‘You signed the contract behind Patrick’s back,’ Stefanie said.
‘They were my designs. I had the rights to them. I’d patented them before joining Linde. It was a large part of why Patrick wanted me to work with him.’
‘But when you started working for Linde, your designs became their intellectual property?’ Stefanie asked.
‘Yes, that was part of my employment contract. But I was also a director of Linde Lights. So even if they weren’t my designs, I was legally allowed to sign the documents.’
‘What happened when Patrick found out?’ I asked. ‘He went to Ozone after Therese lost that deal, and the lawyer showed him the document. That’s when he knew you’d signed it.’
‘He was angry, of course. He said I shouldn’t have done it. Even after I explained that we’d had no choice, he was still livid. Said I hadn’t had the right to do it. I told him I had.’ His voice was calm, but I could see that his hands were shaking. ‘But when Patrick was in that kind of mood, there was no talking to him.’
‘When was this?’ I asked.
‘Three days before he died.’
He’d gone to Ozone a week before his death and asked for the contract. He must have waited a few days to think about how he was going to react.
‘But we talked again the day after,’ Nico continued. ‘And then we went to the Clipper. He still wasn’t happy about it, but at least he was no longer quite as angry. He said that what was done was done. I felt really bad. Maybe I hadn’t thought it through. I’m not saying I’m a business genius, but at least I bought the company two years’ grace. Otherwise we would have gone bankrupt sooner. And I still think that if Patrick hadn’t died, we would have weathered this storm too.’
‘Patrick said he was going to fire you and get in a new lead designer.’
Nico shook his head. ‘That was just something he said on the spur of the moment. He was angry with me. He was angry over the contract with Ozone and he was angry about the Therese situation, but I don’t think he would have fired me. We would have talked the next day and he would have understood why I’d done what I did. I signed the deal with Ozone so we would survive. Because Patrick refused to take them to court, we had no other option. I interfered in the situation with Therese because the last thing he needed was for her to call the police. So yes, that night he was angry with me, and he might well have told someone he was going to fire me. He used to say that all the time. But there was no way he would have actually done it. He would have called me into his office and apologised, as he’d done a number of times before.’ He smiled. ‘He was like that: his temper flared up and then he calmed down again.’
‘But this time he was murdered after you argued.’
‘I know. I’m distraught that we can never put things right again.’
Back outside, Stefanie said, ‘I’ll go through the company records. There must be something there. I just can’t believe that this was all done above board.’
‘Was that a crime? Going behind Patrick’s back like that?’
‘If Nico personally got nothing in return, then no. It was a bad business move, but if – and this is a big if – he was a signatory for the company and Ozone paid Linde directly for the rights, then no crime has been committed. I just can’t imagine that Patrick accepted such a large sum of money without asking questions. And from a competitor, of all people. Surely he must have wondered why they’d paid him, unless he was so relieved that he didn’t stop to think. It just doesn’t seem right.’
‘I can’t see it as a motive for murder,’ I said.
‘I could see that Patrick would have wanted to kill Nico, not the other way round.’
‘Maybe they got into a physical fight.’
Stefanie threw me a look. ‘You’re grasping at straws,’ she said. ‘This could well have been all above board.’
Back in the office, I called Nadia. I’d never thought I’d voluntarily dial those digits, but work was more important than my personal dislike and she was the only one who could answer my question. If she was surprised to hear from me, it didn’t show in her voice.
‘Did you know Nico Verhoef was a director in Linde Lights?’
‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I knew that. My father didn’t tell me at the time, but he told Arjen recently. I was pissed off, of course.’
‘Why?’
‘If he’d offered Nico that deal, why not give us better terms two years ago? I might have made the investment then in return for a directorship. A say in the company. But my father only asked me for a loan, while making his mate a director. Just typical.’
