Death at the Orange Locks

by Anja de Jager

  ‘Love can feel like obsession, can’t it?’ she said. ‘When you want to see that person all the time. It’s only bad when it isn’t reciprocated.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to someone you’re in love with. You wouldn’t want them to be at risk, even if that means you can rescue them.’

  ‘Oh my God, I’ve just realised something!’ Her voice was all fake-excited, like a schoolgirl spotting a member of her favourite boy band. ‘It’s what you’re doing at the moment. You’re trying to rescue Arjen. So romantic. Is that how you’re going to win him back?’

  I’d known there was going to be a price to pay for having Stefanie help me. I’d known when I walked into her office to ask for her assistance that she would irritate the hell out of me at some point. That I knew she was doing it on purpose didn’t stop me from responding. ‘I’m not trying to get him back. I don’t want him back. I’m trying to keep an innocent person out of prison. That’s not really romantic.’

  ‘I think you’re protesting too much.’ She winked at me. ‘What does Mark have to say about all this?’

  ‘How do you know about Mark?’ I had no idea she knew anything about my personal life.

  We stopped at a red light. There was no escape when you were in a car with someone. I should have cycled. I would cycle next time, regardless of how far it was or what the weather was like. Getting soaked in the rain would be less aggravating than talking to Stefanie.

  ‘Charlie told me you’ve got a new guy,’ she said.

  ‘When did you talk to Charlie about my private life?’

  ‘Is your new guy jealous? Just like Fabrice is?’

  I shook my head at the ridiculous idea. ‘So in the romcom movie that’s taking place in your head right now, I would have arrested Arjen just so that I could get him out again?’ I didn’t want to think about the fact that I hadn’t told Mark about any of this. And I obviously wasn’t going to confess that to Stefanie.

  She pursed her lips as she waited for the traffic light to turn green. ‘No, I don’t think that would have worked. I don’t think you could have arrested him yourself. You would have someone else do it, make it look as if you had nothing to do with it, and then go all out to save him.’ She whipped her head round, sending her hair flying. ‘Oh, wait, is that what actually happened? Did you whisper in Thomas’s ear to arrest Arjen? Tut tut, Lotte, you’re much more devious than I thought.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I said. Later, probably as I was lying in bed tonight, I would come up with a much better retort than that one. For now I resorted to sulky silence and switched on the radio.

  Stefanie parked in the basement of the police station and I was back at my desk before I remembered that I was supposed to stay out of the office as much as possible. Thomas and Charlie weren’t there, and I took my coat off and sat down. Stefanie’s words came back to me. However much I’d hated what she’d said, there was something about it that niggled at the back of my mind, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was.

  While I was there, I should have another look at the CCTV footage from the Clipper. If nothing else, I could prove that Stefanie had been talking garbage, and remind her there was a reason why she was in the financial fraud department and I was in CID. I’d watched it a few times already, to see who had been aware of what had gone on with Therese. Previously I’d wanted to check what people’s reaction had been when Patrick returned to the table afterwards. Now I looked at the beginning, when the group first turned up.

  Four people arrived together: Patrick, Arjen, Nico and Gerry. I knew that it was forty-five minutes later when three more people came. It would be almost two hours before Therese arrived to take her seat at the far end of the table.

  I started from when they sat down. Nico took the seat diagonally opposite Patrick. I sped up the footage and it became clear that the two of them didn’t talk to each other at all, but Nico did continue to ply Patrick with wine. The footage wasn’t sharp enough to allow me to see it exactly, but it seemed to me that he was keeping Patrick’s glass full. They finished one bottle and then another. Most of it went into Patrick’s glass. The others hardly drank. My guess was that he had had the best part of a bottle in the forty-five minutes before the next guests arrived. Then a couple more bottles were ordered. I didn’t know how much he usually drank – it could well be that a bottle of red made no impression on him – but seeing Nico topping up his glass over and over again made me wonder if he’d had a reason for doing that. It was as if he wanted Patrick to get really drunk.

  Even Therese’s mother had known how Patrick was going to act under the influence. She’d called him a dirty old man. He wouldn’t be able to keep his hands to himself. Had Nico got Patrick drunk, then called Therese to come to the restaurant? As Sally had said, if this had been his plan, it had almost worked.

  But surely that was just something people did in movies? Surely nobody would think it was a good idea to do it in real life? Had it got out of control? Had he thought that Patrick might just put his hand on Therese’s knee, for example, and he would be able to say something about it and be the good guy? Instead, Patrick had pinned her up against the wall, a sexual assault instead of the mild annoyance that Nico might have expected to happen.

  I closed my computer and got my coat, ready to leave the police station again. It was silly to work from home or away from the office, but if that was what the boss wanted, that was what I’d do. The alternative was to join Stefanie in her office, and I really didn’t fancy that. With a bit of luck, they’d release Arjen at the end of the twenty-four-hour period and I could return to my desk without any qualms.

  As I walked down the stairs, I couldn’t stop thinking about the footage I’d watched. What if Nico had tried to get Patrick drunk for other reasons? Not to get in Therese’s good books, but to make him behave in the kind of way that would force him to step down as managing director. As long as Patrick was the head of the company, nothing was going to change. That was what Fabrice had said. Had this been a strategy to remove him from the helm?

