To Be Supplied Separately

Hugo had moved the table in front of the windows, blocking the socket unless someone crawled underneath. Sanne noticed this when she plugged in her laptop, looked at Vera, and said that they hadn't started yet and had already got something wrong with the preparations.

‘I can reach it,’ said Vera.

She knelt beside the table. There was an old extension block behind the leg. The cable barely reached. When she stood up again, Sanne had moved the chair so that no one would sit on it with their foot on the cord.

A large, clean support sheet lay on the table. The two boxes stood next to it on a low cabinet. Anouk had brought her own papers and the phone with the photos from Friday. Vera saw that the screen had a small crack at the bottom that she hadn't noticed before. That line wasn't there in the photos taken. For a moment she had to remind herself which piece of glass the line belonged to.

Sanne opened her intake folder. Fifty-six images, front and back sides. Vera had been there for the first comparison. Today they had something they had lacked then. The actual old mounted prints had stayed with Dorus, but their images were on Anouk’s phone with his permission. In a message last night, he had confirmed that they could use them today for this comparison. He wanted an overview afterwards.

‘First, the same order,’ said Anouk.

They transferred her photographs to the screen as arranged. Sanne saved them in a separate folder, not among the images from the first delivery. Then she took the current number nine out of the box. The front showed the same door as on Friday. The piece lay flat on its support. On the back was a large number, otherwise virtually nothing.

Anouk placed the two comparison images side by side. One contained the original note about the door; the other, taken on Friday, showed the same small slanted letters. Sanne looked again at the new mounting board in front of her.

‘Those letters should be here if it were the same piece,’ she said.

She pointed to the empty space, not to the photo. Seeing the photograph together with its old back made Vera think of it as an object, not just an image. The new copy could show exactly the same door and yet be something different.

For number eleven, they needed fewer words. On the intake photo, the brown ring extended across the image and mounting board. On the photo of Dorus's table, too. The copy at the foundation lacked the continuous stain. Sanne did not place it on top of the other pieces to make room, but put it back in the protective cover. She asked Anouk to wait a moment before the next screen.

‘I want to keep the list handy.’

They worked through the numbers one by one. With the second one, a wear mark on a corner was the most obvious; with another, mainly the note on the back. Sanne put a cross next to what they had compared. Anouk corrected her when she ticked the wrong box.

At the last of the seven, Vera looked at the clock above the door. It was still before eleven. They had agreed to meet at half past nine; Yasmin kept the café open until three o'clock. She had time. She didn’t have an entire day she could take for granted at someone else’s expense.

‘And the twenty-one others?’ she asked.

They had already checked those. Anouk wanted to see a few of them again, spread across both boxes. Sanne took them out of the envelopes herself. The photos and backs matched her intake photographs. She put them back in their place. Together they counted the twenty-eight pieces in the two boxes: twenty-one old, seven new. The seven old ones they had seen on Friday were still with Dorus.

Hugo came in with an empty roll from the bin bags. He wanted to change the bin bag and stopped on the threshold when he saw the table.

‘Shall I come back?’

Sanne pointed to the corner behind the door. He could reach it there without passing the prints. He closed the full bag and asked if they still needed the extension lead. She nodded.

Vera asked whether he had been in and out of the room on the Thursday Dorus had prepared the prints. Not whether Dorus had been there alone. Hugo couldn't have known that the first time.

‘In and out,’ he said. ‘Just like I always do here. The door to the storage room sticks, so sometimes I get things this way.’

‘And could anyone else have come in?’

‘If Sanne let someone in. Or me. It’s not a vault.’

Sanne looked at the screen. Hugo asked if they meant that he should have paid attention to who touched what. No, said Vera. They weren’t asking him to pretend, after the event, that he had. He nodded, took the full bag, and didn't pull the door all the way shut. At the end of the hallway, someone started moving chairs.

‘So then it remains possible that someone else put something there,’ said Anouk.

Sanne did not answer immediately. Vera saw that she was taking the sentence personally. She understood: the cupboard, the key, the earlier accusation. Now they had to discuss access again, even though Vera had just told her that she had gone too far.

‘I want to know what he says when he sees this,’ said Anouk. ‘That doesn’t mean I suspect you.’

Sanne stood up and took her own folder out of the cupboard. Vera recognised the pages she had shown earlier. The message to Dorus lay next to the preparation list.

‘I sent this before he came,’ said Sanne. ‘That is what I asked him to do.’

Supply seven reproductions separately. Keep the original set intact. The date was above the message, from before the work session. Anouk read it in its entirety. Further down, it mentioned room to lay out the chosen sequence, and the addition of protective sheets. Nothing authorising him to replace the original prints.

‘Did he respond to that?’ asked Anouk.

Sanne showed the answer directly below. He had confirmed the preparation.

‘Could anything else have been agreed upon after that?’ asked Vera. ‘On the phone, or when he was here?’

Sanne looked her straight in the eye. ‘With me?’

‘Yes. That you did say later that he was allowed to replace them.’

