Angel in the Shadows Read online

  ‘Will do. And listen, Ed, look after your ticker, okay?’

  ‘As if you care.’

  She heard him break the connection, chuckling. She waited for Saputra’s number to appear on her display and keyed it in.

  A suspicious-sounding male voice answered, ‘Hello?’

  ‘Bapak Saputra?’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Edward’s contact.’

  ‘Whose contact?’

  ‘Is this Mr Saputra speaking?’

  A moment’s silence.

  ‘Ini dengannya.’ ‘Yes, speaking.’

  ‘Then you know who I am.’

  Another silence.

  ‘Do you know the Jakarta History Museum, on Taman Fatahillah?’

  ‘No, but I’m sure I’ll find it.’

  ‘Meet me there in two hours’ time. In the room with the deity statues.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  The connection was broken.

  She turned towards the bed, remembering the night and, with surprise, her impulsiveness. Why had she told Aninda all about herself? Why had she trusted her so implicitly?

  After a quick shower, she got dressed in a hurry. Then she gathered up her things, checked nothing was missing, put it all in her rucksack and slung it over her shoulder. She walked to the door and took a deep breath before pushing it open. As soon as she did she had to squeeze her eyes shut against the bright sunshine. Gone was the muted light cast by the moon over the courtyard and the weeping fig. The grey stone walls, the once whitewashed cornices above the windows, the wooden frames, doors and floors – all were being gradually overtaken by mould. The damp was wreaking its destruction, causing the wood to rot away and the walls to crumble.

  Something sharp shot across her feet. Ice-cold water. It splashed up against her legs. A skinny little boy with close-cropped hair in oversized khaki trousers and a faded shirt was washing leaves, dirt and other deposits away with a hosepipe. When he saw her he froze. The hose fell from his hand.

  She picked it up and tried to give it back to him. ‘Di sini, silakan. Pergi.’ ‘Here you are. Carry on.’

  The boy made a run for it, but, since he was barefoot, he slipped on the wet tiles and went down hard. He was quiet for a bit, but then he began to bawl. She helped him to his feet, pulled him close and touched his head.

  ‘Saya minta maaf.’ ‘I’m sorry.’

  He stopped crying surprisingly quickly and looked at her wide-eyed. She smiled. He smiled back shyly through his tears.

  ‘Nama saya Farah.’ ‘My name is Farah. What’s your name?’

  He pressed his face against her chest.

  ‘His name is Rino.’

  Aninda’s voice. Farah turned her head and looked into her cheerful face, her confidence-inspiring eyes.

  ‘I frightened him.’

  ‘You seem to frighten everybody.’

  Aninda took Rino’s face in both hands.

  ‘The hose is gone. Where’s the hose?’

  As if stung by a wasp, the boy looked around and saw the hosepipe wriggling across the tiles, still spewing water. He squirmed out of her grasp and ran towards the hose. As he grabbed hold of it, he slipped again, as if it were getting the better of him, but he scrambled back up with the hose tightly clutched in both fists. Then he scampered away down the tiled gallery, past the earthy-brown walls covered in Disney characters, which he also gave a quick rinse.

  ‘Rino is a rubbish-dump angel,’ Aninda said, as they watched him go. ‘Father unknown, mother killed by TB. From the moment he could walk he’s been scavenging plastic at Jakarta’s biggest landfill. He …’

  Farah saw her expression darken.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Rino is an abused angel. We brought him here a week ago. Now he has a bed to sleep in, but he doesn’t want to go near it. A piece of cardboard on the floor is enough for him. When he sees a bed, he doesn’t think of sleeping softly, like most people, but of pain and humiliation. On more than one occasion he’s been lured to a hotel by men with sweets or money and then raped.’

  She pointed to a large photo of a man Farah recognized: comfort-zone man Baladin Hatta.

  ‘You told me about him last night. You should know that he’s the founder of the Waringin Foundation. Years ago, when he was still a budding lawyer.’

  Farah heard respect and pride in her voice.

