MY APPOINTMENT WITH THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY MS. WIND WAS TO TAKE place this week, and ever since I’d set the date, all I could think of was something Wim had said to me when we were walking through the Amsterdamse Bos after his release: his rats were his trump card, the secret weapon he reserved until he really needed it.
It sounded like he had someone in a high position, and I immediately wondered if this was the reason he’d been ruled out of every single liquidation trial.
I’d already made a number of subtle attempts to find out who it could be. But it is impossible to bluntly ask; for Wim, asking a direct question proves you’re working with the cops. In my whole life, I’d only ever dared ask him one question. He would never tell me about his rats.
I kept worrying about their identities, and as the appointment drew nearer, the uneasy feeling intensified. Who knows—it might be the district attorney I was about to meet!
Wim texted me to come to the Gelderlandplein shopping center, which gave me an opportunity to make a last attempt at finding out who his rats were.
The more useful I could prove myself to be to him, the better the chance that he might tell me. “On my way,” I texted back, and got the tiny device I’d found in my search for new possibilities to record him. It was small enough not to stand out. Because Wim is always going through my things, I’d hidden it inside the ceiling and I couldn’t get it back out easily.
I was really hoping this new device would enable me to make a recording. I’d practiced in order to figure out where it could best be placed. Now it was stuck on the back of my bra strap, the safest spot I could come up with, presuming my brother wouldn’t suddenly grab at his sister’s bra. I put on an undershirt, a sweater, and a jacket to make it invisible. To be certain, I wore a large scarf, too.
I had to hurry, because I couldn’t keep him waiting. He’d get angry, and I’d start our conversation at a disadvantage.
Wim was sitting inside a coffee shop where we’d meet regularly. I went inside and sat at the table with him. Two guys entered the place. Wim and I looked at each other and, without saying a word, got up and walked out: undercover agents. We walked up to the corner and stood opposite each other.
W: “Well, they sure enjoyed listening in.”
A: “Yeah. Yet they also have some who don’t look like cops at all, all tattooed and pierced.”
W: “Sure, but you know how you can tell? When they pay the bill. They need the receipt or they can’t account for their expenses to their boss. Ha!”
His eyes wandered to the height of my bosom.
W: “Take that scarf off, you look like an idiot. It’s bloody hot.”
He started tugging it and grasped at my bra strap. I was petrified and felt the device slip away. Where did it go? He might discover it!
He kept going:
W: “You look like an idiot, it’s fucking hot. Take that thing off!”
It was true, it was the warmest day of the year so far, and I looked like an Inuit down in the tropics. I didn’t want to remove the scarf, though, for fear he’d notice the device under my sweater.
I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been not to check the forecast beforehand. Next time I really had to keep that in mind, because this was the behavior that would raise his suspicions—the last thing I needed.
I broke into a sweat, not because of the temperature, but from pure stress. How could I get out of this in a credible way?
A: “No, leave it, I don’t feel warm at all. I feel sick and chilled to the bone. I think I’m coming down with the flu.”
I chose to go on the offense; the best defense where he’s concerned. I went on:
A: “If I’m embarrassing you, I can just go home. You should be glad I came at all.”
W: “No, never mind. You’ll just have to make me look stupid. Let’s take a walk.”
A: “Wait a minute. I need to pee first. I’ll be right back.”
Without waiting for a reply, I walked toward the coffee joint’s restroom to look for the device. With shaking hands I groped across my upper body. Thank God, there it was! It had gotten loose and stuck between my trousers’ waistband and my undershirt. Thank goodness I’d tucked my undershirt inside my waistband; otherwise it would have fallen to the ground.
I tightened my bra strap and put the device back. It was the best solution for now because I wanted to continue recording. Next time I’d have to glue the device to my skin. I hurried back out and we started walking.
W: “Any news?”
I started talking about the CIU connection I’d brought up with him, the man we referred to as This Guy. It was a subject that always interested him because it might be of use later on.
A: “I attended this training session, and I met the man I sometimes talk to.”
I lied to steer the conversation in the direction of playing the cops. I was hoping it’d get him started on his rats.
