A Cold Death in Amsterdam (Lotte Meerman Book 1) (18 page)

‘Aggressive?’

‘Not towards me.’

‘Did he talk about life after getting out?’

‘Yes. He said he wanted to go into politics. A joke, of course. He said there was only one profession where getting caught with your fingers in the till was an advantage.’

I smiled but didn’t reply. I let the silence last.

His mother said softly, her voice barely louder than the crunch of the snow, ‘He was talking about revenge.’

‘Revenge for what?’

‘He didn’t say.’

It all fitted. Otto arranged to see Anton, his old university friend, who had taken his wife. And hadn’t he taken his business also?

We were back on the road her house was on. She slipped on the pavement, a small slide sideways, and I put my arm through hers to make sure she was safe. As I walked her to her door, I remembered what I’d come for. ‘Do you have a photo of Otto when he was young?’

‘I’ve got one from university somewhere, with a group of his friends.’

She disappeared through the door and almost immediately came back. The photo must have been close by. She handed it to me, together with my gloves. ‘You will give it back to me, won’t you?’

‘Of course.’ It was the friends together, Otto Petersen, Anton Lantinga and a younger, thinner Geert-Jan Goosens with another young man I didn’t recognise. But one face was there as well, familiar from television and the financial papers: Ferdinand van Ravensberger, the man whose nephew claimed he’d killed someone.

Stefanie showed no interest in Wouter’s art collection and walked straight past the paintings without stopping. She had already been waiting for me outside Wouter’s apartment building.

Wouter wore a Ralph Lauren polo-shirt over a pair of jeans. He had tidied up: there were no computer magazines all over the sofa any more and the PC that had been in the process of being built had disappeared. We went through the same questions as before. He described Anton’s car and told us his story again.

‘Did you see Anton?’ Stefanie asked.

Wouter shook his head. The slicked-back hair hardly moved and the curls at the back of his neck stayed in place. ‘I only saw the car.’ He lit up a cigarette and offered us one too. I was surprised when Stefanie refused. She probably didn’t think it was appropriate. ‘Then I heard that someone had been shot, and I told Piet about the car.’

‘OK. Let’s talk about what happened then.’ Stefanie got her notepad out to indicate that this was the part that she was actually interested in. ‘You gave a statement to DI Huizen?’

‘Yes, I came to the police station and signed it.’

‘Did you see what DI Huizen did with it?’

I wanted to stop her questions but couldn’t interrupt her. I should have known she would turn the questioning to my father again.

‘No, I didn’t,’ Wouter said. ‘It was typed up, I signed it and that was it.’

Stefanie took some notes.

‘Why do you ask?’ Wouter said. ‘Did something happen to my statement?’

I looked at her, willed her not to tell him, but she ignored my silent plea. ‘It’s gone,’ she said, ‘your witness statement. It’s not in any of the files.’

‘That bastard.’ Wouter grimaced. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to swear.’

Stefanie gestured to indicate that she was far from offended.

‘So that’s how he got away with it,’ Wouter said. ‘I always wondered why Anton was never arrested.’

‘I’ve got no further questions.’ I stood up.

‘Sorry to put you through this inconvenience,’ Stefanie said, ‘but we’ll need your statement again. I’ll type it up and maybe you can come to Amsterdam to sign it.’

‘Fine. Or can I sign it here – in Alkmaar.’

Stefanie shrugged. ‘Why not.’

Wouter got up and walked us to the door. Even on the way out Stefanie didn’t look at the art. I lingered by the painting of the dream world, admired its vibrant colours for a few seconds before shaking Wouter’s hand and following Stefanie down the stairs.

As she opened her car door she paused. ‘He’s a reliable witness,’ she said, ‘but there’s no way we’d get a conviction purely based on his evidence.’

I got my car keys out of my handbag.

‘Why was Anton so concerned about it?’ Stefanie mused. ‘I don’t understand why he paid Piet Huizen to get rid of those files.’

‘I don’t think he did.’

‘You’re right. Piet Huizen probably ripped up the witness statement straight away. But there must have been something else as well. Was there another witness, maybe? More evidence?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Strange.’ She got in her car and slammed the door shut. I waited on the pavement until the engine started and her car moved forward. Then it stopped and the window was wound down. ‘Are you sure they told you everything?’ she called. ‘I bet they’re still holding something back. Anyway, I’ll see you at the office.’ She closed the window again before I could even respond.

