SONJA HAD JUST LEFT, AND I WAS ALONE ON MY COUCH, DOZING OFF, when the phone rang. My secretary was sobbing, totally freaking out. “I thought it was you,” she cried. “My sister called me to see if I had seen the news yet, because they said that Holleeder’s sister had been liquidated. You have no idea how I felt—I really thought for a moment that you were dead. Damned media!”
And she went on like that for a while.
Francis had also called me before Sonja left, saying that a woman in Amstelveen had been liquidated and asking where Sonja was. But she was still with me, so it wasn’t her. It wasn’t Francis, and I had checked on Miljuschka right away, too.
We don’t call each other all the time for nothing. It’s because we know that this can happen at any time. Whenever we hear sirens, see emergency helicopters, hear on TV that someone has been assassinated, we check that it’s not someone in our circle. We’ve been doing that ever since the first attempt on Cor. But whereas we used to count on it happening only to one of the men, we now bear in mind that it could also happen to one of us women.
People were really frightened, and I got several messages and phone calls inquiring if we were still alive. It was a weird experience; for a moment I thought I had an insight into the future. I was a living witness to the news of my own death, or Sonja’s. I was witness to the grief my death would cause a lot of people.
To Sonja and me, it was a very awkward situation, and it happened at a time when we were well aware that this could be our fate if it became clear we had testified against Wim.
And then he called.
He laughed. “Ha-ha-ha-ha. The press thought it was Sonja, didn’t they? Well, it could have been.”
“That makes you laugh?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s funny, right? It could happen to her.”
He was such an imbecile. Such a twisted mind. Talking like that, over the phone, no less, he had a nerve.
I can’t remember the rest of the conversation, I was so mad. I do remember him calling Sonja to ask if she really was alive.
The malevolence of this man never ceases to amaze me.
The next morning, he came to my door early. “Call Sonja, tell her to come over.”
I called her and asked if she wanted some coffee.
He wanted to step up the pressure on his extortion scheme, and yesterday’s event came in very handy. We were inside waiting for her.
S: “Morning. Looking cozy, this early.”
W: “We’re going to buy you a bulletproof vest later.”
S: “Oh, get lost. Really?”
W: “Sure.”
S: “Why can’t you act normal, you idiot.”
W: “Well, what do you think?”
S: “What?”
W: “You think this can’t happen to you? That this Boellaard, who is a psychopath who walks around with a gun…if he is having a bad day, that he won’t kill you? He also shot dead that customs officer. He’s just an imbecile, right? You make it all seem so easy with your friend Peter. But that’s the reason why I should buy you a bulletproof vest. You are seriously in danger.”
He used his familiar trick: I only want to help.
This time he was trying to scare us with his associates, Meijer and Boellaard, unaware that we’d already worked things out with them. They wanted money from the film, too, and tried to get it from us. We told them loud and clear that there was nothing there except for Cor’s debt and that they should take it over because it was about their Heineken kidnapping. I had really had enough: these guys were trying to extort a defenseless woman and her children and at the same time as invoking their intense friendship with Cor. What kind of a friend are you, to do that to his wife and kids? Take over Cor’s debt from the period that you made money with him; be a real pal, or a man at least. That did it; the two men lost the appetite for pursuing their plan.
S: “I’ll go and see that guy.”
W: “Who?”
S: “Boellaard.”
W: “What will you do? Are you being smart?”
S: “No, I’m not being smart.”
W: “You’re being smart. You think he’ll go for that?”
S: “I’m not being smart. But why would this guy hurt me?”
W: “Because you’ve got the film dough, Box. And because they feel they’ve been had and didn’t care for the movie, either. We’ve discussed this more than a hundred times. And you can pretend to be really tough about all this, saying, ‘I’ll go and see him…’”
S: “I’m not playing tough!”
W: “Because if you are playing tough, it’s your responsibility, right, and what happens then is also your responsibility, because you are not going to get me into trouble because you think you’re acting tough.”
S: “I’m not acting tough.”
W: “It’s all right to be tough, but yesterday you weren’t all that tough.”
S: “But I—”
W: “If they come for you tomorrow and blow your brains out, then what? I’ll have to take care of it. You and your Peter. It could happen, I’m telling you. Because do you really think…See, these people are afraid of me…Do you really think they are two morons who don’t have the guts to do anything? Really, Son, they shot at the police, everything. They killed that customs officer. Do you really think they’re crazy? That they’ll do what you tell them to do because you say like…”
S: “Do as I tell them?”
W: “Because you say… ‘Get lost, because I’m Sonja Holleeder.’”
S: “Nothing like that. I didn’t say that.”
W: “You didn’t? But what are you saying?”
S: “What am I saying?”
W: “Yes, how do you see things? Because when you get killed, I have to act.”
I was so glad to have these recordings because they show exactly how he goes about things and the reason why the Justice Department can never catch him. He uses somebody else’s name, so he can use as his alibi that he only wanted to give a warning. He won’t say that he’s the extortionist or the killer. No, it’s always somebody else, people who don’t even know they’re being used as his alibi. The conversation continued on the street, where he publicly berated her.
W: “Why do you have to screw up my life with that Peter of yours? What have I done to deserve this? I have to go to court. I have to go to jail because you and your friend Peter decided that. You’ve had me sign something, I don’t even know what. I really don’t. Doesn’t really matter…But don’t go acting tough with your ‘I’ll go and see him,’ you and your big mouth.”
S: “No, but I mean—”
W: “No, because you know, you can’t do anything.”
S: “No, I can’t.”
W: “You know, you have no idea what you have caused. That is just a sleeping cell. Because anything can happen. And you can go on acting tough…”
S: “I’m not acting tough. But I don’t think they’re going to hurt me.”
W: “You know what it is? Whether they’re Cor’s friends or not, it’s one big misery because of your behavior. Everybody feels cheated, and they are ganging up on me, for you, because you and your friend Peter made that movie. And everybody was looking forward to that movie, and hoped to make some money. And you’re walking like a priss…”
S: “I’m not walking like a priss…”
He knows himself well, and he knows when to accelerate, slow down, pull the reins, or loosen the reins. He never loses control; he only scares people to achieve his goal. Because later on, after we leave Sonja behind—savagely berated—he says, when I point out to him the judicial status of the film rights, he says, “But, As, I don’t care about the judicial aspect. Judicially it’s totally sound; the thing is, people feel they’ve been had.”
He was extorting, and the tragic murder of a woman with children in Amstelveen—he used that event to intimidate his victim.