Death at the Orange Locks

by Anja de Jager

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I’m done for the day anyway.’ I hoped she got the hint and would keep it short.

  She was quiet as we walked across the bridge and I was happy enough with that. In Margreet’s company, I was reminded that the man who had died had been loved; that whatever he had done, he’d been a victim of murder. We went inside the café and took a table at the window. It wasn’t busy; at this time of day people were going home for dinner, not to a café for drinks. The crowds would come later.

  ‘I talked to Nadia,’ she said as soon as she sat down. ‘I want to apologise. I’d never asked her about you before. I mean, I knew there was an ex-wife.’

  She gestured to the man behind the bar and he came over. I had only ever ordered at the counter, but Margreet was the kind of person who would get them to come to her.

  ‘I’m having a glass of wine,’ she said, reminding me of Karin earlier today. ‘What about you? The same?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. I felt I was going to need the alcohol to get through this conversation. This wasn’t about the murder victim but about my private life. ‘Dry white, please.’

  ‘Do you have Picpoul?’ Margreet said. ‘Or Chablis?’

  ‘It’s Sauvignon Blanc,’ the barman replied.

  ‘That would be great,’ I said quickly. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll have a large one,’ Margreet added.

  I pinched my thumb and index finger together to signal that I wanted a small one. The man nodded.

  ‘Nadia told you who I was, then?’ I said.

  Margreet stayed quiet until the barman brought our drinks over. Then she continued exactly where she’d left off. ‘As I said, I knew there had been an ex-wife, but I never gave her any thought.’

  I wondered if she’d rehearsed what she was going to say before she met with me.

  ‘Was that bad of me?’

  ‘It wasn’t your doing,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t your problem.’

  ‘I was mortified when Nadia told me how she knew you. I thought you were her friend. I have no idea what she was thinking of, going to you for help.’

  As if that mattered. I was surprised that this was how she was feeling, seeing as her husband had died a week ago. ‘She was very worried about her father,’ I said kindly.

  ‘I want to apologise,’ Margreet said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said.

  ‘Was it a shock? Did you know that your husband was having an affair?’

  Did you know what yours had been up to? I could have asked. I took a sip of my wine. ‘I don’t understand why you want to know this,’ I finally said.

  ‘I want to know if my daughter is a bad person.’

  I sat back on my chair and hooked one arm over the back. ‘I found out when my husband told me he’d got your daughter pregnant.’ I kept my voice steady, but Margreet flinched as if I’d hit her.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I never believed those stories; I always thought that surely the wife would know. Would have an inkling.’

  I had been too engrossed in the pain of my daughter’s death to appreciate that my husband had been finding solace elsewhere. ‘Often the wife has no idea whatsoever,’ I said. I looked at her steadily.

  ‘If my husband had done something bad, do you think I would know?’ she asked. ‘You’re a police officer. What do you think?’ There were tears in her eyes.

  I couldn’t tell if she was crying because she was thinking about her husband or if she was actually considering the possibility that he had cheated on her. Seeing as we now had a much better idea of what kind of person he really had been, it wouldn’t surprise me if she had had her suspicions about his behaviour. Maybe she had even seen him do something. ‘What kind of bad things are you talking about?’

  ‘Something that would get him killed.’

  I narrowed my eyes. ‘Was there anything like that? Is there something you’re worried about, or have you found something out?’

  She was still crying. ‘I don’t know. It’s all the things together: meeting you, hearing what Nadia had done to you, Patrick being murdered; it makes me wonder if there was anything else I didn’t know. I feel as if I’ve been living in this bubble, accepting everybody’s words, everything they told me, without questioning anything. Believing them. Now I’m doubting everything.’

  ‘Did Patrick tell you something that you’re now doubting?’ I wanted to stay with the investigation. I wanted to talk about the murder, not analyse Nadia’s affair and my divorce.

