Ruben's Account

The café by the business park had a lunch menu with one handwritten price left. Freshly printed strips covered the rest. Lena chose a table facing the door and put her folder on the chair beside her. A woman rinsed glasses behind the bar. A man in bright green work trousers was eating soup, his phone resting on the bread basket.

Ruben van Dijk arrived early. He paused in the doorway when he saw Lena. She recognised something of Sofie's eyes, though perhaps she would have looked for it in any man introduced as her brother. He wore a work jacket with no company name and had a scrape across one knuckle.

‘You're the surveyor.’

Lena got up. He sat before she could offer her hand.

‘Wouters,’ she said. ‘Lena.’

‘I haven't got long. Mieke said you had questions about the house.’

‘And that you could tell me something about Sofie.’

He put his car key on the table and pushed it back and forth with his thumb. A plastic trolley token hung from the ring. Lena glanced at the scrape, then back at his face. She could not turn every scratch into an incident.

The woman came from behind the bar to take their order. Ruben asked for coffee, and whether he could pay before leaving. Lena ordered tea. He looked as though she had deliberately chosen something that took time.

‘When did you last speak to her?’

‘She hates questions like that.’

‘She may do. When was it?’

Ruben rubbed the table where a coffee ring had dried. ‘Last week. Wednesday. Everything was still normal then.’

‘Normal how?’

‘She had work. She didn't have time.’

‘Did she say where she was?’

‘I didn't ask.’

Lena waited for his coffee before asking anything else. Ruben lifted the cup, put it straight down and kept hold of its handle.

‘The file says she left on 31 March. Is that right, as far as you know?’

‘She was moving.’

‘To which house?’

‘She doesn't have to tell you.’

‘No, she doesn't. But I spoke to her at Bremstraat on 6 May. In her kitchen. She showed me where the damp kept coming back. That's why I'm asking what the departure date means.’

He looked at the folder on the chair.

‘Did you take photographs of everything?’

‘Of the damage. With her permission.’

‘Not her things?’

‘Not to prove how much she owned. I had no reason to investigate whether she lived there.’

‘Then you can't say she was sleeping there.’

The certainty came too quickly. Lena set down her glass without drinking.

‘She told me about her shifts. How she wanted to sleep first after an early one. She asked if we could arrange the next appointment in the same way. She never mentioned a moving date.’

Ruben turned his cup so the logo faced away from her.

‘People stay places temporarily.’

‘In their own rented home?’

‘You don't know everything.’

Lena left her folder where it was. She wanted him to read her original report, but realised he would probably only look for lines he could use to end the conversation.

‘I know. I don't know how she is now, either. That worries me.’

He gave a short, angry laugh. ‘Everyone's worried all of a sudden. Where were they when she was forever ringing about that leak?’

‘I went when I was given the job. Afterwards I should have checked more carefully what happened to my report.’

He had evidently expected a defence. His mouth stayed open a moment. In the corner, the man in work trousers tapped his phone against the bread basket.

‘She always says nobody listens,’ Ruben said. ‘Then you try to sort something out for her and you're interfering.’

‘What did you sort out?’

‘Help with her move.’

‘Did she ask for it?’

He drank at last. The coffee was still hot; he drew air past his lower lip. ‘It was offered. There was money available to help those people. Not everyone has a van or someone to carry boxes.’

‘From Noordhuis?’

Ruben looked up. ‘What did Mieke say about that?’

‘We're talking about your sister. I'm asking who offered the help.’

‘Yes. Noordhuis. I was doing temporary work for them. I said I had work, didn't I?’

Outside, an engine hummed without starting. Ruben turned to the window. A van stood between two cars, but Lena did not know whether it was his.

‘What sort of temporary work?’

‘Helping organise moves. Making appointments, sorting out transport. Making sure someone's there if the resident can't be. Doesn't sound so terrible, does it?’

‘It sounds like work. Had the residents already agreed to leave?’

He set down his cup so hard coffee slopped across the saucer. ‘There were statements. Sums had been agreed. I wasn't there to count the ticks on every form.’

The woman behind the bar glanced over. Ruben took a napkin and pressed it into the saucer.

‘Sorry,’ he said, without making clear to whom.

‘Who prepared the statements?’

‘They came with the job.’

‘From Noordhuis?’

‘Different people. I got a list.’

‘Of houses to be emptied?’

‘Of appointments.’

Lena let the word stand. She saw Sofie by the back door again, shoulder wedged between the frame and the fridge because Lena could not reach the junction properly with her measuring rule. Sofie had opened the door wider and asked whether the patch could look dry with damp still behind the plaster. Nothing had suggested she was only visiting her house to clear it out.

‘Did your sister become one of those appointments?’

Ruben put the soggy napkin beside his cup. Coffee stained his fingers.

‘I wanted to make things easier for her.’

