I hit the pedals of my bike, feeling beads of sweat forming on my back. Yesterday I’d been so upset by the devastation in my consultation room that I had to devote all of my energy to carry out my work properly – there had been no opportunity to phone Detective Armstrong. But I felt increasingly edgy and knew there was no time to lose. I wanted to get hold of the detective as soon as possible and share my latest revelations and suspicions of forgery and bribery concerning Mason & McGant, so I decided to ring him before my first consultation of the day. While I waited for the traffic light to turn green, I fished my phone out of my pocket and scrolled through the contacts until I arrived at the right number.
He answered my call. “Detective Armstrong.”
“Good morning, this is Jennifer Smits speaking,” I began in a friendly tone. “It’s been a while since we last spoke. I’m Oliver’s wife, the man who died half a year ago at a holiday park.
“Yes, yes, I know who you are. You called me not too long ago,” he grunted.
I resumed, feeling slightly pressured. “You may also remember I told you before about the secret file my husband had been working on at the law firm. As it turns out, I recently …”
“Yes I do remember, Mrs Smits,” he interrupted me, his voice raised. “And I explained to you we cannot do anything for you. The outcome of the investigation was irrefutable – there’s no indication whatsoever to assume that your husband’s death had a non-natural cause.”
I clutched the phone between my ear and my shoulder as the lights turned green and swiftly cycled off. “Hold your horses. Last time you said that I couldn’t provide evidence for all my hypotheses. This has now changed – I have evidence.”
There was a pause. “And what kind of evidence might that be, ma’am?” he asked, without a trace of interest in his voice.
“It’s too complicated to clarify over the phone. Would you have an opening for me to stop by?”
“Ma’am, I have other pressing engagements,” he said resolutely. “There are a ton of files piled up on my desk. You have no idea what kind of workload I’m under – after last year’s round of budget cuts, our department has shrunk by forty percent while the big shots above us expect the same output,” he complained.
I was thinking about how I could win him over when a black SUV suddenly emerged from my right. With all my might I squeezed the brakes of the bike, skidding over the asphalt. After what seemed like an eternity – but in fact was most likely less than a second – my bike screeched to a halt. The nose of the front wheel was only a few centimetres away from the bumper of the car. I’d escaped getting run over by the skin of my teeth.
“You idiot!” I yelled at the motorist, who was gawking at me in astonishment. “You almost hit me.”
“Excuse me?” I heard the detective ask.
I was standing still on the bike path, my heart beating wildly in my chest. Didn’t that moron have eyes?
“Mrs Smits, are you still there?”
The man in the car seemed to come back to his senses and lowered his window. “Are you trying to get yourself killed? Didn’t you see, I was coming from the right!” he yelled.
I realised that he indeed had priority and needed a moment to catch my breath. “Yes I’m here. Sorry about that,” I spoke into the phone.
Detective Armstrong gave a sigh. “Mrs Smits, I really need to go.”
I ignored the driver, who was still cursing and hollering at me, put on my headphones and cycled away.
This was my last chance. “Ten minutes of your time is all I ask, no more. I will stop badgering you after that. I promise.”
There was another sigh. “Alright then.”
We agreed that I’d stop by during the lunch break. The detective gave me an address that, to my relief, was less than five minutes from my work by bike. I’d be able to duck out for the meeting without too much trouble – I didn’t feel like informing my colleagues about my plans.
“See you later,” I said, feeling elated and cycled along the last few streets towards my work.
After a hectic morning in the practice, I was knee-deep in administration when I noticed it was almost time to meet with Detective Armstrong.
Hans stuck his head around the corner of my room. “Lunch?”
“I’m not eating in today,” I said, stowing my phone in my handbag, avoiding his eyes.
“Oh, that’s a shame. Not hungry?” Hans asked kindly.
My cheeks were turning red. “I er …” I faltered. “I have to pick up something at a friend’s house.” I felt sick as soon as the lie had passed my lips, but I told myself it was for a greater cause.
“Right. I see. Just make sure you have something to eat while you’re on the go,” he said lightly, but there was slight sound of concern in his voice, which I found completely unwarranted – there was nothing wrong with me. “Sure, I’ll grab something on the hoof,” I assured him. I demonstratively pinched a piece of belly fat. “I need to keep that muffin top in shape, right?”
He seemed reassured and laughed. “Exactly.”
I slid my arms into my coat. “See you later,” I yelled over my shoulder and dashed out.
Outside I decided to ignore my growling stomach and cycled straight to the police station – I didn’t want to give Detective Armstrong any reason to cancel our appointment.
