Daan on the Other Side

Daan asked her to meet him at the cycle racks behind the music school. At four he had to start with a group playing together for the first time. Hester asked why he did not want to meet inside. He said there were pupils everywhere, and he did not even know their names yet. A good reason, she thought, until she saw him waiting outside, facing the water.

He was carrying a paper bag with a roll he had bought on the way. He offered her half. She said she had eaten, although lunch had amounted to two rusks from Fleur's cupboard.

'I called Ellen,' he said.

Hester stayed beside her bicycle. 'Really?'

'I couldn't get her straight away. I left my number. I want to tell you first what I'm going to say, because I made things worse yesterday.'

She wanted to ask whether Robin knew. She held back. He had begun by saying what he intended to do. She could ask him to contact Robin directly afterwards, but she could not collect every word on her behalf.

Daan set the bag on his bicycle rack. 'I saw Ruben come onto the path. That evening. From the gate at De Werf. Not just somewhere nearby. He came out of the yard and turned right, along the water.'

'Where were you?'

'Further along. By the bench that used to be there. There's one of those fibre-optic cabinets there now. I was smoking. Brecht hated it, so I did it outside.'

'Did you speak to him?'

'No. He didn't look at me. I thought, good, he's pissing off.'

Hester heard the ugly word and recognised something unpolished for the first time. Ruben had argued with Brecht; they had discussed that on Tuesday. Daan had wanted to defend Brecht and had disliked Ruben. Letting him walk away had been a choice he could feel satisfied with at the time.

'Did you know what they'd argued about?'

'I'd heard bits. He thought she'd promised him something about a job. She thought he wasn't listening. It wasn't about your mother.'

Hester looked at the school's glass door. Inside hung a sheet of lesson times, handwritten amendments beside a cancelled afternoon. She thought of Brecht wanting to leave, with too little money and too many people expecting things of her. Not every clash in her final week had to be reduced to the same argument.

Daan took his phone from his coat pocket and laid it on the bag. 'After that I went back towards the gate. I didn't want to go straight in. I was angry. I wanted her to come looking for me. I'm more ashamed of that than the smoking.'

'Did you hear anything?'

'Not clearly. I know Ruben came back later. There was shouting inside by then. But whether I heard a bang or only a voice afterwards, I honestly can't separate those any more.'

Hester thought of his answer on Tuesday, that he knew nothing for certain. This time he named something he did know and left the rest alone. She asked whether he remembered a time. He shook his head at once.

'I was wearing a watch. That's not the same as having looked at it. Lessons here start at a set time. That evening didn't.'

She was glad he had not rewarded her question. Everything in her wanted to gather minutes, a clear line from gate to stairs, from Ruben to the place where he had not been. For a moment Tessa's photograph had tempted her to think she could reconstruct the entire evening. But an outdoor picture could not supply a second it did not contain.

'Why didn't you say?' she asked.

Daan lifted his bag as a boy parked his bicycle beside his. He greeted the boy by his surname, then corrected himself with his first name. They waited until the school door closed.

'I did say he'd been out,' Daan replied. 'But not clearly. I made it sound as though it could have been after the fall. Nobody kept asking about it at the time, as far as I know. Later I told myself they must have written it down.'

'You could have checked, couldn't you? Or asked?'

'Yes.'

He opened the paper bag. The roll was wrapped in a second serviette. He folded back both layers, looked at it and folded them shut again.

'I wanted him to lose something,' he said. 'Brecht was dead. Robin was with Else. People were cooking meals and putting notes through my door, and no one could tell me what I was supposed to do now. Ruben could go to work. I couldn't bear that.'

'You didn't know what he'd lost.'

'No. I didn't ask either.'

Hester leaned her bicycle against the rack. She thought of the months when she herself had barely been able to bear Ruben wanting anything other than to sit on her sofa as if everything could become ordinary again. She had read his anger as danger. His leaving had confirmed something she had already refused to examine.

'I don't want you telling me this because I'll find it easier to forgive you,' she said.