  ‘He would often come home late. He’d been drinking, I could smell it on him. I could even smell that he’d been smoking, though he was supposed to have stopped years before. He used to say that it was only smoke on his clothes from other people’s cigarettes, but now that there’s a smoking ban everywhere, that doesn’t make sense, does it?’

  I kept quiet. I wasn’t going to give her any hints as to what else Patrick had been getting up to, but if her own mind was heading in that direction, I wasn’t going to direct her thoughts either.

  ‘So if he smoked and lied about that, I keep wondering what else he was lying about.’ She buried her face in her hands.

  I fished a packet of tissues out of my handbag and gave them to her.

  ‘Was he lying about the drinking? What was going on at the company?’ Margreet took a tissue out and dabbed her eyes. ‘I thought I knew what he was like.’

  I didn’t tell her. I didn’t confirm her worst fears. I didn’t want to tarnish her husband’s reputation in her eyes. If he’d been a power-abusing git who inappropriately touched the women who worked for him, that wasn’t her fault, in the same way that Arjen’s cheating hadn’t been my fault either. If Arjen had suddenly died, in a car crash, for example, I would have much preferred to think that he’d been great and had loved me forever. I could do Margreet the courtesy of allowing her to have good memories of her husband. If it became the core of the investigation, or the motive for murder, I would ask her about it, of course, but I didn’t feel it was necessary at the moment.

  ‘This is a murder case,’ I said instead. ‘If there’s anything that you think we need to know, anything at all, you should tell us. We’re trying to find out who killed your husband. If there were problems at work, problems at his company, you must tell me.’

  ‘I don’t know anything,’ she said. ‘And I feel stupid for that. I let Patrick do everything. I have no idea what our finances are like, Nadia is helping me with that. Everything is in his name. I can’t even pay my bills.’ She put her head in her hands and sobbed.

  I gave her time. I threw a quick glance at my watch without her noticing. I had to leave in the next half an hour to get to the dinner in time. I sent Mark a quick text to ask him to pick up some wine and flowers.

  Margreet rummaged around in her handbag, got a handkerchief out and blew her nose. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I hate crying.’

  ‘It’s normal. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘You must see a lot of miserable people. I thought I was coping just fine.’

  ‘How can you be?’ I said.

  ‘I hate it that I cry about not paying the bills, not about my husband.’

  ‘You’re crying about all those things at the same time. Don’t be hard on yourself.’

  ‘I don’t even know why I wanted to talk to you. What I wanted from you.’ She put her handkerchief back into her bag. ‘It seemed important an hour ago. I wasn’t thinking straight. Asking you about your divorce, about Nadia. I shouldn’t do that, should I?’

  ‘It’s best if we keep the two things separate,’ I said. That was an understatement, of course, and the thing I was battling with myself.

  ‘But there was probably something wrong with your marriage already for your husband to have cheated.’

  ‘Let’s not talk about that any more.’ The bitterness I felt inside, that I’d managed to hold back so far, spilled out. ‘I want to see this as a normal murder case, not the death of the father of the woman my hu
sband had an affair with.’

  Margreet paled and I instantly felt guilty. I wished I could take my words back.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

  ‘A normal murder case,’ she repeated. ‘That’s terrible. That Patrick is a normal murder case.’

  I was surprised that this was what she’d got upset about. But to be fair, I shouldn’t have said that part either.

  ‘My husband is dead, and for you this is a normal case.’ She pushed her chair back. ‘I won’t bother you any more,’ she said. ‘As you mentioned, I should really talk to your colleagues. That’s what you asked.’ She put her coat on and left.

  I swore under my breath, but I didn’t stop her. I felt awful. That she was finally going to do what I’d asked her to do made no difference. That she’d asked about something that was painful to me was no reason to lash out. That her husband had been a cheat, like mine had been, didn’t make what I’d said right. The mistake was all mine. Whatever my opinion of Patrick and his daughter might be, Margreet had done nothing wrong. I had no reason to make her feel worse than she was already feeling.

