Seven Sets of Keys

Niels Vos rang at eight on Wednesday morning. Lena was taking a T-shirt for Jip off the drying rack. She trapped the phone between her ear and shoulder, listening as she pulled the fabric free.

‘You had a question about Bremstraat,’ he said. ‘I'm pretty much booked up today, but I can find you fifteen minutes.’

‘Where?’

‘The office. Eleven. Ask for me at reception.’

‘I'll need more than fifteen minutes.’

‘Well, we can make a start. I've got two breakdowns to sort out and someone off sick. Bring the text you mean.’

He did not sound like a man whose secret had been discovered. He sounded like a maintenance coordinator with two breakdowns to sort out and someone off sick. Lena laid the T-shirt on the table and put a reminder in her calendar. She too had been short with people who had yet to realise there were not enough hours in the day.

Before the meeting, she listed the differences on a single sheet. No argument to support, just the discrepancies. The repair estimate belonged there because the new export proposed something different, but she put the departure date first. Beside it she wrote what she had seen on 6 May. She kept the original email attachment separate. She would not pass off another edited file as the one sent at the time.

At RietWonen, the reception area opened into a waiting space with a low table for residents. A screen displayed three frequently asked questions. Lena had never considered what a waiting list for an appointment might look like when you were outside a locked door and needed a home. A woman at the counter was trying to explain a problem with her storage unit. The man let her finish, then asked for its number. He was taking care over it. People queuing behind her could not make it take any less time.

Niels came into the corridor with a laptop under his arm. His grey shirt was wet at one elbow. His phone hung on a thin cord round his neck, as though otherwise he kept leaving it behind.

‘Lena?’

They were standing where they had stood two weeks earlier. Back then, there had been no reason to remember him. He had emailed her a schedule for three addresses. Eva had said he liked to use the same people. It saved explaining how to submit their photographs and forms.

Niels led her towards a small meeting room. They passed a man mopping a puddle towards a drain. Niels stopped to ask whether the plumber was on the way and pointed at a closed door, without forgetting that Lena was waiting behind him.

‘You see?’ he said. ‘There's always something here that won't wait fifteen minutes.’

They sat down. A stack of paper cups stood on the table. Niels took two, glanced at the flask and poured them some water. He placed Lena's cup squarely on a coaster someone had left in front of the jug.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Bremstraat.’

Lena laid out her sheet. ‘Who changed my export?’

‘I don't know. Until yesterday, I didn't even know you thought it had been changed. We use the version we're sent.’

‘I don't think it. I've compared the two.’

‘Let's see.’

He drew his chair closer and read the lines. His finger stopped beside vacant since 31 March.

‘That could have come from the job-details field. We have a schedule of departures. That's separate from what you find on site.’

‘In the report it's presented as something I observed during my inspection.’

‘We'll have to look into that, then.’

‘That's why I'm here.’

He nodded and turned the laptop towards himself. Lena could only see the back of the screen, with a damaged sticker in one corner. She heard him type. Then silence.

‘Sofie van Dijk,’ he said. ‘There were discussions about that. The arrangement for her to leave had been in place for a while.’

‘She was at home on 6 May.’

‘An agreed departure date isn't always the day the last cup goes out of the house. People leave things behind, stay another night, come back to clean. I can't stand in every living room.’

‘There's no need for you to do that. I was in this one. She said she lived there.’

Lena heard the sudden formality in her own voice. They had been on easy terms until now. She noticed the change; he did not seem to.

‘What would you like me to do?’ Niels asked.

‘Remove the incorrect occupancy status from my report. Find out who supplied the text. And explain why Noordhuis is asking for a final inspection when the repairs haven't been done.’

‘Noordhuis is managing the project. The housing association remains the point of contact for these properties until that arrangement changes. There are several jobs going on at once. Sometimes the preparatory work gets scheduled ahead.’

‘But it says after repairs.’

‘Then scheduling sent it out too soon. It happens. That's why we send people to look at the place. If nothing's been repaired, that's what you write.’

He glanced at her sheet. ‘You know that.’

She did. If she wrote down what she had seen this week and left the original conclusions untouched, the project would have two documents that seemed to tell an altogether different story. An empty house declared unfit, then not yet repaired. Sofie on 6 May had no place in that account.

‘I'm not confirming something today that I never established then,’ she said.

‘No one's asking you to.’

‘Pieter asked me to sign off the job. He made payment depend on it.’

