Death at the Orange Locks Read online

  ‘And you’re in charge at the moment?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll look after the products, the purchasing and manufacturing, and Karin is in charge of the finances.’

  ‘Karin?’

  ‘Karin Lems. She’s our admin assistant really but she deals with the invoices and with payroll.’

  ‘We’d better have a chat with her too.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Sure, why not?’

  Nico got up from his chair, happy to be released. ‘Let me fetch her. And if you have any further questions, give me a call.’ He handed both me and Charlie one of his cards.

  Karin was one of those women who would get invoices paid because everybody was too scared to ignore her. She looked like a retired drill sergeant, with short white hair cropped close to her skull and dangly triangular earrings. Even before she opened her mouth, I knew that her accent would be pure Amsterdam.

  ‘I worked with Patrick for almost fifteen years,’ she said without waiting for me to speak. ‘He was a good boss and I don’t know what you’re doing here.’

  ‘We’re here because Patrick was murdered,’ I replied calmly, ‘and we have to investigate all areas of his life.’

  ‘There isn’t much to investigate here,’ she said.

  ‘Nico told me that you’re in charge of all the finances.’

  ‘I do the invoicing, payments and payroll. That’s it. I’m not an accountant.’

  ‘Was there anything out of the ordinary recently?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Bills that were unpaid? Large invoices?’

  ‘No, everything was normal. We pay all our bills. Sometimes our clients are a month or so late, but that’s nothing unusual.’

  ‘You said Patrick was a good boss?’

  ‘Yes, otherwise I wouldn’t have stayed here for years.’

  ‘People here got on?’ Charlie asked.

  Karin’s eyes swerved from mine to his. ‘We got on. We still get on.’

  ‘I believe there are seventeen employees?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  I looked down at the business card in my hand. ‘It says here that Nico is lead designer. What does that mean?’

  ‘He designs the products. Creates the lights, draws what the clients want.’

  ‘And then you make them?’

  ‘Here? No, of course not.’ Her voice indicated that I must be an idiot. ‘We create the specs and then get them made in China. There’s no way we could do it here. That would be far too expensive.’

  ‘And then they get shipped back here from China?’ Charlie said.

  ‘That’s right. Shipped here or directly to the client, depending on what the timescale is like. If it’s a rush order, it goes straight to the client. We like for them to come here so that we can check them, but there’s not always enough time for that.’

  ‘So Patrick was … ?’

  ‘He was the managing director.’

  ‘What exactly did he do? On a day-to-day basis, I mean.’

  ‘Talk to important clients, find new factories to build products for us.’

  ‘What do the seventeen people here do?’

  ‘Why didn’t you ask Nico that?’

  Because the more I heard about the company, the less I understood it. I thought it best not to tell Karin that. ‘I’m asking you,’ I said.

  ‘Four people in sales, two in admin – including myself – three designers, two customer support consultants, one IT support.’ She counted off on her fingers as she spoke. ‘Two in outsourcing, one marketing manager and two account managers. That’s it.’

  ‘Account managers? What do they do?’ It was a good thing I’d never worked in a commercial company. At least in the police force we mostly had job titles that made sense.

  ‘They make sure the product arrives at the right place at the right time and that the client is happy with what they get.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Because we want them to order from us again.’

  ‘Of course.’ I felt out of my depth. ‘Did you go to the company dinner last week?’

  ‘No, that was for sales and designers only. Admin never get invited.’

  ‘I thought you said Patrick was a good boss?’

  ‘Not having to go to a company dinner is no hardship. I have better things to do with my evenings than spend them with my colleagues.’

  ‘Didn’t you say everybody got on?’ Charlie said. I liked that he’d picked up on that. If nothing else, interviewing this woman would give him more experience. He was doing well, I thought.

  ‘Getting on and wanting to spend your spare time with them as well are two different things.’

  ‘Did you know Patrick’s family?’

  ‘I think his wife came here once. Or maybe twice. And then his son-in-law showed up the other day. Patrick introduced him to everybody.’

  ‘That was before the company dinner?’

  ‘That’s right. The dinner was for the important people to get to know him better.’

  The way Karin said ‘important people’ made it clear that she wasn’t part of that group and was unhappy about it, whatever she might have claimed before. It made me wonder if calling Patrick a good boss wasn’t purely a wish not to speak ill of the dead.

  ‘Was Patrick in the office a lot?’ I was asking random questions because I didn’t have any idea what I was actually looking for. I could only hope that one of them would elicit some sort of proof that the company was entirely unrelated to the MD’s death so that I could then do something else. Something to do with another investigation entirely.

  ‘Yes, of course. He came in first thing and often left late. He worked hard, but it was tough. We had to do more and more bespoke projects and I know the margins aren’t the same. The real money is in the projects where you can just tweak a design a bit and resell it, but there haven’t been many of those.’

  ‘What did people think about his son-in-law coming to work here?’

  ‘If he could help us, then why not?’

  ‘Nobody was annoyed about it?’

  ‘Not that I heard.’

  ‘Okay, so Patrick was a good boss, there are no money issues and everybody likes each other.’ Charlie summed up.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What do you think is going to happen now?’ I asked.

