’t quite make out.
“Do you mind if our IT man takes a look at your cellphone while we’re busy in here?”
There was no point in refusing, she realized. She gave the man her South African phone. They were probably only interested in the messages between herself and Tieneke anyway.
The possibility seemed to have increased that she was indeed a suspect, and not one they would soon eliminate. Nausea threatened to overwhelm her when she sat down in the same chair she had sat in before.
The man whose name she hadn’t heard left the room with the phone.
“Okay, we made contact with the woman of the B&B in Leuven. She’s prepared to confirm under oath that you spent Thursday afternoon and evening in her home.”
It was a relief, but something in his eyes told her not to get too comfortable.
“You say you never saw the tenants in Miss Colijn’s rental home?”
“That’s correct.” She knew by now that she had to answer audibly for the sake of the recording that was being made of the conversation.
Sacrificed Page 25