  ‘Boys like Rino are invisible their whole lives. They simply don’t exist for the government, because they have no birth certificates. Baladin wants them to be registered and given shelter and schooling. He wants them to get their lives back.’

  Only then did Aninda see that Farah had her rucksack on.

  ‘Are you leaving?’

  ‘Yes, I have an urgent appointment.’

  ‘Where?’

  Farah hesitated. ‘At the Jakarta History Museum. I’m meeting somebody there.’

  ‘Is it to do with what you told me last night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Aninda looked at Farah. ‘Will you come back here afterwards?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’m sorry.’

  Aninda took Farah’s hand in hers. She did it so tenderly it brought tears to Farah’s eyes.

  ‘Before you go, I’d like to introduce you to someone, if you don’t mind.’

  She ushered Farah past a sewing shop where young girls were cutting old batik dresses and trousers into strips. The ancient sewing machines were whirring, and needles whizzed through the fabric. ‘The children who are given shelter here quickly grow out of their clothes. We constantly need new ones.’

  They stopped by a shaded area in the courtyard where a group of women were busy assembling cardboard boxes and filling each with a bottle of cooking oil, two bags of noodles, rice and sugar.

  ‘The flood we had a couple of weeks ago left many poor families in the kampongs all but homeless,’ Aninda explained. ‘Because the government does so little to help, we’re putting together aid packages for them.’

  Farah noticed that the eldest woman in the group, whom she estimated to be at least eighty, immediately stopped working when she spotted them. She came towards them. Her long, silvery-grey hair had been tied into a knot and her smile was practically toothless, and yet she looked as radiant as a young woman when she bowed to Farah with her hands pressed together. It was the greeting used by Pencak Silat fighters to show respect.

  Farah returned the salutation as respectfully as possible.

  ‘This is Satria,’ Aninda said. ‘She was keen to meet you.’

  ‘Kamu sudah datang.’ You’ve come,’ the woman said in a trembling voice. Farah saw that she was moved.

  ‘I’m extremely honoured to meet you, ma’am,’ Farah said, while holding Satria’s hand. ‘But how did you know –’

  ‘She’s about to leave again, Ibu,’ Aninda interrupted her.

  Tears were streaming down the woman’s cheeks.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ibu Satria,’ Farah said, and let go of the woman’s hand.

  ‘Our ways are often unfathomable, especially to ourselves,’ the woman said. ‘Pergilah dalam damai anakku.’ ‘Go in peace, my child.’

  After bowing again, Farah walked off with Aninda.

  ‘It was as if she knew me,’ Farah said. She could feel the woman’s eyes in her back.

  ‘She probably does,’ Aninda replied. ‘Ibu Satria is a woman with special gifts. She’s Baladin Hatta’s grandmother and was the very first person to work for the Waringin Foundation.’

  On their way to the exit, they paused one last time. Farah looked at the weeping fig, and at the old woman standing motionless underneath it in a beam of sunlight.

  ‘You need people you can trust. Don’t you trust me?’ Aninda asked.

  ‘It’s better if I go my own way,’ Farah said. ‘If they find me here, there’ll be repercussions, not just for you, but for everybody here.’

  She gave Aninda a hug.

  Then, without looking back, she walked through the gate, which fell sh
ut behind her with a loud bang.

  10

  For whatever the reason, Radjen found crimes comforting. Perhaps because they were so absolute and allowed him to compensate for his emotional shortcomings. Thinking rationally gave him something to hold on to in life. The greater the unknowns related to an offence, the more compelled he felt to solve it with reasoning.

  He’d already felt close to solving this case a number of times. But he was lost in a labyrinth. Sometimes he thought he’d found his way out, but then fate played a dirty trick on him, hurled him back into dead-end passages. For the first time in a long while, reasoning threatened to let him down. A sense of powerlessness had become a part of his daily routine.

  Hopefully Thomas Meijer’s autopsy would provide some new leads. Was it really suicide or was it, as Esther had suggested, all a set-up? And even if it was suicide, then he still had some doubt about Meijer’s motives. Because a man about to move to another country with his wife to be reunited there with their foster child surely doesn’t take his own life.

