Death on the Canal

by Anja de Jager

  ‘Not obviously.’

  ‘Any cars in the vicinity to give me a hand?’Ahead, at the end of the road, I could see that we were coming towards the bridge. The barriers were closed and there was no way Natalie could make it through. The bridge was rising slowly.

  ‘We’ve got her,’ I said with relief. I unclenched my hands and stretched out the fingers of one hand and then the other. ‘We’ll block her here.’

  About a dozen cars were waiting for the bridge on our side of the street. I was about to slow down and tell Ronald to get my gun from the glove compartment when suddenly Natalie veered onto the left-hand side of the road. She was overtaking the queue. I had no choice but to follow her. I could only hope that no car would pull out. At the barriers, she took a sharp right onto the street along the canal. I pulled the steering wheel hard and felt the car complain against the treatment it was getting. Even though I held on tight to keep myself upright, the centrifugal force swung my body into the inside of the car door.

  I didn’t even notice the first speed bump until I hit it too hard. I was thrown forward and the impact closed my mouth with such force that my teeth threatened to shatter each other. The street was littered with these obstacles so that cars wouldn’t use it as a rat run.

  Natalie didn’t slow down and approached the next one at speed. Her exhaust pipe struck the road surface as the bump did its job. The car pulled right and hit one of Amsterdam’s many small bollards with such a velocity that she seemed to bounce off it. She was struggling to control her car and it lunged sharply left.

  I hit the brakes as hard as I could. I felt the wheels slip underneath me, then slowly grip again as I released the pedal. I could see the black underside of Natalie’s car. I could see all four wheels off the ground. For a second she was airborne. There were no railings here. I could only watch helplessly as the grey Nissan plunged over the edge.

  ‘Suspect’s car has crashed into the canal,’ Ronald said. I heard the shock in his voice.

  ‘Westerkanaal,’ I said. I left the car in the middle of the street, undoing my seat belt with one hand and pushing the door open with the other.

  ‘Get us some help here!’ Ronald shouted. ‘Now.’ He ran beside me along the side of the canal. Natalie’s car was going under fast. There was no sign of a door opening. It had rolled when it hit the low edge of the canal and the wheels were up. It was sinking.

  I kicked off my shoes. A loud splash next to me told me that Ronald had already jumped in. I wasn’t far behind. The water here was deep. There was no risk of hitting the bottom; I just had to avoid the car. I tried to keep my head above water when I jumped in, to keep Natalie’s car in sight, but the canal closed in above me. It was cool and took my breath away for a moment.

  I fought against the drag of the water on my jeans and got my head back above water. I needed to get close to the car without being sucked down with it. I swam to the right. Not the driver’s side, but the other side. Where Oskar was. I put my feet against the chassis and grabbed the door handle, pulling with all my might. It didn’t budge. It was shut tight. Even though I knew there was no point, I jerked it a couple more times. I closed my eyes for a second. Panic wasn’t going to help me. Panic was counter-productive. I knew the car had to fill with water so that the pressure equalised and we could open the doors.

  There was nothing worse than knowing you had to wait. Seconds felt like minutes when you were so desperate to save a life. People were gathering at the canal’s edge. The windows of the tall houses seemed like even more eyes staring at me to see if I was going to succeed this time.

  ‘The door’s open on this side,’ Ronald shouted.

  Natalie must have managed to open it before the car submerged. ‘Can you see Oskar?’ The door on my side still wouldn’t move.

  ‘I need to get Natalie out first before we can get to him.’

  Let her drown, I wanted to say, but I knew we needed space or we wouldn’t get to the boy. I swam around the car. It was tilting. It was sinking. From the size of the boats coming through, I knew it would sink deep. My legs were heavy from the weight of my jeans.

  Ronald took a deep breath in, then dived under.

  I couldn’t watch him. Two police cars pulled up with sirens blaring and parked behind my abandoned car. The sun’s rays blazed on my head. My eyes stung from the canal water as I waited for Ronald. I saw the movement in the water. The air bubbles where he was exhaling.

