No Statement of Departure

At Mieke's office, an empty umbrella stand had a mop beside it. All the umbrellas they lent out had been taken, the receptionist said, and nobody remembered to bring them back when the sun came out. Lena put her own in the stand. She did not want to end the afternoon as yet another person who had forgotten something.

Mieke came to collect her from the waiting room. Her office was small, with a round table beside a desk mostly buried under paper. An open box containing a kettle sat on a chair. The old one still worked, Mieke said, but only if you held the switch down. That no longer counted as a coffee break.

‘Would you like a drink? We can try out the new one.’

Lena asked for tea. She put her folder on the round table and waited while Mieke looked through the papers.

‘This is your report?’

‘The first three pages. The other three are from the project portal.’

Mieke made two piles. She wrote the dates on a separate sheet, leaving Lena's papers unmarked.

‘And you were hired to carry out an inspection. By whom?’

‘Noordhuis. RietWonen owns the houses. Eva puts the documents together for various jobs.’

‘Who let you in?’

‘The first time, Sofie herself. Niels arranged the appointment, but she opened the door. This Monday Pieter opened the access box. He said the house was empty and access had been arranged.’

‘Did you see what permission had been given?’

‘No. When I realised something was wrong, I stopped the inspection.’

Mieke wrote that down too. She asked about the written instructions, the name on the emails, how Lena usually checked the final version. None of her questions allowed Lena to hide behind a technical term.

‘I usually get the combined report back. Then I check my findings have been included properly.’

‘Usually?’

‘For the last few months it's gone into the portal. With a notification that it's ready.’

‘Which you didn't open this time.’

‘No.’

The word lay briefly between them. Mieke did not make it larger than it was. She looked at the passage about long-term occupation and asked what Lena had actually examined.

Lena described the localised damp patch, the condition of the finishes, what her meter had told her and what she had not opened up. She would never have concluded from that inspection that Sofie could no longer live there. Repairs were needed. Anything more serious required further investigation.

‘Then you need to make that distinction clear,’ Mieke said. ‘For people who don't know what an inspection can establish.’

She turned the altered report towards Lena.

‘I'm afraid they used this to put her out of her home.’

Mieke glanced at the clock, not to hurry her, but as though judging how much they could cover in one conversation.

‘A surveyor can't end a tenancy by ticking a box. A housing association still needs the proper agreement or procedure for someone to leave. A building report doesn't replace that.’

Lena felt her shoulders drop. Mieke noticed.

‘But someone can use a false report to put pressure on a tenant. Tell her there's no point staying, or it's dangerous. Make other people think her departure's already settled. That's why I want to know what other documents exist alongside this report, and who's seen them.’

‘A statement confirming her departure?’

‘For instance. Or an offer of another home. Letters about repairs. What Sofie herself said or signed. We don't know what there is yet.’

Lena would have liked to hear that the wrong date made the entire file worthless at once. Mieke offered something less comfortable: a way forward that required every part to be examined separately.

‘Can you request her file?’

‘Not just because you're here. I can help Sofie if she wants me to act for her. What I can do for you is explain how to record your own involvement properly.’

She poured the tea. The new kettle gave a few small clicks after switching off. Mieke left the instruction leaflet on her desk.

‘Are you in touch with her?’

‘No. Ria sent her my number. She hasn't been in touch.’

‘And someone's seen her since the departure date in the report?’

‘I did, on 6 May. Ria did on 13 May. Ria said I could pass that on. At first she said the twelfth, then she checked her calendar.’

Mieke nodded. ‘Keep the correction in. People don't have a camera in their heads taking pictures of the calendar.’

‘Doesn't it make it weaker?’

‘It makes clear what she's certain of and what she isn't. That matters more than getting the first sentence perfect.’

Lena thought of her list of discrepancies. Each time she learnt something, she had wanted to set it beside something else until the pieces seemed to fit. A mistaken date, corrected, had helped her more than a plausible-sounding certainty.

She told Mieke about Henk. That Cor had known him, that he helped residents with letters, that he had been found behind the houses. She also repeated what Ria had said about voices the previous evening. Mieke listened without pointing to anything on her sheet.

