Death on the Canal

Book 3: Lotte Meerman

by Anja de Jager

Genres: International Crime & Mystery; Suspense

Synopsis

'. . . a novel brilliantly evoking the isolation of a woman with an unbearable weight on her conscience' Sunday Times Where do your loyalties lie? With the truth or with your colleagues? Drinking outside a canal-side bar on a perfect summer's evening, Lotte is witness to the fatal stabbing of Piotr Mazur, a Polish security guard working in one of the city's department stores. As Lotte starts to investigate Mazur's death, all the facts point to him being a small-time drug dealer, and his murder is treated as a minor complication in another team's larger narcotics case. Yet Lotte remains unconvinced; having viewed the man's ordered, unchaotic flat and spoken to his colleagues, she can't help but believe he was being set up. And in the bar, moments before Piotr was killed, Lotte saw a woman pass him a photo of a child. Shebecomes convinced that his death wasn't a revenge-killing over drugs at all, and has to now think carefully about what to do for the best, especially as key evidence in Mazur's murder comes from someone she knows she cannot trust. Praise for Anja de Jager ' An absorbing read with the smack of reality ' Daily Mail 'The book succeeds as a portrait of both a city and, in its heroine, a delightfully dysfunctional personality' Sunday Express 'Impressive . . . De Jager is as good on dodgy family relations as she is on police procedure' The Times 'Detective Lotte Meerman is damaged by her past and tortured by the dreadful mistake she's made at work . . . Amsterdam is the other star here, beautiful and deadly' Cath Staincliffe

Release date: April 30, 2019

Publisher: Constable

Print pages: 352

Sample

Even the most meticulously planned operation could go wrong. I had surveyed the area previously to identify the optimal position and had found a location that would allow me plenty of warning. As I cycled there across the wide tarmac bridge with two lanes of cars shooting past, I could feel the nerves jangling at my fingers.

According to the calendar it had been summer for five weeks, but only today had the weather in Amsterdam woken up to this fact. Following a miserable couple of months, with limited sunshine, now people could finally sit outside in T-shirts and jeans and be pleasantly warm even though it was coming up to half past seven in the evening. I chained my bike to a lamp post and thought the weather was a mixed blessing. On the one hand I could be situated at my selected spot without attracting any attention – had it rained I would have had to abandon the plan – but on the other hand more people were still outside and the place might be occupied. I walked quickly because a few seconds could make all the difference.

I wanted one of only six tables on a tiny terrace where the city had forgone three parking spaces. The one I preferred was right at the canal’s edge and only protected from falling into the water by a shin-high rusty-red metal railing.

It was still vacant.

I jogged the last couple of steps and sat down quickly with the bridge to my back so that I faced the direction he would be arriving from. My breathing was faster than the little run warranted. I’d managed to stop myself from checking my watch until now. Maybe he wasn’t going to turn up. Maybe this time he wasn’t going to come.

The waitress crossed the narrow one-way street that separated the bar from the terrace. A different woman had served me yesterday. I ordered a glass of rosé and said that it was surely the perfect way to celebrate the arrival of summer. It barely drew a smile. The bar’s door was open and Ricky Martin’s music drifted out to mingle with the hum of traffic behind me and the quacking of a pair of ducks to my right. Everything was in place. A sultry breeze tickled my bare neck where I’d had my hair cut that afternoon. He should get here soon.

My mouth was dry and I took a sip of my drink. This wasn’t a bad place to be. It was the height of tourist season but here you wouldn’t know it. Amsterdam’s canals formed concentric half-circles and, like year rings on a tree, the further away from Centraal Station they were, the more recently they’d been dug. But also the further away from the centre you were, the fewer tourists you found. Here, about ten canals out, Amsterdam was a different city. I threw a quick glance at the menu. They served decent food. If he wasn’t going to turn up, I would finish this glass of wine and order something to eat.

Then I saw his tall shape. He was walking slowly with his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t looking my way. During the minutes that I monitored Mark Visser strolling along the canal, my heart must have thumped a thousand times. I got ready to act.

‘Mark,’ I shouted when he was close to the bar. I waved at him. ‘What a surprise. Good to see you.’ I fought to keep the smile on my face in this instant when failure and success were balanced on a knife-edge.