Niels rubbed his forehead. ‘Then he put it badly. I'll ring him. We don't want a surveyor writing things just because someone's paying.’

He sounded convincing enough for her to feel, briefly, that the conversation was getting easier. She pointed to the next line.

‘The findings about damp. I didn't write those either.’

‘Perhaps another specialist's comments were added.’

‘Then they need that specialist's name under them. You can't put sentences between mine and leave my initials at the bottom of the whole thing.’

‘I understand. We're looking at the final combined report. Have you spoken to Eva?’

‘She said she'd compare the versions.’

‘That might be the quickest way. Eva knows exactly which version you export.’

Eva had still not arranged to ring her back. On Tuesday her colleague had emailed to say she had misjudged how long the afternoon would take and would be at her own office on Wednesday. Perhaps Niels knew which files came from whom because he worked with them. It need mean no more than that. Lena made a small mark beside his name on her own sheet and let him finish.

‘Then there's the keys,’ she said.

For the first time, he looked away from the page before she had finished her question. Towards the door, not the laptop.

‘Seven sets,’ Lena said. ‘Where did that number come from?’

‘Access for the project. Maintenance, contractors. The usual records.’

‘I recorded two sets present at the inspection. Not every set issued for a renovation that hadn't even started.’

‘That must have got mixed up. They don't all have to be in the house at once. You know how these things go.’

‘Who authorised the extra access?’

He pushed the sheet a hand's breadth away. ‘I'll find the relevant paperwork first. Otherwise I'll give you an answer that needs correcting tomorrow.’

‘Fine. I'd like it in writing.’

His phone lit up. He touched the screen and declined the call. It softened the conversation: he was choosing her questions over the next problem. Lena felt how much readier that made her to wait a little longer for an explanation.

‘The curtains are still there, aren't they?’ he asked. ‘That patch she sewed in. The contractor needs to know what has to stay.’

‘I haven't been asked to make an inventory for a contractor.’

‘No. Just something she asked about before. Never mind. There's a different list for that.’

The little red patch did not appear in the cropped photograph. It had been in her original, below the damp. Niels might have visited the house before; that would be normal in his job. He might also have spoken to Sofie. His remark did not make him guilty. But his earlier distance, his inability to stand in every living room, was a little less useful now as an explanation for everything he did not know.

‘When did you last speak to her?’ Lena asked.

‘I'd have to look that up.’

‘Has she moved somewhere else?’

‘That's not something I'd pass on without her permission either.’

He had a point. It was frustrating to hear a reasonable answer that also brought a difficult part of the conversation neatly to a halt.

‘Then I'd like you to pass on my request to speak to her,’ she said.

‘Yes. But let's make sure we don't all start making demands on her at once. She's had enough to deal with.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘I'm not going into that here.’

He closed the laptop. They had long since used up their fifteen minutes. In the corridor two people talked over each other about a closure near a school. A real working day carried on beyond the door, full of things Lena knew nothing about.

‘I'll ask Eva about the combined report,’ Niels said. ‘And you'll get an answer about the keys. In the meantime, there's no reason your factual observations from Monday can't go in the project file.’

‘Along with my explanation that I dispute the earlier text.’

His mouth pulled slightly to one side. ‘That's a strong word to start with.’

‘The occupancy status and the conclusions aren't mine. I can't leave them there without saying so.’

‘Then we need to be careful about it. You know there are residents waiting to find out what's happening. The file moving quickly hasn't done them any harm.’

He spoke of them as though their interests were laid out on the table and Lena had put her questions on top. She thought of Ria's soup. Of the woman coming home from her shift on 13 May. He meant the same people, but not one of them was sitting here.

He shook her hand at the door. His palm was dry, and so, now, was his shirt at the elbow. He went straight to the man with the mop to ask about the plumber.

Lena stayed at reception and asked for an acknowledgement of her request. The man behind the counter did not know what she meant. She wrote down her name, the address and the three items she had asked for. He logged the request and gave her a reference number.

‘Do you have any photographs of the damage for us today?’ he asked.

‘I'll submit those separately.’

He nodded. He had done nothing wrong. There was no need to look at him as though he personally stood for the entire administration. Lena thanked him and went outside.

In the car, she noted the curtain and immediately added that it proved nothing. She also wrote down what Niels had promised. By the bottom of the page her tidy list was a tangle of arrows.

She took a fresh sheet. At the top she wrote that Sofie had been there on 6 May, as she herself had seen. Less elegant than property occupied. She left it as it was.