Back when Fetty had given birth, Koos was a merchant marine. Had Felix and Dirk ever heard of Bandar Abbas? A port city on the Persian Gulf. Hell itself couldn’t be hotter or grungier. When his ship docked there, he’d found a letter from his sister waiting with the news. It was months before he was back in Holland and got the story straight from his sister’s mouth.
“No kid and no money. They just kicked her to the curb, that fucking doctor and his fucking son. Stick your dick inside some dumb little girl, blame her for everything, and then take away her baby.”
He’d shown up at the doctor’s door and convinced the man to give Fetty two thousand guilders. Then they’d be done with each other forever. The only condition was Fetty had to come collect the payment herself.
“And she wouldn’t do it. Said it was blood money. I tried to talk her into it, but she flat-out refused. We could have shared it: a thousand guilders for her, a thousand for me. But forget about it. I should have choked the little cunt then.”
“But you waited almost forty years to do it,” said Felix.
“I always been able to look out for myself. I didn’t need her.”
“You got two years’ room and board from us,” Dirk said. “And the way I see it, pretty soon the state’ll be takin’ care of you again. Only I don’t think you’ll be sluggin’ down any more expensive whiskey for a while.”
Koos ignored the remark. “She won the lottery, she told me. And now she was gonna find her little boy.”
“The little boy you told her was dead?”
“Like I know if he’s alive or dead? But what else could have happened to him? She never heard a peep out of him, all those years. Wouldn’t you go look up your real mother, if it was you? Wouldn’t you? All she had to do was set some of the dough aside for me. But no, not her. Just show me the money, I said. Show me the ticket. It wasn’t none of my business, she said. You’d think she was scared I’d steal it. And then she started screaming I should get out. She wouldn’t even give me a damn drink.” He looked hungrily at Dirk, who was holding the bottle, and Dirk in turn looked at Felix. Who nodded.
“Okay,” said Dirk, “one more. Call it your last meal.”
While Koos drank, the two detectives left him alone.
“So now what?” said Dirk, once they had parked and gotten out of the car. “We’re supposed to believe the sister was still alive when he left?”
“He choked her,” said Felix. “He admits it, we both heard him say so. And his sister’s dead, no doubt about that. I say we arrest him on suspicion of manslaughter, book him, and charge him. The rest’s up to the court. Let’s go.”
“What about the neighbor?”
“He’ll testify he saw the brother leaving the apartment.”
Dirk glanced down at the bottle he was still holding. “And the whiskey?”
“Dirk, you’ve been a cop longer than me. The man confessed. He won’t complain we let him wet his whistle. The whiskey doesn’t come into it. Hand it over.”
Felix took it and poured it down the gutter, then tossed the empty bottle in a trash can, along with Dirk’s glass.
“What a crying shame,” said Dirk.
Felix knew it wasn’t just the liquor that was worth crying over, but he kept that thought to himself.
The lottery money had been paid out in five-hundred-euro notes. They were spread out on Felix’s kitchen table, a hundred of them. He gathered them together in a nice neat stack. It wasn’t his money, but whose was it? Did he now have a claim on it? He sighed and put the bills back in the safe with his gun.
He could have used a shot of whiskey, but all he had in the fridge was a bottle of Coke Zero.
“Here’s to you, Fetty,” he said aloud, standing at his front window and raising a glass to the darkened apartment across the street. He was still thinking about the money.
He remembered a song his grandmother used to sing: Money isn’t happiness — at least it isn’t yet — but the more of it you gather, well, the closer you can get...
He realized that he was humming the tune. He reopened his gun safe and spread the bills out again on the table.
The television was on, and he looked up from the money to see an ad for the new Seat Ateca. Was that a sign from above?
The money’s rightful owner was dead. She didn’t seem to have left a will, so her estate — such as it was — would go to her legal heirs. No way that would be the son she’d given up for adoption, even if the boy — a man now, somewhere in his forties — was still alive. And the courts would disinherit the brother who had very probably been responsible for her death. Who did that leave? There was no written record of Fetty’s agreement with Felix. He had bought the lottery ticket, and he had cashed it in.
He sighed, once again piled up the fifty thousand euros, and locked them away.
“Fetty, I’m going to drink a whiskey in your memory after all,” he announced, taking his jacket from the coatrack. They carried Highland Park in the café up the street. He knew that from personal experience.
Maybe he’d just leave the money where it was for a while. Sometimes problems solve themselves, if you let them sit. Of course he knew better, but for now he was in no mood to go on thinking about it.
He pulled his apartment door shut behind him and headed down the stairs. The Westertoren’s carillon began to play. The bells tolled for everyone, but in Felix’s mind they rang for one old woman in particular.
The Stranger Inside Me
by Loes den Hollander
Central Station
Monday
Ted Bundy came again last night.
Ted always comes around midnight on Sundays, every other week for a year now. He says I’m his friend, his best friend. I’m proud of that. It’s great to finally have a friend.
Mother says I have to take a shower. She says she can smell me, and that other people will say I stink and blame her. Mother’s been nagging me more and more lately. She says I eat too many eggs. Eggs are bad for my cholesterol, according to her. The blood vessels in my brain will get all sludgy. She also wants me to go back to getting my meds by injection, because the pill I’m supposed to take every week is bad for my stomach. I don’t like needles, and the pills never actually get to my stomach. I don’t need them anyway, but try explaining that to someone who believes God knows best and medication can make the negative thoughts in your head disappear.
Mothers. There ought to be a law.
Against mothers and caseworkers.
I can’t stand anybody who has anything to do with the psychiatric profession. They think they know everything about your mental ability, they label you without any idea who you really are, they ask questions and arrange your answers in their spreadsheets, and — presto! — they slap you with a diagnosis you carry around for the rest of your life. And of course you’re stuck with them for the rest of your life too.
Caseworkers should all be exterminated.
My mission is scheduled for this Thursday. The woman will be wearing a short brown leather jacket, a tight black skirt, black stockings, and high-heeled black boots. She’ll have long blond hair, and here’s the important thing: it’ll be parted in the middle. Ted really made a point about that middle parting.
The place: Amsterdam’s Central Station, track 13B. The time: Thursday, between 11:30 a.m. and 2:37 p.m. Not one minute sooner, not one minute later.
Ted knows he can count on me.