A: “He said to me, ‘Call me sometime, maybe we could discuss a deal.’ I just said, ‘I’ll see.’ But I was kind of feeling like he wanted to tell me something. You know?”
W: “If he wants to talk, you gotta go hear him out. You know that, right?”
As intended, I’d aroused his interest.
A: “Sure thing.”
W: “You gotta go hear what he’s got to say.”
That’s what he taught me: Always listen, never tell anything.
A: “Yeah, I think it’s more about seeing if you have something to say.”
I made it about him. I knew the only one he’s ever interested in is himself.
W: “Either way, you gotta go hear him out. Say, ‘How are you?’ Be nice: ‘How are you? Yada yada, you wanted to see me? What can I do for you?’ That’s how it’s done. What I always say too is ‘What can I do for you?’”
He instructed me on how to move forward with This Guy, “pulling information,” as we called it.
W: “They’ll feel like they owe you something then, too.”
It’s a manipulation tactic that has proved very lucrative for him. He’s always “helping the other person out”; that’s how he ties people to him, and once they’re tied down, he’ll take advantage.
We continued our conversation, and what I’d hoped for happened: he started talking about the rats.
W: “So you don’t say anything, just listen. I know for sure he’ll ask about the rats.”
A: “Yeah.”
W: “Know what I mean? He’ll ask about it, for sure.”
A: “Sure, that’ll be it. Of course, it is still a big mystery.”
W: “But, see, if he starts on that, tell him, ‘My brother is scared of them, because you can never be sure about these types.’”
Damn, he didn’t tell me who they are. He just provided me with a reason why he “couldn’t” say who they are, which I should pass on. Then he explained his so-called fear.
W: “See, because if they can give information, they can create information, too.”
A: “Yeah.”
W: “You get it? It’s like a game.”
A: “Yeah, that’s it. You never know the truth, do you?”
W: “Look, Assie, instead of paying to give out information, you can also pay to create information.”
A: “Sure thing.”
W: “You see?”
A: “In other words, the rats can’t be trusted, either, even if they pretend to collaborate with you?”
W: “Dirty rats, they can sell information or have it created for cash, either way. You could say ‘Just write down he’s the one and this and that.’”
A: “Ah, that’s what you mean. From this side.”
W: “Yeah, everybody can do that, you know.”
He was saying every criminal could steer information in the direction he wanted suspicion to go. Apparently, though, not every rat was equally flexible, and Wim distinguished between them.
W: “The rats who are dirty can take it really far. You know what I mean?”
A: “Yeah.”
I realized I didn’t want to be sent to This Guy, because I wasn’t even in touch with him anymore, and I backed off.
A: “I’ll see if I hear anything. Should I be calling him?”
Now that I’d been in for a penny, I had to be in for a pound.
W: “Yeah, you should call him for sure. You should say, ‘How’s it going, what can I do for you?’”
This got too hot for me, and I came up with an excuse.
A: “You know, I get the feeling I’m caught up in some sort of game where you can never tell what the truth is.”
He felt the same.
W: “Don’t do it then, leave it. It’s not so smart if they find you out. You know what I mean. Then don’t, love—let them sort it out themselves. If he’s got something to say, he’ll come to you anyway.”
The lesson was, Don’t go to them, they’ll come to you. The cops come to you only when it’s in their interest.
W: “He won’t come to warn me. He won’t come to say, ‘Your brother should watch out for this and that.’ You see? He just won’t.”
I understood he was talking about a liquidation.
A: “Why not? That would be something, wouldn’t it? If something is up, shouldn’t they warn you no matter what?”
W: “No, they’ll do it through the CIU. He won’t do it himself.”
A: “Right.”
Wim didn’t think he was useful after all.
W: “He won’t talk about an investigation, either. He just wants to hear stuff. It won’t work. So far, they’ve given me shit. They wanna have it all, and I already know what they’ll say: ‘Won’t he talk?’”
I agreed with him, and we changed the subject.
We’d talked about rats, but I hadn’t managed to get him to say who they were.
That night, I couldn’t get to sleep. The dark evoked one ghost after another. Talking to the police—what had I gotten myself into, and where would it get me? Luckily, in the morning, most of the ghosts had vanished. Everything looks different in daylight. I decided I should just let it go and take things as they came. I’d rely on my intuition and end things with the CIU as soon as I got a weird feeling about it.