  The rest of the bar was empty. I was now the only person sitting there, two half-drunk glasses of wine on my table. It was tempting to finish mine at least, and maybe even empty Margreet’s into my glass too, but I shouldn’t drink too much before going to my mother’s dinner party. However much I would like to sit here in silence and enjoy a nice glass of wine, arriving half-cut would really set me up perfectly for disaster. It was going to be tricky anyway, and the less I drank, the better it would be.

  Margreet had walked off without paying. I went up to the bar and settled the bill for both our drinks, then popped back into the office to pick up my stuff. Thomas and Charlie looked at me in surprise.

  ‘We thought you’d left for the day,’ Thomas said. He shuffled a heap of papers together. I wanted to ask what they were looking at, why they would clear things away as soon as I came in, but then I realised that this was what happened when you said you didn’t want to be a main part of the investigation: you were on the outside. You didn’t get included. I told myself firmly that it was fine. This was the price I had to pay.

  ‘Someone’s coming in,’ Thomas looked at his watch, ‘in about five minutes.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Arjen Boogaard.’

  I flinched at the sound of the surname that had once been mine. I tried not to read too much into the fact that they had him coming in after they’d thought I’d left for the day. ‘What for?’ I asked.

  ‘We want him to talk us through the timeline of that company do. Who was there, what did they say, did he see anything. Things like that.’

  ‘You want to ask if he noticed anything going on between Patrick and Therese?’

  ‘Amongst other things. But really to get the timings straight.’

  Now I understood what they had been talking about when I came in earlier; they must have been preparing for the interview.

  ‘You guys get on with it without me. Just check if he knew what exactly Patrick wanted him to do. Work-wise, I mean.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Getting the timeline straight doesn’t need three of us, and I need to have dinner with my mother.’

  ‘Well, okay, we’ll go downstairs now.’

  Charlie took the pile of papers with him. It made me smile. He’d learn quickly enough that there was no point in having all your notes with you when you were interviewing a witness, but I liked his eagerness and attempt at detail. It was not his strong point – I knew that, he knew that – but it seemed that he was working hard to rectify it.

  He looked like a student with all that paper under his arm.

  Bless.

  I responded to a couple of emails that had come in, then logged off from my computer, grabbed my handbag and put my coat on. I was nervous about the meeting with my mother’s fiancé and his daughter, but hanging around here wasting time wasn’t going to help.

  As I came down the stairs, I saw Thomas and Charlie ushering Arjen into an interview room. That surprised me. I had thought they would have used one of the more informal areas, rather than the one with all the recording equipment.

  It made me intrigued as to why they really had him coming in. If it was just about the timeline, surely they wouldn’t need an interrogation room. The only reason I could think of was that they were going to ask him about Therese, or maybe the money situation at the company. These were all areas that were crucially important to the part of the investigation I was involved in.

  I was making up reasons why I was going to do what I was going to do anyway.

  Chapter 16

  It would be embarrassing if Thomas and Charlie knew that I was looking at them interview my ex-husband, so I ducked into the observation area behind the one-way mirror after they’d gone in. I had always liked sitting there in the dark, watching my colleagues as they interviewed someone. I flipped the switch on the sound and the men’s voices came through clearly, but with that slightly tinny quality that the electronics added.

  Now that Arjen couldn’t see me, I could study him. It was the first time I’d seen him without Nadia present since our divorce. Did he look good? It was so hard to tell. There was more flesh on his face – he’d definitely put on weight – but he’d kept his hair. What did I expect? We’d only been split up for four years. It wasn’t enough time for him to have altered much. Apart from putting on ten kilos.

  Nadia must be feeding him well.