He hesitated but came over. ‘Hi, Lotte, how are you?’

I stood up and we kissed three times on the cheek like old friends. ‘Have a seat.’ I pointed at the vacant chair on the other side of the table. ‘It’s such a nice evening. Join me for a drink.’

He didn’t refuse. He looked at his watch but then drew out the chair.

‘How are you?’ Now my smile was real.

‘I’m well.’ He sat down opposite me. He stretched out one of his long legs and it touched the inside of mine. For that second, the world shrank until all that mattered was us in this moment. It wasn’t that I didn’t see the street; it just didn’t signify any more.

‘Sorry,’ he said, and pulled his leg back.

I looked down. The tables had been reclaimed from an old school building. I could imagine lifting up the lid and finding space for pens and books. Even the chairs were not that dissimilar to those we had, only bigger. It seemed appropriate, as Mark and I had first met at primary school before losing contact for over thirty-five years.

There was grey in the stubble hugging his jaw, more than there was in his dark hair, and the lines around his eyes were noticeable even behind his round glasses.

‘What’s with the stubble?’ I said.

‘I had to rush out this morning.’ His long fingers rubbed his face. ‘Doesn’t it make me look strong and capable? That’s what I was going for.’

‘Smooth as sandpaper.’ I broke off a piece of wax from the outside of the candle, held the long strip over the flame and watched the molten drips return to their source. ‘Let me get you a drink.’ I gestured at the waitress to come over and ordered Mark a beer.

‘I’ve nearly finished the house,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to put it on the market in a few weeks.’ He pushed his glasses higher up his nose. ‘I still won’t get what I’d hoped for.’

When I had first gone there, three months ago, it had been a building site with just two rooms habitable: Mark’s office and a bedroom. My mind flooded with memories of that time. Of us together.

Before.

‘House prices have dropped again,’ he said.

A large moth buzzed over our table. I shooed it away from the candle. It should sup from the red hollyhocks flowering along the bar’s wall, not burn its wings in the flame. Then the creature’s hum was drowned out by the unusual sound of a car turning off the main drag over the bridge. An Audi drove past and parked further down the canal, partially shielded from view by the heart-shaped leaves of the plants crawling over a trellis. Two men and two women got out. One of the women went into a side street, probably to pay for parking, and the others took the table next to us. They were about our age, maybe a little younger, and smartly dressed.

A moment later, the other woman joined them. She carried a beautiful orange handbag with a large silver clasp. She put it down on the floor and I could imagine the leather complaining about having to touch the dirty pavement. You could fit a slim laptop in there. It was exactly the kind of bag that I’d been looking for. It would probably be way outside my budget. Also it might not be wide enough to hold a gun. She jolted their table as she sat down and moved her chair forward. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘No need to apologise,’ one of the guys said loudly in accented English. He had bronzed skin and his beard was so neat it looked as if he’d laid a ruler along his cheek to decide where to stop shaving. The hairline on the back of his head was equally straight, but hair was creeping up from the collar of his shirt where it escaped upwards from his back. ‘You always do that. For everything. I guess you’re just more empathetic, you … you women types.’

‘Women types?’ I mouthed at Mark with raised eyebrows.

He smiled and shook his head. He enjoyed listening to other people’s conversations as much as I did.

The Beard insisted on ordering a pitcher of cocktails. ‘Moscow mules,’ he said to the waitress. ‘They sound great.’

The women, sitting opposite each other, started talking in Dutch and excluded the men from their conversation.

‘Don’t go,’ the Beard shouted loudly after the waitress. ‘We want to get food as well.’

The woman who had jolted the table translated the menu. At this bar, the menus were in Dutch, as mainly locals frequented it. The outdoor seating area was too small to get the place featured in any guidebooks. The Beard ordered for everybody. When the woman complained in a soft voice that it was far too much food, he ignored her and added another dish. He must be the one picking up the tab at the end of the evening.

‘Is excess food a new way to impress?’ Mark said.

‘It’s never done it for me,’ I said. I stopped watching the table next to us. ‘Do you want to eat something?’