‘No. I didn’t say that.’

She held the folder in front of her. ‘I don’t remember every word from that morning. We talked about the order. And about where he could put his things. But I didn’t ask him to take the old prints away.’

Vera asked if there had been a phone call after the message. Sanne thought for a moment. She looked in her calendar and said that he had asked about the time Hugo would be there. The instructions themselves had not changed.

‘I didn’t check properly what was put back,’ she said. ‘That is what I did. I don’t want us to make it out to mean that I might have asked for it.’

Anouk said they weren’t trying to assume anything. That was why she wanted Sanne’s account alongside the message. Sanne placed the folder on the table. Her face remained tense as she looked at the list.

Vera looked at the new mounted print numbered nine. She pictured the two lots that, according to the list, should have been there at the same time: the twenty-eight registered prints returned, and seven reproductions alongside them. That meant more than the twenty-eight prints now in the boxes.

‘Where should that separate folder have been?’ she asked.

‘Here with the preparation,’ said Sanne. She pointed to the low cabinet. ‘With the list. I didn’t check the contents at the time. I had seen the box and a stack of protective sheets.’

‘But you didn’t receive seven separately?’

‘Not as a separate set, no.’

She took off her glasses. ‘I could also say that he didn’t give it to me. But I didn’t look at everything. That’s exactly why we’re sitting here.’

Vera heard the annoyance she tried to keep to herself. She wanted to tell Sanne that she couldn’t do everything herself. But that wouldn’t answer the question of what should have been checked. Instead, she pushed the list slightly towards the centre so that all three of them could read it.

Dorus had written underneath that the twenty-eight registered prints had been put back and the seven reproductions had been delivered separately. His name was included. In the Friday photos, the seven old prints were in his own work box. Sanne had seven new ones here among the twenty-one others. There was no second group of seven new ones that could pass for a separate folder.

‘If it had happened as described on this sheet,’ said Anouk, ‘you should have had more here than those twenty-eight.’

‘Yes,’ said Sanne.

‘And then he wouldn't have had those old ones in his box.’

Vera looked from the photo of the ring to the list and the message. All three were in front of them now. The seven old mounting boards were with Dorus; what lay here was different from what he had described.

‘He says he made them,’ said Anouk.

Sanne pointed to her original agreement. ‘Then he should have made a different agreement about that. Not signed to say he had put the same ones back.’

She said it more quietly than Vera had expected. Then she put her glasses back on and closed the two boxes. The new pieces remained where they were, clearly marked on the list. They would not throw them away as soon as the old ones were back. Anouk asked whether, once the old prints were handed back, the new ones could be kept separately for comparison. Sanne would record that along with the receipt.

They went to the small kitchenette to get a drink of water. A woman was standing by the tap rinsing a tray and asked if the meeting was going to take much longer. Not because of the room; she needed the trolley of glasses. Sanne said that there were no glasses on their table. The woman looked relieved and wheeled the trolley away with one wheel that kept turning sideways.

At the sink, Anouk picked up her phone. She messaged Dorus, asking him to confirm a meeting on Thursday to discuss what they had found and arrange the return. He would receive today's overview first.

Vera asked what she would do if he didn't show up.

‘Then I’ll take it further with the documents we have,’ said Anouk. ‘I’m not going to agree to another six weeks to look at it later.’

Vera finished her water and took the glass to the counter. She could see her coat hanging from the hallway. Back to the café soon; Thursday was now in her calendar.

Back at the table, they put together the summary for Dorus. Not a report of everything they had thought since the first biscuit tin. The registered set, the seven differences, the seven found, and the original instructions. The delivery via her café was on a separate sheet. Vera only read the lines that concerned her actions and asked for one wording to be changed. It stated that she had never received boxes. She had signed for the one folder. She couldn’t make a statement about never.

Anouk changed the sentence. Sanne checked it and sent the comparison with the agreed-upon images via the channel they used with Dorus.

‘Those two boxes can be handed over here on Friday,’ said Sanne. ‘If we agree on how on Thursday. I’ll reserve the table in advance; we won’t record a handover before it’s happened.’

Anouk wrote down Friday. Her hand lingered briefly over the next line. The negatives and contact sheets from Bente and Otto would still have to follow. She didn't call Bente immediately from the hallway so that everything could happen that same afternoon. She would discuss the terms with her tomorrow.

Vera tidied up the extension block and unplugged the cable. Under the table, she saw the spot where her knee had scraped against the wood that morning. Her trousers were slightly lighter there. When she stood up, Sanne was already busy with the regular room layout. She helped slide one end of the table against the wall. They put the boxes safely in the cupboard before moving the table.

On her bike to the café, she felt her phone vibrate. At the red light, she stopped and looked. Anouk had forwarded that Dorus was available for the appointment on Thursday. He had also asked if she wanted to bring what she considered his contribution. Vera read the message again and put her phone away. The light turned green. She crossed the street and thought of the two photographs he really had taken, among Anouk’s twenty-six.