  A thought popped into my head that I didn’t particularly like: was that why Arjen and Patrick had been arguing? Because Patrick had behaved in a way that could lose him control of the company and put Arjen’s future in jeopardy?

  I remembered thinking as I’d watched Arjen being questioned that there was probably one more layer of truth to unpeel. Was this it? That he had been pissed off with Patrick for his own sake? His own job? Would this have made him more or less likely to start a physical fight?

  I hated the direction my thoughts were going in; that whenever I tried to do something to prove Arjen’s innocence, I kept wondering about the possibility of his guilt.

  With those doubts in my head, I left the police station.

  I saw her as soon as I’d crossed the little garden by the exit. I had no idea how long she’d been waiting for me. There was a list of people I really didn’t want to see right now, and she was at the very top of it. Because nothing good could come of meeting my ex-husband’s second wife.

  Chapter 30

  I sped up and tried to walk past her, but she grabbed my arm.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ she said.

  I wanted to say something snarky, like: get a number, there’s a queue. But instead I decided to be polite and professional. This was work, after all. ‘If it’s about your husband, I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to talk.’

  ‘Not a good idea? You locked him up. I know we’ve done things that hurt you, but this is taking it too far.’

  ‘We pulled him in for questioning,’ I said. ‘We haven’t locked him up, as you call it.’

  ‘This is ridiculous. You can’t possibly think he killed my father.’

  ‘Please talk to his lawyer.’

  ‘I already did that. I know why you called him in for questioning, as you call it. I hope you understand that you’re responsible for all of this.’

  ‘I am?’ I stuffed my hands dee
p into my pockets. ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘You made it personal. Don’t you see? I don’t think Arjen would have lied if you hadn’t been involved.’

  My mother had said something similar, but that didn’t surprise me. Nadia had called her to fire her as their babysitter. She had probably also given this same explanation as to why it was all my fault.

  ‘I could have accepted that if he’d lied only to me, but he was giving evidence to my colleagues. He lied to them,’ I said. I wanted to be fair. I really did.

  Nadia shook her head. ‘You might not have been in the room, but you were involved from the start. You came to our house that first time. You met with my mother.’

  ‘Can I point out that you came to me first? You asked me to look into your father’s disappearance, remember?’

  ‘Only too well.’

  ‘If you hadn’t done that, I would never have been part of the investigation. I’m sorry Arjen felt the need to lie to the police. He’s made everything that much harder.’

  ‘I know that. But there’s no way he murdered my father. I would have known if he had.’

  It wasn’t the first time I’d heard a family member say those words: I would have known. ‘Did you know what your father got up to?’ I said.

  Nadia sighed. ‘Let’s talk. Not here in the middle of the street. My mother said you took her to a café around the corner. Let’s go there.’

  I shook my head. ‘Not just the two of us. That would be a bad idea. Wait for a second. I’ll get one of my colleagues to join us.’

  At Nadia’s nod, I called Stefanie. I didn’t think I’d ever heard her quite this excited before. That Nadia was okay with it made me feel marginally better.

  We waited for Stefanie in silence It would probably have been better to have this chat inside the police station, but the boss had said I should stay away. The fact that I wouldn’t want to be seen by Thomas and Charlie talking to Nadia was something I pushed to the back of my mind. When Stefanie came out, still putting her coat on, we set off across the bridge to the café.

  And that was how I ended up having a coffee with the woman my husband had cheated on me with, and the woman who thought my ex-husband could so easily have murdered someone.

  ‘I’m not your enemy,’ Nadia said to me across the table.

  I pulled my hair away from my face and laughed. The whole situation was too ridiculous. Here was this young woman trying to make friends with me because she desperately needed my help. How the tables had turned.

  ‘You know as well as I do that Arjen didn’t kill anybody.’ She fell silent as the waitress approached and put our coffees in front of us.

  ‘If you want to help him,’ I said, ‘you can answer our questions.’ I put my phone on the table between us and pressed the record button.

  ‘Sure,’ she said, giving me a challenging look. ‘Ask away.’

  ‘Did Arjen tell you what happened that night at the restaurant?’

  ‘Not as such, but he did tell me afterwards that we weren’t going to put any money into the company. That pretty much told me enough.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Stefanie said. Her face lit up with pleasure that this talk was going to be all about finance after all.

  ‘I worked there for a couple of years and hated how he behaved. He even did it when I was there. Can you imagine having to watch that? Your father flirting with the women in the company, always going that little bit too far. It’s why we argued all the time.’

  ‘Your mother said the arguments were about the direction the firm was taking,’ Stefanie said.

  ‘What do you think I was going to say to my mother? Mum, I hate watching my father put his hand on the admin girl’s knee? Mum, the girl asked me if I could talk to my dad and get him to stop? That’s not really something you can tell your mother. It’s much easier to make up a business reason.’

  ‘So that’s why you left?’ I asked.

  ‘I couldn’t stand it any longer. I told him why I couldn’t work there any more. He said something really annoying, like how he was just weak. Or the girls were just too pretty. Or whatever. Some lousy excuse. I got so angry, I broke off all contact with him after that.’

