IT’S VERY DANGEROUS FOR SANDRA TO BE INTERROGATED WHILE WIM IS still out there. He’s not living with her anymore, but his control is still very tight; he checks her whereabouts twenty-four/seven, and he will notice right away and get suspicious if she’s not around for a couple of hours. Sandra takes the gamble anyway. She has a credible story ready should he ask where she’s been.

It’s September of 2014. We have agreed to meet at ten a.m. at the Bosbaan restaurant, and we’ll leave from there for the location where we’ll introduce her to Betty and her associates. Sonja and I are waiting for her at a table outside. When she arrives, the tension is palpable.

“Are you still coming?” I ask her.

“Yes, I’m coming.”

After introducing her to our people, we leave her behind. A couple of hours later, we meet up again.

  

Back at the Bosbaan restaurant, she walks to her scooter, and lingers there.

“What’s she doing?” I ask Sonja.

“What do you mean, ‘what’s she doing’?”

“Why does she keep lingering there? The coffee is here. Can you tell if she’s carrying bugging equipment?”

“As, are you mad or something? She’s just been with the cops. What are you on about?”

“That may well be, but you can never be sure whether the Nose is playing games with us. He may have sent her. I don’t entirely trust her.”

“No,” says Sonja, “you can trust her. We’re all so screwed up because of him; he makes us mistrust everyone.”

Sandra comes back and I ask her, “What was it you were doing there?”

“I just needed a moment to myself. It was all pretty intense today.”

“Okay. I’ll tell you honestly, San, when you do something like that, I think, What’s she doing and can I trust her? I hope you won’t hold that against me…”

“No, I understand perfectly well. I still have the same with you two. That’s because I’ve always had to mistrust everybody; he plays people off against each other.”

“I get the same feeling. Call me paranoid, but I am scared to death that you’re still on his side.”

“Oh, my thoughts exactly. You don’t want to know how I felt when I got here this morning. I was so scared he might be here, too, that you two were in cahoots with him and that he would be here. I thought if that were the case, I would drop dead from fear, on the spot.”

“Horrible, isn’t it? What he’s done to our trust in humans,” I say. “I’m afraid that’s our life. It is what it is.”

Sandra is on the level as always.