The Door to the Rear Passage

Lena didn’t pick up the box of Henk’s things. She pushed it further onto the table, away from the edge, then headed for the passage beside the stock shelves.

‘Where are you going?’ Niels asked.

She heard his foot slide across the floor. Behind her, Cor told him to stay where he was. Niels said something about stolen records, louder than he had been speaking a moment before. Lena looked back once. Cor was still in the opening to the shop. Niels had the folder pressed against his stomach and his other hand round Cor’s upper arm.

‘Let go of him,’ Lena said.

Niels looked over his shoulder. Cor pulled his arm back, the movement bringing him close to the wooden door frame. He braced his free hand against it and stayed on his feet.

‘Go outside,’ Cor said.

Lena stopped. Part of her wanted to go back to the table, the two men, the folder. What would she do there? Put her hand beside Cor’s against the frame. Tell Niels again to stop. Make the situation worse by staying in it. Cor looked at her and nodded towards the passage.

‘Go,’ he said, louder this time.

She went. Beyond the shelves, the light changed colour, falling through the little window above the back door. There were no boxes in the way. Cor had cleared the empty packaging on her previous visit because he took his longer pieces of work out this way. She saw the mat, a torn piece of vinyl with edges that sometimes curled up. She stepped over it and pressed down the handle.

The door opened onto the cool air of the rear passage. Her bicycle stood to the left, its front wheel against the low wall. She left it. The key was in her coat pocket, and her coat was over the chair inside. She had her phone. That was enough to leave.

There was a bang behind her, metal against something hard. She didn’t turn to find out what. She walked towards the end of the passage. Under the gutter, on a damp patch, her shoe almost slipped. She planted her foot again and went on without running. Her bruised hip hurt when she lengthened her stride.

At the corner of the wall she took out her phone. No message, photograph or list of recent callers: just the screen she needed to unlock. Her thumb felt too big. The first attempt failed. She stopped, put her free hand against the wall and tried again.

Nora had called for help. Lena rang the emergency number herself anyway. She was the one who could describe what she’d just left behind. She gave her name and the workshop’s address, then said she had come out at the back and was by the passage to the side street.

‘A man stopped me leaving. He’s taken my folder and he’s holding the owner. The owner’s still inside.’

She looked back along the passage. The door stood open. Niels wasn’t in it. She couldn’t see Cor either.

‘Are you somewhere safe now?’

‘Outside. I’m going further out towards the street.’

The call handler asked whether the man had a weapon. Lena hadn’t seen one. She was asked for his name, a description, and the owner’s name. She described the paint smear on his jumper, the folder, the opening where Cor had been standing. Her voice faltered over Niels’s name. Her mouth was dry. Before asking whether anyone was coming, she repeated the address.

‘I was attacked on the cycle bridge earlier,’ she said. ‘I’ve reported that. But I don’t know whether it was this man.’

Adding the last sentence took an effort. It still felt like wasting an opportunity to say only what she could know. She gave Anouk’s name and said Anouk knew about the appointment. The call handler told her to stay on the line and keep moving away.

At the end of the passage were two bins of scrap timber. Beyond them lay the side street, wide enough for a van, with a steel gate opposite. A man in a grubby white T-shirt was carrying a crate into an open shed. He looked up when Lena stopped in front of him.

‘Are you all right?’

She raised her free hand, the phone still at her ear. She pointed down the passage and said there was trouble at the workshop. He put down the crate.

‘Want me to have a look?’

‘No. Don’t let anyone go in.’

She was glad she could say that without explaining herself first. He moved a second crate out of the way and pointed to a bench just inside his shed.

‘Come here. We can see the street.’

Lena asked the call handler whether she could wait there. They needed to know where it was. She read out the name on the sign above the shed and the number beside the gate. The man opened one of the doors wider so she didn’t have to stand in the narrow gap. It smelt of sawdust and paint. She didn’t sit. From behind the door frame she could see the end of the passage.

The man said he knew Cor, but didn’t know Niels personally. He offered water. Lena shook her head and pointed to her phone. He nodded, stepped back and let her speak.

Niels appeared round the corner, coming out of the passage with the folder in his hand. Lena pressed her shoulder to the frame. He didn’t see her at once. She heard him call her name in the same businesslike voice he used when ringing about a forgotten key.