Mark didn’t answer.

‘Did you hear the news this morning?’ he said. ‘That guy got eighteen months.’

I lifted my wineglass and washed down the lump that had suddenly appeared at the back of my throat.

‘The cop who fired at that getaway car and hit the passenger,’ he said.

As if I hadn’t known who he was talking about. I pulled my hair away from my face. I still felt so guilty. And not just about the man I’d shot. It didn’t matter that it had been self-defence. ‘I was cleared.’

He rubbed his forehead. ‘I know. You had no choice. You had camera footage to back everything up. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.’

So why did you, I wanted to say, but I hadn’t planned this evening only to get into an argument. Talking about guilt wasn’t making either of us feel any better. ‘Do you want another drink?’

‘Sure. Same again.’

I could have ordered from the waitress, but I was keen to get up. Mark probably wouldn’t leave while I was buying another round, but if he wanted to I would allow him an easy escape. I carried our glasses inside.

The café was dark and half empty apart from a group of men in yellow T-shirts and a young couple at a table by the window who were deep in conversation. Their voices were little more than a murmur floating above the sound from the speakers. The music had changed to Abba. The woman wore a flowery sleeveless summer dress; she had matched it with a denim jacket that now hung over the back of her chair. Her dark hair was pulled back into a small ponytail and she had a muscular solidity that reminded me of one of the nurses who’d looked after me in hospital. The kind of girl who would have been the goalie in the school hockey team.

The man stared at her like a sniper focusing on a target. It went with his khaki-green T-shirt. Only his white jeans were incongruous. The woman reached behind her and fished a piece of paper out of the pocket of her jacket. Her shoulders were tense as she pushed it abruptly across the table. I craned my neck but I still couldn’t see what it was. Maybe a photo. It was the right size. The man looked down and smiled. He was in his early thirties, but his wide grin transformed his face and gave him a quirky, boyish charm.

The woman’s shoulders didn’t relax and she didn’t return the smile.

Then the Beard arrived next to me with the waitress at his side. ‘No, no, I’ll choose one myself,’ he said. Moscow mules hadn’t kept him happy for long. He got behind the bar and made a show of studying every whisky bottle on the shelf. The barman exchanged a look with the waitress, who gave a helpless shrug. The Beard finally found one he liked and handed the bottle to the waitress. ‘This one. Large measure.’ She poured.

The barman came to take my order.

‘A rosé and a beer, please.’

‘Sure.’ He pulled the pint and then unscrewed the top of a bottle of unknown origin. I didn’t care enough to study bottles. Holding both glasses, I walked back to our table.

My arm brushed Mark’s as I put his beer down. That he didn’t flinch was a victory.

The evening sun turned the sky the colour of my wine and it would have been absolutely perfect if only the people next to us had left. I tried and failed to tune out their conversation, which revolved around pharmaceuticals of varying kinds. Then the Beard asked his companion how he’d go about scoring some drugs around here. The other man told him to shut up and stop being stupid. I looked over because it annoyed me when people came to Amsterdam for just one reason. I didn’t even try to be subtle about it. The woman who’d earlier apologised for jolting the table now mouthed ‘sorry’ to me. She called the waitress over and managed to bring the focus back to alcohol.

Mark and I chatted about uncontentious topics and ordered some snacks from the waitress. He seemed better than me at blocking out the Beard, who went into the bar a few more times, once accompanied by the woman. I thought Mark enjoyed the evening and maybe even my company.

My glass was almost empty when the couple who had been inside the bar came out and walked along the canal, away from the bridge, turning left into the first sideroad, towards the houses. Stars started to appear in the evening sky and the fat candle in the middle of the table threw shadows on to Mark’s cheekbones.

‘It’s good to see you,’ I said.

My heart pounded as I waited for him to respond that it had been good to see me too.

But before he could say anything, a shout pierced the evening. It was a man’s voice. It took me a few seconds before I identified the source of the sound: a young black man, a Surinamer, with dark-rimmed glasses. He came running out of the side street. ‘Help!’ he screamed. ‘Help!’ He waved his arms above his head but he already had my attention.