A while later I saw an imposing, modern edifice fronted with glass panels rise up in the distance. This police station was nothing like the concrete, dilapidated building that I’d been taken to by the police months ago when Oliver had just died. Memories of that horrible day came rushing back, but somehow the intensity of the grief seemed to have abated with time.
I ascended the black, stone steps to the entrance and saw a counter inside where, according to Detective Armstrong, I had to register. I walked over to it and gave my name through the protective glass shield. “I have an appointment with Detective Armstrong.”
“One moment please,” the lady in the blue police uniform said.
She asked for my identity card, the number of which she noted down and made a phone call.
Then she turned to me again. “This is a visitor’s pass that will provide access to the building. If you hold the pass against the scanner, it will get you through the gates.” She pointed towards something in the far distance. “Then take the lift to the third floor and Detective Armstrong will be waiting for you upstairs.”
I thanked her and followed the instructions. As the lift doors opened on the third floor, I was greeted by a man of about sixty years old, with a grey moustache masking his upper lip. His pink scalp was visible through the thin gauze of his wispy white hair and he was towering about ten centimetres above me. The amiable-looking man extended his hand and introduced himself.
I answered his firm handshake. “Jennifer Smits.”
“Impeccable timing,” he remarked and gave me a nod. “Let’s head to my office.”
We walked silently over the blue carpet towards the end of the corridor, where he held the door open for me. The large window in the room offered a panoramic view over the flanking canal.
“Take a seat,” he said, indicating a hard wooden chair. He walked to the other side of the table and lowered himself onto a chair which squeaked under his weight. He pulled a blue lunchbox from his backpack, secured with an elastic band. “Mind if I eat while we talk?” Four neatly cut sandwiches and some fruit filled the box. “I have another meeting with my team at one o’clock.”
I said that it was no problem and felt my heart pounding in my chest. This was the moment to run my ideas by the detective and convince him to reopen the investigation. If this didn’t work out, I’d have no other options at my disposal to resolve the mystery surrounding Oliver’s death.
The detective got straight to the point. “You wanted to discuss something with me? Fire away.”
I rifled through my handbag and pulled out both my pack of papers and Sandra’s, which I had printed out late last night, and began talking. “I told you before that my husband was secretly working on a file entitled Van Santen, right?”
The detective chewed noisily on his sandwich and mumbled something in consent.
“I gained access to this document after his death,” I said, being purposely vague about the way we had appropriated it. “Based on this, I reached the conclusion that there was actually no such client named Van Santen. This was the first point that deviated from the usual procedure at Mason & McGant.”
“Who were Mason & McGant again?” asked the detective.
His remark made me feel disheartened – he apparently didn’t recall anything about Oliver’s case.
He gobbled up a chunk of bread, immediately grabbed a new sandwich from his box and admired it. “Can’t beat a good old cheese sarnie,” he said and eagerly sunk his teeth into it.
I rolled my eyes and dug my nails into my palms, trying to stay calm. “Mason & McGant is the law firm my husband used to work for, remember?”
He nodded his head vigorously. “Oh yes, now I remember. Go on.”
“We’ve been scrutinising the documents and raked over every detail. It transpires my husband was investigating a number of suspicious cases within his office and organised the results in a file with a pseudonym, ‘Van Santen’.”
The detective took a grape from his lunchbox, tossed it in the air and moved his head so he could catch it in his mouth. He missed and the grape bounced off the table, vanishing somewhere underneath his desk. His obvious and almost offensive lack of attention made me question whether he was taking any of this seriously.
I waved the pile of papers in the air in a desperate attempt to redirect his focus before speaking again. “My husband drafted a chart containing the evidence gathered for the four cases and categorised them into two different types.” I placed the chart on the table and turned it a quarter so that we could both read it. “I’m not an expert in this legal jargon as I’m a doctor by profession, but it transpires that something unusual was going on with regards to the evidence of those cases. Something that was so significant and illicit that he felt the need to give this document a pseudonym. He didn’t even mention it to me, his own wife.” I deliberately left out the fact it wasn’t the only thing Oliver had been hiding from me.
“Hmm,” he muttered wearily and snatched his last sandwich out of the box. He glanced at his watch. “I have a few minutes left.”
I felt like a noose had been forced around my neck – I hadn’t gotten to all those other suspicious things yet, I could feel my glimmer of hope in a good outcome fizzle out.
“Do you remember the compromising DVDs we found, showing all the lawyers who received their training at Mason & McGant?”
This piece of information seemed to have jogged his memory. “Oh right,” he said, a chunk of bread crammed in his left, bulging cheek. “Now it’s all coming back. That is where it got ugly. Wasn’t your husband captured in that footage?” he asked, but I could tell by the look on his face he knew the answer to his rather indelicate question.
