Angel in the Shadows Read online

  ‘Atropa belladonna. Deadly nightshade. Ingest a handful and you’ll be writhing in agony and close to death within minutes.’

  ‘Know your enemy,’ he said, laughing. He quickly tossed the berries and extended his hand. ‘Radjen Tomasoa. Chief Inspector.’

  ‘Melanie Lombard.’ She had a firm handshake. ‘Nature, Inspector Tomasoa, knows us better than we know ourselves.’ She spoke with an air of pretentiousness, with the inborn disdain that characterizes people from the upper classes. Her two bracelets jingled as if they were musical instruments.

  ‘And this is my colleague, Esther van Noordt.’

  Melanie Lombard couldn’t muster more than a brusque ‘good afternoon’ for his partner. She immediately directed her attention back to Radjen, as if his presence was all she could manage.

  ‘What I can I do for you?’

  Strangely enough, he felt a fatherly impulse to put his arm around her shoulders. Melanie Lombard van Velzen was a woman who carried a quiet sadness deep within her soul. He could hear it in her voice, saw it in her dark, dilated irises, filled with melancholy. But she was too strong-willed, too stubborn, too proud to share this with others, let alone two unknown investigators who’d found their way into her garden unannounced. He tried to shake off the feeling. Any kind of compassion for this woman would only get in the way of why they were there.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs Lombard, but I’d like to ask you a few more questions related to our hit-and-run investigation,’ he said.

  She threw him a distrustful gaze. ‘Shouldn’t you be talking to my husband? Or, better yet, my husband and his lawyer?’

  Radjen nodded at the group of women by the fountain curiously looking in their direction and ignored her question. ‘Is there a place where we can talk quietly?’

  ‘I’m about to give a workshop for these women, Inspector.’

  ‘I understand, but there’s still some confusion about the alibi you provided.’

  She looked at him suspiciously again. ‘I assume you’ve read my statement?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘In it, I already told the police everything I know.’

  ‘We’d like to go over a few of the details again with you,’ Esther said.

  For a moment it actually seemed like Melanie Lombard had forgotten there were three people involved in the conversation.

  ‘Details?’

  She turned her head ever so slightly, as if distracted by something outside their field of vision. It was a diversionary tactic so she could gain the upper hand. ‘I’ll give you a few minutes,’ she said. ‘But then I really need to get back to work as quickly as possible.’

  With hasty but controlled steps, she walked over to the group of women. It struck Radjen that there was something about her gait, a charming, hidden shortcoming.

  ‘She’s a poseur,’ Esther said.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Someone who’s pretending to be something that she isn’t.’

  ‘They say that after a time spouses start to resemble each other,’ Radjen said.

  They watched Melanie Lombard direct the group of women armed with pruning shears, rake, pitchfork and spade towards the back of the garden and walked in her direction.

  ‘You might be wondering what this group is up to,’ she said in an unexpectedly light-hearted tone. ‘The new moon is almost here. A new moon means a new beginning. High time for us to look back at what is behind us. What have we accomplished, what do we want to keep, and what do we want to let go of? The transition to darker days can leave you with a chaotic feeling. By talking about this and planting another part of the garden, I help them to find a new balance.’

  She ended her explanation with a high-pitched laugh, apparently realizing she was wasting her breath on them. Radjen saw Esther struggling not to laugh out loud.

  They walked into a conservatory with marble floors, high ceilings and stained-glass windows. Melanie Lombard crossed her arms and scrutinized them. There was something in her attitude that intrigued him.

  ‘I assume you’re aware of the death of your husband’s chauffeur?’ he asked.

  She looked at him in disbelief. ‘You mean the man who ran down that child?’

  Radjen thought about what Esther had just said. Melanie Lombard van Velzen was not just any poseur; she had mastered the art.

  ‘How well did you know Mr Meijer?’ Esther asked.

  ‘Barely. My husband has multiple drivers.’

  Radjen couldn’t tell if she was a woman who took everyone and everything seriously or one who had contempt for the whole world and, right now, especially them.