  He came back up. He had Natalie in a tight grip. Her long blonde hair floated over his arm. The car was now submerged so deeply that only one of the wheels was still visible above the water. My colleagues who had just arrived could deal with the woman. I had a child to rescue.

  I dived under. One stroke and I was next to the car window. The muddy-brown water closed above my head and it was hard to see anything. I felt my way to the open car door and pulled myself inside. Where had Natalie put Oskar? I saw it in front of me again. When she’d got into the car she’d been in a hurry. She’d had no time for a child seat. He could be anywhere inside the car. I felt around me. I didn’t want to get stuck, but I needed to get Oskar out.

  I wanted to breathe, I could feel my mouth opening reflexively. My lungs burned. I exhaled all the air I had inside. The child had been in the back. Surely he’d been in the back. My hand struck something soft like seaweed. It was hair. I knew they were blonde curls. I grabbed a handful and pulled. My other hand still held on to the door frame. Something gave. Thank God he hadn’t been strapped in. My lungs were now so painful that I was starting to feel faint. I had to go up soon. I felt below the hair, found a T-shirt, a collar that I could grab hold of. I pulled him towards me, grabbed an arm, held him tight, pulled him out of the car and kicked my legs to get up to the surface.

  I felt the blessed oxygen stream in through my mouth.

  I lifted Oskar’s head until his face was free of the water. I made sure his nose and mouth were clear. His eyes were closed. I wrapped one arm around his little body, under his arms, and looked around me, moving my legs to keep us afloat while I gently wiped the hair from his face. I hugged him to me and rested his head on my shoulder. He was a toddler, but half carried by the water he felt just the weight my daughter had been.

  I didn’t dare check for a heartbeat in case the knowledge killed me.

  The boat for which the bridge had opened slowly pulled alongside me. It was a large sailing boat and it still had the rainbow flags strapped to its side. A man dressed in pink with a deep tan stretched out his arms towards the water. ‘Hand the child to me,’ he said. Two of his friends held him by the belt to stop him falling in. My arms were getting tired but I could just lift Oskar’s limp body out of the water. I held on to the side of the boat and rested my forehead against it.

  ‘He’s breathing,’ the man confirmed, his voice high above me. The relief I felt was enough to make my fingers release their grip on the boat. I let myself sink down.

  Ronald was by the canal’s edge, a distance away. ‘You got the child out,’ he said. His voice carried over the water. ‘After I nearly got him killed.’

  ‘I saved a life.’ I pushed my feet against the side of the boat, floating on my back and letting the water support me. Letting it wash away my fears. I was slowly rebalancing the score.

  Two policemen on the shore had hold of Natalie. We were done. Four hands grabbed me and pulled me out of the water and onto the boat. Someone handed me a towel. I’d never before been so happy to hear a child cry. I wrapped the towel, and then my arms, around him. I hadn’t dared to hold a child in such a long time. It brought back memories and I allowed them to flood in. This time I wouldn’t drown.

  A small police boat pulled alongside us and a paramedic came across to check out Oskar as I held him. I wasn’t going to let go. The sun shone on my wet skin and pulled it into pleasurable goose bumps. I ignored the fact that I was only dressed in a very wet T-shirt and sodden jeans. Maybe I should towel off so that I got dry sooner. Instead I closed my eyes an
d turned my face to the sun in the cloudless sky, treasuring that feeling of having a child in my arms again. Water dripped from my jeans onto the deck. I rested my chin on top of Oskar’s head and watched as Ronald climbed out of the water and sat down next to Natalie.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Oskar was taken into care. Luckily he suffered no adverse consequences from his bath in the canal. Ingrid and I had another go at interviewing Katja. I knew that Bauer and Tim were watching us from the other side of the mirror. It seemed to make Ingrid more nervous than it did me. She kept throwing glances at the mirror. Bauer was still pissed off with me and I knew that he was sitting there trying to find fault with whatever I did. Even all the drugs we found at Koen and Natalie’s place didn’t make him happy. I remembered that time we’d searched Piotr’s flat and I’d heard the disturbance next door. I’d gone to Koen and Natalie’s flat and I had wondered why Koen hadn’t opened the door wider. Now I knew that what had kept Natalie so long wasn’t that Koen had hit her and she was putting on new make-up, but that she had to put their stash back in its hiding place.

