Hello everyone. I started a writing course (BBC Maestro Agatha Christie writing course) and I opened this website to post my progress. Keep in mind this is a draft. You can follow along with the real-time writing itself on my youtube channel, where I also reflect on the writing process itself as a tool for myself mainly. Murder mystery novels isn't a genre I'm used to so I started this project to challenge myself. Please find all chapters below. You'll notice some editing in transcribing the handwritten manuscript to the below posts too. Comments are possible on the related youtube channels or you can contact me via my landing page directly too. Thank you to anyone and everyone for helping the project along by sharing your thoughts!The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this story are fictitious. No identification with actual persons, places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.© Clark Gillian Van Herrewege, 2025 - 2026
If you were to ask me to introduce myself, I would start first of all with my name, which is Karel Benjamin De Walters. My clients call me mister De Walters. My friends and family call me Benjamin. My close friends and loved ones, however, they call me simply Ben.I will extend that privilege to you, my dear reader-friend. If you were wondering why I sound the way I sound, or if you were wondering why I had mentioned earlier that my clients call me mister De Walters, the answer to both questions is that I am a "Notaris", a notary from Brussels, just like my father was before me and his father before him. We have a certain way of speaking, a peculiar mix of the two languages in our little capital, in addition to words from our local dialect as well. Add to that the jargon of our vocation, and you end up sounding like... well, me.Talking of my father, how can any man introduce himself without speaking of their father because as far as I believe all men owe at least one basic feature of their being to their fathers, like it or not, be it their hair color, their eyes, their jaw, and in having that jaw, their voice perhaps as well, or the manner of enunciating words that are particular to them. Or for example they could have their father's broad shoulders, a certain posture that might seem identical from father to son, or not anything at all. In any case the reason I bring this up at all is of course that I was offered and I accepted the chance to follow in his exact footsteps.This happened at a certain point in my adolescence, when my father had sat me down for a very serious talk. He handed me a weathered old card. "Le Chariot" it read on the bottom. I didn't know what it was or what it meant. I could only tell that it had been held by many hands and had been gazed upon many, many times. "Remember this card well", my father said, "It says that all the world's a stage, see, and we've all a role to play." He explained that for him and his father, that role had been to play the notary. "It's not a show, it isn't acting, but it's still a performance, sincere in its service. Most of all, as you can see here," he pointed at the illustration, "most of all, it's a vehicle.""A vehicle?""Indeed, son. It's a vehicle that can take you through all stages of life. Of course, you have the choice to carve your own whole path, you are free to tread the path on your own, on foot in stead of taking the vehicle I'm offering you, my son. But you may after many years come to the conclusion that you should have taken the opportunity when you had the chance and the support to do so. Many men do realize this, but admittedly, only by going through the hardship of their foolish meanderings could they ever have realized what the offer was worth in the first place. As a father, I want to avoid putting my son through all that."We both stared a while at the card in silence. I felt paralysed. It seemed like this choice would determine the entire rest of my life and as a young lad, I had never thought about the rest of my life before."Having said all this, my son, even when you choose to follow in my footsteps and become a notary too, the vehicle doesn't drive itself, and there are no guarantees, even in this profession. But love and support go a long way. I can see you don't want to think about spending your entire life in this house, but as you grow, you'll learn that you can take this vehicle and still drive wherever you want, drive your own way. De sure to always maintain balance and remain modest, because, to be sure, not everyone gets this opportunity, so be grateful, and have respect for the profession. Take it from me: balance everything you do for the self with service to others, and vice versa."There hasn't been another talk with my father in my entire life that has stuck with me as this one has. I remember it almost word for word. Needless to say, I took it. And his wisdom hasn't failed me throughout my career. Today, I'm older than when he was when he had sat me down for that talk and I still have the very same card on my desk.You might be thinking: why should I interest myself in this boring notary doing boring work in the most boring of places? My answer is: you might be surprised. Some of my cases turn out to be extraordinarily emotional, even outrageously so. Especially the ones concerning the reading of the last testament and will of my clients.The case I'll present to you in the following pages, is one such reading of the last will and testament, of my - I'm sorry to say- former good friend: billionaire Johan Paepe. This wasn't just any standard reading of the will. True to Johan's character, it managed to turn the lives of the beneficiaries completely upside down. I will try to explain simply and as technically as possible, professional and discrete as my profession dictates. However, even the most factual recounting of this case will prove to be scandalous, disturbing and even bloody.
Any reading of the will is of course preceeded by the death of one of my clients. But this particular last will and testament belonged to, as said, one of my most peculiar and particular clients: Johan Paepe. His inheritance was a tricky one to handle, and to manage it I had to consult the accountant of his estate, the young, bright and succesful Ariadne 'Tjollyn. Why? Let me explain the particulars.Johan Paepe was an enormously wealthy man, but only became wealthy later in life. He had no children of his own and had been living as a recluse before and after amassing his fortune. His estate was based on the success of his series of fantasy novels that had been optioned and turned into a major worldwide franchise of films, television series and merchandise. The bewildering part of the inheritance of his estate is that he had bequeathed the amount of €1 to his next of kin, and nothing else.This was of course, to me, knowing him personally, not unexpected or anything out of the ordinary. The strange part of the whole case is not the €1 inheritance, but that he had changed it to something else entirely and shortly thereafter had died. The €1 inheritance seemed very much like him, the new addendum, as mrs. 'Tjollyn had come to present and explain, was completely out of character for Johan. What had happened? Of course, as the notary, that was not for me to investigate.To do so, the investigation had been started by the police department of Brussels, who had put a thirty something young Rechercheur on the case named Van Der Smet. And this was due to the circumstance of Johan's death. He was found in an armchair in his house, having shot himself through the head, bloodstain patterns and directions all studied by the forensic team seeming to corroborate the suicide. However, the confounding part was that the gun had been found on the coffee table across from him. It seemed there was another person there at the time, and this person could well have shot Johan, put the gun to his head and shot him, right after the change in the will. For this reason, the investigation team had reached out to me. We would be working together. This was a first in my vocation, to work together with the police department in finding a possible murderer among my own client's beneficiaries, but that was what had to be done. And so there I was, welcoming in the beneficiaries into my office, not yet realizing what was about to transpire later, and in my own home, previously my father's house.Looking back, I mustn't be so surprised about how things escalated from there, considering Johan himself. He was not living by the rule of temperance my father had urged my to live by. He was incredibly greedy about all the wealth he had gained as an author, refusing to share any of it to anyone he knew, even as he accumulated as much wealth - thanks to Ariadne 'Tjollyn's management of his estate - as he or even his entire extendeed family could ever spend in their entire lifetimes.As the beneficiaries sat down in my office, I felt for the first time in many years some nervousness, but then I remembered Rechercheur Van Der Smet promised to make quick work of the case. How? Well, here was the interesting part. Rechercheur Van Der Smet was using the latest in AI technologies, specifically facial pattern recognition "far surpassing any lie detector test", or so he said and I of course believed him, rather attracted to the idea of being rid of this entire case as soon as possible. There was one thing about the whole premise of using his AI tools I wasn't feeling completely comfortable with: he had said that he could quickly find the culprit 'if' there was a culprit to be found.Six beneficiaries there were in total, including spouses, 10 people took a seat in my office. After welcoming them and having my personal housekeeper Brigitte offer them either a cup of coffee, fruit juice or a glass of water, I proceeded with the reading of the last will and testament - both the original and then the addendum as was presented to me by Ariadne 'Tjollyn. At the request of Rechercheur Van Der Smet, I read both of them, so that the AI could pick up on the facial cues given by the beneficiaries - hinting to whether they could be the potential culprit in the case of Johan's death.At first, most of them gasped at the news that only €1 would be inherited amongst them all. To other, who knew Johan well, it didn't come as a surprise at all. But then when I went over to the second part, the addendum, there was a collective shift in their countenances.Here was the entire addendum I read to them:"My dearest next of kin, my nieces and nephews, children of my beloved brothers and sister who have passed into that great unkown before myself, some of you know each other well and keep in touch, others don't, much a reflection of how me and your parents related to one another. I regret my former will and testament amounting to €1 to split amongst you. It was cruel. I have had a change of heart and I will not bore you with details as to why. But I do want to apologize and make amends and do the right thing. My estate's net worth amounts to just over €1 billion. It would only be right to split the estate's worth evenly amongst the six of you."I looked up for a moment and scanned their faces. They were all hardly breathing, listening to Johan's words from beyond the grave."I know that all of you had