A Cold Death in Amsterdam (Lotte Meerman Book 1) by Anja de Jager Page B

segment of her ring finger was covered by a square-cut blue stone in a golden setting. ‘Has any . . . new evidence come to light?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes,’ Stefanie said. ‘We’ve had some new information. It’s too early to disclose what it is.’
    Karin’s face turned itself into a mask. Nothing moved, not a muscle around her lips, not a blink of an eye. Even the lines on her forehead smoothed themselves out. She looked at me. Her eyes, deep blue as the sapphire on her finger, narrowed between the crow’s feet. ‘Sorry, but I thought you were from the Financial Fraud department.’
    ‘I am,’ Stefanie said. ‘Detective Meerman is from CID.’
    ‘I see.’ Her eyes slid from me to Stefanie.
    ‘Could you please tell us your version of events on the evening your husband died,’ Stefanie said.
    ‘Anything in particular? Or would you like me to tell you all the minutiae?’ Karin raised an eyebrow.
    ‘Your movements in the afternoon.’
    ‘I can’t remember all of them.’ She tipped her head sideways a little at the end of the sentence.
    ‘You drove to the prison . . .’ Stefanie prompted. She moved forward and I had to stretch my upper body to its full length to keep Karin in view.
    ‘Otto had asked me to pick him up at five o’clock in front of the prison.’
    ‘He called you?’
    ‘As soon as his release date was decided.’ She scrolled the trackball on the front of her BlackBerry again, clicked on an email and read it.
    ‘You expected that?’
    ‘Yes. I always thought he’d want me to drive him home.’ Her eyes hadn’t left the device.
    ‘OK. So you drove to the prison,’ Stefanie said.
    Karin was silent. She let it last.
    Stefanie was the first to fill the gap. ‘What time did you get there?’
    Karin smiled at her BlackBerry and put it back on the table. ‘I got there before five – a quarter to, ten to, something like that – and waited for him. I sat there for half an hour and still he wasn’t out. So I went up to the prison, to talk to the warden. Still no sign of Otto. Then the warden spoke to one of his colleagues, who told us my husband had been released just after four. He had apparently got in a cab and left.’
    ‘Were you angry? Annoyed?’
    Karin unfolded her hands and used the right one to tuck some strands of blonde hair behind her ear. ‘No, I wasn’t angry.’ She looked Stefanie straight in the eye. ‘I thought something had come up and he hadn’t been able to contact me.’
    Stefanie nodded. ‘A change of plan.’
    ‘Exactly.’
    ‘He could have called?’
    ‘I assumed he’d phoned the house.’
    ‘And had he?’
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘Was there a message on your answerphone when you got home?’
    ‘Otto was dead when I got home.’ Her voice purely stated the facts. She might as well have told us it was raining. She caressed the double string of pearls that fitted closely around her neck, probably to hide some slackness in the skin.
    ‘But was there a message on the answerphone?’
    I watched this game between Stefanie and Karin. What was truth after all this time? Could anybody still remember exactly what they’d done, felt or seen after ten years?
    ‘No, there was no message.’
    Had she been angry then? Unless she had changed a lot in the ten years since his death, this wasn’t a woman to keep waiting. Had she been glad of the delay, perhaps? Glad for the extra time it gave her, to consider how she was going to tell him she was leaving him? Postponing the moment she had to tell him of her affair? In my mind I pictured her inside that car, waiting outside the prison. Nervous but controlled. He’d asked her to be there, so she was there, doing her duty. It rained – drops like tears falling on the car and streaming down the windows. She didn’t want to be there: surely she was wishing she was somewhere else, anywhere else.
    ‘So now, knowing there wasn’t a message, why do you think Otto asked you to pick him up?’
    Karin let her eyes rest on the