  ‘I think you should finally tell us what happened.’ I said to Katja. ‘I know you tried to make sure that Oskar would stay with Petra and Gerard, but now you need to tell us the truth.’

  ‘I found out that Sylvie had been living with Petra and Gerard. So I thought she’d killed herself and had selected Oskar’s new parents for him. She wouldn’t want him to be adopted by people like our parents. You’ve met them. You know what they’re like. I love him so much.’ She smiled. ‘From the very first time I met him and smelled his apple shampoo. That toddler smell. His life was in front of him and mine was nearly over. I had to look out for him. I thought I had killed my sister. I thought that because I hadn’t let her into my flat, she’d committed suicide.’

  ‘I think Sylvie came to you because she wanted to move out of Petra and Gerard’s place. I don’t know that for sure, but I think that’s why she went looking for money. From you and then from Koen.’

  ‘It’s ironic that it was only when Piotr turned up and started to ask all those questions that I realised it wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘What did he ask?’

  ‘He wanted to know if Sylvie had ever done heroin. He said that a heroin overdose seemed out of character.’ She shrugged. ‘That they’d been doing lines of coke before she turned up and that the heroin overdose sounded wrong. And where was the child.’

  ‘And those questions didn’t make you think that maybe he had nothing to do with her death?’

  ‘They sounded like a threat to me. That he was looking for his child. That’s what Natalie told me.’

  ‘Natalie killed your sister. She was the one who swapped the drugs. To keep Sylvie out of Koen’s life. Koen cheated on Natalie with Sylvie. She’s insanely jealous.’

  ‘I know she lied to me now.’

  ‘So why kill Piotr?’

  ‘I thought that if he was the father, maybe he should get to know his son. Petra disagreed vehemently, said it was too risky, that he could shop us to the authorities. But I would have loved to know my father. I thought we should give Piotr that chance. Introduce him to Oskar, maybe give him some visitation rights. Gerard agreed with me.’

  ‘But you changed your mind when he gave those drugs to the German.’

  ‘Yes. The guy with the beard. It brought back to me that he was a dealer; how could I introduce Oskar to a man like that? I called Petra and said I couldn’t do it. That she should leave with Oskar and hopefully Piotr would be happy now that he’d seen the photo. I would give him some other updates, I don’t know. But she insisted that we should go ahead. That I should bring him to the car. And she would take care of everything else.’

  ‘And then she killed him.’

  Katja nodded. ‘He never expected a thing. I never expected it either.’

  ‘You drove off?’

  ‘She stabbed him, I got in the car, and we left.’

  ‘Did Petra ask you to take the fall?’

  ‘No, it was my decision. I wanted Oskar to stay at the house where he was so happy. He could go on being Petra’s grandson.’

  ‘Someone would have found out.’

  ‘It was a risk worth taking.’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  We sat together in the restaurant. I hadn’t been here before; restaurants with white tablecloths and as many glasses as there were sets of cutlery around my plate weren’t really my thing, but my lemon sole was cooked to perfection, its skin a crisp brown and a butter and dill sauce that added to the flavour but didn’t overwhelm. The simplest way of cooking fresh fish was often the best. The skin crunched pleasingly between my teeth. I wore my new green dress.

  ‘How’s yours?’ I felt that the surroundings meant I should eat the potatoes as they were, not mash them together with my fork in the sauce. I speared a piece.

  ‘It’s very nice,’ Mark said.

  A silence fell. It felt awkward. At the table next to ours, an overweight man and a super-skinny woman both looked down at their phones while having their dinner. The woman smiled at the appliance, put her fork down and wrote something back. She held her phone up to her dining partner, so he could read what was on the screen too. At least she didn’t just forward the message to him.

  A waiter came to our table and refilled the glasses from a bottle of mineral water. When I’d asked for tap water, he’d said that they didn’t serve that here. Now I wished I’d argued with him about it. It would have released some of the tension.

