A Faithful Translation
At twelve minutes past three on a Saturday morning in November, a woman calls the emergency line in The Hague. Her voice is calm. She gives her address without a single slip. ‘I’d like to report that I’ve killed someone.’
Lotte Brouwer is a sworn court translator, one of only a handful in the Netherlands who work between Polish and Dutch. She is careful, exact and trusted with other people’s words.
For the past year, in the hours when no one else was awake, she has been talking to someone who always answered. Someone patient and attentive, who never grew tired of her and never forgot what mattered to her. Until one night it did.
The detective who takes her statement has twenty-eight years on the force, and a confession that fits a little too well. He has learned to be wary of stories that fit at the first attempt.
What did Lotte really do that night? And whose voice was she listening to?
Read the opening
Jaap Rietveld picks up on the second ring. He is in his fourteenth year on the Hague police emergency line, and the second ring is where his hand has always landed.
‘112. What is your emergency?’
A woman. Her voice is quiet and level, the voice people use to give an address to a courier.
‘My name is Lotte Brouwer. I’d like to report that I’ve killed someone.’
He asks for the address. She gives the street, the house number, the postcode, four digits and two letters, without a single slip. He types as she speaks and finds he doesn’t have to ask her to repeat anything. The nearest patrol is seven minutes away. He dispatches it before the call is over.
‘Does anyone need medical help?’
‘No. She’s past needing help.’
‘Are you alone?’
‘Yes. I’m in the kitchen. I’ve left the door unlocked, so your people won’t have to break it down.’
He keeps her on the line for another two minutes. There is a list of questions for this, and he works down it. She answers each one exactly as far as it is asked and no further. She does not cry. She does not say I didn’t mean to. Years on this line have taught Rietveld how often people say that, and how early.
…