‘Ria's spoken to the police herself?’

‘Yes. I don't know exactly what she told them. She gave me no names, no words she'd been able to make out.’

‘Then don't turn your notes into another statement on her behalf. You can say you've spoken to her and she's given information herself.’

‘I don't know if the police know anything about Sofie.’

‘You can ask. And tell them about your own observations and documents. You don't need to know a crime's been committed before passing on relevant facts.’

Since Monday the word police had hovered at the edge of everything. Lena had been waiting for a definite reason to use it. Something a surveyor could point to and prove. But Sofie was not a leak that had to grow large enough before anybody reported it.

‘I don't want to report someone missing if she's just somewhere else.’

‘Tell them what you know. Not being able to reach her isn't the same as her being missing. Say when you saw her and why the documents worry you. If she's safe and doesn't want contact, that needs handling carefully too.’

Mieke pushed a blank sheet towards her.

‘Let's put your facts in order. Questions underneath. Keep them separate.’

Lena began with 6 May. Mieke stopped her when she went to write that Niels had lied about Sofie leaving. She could record what the file said, what Niels had told her and how her own observations contradicted it. She did not know his intention.

It took almost half an hour. Small details lay behind the account, things she had not thought important at first: who had taken the key on Monday, when Pieter had said the house was empty, which photographs she had taken herself. Mieke asked if she had removed any papers from the house.

‘No.’

‘Good. If you add anything later, record where it came from. And pass on the original files once you've agreed a proper way of doing it. Not just your summary.’

They agreed that Lena would write her own correction to the building report. Mieke would check that the covering text clearly separated first-hand observations from other information. Questions about her professional liability would also need her own adviser or insurer. Mieke was not representing everybody involved.

‘What if Sofie gets in touch?’ Lena asked.

‘Ask what she wants. You can give her my details. You don't need to send me her address. I won't need that for our first conversation.’

Lena wrote Mieke's number on a separate card, as though that would help her pass it on more quickly. She could feel herself pinning her hopes on it already: find Sofie, then she would understand where the dates had come from. Perhaps Sofie had no energy for that. Lena could not expect her to come and solve the problems in her file.

It was still raining outside. Lena sat in the car, looking at the two sheets they had drawn up together. The wet umbrella lay on a newspaper in the footwell. She rang the police's general contact number and said she had information about Bremstraat 18 and who had been living there. The call handler did not ask for her thoughts on Henk's death. He asked her name and how she had obtained the information.

She began with her work. Her voice sounded more ordinary than she felt. A report in her name had been altered after her inspection. The woman who, according to the altered file, had already left had still been living in the house on 6 May. Lena had been unable to reach her since raising her questions. A neighbour who had helped with residents' queries had recently died behind the houses.

‘Did you see what happened to him?’ the call handler asked.

‘No.’

‘Do you know the tenant personally?’

‘From the inspection. Not otherwise.’

He asked whether she had Sofie's number, and whether she could give the names of other people who had seen her as contacts. Lena explained that she had no direct number. She gave her own observations and Ria's name, within the limits Ria had set. She did not claim to have proof of murder. Nobody needed that word to record the report.

He asked her to keep the original documents. He gave her a reference number and said somebody might contact her for more information. He could not say what was already known about Henk or Sofie. Lena should not have expected him to.

‘If you see anything new, or there's an immediate danger, contact us again,’ he said.

She wrote that down too. Not because it was a coded message, but because she had just learnt how much a quiet conversation could change. There was still no answer. But her information now existed somewhere outside the project that treated her original report as a draft.

As she started the engine, Jip rang. Would she be on time? There were wraps at home, and she did not want to wait until eight to eat.

Lena checked the time. Traffic on the road out of town was slow, but she did not need to go back to the office for a folder. Everything she still needed that day was beside her.

‘I'll be home in half an hour,’ she said. ‘Put the oven on, will you? I'll be there before it's hot.’

‘It doesn't take that long.’

‘Just after, then.’

Jip told her which setting she had chosen. Lena listened to the end. Only when the call was over did she put on her indicator.