  I had been nervous before coming here, with the kind of butterflies in my stomach that would be more suitable for a first date than for this dinner. The only sound was the noise that Mark’s knife made cutting his steak. I pulled a piece of fish away from the bones.

  ‘I’ve done some thinking.’ He took a sip of his wine. ‘I haven’t been fair on anybody.’

  I didn’t respond, but continued dissecting my fish. Its eye stared at me from the top of its head. I had been fascinated by these fish when I’d been a kid: how when they were young their eyes were on either side of their head, like normal fish; then, as their bodies flattened out, their eyes travelled upwards until they were both at the top of their head.

  Mark looked down at his plate. ‘Lotte, what do you want from me?’

  I swallowed the mouthful of fish and looked up sharply to meet his eyes. I rested my elbows on the table and took a couple of breaths in. I was saved from having to answer by the waiter, who just then turned up by my left elbow and asked if everything was okay. I responded tersely that everything was just fine. He left as quickly as he could.

  ‘I want to apologise. For everything. For arresting you, for stalking you, for drunkenly texting you.’ I smiled uncomfortably. ‘It feels too light, those words. If I’d been Asian, I would have knelt on the floor to beg your forgiveness.’

  ‘I got used to seeing you outside my house. Maybe I’ve missed it. Maybe I liked it.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘I just had to get over being angry with you. Even though I knew you’d only done what was right, I was still angry with you.’

  ‘Why didn’t you stay?’ I said. Two people came past outside, arm in arm, walking their dog. They stopped to look at the menu, then seemingly at my plate. I looked back at Mark. ‘At the bar? Why did you leave?’

  He put his fork down, giving me his full attention. ‘I think I freaked out. For you this is probably normal, but I’ve never seen anybody get killed before. I was …’ He hesitated. He picked up his wineglass and took a big gulp. ‘Okay, I might as well tell you. It seems I’ve got nothing left to lose anyway. I was scared, okay?’

  ‘That’s perfectly sensible.’

  ‘Then there was the smell of blood. I’ve never seen someone get killed before,’ he repeated. ‘You think you know how you’re going to react, but really, it’s totally different. I just froze. And you acted, you tried to save him. I just felt stupid. Completely useless. Like I said, for you thi
s is normal, but for me—’

  ‘It’s really not normal for me either.’

  ‘You were … I don’t know, completely in control of the situation.’

  I frowned. ‘And you think that makes it easy?’

  ‘You looked as if you didn’t need me there.’

  ‘Need? No, I guess you’re right. I didn’t need you there.’ I saw that he flinched but I couldn’t stop myself from being honest, whatever my mother might say. My heart was thumping in my mouth. Here was where I had to be brave. I took a breath and added, ‘But I would have liked you there.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘You could have asked me if I was okay afterwards. Given me a hug. Whatever. That would have been nice.’

  He looked down at his plate. He pushed the steak further away from him. Instead he ate a couple of chips with his fingers. ‘Do you want to start again?’

  I really shouldn’t have been as happy as I was. Maybe I should even have played hard to get. But I couldn’t be bothered. ‘Of course,’ I said.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  ‘Why did you do it?’ I asked.

  ‘He was going to leave me,’ Natalie said. With her hair bedraggled and her face free of make-up, she looked very young. Two days in the holding cell had stripped the glamorous veneer away. ‘It had already changed before Sylvie came back. I love him so much, I can’t imagine life without him.’

  ‘What happened with Sylvie?’

  ‘It was so easy to swap her drugs. She needed a bit of persuading to do a line, but of course she did in the end. They always do. I gave her white heroin instead. We kept that for a couple of regular customers.’

  This needed to be clear on the tapes in order for another case not to fall apart. ‘So can you confirm that you swapped the drugs on purpose?’

  ‘I heard about that dealer who killed all those people. Giving them white heroin instead of cocaine. It seemed such an easy way to kill somebody. To be honest, I never thought it would work so well. I think I could have saved her life but I didn’t want to. The lying bitch.’