What Cor Had Made

Cor had put a chair outside his open workshop. He wasn't sitting on it. Across the seat lay a board he was painting in two colours. Underneath stood a tin of paint he'd knocked open with a hammer.

‘It's for my granddaughter,’ he said when Lena stopped to look. ‘A shop. That's the idea. Though she's told me she's only selling stones.’

‘Saves on fittings.’

‘They've all got different prices. I hadn't allowed for that.’

He wiped his hand on his trousers. A small patch of purple clung to his forefinger. Above the workbench hung compartments of metal parts that, from where Lena stood, looked much the same. Cor noticed whenever she put one back in the wrong place. Since their last job together, she'd taken to pointing at the right compartment and leaving him to fetch what they needed.

She put her bag down in a clear space. ‘Have you done any work in Bremstraat lately?’

‘Which number?’

‘Eighteen.’

He glanced at the cupboard of job folders. ‘Possibly. Tell me what you want to know first.’

She explained the discrepancy between the keys she'd seen during a property inspection and the number recorded in a later file. She kept it matter-of-fact. No making it sound more serious to get Cor talking. Once, someone had taken an order for a replacement lock cylinder as evidence of an attempted break-in. Since then, any caller whose number he didn't recognise had been asked for more information than they cared to give.

‘I'm not telling you who has how many keys to a house,’ he said.

‘I don't expect you to.’

‘You are asking, though.’

‘I'm asking whether you did any work there. I inspected the place. My report seems to have been changed.’

‘Seems?’

‘The text sent out under my name isn't what I wrote.’

He lifted her bag by its handle and moved it to the shelf below. ‘You've put that on my sandpaper.’

‘Sorry.’

‘No, hang on. I'll have a look.’

He took the May folder out of the cupboard and opened it. No computer, no list for her to read over his shoulder. A job sheet often held more information than anyone needed for a single question. Cor covered the bottom half with his hand.

‘There's something here,’ he said. ‘Extra copies of the front door key. No change of lock.’

‘When?’

He hesitated. ‘I want to check it against the original order first. It's a business address. I need the order in front of me before I give anything out.’

‘So extra keys were cut.’

‘Work was done. That's all I'm confirming for now. When a key comes in here, I don't know everything that's been agreed at home.’

Lena nodded. It was frustrating, but she preferred him this way. If he handed over his customers' details to her today, tomorrow he might do the same for someone asking about Jip's home.

‘Can you check your own records?’

‘Yes. What's going on in that house?’

‘They say it's been empty since the end of March. I was there on 6 May. The tenant was home.’

‘That's not long ago.’

‘I went to look at a leak. Yesterday I had to check it again. Nothing had been repaired, and by then the original report said something different.’

Cor kept a finger between the pages instead of closing the folder.

‘Sofie,’ he said.

‘You know her?’

‘By sight. She used to come in with a letter now and then. Nothing to do with keys. She came to see Henk.’

‘Who's Henk?’

Cor let the pages settle against his finger. ‘Roos. Same row of houses.’

Lena recognised the surname. She'd read it on a nameplate somewhere, or on an envelope left on a windowsill. Not enough to put a face to it.

‘He brought people to you?’ she asked.

‘Came past nearly every day. Sometimes he'd bring someone who needed a hand. A door that stuck, a key snapped in a lock. Sometimes something I couldn't do anything about.’

‘What sort of letter?’

‘Wrong person to ask. I didn't read it. Henk would usually say, don't worry, I'll make a copy. Then my printer had to go on.’

This time he put the folder down. Through the open door he looked at the board on the chair. The shadow of the doorframe was moving slowly across the pink paint.

‘He's dead,’ he said.

Lena straightened. ‘When?’

‘Found on Friday. Behind those houses.’

‘I didn't know.’

‘Why would you? You were only there for a job.’

He looked at the whiteboard above the coffee machine. Someone's name was written there, an order still to be collected. Henk's wasn't, but Cor looked as though he'd expected to find it.

‘An accident?’ she asked.

‘I heard he fell. By the steps behind number eighteen. That's all I know.’

‘Isn't that just the path to the back gardens?’

‘There's a concrete drop. They took a lean-to down years ago and left the difference in levels. He'd complained about it often enough.’

Cor swept a strip of sandpaper off the workbench and sat on a stool. With his heel he pushed the paint-tin lid a little further away.

‘It doesn't make sense,’ he said. ‘But accidents don't have to. My brother fell off a stool he'd stood on every day. Just because something's never happened doesn't mean it never will.’