I wished that Stefanie was here to help me make sense of what Nadia was saying. Instead, I was going to have to show my ignorance in front of my ex’s new wife, like I’d shown it in front of my stepsister-to-be the other day.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked through gritted teeth. ‘Wasn’t Nico a director from the start?’ That was what I’d assumed when he’d first told us he was one.
‘Oh God, no. My father made him one in return for money. That was where the financial injection came from.’
‘He made him a director because they got the money from Ozone?’
‘Ozone? No, it was money from Nico himself.’
‘The money came from Nico personally?’ I was obviously being dim, because I didn’t get this at all. I had thought that the financial injection had been from Ozone, when they bought the rights to Linde’s bestselling product.
‘Yes, he made a large investment in the firm when I refused, and my father made him a director in return.’
‘And this was two years ago?’
‘Yes. I’d say he must have gone begging to Nico the day after I turned him down. And with terms I might have accepted, too. But then Nico never questioned my father’s morals or his business sense, so my father probably thought he would be easier to deal with than me.’ She sighed. ‘I’m not supposed to speak ill of the dead, am I? Do you want me to come and make a statement about this? Are you going to let my husband go now?’
‘Just a little longer,’ I said. ‘Please be patient.’
Stefanie called me as soon as I’d put the phone down, before I could even tell her what I’d heard from Nadia. ‘I’ve got a present for you,’ she said. ‘Come on up. I think you were right after all.’
I went upstairs to her office. ‘What is it?’
‘Look at the dates,’ she said. ‘I pulled the records from Company House. Nico Verhoef is indeed a director at Linde Lights.’
‘Right, so there’s no problem?’
‘Check these dates,’ she said. ‘I’ll make it clear for you.’ She drew a long horizontal line on her office whiteboard.
I should be annoyed that she thought I wouldn’t be able to understand it without a drawing, but in fact I was grateful that she was using my favourite technique to explain an important point to me.
‘Nico Verhoef makes a payment of half a million euros on the twenty-third of September. Two days later, Patrick makes Nico a director. And here’s the interesting bit: he also transfers a quarter of the shares in the company to Nico.’
‘Nadia told me that Nico became a director in return for that money. So he wasn’t a director when he signed the agreement with Ozone?’
‘I thought you’d think that,’ Stefanie smiled, ‘but he was. He signed the deal with Ozone a month later.’ She drew a spot on the timeline. ‘But here’s the interesting bit: Ozone then paid Linde Lights half a million euros.’
‘Hold on. So there were two payments? One from Nico and one from Ozone? Did you see that when you looked into Linde’s finances? I thought there was only one payment.’
‘Exactly. There was only one payment to that reserve account, and it came from Nico. That’s when I double-checked the details of the account Ozone paid that money into. It was a third Linde Lights account.’
My head was spinning. ‘Wait, there was a third account?’
‘At least there was another account under that name.
I didn’t think there was any point in asking Karin, She was in charge of invoices but wouldn’t have known anything about this. So I called the bank.’
‘What did they say?’
‘This was a business account with a completely different bank. Not the one the two main accounts were with. It was opened by a company director of Linde in late September. Guess who that was.’
‘The new director, Nico Verhoef.’
‘We’ll make a financial expert out of you yet, Lotte. Nico, with all the proper paperwork, perfectly legally opens another business account. Ozone pays the money into it and Nico personally withdraws the funds a few days later. He never uses that account again.’
I shook my head. ‘That’s crazy.’
‘No, it’s smart,’ Stefanie said. ‘Very hard to trace, and no statement would ever have reached Patrick or Karin. Without Patrick’s murder, we’d never have found out about it.’
‘If Patrick hadn’t gone to talk to Ozone after Therese’s deal fell through, he wouldn’t have noticed any of this.’
‘Actually, I’m surprised he didn’t contact them sooner if he thought they were plagiarising Linde’s designs.’
‘That’s the inaction that annoyed Nico so much, I guess.’