The time had come.
Michelle picked me up at the elevator again. Her presence had a quieting effect on me; she seemed sincere. Manon was waiting in the room, greeting me as soberly as she’d done previously. A female district attorney got up and shook my hand. “Hello, my name is Betty Wind. We’ve seen each other around, haven’t we?”
Indeed, I’d seen her before but had never spoken to her; I’d always kept my distance from public prosecutors because I couldn’t be sure they weren’t “sent” by the Justice Department to infiltrate my family through me.
“That’s right, we’ve seen each other in court,” I said.
With Wim’s remarks from yesterday still in my mind, I immediately thought of his “trump” and who it might be. It hit me she was kind of his type: pretty, thin, well-dressed. At the same time, I knew this didn’t have to mean anything; Wim would shag a troll if it was to his advantage. Betty Wind asked me what I had to say.
“I can tell you the truth,” I said, “but after spending an hour with him, you’ll be convinced the reality he’s holding out to you is the actual truth. You’ll be thinking, These two sisters are out of their minds, the poor man hasn’t done a thing.”
Betty said calmly, “I do know him. He acts extremely charming in court, as well. I’ve noticed all of that.”
She appeared to see through Wim’s naughty-boy act in court and knew it didn’t match his reputation. It seemed like I’d found a prosecutor who might finally see right through him. This was a must. Anyone else would get lost in his maze of conspiracies and never get to the truth.
Michelle and Manon had told Betty about the picture I’d painted of Wim’s personality, and this, too, sounded familiar to her, though she’d never expected him to treat his own family the same way he treated his victims.
“I get that,” I said, “but that’s because you couldn’t know our family has been victimized by him for such a long time. We can’t say anything negative about him, for he won’t accept it.”
“I’d like to know what precisely you can share with us,” she said.
Out of suspicion, I hadn’t let on much about that in my earlier interviews, and I’d only spoken cryptically about what I knew about the liquidations. “Enough,” I said.
“Such as?” she asked.
Without mentioning his name, I said, “Who he has iced.” Fear crept up on me while I spoke the words. “If it gets out that I’m talking to you, it’ll be my death sentence. Before I tell you anything, I need to know what you’ll do with the information and who’ll be involved.”
“Don’t worry, your talking to us will be kept between the three of us for now, and you really can trust us,” Betty said, trying to reassure me.
“With all due respect, I don’t trust him, and I don’t trust you, either. I can only trust my sister and myself. It’s my experience that everyone can be bought, and those who won’t be bought will yield out of fear for their well-being or that of their loved ones. Paying a visit to someone’s kids’ school is easy to do—he’s done it. That’s why I need to know what will happen with my information before I tell you anything.”
“That’s why I’m here, to explain it to you,” Betty said.
The bottom line was that I’d have to tell them what I knew first. They’d put it down in a written statement, and based on this statement, it would be decided if it qualified as “highly confidential.” If it did, my statements would be used in a prosecution against Wim only with my explicit consent. Should I back down at any point, the statements would never be revealed. But even if I did go through with it, the Justice Department wouldn’t automatically use them. That depended on whether the State’s duty of care allowed the use of my statements. Put differently: When the Justice Department deemed it too dangerous for me, they could still decide not to use my statements.
I didn’t like what I heard. I’d have to unfold my entire life for them to put down in writing and only then decide if it was of any use to them?
To me, sharing the information verbally with the Justice Department was dangerous enough, but the existence of written statements made it even riskier. What if Wim got his hands on them? Besides that, I would never know if giving my statements had made any difference, whether they’d actually use my information against him.
In the scenario they laid out for me, I’d be left with no control over my personal safety whatsoever. Why was it so important to write down what I said? Telling your story within a confined room still enables you to deny it ever took place, to deny what people may claim. It’s a completely different thing to have your story written down and taken away, out of the reach of your power and influence.
Who would be reading it?
I could already picture one of these women walking into the prosecution office, waving my statements above her head and saying, “Guys, look what I’ve got here! It’s a statement from Holleeder’s sister. You won’t believe how fucked up this family is! These gals are washing their dirty laundry in public. You really should read this!” I imagined the whole department having a ball with these statements and the rat meanwhile managing to make a quick copy and taking it with him as fun reading material for my darling brother.