My cheeks flushed with disconcertment. “My theory is that the paralegals are deliberately recorded on tape during their first year,” I said, evading his question. “So that they can be silenced later on during their careers whenever they witness things at the firm that are illegal or otherwise in breach of the law. Or even worse, used to put the squeeze on them to actively participate in criminal activity.” I paused a moment letting the detective take it all in, before I concluded my story. “I have a strong suspicion that the Dutch Forensics Institute is playing a major role in this as well.”
He attentively wrapped the elastic band back around the lunchbox and slid it into his backpack. Then, to my astonishment, he pulled out one of those boxes of milk children take to school with them. “I see where you’re going,” he said, puncturing the aluminium foil with the straw and taking a sip. “By the way, who are we?”
I looked at him, puzzled. “I don’t follow.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You said: we went through the documents.”
I had to admit, he was sharper than I’d perceived him to be. Perhaps I’d been underestimating him so far. “Sandra and I,” I wavered.
“And who is Sandra?”
A wave of crimson crept up my neck. “Sandra was my husband’s mistress,” I confessed, immediately regretting it. I should have said she was a friend of mine.
I quickly continued. “After we found these documents, she died under suspicious circumstances, not far from here, as a result of a collision with a tram.”
“Oh yes, I remember,” he cut me off. “There was nothing suspicious about it, Mrs Smits. It was just a terrible accident.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I’ll get to that in a moment.”
The detective was adamant. “Mrs Smits, one of the best detectives was assigned to that case. With a team full of professionals, he investigated everything at the scene of the accident. There was absolutely nothing suspicious about this poor woman’s death.”
“How can you know for sure?” I muttered. “I spoke with the tr …”
He broke me off. “Yes, yes, you told me all that over the phone last time.”
“But,” I tried, but stopped when he raised his hand and closed his eyes.
He looked at me. “Listen, Mrs Smits,” he began. There was that look of pity again, which I’d seen in people’s eyes so often lately and couldn’t stand anymore.
I turned my head away and stared out of the large window, where I noticed it had started drizzling.
“You’ve been through a lot lately. Your husband was snatched from this world before his time and you didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye to him. Suddenly you’re all alone, left behind with a toddler. You apparently discover that your husband has been, er …”
I looked at him, lifting my chin and squaring my shoulders, daring him to say it out loud, but this time he was the one who averted his eyes in discomfiture.
“Anyway. This lady suddenly dies as a result of a fatal bicycle accident with a tram. It must have been an incredibly traumatic time for you. There are people who’d lose their marbles over less.”
I felt anger welling up. “Are you suggesting I’m losing my mind?” “Oh no. Of course not,” he hushed. “I’m merely trying to say it must be overwhelming.” He folded his hands together like a priest presiding over his congregation. “After your husband’s death, I spoke extensively with my colleagues in the south. They’ve done an excellent job over there and meticulously examined all traces,” he said proudly. “After you and I spoke on the phone a while ago, I went back over the report and I reiterate – I one hundred percent agree with their findings.”
I wielded the piece of paper with the chart presenting the evidence that Oliver had prepared so scrupulously, and shook it in his face. “But this here is new information,” I sputtered, but I knew I’d lost the battle, any objection would fall on deaf ears.
He raised his voice. “This isn’t proof of murder. It’s not even a starting point. Neither of us know what your husband’s intentions were when he drafted this document. Maybe his supervisor had requested him to make an overview of some cases. It’s anyone’s guess basically.”
He glanced at his watch again. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”
I gave a little whimper of protest. “Please,” I said, trying not to burst into tears. “I am desperate. You are my last resort. I received a threatening note at home the other day and yesterday a tile was thrown into …”
He released his breath with a long, impatient sigh. “Look. If it would ease your mind, I’ll promise to go over it later.” He grabbed the stack of papers and tossed them to the corner of his desk, on top of a tall, disorderly pile.
The detective was merely humouring me – we both knew he wouldn’t seriously examine that evidence. Best-case scenario, he’d skim through the document and toss it in the bin. More likely, it would lay on his desk for months, collecting dust, only to be fed to the shredder during a clean-up.
I was overwhelmed with defeat – I’d been unsuccessful in trying to win him over.
I stood up and gathered up my belongings, acknowledged my loss and shook his outstretched hand. “Thank you for your time.”
He nodded and smiled. “All the best to you, Mrs Smits.”
It was still drizzling when I left the police station. I pulled up the hood of my jacket and swiftly unlocked my bike. As I made to cycle off, I noticed a young man on a scooter, shielding his face with his hoodie. I waited for him to go first, but he kept lingering, his head slightly bowed and hidden from my view. I shrugged and started pedalling towards the practice.