  Given the suspicious circumstances under which Thomas Meijer had hanged himself, or been hanged, it was only logical that a court-ordered autopsy be done. Normally, the Public Prosecutor commissioned the Netherlands Forensic Institute, but the situation was far from normal and Radjen had managed to prevent this. After the débâcle of files disappearing from Lombard’s hard drive and the subsequent explosion at Nationwide Forensics, he’d arranged for Meijer’s autopsy to be done by a pathologist independent of the police: Ellen Mulder. He’d received little resistance to this choice. Mulder had done another autopsy for this case, namely on the paediatrician Danielle Bernson.

  He walked the long corridor with Esther. The sound of a symphony orchestra drifted in their direction. Esther looked at him questioningly.

  ‘Ellen Mulder always has classical music on in her office,’ he said. Radjen knew she listened to it even while doing autopsies. She’d once told him it was her salvation. While clinically observing and analysing death in one room, there was this continuous counterbalance in the other room: the sound of life.

  It had been some time since Radjen had seen Ellen. She’d returned to work six months earlier after having taken disability leave because she was suffering from depression. Her husband, a criminal lawyer, had abandoned her for a woman twenty years younger. For the fifty-year-old Ellen, who already practised a profession that required the utmost in emotional stability, it had been the final blow. The break-up of her marriage pushed her into a black hole. Radjen had visited her a few times in that period, something she had greatly appreciated. Sitting behind her Steinway grand piano, her favourite spot at home, she told him about the voices in her head, voices that constantly reminded her that she had to be better than everyone else, because otherwise she didn’t count for anything. Voices that cried she was too fat, too old and unattractive. She’d managed to silence those voices again.

  As they neared Ellen’s office and the music was clearly audible, Radjen couldn’t help but think of the accusation Melanie Lombard had hurled at him. That he didn’t exhibit much empathy and that it might be good for him to listen to a good piece of music on occasion. As it turned out, Ellen Mulder had once invited him to go to a concert with her, and he’d accepted. Afterwards they drank a glass of wine and he brought her home. But finding his own way home was another story. Music, like emotion, was more powerful than he was. Believing that it was raining, he turned on the windscreen wipers. Until he realized he couldn’t see the road because of his streaming tears.

  When they walked into the room, Ellen Mulder was already waiting for them. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and her shoulder-length, ash-blonde hair was elegantly pulled back. She’d lost weight. Her eyes were a clear shade of grey-blue, and her slightly mocking smile was rather engaging. The expression of an intelligent woman who knew the dark side of life through and through and had opted for the light. You saw it in how she dressed: a white cotton blouse trimmed with floral lace underneath a matching dress. Vanity wasn’t one of Ellen’s character traits. She wore what she felt comfortable in, but always looked stylish.

  He saw her hesitate at first, because he was with someone she didn’t know, and not follow her impulse to give him a kiss on each cheek instead of an extended hand. But one glance at Esther was apparently more than enough to put her at ease and Radjen was warmly greeted in the usual manner.

  ‘Good to see you again, Radjen, even if you kept a woman waiting,’ Ellen said.

  Radjen felt the tension that had built up in his body while questioning Melanie Lombard fall away.

  ‘You look good, Ellen.’

  ‘I wish I could say the same for you,’ Ellen said. ‘You look exhausted.’ As charming as she was, she wore her heart on her sleeve. She turned to welcome Esther. ‘I’d appreciate it if you kept a close eye on him.’

  ‘I will,’ Esther said, and introduced herself. From the way Ellen shook Esther’s hand, he saw that she immediately liked her, and apparently the feeling was mutual.

  ‘The last time we saw each other was at a concert,’ she told Esther as she looked sideways at Radjen. ‘I haven’t seen him since. Do you like classical music?’

  ‘It’s not really my first choice, ‘Esther said.

  ‘No matter, it’s certainly mine,’ Ellen said. ‘These are the Enigma Variations by Edward Elgar. There’s a wonderful story behind this piece. In each variation, Elgar created a musical portrait of a friend. But I’d better stop talking about music or I’ll be going on and on about it all night. Because we’re late getting started, best we immediately get down to it. Shall we, Radjen?’