“Yeah, right,” I said, “I’d rather bite my tongue off and bleed to death than put a statement in writing.”
I’d have preferred to use my brother’s method: whispering all the damning information into their ears, leaving no evidence of having spoken with them. Betty wouldn’t have it, though; a written statement was mandatory or they wouldn’t be able to do anything.
“Suppose you’ve got my statement on paper, though,” I said, “you won’t even know if you’ll use it. Why not hear me out now? As a prosecutor, can’t you decide right now how a statement could help you?”
“No,” she said, “it has to be done in peace and quiet. We need to consider if these statements support other evidence and if all together it will be sufficient for prosecution, conviction, and possibly a sentencing.”
This sounded reasonable enough, but their strategy didn’t alleviate my anxiety.
“Where will you be keeping this statement?” I asked.
“Inside a safe,” Betty said.
“Inside a safe…” I echoed.
A safe didn’t impress me at all. A safe offers zero protection if you don’t know who has access to the key. And that’s something I can never be sure of.
“Who is able to access this safe?”
“Just me and my superior.”
“Okay,” I said, “your superior will have a key as well. But I don’t know your boss. And I have no way of knowing what he’ll do with this key, so that doesn’t reassure me. For example, as a CIU officer, could you be shoved aside by a case officer, or, for all I know, by an undersecretary or a minister dropping by to raid your safe? How will I know your superiors don’t have their own keys without your knowledge? That they’ll take a peek and leak it so I don’t have a way out? I want to trust you, but I can’t tell what others will do. Suppose you conclude it lacks relevance, or I decide to refrain after all? Then what?”
“We’ll sign an agreement in advance, confirming this statement may be used exclusively with your consent,” Betty said, “and without your consent, it will be destroyed immediately.”
“Destroyed how?”
“Through the shredder,” she said.
“What about the audio recordings?”
“Destroyed too.”
“How does that work? Can I be there to see it’s actually done? I’d want to see it with my own eyes.”
“No, you’ve got to take our word for it.” Another minus point for her.
“But how many people would get to know my identity? How many will be involved without my knowledge?”
The thought of losing control scared me to death. The more people know, the bigger the chance of leaking.
“For the time being, it will just be the three of us,” Betty said. “We’ll get other people involved only later in the procedure.”
I didn’t have the faintest idea about all the formalities my testimony would involve, or all the departments it would have to pass through. I wouldn’t have dreamed this many conditions would apply. I painted pictures for Betty of all kinds of situations that might occur, which she tried to counter as best she could.
Eventually she just looked at me a bit pityingly, as if she were thinking, How sad to have to go through life that suspicious. “You’re going to have to put a tiny bit of trust in us to handle your case responsibly,” she said.
Trust? Reality will prove your trustworthiness, I thought. You’ll only stop being trustworthy if things end badly. By then it will be too late for me.
It was a tough conversation for both parties.
After what she’d told me, I was still too unsettled, and I left.
“How did it go?” Sonja, who’d been waiting for me at home, asked. “Was it a rat?”
“No, she wasn’t a rat. She’s onto him,” I said.
“Now what?” Sonja asked.
“I don’t know if this will work for us.”
“Why not?”
“It’s all about phases. First they want to talk, then they want a written statement. After that, they’ll decide if it will be useful to them and if they want to continue with us.”
“Oh, I won’t do that. Not when he’s still walking around free. It’s way too dangerous, As.”
“They say we can trust them.”
“Like hell we can. And what about his rats? I won’t do it. I’m not writing anything down. It’s just too risky. Do you trust ’em?”
“I don’t trust anyone, but I think these three women are okay. I don’t think they’ll screw us on purpose. I’m just worried about the top. That scares me more. What if he’s got his rat in there? Then these three have no authority, they’ll just have to do as the boss tells them. I really don’t know yet. But if I go through with it, I won’t do it by myself, Box. So what are you going to do?”
She was quiet for a minute, then spoke.