reached out to me over the years, asking for financial help, and I had refused. I don't know what I was thinking, however, today things are very clear to me and I must explain the original €1 inheritance, before I can explain how to split up my estate. The reason my inheritance comes down to only €1, is that I have already bequeathed all of the rest of my wealth to someone anonymously. That someone is in the room with you now."Again, they all gasped and this time it was all of them."All of my estate had been given to them under the condition they would remain anonymous. It had all been settled, today, nearly a decade ago.""A decade ago?!" was the collective cry from the beneficiaries."After my passing" I continued, "This person was to become the sole holder of my wealth. This decision, I do regret. So with this addendum, I add to my last will and testament that the joint account be split amongst the six of you if you all unanimously decide to do so.""But that would include the person who had inherited the €1 billion all to himself for the past ten years!" one of Johan's next of kin pointed out."Otherwise, you can all unanimously agree to let the previous arrangement stand as is. My friend mr. De Walters will provide time and space today to come to a decision together and with this I feel my conscience is clear and a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Farewell.""Oh, the weight has been lifted off of his shoulders and put squarely on ours! Good going, Uncle." said the eldest of his beneficiaries, his cousin, Pieter Paepe.A storm erupted amongst them, and I couldn't make out any word of it as they were all talking over each other, outraged about what they had just found out. Then, Rechercheur Van Der Smet finally entered the room. He informed them this was a potential murder case and that they were all under investigation, since not a one in the room was clear of a motive for killing Johan, as he had explicitly stated in his testament."Do you mean the part that each of us at one point had come to him, asking for some financial aid?" said Jochen, Pieter's brother."Not only that", added Van Der Smet, "It's that the suicide of your uncle was questionable due to the state he was found in, of which I will inform you later. At this stage I want to let you know that I have installed cameras equipped with AI facial recognition to help determine who is most likely to have committed the murder.""Excuse me?" said Layla, Johan's niece through his sister, "Can you even do this?""We can and we are. This is an official investigation and you are all part of it. The reason is that the person most likely to have committed the murder is the person who had inherited the estate and Johan's billion euros, and would want to keep it that way. It is extremely likely they have murdered Johan as soon as they found out about the addendum.""How would they have found out-" mumbled Kenny, the youngest of the three brothers."All of this to say, for my part, that all proceedings in this house today will be recorded for this purpose. Anyone who is not agreed to this can leave, but must also forfeit their share of the estate, since the decision was to be unanimous, leading the previous arrangement to stand as is.""So if any one of us walks out of here, the person who had been a billionaire all along, for nearly ten years, would keep the money all to himself, and we're all left with nothing.""That's right", said Van Der Smet.All of them proceeded to declare they could never have committed a murder, let alone the murder of their recluse of an uncle, to which Van Der Smet replied after glancing at his laptop screen: "The AI determined that was a lie."
"Hey may have been rich, but he's incredibly stupid. I one of us really did receive his €1 billion, they would just walk out of here right now without ever admitting to anything and just keep... being a billionaire!", said Pieter."That's ridiculous", said Kenny, "None of us are rich! Who in their right mind would walk out of 1/6th of a billion euros?!""You're wrong, Kenny", said Céline, Jochen's wife, "Five of us aren't rich. One of us has been a billionaire for ten years and didn't tell any of us about it!""I think what Pieter is saying," Jochen interjected, "Is that if the billionaire amongst us would walk out now, they would betray themselves. Whoever it is, they are forced to stay.""I don't know if I meant that", said Pieter to his little brother, "I can speak for myself you know."Layla and her husband Jean-Baptiste had been talking to each other in hushed voices, but she added to this conversation that "Yes, that would be very suspucious if someone walked out now, considering they would be the prime suspect of the murder of our uncle if they do. People have killed for less.I noticed that Céline at this point glared at her with a look of total suspicion, as if saying with her eyes: how would you know? Meanwhile, this whole conversation was not sitting well with Pieter."I don't think we should be so quick to shout murder, just because there's money involved. We all heard the addendum, is it so unlikely the man actually felt bad and killed himself? He clearly wasn't well.""But what was his change of heart? Sounds to me like someone forced him to write it", said Kenny. At his side sat his girlfriend Joyabel, with whom he had opened a restaurant a few years ago."Just the opposite", cried Céline, "The addendum to split the €1 billion amongst us was most likely sincere, probably driving the murderer to kill him so as to keep the €1 billion for themselves as soon as they found out.""But how could they have found out?" repeated Kenny.Everyone was looking puzzled as the atmosphere in the room turned colder and colder. Each of them was looking at the others with ever increasing suspicion, changing their posture, their voices, their expressions. Van Der Smet's cameras all the while recorded every little part of this. His plan to register all the reactions to the reading of the will to add to the AI's calculations of who the culprit might be, seemed to be working smoothly. At that point, I was still pretty confident the matter could be settled relatively quickly."I don't know and I don't care", cried Pieter now, raising his voice, "As for me. I'm not taking part in this. If they didn't care to tell me before, I'm not interested in hearing it now. I say leave the arrangement as is. I'm leaving this whole stinking case."Everyone stared at Pieter in shock as he got up from the table. Standing up and looking at everyone's expression, he suddenly froze into place."Guys, why are you looking at me like that."For a moment it seemed like no one would speak, but then Layla finally broke the silence."After what we just discussed, you would just up and walk out, leaving us all with nothing? Not to mention the one person who has had the billion all along would...""Would what?""Well, get away with it!""Get away with what?""Like, deceiving us all, right? Pretending not to be a billionaire whilst being amongst the richest people alive?""That's hardly a crime, now is it?""But the murder is", said Rechercheur Van Der Smet."Rechercheur, this is all just speculation. Even if the secret billionaire has the highest likelihood of being the murderer, doesn't make them a murderer. MURDER is what makes them a murderer.""That's why it's called in investigation, Pieter," said Rechercheur Van Der Smet, "And you're not making your score any better, right now.""I don't care about your ridiculous score!" said Pieter, throwing on his jacket, ready to step out."You can't really mean it, brother," cried Jochen, "You would just walk out of here, destroying all our chances to get 1/6th of a billion euros?""Is it so hard for you to imagine someone being satisfied with their lives without being rich?" replied Pieter, "Im a seasonal worker - I like it. I live according to the seasons and go where the harvest is. Makes me feel connected to... the earth -""Connected to earth?! Oh, I forgot, he considers himself an artist," mumbled Céline sarcastically, "I suppose this is worth more to you than a few million euros.""You're a shallow woman, Céline!" shouted Pieter, "And yes I am. Just because I haven't made any money off of it-""You consider picking up dead birds from the forest, dipping them in paint and then throwing them into a canvas is art?! It's morbid! A red flag if I ever saw one.""That's it. You guys enjoy the rest of the investigation. I'm out.""Sometimes it isn't just about you", Jochen rebutted, now standing up from his chair too, "This time you can actually really do some good for us, just by staying...""Finally?" repeated Pieter, "so I've never done you any good, brother?"Céline caught this immediately and stood up at her husband's defence, saying:"Honestly Pieter, riddle me this. How is it that you always seem to get by, but you never seem to have any real job?"Jochen turned to her and said: "Céline, you're not helping.""I don't need to riddle you anything. Just what is it you're saying", said Pieter now, fuming."Can you blame me? Guys, we're all under investigation here. The sooner we dig into things, the sooner we can all call it a day."No one disagreed with Céline and just sat by silently."See? So, yes. It is very suspicious, Pieter. And now, on top of that, you would just walk out of potentially millions and millions of euros? Come on! You're the secret billionaire, aren't you?"Now Pieter had become completely red in the face. He pointed his finger at Céline in return and shouted: "You think I have 1 billion euros?!"At this point I realized this was going to take much longer than expected and started to think about refreshments. If the entire investigation was going to be as intense as it had been so far, I would need some more snacks and drinks. I called for Brigitte."Well, you do seem very eager to walk away from it. It doesn't make any sense!""I agree", said Layla."Céline", shouted Pieter, "You have waited years for a reason to throw me under the bus. Now you have it! But I'm sorry to disappoint! I haven't a billion euros. And I'm not interested in procuring millions for any of you either, if you keep insulting me like this!""Guys, calm down", yelled Kenny.But the shouting match between Jochen, Céline and Pieter continued. Brigitte had come in and I had asked her to provide some lemonade or cola and some sweets since they were tiring themselves out a great deal. She came back with the bottles of lemonade and cola, some water, sweets and pralines. I asked the group if anyone needed some refreshments but since there was no reply, as if I wasn't even present in the room, I had Brigitte set it on a chair in the middle where all could reach.The only one who answered me, whilst the shouting continued in the background, was Nele Paepe, who had come in with her sister Brenda Paepe who unfortunately had been catatonic in a waking coma for decades. Nele and her mother had tended to her most of their lives, until her mother eventually died and left the care of Brenda completely in her hands. With a voice as soft as a flower petal, she asked if she could have some fruit. I immediately had Brigitte bring over our breakfast fruits and provided a little plate and a knife, so she could cut up a banana in bitesize pieces to feed her sister. Nele