Death on the Canal

by Anja de Jager

  ‘We need the police,’ I shouted. ‘Tell them that we are urgently – extremely urgently,’ I corrected myself, ‘looking for a woman …’

  Instead of simply relaying my message, Nathan held my phone to my ear as I kept pressing down with the now blood-soaked T-shirt.

  ‘This is Detective Lotte Meerman,’ I said into my mobile. ‘We are extremely urgently looking for a young woman. Probably in her twenties. Dark hair tied in a ponytail. Wearing a floral summer dress and a denim jacket. She’s wanted in connection with a murder. Potentially armed with a knife.’ Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mark standing frozen and staring at me. ‘Put it out to all cars.’ I moved my head away from the phone and concentrated on the man under my hands again.

  More people turned up behind me, probably from the bar. I shouted that they should stay back, to keep the crime scene secure, but I continued to stare at my hands, at the creases in the yellow T-shirt and then at the doctor doing his best to keep the victim’s heart going. I tried to keep the man’s life inside him, but the amount of blood pumping out told me I might fail. I was so stuck in the moment that even when the ambulance turned up and the paramedics rushed over, it was hard to lift my hands.

  One of them, a young woman, took my place. I rested back on my heels, then stood up. The world disappeared into blackness for a second. I steadied myself against a parking payment machine and left a red print behind. I turned around to look for Mark where I’d seen him last, at the end of the street, but he was no longer there.

  The ambulance crew examined the man on the ground. ‘He’s gone,’ one of them said.

  Chapter Two

  A myriad of blue swirling lights destroyed the last vestiges of a pleasant evening and made the quiet street seem a dangerous and threatening place. Two police cars were parked nose to nose as if ready for a fight. Tape closed off the street at either end, locking in the forensic scientists with the body. A van had carried eight more officers to the crime scene and they were now busy taking statements from everybody who’d been in the bar. The fluorescent yellow stripes on their uniforms stood out starkly against the dark blue. The ambulance was still waiting, ready to leave once Forensics had finished with the victim’s body. At least a blanket now shrouded him from view.

  ‘I didn’t hear anything,’ Nathan said. ‘I had music on but it wasn’t that loud. Shouldn’t I have heard something?’

  I sat with Nathan Derez and the doctor, Gerard Campert, on the edge of the pavement on the opposite side of the road, the three of us like battle-worn survivors. After my colleagues had spoken to us, we were now left alone. Gerard had described the woman in the floral dress in detail. He’d been inside the bar for most of the evening and had a good look at her. I’d filled in the gaps. Nathan hadn’t witnessed anything apart from the aftermath.

  His partner, a tall red-haired woman, came over and brought us mugs of sweet tea. She’d also handed me a towel after I’d scrubbed my hands for five minutes at their kitchen sink. I’d even rubbed kitchen roll under the already clean tips of my nails, wanting desperately to wash the thought of blood away. She’d said that we could wait indoors, but until I changed my clothes, I shouldn’t sit on someone’s sofa.

  ‘There was no shouting? No argument?’ I asked.

  ‘No, nothing.’

  I hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary either until I’d heard Nathan’s cry for help. ‘I saw him and the woman turn into this street about ten minutes before you found him,’ I said.

  A few police constables rang doorbells along the street. Maybe I should join them, but somehow it was hard to move.

  ‘He’d lost a lot of blood in that time,’ Gerard said. ‘We could never have saved him.’

  ‘It wasn’t until I stepped outside for a cigarette that I saw him. If only I’d heard something, I could have got help sooner.’

  Gerard put a hand on Nathan’s arm. The doctor was now wearing a red polo shirt that Nathan’s partner had given him. It was a tight fit. His blood-soaked yellow T-shirt had been bagged up by Forensics. ‘It’s not your fault,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing you could have done. With knife wounds like those – one to the lung, two to the stomach – it wouldn’t have made a difference. I could tell from the start that …’ he rubbed his forehead with the knuckle of his thumb, ‘that he was most likely going to die.’

