Page 27 of The Expat Affair

I wake up in my beige bedroom, and for the first second or two, I don’t remember that anything is wrong. Rain patters against the tiny window above my head, little rivers of water rolling down the glass with just beyond, ominous clouds hanging low enough to touch. Winter in Holland all looks the same, impossible to tell if the sun’s just risen or is about to set. It could be morning or evening or anywhere in between.

“About time you woke up.”

The voice is low and oily, coming from the chair in the corner. I roll my pounding head on the pillow, and there he is. Lars.

He smiles, and last night comes back in horrible flashes.

The terrace on the Leidseplein. Beanie man and his friend getting carted away and the sparkling water that somewhere between the glass and my stomach, picked up a colorless, odorless, tasteless pill that dissolves quickly and easily in liquid.

I feel my body under the covers, and at least I’m still dressed. Still wearing the same jeans I had on last night, the same sweater over a tank top, now twisted around my middle. Even my coat and shoes are still on, though I kicked off one sneaker during the night, but at least Lars didn’t rape me. That’s about the best thing I can say about the situation.

I stay quiet, trying to decide how to play this. Do I act surprised to find him here? Pretend I don’t know about the drugs? Neither seems like the best way to get out of this alive, so instead I opt for honesty.

“Thanks for bringing me home, I guess.”

My tongue is thick in my mouth, coated with something sour that makes me long for a toothbrush. The words come out mushy and hoarse. “Though you could have gone lighter on the roofie. How much of that shit did you give me?”

It didn’t take me until now to figure out, though, that the first night in the basement club, me bumping into him, him feeding me shawarmas at his cousin’s place around the corner . . . I might have made it easy for him, but nothing about that night was an accident.

“I need to know who was here, .”

He gestures to the room, the drawers and closets I emptied out, the clothes and shoes and bags I hurled everywhere. “Who tossed your stuff.”

“Me. I tossed it, after I—”

I roll onto my side and the movement pitches my stomach, firing a ball of bile up my throat. I hold still and breathe through the rolling nausea until it somewhat subsides. “Are you even an artist?”

Lars rolls his eyes. No, not an artist, but a damn good liar. “Good job on the trackers, by the way. How many were there?”

“Trackers.”

Not a question, exactly, and yet somehow it is.

“Yes, trackers. I found six, and that’s not including the one I left on the tram.”

I look to the nightstand for my phone, but it’s not there. Of course it’s not. “Good work, by the way. Picking just the right spot at the bar to make it seem like I came up to you and not the other way around. That couldn’t have been easy, but you played it well. Though just happening to be on the same side of town as me last night was a bit obvious, don’t you think? Where was the one that I missed?”

“The one what?”

“The tracker. Because I checked every piece of clothing I had on last night. I looked inside every compartment in my bag. I was certain I’d found them all.”

“I wasn’t tracking you. I’ve been watching you. I’ve had eyes on you this whole time.”

The downstairs neighbor’s face flashes before my eyes, her wrinkly smile as she gestured for me to come inside. “But I didn’t go out the front door.”

“I’ve lived in this city my entire life. You think I don’t know every street and alleyway? I had eyes on both exits.”

“Lemme guess. Beanie man and his friend in the orange coat.”

Lars leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Good guess. Let’s hope for your sake that I’m not too late.”

“I feel like this would go a lot faster if you’d stop talking in code. Too late for what?”

He waves a hand around the room, the mess. “The diamonds, . The necklace. Tell me where they are.”

On the one hand, I suppose I should be relieved that whatever this is, it’s only about diamonds. If Lars was a killer with a penchant for zip ties, if he thought I was witness to his crime, then he wouldn’t have bothered with the roofie. He would have killed me and dumped me off that bridge instead of pouring me in a cab.

“I don’t have any idea where the necklace went. I was so drunk that night, I barely remember putting it on. I don’t remember anything past midnight.”

I pause, looking around my sad, beige bedroom. “Also, if I had that necklace, do you really think I’d be living here?”

Lars shifts his body on the creaky chair, reaching down for something small and dark and shiny on the floor. A single-shot, nine millimeter Staccato CS, compact enough to fit in his hand. He aims it at my head, and I think of Willow’s words, echoes of ones she wrote in that note.

At least with diamonds in your back pocket you’d have some leverage. Something to barter for your life.

I scramble up the bed, moving as far away as possible. Barry had quite the collection once upon a time. I know what that gun can do.

“How are there so many guns in this country?”