was totally unaffected by the whole shouting match, calmly cutting the fruit."It IS art and I'm not going to discuss any of this any longer with you, Céline", Pieter went on, still as red as a tomato.At this point, Jochen had been sidelined in the discussion, as he was only trying to get Céline to calm down."You're despicable!" she shouted, "Even if you don't want anything to do with the money, sit yourself back down for our sakes! Some of us really need it! You know we had to... sell... because of..."At this point her shouting had turned into sobbing and she leaned into Jochen's shoulder, who was glaring at Pieter now."Sit down", he growled at him."Brother, you know I'm sorry about what happened to..." muttered Pieter."Sit down, Pieter!" Jochen said, raising his voice."I loved him too, as much as I do...""Sit down, Pieter!" shouted Jochen.Pieter sat back down, then a throbbing silence. Even Nele had stopped cutting her banana.After blowing her nose and the two of them had sat back down, Jochen handed her a 'citroen'-lemonade. Then, she said, shaken: "You're just as heartless as our uncle."Pieter sat down, defeated, breathing heavily and took a cola himself. Kenny had already downed three pralines."To be fair", said Layla, "Whoever it turns out inherited the estate 10 years ago would use their lives as we all know it as a cover of sorts to remain anonymous. It could be... anyone of us."Still blowing her nose and wiping away her tears, Céline mumbled: "It's unconscionable.""It's hard to imagine any one of us doing that", said Jochen, "We all know each other."Another silence no one dare break fell upon the room. The only sound was the light sobbing of Céline into her handkerchief, until finally Kenny turned to Rechercheur Van Der Smet and asked: "Please, Rechercheur, tell us what you know. How did our uncle die?"
Of course Rechercheur Van Der Smet and I had completely anticipated all of this, especially since prior to them all coming to the reading of the last will and testament we had gone over all possible scenarios together. Though I admit, I had faith in Van Der Smet's promise it would all be over in a matter of hours. The worst case scenario was that they would need to stay the night, or even longer, until the AI had provided enought of a conclusion for the police department to further the case. Until then, Rechercheur Van Der Smet could keep all of the beneficiaries here, in my house. The thought of it had been disturbing enough, but now seeing it play out in real life, it was starting to feel chilling. My father's words kept sounding in my head - temperance. Temperance. How was I supposed to do that in this situation? Leave it to my old friend Johan Paepe to really put my principles to the test.Rechercheur Van Der Smet proceeded to tell them, in dry detail, about the suicide of their uncle sitting in his armchair in his study room, about the blood spatters, the directions and patterns, about the gun being found on the coffee table across from him, about this all happening within hours of the addendum to his last will and testament made final. Never in my life had I heard a silence getting more silent until after Van Der Smet was done relating this all to them."Then it's obvious it's murder", said Jochen, "Since the gun was found at an impossible angle to the shot to the head.""Correct", Van Der Smet confirmed, "I could never have just fallen on top of the coffee table in the position we had found it in. However, the blood spatterings confirmed that he had truly shot himself at the temple, the impressions found on his right hand confirmed his triggering of the gun.""Well I can't make any sense of it", said Céline."How can it be", said Layla, "That we end up being suspects in all of this, when he probably had a house full of servants, who could all have shot him or even if they didn't shoot it, moved the gun. Were there no finger prints?""Only his own, Mrs. Nourtaki", said Van Der Smet, "And he hadn't any servants. The man was so fond of his privacy, as we all know he was a recluse, that he kept only a concierge on his grounds at Hoog-Linden. The concierge lived outside Johan's mansion, in the concierge house. And it was from the same house he had heard the gunshot at 21:00 hours.""Does he claim so, or do we know so", asked Jochen."Actually, we know so for certain, since the concierge had been live-streaming himself working on a miniature panoramic battle scene for his youtube channel and his merchandise store featuring photographs of his dioramas.""That's oddly specific", said Céline."Well, it's the only footage we have pinpointing the exact moment he shot himself. Johan didn't have any cameras anywhere on his property. He was very weary of them.""Ironic", mumbled Pieter, arms crossed."Not ironic", said Van Der Smet, "Lucky. Without it, we wouldn't have known the exact time and location of his death.""He loathed modern technology and distanced himself from it as much as humanly possible", I added, knowing him well, "Not as a way of shutting out the outside world per se, but it made him a recluse even more so. Even the addendum had been sent by mail.""So the man undertook the upkeep of the entire house by himself? I don't believe it for a second", said Layla."You musn't have visited your uncle in Hoog-Linden for years, Layla", said Rechercheur Van Der Smet, "Because the state we found the house is was almost as shocking as finding his dead body. It was nearly coming apart. Only the rooms he frequented were in somewhat of an acceptable state. The rest was a shambles. He seemed to be very sick of life itself, making the likelihood of suicide more plausible.""There we have it. Suicide." ejected Pieter, "Can I go home now?""It doesn't explain the gun!" said Kenny."It was his concierge, most likely, running up to check and see what the sound was and he probably moved the gun whilst trying to revive him or something and then called to police. What else could it be?""There were no other prints on there, Pieter!" said Céline."I don't understand how you can be so sure to rule him out entirely", said Pieter, "Since he was the only person there.""There's every reason to", said Rechercheur Van Der Smet, "since we have video footage proving he had heard the shot from the grounds."Which could have been staged", said Pieter."And from the fact that he wasn't mentioned in the will and testament", added Van Der Smet, "He wouldn't gain anything by it.""Maybe he just really hated him and wanted to kill him", grumbled Pieter."Ok Pieter, calm down", said Jochen, "Now you're not making any sense anymore. Let's all just try to get this thing sorted as soon as possible. Don't we need to get back home as soon as possible, some of us have kids to look after?""Seems to me you're grasping at straws, Van Der Smet," said Pieter, "If just the mention of us in the will is the only thing to go off of. Hardly enough to suspect us in a murder case. The whole thing is ridiculous.""That, and that the AI had determined that you are were likely to be, of course" replied Van Der Smet."The AI? And that enough to make us all go through this?" cried Pieter."Right!" Jochen agreed, "What will it take for the AI to rule is out?""Let me explain," said Van Der Smet, "The AI is not going off of the files of Johan Paepe's case only. It's also been fed all of your files too. All of your details, all that was available of course under jurisdiction of the police investigation.""And may we see these files?""I was afraid you would never ask," said Van Der Smet, a bit too sadistically for my taste. He proceeded to hand out the files of all six of them."This is preposterous", said Jochen, "Without any of our consent, you can be feeding all of our private information to a murder suspect machine. Of course it's going to rank us from least likely to most likely, never ruling any one of us out!""How can you even be sure all the information is true?" added Layla."I assure you it's very official," said Van Der Smet."That doesn't make it necessarily true", cried Pieter, throwing the files away, not even looking at them."This is grotesque", said Jochen, "How can you summarize the most desparate moments of our entire lives in just a few paragraphs just to add them to a score of making us more likely to be murderers or not.""It's dry fact. I'm sorry if that disturbs you," said Van Der Smet" But I assure you it's all very much true and complete. Every single one of you had contacted Johan Paepe to help them with a desparate situation, to which money could have been the solution. Layla and her husband Jean-Baptiste had been denied funding for their consultancy firm in Paris from going bust. Pieter Paepe had asked him to help relocate and start life anew abroad so as to escape the drug maffia he had been doing business with during the slower months when he couldn't make money off seasonal work - and he owes them a great deal-""Pieter..." whispered Jochen disappointed."Kenny Paepe and his wife Joyabel had invested too much of their restaurant's resources into a crypto scam and lost everything. Them too Johan Paepe had refused to help save from bankruptcy. Jochen and Céline had to sell their newly built house to pay for the medical bills of their son, who had passed away even after experimental treatments that cost a lot of money for leukemia three years ago. Even in this instance, Johan Paepe had refused to help. Jochen and Céline had to move to rental apartment with what was left after selling the house.""Heartless man!" cried Céline, shaking."Nele had also reached out to him a few years ago on account of her sister and had asked him to put Brenda in professional care at a home, since state support was making life for the both of them nearly impossible to support."It was at this point that Nele for the first time that day spoke up and said: "Yes. I did. And I'm not ashamed of it. We all came to him in our most desparate moment. And what he said to me I'm sure he said to all of you: that during our most trying moments, like him, we get the opportunity to create our magnum opus and overcome it by ourselves. And he wouldn't take the opportunity away from us by bailing us out."There was a stunned silence. Everyone's most desparate moment had just been laid bare to each other and they were looking visibly tired. But Van Der Smet was anything but."At the end of each file you will find the AI's assessment of you - but I must inform you there will be no final percentage of the likelihood of whether or not you murdered your uncle. That's because the AI is constantly taking into consideration every moment we spend in here discussing the inheritance and the case of your uncle's death. Every action and reaction, verbally or non-verbally counts towards your percentage. It's continuously reassessing your score in real-time.""This is absurd!" cried everyone in unison."It is not absurd", said Van Der Smet, "I assure you it's quite technical and state-of-the-art, so don't worry.""Don't worry?" cried Céline, "We are worrying!""Hold on, if you've programmed the AI to spot a murderer amongst the six of us, isn't it going to be biased? I mean won't it always point to someone, even in the case no one had done it?""No", said Van Der Smet confidently."Why do you say that," asked Kenny."It had ruled out the concierge."