Alkmaar’s police station was becoming a familiar sight, as was the milkmaid on Reception. ‘I’ve come to see Ronald de Boer again,’ I told her.

As last time, she dialled his number by heart. ‘Hi, Ronald, that Amsterdam detective woman is here again for you.’ She turned away and spoke quietly into the phone, so that I couldn’t hear. She laughed softly, then, turning back, she informed me, ‘He’ll be right down.’

‘Of course. Thank you.’

Ronald was waiting for me at the lifts. ‘She’s nice, your receptionist,’ I said, and then wished I hadn’t.

‘Hi, Lotte. What’s up?’

I looked around to see if anybody could hear us. The corridor was empty. ‘Can I talk to you about the Petersen files?’

‘Let’s have a coffee.’

I followed him to the canteen. We sat at a table in the furthest corner, closest to the window, and drank coffee from brown plastic cups with white plastic stirrers. Over Ronald’s shoulder I saw the broad canal that linked Alkmaar to Amsterdam. A few boats kept the ice open. Seagulls followed them, hoping the movement of the engines would bring fish to the surface. Even the seagulls were more relaxed here than at home in Amsterdam, floating on the wind for longer, diving less often. The water, wider than a motorway, was a reminder that we were below sea-level.

I leaned closer to Ronald and lowered my voice. ‘When these files went missing, was there ever any . . . any mention of money?’ I wouldn’t admit the possibility of bribes to my Amsterdam colleagues, but I wasn’t telling Ronald anything new.

He frowned. ‘He never offered me money.’

‘No, that’s not what I mean. I mean . . . do you think
he
took money? My father?’

‘Took it? What – you mean stole it?’

I sighed, frustrated that he wanted me to spell it out, was making sure he didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. It was apparent that he still didn’t trust me. ‘A pay-off,’ I explained. ‘One of my colleagues, she thought that maybe he took a pay-off – from Anton Lantinga. To get rid of those files.’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said slowly, looking at me closely for a few seconds. He took a sip of coffee, grimaced and fished a sachet of sugar from the table next to us. As he stirred, the light showed up the scratches in the otherwise smooth surface of his gold wedding ring.

I understood his hesitation and sat back in my chair. ‘I’ll cover for him, if that’s what you’re worried about. But I’d like to know.’ I had a right to know.

He nodded. ‘There were rumours. You’ve been to his house . . . Questions were asked.’

Yes. It was exactly as I thought.

‘Have you asked him? Outright?’ Ronald enquired.

‘No.’

‘Maybe you should keep it like that – you know, don’t upset him too much. Think about his heart. And let me know if I can help. You can call me any time.’

‘Thanks, Ronald. I need all the help I can get.’ I held the brown cup between both hands. The plastic did nothing to stop the heat of the coffee hitting my skin, making my fingers tingle in delicious pain. ‘I saw Otto’s mother this morning.’

Ronald laughed. One of his incisors was at an angle and overlapped the front tooth. ‘If you’d called me beforehand, I could have saved you the trip. Did she talk at all?’

I took the photo she’d given me out of my bag and slid it to him over the table, past a small pile of spilled sugar.

‘She was rarely lucid when her son got killed,’ Ronald said. ‘We talked to her a few times, but there wasn’t any point.’ He bent his head over the photo and rubbed one greying eyebrow, making the hairs in the corner, longer than the others, stand on end. ‘Petersen, Goosens, Lantinga and this one.’ He moved his finger to the last figure. ‘Is that Van Ravensberger?’

‘Yes. Don’t know who the other guy is.’

‘Me neither.’

‘I took her for a walk.’

‘What for?’

‘She wanted to get out. She seemed perfectly compos mentis.’ I took a sip of coffee. ‘I had no idea she wasn’t quite with it. Then I noticed how cold her hands were. I felt so guilty. Can you imagine, bringing an old lady back with frostbite after a stroll in the park with a police officer?’

‘I’m sure she’s fine.’

‘I hope so. It was minus five and I let her walk around without gloves.’ I remembered reaching out to those fingers, the touch of her hand in mine, feeling the protrusion of her joints, swollen like catkins on a thin willow branch, and holding them as life returned to them. The first physical contact I’d sought in weeks.

