What Sofie Saw

The office was warmer than Lena remembered it from the day before. Mieke had switched on the lamp above the round table and cleared the folders from her desk. On the windowsill was a packet of biscuits she couldn’t get open. She handed it to Lena, who tore along the edge so carefully that she still managed to break a biscuit.

‘Leave it,’ Mieke said. ‘We’re not entertaining guests at a hotel.’

Lena put the packet on a plate. She had left her bag in the hall and kept only her phone. Anouk knew where she was. The handover of Henk’s notebook and Cor’s original job sheets had been confirmed. There would be no need for her to pass evidence round that evening.

The bell rang. Mieke went to answer it. Lena heard the lock turn, then a woman asking whether she could hang her coat there.

Sofie stood in the hall. Her shoulders were as narrow as Lena remembered from 6 May, but she held herself differently, her chin jutting slightly forward, her hands in her coat pockets. Yara stood beside her with a small rucksack. She glanced towards the exits, then slipped off her coat.

‘Hello,’ Lena said.

Sofie nodded. She looked down at Lena’s knee, then up again. ‘You can walk all right?’

‘Yes.’

They didn’t shake hands. Lena wondered whether she should have offered hers. Mieke took their coats and asked Sofie where she wanted to sit. She chose the chair by the window, facing the door. Yara sat beside her and pushed her rucksack under her own chair.

‘Anouk will speak to you in a little while, as you arranged,’ Mieke said. ‘She’s in the building. You can see her first if you’d rather Lena waited.’

‘I want to speak to Lena first.’

‘All right. And if you want to stop, we stop.’

Sofie took out her phone and laid it face down on the table. One corner of the case had a small crack. Lena looked at it, then at her face.

‘The original report went in with the material I handed over,’ Lena said. ‘I haven’t brought it for you to judge. The people investigating have what I wrote and sent. RietWonen has my correction. They’re having the files independently reviewed.’

‘Have they stopped saying I didn’t live there?’

‘I don’t know what’s been changed in every system yet. I’ve asked for you to be contacted through someone independent. Mieke’s helping with that.’

‘So you don’t know.’

‘No.’

Sofie picked up her glass without drinking. ‘On 6 May you said the damp patch could be repaired.’

‘That was what I found.’

‘That’s why I couldn’t understand it afterwards. At first I thought you’d spotted something else and hadn’t told me. That happens. People come and look, then they leave and you get a letter.’

Lena had thought she would need to explain about Eva first. Instead she was hearing how long Sofie had spent turning that visit into a different memory.

‘I didn’t write the other version. But I didn’t check what was finally sent out under my name. It meant you had every reason to think those words were mine.’

Sofie looked at Yara, who let her go on.

‘I thought I was the one who didn’t understand. Ruben said I had to stop asking the same questions. Niels said you were responsible for the technical side. Once the power went off, everything was such a struggle. Getting to work, charging my phone, finding someone whose fridge I could put things in.’

‘On 11 May,’ Lena said, then stopped herself. ‘Tell it in your own order.’

‘Yes. The Monday. He said they had work to do and it wouldn’t take long. When I got home it was still off. The little clock had stopped. I had to find the bread I’d bought for the next day in the dark.’

She slid the glass across the wooden table. ‘Henk brought me a torch. A rubbish one. The batteries didn’t last. He got cross with it, went home and came back with another. Said he had two of everything because one was always missing.’

Lena smiled briefly. Nora’s pencil was still fresh in her mind, but she didn’t mention it. This memory didn’t need to be fitted into a collection of things they all knew about Henk.

‘He wrote down who I needed to speak to. It wasn’t just him. Ria did too. I had no idea then how much I’d need to keep.’

‘What happened on 14 May?’ Mieke asked.

Sofie glanced at the door. ‘I’ve told Anouk I was there. She said I must tell her exactly what I saw myself.’

‘Yes,’ Mieke said. ‘And you don’t have to tell us anything here just because you think we’re expecting it.’

‘I want Lena to know.’

Lena rested her hands on her legs and kept them still. For days she had tried to piece the same place together from documents, memories and conversations. Now she mustn’t choose her questions to fill the gaps.

‘I was upstairs,’ Sofie said. ‘At the back window. I’d opened a window because it was stuffy. They were talking down below. Not loudly at first. I could see Henk by the steps. Niels was on the path.’

She stopped and looked at the surface of the water. Yara moved one foot and did nothing else.

‘I don’t know what time it was. Still light. I’d eaten, or I was getting something ready. I can’t properly remember. I mustn’t make it up. I remember Henk holding his phone. I couldn’t see what was on it.’

‘You don’t have to give us a time,’ Lena said.

Sofie nodded. ‘Niels held his hand out. He wanted something. I heard him say, give it here. Henk said no. Or no, you. It was quick. Then they got louder. Henk turned slightly away from him with the phone.’

She made a small movement with her own hand, then put it down again.

‘Niels went towards him. I knew him. His coat, his face. It wasn’t just someone who looked like him. He was off to one side below my window. Henk was higher up, near the edge of the steps. Niels reached for his arm first. I saw Henk pull it away. Then Niels pushed him here.’

Sofie briefly laid her palm against her own chest.

‘With his hands. It looked like one push. Hard. Henk went backwards. He was badly placed for it, so close to the step. He fell.’