"Oh sure, why not go around and ask everyone who can't stand us and don't want anything to do with us to write a profile and stick it into your AI algorithm? I'm sure it will come up with an accurate profile on all of us", snarled Pieter, "Just tell us right now who the AI thinks the murderer is.""Sure", said Van Der Smet calmly, "It's Céline.""Pardon?!" exploded Céline, jumping up from her chair."Yes, you have the highest likelihood of having killed Johan Paepe, on acount of losing your son to leukemia and Johan declining to help, with either the bills for the experimental medical treatments, causing you and Jochen to sell the house.""But? How? I?", she stammered, "And what about Jochen, then? Jens was his son too.""Very good point Céline", said Van Der Smet, expressionless, "Indeed. Jochen is second place."Céline started shaking in her chair and rummaging through her purse all the while whisperingly talking to herself."Come on, calm down Céline", pleaded Jochen."Calm down? Imagine losing a child to leukemia and then going through all that just to end up accused of being a criminal! A murderer!""No one is accusing you, Céline. It's just this stupid AI thing, making wrong calculations or whatever."Céline looked up from her purse and scanned the faces in the room. Everyone was taken aback from her meltdown, even though everyone could understand perfectly why. But it was clear she took it differently. As if everyone had thought the AI was right. That she was a murdered. Her face changed."Don't look at me like that, all of you. Think about it. If I were the secret billionaire... the one who killed uncle Johan for his money... would I not have used that money to save my own child? Would I not have saved my own son?!""No one is saying", tried Layla."Are you guys absolutely insane?" she shrieked, loudly, stunning everyone in the room.For a moment, everyone, even the stoic Rechercheur Van Der Smet refrained from breaking the silence, realizing pushing Céline to the brink wouldn't help. But then, unexpectedly, Céline said something that would not sit right with anyone for the remainder of the case. In a calm voice, she said:"I didn't kill Johan. But I can tell you right now, if I had the chance to kill him today, I would.""Céline", tried Jochen again, realizing she was digging herself into a hole she couldn't get out of, "Come on. Take a breath. Calm down. Breathe."She took a breath. Then Jochen again, amidst the stunned silence of the room:"That's it. Deep breaths", he whispered, "You're not helping the algorithm determine the real killer here if you have an outburst on camera."She opened her eyes again and stared at him, eyeballs bulging out of their sockets as if she was trying to give birth to them:"Oh, so that's how I'm supposed to go through life now? Try to get an algorithm to "get in my favour" that had rated a berieved hard-working mother to be more likely to be a killer than a literal DRUG DEALER?!""Oh, here we go", sighed Pieter, "Why do you have to drag me into this again?"He buried his face into his hands."Yes, I do and I will", shouted Céline.Pieter tried to hug her again, just as when they were just now doing the breathing exercises together. But she threw his arms off."Potverdikkeme, Jochen", she shrieked again, "Oftewel laat je me nu spreken oftewel ga'k'ik niet te genieten zijn. Jij mag kiezen!"Even though we didn't all understand what she just told him, we could all tell from Jochen backing down what it had meant."A low-life, lying, drug-dealing, failure and loser of a man, and the AI ranks hjim below us?! And I'm not supposed to be angry about that?""Since it's only going to make the AI rank you higher, yes!" tried Jochen."Could you please stop? Why are you always pointing fingers at me?! It's obsessive! Ma gij zijt een obsédée!" shouted Pieter."Oh, so no I'm not only a murdering psychopath, I'm also obsessed with my brother in law. My profile is getting more and more incriminating by the second!""It is!" shouted Pieter! "Stop! Let's just all calm down and talk. Frankly, let's just get this over with!"Meanwhile, Kenny had been translating the conversation to Joyabel, who had been watching the shouting match like a game of tennis. Looking at her, I couldn't tell what she thought the score was in her mind. But there was that slight twinkle in Joyabel's eye, as if she was enjoying a part of this, the drama of it all. As if she was enjoying a stageplay as part of the audience, and not part of the actor troupe. It gave her this sense of being the observer, much like Rechercheur Van Der Smet and Nele. But whilst Van Der Smet was relying en AI to solve the case and regarding all the goings-on as data, and Nele would sometimes add her two cents, I recognised as a public servant who was entirely outside of the conversation, a fellow outsider in her. However, that twinkle, that slight twinkle in her eye made me wonder."There are about 10 people around this table and always you manage to endlessly point the finger at me like a crazy woman!" shouted Pieter. The second round of the shouting match between Céline and Pieter had continued without me even noticing, as I had turned my attention to Kenny and Joyabel for a moment. Though it wasn't very hard to pick back up. Layla and her husband exchanged looks every now and then, and he squeezed her hand as they sighed patiently, waiting for this all to be over."Crazy woman?!" erupted Céline."Yes, crazy woman! To me, the AI hot it right. You did it. No doubvt about it. You're the murderer!""Pieter, stop throwing oil on the fire!" said Jochen."I didn't start the fire!" shouted Pieter, "It is you guys who keep dragging me into it. If it were up to me I would have been out of here an hour ago!""How dare you!" said Céline, not listening to a single word Pieter said, "Haven't I suffered enough to now also be accused of something like this? After losing my child and my home and...""Sanity", sighed Pieter, looking sideways to Kenny, who had to stifle a laugh."Family!" cried Céline.As if trying to make up for Pieter making him laugh at a cruel little jab at Céline, Kenny spoke up: "You haven't lost your family. We're all still here for you."But again, Céline didn't listen."All the while this disgrave of a man skates through life doing whatever he likes, no commitments or responsibilities, waiting to be bailed out by anyone and everyone!""Oh, my God, Céline" shouted Pieter, "What's it to you how I live my life?"Céline started spewing syllables like a bottle of soda where the bubbles pop out. "What's? What's it? What it is? To me? Jochen. What's? It? What it is to me? He is really asking me that?""Yes!" said Layla, calmly yet forcefully, clearly having had enough of the bickering, "What is it to you?""I...""Absolutely nothing", said Pieter, "Except that you just simply have always hated my guts, using every chance you get to badmouth me and slander me but Jochen you should draw the line at the death of Jens. She can't use his passing to justify being cruel to anyone and everyone and then hide behind it without consequence