  ‘You claimed that your husband was brought home by Mr Meijer at ten thirty,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘According to your husband, he had two heavy briefcases with him. It’s protocol that the driver carries the bags inside. That evening, did you see or hear him doing this?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Where were you at that time?’

  ‘I was in the kitchen.’

  ‘Would you mind showing us the kitchen?’ Radjen wanted to take the lead, but saw her frown. ‘So we have a visual reference.’

  She sighed and led the way past two high panelled doors into a spacious kitchen with an old table the size of a pool table in the middle, almost completely covered with pots full of herbs, dried flowers and a fruit bowl filled to the brim. Through the large stained-glass window that overlooked the backyard, the sun conjured the slowly shifting coloured patterns of red, yellow and blue on the whitewashed walls.

  ‘Did your husband come through the front door that night or from out back?’

  ‘Really, Inspector, is this the reason you’ve interrupted my workshop?’

  ‘Could you please answer my question?’

  ‘He’s always dropped off out front.’

  Radjen looked around and pointed to the door that opened into the hallway. ‘Was that open or closed?’

  ‘The hallway door was closed; otherwise I would’ve seen him arriving home.’

  ‘Didn’t you hear the car?’

  ‘I was making tea at the time. The kettle was on.’

  She sounded impatient. Radjen thought that was a good sign. He nodded at the copper kettle on the Aga cooker.

  ‘Would you mind boiling some water?’

  She looked at him in amazement. ‘Inspector, you’ve had your few minutes of my time, and that’s more than enough.’

  ‘We’re trying to get as precise a picture as possible of the situation when your husband arrived home,’ he said calmly. ‘I can come back this afternoon with a team and do a detailed reconstruction, or we can do it now, and in a few minutes you’ll be rid of us. Up to you.’

  She filled the kettle and lit the stove. Then she crossed her arms and stared at him arrogantly.

  ‘Happy now, Inspector?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. So you were here in the kitchen, with the door to the hallway closed, when your husband’s chauffeured car arrived. The front door opened, the driver put the briefcases in the hallway, the door was closed and Mr Meijer drove away. And you didn’t hear anything?’

  ‘That’s correct – the water was boiling and I –’

  ‘May I have the key to the front door?’

  ‘No, I want you to leave now. This is not a reconstruction; this is harassment, which I’m going to report to your superiors.’

  ‘You have that right, ma’am. But I’m not going to argue with you. Cooperate, or I’ll send a team here this afternoon to conduct an extensive investigation.’

  Melanie walked over to the large table, pulled open a drawer, removed a bunch of keys, walked towards him and just stood there with the keys in the palm of her open raised hand. Radjen didn’t look at the hand or the keys but straight into her eyes, and he saw the deep contempt there.

  ‘Could you tell my colleague which key is for the front door?’ he asked.

  With her other hand, she grabbed the biggest key
and handed it to Esther as if it were a dead rat.

  In hushed tones, Radjen instructed Esther to drive the Corolla closer to the front door, to open and close the car doors and to then come back through the hall to the kitchen. Esther disappeared down the hallway. He heard the tapping of her boots as she headed to the front door, which opened and shut again.

  ‘Do you mind if I smoke in my own home while you’re finishing up your masterful reconstruction, Inspector?’

  Melanie Lombard didn’t even wait for his response: she removed a cigarette from a packet lying on the table, lit it and, with a small hop up, sat on the edge of the marble worktop. No matter how he looked at it, Radjen felt a hundred times more intimidated by this woman than by her bully husband. He couldn’t figure her out. One minute she seemed helpless like a child, and the next she was an ice queen: cold and unapproachable. Yet perhaps the worst of it all was that he could barely keep his eyes off her. It unsettled him.

  He cleared his throat. ‘An innocent boy nearly died, Mrs Lombard. And a number of people have placed your husband at the scene of the crime. As it happens, your alibi is the only thing that contradicts those statements.’