  The young man nodded, his eyes serious behind his glasses. He leaned back against a birch tree. From where I was sitting, I had a perfect view of the crime scene, the dead body, the forensic team moving about and the parking payment machine with the bloody handprint I’d left behind.

  Another car drove up and pulled into the spot next to the ambulance. Detective Ingrid Ries got out. She was very tall and her skinny jeans only accentuated the length of her legs. She sometimes reminded me of a plant that had grown without enough light; her limbs were too long, as if she’d had to reach for the sun all the years of her childhood. She’d been at home when I called her.

  She hurried towards me. ‘Are you okay?’

  I put my hands on my knees and got up from the kerb. Nathan and Gerard also stood, as if I had disturbed our little survivors’ tea party. I made the introductions.

  Ingrid put an arm around my shoulders. She did it to comfort me, but it was restraining too.

  ‘I just watched someone die.’ I said it softly. It would be more precise to say that I felt him die. I’d felt his blood drain out of him. My hands shook with a tremor that originated in my fingertips and I stepped away from Ingrid’s hug. I hid my hands in the back pockets of my jeans. Maybe I was in shock because death was so incongruous after the pleasant summer’s evening, or maybe I’d just had too much to drink.

  The front page of yesterday’s newspaper lay in the gutter. Geert Wilders’ photo was illuminated by the street lights. ‘Muslims should integrate or go home’ screamed the fat print of the headline.

  I pulled myself together. I’d written down the man’s details. We’d identified him from his security card, which had been bagged up by Forensics earlier. ‘Piotr Mazur. Polish national.’ On the pass, the green emblem of one of Amsterdam’s large department stores showed right above a photo of the now-dead Piotr Mazur’s smiling face.

  ‘A security guard,’ I said.

  I’d phoned the store after I’d finished washing my hands. I had spoken to the guard who was on night duty. He told me it was all quiet at their end but he’d call his manager and they might get some more security staff in, just in case the murder had anything to do with them. I didn’t see how it could, but they wanted to be extra careful.

  A little breeze cut through the still night. ‘He was in the bar with a woman in a floral dress.’

  ‘She’s our main suspect then.’

  I thought about how they had been when they talked. I couldn’t remember any animosity, but there had been tension between them. He had been staring at her intensely. Still, I’d only seen them briefly. The barman or another of the men in the yellow T-shirts would have more information. ‘Let’s say she’s someone we urgently need to talk to. They left together. If she’s not the murderer, she must have seen something. Witnessed something and didn’t call for help. There was no other call to 112, was there?’

  ‘No, just you. Come in the car. Sit down.’ She reached out a hand as if to steer me into the vehicle by my shoulder.

  I stepped away from the contact. ‘I’d rather not. I’ll wait here for a bit.’

  Forensics were doing their work by the body. One of them was examining the bloody handprint on the parking payment machine. It was hard to recognise them in their white Tyvek suits.

  ‘You don’t have to test that one,’ I said loudly. My voice wobbled. ‘That’s mine.’ The man correctly ignored me and photographed the machine from all angles. It was evidence of our failure to keep the man alive.

  ‘The woman in the bar probably gave a photo to the victim,’ I told Ingrid. That photo was now with Forensics. It was a photo of a small boy. A toddler.
He was a cute child, with blonde curls, smiling broadly, holding a blue and red boat out to the camera with both hands. Not much of the background was visible: some grass, a park maybe. The back of the photo was blank. ‘I saw her give him something from the pocket of her jacket. We found the photo in his wallet.’ The woman had been tense as she’d handed it over and Piotr had suddenly smiled. Their reactions made this photo seem significant to me.

  ‘Are you sure that was what she gave him? You saw him put it in his wallet?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘So it was something he could have already had.’

  ‘Yes, but I think I saw her give him a photo and that was the only one he had on him.’

  Ingrid stared at me. ‘He could have handed it back.’

  ‘Sure. You’re right. But she definitely gave him something and he was happy about it.’The thought of how young and boyish Piotr Mazur had looked at that moment made my tongue clumsy in my mouth. Compared to the death of this man, my ruined evening was of course insignificant. ‘He was happy,’ I said again.