when people stand up for themselves.""Pieter", tried Jochen, but his mediation skills had been used up. It sounded like just a little whisper to himself."You're a hypocrite, Céline, and everyone knows it."Céline burst out in tears as she let herself fall into Jochen's arms again, even before he realized she was pushing herself into his chest whilst still processing what Pieter had said. After a second's hesitation, he put his arms around her, saying:"OK, don't talk about my wife that way. Stop Pieter, we heard you.""But you will let her talk about your brother that way. I see how it is", said Pieter and took a sip from his drink, looking at Jean-Baptiste and Layla, as if they had been part of the conversation all along. They stared at him, puzzled, but at the same time nodded slightly."Brother", said Jochen, "It's you who chose to get involved with that nast drug business. That's on you!"It was at this point that finally after what seemed like hours, however not uncommon in my profession at a reading of the last will and testament, yet admittedly this case was exceptional due to the added layer of Rechercheur Van Der Smet's investigative techniques, that Céline turned to me and admitted me back into the conversation, still shaking and sounding more and more hoarse."Mr. De Walters", said she, "I've had enough. Let's just end it right here and right now. You told us that if we unanimously agreed to split the inheritance amongst the 6 of us, we can call it a day. We're all unanimous, right? We all want our piece so go ahead and deposit it to our bank accounts, I'm sure it will be more than enough even after taxes than we had expected coming in, and it surely it will be more than some of us here deserve."Oh, give it a rest", said Pieter.Layla and Jean-Baptiste looked at each other again for a brief moment, suppressing a knowing smile and added: "You know, Céline. It's not going to be €1 billion on a bank account that Uncle Johan left us. It's going to be assets that altogether amount to €1 billion."Oh, that's funny", sneered Céline at her, "Now you decide to pipe up, Layla! Glad to have you with us.""I've been here the whole time", Layla replied coldly."And what would you know about having millions and billions in assets?"Layla didn't reply. She just leaned back, pursing her lips slightly and exchanged another look with Jean-Baptiste."Oh, that's right", said Céline, "now having her eyes locked on Layla. "Nothing suspicious at all about how all of a sudden you just magically retired at 35, moved to a home - I mean a mansion! - in Waterloo, from Paris, as I recall, 10 years ago, when your firm allegedly when bust? Right? Nothing suspicious about that. And then when you moved back to Belgium, you declined every invitation I sent you to join us at our family functions. Right? Nothing suspicious about that. At all."This time, Jean-Baptiste spoke up: "I know it isn't my place to get incolved in family matters but if you start insulting my wife comme ça, I will have to say something. So Céline, you better be careful with yoiur words. Why in your mind can't Layla be a succesful woman of her own merit? She is brilliant! That is why I love her! She didn't need to inherit anything to get where she is now. Do you thinki you didn't work hard for what she got? Put in the effort?""Well, marrying rich always helps", Céline said, looking down at her glass on the table."Allez, Céline. Kom." said Jochen."But Jochen, doesn't it seem extremely convenient that about 10 years ago she struck gold in Paris with her firm, but then suddenly decides to come back here for some reason completely out of the blue? And go live in a mansion in Waterloo, retired? Before the age of forty?""Waterloo is where I'm from", said Jean-Baptise, "Anything suspicious about that too? And would you not buy a house in your favourite neighbourhood if you had the chance?""Of course I would", said Céline, "Of course! I wish everyone could go live in a mansion!""It's not ten years ago that we moved here, Céline, but five", said Layla, "But I can admit that I have been neglectful and I'm sorry that I haven't accepted any of your invitations to your home. That I haven't kept in touch with you personally. I'm sorry. I could have."Céline didn't look at her whilst she apologised. But her posture relaxed just a tiny bit."But everything I have is what I have made myself, even with losses along the way, many even.""How was I supposed to know about that if you never came to talk to me. To us?""You're right! I'm sorry again. But, Céline, I didn't inherit Uncle's billion euros. Everything we have, Jean-Baptiste and I, it's what we have built ourselves."For a moment, Céline seemed softened, but one look from Rechercheur Van Der Smet, scanning her face for her reaction seemed to have reminded her that once Layla was off the suspect list, she remained even more of a top contender in the AI ranking of Johan's murder. Her eyes went back to fighting mode."Seems to me nonetheless you have a lot in common with Johan though. Knowing about assets and finances and all that.""It literally was my job", said Layla softly to her husband."It doesn't seem unlikely to me that Johan had chosen you to handle the estate. It doesn't seem unlikely at all. And to keep the secret, you distanced yourself from us. Yes. Not unlikely at all."It all sounded a bit desparate at this point, and Céline's voice sounded tired, as if she had no fuel left to fire any more accusations around the room. Then, as a surprise to everyone again, Nele spoke up."At least Layla got an invitation to your... family functions, Céline"Céline, lost for words, stared at Nele and Brenda."I... I... I..." she stammered."Yes?" said Pieter in a loud deep voice, startling her and visibly enjoying this."I... I had wanted to, Nele. I meant to, but... I know it's hard for you with... you know... with Brenda and... You did come to Pieter's ... we talked there...""That was my invitation, not yours", said Pieter, smugly.In her calm and soothing voice, acquired after a lifetime of longsuffering, Nele replied: "No need to explain. I get it. Can we just all agree and get this over with now. Brenda needs to go to the toilet. And I need to help her do it."Jochen stood up. "Yes, please. Can we all now just agree on this? We'll split up the assets evenly amongst us. The six of us. Fairly. Even if one of us inherited the estate 10 years ago, they're not speaking up. So that means they are agreed too."Everyone looked about the room. Everyone seemed in agreement. Except Pieter."I haven't agreed to anything.""What did you say", said Kenny. Joyabel didn't need a translation for that part, as she stared at Pieter in horror."You can't be serious, brother. You know we really need to money!"Pieter, with chin raised and eyes stern, repeated: "I don't agree. Uncle Johan had chosen someone to give his riches to ten years ago. Let them have it. I say let them come forward and share the estate of their own accord, not anonymously like this.""Come on!" pleaded Kenny again. "That could take forever!"