'I'd like that,' Daan replied. 'Easy. But I know you too well.'

She laughed despite herself. He looked up and smiled briefly, making nothing more of it. Then he asked whether he could reach Robin. She was working, Hester said. He could message and ask when she had time. Not send a long account she would have to read between heavy panels.

Daan typed. Hester looked away at two pigeons searching for bread beneath the bench. She left him that space. When his phone rang, he stopped halfway through a sentence and answered. He gave his name, listened and glanced at Hester.

'Yes,' he said. 'I can do tomorrow after half past one. But if it has to be today, I'll arrange cover.'

Daan asked whether he should also send a short message about the route. Then he said he understood and would come in himself. Hester looked at his hand on the paper bag. It almost hurt to hear how ordinary an appointment with the police could sound.

When he had hung up, he said they would speak to him on Thursday. He had to write down what he remembered and distinguish what he knew from what he had heard later. Hester nodded. She did not want a copy of his notes to read.

'Will you walk with me for a bit?' he asked. 'To the end of the street. Then I can eat this roll and you don't have to watch me.'

They walked alongside the music-school building. Through an open window came a run of single notes, returning to the same mistake. Daan waited to eat until they had turned the corner. Hester asked whether he enjoyed teaching. He looked surprised, as though this week his work had existed only to make his appointments difficult.

'Mostly. Today I'm expecting four clarinets and a girl who thinks she's enrolled for saxophone. Her father arranged it.'

'Could be a disappointment.'

'For the father, certainly.'

He told her about an adult pupil who had taken up the trumpet after retiring and tried to pull a different instrument out of the case at every lesson, because he kept mixing up his grandchildren's cases at home. Hester laughed properly. Daan brushed a crumb from his jumper. The story made him no better or more innocent, but it gave him an ordinary working day again, something Hester had forgotten to see in anyone these last few days.

He stopped at the corner. 'I burdened Else with it too. First saying just enough to worry her, then backing away again. She practically had to help me tell her something about her own daughter.'

'She knows that.'

'Doesn't make it better.'

'No.'

His phone vibrated. He looked at the screen and did not pass it to Hester. 'Robin wants a ten-minute call this evening. I can do that.' He typed a reply. Hester saw his thumb hover briefly over the screen before he put the phone away.

'I have to get back,' he said.

She walked with him to her bicycle. He tossed the empty bag towards the bin, missed and picked it up. At the school door he turned once more.

'I'll ask Ruben myself whether he wants to hear my account. No apologies to him through you.'

'Good.'

'And you don't have to make that easier for me either.'

Once he was inside, Hester stood by the rack for another minute. She had wanted to tell him she would correct her alibi to everyone, but had swallowed it. His decision did not call for a reciprocal gesture he had to witness on the spot.

She did not cycle straight to De Werf. At the water she dismounted. The path ran behind the houses, low fences on one side and, on the other, a row of posts where boats had once been moored. From here she could see De Werf's gate if she tilted her head a little.

She looked at where the gate opened and how the fence screened the yard from view. Then she rang Ruben.

'I've spoken to Daan,' she said when he answered. 'He wants to contact you himself.'

'About what?'

'What he saw outside that night. He's got an appointment to tell the police.'

At his end she heard a printer start up. Ruben asked whether she was ringing to tell him he had to be nice to Daan. She said that was not her intention, and realised as she spoke that she would have liked the conversation to go calmly.

'I didn't want it sprung on you,' she said. 'That's the most I can say.'

'All right. Let him call, then.'

He had a meeting to go into. She wished him luck and got a brief thank you. After the call, she typed no message to explain further. Her screen stayed blank until Fleur rang.

'Where are you?' Fleur asked.

'By the path. What's wrong?'

'Come round the front. There's something on the door.'

Hester turned her bicycle. She could be in the yard round the back in two minutes, but Fleur had said the front. She took the street. At the corner she could already see that the glass door no longer held only opening hours and a freshly printed programme. A white sheet hung over the flyer, fixed with two broad strips of clear tape. Across the top, in large letters, it said the gathering had been cancelled.