The Notebook at Cor’s

Nora was outside the workshop with a paper bag containing two currant buns. She had already eaten half of one. She brushed the crumbs from her fingers before shaking Lena’s hand.

‘I’m a bit early,’ she said. ‘Cor’s helping someone.’

Lena looked through the window. A customer stood at the counter, turning a small loose key between his thumb and forefinger. Cor listened and shook his head. Behind him was the same wall of hooks and little labels Lena had seen on her previous visits. At the far left, the door into the back of the workshop stood open.

‘I haven’t touched anything since we last talked about it,’ Lena told Nora.

‘I know. Cor rang me.’

Nora looked at the bag and offered her the other bun. Lena took it, though she wasn’t hungry. Across the road, someone parked a bicycle half on the pavement. She disliked the way she now watched every vehicle that stopped.

‘You had a fall,’ Nora said.

‘On Tuesday. It’s been reported.’

‘You don’t have to tell me about it.’

Lena nodded. They stood side by side, eating. Nora wasn’t trying to turn a shared fright into an intimacy between them. Lena was glad of that.

The customer left, still holding his key. Cor held the door for them and said they could come in. The workshop smelt of oil and warm dust. A work mat had left a rectangular mark on the counter. He showed them to the two chairs at the back. Lena knew the narrow passage beside the shelving and where it led: to the back door and the shared path beyond. Cor’s coat hung on a hook beside the door.

‘His things are here,’ Cor said.

He put a plastic box on the table. Inside were a brown cardboard folder, a pencil with a chewed end, two envelopes and a thin notebook with a dark blue cover. Nora picked up the pencil first.

‘He left these everywhere,’ she said. ‘Thought you should always have a pencil on you. Only he never had anything to sharpen it with.’

Cor smiled. ‘He used a knife when he was here. I put a stop to that. Kept cutting into my work mat.’

Nora put the pencil back. ‘Typical.’

She picked up the notebook and opened it at the first page. There was a phone number, an arrow in the margin and the word new. She turned the page. Lena looked at the table rather than over her shoulder.

‘You can look at the appointments to do with the street in a minute,’ Nora said. ‘And the keys. I want to keep the rest until I know what to do with it.’

‘Of course.’

‘I don’t know whether any of this matters. I don’t want us making everything important just because it was his.’

Cor took an older letter out of the cardboard folder. A neighbour had asked Henk to look over a quotation. There were pencilled exclamation marks beside one of the amounts and the line for call-out charges. Nora shook her head.

‘He didn’t know about those. That’s why he marked them. So someone would ask.’

Lena recognised the layout of an ordinary maintenance job. The letter had nothing to do with the Noordhuis project. She put it back as soon as Nora mentioned that another resident’s name was on it.

‘He doesn’t have an answer for everything,’ Nora said. She heard herself using the present tense, swallowed and let it stand. ‘He just didn’t want people forgetting their questions when someone in smart shoes turned up at the door.’

Cor got up and pushed the door to the path almost shut. Cold air was blowing through the gap and past the table. Someone went along the shared path with a crate of empty bottles; Lena heard them rattle, then a door opening or closing at the business next door. The back of the workshop was part of the same ordinary street they would soon be walking out into again.

‘I can put that letter with the other things tomorrow,’ Cor said. ‘Keep it separate from the job sheets for the investigation.’

Nora nodded. She looked at the notebook, then began turning to the week they had come to look at together.

Cor sat on the edge of a stool. Nora turned the pages slowly. Her fingers came to rest on one. She didn’t read it aloud. Her lip moved briefly; then she took out her phone and, with some difficulty, photographed it for herself.

‘Shopping,’ she said. ‘He was meant to keep something for me. I’d forgotten. And here it is.’

Lena waited. She couldn’t see what it was and didn’t ask.

After a while Nora turned the notebook towards them. The week of 10 May spread across two pages. Henk had written the date at the top; the lines below slanted towards the edge. Between collecting medicine and an amount for something Nora couldn’t decipher was: N.V. getting keys cut — Cor.

Lena leaned forward, carefully shifting her knee to one side. ‘Do you know whether N.V. meant Niels?’

‘He did write his name like that,’ Cor said. ‘But that’s from memory. It doesn’t say Niels here.’

Nora looked back through the notebook. On an earlier page she found Niels beside a partly crossed-out number and showed them. It helped explain the initials; it wasn’t a piece of handwriting that suddenly explained everything.

‘When he came in that Sunday, he said Niels had been getting more keys cut,’ Cor said. ‘I told him it was maintenance work. Henk thought that was a lot of maintenance for one door.’

‘Had he seen Niels here?’

‘That’s what he said. I don’t know how long he’d been outside. I was working.’

Lena made a note, keeping Cor’s exact wording. They already had the job sheet dated 10 May; the duplicates weren’t a new discovery. What the notebook added was a neighbour who had noticed them that day, and who had already begun to find it odd.