It was at this point that I had informed everyone that Johan Paepe had arranged for, if needed, a tour of the assets to be split amongst the six of them. This would take several days and take them from the art and automotive depositories in Geneva to Michelin-star restaurants in Paris, London and New York; and everything in between.Kenny and Joyabel especially, and then Pieter to a lesser extent seemed to be excited about taking this tour, but the couples Layla and Jean-Baptiste, and Jochen and Céline were eager to go home and take a good look at their calendar to see what time would suit them best."I am not going anywhere", said Céline, "I took one day off work already. I can't take any more just because some dead guy wants us all to spend more time together and play his cruel games."Come on", said Kenny, "Would it hurt to take one day off work when it literally could mean that you'll never have to work another day in your life?!""Don't try to reason with the unreasonable", said Pieter to his little brother."You're just as unreasonable, brother. I think it would be good to go on this tour. Me and Joyabel are eager to see Uncle Johan's Michelin star restaurants.""I bet", said Pieter, "But I didn't hear Joyabel say anything, did you read her mind or do you just speak for her now.""Careful, brother", said Jochen, "Can you blame Jochen and Joyabel from wanting to see the Johan's restaurants after going bankrupt with theirs?"All the while Céline was talking to herself, whispering, almost whimpering even: "I want to work. I need to work. But they wouldn't understand. Why can't this be over with today?""Pieter", said Kenny, "Please, if you don't agree, why would you deprive us of Johan's wish to finally help out, even after he died? We could all walk out here today with millions. Hundreds of millions in assets, each."Pieter nodded for a moment, seemingly agreeing and taking Kenny's plea into account. However to myself and Rechercheur Vanb Der Smet, it was clear he was just buying time to find the right words, to him, that would again explain his point of view without repeating himself - even though he repeated himself once again."First you all drag my name through the mud without hesitation, ostracize me and ridicule me at every turn and now I'm supposed to agree with you all? Out of kindness? But where was this kindness when it came to me? It's pretty insane if you ask me."Everyone at the table was baffled at the level of pettiness coming from a grown man such as Pieter."An eye for an eye leaves the world blind", said Jean-Baptiste."Well, get ready to buy a walking stick because I'm not giving in for your sakes", said Pieter.Céline, mustering a smile for the first time after her outburst, looked up and laughed."It's him! He's the secret billionaire! It couldn't be more obvious! Rechercheur Van Der Smet, just arrest him already!""I don't think it's Pieter," said Jochen."You only say that because you're sentimental about him. You always have been. But you're the younger brother? It's inexplicable!" Said Céline, her face changing back to a stern pout."More than an eye for an eye, this whole thing seems to me to be more of a case of the one-eyed leading the blind, since one of us is in fact already a billionaire in secret and would lose hundreds of millions of euros to us if we agree."Rechercheur Van Der Smet stepped in, even as him and I were reluxctant to get in the middle of this - for very different reasons, but regardless, wez remained mostly silent up to now because, as Jochen had mentioned and rightly stated, the one who had inherited the one billion euro estate 10 years ago wasn't going to give it up."This is entirely in line with what the AI had determined", said Rechercheur Van Der Smet."My friends", said I, "feeling like this was the perfect time for a pause and some more refreshments, "I invite you before making any more decisions to please take some snacks and drinks in my living rooms, anything you might like until afterwards we can proceed to dining in my dining room of course as soon as we receive the delivery from the traiteur, who has prepared a simple three course meal I hope you will all enjoy."Whilst everyone left the meeting room with a great sense of relief to be out of that space and relax for a moment, I asked Brigitte to go and find Nele and Brenda, who hand't returned from their visit to the toilet and ionform them we were moving to the private wing of the house now.Following me to the living rooms, I heard Pieter ask Rechercheur Van Der Smet: "We're allowed to roam around here? Doesn't your AI need to keep their "eye" on us at all times? For the algorithm?""You needn't worry about that, Pieter. All rooms throughout the house have been outfitted with advanced security camera systems and mr. De Walters has so graciously given permission to our investigative team to link our AI with access to his camera network.""Very gracious", sighed Pieter, sarcastically."Rest assured we will be able to perfectly follow along all proceedings, even outside the meeting room.""I'm most definitely assured", Pieter repeated, "It's all stil a test."They all moved to my living rooms and enjoyed some aperitives and "amusekes" that Brigitte had prepared, whilst waiting for the delivery from Traiteur Lanckriet.As I presented the local beers, wine, cheeses, fruits, soft-drinks and the rest, I noticed that one of my guests hadn't taken any refreshment and moved into one of my other private rooms. It was Céline.When I was sure everyone had been served to satisfaction, I went into the library and found Céline sitting silently, almost motionless in one of my armchairs. I approached her and offered her some whiskey from the cabinet nearby. I thought she might have wanted some as she was staring in that direction, and perhaps had been to shy to ask. But she declined. She wasn't staring at the whiskey at all, she was looking through the cabinet into the nothingness. In her hands she held my father's precious deck of cards, flipping through them, only looking down once or twice."I'm sorry", she said, "I needed to get away for a moment. Some peace and quiet. After all of that commotion.""I fully understand", said I and poured a whiskey for myself.She shuffled the cards pensively, and then asked: "Have you ever lost a loved one?""I have", I answered."You're never really the same afterwards, are you?"It wasn't a question so much as a statement."No", I sighed, "You're not. You can't be."I started staring into the same direction as her."Who was it?" she asked."My wife", I replied."I'm sorry", she turned to look at me for a brief moment for the first time since I sat down by her."Don't be", I said, "It's been seven years."We sat in silence for a while."Sometimes I remember her", said Céline."Who?" I asked."That Céline. The Céline when I first met Jochen. At uni. I remember her well. We were so in love, right from the beginning.""You were? That's lovely.""It was. I knew at the time he was the love of my life, at 22, and I was right. Even though everyone around me kept saying you could never know for sure at 22. I had never been in any other serious relationship before. But I did. I knew."I was her shuffling the cards again."Pull one", I said."Pull one?" she asked with a faint laugh of amusement."She split the deck and pulled a card off the top."Ah", I said, "The hanged man.""Very fitting", she said, "Very fitting indeed, godverdomme.""It means you're in some kind of inescapable situation or stuck in some kind of circumstance where the only way out is through.""That's for sure", she interjected."But with the greatest clarity of mind and highest perception and awareness because of it."She didn't say anything for a brief moment as if she realized something, staring at the card and the image of the hanged man. Then her face changed back and she put the deck aside nonchalantly, as if she just discarded a used handkerchief."You know, people deal with grief differently, right?" she said."Absolutely so.""Jochen and I both were having affairs... before..."She couldn't bring herself to mention the loss of their son."After it had happened, when Jens finally passed, I was so stricken with grief I just couldn't continue seeing my lover... but Jochen. He is'nt like that. He... needed more of it. That his way of dealing with it. More and more. I wonder when it will ever be enough."I couldn't bring myself to say anything."I know it won't ever be enough. I just... wonder when it will occur to him. To his credit, he never stopped making love to me, and it never stopped feeling lovely and lovingly and he even showed me more love the past years than ever before. It was never like he replaced me with someone else who could meet his needs better and just kept me around for show, no. I pity the woman who has to go through that but that's not Jochen and that's not me either. If that were the case... I would've..; I would've..."I noticed she was pulling the sleeves of her sweaters so tightly that I expected them to tear. Then, her hands relaxed again."But no, he never neglected me in that way. For me, the affair did nothing to take away that dark cloud around my heart, that hole that Jens left behind, my son, my love. Nothing can replace that. I felt like going through the motions with my lover, it felt mechanical, joyless, dull. I broke it off."She glanced over again at the card of the hanged man."But for him. It's the anger. It's the rage. When we make love, we make love. But when he meets his lover, I think it's ... about his rage. Maybe, it's always been... even before Jens passed... maybe it's always been about... the rage?"I was just about to ask her what she could mean when suddenly we both heard:"Blood! Blood! Help!"We were both so startled due to the sheer volume of the shrieking that we both humped up from our chairs and followed the voice down to the dining room where indeed we came upon a dark red pool of blood.