  ‘You should go home,’ Ingrid said. ‘You’ve done enough for one night. We’ve got it from here. Thomas is on his way. We’ll contact the next of kin.’

  ‘I asked the department store about his family when I called them. They have no record of a wife or a partner. He’d written down his parents in Poland as next of kin on his employment form.’

  ‘Great. I’ll get a translator ready. Just in case. The woman he was with, was she Polish?’

  ‘I don’t know. Check with one of those guys in the yellow T-shirts. They were inside the bar. Talk to the doctor. I was sitting outside and only came in to get a drink.’

  The Yellow T-shirts were members of a rowing club. I didn’t know why they had been in this particular bar, but they made perfect witnesses. Apart from Gerard, the doctor, there was a lawyer, a town councillor and a couple of bankers.

  An elderly couple walked by hand in hand. Their steps hastened as they came past the blue lights but their faces turned towards the covered dead body on the pavement. Even though they were worried by the flashing lights on top of the police cars and the tape that identified it as a crime scene, they still looked. You could never stop people from staring at the aftermath.

  ‘I’ll come to the station and give you a description of the woman,’ I said. ‘We need to put that out and find her as soon as possible. She’s either a murderer or a key witness. We need to talk to her.’

  Ingrid shook her head. ‘You need to get out of these clothes.’ She gestured at my jeans. ‘It’s …’ she swallowed, ‘it’s too much like last time, isn’t it?’

  Last time. I knew she meant the time I’d shot a man. Even though he had been a murderer and I’d had no choice, my own actions still appalled me. I had never killed anyone before.

  I looked down at my legs. For a few minutes I’d forgotten about the large bloodstains on my trousers. It reminded me of how Piotr’s blood had flooded over my hands and I shuddered in sudden revulsion. I wasn’t sure how it had got all over my clothes. Maybe I’d mindlessly wiped my palms on my jeans or maybe it had dripped there when I kneeled by the victim’s side or soaked up from the pavement while I’d been trying to keep him alive. My hands shook in my jeans pockets, reverberating through my arms and into my shoulders.

  ‘You look terrible,’ Ingrid said. ‘Go home. We’ll talk about this tomorrow. You only saw her for a second. If any of those guys can give a clearer description of the woman, I’ll use them.’

  ‘I’ll wait here for a bit.’ I shivered again, as if the July night was really a winter’s evening. ‘I’m on my bike.’ I didn’t trust what my body was doing. That I was cold was probably the down after the adrenaline high. Shock was a possibility too.

  Ingrid looked at the officers milling down the street, then back at me as if she was weighing me up. Judging me. ‘Don’t cycle. I’ll give you a lift. Bear with me a couple of minutes.’ She briefly talked to one of the police officers. I saw her gesturing towards me, probably to tell the guy that she was taking me home. The man checked something in his notebook and seemed to give Ingrid a brief outline of what had happened. She talked to one of the younger Yellow T-shirts, who nodded to affirm whatever Ingrid was asking him.

  She made a phone call, then walked back towards me. ‘The young guy got a really good look at the woman. Says he remembers clearly what she looked like. Thomas is coming over to take him to the police station.’

  She got in the car and opened the door on my side. I said goodbye to Gerard and Nathan. I’d pick up my bike tomorrow.

  Ingrid did a U-turn then drove along the canal towards the bridge. I pulled my seat belt closer around me, as if that would keep me safe. Just as we approached the bridge, the traffic lights started to flash and the barriers came down. This was one of the wider canals, which allowed larger boats through. Ingrid switched off the engine. We could be here a while.

  ‘This must have been hard,’ she said. Her voice in the silence was loud. Now that she no longer needed to look at the traffic, her attention was relentlessly on me.

  I was jealous of the boat that managed to disappear out of sight, hidden behind the now-vertical part of the bridge. It was a mid-size sailing ship. It had its sails down and used the motor to get it through the canal. When I’d been a child, it had perplexed me that the road surface would come up and the white lines would point to the sky and I’d wondered if that was what a runway at an airport looked like.