  ‘That’s what alibis are for, right?’ She took a drag of her cigarette. The disdain in her eyes was killing.

  ‘That’s the reason we have to double-check your alibi,’ Radjen said.

  She gave him a long and serious look, inhaled the smoke from her cigarette and exhaled through her nose. ‘I have the feeling, Inspector, that people don’t think you’re the empathetic type. No wonder. You’re obsessed with the misery of the world, unable to think of anything besides violent crime. I see it in you. Do you ever take time to visit a museum or listen to a moving piece of music?’

  He looked past her at the kettle on the cooker. The water was almost boiling. ‘I want to make sure we’ve correctly understood what you’ve already told us. Can you tell me what you did after the water boiled?’

  ‘The usual things that a woman does when she makes tea for herself and her husband.’

  ‘Perhaps you could show me exactly what you did?’

  ‘You mean, so you can empathize?’

  ‘Please, Mrs Lombard.’

  She hopped off the kitchen worktop and put her cigarette out under the tap. She removed a glass teapot from an antique pharmacy cabinet, plucked mint leaves from a plant on the counter, filled the teapot and put a small glass jar with honey beside it.

  ‘This will make the ladies in the garden happy,’ she said with false cheer in her voice. The water in the pot was now almost boiling. Nevertheless, Radjen heard the distinct crunch of the pebbles in the driveway, the opening and closing of the front door and Esther’s footsteps in the hallway. At the time the kitchen door swung open, the kettle whistled as if a fire alarm had gone off.

  Esther threw the keys on the table. Radjen turned off the cooker.

  ‘You said that you didn’t hear your husband arrive home because the kettle was almost boiling.’

  ‘Correct’

  ‘Didn’t you just hear the car?’

  ‘No, Inspector.’

  She looked at Radjen with a dislike as immense as the Great Wall of China is long. ‘I have otosclerosis, an abnormal growth of bone in the middle ear.’ She walked to the table, pulled open a drawer and showed him two small hearing aids. ‘I never wear them at home. Makes me feel a bit too bionic.’

  ‘Your husband claimed in his statement that you were in the living room,’ Esther reminded her. ‘But you’re saying you were in the kitchen. So you were in two places at the same time. A rather good trick.’

  Melanie Lombard looked at her with a mixture of disgust and contempt. ‘When my husband came home, I was in the kitchen. I didn’t hear that he was already in the hall. I went into the living room with the tray. After a busy day, no matter what time it is, my husband enjoys sharing a quiet moment together. We drink tea and indulge in dark chocolate. Space, silence and chocolate, the essentials of life.’

  She smiled as if she had the whole situation under control.

  ‘That leaves us with the third and final riddle,’ Radjen said. ‘How did you know that your husband would be home at that time?’

  ‘I knew because he told me.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘About ten minutes before he arrived home. He called me from the car.’

  ‘Neither of you mentioned this in your statements.’

  ‘Because nobody asked, Inspector. Is it so strange for a man to call his wife to say he’s almost home?’

  ‘Do you realize, Mrs Lombard, if it turns out you’ve concealed certain things, or that your alibi is a lie, you’re complicit in the crime your husband is suspected of committing?’

  She sighed. ‘All right. You got me.’ She looked at him intently. ‘I didn’t make mint tea that night. It was star anise. Now I think it’s time for you to leave.’

  They drove on winding country roads for a while in silence, while Radjen racked his brains over the life-sized puzzle Melanie Lombard van Velzen had become for him. He’d seen the pain in her dark eyes. What was she hiding from the outside world?

  It was as if Esther could read his thoughts. ‘Don’t you think it’s strange they don’t have children?’

  He thought about it. ‘Lombard isn’t exactly the fatherly type.’

  ‘Maybe in a horror film.’

  ‘Okay, but that’s not the impression I get from her. And I’m not talking about the Melanie Lombard van Velzen we just met, no, perhaps around twenty years ago. Is there something in her medical records?’

  She picked up the folder and began thumbing through it. ‘Those kinds of things are usually not listed, unless it’s a case of … wait … she was involved in a serious accident, eighteen years ago. She spent a long time in rehab.’