“It’s tough, but I can’t say if it’s the right thing to do. Right now, we’re all still alive. It’s not much of a life, but at least we are alive. If we testify, we probably won’t be, and is it fair to do that to our children? How are these kids supposed to make it without us? Who’ll protect them from him? That’s what’s bugging me. I really don’t understand why he hasn’t been shot yet. Everyone around him drops like flies except him. And he’s got so many enemies.”
“Then you’re just sitting around waiting for someone else to do something. That’s easy, leaving it to others. So far it hasn’t gotten us anywhere. We’re dependent on fate. I’d like to take my fate into my own hands, and I don’t care what happens.”
I was so fed up. All those decades, we had to be silent about everything we knew. All those years, he’d burdened us with his horrible information, stuff he had done. All those years, he used everything we held dear to put pressure on us. He destroyed the things we loved. Used us to serve his own best interests while undermining ours in every possible way.
We’d become his security system, his place to safeguard his secrets. He owned us. He had crowned himself king of the family, and we were his subjects. He had us living in constant fear of saying something wrong, continuously threatened against talking to the police.
I couldn’t keep on living under this regime. It was eating away at me. I needed to break free.
I knew for certain that if I told what I knew, it would be clear instantly that my statements should be highly confidential. I had to gamble, had to believe that they wouldn’t be shared with others or Wim himself—at least not by the three women.
“I’m going to take the first step,” I said finally. “I’ll testify. I am certain it will be deemed a highly confidential statement and after that we’ll see. If something happens to us in the meantime, the Justice Department will at least have something to go on. I’ll take the risk.”
“Fine, if you do it, I’ll do it too. I’ll take the plunge with you. It’s about justice for my husband, and for my children’s lives.”
Even after I was fully committed to my mission, I still wavered sometimes.
“We’re the same, Assie,” Wim would tell me at least once a week. And it was true. Of the four children my mother had, the middle two, Sonja and Gerard, and the oldest and youngest, Wim and me, were very much alike in character and behavior.
Our characters prevented us from being victimized. As small and powerless as we were, we wanted to take our fate into our own hands by trying to defuse my father’s unpredictable behavior.
As a child, I’d developed a tic of repeating my every movement. Opening and closing the door twice, putting my shoes on twice, touching the doorknob twice. It kept me quite busy. I’d figured out that by touching everything twice, I could control my father’s willful behavior, so he wouldn’t beat us.
One night—I was seven and Wim was fourteen—I saw him shutting the fridge twice.
“You’re doing it too,” I said.
“What?”
“You do everything twice too.”
He looked at me, understanding, and in that moment I felt a strong connection.
Had I been a boy, I might have turned out just like him. Maybe it was being a girl that prevented me from compensating with violence and bravado. Maybe I had used my intellect instead, safeguarding me from a similar path in life.
Who am I to condemn him for the coincidence of being born male? Should I, of all people, be the one to do this to him, while we might well be “the same,” as he claims?
“So you’d be the same as him just because you both repeat some stuff?” Sonja asked, dryly. “Nonsense, As. How can you even think that way? You’re nothing like him. Would you shut up about it? He’s an evil person, and you’re not!”
“No, but if I’d been in his shoes, I might have acted the same way. I might have murdered someone close to me if they were threatening my life.”
“But he did it himself—he’s only got himself to blame for these situations! Because he’s been selling everyone out his entire life, he ends up in situations that make him decide to get rid of people. But he doesn’t have to! He chooses it consciously. You’d never act that way. So stop saying you are just like him. That’s what he wants you to believe, so he can manipulate you. And it’s working. He’s making you believe you are an exception to the rule, but you’re not.”
Sonja was right, and I knew it. I am no exception to him; he sees me only in terms of how he can use me. But he sure knows how to make you believe it, that you’re the life ring just barely keeping him afloat in his ocean of misery. Maybe I wanted to be just that, on the lookout for that moment of connection from long ago, even though I know that Wim is long gone, even though I know what he’s turned into.
Once again, I’d made the mistake of hoping he harbored real emotions. I’d let myself be disarmed by his feigned affection in the middle of my battle against him. I really couldn’t afford this. I had to keep my guard up and couldn’t be tempted into a situation that would prevent me from seeing the attack coming.