I knew that Johan's will would cause some sort of discord, but I never would have thought it would result in someone sitting in a pool of blood in my very own dining room, whilst someone screaming from the top of their lungs. It was layla, shaking and burying herself in her husband's Jean-baptiste's embrace."What's this?" I cried, "What happpened?!"I called for Brigitte. Then I remembered that I had sent her out to go get the dinner from traiteur Lanckriet by bike as she always does, after she brought Nele and Brenda to the toilet earlier. She wouldn't be back for another 15-20 minutes.Brigitte had obviously left my house, since there was no answer. And she had done as I had asked, to bring Nele and Brenda to the toilet during the last shouting match between Céline and Pieter. But now, to our astonishment, we found that she had left Brenda at the dinner table, alone in her wheelchair. And under it, there was a pool of blood. Brenda's head was hanging sideways and the sight of it nearly made Céline faint."Brenda?!" she cried. She lept towards her, grabbing her and looking for the source of the bleeding, getting blood all over her own clothes. Meanwhile, Layla was crying into Jean-Baptise's chest, who had been stunned into place, as was I."Jochen!", shouted Céline, "Jochen! Kom hier! Nu!"Surprisingly, none of the three brothers had come until now. Wouldn't the scream that reached the library where I and Céline had sat down for a conversation surely have reached the adjacent living room, which was much closer than my library room?When they stumbled in, all was clear and apparent. They had been drinking with Rechercheur Van Der Smet. It seems they had found the one common thing between them that bonded them together like they had just come across each other in a day-to-day setting, like a bar. Why? Because they, all four of them, walked in, bottles of beer in hand. And it was clear the bottles they were holding weren't the first ones they had had in the meantime between exiting my office and entering the private wing of my house. As if they hadn't noticed the blood coming from Brenda, they were giggling and belly-laughing amongst each other, as if just standing there was enough and they needn't even enquire as to why they were even called there. What surprised me most was that Rechercheur Van Der Smet had been just as inebriated as the three brothers."Rechercheur!" I cried, "For goodness sake, take a look at this."Rechercheur Van Der Smet looked over at me with a slight drunk delay and then let his eyes fall upon the horrific scene at the dinner table, where Brenda was bleeding, sat in her wheelchair next to the fully decked table, awaiting dinner.Suddenly and most visibly, a jolt of adrenaline seemed to shock him back from drunkennes to complete soberness."Van Der Smet! What happened here? How can you be so careless? I thought you were keeping an eye on all things all the time here?"He stumbled over to me, keeping balance by putting his hand on my shoulder."Of course I am. I mean, yes. The AI is. The AI is keeping an eye on things. I just monitor the AI. Who is monitering everything."Having less and less confidence in anything he had promised so far about the wonders of artifical intelligence helping in policing matters, I asked: "Well then, what kind of use is this policing AI for when it doesn't even alert or notify you when something like this happens?""I'll find out", he stuttered, "I'll take my... I'll find... I need my...""Laptop?" I said, agitated. I wasn't at all too pleased that my house now had become some sort of crime scene, "Van Der Smet, this is going far beyond what I had agreed to as to what I was prepared to do in cooperating with the solving of this case. I can't help but wonder if the police does not have all of their own space and means to conduct their research and investigations on their own premises. Why was it so imperative that I use my own home for this?""Exactly!" cried Pieter, giggling still. Him, Kenny and Jochen hadn't even noticed Brenda yet. And if they didn, they hadn't noticed she was bleeding as Céline and Layla had."It's her wrists!" cried Céline meanwhile."Mon dieu!" cried Jean-Baptise."That's it. We're out of here. This is gone too far", said Layla, "We're now in danger ourselves trying to find this murderer. Why do we have to risk all of our lives to find a murderer? What kind of police investigation requires a group of innocent people to expose themselves to a murderer amongst them, just to find one person?""Agreed!" agreed Jochen, still holding a beer in hand, standing at the furthest point with his brothers removed from the dinner table, most probably not even having seen what Layla was referring to."The reason", said Rechercheur Van Der Smet, "Is that for this experimental AI program to work is that it is done with genuine reactions. It has had to be involved from the very beginning of informing you of the will, and your countenances, your facial expressions, your movements and words, so that the AI can compare that to when it progresses further into questionings etc. This is top notch stuff, state-of-the-art so you don't need to understand, just to comply. We'll find the murderer among you.""You don't need to understand, just comply?" said Pieter, "I think that says it all. I agree with Layla. Let's all just go."Then Céline erupted, again. "Could you guys stop bickering and take and listen to me? THIS is what's most pressing now, right? Brenda's wrists! She's bleeding out! Look!"As if the three brothers just noticed Brenda had been bleeding, and not just sitting by the table in comfort and having a quiet old good time by herself, they ran closer to Céline."Don't just stand there!" said Céline, "Help me stop the bleeding!"She was holding both her wrists with her bare hands, trying to stop the beelding, but it was oozing through her fingers.Jochen straight away started to call an ambulance, as Layla ripped the silk scarf she was wearing in half and tied it around Brenda's wrists, whilst Jean-Baptise took all the paper serviettes I was grabbing from all over the dinner table and covered the pool of blood under the wheels with it."I'm", said Layla, "I'm going to faint...""The ambulance is on its way", said Jochen."This is absolutely insane", said Pieter, looking at the commotion around Brenda, "This really has gone too far. This is not just some questioning with new tools. You have effectively locked us all up with a killer, and they're not afraid to strike! What does your little laptop say about that, my dear Rechercheur?""I..." stammered the flustered man, "I... I'm going through the data.""The data..." said Jochen mockingly, "The data. How the "data" on your end Céline. Is the data better?""The bleeding isn't as bad anymore, but she needs to go. She needs to go to a hospital. Right away."She finally took a moment to stand back up and look around. Her clothes were blood-stained and the sight of her was now pretty unsettling. As her eyes fell on Pieter and Kenny, who were standing side by side, observing in clear disapproval of the situation, she lashed out at them: "Can you at least put down your beers?!""Put down our beers?" said Pieter, "Céline. No can do. It's a Westvleteren! That would be a sin."The both of them started to giggle slightly."How can you laugh at a moment as this?""The ambulance is coming", said Pieter now, coming to his brothers' aid, "Brenda will be fine.""How can you say that? Brenda will be fine? Look at her? She's nearly dead!""Give her something to drink", said Pieter, making another inappropriate joke."You're crossing a line here, Pieter. Let's see how you would like it when people would talk about having beers when you would be in mortal danger?""I would love it", said Pieter. This time Jochen also couldn't keep it in. Céline of course was fuming."There's always trouble when the three of you get together!" she said, stomping her feet."And you" she said as she turned to Layla and Jean-Baptise, "You haven't been of any use at all. Again!""Pardon?!" cried Jean-Baptiste, "I am keeping my wife from fainting! She's hyperventilating!""Hyperventilating. Of course she is.""What is it you are saying", said Jean-Baptise, his eyes getting a dangerously angry look."You're the ones who found her.""Yes. So?""You found her and yet, only when we came around did anyone start to help.""What are you saying?!""Why would you start screaming and screaming getting everyone's attention to Brenda? Whilst doing nothing at all to help?""You can't blame us for tending to each other at the sight of this 'catastrophe'?"Jochen this time listened to his wife intently, whereas everyone had expected him to step in as he had done before in my practice."How convenient. Now, you have a horrid scene, created by who knows who, and you have your reason to leave the house, leaving us all with nothing.""I say again. What is it you are trying to tell us?" said Jean-Baptiste, his voice now also shaking with anger."It's all too convenient. Run out now. And you keep your billion dollar estate. And you have your excuse.""Mais n'importe quoi!" cried Layla."Je peux plus avec elle et sa famille de merde. Je vais la tuer. Maintenant", said Jean-Baptise, and the nearly fainted Layla struggled to keep him from assailing Céline."Guys, guys", said Pieter, Westvleteren bottle still in hand and a smug look on his face, "Come on. You seem to be forgetting the state-of-the-art technology right here, coming to our rescue in this type of thing, right? It's all right here on Van Der Smet itty, bitty, little laptop."He tapped the laptop quite hard, prompting Van Der Smet to move it away from him, as he continued to type and click and move around windows feverishly."It can clearly show what happened in this room.""How?" said Layla."Just before moving out of the offices of Benjamin, I had asked Rechercheur Van Der Smet about if the AI program was still running the investigation on us, investigation here is of course saying the same as using the algorithm on us, right. And, indeed, he confirmed, it was. It is plugged in, you guys, to the WHOLE HOUSE."Everyone fell into a silence."Yes. The whole house, right? Van Der Smet?""Yes", he replied under his breath."So, what's the hold-up. Just tell us what happened.""Just give me a second", he said."One", counted Kenny, giggling still."Very funny", grumbled Van Der Smet.At that very moment, Joyabel walked in. She looked puzzled as to why everyone was standing around in this one room, with a decked out dining table awaiting a gorgeous dinner but everyone nevertheless not taking a seat at it. She put away her cigarettes and took a breath mint when suddenly she spotted Céline with blood all over her clothes."Céline" she cried, "What happened? What -"Then she caught sight of Brenda, covered in even more blood, not to mention the wheelchair itself and the pool underneath that had saturated the floor carpet. Kenny put down his bottle of beer and embraced her."Brenda's been attacked. We found her here, bleeding from the wrists. We don't know what happened, but Rechercheur Van Der Smet is finding out.""He can?""Yes", said Kenny, "He can. The AI is using camera's all over the house. It was not just Benjamin's office."Just as she looked at Brenda in horror, she now looked about the dining room and especially the ceiling in the same amount of shock, as she clocked the cameras in several corners and glancing backwards, now also seeing several of them in the living rooms as well.At this point, I noticed everyone awaiting Van Der Smet's results whilst the sounds of his furious typing filled the room."I hope he isn't too drunk to make the right calculations", said Pieter, "Don't make a typo, vriendschap, it might change the whole mind map of the AI meant to judge us.""Pieter, don't even try to comprehend how this program