Sacha Dumont's Euro-Mysteries by Sacha Dumont

Author:Sacha Dumont
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Apollo Press / Germinal Prdouctions Ltd
Published: 2011-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 31

WE HAD LUNCH at a restaurant on Tuindwarsstraat, back in the Jordaan not far from her house. It was a place I’d been to before and was very ‘New Amsterdam’, very ‘Jordaan’ - friendly, comfortable, relaxed, no pretence, good food. The walls were tiled white, which could have been a disaster, except they were covered with giant-sized posters and outrageous paintings which made the white tiles more camp than toilet. There was also an enormous clay urn which dominated the entryway with a humorous frieze that turned a ridiculous piece of design into a lighthearted joke. What’s more, it was a ‘vegetarian’ restaurant that served meat - though certified organic (whatever the hell that meant).

We ordered some hot bread, olives, pistou soup and pasta with a sauce made from pastachio nuts. And a carafe of wine.

I poured her a glass and filled mine and then proposed a toast: ‘To meeting up again,’ I said.

She smiled and clinked my glass.

‘And to Heinke...’

‘To Heinke,’ she repeated, lifting her glass again. ‘I hope he’s all right.’ And then her smile faded. ‘He’s not a murderer...’

‘Most murderers aren’t murderers,’ I said. ‘Not cold blooded murders, anyway. But sometimes people find themselves in extraordinarily horrible situations and do extraordinarily terrible things.’

‘Extraordinarily terrible, perhaps,’ she said. ‘But not taking another person’s life. Not Heinke.’

I ate some olives and buttered some bread with a garlicky concoction, ate that, and then said, ‘You know that photo on the wall. The group picture...’

She was nibbling on some olives, too. But with less gusto. ‘Yes?’

‘I was curious about the young woman with the dark complexion. The one at the bottom row, sitting at Heinke’s feet.’

I could almost feel her thinking as she tried to transport herself back to that moment, so long ago, when some unseen photographer snapped the shutter of his camera, forever fixing in time an image which now hung on Heinke’s wall.

She rubbed the cool rim of her wine glass against her lower lip, as if the sensation would help her remember, and then she said, ‘It was strange, you know. She wasn’t really part of the group. Just a friend of Heinke’s who happened to be there. And she was invited in...’

‘Into the picture?’

‘Yes. That’s the way were, of course. A group. A non-group. We didn’t believe in groups but we were one, none the less. An amorphous group without a centre. At least that’s what we said. But the centre was Heinke, really. Without him the group didn’t exist.’

‘Did you know her at all?’ I asked.

She shook her head. ‘I think I had been away for a while. I just popped in to say hello, so they put me in the picture, too.’ And then she laughed. ‘We all looked so serious, didn’t we? Like we were a real movement...’

‘Like you were COBRA II.’

She laughed again. ‘Yes. COBRA II. Except COBRA lasted for about two years and we lasted for fifteen minutes!’

‘Do you think she was Surinamese - the dark woman in the photo?’

‘Yes, she was Surinamese.

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