Death at the Orange Locks

by Anja de Jager

  He looked up as if he knew that someone was watching him. I took a seat opposite him and he immediately turned around to get the waitress to come over.

  ‘It must have been a shock,’ he said. ‘I know you need a drink. The usual?’

  I could only nod. How did he know about the afternoon I’d had? Was the aftermath of my freak-out at Arjen’s house still visible on my face?

  ‘Who would have thought your mother would want to get married again?’

  Ah, that. ‘I know, right?’ I said, but my mother announcing her engagement was no longer the worst thing that had happened to me in the last twenty-four hours. ‘I never thought she’d do that. She said she’d not introduced me to him on purpose. Can you believe that?’

  Mark ordered a glass of white wine for me and a beer for himself. As soon as the waitress had left, he reached out and took my hand. ‘It doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you,’ he said.

  I rubbed my thumb over his palm. ‘I know,’ I said again. ‘She loves me, she’s just ashamed of me.’ Being in his company calmed me down.

  ‘You got close to your father again. It could be that she’s worried about that.’

  ‘Why?’ I frowned.

  ‘She might think you’d see her new marriage as a betrayal.’

  ‘If that’s what’s on her mind, she’s being silly. I’m happy she’s seeing someone; I’m really happy she’s no longer by herself and that I don’t have to worry about her. I just don’t get why she’s getting married to this guy. At her age.’

  ‘There are legal benefits.’

  ‘They could sign a living-together document and that would be exactly the same.’

  ‘They’re not living together yet. Your mother is churchgoing. That could have something to do with it.’

  ‘No sex before marriage, you mean?’ I shuddered. ‘I don’t want to think about my mother having sex. Why did you have to bring that up?’

  ‘Me? I didn’t say a thing.’ Mark laughed. ‘You were the one who mentioned sex. It’s all in your mind.’

  The waitress came back with our drinks. I didn’t let go of Mark’s hand but lifted my glass with my left. I took a sip of the white wine; it was clear and crisp.

  ‘If she was going to sign a living-together contract anyway, she probably thought they might as well get married.’

  ‘He even gave her a ring.’

  ‘It’s quite romantic, don’t you think? Not just practical.’

  ‘I hope I like him. Can you imagine if he’s terrible?’

  ‘If he’s terrible, you can say something. If he treats her badly, you can say something. If you just don’t like him, you’re going to be polite and make pleasant conversation.’

  ‘He’s got two children and a couple of grandchildren. My mother has met them already.’

  ‘They’re probably all scared of you.’

  ‘Scared?’ I sat back in my chair and smiled at Mark. ‘But I’m such a nice person. And really easy to get on with.’

  He grinned. ‘They’ll understand that after they’ve met you.’

  ‘You’ll come, won’t you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Your mum is my biggest fan.’

  ‘I know. She always tells me not to mess this up.’ Having Mark there would make it so much more bearable. He had this uncanny ability to make me realise that things were actually funny when I thought they were annoying. He laughed at me and that allowed me to laugh at myself too. It was good. ‘I’ll call her to set up a time for us all to meet. And I’ll behave. I promise. I won’t embarrass her.’

  I took another sip of wine. The alcohol was soothing and washed away any annoyance. If this was what my mother wanted, then who was I to judge? The longer I thought about it, the more normal it seemed. I had been surprised by the sudden announcement, that was all. I’d had no idea that marriage was on my mother’s mind. In fact, I couldn’t think of a single occasion when I’d talked to my mother about marriage as an institution.

  When I was getting married to Arjen, my mother and I had rowed. There had been a difficult moment when I’d insisted that my father should be there too. They had divorced when I was five and I wasn’t even close to my father at that point, but having both my parents at the ceremony had felt like the right thing to do. My mother had strongly disagreed. She’d told me that she’d been the one to raise me, so why did I want my father to walk me down the aisle? I couldn’t answer that question; it had just been what I’d wanted. In my head, I’d had this image of what the perfect marriage was going to be like, and if my dad didn’t walk me down the aisle, it was going to be doomed from the start.

  In the end, it had been doomed anyway, but at least I couldn’t blame a faulty ceremony for that.

  I didn’t know what my mother’s views on marriage really were. I only knew that she’d always spoken disparagingly about her marriage to my father. It felt strange that I hadn’t known she wanted to get married again. Maybe she had been dating other men in the decades since she and my father got divorced, only to find love again in her seventies.

  I had to admit, if I put it like that, it was actually quite sweet. I shook my head. My mum would not like being thought of as sweet.

  ‘How was your day otherwise?’ Mark asked.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘We’re working on a new murder case, but Thomas is taking the lead. I’m focusing on one particular angle. It’s early stages still.’ I hadn’t talked to Mark about the murder since we’d found Patrick van der Linde’s body. If we’d met yesterday, I might have mentioned it, but I wasn’t going to tell him about seeing my ex-husband, his new wife and their child. I didn’t want to talk about how much that had hurt.