‘Yeah, well, he still shouldn’t have done what he did. If he wanted to sell the rights, he should have put that money in the reserve account and told Patrick about the deal he’d struck.’
I still didn’t quite get what had happened. ‘But Nico paid money to Patrick, to Linde Lights, before he became a director. Where did that money come from?’
‘If I had to guess, I would say a loan. He probably took out a second mortgage on his flat. No bank would have lent him that amount without collateral.’
‘So Nico takes out a mortgage, gives Patrick the money, becomes a director and major shareholder, signs the deal with Ozone, gets the money back and pays off his mortgage?’
‘In a nutshell, that’s exactly it.’
‘But what if Ozone refused to sign? What if they hadn’t paid the money?’
‘Those negotiations probably took a long time. To be honest, Ozone got a sweet deal, probably because Nico couldn’t raise more capital on his flat.’
I shook my head. ‘Then Patrick found out and went crazy.’
‘He probably threatened to take Nico to court over it. Not just fire him, but send him to prison.’
‘It’s the perfect motive for murder.’ No longer a reason for Patrick to want to kill Nico, but for Nico to want to murder Patrick to keep him quiet.
I thought about the CCTV footage from inside the Clipper. ‘Look at this and tell me what you think.’
‘You want my opinion now?’
‘Just watch.’ I pulled it up on Stefanie’s PC and pressed play. Together we stared at the screen. The last time I’d looked, I had been focusing on Nico filling up Patrick’s glass. Now I also saw that Patrick seemed angry with Nico. His body language told me at least that much. He was sitting turned away from him, and as I’d noticed before, the two men didn’t speak to each other at all, even as Nico kept pouring the wine. Was he doing that because it was easier to dump a man into the canal if he was drunk? Make it seem like an accident? That would mean the attack hadn’t been a spur-of-the-moment thing, but carefully planned. When had Nico first known that Arjen was going to come to the office and that there would be an evening do? He had known exactly how Patrick was going to behave after he’d had a few too many. Get him drunk, get Therese to come to the Clipper, and it was an accident waiting to happen.
Why, though?
So that Nico could be the hero and no suspicion would attach to him? Or so that he could explain away any argument with Patrick as being about the sexual assault?
Another thought came to mind. What if he’d wanted to set up Fabrice? Had he planned to create a scenario where someone with a record of violence would have a reason to attack Patrick? It could have worked; if Therese’s mother hadn’t been there to give him a solid alibi, I would have continued to investigate him. Instead, Thomas had focused on Arjen. Nico couldn’t have seen that coming – that Arjen and Patrick would argue over Nico’s behaviour – but it had worked out very well for him. He had seemed like a hero and he was in the clear.
I sat back. ‘I need you to explain this to Thomas and Charlie. You need to convince them.’
‘There’s nothing to convince them of. These are facts.’
‘Convince them that Nico murdered Patrick.’
‘We have no evidence for that.’
Nico had filled Patrick’s glass again and again. He was a tall man who could easily have bashed Patrick’s head in and then tipped him into the canal. Maybe he’d even overheard Patrick and Arjen’s argument and couldn’t believe his luck.
‘I’ll tell them about the fraud,’ she said. ‘You can try to get them to switch their main focus from your ex to your suspect.’
‘You’re so frustrating,’ I said.
‘I do the financial part. Remember? You wanted me to find the money problems; I found them. That’s what I do.’
I didn’t have to make a drawing to get a picture of what must have been going on inside Nico’s head, and why he’d killed Patrick. Not only would it mean he’d get away with his fraud; he was also going to keep the company as the sole director. It was very possible that he hadn’t appreciated what Patrick’s death would mean financially, only thinking that if Patrick was dead, his way would be clear and his crime of two years ago would be covered up. He probably wasn’t all that fussed about what he put Therese through. If she hadn’t gone running to the boss after she’d lost her latest deal, Patrick wouldn’t have gone to Ozone and none of this would have happened.