Nobody knew I was a police detective apart from Mark. This evening that I’d planned so carefully was going as well as I could have hoped for. Why spoil it by getting up and offering assistance when I could stay here and have another drink? I could just not get involved.

‘Someone’s been stabbed,’ the young Surinamer shouted. ‘Just here.’ He pointed down the side street.

Instead of doing what was sensible, I pushed my chair back. The metal legs screeched a complaint on the paving stones. I got up. ‘You stay here,’ I said to Mark.

He opened his mouth to object but I held the palm of my hand in his direction and silenced him. I needed to concentrate and Mark would get in the way. If there was still a fight going on, he could get hurt. My walk turned into a jog. I automatically checked my watch whilst running. It was 10.21 p.m.

I would have felt better if I’d had my gun with me.

A half-bald elderly man with large facial features and wearing a yellow T-shirt followed me. Nobody else even thought of interfering, and that was a good thing.

I turned the corner and saw a man lying on the ground. He was on his side. I recognised him: it was the intense man in the white jeans. Blood stained his khaki T-shirt a muddled brown. I scanned the street, but it was dead quiet. Cars were parked on one side, with thin white lines marking out each space, but I couldn’t hear any engines running and nothing moved. There was no sign of an attacker. Most flats were dark, with the curtains closed and the lights off. How long ago had this man left the bar? Ten minutes at most.

The elderly man nearly overtook me and I grabbed his arm to stop him.

‘I’m a doctor,’ he said.

I let him through. ‘I’m police.’

The doctor knelt at the man’s side, felt his pulse then started CPR. I dialled 112. The man’s eyes were closed and he was losing blood fast. It was obvious where the wound was. Wounds. Three cuts in the front of his T-shirt. The young Surinamer stood a few metres away. He had taken off his glasses and kept saying, ‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ over and over again.

‘What’s your name?’ I said.

‘Nathan,’ he said. ‘Nathan Derez.’

‘Come over here and help me,’ the doctor shouted. He ripped off his yellow T-shirt, baring a wrinkled torso, and held the garment out.

Nathan didn’t move.

‘Hold this, Nathan.’ Using his name would get him out of his state of paralysis. I handed him my phone, grabbed the T-shirt, knelt down by the young man and pressed the cloth against the wound on his stomach as the doctor indicated. Blood had pooled onto the victim’s skin and now flowed thick and warm over my hands where the T-shirt couldn’t absorb it all. It congealed between my fingers until I felt I was glued to this man. As I heard Nathan telling the ambulance crew our address, the evening became so thick with the metallic smell of blood that I could taste it. What had been a pleasant warmth was now oppressive.

‘We need the police,’ I shouted. ‘Tell them that we are urgently – extremely urgently,’ I corrected myself, ‘looking for a woman …’

Instead of simply relaying my message, Nathan held my phone to my ear as I kept pressing down with the now blood-soaked T-shirt.

‘This is Detective Lotte Meerman,’ I said into my mobile. ‘We are extremely urgently looking for a young woman. Probably in her twenties. Dark hair tied in a ponytail. Wearing a floral summer dress and a denim jacket. She’s wanted in connection with a murder. Potentially armed with a knife.’ Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mark standing frozen and staring at me. ‘Put it out to all cars.’ I moved my head away from the phone and concentrated on the man under my hands again.

More people turned up behind me, probably from the bar. I shouted that they should stay back, to keep the crime scene secure, but I continued to stare at my hands, at the creases in the yellow T-shirt and then at the doctor doing his best to keep the victim’s heart going. I tried to keep the man’s life inside him, but the amount of blood pumping out told me I might fail. I was so stuck in the moment that even when the ambulance turned up and the paramedics rushed over, it was hard to lift my hands.

One of them, a young woman, took my place. I rested back on my heels, then stood up. The world disappeared into blackness for a second. I steadied myself against a parking payment machine and left a red print behind. I turned around to look for Mark where I’d seen him last, at the end of the street, but he was no longer there.

The ambulance crew examined the man on the ground. ‘He’s gone,’ one of them said.