  ‘Who’s going to run the company, you mean?’

  I nodded.

  Karin laughed. ‘How would I know? I’d be the last person to find that out.’

  I brought the interview to a close. That had been utterly pointless. On the way out, I had a look at the other people working here. They were a mixed bunch in terms of age and gender. A pretty girl with long dark hair stood up. Karin gave a small shake of her head and the girl sat back down.

  I addressed the room. ‘If anybody has any information that might help us find Mr van der Linde’s murderer, please get in touch. My name is Detective Lotte Meerman and this is my colleague Detective Charlie Schipper. I’ll leave some cards here with our phone numbers. Please call us.’ I put the cards down on the desk at the front. I had no expectation that anybody was going to call me.

  Karin walked us out.

  ‘Who was the woman who stood up?’ Charlie asked. I wasn’t surprised that he’d noticed her.

  ‘Oh, Therese? She wanted to talk to me about invoicing. It’s nothing.’

  Chapter 10

  ‘Can I get you a coffee?’ Charlie said as we left the building and were walking along the water’s edge back towards where the car was parked. ‘I need to talk to you about something.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Coffee’s always good.’

  We went to the same place I’d been to yesterday with Thomas, but a day of sunshine had transformed it. Instead of only having the smallish indoor space, the café could now seat twice as many people, as they’d opened the terrace too.

  ‘In or out?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘Oh, outside, of course.’ Who kn
ew how long this weather was going to last?

  As he went inside to order the drinks, I chose the table closest to the café building so that we’d be sheltered from the wind. I had to keep my coat on, but I unzipped it and took my scarf off. I stared out over the water and watched the shifting cloud formations, forced together by the wind and then torn apart again. I had a feeling that Charlie wanted to talk to me about working more closely with Thomas. Only a few months ago, the two of them had been archenemies. Thomas hadn’t been keen on Charlie joining our team and hadn’t been shy about letting everybody know. But as Charlie had slowly proved himself to be a useful team member, the animosity between the two of them had diminished to the point where they were almost friendly. They were never going to be best mates, but they no longer disliked each other. For the atmosphere in the office, this was a big step up.

  Charlie came back carrying our drinks. My cappuccino had chocolate sprinkled on the top. The good thing about having worked together for a few months was that he knew exactly how I liked my coffee. To be honest, as long as it had caffeine in it, I was happy to drink it. With my old boss, I had always discussed work at the coffee machine, and it seemed that I had passed this habit on to anybody who worked with me subsequently. Anybody who wanted to get on my good side, at least.

  ‘They’re forecasting eighteen degrees for tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘Eighteen? In March? That’s crazy. I want winter to feel like winter and spring to start later.’ But I didn’t mean that really. I enjoyed these early rays of sunshine as much as everybody else. It just felt precarious, as if at any moment the weather could turn again, snatch away those precious moments of spring and dump us back into winter’s darkness. I was getting better at simply enjoying the sunshine when it was here instead of worrying about tomorrow’s rain again, though that didn’t mean I’d stop carrying the precautionary umbrella.

  Charlie picked up his cup and looked out over the water. ‘It’s a bit awkward,’ he said.

  I wanted to tell him to get on with it. Being traded in by a work colleague for someone more useful was just like getting dumped. And like ending a relationship, it was best to do it quickly.

  ‘I don’t know who else to speak to. I could ask my mum, but that would be even more embarrassing than asking you.’

  My coffee went down the wrong way and I coughed violently. ‘You want to talk to me about something you can’t even ask your mum?’

  He blushed. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ He put his cup down. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. Forget it.’

  ‘No,’ I said with a grin in my voice. ‘You can’t stop there. You want some advice on something. I’m intrigued. Tell me more.’

  ‘This was a bad idea.’

  Yup, he was right. But there was no way I was going to let him off the hook now. ‘You’ve come this far,’ I said. ‘You might as well tell me. You’ve bought me a coffee and that entitles you to …’ I looked at my watch, ‘exactly thirty-three minutes of female help with whatever issues you have.’

  He stared at me, and I smiled sweetly back. ‘You know that all women think in the same way,’ I said, ‘so how can I help? Do you have girlfriend problems? I’m sure I’m able to read her mind perfectly.’

  ‘I should have asked my mum,’ Charlie said. ‘She would have been less sarcastic.’

  ‘Yup. But you didn’t. Tell me first, and if you don’t like my response, you can always ask your mum for a second opinion.’

  ‘My girlfriend wants us to move in together.’

  I waited, but he didn’t say anything else. ‘That’s it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You need to give me more details.’ I realised I didn’t know much about him at all. I wasn’t someone to ask about people’s private lives. For all I knew, Charlie could still be living with his mum and he wanted my advice on how to tell her that his girlfriend was moving in with them. Surely not, though. He was too old to be still living with his mum. He had to be thirty at least. He’d worked in the traffic department for almost a decade before joining us.

  ‘What kind of details do you want?’ he asked.

  ‘You don’t live with your parents, do you?’

  ‘God, no!’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘How old do you think I am?’