An unpleasant lesson for Therese: her boyfriend arrested and Nico seen as the big hero. That could have been his plan. It had so nearly worked.
‘After all this,’ I said, ‘you don’t want to see it through to the end? You don’t want to help close the case?’
Stefanie looked down at her high-heeled shoes. ‘I thought you were going to kick me out at this point.’
‘Don’t be an idiot. Let’s do this.’
She smiled. ‘Okay.’
I should check with Charlie whether he’d seen Nico anywhere on CCTV that night. I knew he’d checked the public transport footage. That would at least show that Nico hadn’t gone straight home. It wouldn’t be evidence of him killing Patrick, of course. For that we needed more. We should plan before confronting him. As of now, he thought we were still focusing on Arjen. He had no idea he’d become a suspect.
Chapter 36
I sat back as Stefanie ran through the fraud again. I’d called Thomas and Charlie out of their interview. She told them exactly what Nico had done, and how. How he’d basically swindled Patrick out of a quarter of his company by selling the rights to their main product behind his back. How this had eventually made the company go bankrupt as Ozone did a better job of producing the lights than Linde. They were being outcompeted by their own product, as she phrased it.
‘So what do you want us to do?’ Thomas said. ‘Drop our investigation into Arjen Boogaard and switch to Nico Verhoef?’
‘One of these men has a motive for murder,’ I said. ‘We haven’t looked into Nico’s movements for the rest of that evening. He said he got on the tram and went home. He would have known that Patrick was likely to smoke a cigarette after the drinks, as he’d gone with him to so many of these events before. That’s what you guys said about Arjen and it’s just as true for Nico. Even more so, probably.’
‘So, what, he waited until Arjen left and then bashed Patrick’s head in?’
‘To be honest,’ I said, ‘I think he waited for Patrick somewhere along the path. I never liked the patio behind the Clipper as the place for the murder. I think he did it somewhere further down, where it’s much easier to roll the body into the water. He just had to wait longer than he’d expected, because Patrick had an argument with his son-in-law first.’
>
‘We were getting nowhere with Boogaard anyway,’ Charlie said. ‘We pulled his mobile records and found he called his wife to tell her he was on his way. We could pinpoint him en route to Haarlem twenty minutes after Patrick paid the bill, according to the Clipper’s till.’
‘Twenty minutes? He argued with Patrick, hit him over the head and dumped his body in the canal, then got into his car and drove off, all in twenty minutes?’
‘Fifteen, actually,’ Charlie said. ‘It would have taken at least five minutes to drive to where the GPS pinpointed him.’
‘Seriously? Why did you arrest him, then?’
‘Purely to piss you off, Lotte,’ Thomas snapped. Then he calmed himself down. ‘Because fifteen minutes is plenty of time. You know that.’
‘But you had nothing on him. There’s no motive, just the location and opportunity. And if the opportunity now looks dubious—’
‘Plus he lied to the police.’
‘He lied because it was me,’ I said. ‘He felt he needed to protect his father-in-law’s reputation. If I had been nowhere near this case, he probably wouldn’t have lied, but because I came to his house with you that first time, he didn’t want to make Patrick look bad. It was stupid, I warned him about it twice, but there you go.’
‘You should have stayed away.’
‘Yes, remember I told you the same thing? This time it wasn’t because it influenced my behaviour, but because it influenced his.’
‘It influenced yours too,’ Stefanie said. ‘Look how you’ve been running around to prove he’s innocent.’
‘Because he is innocent,’ I said. ‘I’ve been running around to make sure an innocent man doesn’t get charged with something he didn’t do. That he’s my ex-husband just means I’m more certain he couldn’t have done it.’
‘We were going to release him anyway,’ Thomas said. ‘Even without your running around.’
‘How long have you got left?’ I said.
‘Another hour.’
‘Let’s arrest Nico Verhoef first. As long as Arjen is locked up, Nico won’t feel the need to run.’
Death at the Orange Locks Page 25
