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

together. Instead I put out my set of low-numbered clubs. Only two more cards to go – a ten and the queen of spades.
    ‘No, no, I read a book where exactly that happened.’
    ‘I wouldn’t take him back.’
    ‘Why not? There’s hardly a queue of men outside your door. You’re forty-two. It’ll take you a while to find someone else.’
    ‘So you keep telling me.’
    She picked up a new card. She had four left; she had finally fallen behind. ‘But there’s a chance, isn’t there? That you might get back together?’
    I moved the dead weight of my plait over my shoulder. ‘No.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Well, they’ve got a child now.’
    ‘Oh yes. The child . . .’
    I slotted the ten in the middle of a run. We were both silent for a bit. The queen of spades, all alone in my hand, looked at me with her one eye, as if urging me not to say anything. I knew what my mother was thinking anyway, but she didn’t mention it. Kept quiet about my own little lost daughter. ‘You didn’t stay friends with Dad either,’ I said.
    ‘That was different.’
    ‘How?’
    She put out the four cards in one set; it was a run of diamonds from seven to ten. So much for my theory that she had low numbers.
    ‘Different how?’ I persisted.
    ‘It’s time for
Lingo
,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to miss that.’ She got up, picked up the remote control and switched on the television.
    I threw my leftover card on the table. Yes, she couldn’t possibly miss her television programme, apparently the most popular programme amongst the over-sixties, so popular that a previous prime minister had once mentioned his displeasure when it was moved to an earlier hour in the schedule. And in this case, it was the perfect excuse to avoid talking. She’d never told me why she left my father.
    Even though the flat was so small that we could see the television perfectly well from where we sat, we moved to the sofa. There were some rules: the table was for eating and playing cards, the sofa for watching the television.
    The game show ate up the time until I had to go. I put all my layers back on, my thick coat, gloves, scarf and hat, and made my goodbyes. I descended the concrete steps of the communal staircase, my hand on the red plastic banister. Downstairs, I unchained my bicycle from its attachment to my mother’s fence and pushed the pedals as hard as I could as I cycled through the cold darkness. January was a depressing month at the best of times.

Chapter Four
     
    After another sleepless night, this trip north up the A9 from Amsterdam to Alkmaar didn’t seem like such a good idea any more. The road ahead of me glistened in the morning light and stretched through the snow-covered white flatness of the landscape like a charcoal-grey pencil line on a blank page. Scattered villages broke the monotony of the never-ending fields. Churches pointed their steeples to the sky like warning fingers. ‘Be careful,’ they said. ‘You can see a long way – but that doesn’t mean things are out in the open.’
    My car still smelled new, leather mixed with that odour of burnt dust you get when you first turn on the heating in late October. Its paintwork was poison green, and I imagined my ex-husband, Arjen, naming my car The Frog and joking about hopping to the shops or hopping into town. The car dealer hadn’t understood. ‘Stupid woman,’ his eyes said. ‘Fancy choosing a car just for its colour.’ Maybe he hadn’t known green was the colour of envy.
    A long left-hand curve, which pressed me closer into my seatbelt, led to the roundabout on the ring road approaching Alkmaar. The lights were in my favour, no wished-for delay, no other cars. I changed gears. The engine hummed louder, as if I’d disturbed a nest of wasps with the gear-stick. I moved my foot off the accelerator and it quietened down. The thin pink folder lay on the passenger seat, the only evidence that this solitary trip was a flagrant breach of police procedures.
    I consulted