Death on the Canal

by Anja de Jager

  ‘Pippi-puss, where are you?’ I called. I heard the bump of the cat jumping from a height. The sound came from the spare room. I thought of her curling up to me at night when I was sleeping. Was Ronald here? Asleep? It stopped me in my tracks. I listened out for any other sounds, but all I could hear were the cat’s paws on the wooden floor as she tripped from the spare room down the hall towards the kitchen. She paused and finally gave me a meow. She was happy to see Mrs Owner, but my return wasn’t quite as important as usual. I bent down to scratch her behind her ear.

  ‘Is he here, puss?’ I whispered. If Ronald was sleeping, I didn’t want to wake him up. ‘Lucky puss, you got fed early.’ I felt her fur, as if there would be some warmth lingering there if she had slept curled up against him. I stood silently in my kitchen, suddenly unwilling to leave because I might bump into someone.

  If he was in the flat, surely he would have heard me. He must be at work. He’d said that he would be out most of the time. That he was on double shifts until they’d hired someone to replace Piotr. Why would he still work there even though they still hadn’t paid him? I didn’t understand.

  Not knowing if I was alone in the flat was unsettling. Why had I let him stay here? It had been a really stupid idea.

  I sat down on the sofa and looked out as day turned into dusk, but couldn’t get comfortable. The cat jumped up beside me, but I kept her away from my lap. Until I knew that I was by myself here, I would keep listening out for every creeping sound. Even the normal clicking of the water pipes made me think that someone was moving in the spare room.

  I got up. This was silly. This was my flat. I could go into whichever room I wanted. The door to the spare room was ajar. I paused outside. There was no light on inside. Surely Ronald would have closed the door if he was actually in there. Unless he had kept it open so that Pippi could get out if she wanted to. I put my hand on the door, palm flat against the wood, as if that would tell me whether there was someone inside. I pushed carefully, inched the door open. My heart beat fast, because if Ronald was there, this would look really weird. He would wonder why I was coming into his bedroom. Why I was coming into my own spare room, I corrected myself.

  I could see the bed through the small gap. It was empty. He wasn’t here. I noticed the hollow where Pippi had been sleeping. Tension I hadn’t been aware I’d been feeling left my shoulders. I took a deep breath in and out. Good thing I’d checked. Now I could enjoy my safe place as I would normally do.

  First, dinner. Halfway through cooking it, my phone beeped to announce a text message. It was from a number I didn’t recognise. It read: We need to talk. I looked at it in puzzlement. Was it from Mark? Did he have a new phone? What would he want to talk to me about? It was probably a wrong number.

  We need to talk. Those words never indicated anything good. When my ex-husband had told me that we needed to talk, it had been to tell me that he had got another woman pregnant and was leaving me. I was thinking about sending back a text saying Wrong number or I don’t know what you’re talking about. Instead I did nothing. Let whoever this text was for enjoy their last evening without the bad news they were definitely going to get.

  I finished cooking – spaghetti in tomato sauce – and ate quickly and in silence, standing up in the kitchen, plate balanced on the work surface. I rinsed the plate and stuck it in the dishwasher.

  I should have felt happy to have closed a case, but instead I felt unsettled. The sense of satisfaction that I normally got was missing.

  Even if I could accept that Katja Bruyneel had stabbed Piotr Mazur, there was still something odd about that photo she had given him. Sure, she could have printed out a picture from Petra Maasland’s Facebook page, but why had she given it to Piotr? I was concerned about it. Katja had said that the counsellor had failed her sister. If she held her responsible for Sylvie’s death, had she tried to use the child to take revenge on Petra as well?

  Pippi jumped on my lap. It was a little cooler now so I didn’t push her back on the floor. I scratched her behind the ear. ‘Hello, puss. I’m good enough again now, am I? You tart.’ I smiled.

