‘Sure, they could have thought all kinds of things. I don’t know.’
Would any of the people who’d given Patrick money all those years ago be annoyed enough at his behaviour to murder him? Maybe they knew his daughter wasn’t going to bail him out after the way he’d acted in front of his son-in-law. If they were going to lose a lot of money, who knew?
‘Did your father tell you anything about their products being plagiarised?’ Stefanie asked.
‘Plagiarised?’
‘Therese Klein told us that there’s another firm out there that copied Linde Lights’ products and made them more cheaply. That was why they were having a tough time gaining new business.’
‘I wouldn’t believe anything that girl says. She’s probably just terrible at her job and only kept it because my father fancied her.’
‘Do you know her?’ I asked. Any sympathy I’d felt for Nadia over the last ten minutes had quickly ebbed away.
‘Never met her, but I know her type.’ She abruptly put her cup back on its saucer. ‘I didn’t come here to argue with you,’ she said. ‘Actually, I want to apologise.’
‘Apologise?’
Nadia shot Stefanie a look.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘She knows what happened between you and my ex-husband. I’m guessing that’s what you were planning to apologise for?’
‘Yes,’ Nadia said. ‘I know it was wrong. I shouldn’t have gone after him.’
‘It’s funny,’ I said. ‘Arjen apologised too. He did it just before he asked me not to tell your mother that your father was cheating on her. You’re doing it because you want me to help your husband out, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. Don’t be angry with us. I’m sorry about—’
I cut her short. ‘Why does your apology seem so much like an insult? You both appear to think that I won’t do my job properly unless you apologise to me.’ I looked over at Stefanie. ‘She’s actually insulting you too, now that I think about it.’
‘You’re right,’ Stefanie said. ‘She must think I only do what you tell me to.’
‘But I really am sorry.’ Nadia tried again.
‘No you’re not,’ I said. ‘Well, you might be sorry that your husband isn’t coming home tonight, but I don’t think you’re sorry you slept with him, got pregnant and married him. You’re only apologising because you want something from me. That’s not an apology, it’s a bribe.’
‘No,’ Stefanie said. ‘I actually think you were right first time. It’s an insult.’
Nadia pushed her chair back and walked off.
Stefanie and I watched her storm out, then grinned at each other.
‘That went better than I expected,’ she said.
‘Are you working on this case or are you laughing at me?’
‘I can do both at the same time, can’t I?’
I shook my head and took a sip of coffee. The air had become more breathable now that Nadia was no longer there. I had to laugh at the thought that both mother and daughter had stormed out on me in this café, leaving me to pay.
‘Still, that plagiarism case interests me,’ Stefanie said. ‘And even more so because Patrick didn’t mention it to Nadia, a possible investor.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you? You’d say: give me money to sue these people; they’ll have to pay damages and you’ll get your investment back with interest. If there’s a structural reason for why the company is in financial difficulties, you would mention that.’
‘Unless it’s something that’s hard to prove,’ I said.
‘Right. Or unless it isn’t actually true.’
‘You think Therese was lying about it?’
‘We should check it out. Confirm it either way.’
Chapter 31
Stefanie and I met with Nico Verhoef at the Clipper. After talking to Therese and Fabrice earlier, I had known none of the Linde Lights staff was going to work any more, but the fact that the doors of the office were locked came as a surprise. Nico told us that now that the bank had refused to extend their line of credit, there was no longer enough money to keep the heating or the lights on; more to the point, the rent on the premises hadn’t been paid and the landlord had kicked them out.
‘That happened quickly,’ I said.
‘Yes. It’s come as a huge shock to all of us. Another huge shock, I should say. After Patrick’s death.’ He sat with his arms folded and his legs crossed. I could see from the hangdog expression on his face that the events of the last week had taken their toll. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.
I felt sorry for him. ‘I understand. You’d been here for a long time,’ I said. ‘Nadia told me you were one of the early employees.’
‘Patrick hired me away from the company where I worked,’ Nico said. ‘He wanted my designs, said they were perfect for what Linde Lights was trying to become.’
‘Where had he seen them?’ I wanted to give him time to reminisce about the early days before asking him about the topic that had made it all fall apart. I didn’t do it purely to make him feel better, but also to make him relaxed enough that he’d be open about what had gone wrong. Thinking about it earlier, it seemed to me that everybody had been defensive all the time: of Patrick’s behaviour or the company’s strategy.
‘I worked for one of the large design companies that Patrick used in the early stages to create the specs for him. He would do the sales part and organise the production.’
‘That’s interesting,’ Stefanie said. ‘So he outsourced the design initially.’
‘Yes, but we worked so well together that he decided to bring it in-house.’
‘That was a huge gamble,’ Stefanie said. ‘For you, I mean, to take that job.’
He unfolded his arms. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say huge. It was fun to see the process from beginning to end, and being in a small firm gave me freedom. I was no longer just a cog in the machine.’
‘But also you were working closely with one person,’ she said. ‘If for some reason you fell out with him, it would be a problem.’
‘I’d worked with Patrick before, of course, so I knew we got on.’ A defensive note crept into his voice. It must have seemed to him that Stefanie was questioning his judgement.