Nora turned to 14 May. There were three lines, one crossed through at an angle. Bread. Ask Ria about lamp. Ring Niels / key back. A small question mark followed the last entry. A time near the bottom seemed to belong to a different appointment, but the fold made it hard to read.

‘That might be half past six,’ Nora said. ‘Or something else. He wrote his numbers in a hurry.’

‘We mustn’t guess,’ Lena said.

Cor nodded, looking at the notebook without touching it. ‘He said that blue key wasn’t to go in with all the others. Sofie had told him. She’d tied something to it.’

Lena pictured the loop in the kitchen drawer. ‘Blue cotton.’

‘Something like that. I remember the metal bits better.’

Nora turned back a page. ‘Henk remembered that sort of thing. Little things people said. If someone said something mustn’t be taken away, he’d make it his job to see it stayed.’

‘That sounds kind,’ Lena said.

‘Sometimes. Sometimes people stopped telling him things because a week later he’d ask why they hadn’t kept their promise.’

She half closed the notebook. ‘He used to ring me at work. Not because anything was wrong. Because he thought work could wait. If I said I was busy, he took it as an invitation to ring back later.’

Lena smiled. Nora kept looking at the cover.

‘I was cross with him the last time he rang. I’m not going to turn that into some lovely story now.’

Cor pushed his stool back a little. He said he had another envelope for Nora, with things Henk had brought in the month before. Lena asked whether she could pass her notes to Anouk. Nora agreed. She wanted the notebook seen by the people investigating Henk’s death. But she wanted a say in the stories other people might later choose to tell about him.

‘If they need the original, they can have it,’ she said. ‘But I want to know who I’m giving it to.’

Lena suggested they ring Anouk together. Nora took out her phone and did the talking. Lena sat beside her, adding something only when Nora asked which of the job sheets they had already seen went with these entries. Anouk could receive the original through the agreed handover; its provenance and receipt would be recorded. Cor offered to drive Nora to the police station if that suited. Lena didn’t need to make herself the go-between, carrying someone else’s possessions in her damaged bag.

With permission, they photographed the relevant pages. Nora would send the pictures herself, by the method agreed with Anouk. Lena noted which pages she had seen and that the time beside the crossed-out appointment was unclear. Then the notebook went back in the box.

Cor took the envelope from a cupboard behind the counter. His phone rang. He glanced at the screen and raised his eyebrows.

‘RietWonen,’ he said. ‘Might be about the job sheets.’

He answered and moved a few steps away from the table. Lena could hear his replies, but not the voice on the other end.

‘Yes, I’ve still got them.’

A pause.

‘They’re my job sheets. They don’t go anywhere just because the job’s being closed.’

He looked at Nora and raised his free hand to show he would be a moment.

‘Put in a request, then. No, I won’t leave them by the entrance.’

After hanging up, he stood with the phone still in his hand.

‘Niels,’ he said. ‘Wants to collect the paperwork for the sets of keys. Complete the records, he says. Wants any damage sheets included as well.’

‘Did he say why he needs them now?’ Lena asked.

‘Project review. I told him to send a request. The relevant originals of my own job sheets go to the police first, as agreed. I’ve given a statement about that.’

Nora stood up. ‘Then let’s take the notebook over now, if we can.’

Cor looked at the clock. He would have to close up for a while or find someone to cover the counter. He rang a neighbour in the building next door, who said he could be there in ten minutes. Lena looked towards the open back door. Nothing had happened except a phone call asking for some paperwork. Yet her back was rigid against the chair.

‘I’ll tell Anouk about the request,’ Cor said.

‘Tell her exactly what he asked for,’ Lena said. ‘Not that he wanted the notebook. He didn’t mention that.’

‘I know.’

She nodded. There was no need to talk to Cor as though he had never handled anything carefully before.

He wrote down the time and as much as he remembered of the conversation. Nora put the notebook in a fresh envelope and wrote her name on it. The original material would be handed over that afternoon. Cor would keep only the checked copies of the relevant job sheets and notebook pages. They arranged to have Nora’s other things ready on Friday. Lena would help identify the building-related papers Henk had been keeping for his neighbours; she didn’t need to hold on to evidence to do that.

Nora picked up the envelope and the box. Lena carried the envelope of older loose papers out to Cor’s car, with Nora beside her. Having her permission made it a simple thing to do. At the car Lena handed everything back, without checking inside again.

‘He’d have liked me to look at those back steps,’ Lena said. ‘See whether they were sound.’

Nora stopped for a moment. ‘Yes. He’d have said that.’

‘I can’t say anything about the fall. Only what I know about the house.’

‘Then say that when people ask.’

Cor came out wearing his coat. He said the officer they were due to see was ready for them; he had the address and time written on a slip of paper. Nora got into the car. Before she shut the door, she looked at Lena.

‘See you Friday.’

‘See you Friday.’

Lena stood at the kerb until the car had gone. She had a new note for Anouk, an appointment for herself, and a picture of Henk with a pencil and a damaged work mat. None of those things could stand in for either of the others.