  ‘Look into it, okay?’ He glanced at her. ‘Like a ninja.’

  ‘Fine, but what do you hope to find?’

  ‘I don’t know. Besides the fact that she’s probably lying about her alibi, what surprises me most about this woman is her aggressive nature. There are other things she’s hiding as well. Matters, perhaps from the past, things she knows about her husband, but doesn’t want to reveal, or can’t reveal. Something that will bring us one step closer to Lombard.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re not losing it a bit?’

  Esther had lit two cigarettes and given him one. This small but meaningful gesture had quickly become a familiar ritual.

  ‘It’s almost a new moon, you know?’ she said in the same affected tone Melanie Lombard had used. He’d just inhaled, but started laughing. And with this came a billowing of smoke and all his frustration. She laughed along with him.

  ‘When I saw the photos in the hallway,’ she said, ‘I was immediately reminded of what they say about sailors.’

  ‘What photos?’

  ‘A young Melanie at the helm of an extended Jeanneau Gin Fizz ketch.’

  ‘Do you eat that or drink it?’

  ‘It’s a type of sailboat.’

  ‘And what do they say about sailors?’

  ‘That they have a way with rope. Sailors are experts at making a wide variety of knots.’

  He threw her a grin. ‘Speaking of occupational hazards. Perhaps you’re losing it too?’

  ‘More and more, I feel like we’re starting to resemble each other,’ she said, completely serious.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The two of us.’

  ‘Come off it.’

  He had just enough time to take one more drag. Then the phone rang. He heard the voice of Ellen Mulder, the pathologist.

  ‘Meijer’s autopsy waits for no one, not even a chief inspector. How long before you get here, Radjen?’

  8

  ‘Julius Caesar was the first to dispatch his messages encrypted,’ Edward said. ‘He’d developed a simple type of algorithm, a code that was very quickly cracked. Some crazy scientist even claims it was the beginning of the end for mighty Caesar, would you believe it?’


  They were sitting side by side, each with another glass of whisky, both with their eyes glued to the screen of the laptop in the middle of the table in front of them.

  Paul thought of the explanation he and Farah had received from Anya in Moscow, just before they’d parted ways. They’d be sending one another messages that had been ‘locked’ by a digital key. A key, Anya explained to them, was an infinite algorithmic series of figures and other characters that made any form of information unreadable to an outsider. Besides, rather than the single key that was used to encrypt and decrypt data in the outdated symmetrical system, they’d be working with asymmetrical cryptography, which used two keys. Anya would be locking the messages and files she sent to Paul with a public key. But as soon as the communications reached Paul, he’d only be able to open them with his own private key.

  The moment his email buzzed to indicate he’d received a message, Paul put Anya’s lesson into practice for the first time. The ‘encrypted’ symbol lit up red to indicate that the file received was locked. In accordance with Anya’s protocol, he now activated Enigmail, an application in his email program that managed his private key. Then he typed in ‘decrypt’.

  A window popped up, prompting him to type in a password – an additional security measure. When he did so, the outcome flashed on the screen.

  Access denied.

  He looked down at his keyboard, noticed the green light of his ‘caps lock’ key, deactivated it and tried again. He waited.

  The media player was activated and three video files were automatically transferred.

  ‘God almighty,’ Edward sighed. ‘The days of Caesar’s basic algorithm are truly over.’

  Paul took a hurried gulp of his whisky. The opening image of the first file loaded. A wide shot, blurry and from an angle. Paul saw a camera on a tripod. Sitting some three metres before it, handcuffed to a chair, was Farah. Her hair was loose and her black dress ripped up to her waist. She was barefoot and her head was stretched forward, like that of an eagle about to attack. It must have been her fury, wanting to flee, yet knowing she couldn’t move. Beside the camera he saw a second woman. It was the girl he’d seen in the flat – conclusive evidence that it had indeed been her. She was squatting next to the camera, on her knees, with her head down.