  ‘What does age have to do with it?’ I said to avoid the question. ‘Your parents could have a huge house and you could live in an annexe for all I know.’

  ‘My parents live in Veere in a bungalow and I live in a flat here.’

  This was going to take forever. ‘Explain the problem to me.’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  ‘No, not to me. Is your flat too small for the two of you?’ ‘It’s not that. I’m not sure I want to live with her.’

  ‘Ah, I see. It’s too big a commitment?’

  ‘No, I really love her and I want us to be together.’

  If he didn’t get on and tell me what the issue was, I thought I might explode. ‘Just too soon?’

  ‘No, we’ve been seeing each other for a couple of years.’

  Then what? I wanted to scream. What is the problem? ‘So why don’t you want to live with her?’

  He leaned forward and whispered, ‘She’s really tidy.’

  I was impressed with myself for keeping a straight face. ‘And I’m guessing you’re not?’

  ‘Right. She’s only ever been to my place once, because it’s a tip. And I’d hired a cleaner beforehand. She still thought it was a mess.’

  I bit my lip to stop myself from laughing. ‘It’s a serious choice between your relationship and your lifestyle as a major slob. I understand now.’

  ‘Are you laughing at me?’

  I gave up any pretence and allowed my grin to show. ‘Yes. Yes, I’m laughing at you. Sorry.’ ‘I should have asked my mum.’

  ‘She would have told you to go tidy your room.’

  ‘It’s not funny.’

  ‘It is funny. You’re willing to risk your relationship because you don’t want to clean your flat.’

  ‘You don’t understand. She’s a total neat-freak. She bought this book by Marie Kondo and has colour-coordinated bookshelves. All her T-shirts are folded in exactly the same shape. She says I own too much junk and should throw out anything that doesn’t give me joy. It drives me nuts!’

  ‘She won’t have many boxes to move into yours, then.’

  ‘It’s not the moving. It’s the ongoing. I’d be okay throwing stuff out, but I don’t know if I could live with equally folded T-shirts and necessary joyfulness all the time.’

  ‘I get it.’ I drank the rest of my coffee. ‘I’ll be serious for a moment and give you sensible advice. You need to decide what’s easier to live without: your messy lifestyle or your girlfriend. That’s the choice you’re making. Now that she’s brought up living together, there’s no chance of things staying the way they are. You’re either going to move in together or you’re going to split up. You need to decide which one you prefer.’

  ‘I knew I should have talked to my mum,’ Charlie said. ‘You’re too logical.’

  I was still grinning when my phone rang. It was Karin, the finance person. She wanted to talk to me. In private.

  Chapter 11

  ‘They asked me to speak to you,’ Karin said. ‘And I thought it would be best to do it without your colleague there. I’m not happy about this, but it’s better that I do it than one of them. They said that if I didn’t, they would.’ She scratched at the grey stubble at the back of her head. ‘They would exaggerate anyway.’

  We were sitting at a table in a bar and restaurant close to their office called the Clipper. The place was large, and pretty much empty, and it was a good spot to have a chat. I had ordered a bitter lemon – there was a limit to how much coffee even I could drink – but Karin had said she needed something alcoholic to get her through this and had asked for a glass of white wine.

  ‘I was so upset when I heard that Patrick had died. I’d worked with him for f
ifteen years. I was there in the early years, before Nico had even joined.’ Her eyes glazed over with unshed tears that she pre-emptively rubbed away with the back of her hand. ‘That’s why I didn’t want to talk to you about the rumours. I didn’t think it was right. But they forced me to. They came to me after you’d left your card and asked me if it wasn’t relevant. Well, I don’t think it is, but I should tell you about it anyway.’

  I got my notebook out. ‘Tell me about what?’

  ‘He was of a different generation. He didn’t think there was anything wrong with putting an arm around someone’s shoulders.’

  I could tell where this one was going.

  ‘Women these days are oversensitive,’ Karin continued. ‘They complain about anything. We never made a fuss about things like that.’

  ‘Did he harass someone?’

  ‘One of the sales girls complained last year. She left, but her figures were terrible anyway, so I think she was making it all up.’

  ‘And he would put his arm around her?’

  ‘I think she didn’t like being touched. She had issues. You can’t blame him for that.’

  I wondered if Karin had been in love with him; she was defending him so earnestly. ‘Is that what your colleagues asked you to tell me?’ She had probably volunteered to talk to me, since the truth might well be nastier than what she was indicating.

  ‘Yes. Well, kind of.’ She pulled on one of her dangling earrings.

  ‘There was something more recent,’ I said. It wasn’t even a question.

  ‘This girl Therese, the one you saw in the office, she also works in sales. The other girl used to get upset, but Therese didn’t mind. She flirted with him. I saw her do it, and he flirted back. That was all there was to it, until she started to go out with Fabrice, our IT guy. It wasn’t Therese who was uncomfortable with Patrick, it was Fabrice.’ She nodded energetically, her earrings rocking back and forth.

  ‘Therese asked you to talk to me?’

  ‘She didn’t exactly ask me …’

  ‘You wanted to be the one who told me this.’