‘You just said she was moving.’

‘That was the plan.’

‘Her plan?’

He pushed his chair back, its legs scraping the floor. Lena thought he was leaving, but he only bent to take his phone from his jacket.

‘I don't know where she is,’ he said. ‘You can stop talking round it. If I knew, I'd have spoken to her myself.’

‘Have you tried to reach her?’

‘Of course.’

He unlocked his phone and scrolled, then put it face down again. He showed her nothing. She did not ask him to turn it over.

‘Last week she told me to leave her alone. Which I'm not doing, but she won't pick up. I ring and get nothing. Sometimes it rings. What does that tell you?’

‘I can't draw any conclusions from it.’

‘You think something's happened to her.’

‘I hope she's safe and can say what she wants for herself. I spoke to the police this morning.’

His hand closed round the phone. ‘About Sofie?’

‘My report. Her living in the house. The fact that nobody I'd spoken to had heard from her recently. I haven't invented a story about her.’

‘Did you give them my name?’

‘I said I hadn't met you yet.’

He looked at the door. The man with the soup had left, his chair askew. Ruben got up and went to pay for his coffee, leaving his key behind. Lena stayed seated. He came back after paying and slid the token from under his cup.

‘Who did you speak to?’

She gave him Anouk's name and the general contact details she was allowed to share. He could tell her what he knew directly. He put Lena's note into the breast pocket of his jacket, which had come half unstitched.

‘If I hear from her, I'm not telling everyone straight away.’

‘I'm not asking you to. Her address is hers to share. If you reach her, tell her she can speak to Mieke or Anouk. She doesn't have to go through me.’

He stayed beside the chair. ‘You put it all very nicely. But you could just stop. You don't have to work there any more.’

‘My name's under something I didn't write.’

‘Take your name off, then.’

‘And leave the rest?’

Ruben looked at the space where his cup had stood. ‘I didn't come up with how it was done.’

He left before she could answer. Outside, the van's sliding door did indeed open. An empty sack truck stood inside, beside a folded removal blanket. He did not look back at the window as he drove away.

Lena stayed until her tea was lukewarm. She had made no notes during the conversation. There was a pen in her bag, but she had not wanted it to become an interrogation she had no business conducting. Now she took out the little notebook she used for measurements. She wrote the time at the top and noted what Ruben had said about his work. Beside his account of Sofie leaving, she put: initially suggested move in progress; later said it was the plan. He had not given her a formal statement, and she could not turn it into one.

On the way home she stopped at the unit. It was quieter than most Fridays. Somebody had pulled shut the roller gate behind the building. Two pallets of tiles in the shared hall bore wet shoeprints. In her office, the light on the charger glowed green and useless. She had left her damp meter's battery at home.

She rang Mieke, who did not answer immediately but called back five minutes later, out of breath.

‘I'm walking a resident to the bus stop. What did he say?’

Lena described the conversation in order. At the departure on 31 March, Mieke interrupted.

‘Did he confirm that?’

‘No. First he said she was moving. Later he said it was the plan.’

‘Keep that distinction. He wants to protect his sister, and perhaps himself too. We don't know what choice he's making.’

‘He worked for Noordhuis. With statements and appointments.’

‘Don't ask him for her papers or belongings. If he wants advice on his own documents, he can bring them in. He's already had that offer.’

Lena went to the window. Outside, water dripped from the tap onto the corner of a crate.

‘Can I tell him I think something's gone wrong?’

‘He knows. You don't need to make him more anxious to get an answer.’

They agreed that Mieke would pass on another safe request for contact if she had the chance. Lena did not put the journalist Amir in touch with Ruben. She sent Anouk a short update: brother spoken to, no known whereabouts, mentioned his own temporary work for Noordhuis. The note in her measurement book remained her own. If Anouk asked to see it, she would explain when and how she had made it.

At home, Jip was cutting open a bread roll at the worktop. The opened packaging lay beside her; she was looking for the clip to close the rest. Lena put down her bag and watched her daughter's knee holding a drawer half shut.

‘Shall I do that?’

‘No. Can you tell me where the little knife is?’

Lena opened the drawer beside the oven. The knife lay between a peeler and the cheese slicer. She handed it to Jip and put some water on. Jip did not ask about the folder. Lena wanted to tell her about Ruben, the moment he had used the word plan, but could think of no reason to ask her daughter to carry it.

‘I spoke to someone this afternoon who's trying to reach her too,’ she said.

Jip put down the knife. ‘The woman from the house?’

‘Yes. When I know how she is, I'll tell you.’

‘And until then?’

Lena switched on the kettle. ‘Until then I'll eat with you. If you still want to eat with me.’

Jip pushed the other half of the roll towards her. A strip of plastic wrapper clung to the cut surface. Lena removed it and put it beside the clip, which had turned out to be behind the bread bin.