Lena thought of the phrase unfortunate fall, and of Anouk saying that the start of an investigation wasn’t an explanation. For Sofie, the moment didn’t fit neatly into a phrase. One man had put out his hands. The other had tried to step where there was no floor left beneath him.

‘I couldn’t see everything after that,’ Sofie said. ‘From inside you can’t really see the paving right under the window. But I heard something. A hard sound. I stepped back.’

Yara didn’t take her hand. Sofie clasped her fingers tightly together, pulled them apart and went on.

‘I stood against the wall beside the window. I thought Niels might look up. Perhaps he already had. I don’t know whether he saw me while I was still at the window. I didn’t dare look again.’

‘What happened next?’ Mieke asked.

‘I went downstairs. My things were packed because I thought I might stay somewhere else for a few nights. Not leave like that. Just because the electricity still wasn’t working properly and I didn’t want another visit from him. I took my phone and the bag. I thought I’d come back once he’d gone.’

Lena could hear her searching for the ordinary plans inside her own story. A bag already packed, a visit she wanted to avoid, the intention of coming back.

‘I took the other part of the path out to the street. I didn’t go to Henk. I didn’t fetch anyone. I didn’t do that.’

She looked straight at Lena now.

‘You can tell me I should have called. I’ve told myself often enough.’

Lena thought of the two people at the bridge who had stayed with her while she made her call. She didn’t tell Sofie it was all understandable. ‘I’m glad you’re telling us now.’

‘That doesn’t help him.’

‘No.’

Sofie picked up her glass and took two small sips. Her hand was steadier than her voice.

‘Niels rang. I didn’t answer. Then the messages started. He wrote that I’d been there. That I knew there’d been an accident. He said if I told it any differently, I’d take my brother down with me. He knew which shift I was working. The new time as well. I’d told Ruben that.’

‘Do you know whether Ruben passed the time on to him?’ Mieke asked.

‘I don’t know. Maybe. I told Anouk that too. I can say who I told. I can’t say what happened to the information after that.’

Lena kept her eyes on Sofie. There were plenty of reasons to suspect Ruben. Sofie wasn’t going to use him to get round the limits of her own answer.

‘I’ve still got the messages,’ she said, tapping the phone with one finger. ‘I haven’t copied out bits of them. Yara said to leave everything as it was.’

‘She showed me some when she arrived,’ Yara said. ‘I didn’t tell her what to say in her statement.’

‘I went to hers because there was nowhere else I wanted to go,’ Sofie said. ‘In Duinwaard. She had room. I was afraid to go to Ruben. Niels knew him and I didn’t know what he was passing on any more. Yara was cross because at first I only told her I wanted somewhere to sleep for a few days.’

‘Cross because you thought you couldn’t burden me with it,’ Yara said.

‘And cross because I didn’t call.’

‘Yes.’

Mieke asked whether Sofie wanted a break. She said no, pushed her glass away and looked towards the door. She asked if Anouk could come in. She wanted to show her the messages and give her statement.

Mieke went to fetch her. Lena waited until the door had closed, then said she would go elsewhere while Sofie gave her formal statement.

‘I don’t want you filling in my words,’ Sofie said.

‘I won’t.’

‘Not even to make me sound more certain.’

‘No.’

For the first time, Sofie leaned back in her chair. ‘On 6 May you asked if you could take a photograph. I thought that was decent of you. I thought I’d let someone in who knew what she was doing.’

Lena felt her cheeks grow hot. She couldn’t correct the accusation without taking something else from Sofie.

‘You should have been able to go on thinking that,’ she said.

Anouk came in with Mieke. She greeted Yara and Sofie, asked how things had gone so far and said that Lena and Mieke would wait outside while she spoke to Sofie separately. She confirmed the arrangements they had already discussed for the rest of the statement, including who could be there to support Sofie at each stage. She didn’t tell the group what had already been investigated or what conclusions might be drawn.

Sofie picked up her phone, her thumb resting for a moment on the cracked case. Anouk asked which original messages she wanted to show her, and stressed that uncertainties about times, positions and words were part of her account too.

Lena got up. She didn’t wait for a question about Henk that she might be able to answer. She collected her bag from the hall. Mieke took her into the kitchen and switched on the kettle.

‘She saw him push,’ Lena said quietly.

‘That’s what she’s told us. Now she’s giving her own statement. The other evidence will be carefully checked against it.’

Lena nodded. She had spoken to Niels while he sounded perfectly pleasant. He had asked her to finish quickly. He had arranged access, dealt with sets of keys, had a report changed. Now Sofie had told her what the same man had done to Henk. The ordinary sound of his voice in that conversation stayed in Lena’s head.

Mieke gave her a mug of tea. They sat in the waiting area beside a rack of leaflets about moving house and energy bills. Lena didn’t look up when a chair moved in the other room. The conversation behind the door wasn’t hers.

Later Anouk came out for a moment. The investigation was continuing; she gave no information about anyone else. Tomorrow’s appointments for additional material and the handover of Henk’s remaining possessions still stood. Lena was to let her know if anything changed. What they now knew about Niels didn’t mean Lena should go and ask him why.

‘I won’t,’ Lena said.

She texted Tom to say she was nearly finished. She included no address where anyone was staying, nothing from Sofie’s statement. Only that he could collect her from Mieke’s office. When they said goodbye later, Sofie was tired and quieter, but she went to the coat rack herself and put on her own coat. Yara held the door for her. Lena waited until they had gone out together before following them.