I tried to smooth things over. ‘It makes it even more impressive that you decided to step in to rescue Therese.’
Nico shook his head. ‘It wasn’t a big deal. It really wasn’t. He would have appreciated it the next day. I’d saved him from a tricky situation.’
‘A tricky situation? He told his son-in-law that it was consensual,’ Stefanie said.
I wanted to kick her under the table. She needed to stop attacking him.
‘Yeah, well,’ he said, ‘whatever he might have told Arjen, it really wasn’t. And there’s a huge difference between having your staff pissed off at you and having to talk to the police. After the last time, Therese said she would press charges if he tried anything like that again.’
‘She told you that?’
‘Yes. She said she’d get him somewhere with CCTV or record him. I couldn’t have Patrick being arrested. It would have been the end of us. Of the company, I mean.’
It was quite ironic that what his colleagues saw as his bravery in standing up to the boss had actually been an attempt to protect him and stop him from being arrested. ‘Patrick didn’t know that, though, did he? He was angry with you.’ I made it sound as if Patrick’s anger was misplaced.
‘He would have done the next day, when he’d sobered up. I’d never seen him drink that much before. He was plastered before the food even turned up.’
I remembered watching the CCTV footage of the dinner table and seeing Nico fill up Patrick’s glass again and again. If he’d been concerned about his boss’s drinking, he hadn’t done anything to stop it. I had noticed that Nico was spinning everything to do with Patrick in a positive light. I wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t want to speak ill of the dead, or if thi
s was what he liked to think had happened now that Patrick was no longer alive to contradict him.
‘We talked to Therese yesterday and she told me that one of your products had been plagiarised,’ Stefanie said.
Now the barrier of his body posture finally came down and Nico leaned forward, suddenly keen to talk. ‘I told Patrick that we should take those people to court, but he was reluctant. I think he was just too nice. Or maybe he didn’t have the money for it.’
‘When did you first notice what they were doing?’ Stefanie asked.
‘When we lost our first sale to them around this time two years ago.’ He took a sip of his tea, getting ready to tell us the full story. ‘When we asked the client why, they said that our competitor had something very similar but at a much lower cost. They said their quality was better. We were very upset to have lost the sale, but I was even more upset to see my design being used by someone else. I knew we had a patent on it, so I don’t know how that could have happened.’
‘You saw them at a conference too?’
‘Yes, they were exhibiting there. They had the nerve to tell me it was their bestselling product. I was so angry, I called Patrick and told him to fly out to Stockholm, where the conference was, and take them to court.’
‘You talked to Patrick about it?’ I asked.
‘Of course. But he didn’t want to do anything about it. They were making huge amounts and we were going under. It was so unfair. He refused to come.’
‘Why?’
‘I think he was worried about the legal fees.’
‘You were in financial trouble already then?’ Stefanie asked.
‘I’m only saying this with hindsight. I can’t think of any other reason. Patrick wanted me to come up with new ideas all the time, but at the same time he pushed me to produce the existing ones at a lower cost so that we could compete, and that took up all my time. It was that real dilemma between keeping existing clients happy and getting new ones. In an ideal world, we would have hired someone to run production so that I could concentrate on design. But it’s a far from ideal world.’
Stefanie nodded. ‘I’m sure you addressed this with Patrick.’
‘Plenty of times, but the answer was always the same: there was no money. It was a real chicken-and-egg situation. We should have spent the money then and gone under fighting. Now we’ve gone under anyway.’
‘You must have been very angry with him,’ I said.
‘I felt bad, sure. But I was much angrier with Ozone.’
‘Patrick went there two weeks ago.’
‘Yes, I heard. Therese losing that deal was the final straw for him.’ He shrugged. ‘She was the one who finally made him act. I’m just sad that it happened too late.’
‘We’re going to meet with them,’ Stefanie said. ‘To hear what Patrick told them.’
‘Why do that?’ Nico asked. ‘It’s too late now. Too late to save the firm.’
The fact that he didn’t want to take action against them made me wonder if he was going to apply for a job with them.
Chapter 32
I checked my watch and noticed with a shock that it was ten to seven already. Mark was coming over for dinner tonight. I called the Chinese takeaway place and said I’d come to pick up the food in fifteen minutes. They were always very quick, and half an hour later I was walking back along the canal with a white plastic bag in my hand, thoughts running through my head.
All of us were keeping quiet to protect someone else, or maybe from self-preservation. We didn’t want to deal with how the other person would react when they were told the truth. I tried to keep certain things about my job from Mark. He didn’t need a bucket of unhappiness chucked over his head as soon as he got home. I had no doubt that this was the right thing to do.
But this case was different somehow.
Not telling him about talking to my ex was not the same as not telling him about what Patrick’s body had looked like when he’d been dragged out of the water after many days. One of these things I could justify; the other was me stepping away from confrontation.
It was me being a coward.