  Katja Bruyneel came at me with her knife pulled. I stared at the blade but couldn’t do anything to stop her. She half missed, only nicked my waist, but somehow I still fell to the ground. I heard the thump of my head hitting the street. The doctor in his yellow T-shirt approached me. His footsteps were clear on the pavement. He felt my wrist. ‘She’s dead,’ he said, and walked away again, because now that I was no longer alive, there was nothing he could do for me. The sound of his shoes on the ground rang in my ears. I wanted to call him back and say that surely I was alive if I could still hear footsteps, but the words didn’t come. Maybe he’d been right and I was dead after all.

  I woke up. It was light outside. It took me a few seconds to realise that I was in my bed and not lying on the street. What a stupid dream that had been. My mouth was dry. I swung my legs out of bed and welcomed the feeling of the cool wood under my bare feet. I stopped suddenly when I heard those same footsteps again. This time they were actually in my flat. Ronald. Of course. He must have come home after work. The thump of my head on the ground had been the sound of Pippi jumping off my bed.

  I got dressed but stayed in my bedroom. I didn’t want to bump into him. I wouldn’t want to talk to anybody before I’d had my first cup of coffee. I waited until I heard his footsteps go into the spare room. Then I got up with my water glass and filled it in the kitchen. I heard Ronald say, ‘Hello, cat.’

  I put some food into Pippi’s bowl. Just because she preferred someone else’s company, that didn’t mean I shouldn’t feed her. Normally I would have breakfast before going to work, but now I was keen to get out. I would grab something on the way. I quickly left the flat, went down the stairs and opened the communal front door.

  I was only halfway out of the house when someone caught me by the arm.

  It was Mark. I hadn’t seen him standing by the side of the door. ‘Who is he?’ he said.

  I didn’t have to ask who he was talking about. He must have seen Ronald by the window, otherwise he would surely have assumed that he was a new downstairs neighbour.

  For a second I considered lying, but what would that achieve? ‘I’m just helping him out. He needed a place to stay.’ I shrugged. ‘After all, he saved my life once.’

  ‘That’s Ronald de Boer?’

  There was something gratifying in this evidence that Mark had been listening closely to what I’d told him about my previous cases.

  ‘I have somewhere he can stay,’ he said. ‘I still haven’t sold the house.’

  ‘I can’t ask that of you.’

  ‘I’d prefer him living in an empty house than with you.’ He scratched his head. ‘Lotte, we need to talk. Can I come in?’

  Had he sent me last night’s text after all? ‘I’m just going to work.’

  ‘Can we stop for a coffee on the way?’

  However much I wanted to be in his company, if I spent time with him again it would be even tougher to let go. ‘Mark, now’s not a good time.’ I unlocked my bike without looking at him. It was hard but I did it, and I was proud of myself.

  I’d almost got to the police station when I had a text from the same number as yesterday. This time he’d signed his name. It was from Ronald. Everybody wanting to talk to me today. I turned my bike round and cycled back home. I’d been early anyway.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I had expected that Piotr would be buried back in Poland, but he had made a will and had explicitly stated that he wanted to be laid to rest at a cemetery just outside Amsterdam. A small crowd of colleagues, family and friends stood outside in the burning sunshine waiting for the service to start. I stayed far back. I hadn’t been sure if I should be here, but Ronald had asked me if I could give him a lift. That was why he’d texted me. Trust him to say that we needed to talk, whereas what he meant was that he needed a favour.

  Natalie arrived with Koen. They made a very good-looki
ng couple, both so well turned out and attractive. Even outside work Natalie looked like a walking advertisement for expensive outfits. She was chatting brightly, but Koen didn’t say a word. He stared at the ground, looking as if he desperately wanted to be somewhere else. Natalie linked her arm through his, but he took a step sideways and pulled free. She looked as if she was about to cry. Maybe Piotr’s death really had hit her hard. Apart from dealing drugs, he had been their neighbour, and Natalie had told us that he had been friends with both of them. Maybe that had been true.

  The funeral director gestured that the service was about to start and everybody went inside the church. Ronald followed Natalie and Koen. She had ignored him throughout; there clearly was no need to make casual conversation with a security guard. He glanced around as if he was looking for someone. I took a seat at the back, two rows behind everybody else and as far in the corner as I could.