A myriad of blue swirling lights destroyed the last vestiges of a pleasant evening and made the quiet street seem a dangerous and threatening place. Two police cars were parked nose to nose as if ready for a fight. Tape closed off the street at either end, locking in the forensic scientists with the body. A van had carried eight more officers to the crime scene and they were now busy taking statements from everybody who’d been in the bar. The fluorescent yellow stripes on their uniforms stood out starkly against the dark blue. The ambulance was still waiting, ready to leave once Forensics had finished with the victim’s body. At least a blanket now shrouded him from view.

‘I didn’t hear anything,’ Nathan said. ‘I had music on but it wasn’t that loud. Shouldn’t I have heard something?’

I sat with Nathan Derez and the doctor, Gerard Campert, on the edge of the pavement on the opposite side of the road, the three of us like battle-worn survivors. After my colleagues had spoken to us, we were now left alone. Gerard had described the woman in the floral dress in detail. He’d been inside the bar for most of the evening and had a good look at her. I’d filled in the gaps. Nathan hadn’t witnessed anything apart from the aftermath.

His partner, a tall red-haired woman, came over and brought us mugs of sweet tea. She’d also handed me a towel after I’d scrubbed my hands for five minutes at their kitchen sink. I’d even rubbed kitchen roll under the already clean tips of my nails, wanting desperately to wash the thought of blood away. She’d said that we could wait indoors, but until I changed my clothes, I shouldn’t sit on someone’s sofa.

‘There was no shouting? No argument?’ I asked.

‘No, nothing.’

I hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary either until I’d heard Nathan’s cry for help. ‘I saw him and the woman turn into this street about ten minutes before you found him,’ I said.

A few police constables rang doorbells along the street. Maybe I should join them, but somehow it was hard to move.

‘He’d lost a lot of blood in that time,’ Gerard said. ‘We could never have saved him.’

‘It wasn’t until I stepped outside for a cigarette that I saw him. If only I’d heard something, I could have got help sooner.’

Gerard put a hand on Nathan’s arm. The doctor was now wearing a red polo shirt that Nathan’s partner had given him. It was a tight fit. His blood-soaked yellow T-shirt had been bagged up by Forensics. ‘It’s not your fault,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing you could have done. With knife wounds like those – one to the lung, two to the stomach – it wouldn’t have made a difference. I could tell from the start that …’ he rubbed his forehead with the knuckle of his thumb, ‘that he was most likely going to die.’

The young man nodded, his eyes serious behind his glasses. He leaned back against a birch tree. From where I was sitting, I had a perfect view of the crime scene, the dead body, the forensic team moving about and the parking payment machine with the bloody handprint I’d left behind.

Another car drove up and pulled into the spot next to the ambulance. Detective Ingrid Ries got out. She was very tall and her skinny jeans only accentuated the length of her legs. She sometimes reminded me of a plant that had grown without enough light; her limbs were too long, as if she’d had to reach for the sun all the years of her childhood. She’d been at home when I called her.

She hurried towards me. ‘Are you okay?’

I put my hands on my knees and got up from the kerb. Nathan and Gerard also stood, as if I had disturbed our little survivors’ tea party. I made the introductions.

Ingrid put an arm around my shoulders. She did it to comfort me, but it was restraining too.

‘I just watched someone die.’ I said it softly. It would be more precise to say that I felt him die. I’d felt his blood drain out of him. My hands shook with a tremor that originated in my fingertips and I stepped away from Ingrid’s hug. I hid my hands in the back pockets of my jeans. Maybe I was in shock because death was so incongruous after the pleasant summer’s evening, or maybe I’d just had too much to drink.

The front page of yesterday’s newspaper lay in the gutter. Geert Wilders’ photo was illuminated by the street lights. ‘Muslims should integrate or go home’ screamed the fat print of the headline.

I pulled myself together. I’d written down the man’s details. We’d identified him from his security card, which had been bagged up by Forensics earlier. ‘Piotr Mazur. Polish national.’ On the pass, the green emblem of one of Amsterdam’s large department stores showed right above a photo of the now-dead Piotr Mazur’s smiling face.

‘A security guard,’ I said.

I’d phoned the store after I’d finished washing my hands. I had spoken to the guard who was on night duty. He told me it was all quiet at their . . .