A Cold Death in Amsterdam (Lotte Meerman Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

loathe being the centre of attention.’
    ‘So much fuss over this one case.’
    I couldn’t get rid of either one of my cards and had to pick up a new one – a three of clubs, its corner battered and tattered from over-use. ‘The papers had been writing about it for years. There’d been so much speculation,’ I explained.
    ‘There’s plenty of other things to write about. Proper news. There’s no need to put
you
on the front page.’
    ‘It’s what sells, I suppose.’
    ‘You sell?’ Her eyes scanned the cards on the table. She took three runs, clubs, spades and diamonds, and rearranged them into three sets of the same numbers. The cards moved over the table with the sound of dead autumn leaves falling to the ground. She added a fourth card. Her smile bunched up the skin on her cheekbones.
    ‘Well no, not me specifically. But Wendy Leeuwenhoek. Her disappearance had been selling papers for years.’ I picked up another new card, hardly having looked at my old ones.
    ‘But it’s not front-page news.’
    ‘Neither is a footballer’s wedding, but that gets on there too. It was more important than a footballer’s wedding, don’t you think?’
    My mother put an eight of diamonds on the table. I added a card to my hand.
    ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘You’re right. But it’s horrible how they make money out of people’s grief.’ Her eyes were glued to the table.
    ‘At least we found a body to bury.’ I reshuffled the cards in my hands, breaking up sets and creating new ones. We would never know what had happened. I would never know why Wendy had been killed. Just another thing to keep me awake at night.
    ‘But at what cost to you? This job isn’t good for you.’ She held her last card between her fingers and checked the ones on the table. She put it back face down on the table and took a sip of tea.
    I tried to guess what she had left based on the sets she was examining. It was probably a low number – they were the hardest to get rid of. ‘It’s my job. It’s what I do.’
    She sighed and picked a new card from the stack. ‘You went to university. You had so many choices, great opportunities. You still do. Now you see bad things all the time, suspect everybody you meet, nothing good ever happens. It’s hard on you. I can see it in your face.’
    ‘I just haven’t been sleeping well.’ I had a run of low clubs and could put them on the table, but then she could use my cards to get rid of her last two. Instead I picked a new one and hoped she’d have to do the same. Her eyes met mine. She looked at the number of cards I had left and could probably guess my tactics.
    ‘I had hoped this new team would be better, because you were looking at older cases. You seemed happy. Much happier than you’d been for a while.’
    ‘It’s like that. When you first start a case there’s excitement. Something new. A new puzzle. A new challenge.’
    She was silent for a bit, then reached over and picked some fluff off the sleeve of my jumper. ‘I’m worried about you,’ she repeated. ‘I’ve never seen you like this. It’s because it was a little girl, isn’t it?’
    Amongst other things.
His hands on my body, his fingers in my hair.
    ‘Have you spoken to Arjen lately?’ she asked.
    I had no reason to talk to my ex-husband. ‘No, not in months.’ I rubbed my thumb over the tattered corner of the three of clubs.
    ‘I saw him and his new wife in the Kalverstraat yesterday.’
    I took a gulp of my tea without waiting for it to cool down and let the hot liquid burn the roof of my mouth and the back of my throat.
    ‘He looked very well,’ she said.
    ‘Good for him,’ I said. Then: ‘Come on, make a move, you’ve been thinking for long enough. Pick a new card – you know you’re stuck.’
    She added a card to her hand. ‘You should stay in touch. You never know.’
    I heaved a sigh. ‘You’re crazy.’ I wanted to give her hand a soft squeeze, careful not to squash the swollen knuckles