‘Lena! You’ve left your bag.’

She didn’t answer. She told the call handler he was outside now and described where he was walking. The man in the shed looked past her, but didn’t approach him. Niels took two more steps into the street, looking at her bicycle behind the wall, then at the cars. The folder hung loosely by his leg. She thought for a moment he might throw it down. He kept hold of it.

A car braked hard at the other end of the street. Niels turned towards it. From where she was, Lena couldn’t see what sort of car it was. She stayed on the line. The call handler said officers were on their way and told her to keep away from Niels, then asked if he was still moving.

‘He’s stopped. Looking left. I don’t know what he can see.’

Niels took out his phone, glanced at the screen and put it away again. Then he turned back towards the passage. Lena lost sight of him at the wall. She kept watching the entrance. From here she couldn’t tell whether he had gone inside.

The man in the shed brought her a plastic chair. ‘You’re shaking.’

‘I want to keep watching.’

‘Same view from here.’

She sat. Only then did she notice she was holding her phone in both hands. Her knuckles hurt. The call handler had more questions. Where was Nora? Had anyone else been in the back room with Cor? Lena stuck to what she knew. Nora had gone to the front to make a call. The supplier had been by the shop. She couldn’t say whether he had left.

No siren came from the main street. She had expected one and kept looking towards the corner. Without it, she couldn’t get a sense of how many minutes had passed. An engine ran. A door shut. Footsteps sounded on a pavement she couldn’t see. She lowered her shoulder. When she looked back towards the passage, two people were standing at its entrance. One wore a police uniform.

She described them. The call handler told her to stay where she was for now. She couldn’t immediately connect these uniforms with Anouk’s investigation; these were people responding to something happening now. She didn’t need to know how many had come to do as she was asked.

The man beside her finally introduced himself: Arend. Did she want to ring someone when she could? Lena nodded. On the screen she saw a missed call from Nora. She wanted to answer, but the call handler was still speaking. She explained that Nora was trying to ring her. Shortly afterwards she was told she could end the call, but mustn’t return to the workshop.

She rang Nora straight away. Nora answered almost at once.

‘Where are you?’

Lena named the shed and said someone was with her. ‘Where’s Cor?’

‘Out front. The police are inside. I’m outside with one of them.’

‘Can he talk?’

‘Yes. Too much. He wants to explain what Niels is and isn’t allowed to touch.’

Lena rested her head against the wall behind her chair. She breathed out and heard how unevenly the breath came. Nora asked if she was hurt. Lena said the earlier fall was still troubling her, but she hadn’t been hit or hurt again this time.

‘I’ve left my bag in there.’

‘It’s not going anywhere. Stay put.’

Twice in quick succession someone had told her to stay where she was. She did. She didn’t ask Nora to retrieve the folder or fetch her coat from the back room. Nora ended the call because the officer had a question.

Arend set a cup of water beside her. She could pick it up with one hand. A plain paper cup, the same kind she kept on the shelf beside her printer. She drank, felt water run down her chin and wiped it with her sleeve.

‘My work’s in there,’ she said, without knowing why she was telling him.

Arend looked towards the passage. ‘They’ll bring it over. Or you can get it later.’

Lena nodded. She had got herself out. Wasn’t that what anyone would have told her to do? Her things were still by the table: the charger, the apple she hadn’t eaten. She tucked her free hand under her leg. She was thinking about the apple now, and she couldn’t get her hand to stay still anywhere else.

A second police car appeared at the end of the street. For a moment she heard a radio as a door opened. A woman looked down the passage, then came towards the shed. Arend raised a hand to show her where Lena was sitting.

The officer asked her name. Lena gave it and half rose. The woman said she could stay seated. She introduced herself, asked whether Lena needed medical attention and waited for an answer. Lena said she had to know Cor was safe first. The officer didn’t kneel or take her hand. She stood at an ordinary distance.

‘Someone’s with him,’ she said. ‘My colleagues are in the workshop. There’s nothing you need to do in there now.’

Lena looked past her towards the passage. The back door was still open. Through it she could see a piece of the grey floor she had crossed a few minutes before. She turned back to the officer and answered the question she had been asked.