Lena let him finish. She'd never heard him talk about his brother. All she knew was that Cor spent a lot of time in the workshop, even after the customers had gone home. Here, you could finish something. That was part of the work, though perhaps it wasn't only about work.

‘His daughter came round yesterday,’ he said. ‘Nora. Doesn't live in Rietdam. Suddenly there's all this stuff she has to make decisions about.’

‘Did you give her anything from here?’

‘Her dad kept a few things here. Those can wait. We had coffee first.’

He stood again. Sitting down hadn't seemed to help. ‘Want one?’

‘Please.’

To get water he went past the little sink by the door and through to the back. There was another room behind the workshop. He asked Lena to bring two empty mugs from the shelf, so she followed as far as the threshold. Beyond a second door she could see a sliver of daylight.

‘Is that new?’ she asked.

‘The door? No. Just the frame. Got tired of holding it open with a stool.’

He pushed the door open with his hip. The path beyond ran between his workshop and the neighbours' lower shed, out to the street on the harbour side. A bicycle with no front wheel leant against the wall. Beside a bin, a square of drier ground showed where something heavy had stood.

‘Better for painting out there,’ Cor said. ‘Keeps the smell out of here. Chair's too wide for the gap, though. I'll take the board off later.’

Lena set the mugs on the little kitchen counter. The air through the back door was fresher than at the front, where the delivery vans parked. Cor filled the kettle, rinsed it and filled it again. He went on talking as he moved about, though not about Bremstraat.

His granddaughter wanted cards with the names of the stones. He'd asked whether people could decide for themselves what a stone was. They couldn't. It had to be a proper shop, she'd told him, and things in proper shops had prices.

‘Asked me how much I make on a key,’ he said. ‘Had to explain that. At first she couldn't see why anyone came here when they could just buy a new door.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Six. She'll be running the whole business.’

Lena smiled and drank her coffee. The mug was wider than was practical, filled too close to the brim. She set it on a loose coaster.

‘That job sheet,’ she said. ‘If you confirm anything, I need the order with it. I don't want to get you saying something you'll have to take back.’

‘Not something I enjoy either.’

‘Will you let me know once you've checked?’

‘Yes. Can't do it all today. Need to ring Nora about her dad. And someone's waiting for a door that'll shut.’

‘What did Henk keep here?’

Cor looked at the closed cupboard behind his stool. ‘A little box. Some notebooks. Keys he was passing on for other people. That sort of thing. His own key rack was at home. His daughter wanted to collect that herself.’

‘Did he write a lot down?’

‘Spent his life delivering things. You want to know what goes where. Some of those books were just diaries. He wasn't keeping files on everyone, if that's what you're asking.’

‘It wasn't.’

He didn't quite believe her. Perhaps she'd brought something of her professional manner in with her that he didn't want this morning. Find a folder among a dead man's things and you might want it to hold a missing answer, when all it contained was a measurement and the address of a butcher with meat on offer.

‘I wanted to know whether he knew my client,’ she said.

‘Everyone knew someone. Doesn't mean I know what they all talked about.’

Lena left her half-finished coffee by the sink and picked up her bag. Cor held the front door for her, though she could have managed it herself. Outside, the board on the chair was still wet. A tiny fly had landed on the pink half. Cor lifted it away with the back of his nail and smoothed the paint.

‘Ever coming round without a list?’ he asked.

‘I'll try.’

‘An answer of sorts.’

In the car, Lena wrote down what he'd actually confirmed. Further work making copies of front door keys. Order and date still to be checked. No new locks. She put a question mark beside the possible connection with the number seven, then closed her notes.

She looked up the report about Henk on the local paper's website. There wasn't much. Man dies after fall in rear alley. It named the street, but not a house number. Police were investigating and asking anyone who'd seen anything on Thursday evening to come forward. No photograph, no statement about what had been established.

Three comments. One asked whether this was the man who used to deliver the post. Another called the paving a disgrace. The third complained about the amount of traffic in town, which had nothing to do with a rear alley.

Lena closed the page. On 6 May, Sofie hadn't only had a leak. She'd shown letters to a neighbour who could no longer say what they were about. The extra keys didn't explain that. Lena had to keep the two things separate, however close they came in the same street.

She rang Pieter and asked when the house had been cleared. He'd have to find out. She rang Niels and got his voicemail again. Then she sent Mieke Kraan a short message. They'd met years ago at a residents' meeting about maintenance. Lena asked for no names or files, only whether they could talk about an incorrect departure date in an inspection report.

She started the car. Behind her, Cor lifted the board off the chair and carried it into the workshop with both hands. Before his granddaughter could have her shop, he had to finish painting a board. The paint wouldn't dry any faster because someone was waiting.