  ‘Can you talk us through what happened that evening?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘Nothing unusual,’ Arjen said. He had his arms folded across his chest, and a frown line that I remembered well was showing between his eyebrows. A couple of days ago, I would have interpreted his posture as being annoyed at having to come to the police station. Since then, we’d found out what his father-in-law was really like, and I could now see a second interpretation for that frown.

  He’s defensive, I wrote down in my notebook, but it was the ‘I forgot to put the bin bags out’ look, not the ‘I screwed my secretary and got her pregnant’ one. I could still read him like a book, especially if my concentration wasn’t pulled away by his wife and child.

  ‘I was with my father-in-law for most of the evening. He was drunk but still compos mentis, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  It really pissed me off that he classified a drunken Patrick forcefully kissing Therese as a bin-bag-level misdemeanour.

  ‘We’re not really getting at anything.’ Thomas stressed the repetition of Arjen’s words. ‘We want you to tell us what happened that evening. Walk us through it. What time did you arrive? Let’s start there.’

  ‘I went to Linde Lights first. That was just after five p.m. Patrick had asked me to be there at five, but I was a bit late. Traffic was bad.’

  ‘You drove?’ Charlie said.

  ‘Yes. I wanted an excuse not to have more than a couple of drinks.’ He shrugged. ‘Patrick would always drink a lot, but if I was going to work there, I wanted to keep my wits about me in front of my new colleagues.’

  I could see Charlie taking a note of Arjen’s answer. He seemed even more like an eager student than when he’d walked to the interview room with all those papers under his arm.

  ‘So yes, that was just after five. Patrick introduced me to the staff. I’d met Nico Verhoef before but none of the others.’

  ‘Where had you met Nico?’

  ‘He came to my wedding.’

  I didn’t even choke. I was getting much better at this.

  ‘Your wedding to Nadia, Patrick’s daughter.’

  ‘Yes. He knew Nadia well and he came to the reception. It was nice to see a familiar face when I did the rounds of the company.’

  ‘So you met all those new people, then went straight to the restaurant?’ Thomas’s voice was harsh. I wondered if he was pissed off with Arjen on my behalf, that he so lightly talked about his second wedding in fro
nt of his ex-wife’s colleagues. I should buy Thomas a drink at some point, I thought. It was nice to have someone on your side.

  ‘The table was booked for six p.m.’

  ‘Not everybody came,’ Charlie said.

  ‘No, Patrick said sales and design only. I’m not sure why, but that was his choice.’

  ‘Did everybody come straight away?’

  Arjen shook his head. ‘One girl, Therese, I think, was really late. Patrick had to call her. I’m not sure what time exactly she got there. It was after seven, I know that, because I thought Patrick needed to have some food or otherwise he’d be quite drunk. I wanted to order some nibbles, olives and bread, but he said we’d spoil our appetites. I think that was a joke.’

  ‘What time did people start to leave?’

  ‘The girl who was late to arrive was also the first to go. She said goodbye to everybody around nine-ish, nine thirty maybe. Again, I’m not sure exactly. If I knew I was going to be examined on it, I would have paid more attention.’ He smiled.

  Thomas didn’t smile back. ‘Did you notice anything around the time she left?’

  Arjen raised his eyebrows. ‘With her?’

  ‘With her, with someone else.’

  ‘No, not really. Should I have done?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I was talking to Gerry and Patrick. Therese was at the other end of the table. I didn’t talk to her at all.’

  ‘Did Patrick stay at the table all evening?’

  ‘He got up to go to the bathroom a couple of times. I didn’t really notice when that was. Sorry.’

  ‘Did the mood change at all during dinner?’

  ‘I noticed that everybody left all of a sudden. I don’t know why.’

  I knew why. I wondered if anybody else at that table had known why.

  ‘Gerry, Nico, Patrick and I were the last ones there. Patrick insisted we finished the bottle of red that had been opened. I didn’t want any more, I counted myself lucky that I was driving. When we were done, it was after eleven. I know that because I texted Nadia to say that we were finally finished and I was coming home.’