  The hymns were familiar melodies with unknown words in a foreign language. Only the family sang along. They made a frail sound that echoed through the half-empty church and died before it could inspire or lift anybody’s soul. A dark-haired priest talked, but the words were just a sound. Part Latin, part Polish. The church was more wide than tall. I counted eleven rows of seating, furnished in an unrelenting modern style with bare pine-wood benches. Funerals were always sad affairs, I thought, especially when parents had to bury their child.

  I was probably fortunate that I could not remember anything of the service for my daughter. That day was a blank, as if the grief had erased it from my mind. The only memory I had was of scattering my beautiful girl’s ashes out over the sea, standing next to my ex-husband, not being able to look at him or touch him. Standing side by side but each of us terribly alone. If I wanted to be fair to him – which I didn’t often want to do but which I was getting better at – losing our child was what had really torn our marriage apart.

  The priest’s voice droned on. Time for prayer. Everybody got on their knees and bowed their heads. I stared at the ceiling. I was relieved when at a final Amen the service finished and we could go outside again.

  The mourners followed the coffin towards Piotr’s final resting place. The sun beat down on their heads. Ronald kept a polite distance from the family. The grave was a two-metre-long wound in the ground that was visible from far away. We approached along a path lined by gravestones on either side. On the left, a perfectly maintained plot with flowering bedding plants and a clump of forget-me-nots. Another had a vase with only stems; the petals had long since fallen on the ground and been blown away onto other graves. High poplars, tall and thin, lined the central aisle. Only a plane’s vapour trail broke up the everlasting sky.

  The procession came to the empty grave. The coffin was lowered. Earth was thrown by the family. Natalie stepped forward. Piotr’s father stood behind her, face stern, mouth working hard to keep the tears inside. His wife was a matronly figure in a trouser suit. The couple were probably no more than a decade older than me, but they seemed ancient, like old gnarled trees. Loss aged people.

  Koen stepped next to Natalie. She held out her hand to him but he didn’t take it.

  The priest said a few more words. Ashes to ashes.

  A handsome Moroccan man in a suit and tie approached Ronald. I recognised him. It was the man who’d talked to Ronald about his housing situation. They exchanged a silent nod. I joined them. Ronald looked at me but didn’t introduce me. He also didn’t tell me to leave.

  ‘How are things, Khalil?’ he said.

  The tall man shrugged, took a handkerchief out and wiped his eyes. ‘Sorry, hay fever.’

  I remembered that I had used the same excuse myself. A girl from the department store kept looking in Khalil’s direction. The pale green eyes in his dark face appeared to mesmerise her.

  ‘The sooner the parents leave,’ he said, ‘the better.’ He gave me a little smile. ‘Sorry to say it, but that’s the way it is.’

  I wondered who he thought I was. I was pretty sure he had no idea that I was one of the police detectives who’d investigated Piotr’s murder. Maybe I should have introduced myself, but now that the case was closed, it was probably better to let Piotr’s friends talk freely and not feel as if they had to watch their words.

  ‘They keep complaining about burying him in Amsterdam instead of in Poland,’ Khalil continued. ‘But those were his wishes. He specifically said he wanted to be buried here. He’d taken out this funeral insurance, everything was sorted out. He said it was funny that if he paid seven euros a month, it would get him a funeral with coffee and cake for fifty people.’ He shook his head. ‘Crazy guy. He probably just fancied the person selling the insurance. Anyway, it means he’s ended up here, in a cemetery in Amsterdam.’

  ‘So why did the parents want otherwise?’ Ronald said.

  ‘Because they’re a bunch of hypocrites. You know they hadn’t spoken to Piotr in years. They were angry with him because of …’ The Moroccan briefly looked at me and shrugged. ‘Well, you know why, I don’t have to spell it out. But that was his choice, wasn’t it? We live our lives. We are what we are. And now’ – he turned to Ronald – ‘now they wanted to bury him in their home town so that they could easily put flowers on his grave. Who cares about that?’

  ‘Maybe they feel bad. They want to make it up. We all think we’re going to live forever, that our children will, that our parents will. We’re always wrong. We’re always too late to make amends.’