Lars sighs. “I’m losing patience, , so I’m going to need you to listen very carefully. I want the necklace. I want the diamonds that were in Xander’s safe. Tell me where you hid them.”

“Nowhere! The last time I saw the necklace, it was in the nightstand drawer, and I didn’t even know he had a safe, not until I dreamed about walking into his study—”

Lightning fast, he whips the covers off my legs and whacks me hard on the shin with the barrel of the gun. I squeal, the pain exploding up my leg. “So you knew the safe was in his study.”

“Yes, but from the detective.”

I try to focus on his face and not the gun in his hand, the barrel pointed once again at my head. “Not from Xander. Not because he showed me.”

“What about your roommate?”

“Ingrid?”

He rolls his eyes. “Yes, Ingrid.”

“What about her?”

“Did you give the diamonds to her to sell? Tell me the truth. It’s the only way you get out of this alive.”

“I didn’t give her anything. Ingrid works in an antique shop. She restores antique mirrors for a living. I don’t understand any of this.”

“Ingrid worked with Xander. She was one of his handlers.”

“Handlers?”

Lars sighs, clearly irritated. “Of diamonds. Keep up. Ingrid sells diamonds on the black market. That’s how they get the stones across borders, by hiding them in the mirrors.”

I push up onto an elbow, my gaze wandering to the open doorway, the light from the living room creeping down the hall. I have no idea what time it is or if she’s even home, but if this is true, if Ingrid worked with Xander to move his diamonds, those trackers Lars claimed not to know about are suddenly making a lot of sense.

“Where is she? I want to talk to her.”

“Ingrid is a little tied up right now.”

Tied up selling stolen diamonds. Does she know that Xander’s diamonds are lab-growns? That they’re worth only a tenth of the real thing? Does Lars? If not, it seems unwise to point this out.

I fall back to the bed and stare up at the window high on the wall, the thoughts gathering around my brain like that crowd of reporters down on the street. Ingrid worked for Xander, which means that first day when Xander swiped right, when Ingrid looked over my shoulder and said if I didn’t want him then she did, she was lying. The morning after his murder when she wondered if the killer might also be a diamond thief, she was lying. All those times Ingrid pretended not to know Xander. She’s been lying to me the whole time.

And then I think of another thing Ingrid said.

That necklace couldn’t have been the only piece Xander had lying around. Did the killer get more?

That was Ingrid feeling me out, trying to figure out how much I knew, how much I saw that night in his penthouse. When I told her nothing—I knew nothing, I saw nothing—she shrugged it off, acted like she believed me. Money is a big motivator, she said to me that day, when all along, she was motivated by diamonds.

New questions roll in like the rumblings of a thunderstorm. Did Ingrid know what was going to happen that night? That someone would sneak into Xander’s apartment and murder him for his diamonds? Ingrid told me to watch my back—why? Not out of genuine concern. What is my role in all of this?

“I’m . . . I’m a nobody. I write travel articles for online magazines. Xander was just some guy I met on Tinder.”

As I say the words, I realize they’re not true. Xander swiped first. He initiated contact, something Detective Boomsma questioned me about under the weeping willow at the funeral. He asked if Xander had any reason to seek me out, if our work crossed paths, or if we knew some people in common—which as it turns out, we do.

Ingrid.

Lars is still watching, still pointing the gun at my chest.

“Was it you? Did you kill Xander?”

“Now is not the time for questions, . Now is the time to tell me the truth. That night at Xander’s penthouse. Did he give you anything? Did he mention any names?”

Deep in a pocket, his phone begins to buzz, but he ignores it. His gaze sticks to mine.

“No, nothing.”

I shake my head. “I swear.”

“Did someone come to the penthouse while you were there?”

“Yes. They cut off his finger and strangled him in the shower.”

He grunts. “Besides the killer, I mean.”

“Not that I saw. Xander received a phone call, but that’s it.”

“A phone call from who?”

The phone stops its buzzing, then starts right back up again. Lars hikes up on a hip, wrestling a lump from his pocket. “What time?”

“Sometime around midnight, and I don’t know who it was. Xander didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”

“You just said it was midnight. Why would someone be calling him that late?”

Lars asks, but he doesn’t seem to expect an answer. He’s too engrossed in whatever’s on the phone—my phone—in his hand. I crane my neck to see the name lighting up the screen, but there’s no need, because he flips the phone around.

His eyes narrow into slits. “Why is Willow Prins calling your mobile?”

Part Three

“It’s hard to be a diamond in a rhinestone world.”

—Dolly Parton