  He wouldn’t ask more, I knew that. Even with other investigations, the normal ones, I would keep a lot of the details to myself. Not only because it wouldn’t be right to share those with him from the point of view of the victim’s family’s privacy, but also because I didn’t want to dump a whole load of graphic details on him every time we met. It might be normal for me to see a dead body with wounds all over it, but for a civilian, it definitely wasn’t.

  On top of that, I didn’t want him to think that his job wasn’t important compared to mine. Who would feel that it was appropriate to talk about building projects after he’d just been told that a man had been murdered and drowned in the IJ?

  ‘Did you go to the Orange Locks as a kid?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think so. They’re not particularly pretty.’

  ‘They’re fascinating,’ I said, feeling defensive on behalf of one of Amsterdam’s more functional bits of architecture. ‘My mum would take me to watch the boats go through. It was fun.’

  ‘Did you have a boat?’

  ‘No, but watching the little boats in there, three abreast, and then sometimes a huge oil tanker, it was exciting. A real summer’s day outing.’

  ‘We didn’t do that. We’d go to the zoo.’

  You didn’t have to pay to watch the boats clear the locks. That was probably why we went there instead of to the zoo.

  ‘Do you want to go to the Locks for a day out? Is that why you’re bringing them up?’

  ‘God, no. I was thinking about it because we found a body near there yesterday.’

  Mark burst out laughing. ‘Of course you did. Silly me. I should have figured out how your brain works by now.’

  I told him some of what was going on and held back on other bits. It was a tightrope between sharing my experiences with him and not overwhelming him. It wasn’t an easy balance and I wasn’t sure I always got it right, but I was trying my best.

  ‘I’m surprised you had time for dinner,’ he said. ‘You’ll be busy again.’

  There was nothing like a murder case to have me running around like a headless chicken. Another balancing act: dividing my time between my work and my private life. Making time for other people while I was working a murder case was normally tough.

  ‘Busy, but not crazy so.’ I smiled. ‘I’m only suppor
t for Thomas, so he can work all hours. It will do him good.’

  ‘His wife won’t be happy.’

  ‘He’s very keen to do it,’ I said. ‘But I’m not sure he discussed it with her beforehand.’

  ‘He’s hoping for the kind of publicity that you’ve been getting.’

  ‘Really? Why would he want that?’

  My previous cases had brought me more recognition and press coverage than I would have liked. I’d worked on some high-profile investigations and maybe the press were intrigued by the idea of a female police officer dealing with murderers. My photo had been on the front page of the newspapers a couple of times. I had hated it every time. The idea that Thomas could be jealous of that struck me as strange. But then people often coveted things they didn’t actually want. I’d been like that: I’d thought I desperately wanted something that someone else had, only to appreciate how difficult it was once I had it. It was ironic that Thomas was jealous of recognition I’d rather not have, whereas I was envious of his stable marriage and his three kids, who, if the photos were anything to go by, were cute and well behaved. I wanted to tell him that he had the better side of that trade.

  ‘People crave what they haven’t got,’ Mark said. ‘They don’t understand the value of holding on to what they already have.’

  ‘You’re wise beyond your years,’ I said with a smile.

  ‘I’m just older than I look.’

  ‘What are you working on?’ I asked, wanting to change the subject from my work to his.

  He told me about the project to refurbish the inside of an office building. ‘It was originally built in the seventies and the interior is really outdated. We have to put in ducts for cables and redo the walls. It’s going from a place where everybody had their own office to entirely open-plan.’

  I grimaced. ‘Are the people who work there happy about that?’

  ‘I’m not sure how much of a say the employees actually had in the decision. The company said it was to enable better communication, but in reality, it’s because this way they can fit in ten per cent more people without having to move to new premises.’

  ‘But how will they keep on using it if you’re breaking everything down?’

  ‘We’re going section by section and the people who work in the bit we’re converting are in temporary offices. It’s a nightmare project. Not only do we have to keep everything tidy, and it’s less efficient, but we’re also under immense time pressure. I shouldn’t have taken it on. The company doesn’t have that much money, so we’re having to cut corners everywhere too, making do with solutions that will fail within ten years. They don’t care, though.’

  ‘But if they’re growing, then there must be money.’

  ‘It’s all about cash flow. They might have plenty of capital and investments but not enough to pay the bills.’

  I tried to pay attention to what Mark was saying as I surreptitiously glanced over his shoulder at the board on the wall to check what tonight’s specials were.

  ‘Do you know what you want to eat?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. He’d obviously caught me looking at the menu. ‘I was listening to you.’

  ‘You tune out when I talk about numbers and I tune out when you talk about gory details.’ The way he said it made it obvious that it really was fine, rather than a passive-aggressive dig. ‘I had a chance to look at the board as I was waiting for you. I’m going to have the chicken.’

  ‘Same,’ I said.

  Mark allowed me to be myself and keep my sanity at the same time. I was lucky to have him.

  Chapter 9

  The offices of Patrick van der Linde’s company were located within walking distance of where he’d lived, facing the water of the Ertshaven on the south side of the KNSM Island. It was just along from where Thomas and I had had our coffees two days ago. We hadn’t known at that point that Patrick had worked so close by or we might have popped in for a chat then. We also hadn’t known that it hadn’t been an accidental death.