  ‘I’m okay,’ I said.

  ‘Did it bring back memories?’

  I pulled my eyes away from the bridge and faced her. ‘No, it didn’t.’ I made my voice strong as much to convince myself as her. The only similarity was that a man had died under my hands.

  ‘I haven’t forgotten what you did for me,’ she said.

  I caught my bottom lip between my teeth. ‘Can we not talk about that?’

  But Ingrid didn’t stop. ‘It’s because you were covered in blood. When I saw you sitting on the kerb … I don’t know, it immediately brought it all back.’

  I didn’t reply. What was I going to say? That I hadn’t needed anything to bring it back to me as it hadn’t been out of my mind? The boat appeared on the other side of the bridge and the road surface lowered again slowly.

  ‘I want to make it up to you,’ she said.

  I shook my head. ‘Plaese don’t say that.’ I swallowed something back. Bile tasted like guilt. How could I explain to her that every time she got me a cup of coffee or did a late-night shift in my place, it reminded me of the man I’d shot dead almost three months ago. Every kindness stabbed the knife in deeper.

  ‘How much did you have to drink?’ she said.

  ‘I had a couple,’ I said, ‘maybe three.’ It was always harder to keep track when there was waitress service. I realised I hadn’t paid. Mark must have picked up the bill.

  The barriers opened and Ingrid started the engine.

  ‘Is that why you want to get me home?’ I said. I didn’t like the thought that she was trying to protect me by getting me away from the murder scene.

  ‘You were slurring your words. I didn’t want to say anything before we got in the car. I didn’t want anybody else to overhear. And you really don’t look too well. Thomas and I have got this. One of the guys had been inside the bar for most of the evening and he’s a much better witness than you are.’

  I turned my face towards the window and watched Amsterdam go past. The streets were busy with people making the most of the summer’s night. Only three more turns and I would be home. We crossed a narrow bridge. A group of people coming from the other side had to walk in single file as the pavement was almost entirely taken up by parked bicycles chained to the bridge’s white railings.

  We reached my street. My apartment was the top floor of a seventeenth-century canal house. Tomorrow morning the hordes would come past my front door again on the way to the Anne Frank house. Now it was quieter, apart from the sound of laughte
r that bounced against the houses. On the canal a group of people in a pedal boat saluted the balmy July night with bottles of beer. From this close it was hard to tell that the canal was actually a large semicircle that at one point had protectively embraced the entire centre of Amsterdam. What was now a tourist attraction had centuries ago been the main form of defence.

  Ingrid left the car in the middle of the road with the door wide open. She walked me to the front door and made sure that I could get the key in the lock.

  ‘What were you doing in that bar anyway?’ she said.

  My hands were shaking so much I had to have a couple of goes before the key slid in. A silver-grey Volkswagen pulled up. The street was narrow with the canal on one side and the houses on the other, and Ingrid’s car blocked the road. The driver made a hand gesture at Ingrid. She ignored him and kept looking at me.

  I finally managed to unlock the door. ‘What difference does it make?’ I pushed it open.

  ‘Bit out of the way for you, isn’t it? It took us what, twenty minutes to drive here. With so many bars within walking distance, why go to the west side?’

  ‘Avoiding the tourists.’

  ‘The waitress told the other officer that you were there with a man.’

  I rubbed my hand over my face. ‘I met Mark Visser.’

  ‘Really? I didn’t know you were in touch again.’

  I made a non-committal humming sound. ‘I just bumped into him.’

  ‘I didn’t see him,’ Ingrid said

  ‘No, he’d already left.’

  Volkswagen man rolled down his window. ‘Are you going to be long?’

  ‘Shut up,’ Ingrid said. ‘We’re nearly done.’

  ‘Some of us have homes to go to.’

  I looked Ingrid in the eye. ‘I’ll get his statement for you.’

  She nodded. ‘Great. We’ll talk tomorrow. Try to get some sleep.’ She put a hand on my arm and then got back in her car.

  I waited until both cars had driven off and then went through the front door. Get some sleep. As if that was even possible.