Page 32 of The Expat Affair

“I thought I told you to wait outside.” The detective, thank God. If the intruder is still here, he’s about to wish he wasn’t.

I press the button to let him in. A minute later, the place is crawling with cops.

Two of them go room to room, hands draped loosely over their guns but trigger fingers poised and ready, while the others wait outside on the landing, nodding at whatever Detective Boomsma is saying—orders, by the sound of things. He points to the front door, to the stairwell behind them, to the hallway and beyond, to Ingrid and me watching from her bedroom doorway.

“I thought I told you to wait outside,” he repeats, not willing to let it go.

“We were already here,” I say, hooking a thumb at Ingrid. “She was already in her room. They took her cash.”

“How much?”

“I’m not sure,” she says, and either she’s in shock or intimidated by an apartment full of uniformed cops. She eyes them as they clomp inside, dropping their big bags of supplies. Her voice is a lot less adamant than it was just a minute ago, with me. She says something to him in Dutch, and he nods.

The detective turns back to me. “What else did they take?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t checked the other rooms yet.”

By now, the cops have declared the apartment empty of anyone but us, and I make a beeline to my room, my eyes darting left and right as if half expecting someone to leap out of an open doorway.

At my bedroom, I pause just inside the door, cringing at the unmade bed, the strip of black lace peeking out from a pile of dirty laundry in the corner, the bra hanging from a doorknob on the chest of drawers. My bedroom feels too hot, too beige, far too small for two people, especially someone as large as Detective Boomsma. He steps inside and gives me an expectant look.

I open the top drawer on the dresser and slide the bra in, feeling under a stack of folded T-shirts. “My passport is still here, and so is my Kindle.” I point to it, charging on the nightstand, then fish my laptop from where it’s tangled in the duvet. “Everything is here, except...” I drop the laptop to the bed like it’s sizzling.

From the other side of the apartment, Ingrid says something in emphatic Dutch.

“My laptop was open when I left. I was on FaceTime with my sister. I put on my coat and shoes while we talked. I remember waving to her from the doorway, and then she’s the one who hung up, not me. I didn’t close the laptop when we were done. I just... left.”

“So you’re saying whoever was here shut your laptop and moved it to under the duvet.”

I nod. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

The detective leans his head into the hallway, calling out something in Dutch. “Don’t touch anything, not until we dust the room for prints. What else?”

I point to the drawer containing my passport, still sitting open. “See that stack of T-shirts? It’s messier than it was when I left, and my Kindle was wedged in the drawer on my nightstand, not on top with that pile of books. Someone was definitely here. They went through my stuff.”

“They went through it, but they didn’t take anything.”

I look around the room, doing a quick inventory of my meager belongings, but it doesn’t take me long. There’s not much here to steal, and the MacBook is by far the most valuable thing that I own, a holdover from when I was married. For some reason they left it, along with the TV on the living room wall. Along with the crumpled twenty on the nightstand.

“Why would they steal Ingrid’s cash but not mine?”

The detective shakes his head, and he’s nice enough not to mention that a twenty is hardly worth taking. “What about any other valuables? Medicine, electronics, jewelry?”

“I already told you. The last time I saw the necklace was when Xander tossed it in the drawer.”

“I meantotherjewelry.”

A fresh surge of something unpleasant rises in my chest, though a wiser part of me knows the detective can’t possibly realize the landmine he’s stepped on. That all those pieces I used to place so much importance on—the six-carat engagement ring, the tennis bracelet, and the Cartier Love bangles, the gold chains and diamond-encrusted pendants—are decorating somebody else’s body now. That eventhinkingthat enrages me—not because I want them back, but because of who I lost them to.

“No, there’s nothing else. Everything I own is here.” Downstairs on the street, a horn honks, and I think of the reporters. “Did you ask the reporters? They must have seen something.”

“They didn’t. Not anyone out of the ordinary, at least. We’ll talk to the neighbors, though. Maybe they let somebody in, a delivery person or a cleaner.”

“That’s it. You’ll talk to the reporters and neighbors. What about protection? What about someone guarding my door?”

“We don’t have the funds or the manpower, unfortunately, but the reporters are doing a decent job of watching your door. All those stores out there—they have security guards and multiple cameras. I’ll talk to them, too, and arrange some extra patrols of your street. Speaking of cameras, I don’t suppose you have any of your own?”

I give him a look. “For what, my thrift-store clothing and IKEA furniture? Other than Ingrid’s cash, there’s nothing else. He couldn’t even be bothered with my laptop. There’s nothing here worth stealing.”

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