  The Moroccan coughed. ‘How thoughtful. You’re almost a poet, Ronald, who’d have imagined.’

  ‘I just thought—’

  ‘I know what you thought and you’re wrong.’

  ‘This is bad, Khalil. You can’t live your life in fear,’ Ronald said. ‘Piotr didn’t.’

  ‘And Piotr’s dead.’

  ‘That wasn’t your fault.’

  Khalil didn’t reply; just walked away with big strides, as if he could no longer bear to stand by this open grave.

  The parents walked slowly away, and everybody else began to file behind them back to the church, where the family would stand in line and receive condolences. I looked at Natalie walking next to Piotr’s parents. Why was she doing that?

  ‘Who was that?’ I asked Ronald.

  He didn’t respond.

  Natalie was crying. She looked genuinely upset. Then she slowed down as if she’d decided to distance herself from the family. Ronald caught up with her. I followed right behind him.

  ‘Had you met his parents before?’ he asked her.

  She smiled. ‘They know we worked together.’

  ‘You’re not repeating that stupid lie that you were seeing him, are you?’

  ‘It’s what they like to believe.’

  ‘It’s not true.’

  ‘It’s easier for them.’ She looked round to make sure they couldn’t hear her. ‘They prefer not to know.’

  ‘Does it matter now that he’s dead?’ Ronald asked.

  She tucked her hair behind her ear in a cute gesture. ‘It’s perfect now, isn’t it? No inconvenient truths can get in the way of their idea of the perfect son. No wonder he left Poland and ended up in Amsterdam.’ She seemed brittle, too bright. I wondered if she was on drugs. Her make-up was less than perfect. She looked vulnerable. Fragile. Scared, even.

  Koen came over and joined her. She hooked her arm through his. This time he didn’t pull away.

  ‘I’m going to head home. This isn’t really my thing.’ Ronald looked in my direction, to check whether I was ready to leave as well. I nodded.

  He got a cigarette out of a packet and put his sunglasses on. ‘If you need anything, call me.’

  As I took a step towards them, Natalie’s voice stopped me.

  ‘That stupid little bitch.’ Her tone was perfectly pleasant on the unexpected swear word. She looked at me. She wanted to make sure I was listening to what she was saying. ‘Meeting him in a bar. As if that would sort anything out. As if she could stop him asking those questions. Trying
to protect the child.’

  ‘Natalie,’ Koen said. ‘Be quiet.’

  ‘You know why he got killed?’ Ronald said.

  ‘That stupid little bitch,’ Natalie repeated as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘She killed an innocent man.’ She smiled brightly, her eyes small in the smudged mascara. ‘But maybe it’s better this way.’

  She freed her arm from Koen’s and dashed away towards Piotr’s parents.

  I wanted to follow her, but Ronald stopped me. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘Talk to her later.’

  He was right. I couldn’t ask the questions I wanted to with Koen here. I would go to the department store, or call her into the station for questioning later. Do it officially. Not just meddle in a case that had been closed.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I could see what Maarten Wynia had meant when he’d said he’d moved all Tim’s stuff from this spare desk. In the few days since I’d been gone, it seemed that he had transferred it all back. Clothes hung over the chair I’d sat on. Gym kit was piled up on the corner of the desk, giving the place a hint of sweat. My plan had been to talk to Bauer by himself, but as Tim and Maarten were here as well, I might as well tell everybody in one go. A couple of days ago, my mother had told me that I needed to ask for help every now and then. I was going to follow her advice. I didn’t have to do this by myself.

  ‘We need to look at Piotr Mazur’s death again,’ I said. ‘It was about a child, not drugs.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Lotte?’ Bauer said.

  ‘Earlier, at Piotr’s funeral, Natalie Schuurman said that Katja Bruyneel had killed an innocent man. She was trying to protect a child.’

  ‘I didn’t know you went to the funeral.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I had to give someone a lift there.’

  ‘We’re not doing it,’ Bauer said.

  I frowned. ‘Not doing what?’