Along the way my thoughts turned to the past few days, in which everyone around me seemed to have been doubting me and questioning my sanity. I’d ruined the date with Dan – he’d clearly concluded I was a lunatic, my girlfriends thought that I wasn’t thinking straight and Detective Armstrong had made it abundantly clear my suspicions were completely unfounded as far as he was concerned.
Perhaps the grounds for Oliver working on the Van Santen file were entirely different after all. It was clear that the document didn’t belong to a client and so the name was indeed a pseudonym, however, there were countless innocent explanations for this, as the detective already pointed out.
Perhaps my mind was playing tricks on me and I was barking up the wrong tree. Admittedly, I hadn’t felt like myself in the past six months, I was suffering from a perpetual lack of sleep and the alcohol was flowing a little too profusely.
I stopped at a traffic light and pressed the button a few times as the rain intensified, swooped by the wind across the road. I managed to fish my phone out of my pocket and noticed I had only ten minutes left until my next consultation. I would have to ask Simone to get me a sandwich.
Sliding my phone back into my pocket, I was alarmed by a rumbling sound coming from directly behind me As I looked back, I saw a figure on a white scooter wearing a blue, utterly soaked top, just a few metres away, looking familiar. Wasn’t that the same guy I just saw as I left the police station? The rain was beating down on my face, obscuring my vision, and I was unable to make out the face that was hiding underneath the hood. I abruptly turned my head forward again and felt my heart skittering erratically in my chest. There was something unnerving about this guy and the way that he’d been loitering outside the police station, but had now caught up with me.
The light turned green and I cycled on hurriedly, my hand over my eyes trying to hinder the plump drops of rain. The scooter didn’t overtake me as I would have expected it to, and my fears began to grow. After a few minutes of hearing a continuous hum of the engine behind me, I plucked up the courage to ever so carefully look over my shoulder. For a brief moment I caught a glimpse of the hard gaze in his dark eyes boring straight into me, but the man immediately bowed his head again.
He was following me! I pedalled as fast as I could, even though he could obviously catch up with me at any moment if he wanted to. The pounding rain felt like a thousand tiny pins stabbing my face. I veered right, towards the practice and when I cautiously looked back over my shoulder again moments later, he’d disappeared.
I halted by the side of the road and took a moment to catch my breath, my head spinning. Why was that guy following me? Was there someone out there that wanted to keep an eye on me? Did it have something to do with the two threatening notes I’d received or the man Tim had spoken about?
I tried to calm myself down. “Get a grip, Jennifer,” I said out loud. There was probably a simple explanation for all of this.
When I entered the practice minutes later, my trousers were sticking to my legs and my shoes squelched loudly as I walked. I only had a few minutes to smarten up.
“Oh gosh, you’re drenched!” Simone said, looking at me from head to toe. “Take your time. Your patient hasn’t arrived yet,” she added and handed me a towel.
“Thanks,” I responded, hanging my soaked coat to dry on the coat rack. I swept the wet strands of bedraggled hair away from my face and made a few attempts to dab myself dry with a towel. I glanced at myself in the mirror – I’d had better days, but this would do.
My eyes fell on the small window in Simone’s room, offering a wide view of the busy main road on which our practice was located. “Simone, have you by any chance ever seen a young fellow in a blue hoodie on a white scooter passing by?”
Simone spun around on her office chair and looked at me in surprise. “I see so many people from here, it’s one of the busiest roads in this part of Amsterdam. I’m sure there would have been someone who fits that description.”
I stared into the distance. “You’re probably right,” I mumbled.
There was a short pause. “Are you all right?”
My gaze turned to Simone. “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” I responded with a faint smile and fled to my consultation office.
As I put my phone on mute I noticed I’d received a message from Lindsey.
‘Jen, I hope you’re not cross with us anymore. We love you and only have your best interests at heart. How about we go for drinks soon?’
I tossed my phone back into my bag and decided to respond later. I plopped onto my desk chair and watched sheets of rain stream relentlessly down the windows. It wasn’t until then did I realise how tired, cold and hungry I was.
I opened our administration programme and saw that Mrs Peters had already registered into the practice. I leaped up, walked to the counter and asked in hushed tones. “Simone, could you get me a sandwich?”
She stared at me in astonishment. Behind her I saw Hans, who was making a fresh pot of coffee, look up with eyebrows that had risen several centimetres. “It’s almost two. Haven’t you had any lunch yet?” Simone queried.
I threw out an excuse. “I was running late. Just make it a cheese or ham sandwich.” I laid a note on her desk to cover the costs. “Thank you.”
Before either of them could comment, I dashed into the waiting room. “Mrs Peters, you’re next.”