  ‘Your mother told us he’d had counselling and that he’d stopped drinking.’

  ‘It was easy, wasn’t it? To accept that the cheating was only down to the fact that he drank too much. As I said: some lousy excuse. I guess part of it was my fault. I never told my mother the extent of how he behaved at work. I met with her, of course, and after Arjen and I got married and …’ She stopped. ‘Whatever.’

  I knew what she’d been about to say. ‘And after your daughter was born,’ I said, ‘you got back in touch.’

  ‘Yes. We would go round there for lunch every other weekend. I felt bad for my mother not seeing her grandchild as much as she wanted, but I just couldn’t stand being in the same room as him.’ She tore the top off a sugar packet and stirred it into her coffee. ‘I avoided him, but then I felt guilty for being a bad daughter. You can’t win, can you?’

  ‘And Arjen knew about this?’ I asked.

  ‘I told him I was embarrassed about the money. Two years ago, my father got in touch. The firm was in need of money and he asked us if we were willing to put some in. He’d sold the house a couple of years before that, and I’d suspected he needed to release the equity to prop the company up. I confronted him about it at the time and he was pretty evasive. Said that they were downsizing, nothing to do with Linde Lights. My mother has no idea; she still thinks there’s a lot of money left.’

  ‘You haven’t told her?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure what’s there and what isn’t. A solicitor is going through it all; it’s a total mess. I prefer to wait until I actually have some facts, then I’ll sit down with her and discuss the situation.’

  I nodded. I understood that. ‘Did you not have the money back then?’

  ‘No, we could have given him what he wanted,’ Nadia said. Her voice was sharp. ‘But he wasn’t changing anything about the way he was running the company. He wasn’t going to give us any say in return. He thought it could be a loan – which would have ended up as a gift – without any interest. I told him to go to hell.’ She looked at me over her coffee cup. ‘Those were the words I actually used.’

  ‘What changed between then and now? You were going to bail him out this time.’

  ‘He must have been desperate. He offered to give us half the company in return for the cash. He was willing to modify the way they were working. He would take my opinions into account – no, he would be legally bound to do what I wanted, as he was going to make me a co-director with the same number of shares in the firm as he had.’

  ‘But it wasn’t just about a say in the company,’ I said. ‘That’s not what you argued about in the past.’

  ‘Exactly. Our falling-out was about how he behaved. I told Arjen to look around for a bit, to see if he really had changed.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘And of course my father insisted on throwing that company do, getting horrendously drunk and snogging Therese Klein.’

  ‘Arjen had an argument with your father about that.’

  ‘I’m sure he did. He was pretty pissed off when he got home. But when my father went missing, we decided not to tell my mother about what had happened at the drinks. At first we thought that maybe he’d spent the night with Therese. That he’d decided to divorce my mother.’

  ‘Therese has a boyfriend. She says he sexually assaulted her.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  Nadia’s dismissive response annoyed me. ‘Both Therese and Nico said that Nico had to drag your father off her. Do you think he would have done that if they were just making out?’

  ‘Nico did?’ Nadia laughed. ‘That’s a surprise. He only ever does what my father tells him to do.’

  ‘Someone called him your father’s lapdog.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s about right. He was already working with my father when I joined. I didn’t see hi
m stand up to him once.’

  ‘But now he has.’

  ‘Wow. Okay, but we didn’t know that at the time. My mother called me, distraught because my father hadn’t come home, and Arjen told me about their argument and that he’d been kissing this girl, and we decided that it was probably best to go to the police before my mother went insane. We expected him to turn up the next day with his tail between his legs.’ She paused, a grim smile on her face. ‘No, actually we expected that he would have disappeared with whatever cash he still had. He knew the company was beyond rescuing and it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d cut his losses. There were no other assets left: the house was sold, the new flat was rented. He could have run away from his responsibilities. I wouldn’t have put it past him.’

  ‘But he didn’t run,’ I said.

  ‘No. He was murdered. But it would have made no sense whatsoever for Arjen to have done that; you see that, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m trying to prove it,’ I said. ‘I’m in a tough situation where I have to be seen to be objective when I’m clearly not. I had nothing to do with his arrest. For once, I think we’re on the same side. Just one last question: the investment two years ago, where did that come from?’ Part of me hoped there was some shady moneylender in the background, or that Patrick had been smuggling drugs in the shipments from abroad.

  ‘He never said. I think he might have got some of his friends to put money in.’

  ‘Money that they were going to lose unless you bailed them out,’ Stefanie said. ‘Did anybody know about the ultimatum you’d given your father? Or maybe I should say the conditions you attached to the loan?’

  I could see where her thinking was going. Conditions that he had clearly broken that evening.

  ‘I’m not sure he told anybody he’d asked us for money. Keeping stakeholders informed wasn’t my father’s strong point. Some of the old-timers had a pretty shrewd idea why I’d left the company, of course. They might have put two and two together when Arjen showed up.’ She shrugged.

  ‘Or maybe not,’ Stefanie said. ‘Maybe they thought you no longer cared about your father’s behaviour.’