  We still didn’t know exactly where his body had gone into the water, but if it had been near here, it would have had to have floated around the island. I didn’t have the current patterns of the IJ yet, and I wondered how the locks influenced the way the water moved. It seemed unlikely that he’d died here. Surely his body had been thrown into the water on the other side.

  The office block was close to the Azartplein tram stop and near a white bridge that connected this artificial island to the next one down. In our typical literal naming style, the bridge was called Verbingingsdam. Connection Dam. The houseboats moored all the way along the water were more upmarket than the office. It was a slightly run-down two-storey building with garages on the ground floor that must function as a warehouse.

  Charlie had come with me this morning. I wouldn’t say that I’d had to drag him out, but I had seen some doubt on his face: should he go with the person who had got him the job in CID in the first place, or should he stay with the person who was leading the investigation? That was how quickly alliances changed as power shifted. To be fair to him, he obviously wanted to be at the centre of this investigation, and I had relegated myself to the sidelines. Who wouldn’t want to be where the action was?

  I felt aloof from the case. I was setting out in my own direction not because I was convinced that this was the right thing to do, as I’d done often enough in the past, but because I didn’t want to talk to the family. I reminded myself that even with a normal investigation, we would have gone to the victim’s place of work, especially if he was the owner of a company. I had to snap out of thinking like that. This was a normal investigation; the only thing not normal about it was my attitude. Just because the victim had been the father of the woman my ex had cheated with didn’t mean that he didn’t deserve just as much justice as any other citizen.

  As soon as I saw the premises, I realised that this wasn’t a big company. I could see about twenty people staring intently at their laptop screens. I wondered what it must be like for them to have lost their boss. I guessed that suddenly their jobs were at risk: who would run the company now? Would it be sold off? It was something I should look into. Somehow I couldn’t picture Margreet running a business, but then I didn’t know much about her background. It was of course very possible that she had started the company with her husband but had stopped working here at some point. It was possible that she would slip back into the role she had left behind.

  We had arranged to meet with the company’s lead designer, Nico Verhoef. I wasn’t entirely sure what a lead designer did, but according to Margreet, he was the one who knew everything about the company. He was as good a place to start as any, and he’d been happy to make time for us this morning.

  He turned out to be a tall man in his late thirties. All the features in his face were large, from his chin to his nose to his bulging forehead. Even for someone as tall as he was, they were out of proportion, more like those of a teenager who hadn’t grown into his face yet. He showed us into a small office that seemed even smaller now that he was inside it. His awkward movements again reminded me of a teenager who wasn’t yet used to his height or the length of his limbs.

  ‘This used to be Patrick’s office,’ he said. ‘No one’s been in here since we heard he’d died. I don’t know if it’s appropriate to use it for this meeting.’ He looked at me as if he expected me to have the answers to all things to do with death. ‘But there’s nowhere else private.’

  The room was small. It had a table and two chairs at one end, and a desk at the other. The table was only just big enough for two coffee cups, and I had to rest my notebook on my knee. On the wall were framed certificates. They seemed old. I would have a closer look at them after I’d talked to Nico.

  He took the chair from behind the desk and rolled it over to the table. It was higher than the other two chairs, and he loomed over Charlie and me.

  ‘When did you last see Patrick?’ I asked.

  ‘It was the evening of the t
eam dinner.’

  I remembered what Arjen had said about that dinner. ‘Was it a special occasion?’

  ‘He introduced his son-in-law, who was going to start work here.’

  ‘Is he here now?’ It would be typical if I ended up having to deal with Arjen here as well.

  ‘No, there was no point in him starting.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I said without thinking.

  Nico frowned.

  ‘I mean it’s good that you were all together the last time you saw him.’

  ‘Did he die that evening? Is that our alibi?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. We still need to formally establish the time of death.’

  ‘Okay.’ Nico accepted my odd behaviour. ‘What did you want to talk about? You said you needed information about the company.’

  ‘Yes. Were there any problems?’

  ‘Problems? Like what?’

  ‘Anybody who didn’t get on with Patrick?’

  ‘As you can see, it’s a small company. Everybody gets on.’ ‘Any problems in the past?’

  ‘No, not really. None that I can think of.’

  ‘And what is it that the company does?’

  ‘We make lights. Advertising lighting, novelty items, those kinds of things.’

  ‘Novelty items?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘We mainly do bespoke items like glow sticks for gigs, but with the band name. T-shirts with lights that blink to the beat.’

  ‘Is there a big market for that?’ Charlie followed up.

  ‘The market was better a few years ago. When advertising budgets were bigger, we had more business. But we’re still making a profit, can pay our staff.’

  ‘Any suppliers you owe money to?’ I asked.

  ‘No, we pay all our bills on time.’

  ‘Are you owed money?’

  ‘Here and there, but no large amounts.’

  ‘How many people does the company employ?’

  ‘There are seventeen of us.’

  ‘And what’s going to happen now?’

  Nico slumped on his chair. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘I’m keeping things running until I hear otherwise. I guess his wife will inherit the company. Or his daughter. I don’t know. But what can I do apart from make sure we keep going?’