That was also why I hadn’t been working on this case properly. I had been a coward. I had wanted to stay away from the victim’s family. I hadn’t wanted to see the little girl, the new wife, my ex. I had told the son-in-law information I hadn’t told the daughter. I hadn’t wanted to talk to the daughter about the money situation because I didn’t want to meet with her. I hadn’t spoken to the widow because she was asking me questions about my divorce.
In any other case, I would have done these things. In this case, I was staying in the background, I was sitting behind my desk, I wasn’t asking the questions I should be asking.
And maybe that had led to Arjen being arrested for murder.
I opened the door to my flat and saw that Mark was already inside. I loved that he had a key and would let himself in. Pippi was sitting on his lap and opened one eye to check who was coming through the door. She was ungrateful like that. Surely she should show more excitement about her owner coming home. But no. As long as she had a nice warm lap to snooze on, she was perfectly content. I bet he’d fed her as well, otherwise I would have been greeted by dramatic meowing rather than this ongoing snooze-fest.
I held up the plastic bag. ‘I brought food,’ I said. ‘Couldn’t be bothered to cook.’
‘You should have called me; I would have cooked,’ Mark said. ‘I’m sure I could have made something edible out of whatever you’ve got in the house. How’s your hand?’
‘My mother told me I’d been overly dramatic for something that was covered by such a small plaster.’
Mark laughed. ‘That sounds like her.’
‘I went to Elise’s to pick up my bike and we had a nice chat and a cup of tea. At least I didn’t ruin their kitchen floor. There were no bloodstains left behind.’
‘That’s good. Even though it would be like your personal graffiti: Lotte was here, there are even bloodstains to prove it.’
I put the bag on the table and started opening the boxes. Pippi woke up properly and jumped off Mark’s lap. She probably thought there was going to be some food for her too. She thought wrong. It was all ours.
I scratched her head. ‘Nothing for you, puss,’ I said, and she meowed in return.
‘I hope nobody gave you a hard time for coming in late after the accident.’
‘I don’t think anybody cares about that,’ I said. ‘Plus I actually did some work whilst talking to Elise. You were talking about strategy and I was curious how that worked.’
‘Is your latest case the murder of a strategist? I had no idea that was such a dangerous job.’
‘No, it’s the murder of a company director. He’d hired a strategist and was introducing the guy at a company do. He was murdered that evening.’
‘You think there’s a link?’
‘I just wondered if that meant there was something going wrong at the company. Elise told me very kindly that I knew nothing about how business works, so I got someone from the financial fraud department to work with me. To help me,’ I corrected. ‘But I think I was right after all, as the guy’s corporate credit card bounced.’ The thought I’d had while walking back here came to me again. I shouldn’t be a coward; I should tell Mark what had been going on. ‘It all got a bit trickier,’ I said, ‘because the strategist is my ex-husband.’
‘Wait … what?’
‘The man who’s been murdered is Patrick van der Linde. Arjen is his son-in-law. Patrick seemed to have brought him into the firm.’
‘Just don’t arrest him. Nobody will believe you didn’t have an ulterior motive.’
‘Too late. He’s already been arrested. Though not by me.’
‘Oh shit.’ Mark put his fork down. ‘Are you okay?’
The moment I’d been worried about had turned out to be a non-issue. All Mark cared about was me. ‘It’s been hard.’ I didn’t know why I said that, other than as a reaction to how l
ightly he was taking this. ‘Talking to him and his new wife. Seeing their kid. It hasn’t been easy.’
‘In what way?’
‘It brought back a lot of bad stuff. Things I hadn’t thought about for years. Our daughter dying, the cheating, the divorce. It’s not good to have your face rubbed in that.’
‘He talked about those things?’
‘No, the wife’s mother did. She thought I was Nadia’s friend at first so was taking me into her confidence in an uncomfortable way. Then, when she found out who I actually was, she wanted to know if I’d been aware of what had been going on.’
‘Why would she want to know that?’
‘I think it was because her husband had been murdered. She was asking herself if he’d done something to get himself killed. She wanted to know if it was possible to be totally ignorant of what was going on around you.’
‘Is it?’
‘Her husband hadn’t been the nice, caring, faithful man she’d thought he was. I didn’t tell her that, of course. It’s difficult, because it’s all become quite personal. I’m second-guessing myself, trying to figure out what I would have done if it hadn’t been Arjen’s father-in-law. I see parallels everywhere between his behaviour at work and his daughter’s with Arjen. The widow and me.’ I started ladling rice onto my plate.
‘You’ll figure it out. Or you could take some time off. We could go on a trip, if you like.’
‘Now’s not a good time.’ There was no way I could stop working on this case now. ‘We’ve got my mum’s wedding coming up in a few weeks too.’
‘Is she okay?’
‘She’s no longer angry with me for bleeding over her stepdaughter-to-be’s kitchen floor. Now she’s angry with me for arresting Arjen. Which I didn’t do.’
‘Do you want to tell me about the case without all the personal stuff? Would that be helpful?’
‘Linde Lights. Have you heard of them?’
‘It’s them? I pitched for redesigning their office a few years ago. We didn’t get the business, but the guy who did told me it took forever to get paid. He thought he was going to have to take them to court, but it all worked out in the end.’
Death at the Orange Locks Page 23