  Before he could answer, she led them to a room where they donned green surgeons’ scrubs. Then she brought them to the DNA-sterile autopsy room. Thomas Meijer’s naked body was already laid out on a two-metre-long dissecting table. The exhaust, which absorbed odours and dust through its small holes, hummed softly. Special scalpels, forceps, tweezers and a saw were lying beside the body. Radjen and Esther officially confirmed that it was Thomas Meijer lying there; he could tell from Esther’s body language that she felt uncomfortable. He knew only too well that looking at a corpse at a crime scene was not the same as watching a dead body being split open and stripped of most of its organs. No matter who you were, you never really got used to it.

  ‘Do you want to take the pictures?’ he asked Esther.

  She nodded.

  ‘Do you mind if my colleague takes the photos?’ he asked Ellen, who was instructing her assistant.

  Ellen looked at him in surprise. She glanced at Esther, understood the problem and asked her assistant to give Esther the camera. The first thing Esther did was to take a full-length photo of what was now only the shell of a man. During their research they’d discovered that Meijer, once an ambitious student, had trained to be a pastry chef and then worked as a kitchen porter in a variety of restaurants. Later he’d opened up his own place by the sea in Scheveningen. It went wrong from there. In every possible way. Meijer wasn’t flexible enough; he couldn’t handle the competition; he had difficulties supervising his kitchen staff. Eventually he went bankrupt. After training to be a taxi driver, he worked for nearly six years for City Tax in The Hague. With that job his modesty and accommodating nature came in useful for the first time. He was the perfect man behind the wheel, someone with an unobtrusive character. The personification of anonymity. He was lent out to ministries by his company, until he was dispatched to Economic Affairs. There he became one of three chauffeurs who drove Ewald Lombard around the country each day. The job that seemed perfect for him would ultimately land him on a cold metal table, just another body.

  Radjen had read the transcript of Meijer’s interrogation and listened to the recording countless times, attempting to determine whether he was telling the whole truth. Radjen had no doubts. Meijer wasn’t a criminal but rather a coward who’d taken the idea of following orders too far. Similar to subjects in the experimental research carried out by the social psy
chologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s at Yale University. The people in that study had been prepared to administer a severe electric shock to co-participants who gave an incorrect answer, simply because it was ordered by a professor.

  While Radjen knew there were plenty of people just like Meijer out there, he was happy to have to deal only with the one now lying in front of him, lifeless and naked, ready to be dissected.

  Ellen Mulder began the autopsy with an extensive examination of Meijer’s body. She indicated every finding aloud so it would be recorded via the microphones in the room. The software system saved the information as an interim report, which could be printed out right after the autopsy.

  ‘Red dot-shaped discolorations on the face, in the eyes and to the back of the ears, indicating an accumulation of blood. Multiple abrasions to the skin on the front and sides of the neck.’

  Despite the clinical way in which she stated her findings, she was captivating, like someone giving a presentation to a rapt audience. That was because of her warm, clear voice. Radjen recalled the time he was about to knock on her door unannounced, but stopped when he heard singing coming from the house: she was accompanying herself on the piano. He almost reached for the bell, but thought twice about interrupting her, turned and drove away again.

  ‘A slight discoloration of the skin around the throat, extending horizontally along the neck. Possibly as a result of impact from external mechanical compression, strangulation. Inside upper lip: small area with dark-red coloration indicating damaged tissue.’

  After she’d extensively inspected the chest, arms, abdomen, pelvis and legs and the abrasions on Meijer’s heels, at Ellen Mulder’s request, her assistant rolled the body on its stomach. Ellen’s first statement got Radjen’s immediate attention.

  ‘A small bruise at the base of the neck, possibly caused by a hypodermic needle.’

  After Esther had documented this with a photo, Radjen came closer and leaned forward to look through the magnifying glass that Ellen was holding above the neck. He saw a minuscule black hole, which would have likely gone undetected by the naked eye.