Ronald fished a packet of chewing gum from his pocket and took a piece out. As he chewed I could see it move from right to left, collecting all traces of food from between his teeth with each movement of the jaw. I drank the last of my coffee, said goodbye and set off back to Amsterdam.

I felt safe again when I was in my green car and en route for the police station. Was it by chance that I took a wrong turn and drove past my father’s house? A Freudian slip of the steering wheel? Now that I was here, I thought, I might as well go in, I might as well see him. Mum need never know.

I rang the doorbell but no footsteps came to the door. Nobody appeared to be at home.

It said 13.57 on the clock on my desk when I walked back into our office. There was too much space around my desk, even though it was days ago that CI Moerdijk had taken my files, papers and photos away. The paperwork on the Petersen case hadn’t taken its place yet. The two white cardboard boxes behind me, pushed up against the wall, were packed again, all the papers that I’d thrown on the floor returned to their green folders. But they were CI Moerdijk’s papers. There wasn’t much filled with my writing. My notepad was covered with circles and squares, not with any evidence of original thought. I’d wasted too many pages, then torn them off, leaving the thin edges stuck to the spiral binding as evidence of my failure. Somehow my brain didn’t want to kick into gear.

‘How was Otto Petersen’s mother?’ Hans said.

‘I’m really not sure. I thought she had some useful info, but then someone at the Alkmaar police told me she’s not with it any more. I’d like to know what the boss thought at the time of the murder.’

I straightened the files up, opened the top one and soon found the transcript of the interview. The chief inspector had met up with Otto’s mother in September 2002. She’d been in hospital at the time, having been found in her house two weeks before, undernourished and seriously neglected. How thin her fingers must have been. I rested my forehead in my hand and hid my face behind a curtain of short dark hair while I read. CI Moerdijk had spoken to her but, as with Ronald, she hadn’t made much sense. She must have been placed in the sheltered accommodation when she got out of hospital, I thought. The flat clearly wasn’t bought by her son if she’d still been living in a house, a few months after his death. How much of what she told me had been true?

‘They had a whistle-blower. I always said you need a whistle-blower, didn’t I?’ It was Stefanie, marching into the office with a handful of printed pages. She jiggled them at me to celebrate the fact that she’d been right.

How come she always knew exactly when I was at my desk? I thought irritably. I should check with Hans if she popped in and out every half an hour to see if I was here. Or maybe her office overlooked the Marnixstraat and she could see when I got in.

‘I don’t know who it was, though. It doesn’t say.’ She stood opposite me, leaning against the side of Thomas’s empty desk. I didn’t know if he had joined André Kamp’s team permanently or if he was temporarily helping out. The boss would tell us at some point.

‘Here.’ She read from one page like an actress learning her lines. ‘This is the mention of an anonymous tip-off.’ She pushed the pages across the desk to me. ‘He or she provided evidence. I haven’t found out yet what it was. Must have been conclusive though. They didn’t testify in court.’

I glanced over the papers but went back to thumbing through the CI’s notes.

‘Not even behind closed doors?’ Hans said.

‘No.’

He motioned that he’d like to see the papers and I handed them over to him. ‘It must have been something in writing,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘something the whistle-blower had access to. Maybe he was a risk manager, or another one of the traders.’

Stefanie shrugged. ‘Risk manager is a possibility. They have to sign off on those things. Any illegal trading would be their responsibility.’

‘And if’, Hans continued, ‘Otto wouldn’t listen . . . Wouldn’t they have gone to Goosens? Get him to talk to Otto first?’

‘Goosens said he didn’t know anything about it,’ Stefanie told him.

‘Maybe he lied,’ Hans said.

‘He definitely lied,’ she agreed. ‘There’s no way he didn’t know. Anyway, I haven’t yet found the particular trade they lost the money on.’

I fished the photo of the young men who’d been together at university out of my bag. Whatever Otto’s mother might or might not have remembered, this photo
was
real. ‘He also forgot to tell us about—’

Behind me someone knocked on the doorframe. ‘Excuse me,’ said a familiar voice.

I turned round to see my father, his nose red from the cold. He took out a handkerchief and gave the nose that was so much like mine a rub. His hair was dotted with flakes of snow.