works, alright? Even in my most drunk state, I'll still understand this programming better than you in your most sober state, so don't even try to question me. And as for what I'm putting in and not putting in, rest assured, even this little remark is already going in. It's automated, my friend.""Fine, I can accept that. But don't call me friend.""Fine by me, now let me work."Unexpectedly, Brenda moved a little in her wheelchair. Everyone except Van Der Smet turned around towards her."She moved!" cried Céline, and then to Brenda: "Brenda. Brenda. Can you hear me? It's all going to be OK! It's all going to be OK. The ambulance is coming.""No", she answered.Everyone bounced back, astonished."No", she said again, her voice sounding both like a soft whisper and a soar throat."What did you say?" said Céline."She said 'no'", sneered Layla to Céline."Please", said Brenda."What is it?" said Céline."No..." Brenda repeated."No what?" asked Jochen, squatting down next to her wheelchair so as to come face to face with her."No..." she said, clearly using all her energy to speak this one syllable."No... Ambulance...""What is going on here!" said Kenny, "No ambulance? Why?"It was at that moment that Nele stepped into the room."She doesn't want an ambulance. She never does. She hates the hospital", said she."And where have you been all this time!" said Pieter."I was on the toilet", said Nele."On the toilet?" said Layla and met Céline's eyes."On the very bowl", said Nele.Again, everyone was too stunned to speak, when Brenda spoke again."Sorry..." she whispered."But how can this be? She's... she's been in a waking coma for decades? Catatonic!" said Jochen."She has and she hasn't. But I don't expect any of you to believe me", said Nele, "I have been trying to tell you. But no one of you ever listened.""Either she's catatonic, or she's not", said Pieter, "Which one is it.""See, this is why I never tell you. And you call yourself family. Just for pictures. And preferably ones without a wheelchair, am I right?""Nele," said Céline,"Come on. We're not that cruel.""But you have been cruel to me. But can you see now? She's catatonic, until she isn't.""What do you mean?" asked Layla."I have cared for her for decades, thirty years almost. The first ten with my mother. The last twenty just me by myself. She does this. She has done it before. Now you see for yourselves.""See what?" everyone asked in unison."That she tries to cut her wrists every now and again.""That can't be true!""There we have it. Just like always", she sighed, taking one of the chairs and sitting down, "This is why I could never talk toi any one of you. It just... can't be true. Even now, when you see it for yourself.""But when did you tell us?""I have done several times, and you didn't listen because you wouldn't want to help me with the burden of not only taking care of her, but also of the burden when worse comes to worse. She has been trying to take her own life for a while now. You can't stomach the idea, can you, even now. But I have. And I have for a while.""I can remember you bringing it up at all", said Céline."I have brought it up", said Nele, "But you've never thought it was the right time. Or maybe, maybe you thought I was just trying to get you to help take Brenda off my hands. And no one is willing to take Brenda off my hands, are you. Well, I didn't make it up. I was just telling the truth. She's not always catatonic. When she's able, she slyly takes a knife when you don't pay attention and hides it in her sleeve. I can't tell you how many time I've found a knife in there and taken it away before she could to something with it. And I have told you. But you always only invite me to parties and at the parties you only pay attention to your kids you need to take care of, but my sister of whom I have taken care for decades, you don't seem to want to talk to or about. Shame on you. See here. This is a sight I have to deal with constantly. I patch her back up. And then, I go about our day again. There's only so many times you can cry about it, and cry for help when nobody is listening."
"But how about the doctors? Why, they must have found this to be some kind of breakthrough, or something! Take her into special care, revalidation even?"Nele let out a big old laugh."The doctors? Do you mean the same ones who had determined her dizzy spells had been due to stress and it turned out to be meningoencephalitis? And got her into this state in the first place? Yes. Yes, the docters did take a look, the first couple of times. Yes. They found her to be catatonic "enough" to still, let's say, keep her under my care. They gave me tips on to how to bandage and call it a day. Never mind that she sometimes is able to speak. I did beg them to see this as some kind of start of revalidating her, but, they didn't see any course for revalitation of any sort. Just. Care. Keep caring for her. As I was doing. Had been doing."Again, a stunned silence, broken only by Brenda's "sorry"."Don't be sorry", said Jochen, putting her hand on Brenda's shoulder."And we're supposed to take your word for it?" said Céline."I beg your pardon?" said Nele."We find her here. Wrists cut. You're nowhere to be found.""Yes. I was on the toilet.""So you say! But Brenda is left helpless, wrists cut, to be bleeding out in the dining room where conveniently, nobody was yet to be invited to due to Brigitte still getting dinner from the traiteur. And then after we were able to patch her up somewhat after Layla found her, you show up op uw dooie gemak?""So?""Pardon me for exploring every single possibility here, since Rechercheur Van Der Smet is still trying to get his laptop to work for him, I must be the one who uses their own mind here in the matter. It's my name still on the top of the list! But why shouldn't yours be?""Why shouldn't it be?" said Nele, "Because I didn't kill Johan, I don't have one billion euros and I didn't try to kill my sister! On the contrary, I've kept her alive for years and years!""It's too convenient.""Sometimes the truth seems convenient! But that doesn't make it any less true! This has been my life. And you're trying to make it like it could only lead to me being a killer.""Join the club!" said Céline."Do you all think this?" asked Nele, but there was no response."This doesn't surprise me in the least", she sighed, "It's just like all the other times I told you, and you ran away from me as if agreeing to something I say would tether you to a horrible situation you would rather me handle all by myself. Don't even bother to deny it."I felt as if I needed to say something, but there was this strange anticipation of Van Der Smet's results and everyone's reaction to Brenda's heartbreaking lived experience."So, yes. She doesn't want an ambulance. She wants to actually no longer live life as a human vegetable. But who here can do it. Who here can fulfil that wish? Would you let her bleed out? Wouldn't you feel like a murderer?""I don't..." said Céline, "I don't know what to say.""So you still think I did it? I cut my own sister's wrists?""I..." Céline murmered pensively."I don't think so", said Jochen, "We've never heard her speak before. She speaks. She said 'no', and she said 'sorry'. What are we supposed to think about all of this now?""I'll tell you", said Rechercheur Van Der Smet finally, "I've got the results right here."
"And for your information", Rechercheur Van Der Smet added, "This is a crime scene now.""Well, what does that mean for us?" asked Layla, who was just about ready to step outside of all the madness with Jean-Baptiste."It means that we can't let any of you go home without questioning.""Without questioning?", said Pieter, "Isn't that what you've been doing this whole time already?""I haven't posed a single question, have I? Now, before any of you choses to leave, they are up for questioning.""You can't be serious", said Céline, "Some of us have children to go back home to. We can't leave them with my parents for days, they agreed only to one night.""You are missing the point, mrs. Paepe, that I am telling you this is now a crime scene you are standing in, meaning this whole house now is, and you cannot leave until we've had your statements. MY colleagues from the police department will be here shortly.""Just as shortly as the ambulance, I take it?" said Pieter, "Then we can rest easy for a while at least. Maybe a day or two even.""Are you really still cracking jokes, you moron", said Céline, as she dragged a chair from under the dining table next to Brenda and sat down, holding one of her wrists, keeping some pressure on it, as Jochen was still holding the other wrist."Shut up, all of you", said Layla, "Let him speak."Céline looked at Jochen and saw him sway slightly from side to side and whispered to him: "Darling, get a glass of water and drink it whole. This is important. I can't have you being drunk right now."Jochen nodded and got up, letting go of Brenda's wrist for a moment, recoiling ever so slightly at the feeling of her blood having stolled just a tiny bit between his hand and her wrist, making it a more sticky release than he had anticipated. He left with a shudder to take a glass of water from the living rooms where Brigitte had places all the drinks and came back with a glass of mineral water.Without waiting for him to continue, Rechercheur Van Der Smet cleared his throat as if preparing for a soliloquy. And he was."I have access to all footage, but thanks to the advances in technology, the AI had scrubbed through hours and hours of footage from all the camera's in the house, and not only that, it has made a mind map of all connected instances, illustrated by clips it has made from the raw footage itself.""So what did it say?" asked Jochen."It has compiled a video that I had asked it to provide: one that followed Brenda's journey from the offices of Mr. De Walters all the way to the moment she was discovered bleeding at this here dinner table by us. It can show us who was where and when.""Incredible," I said."Very much on the contrary, my friend. It is credibility itself. Now take a look here: We see during the shouting match at your office in your practice that Brigitte had served some fruit, water, lemonade, coffee and chocolates to everyone. At the request of Nele, Brigitte had brought a kitchen knife to help Nele cut the banana for Brenda and proceeded to feed her the little cuts of banana. We can see Brenda eating the banana bits here. Now pay attention as the AI fast forwards to the following moment of interest. It is exactly the moment, and pay close attention to this everyone, that we see here: Mr. De Walters had asked Brigitte to guide Nele and Brenda to the toilets during the second shouting match. Now let's slow the footage down. Did you catch it?""What happened? I didn't see anything," said Kenny, "Did you see anything?""Not a thing", said Jochen."I told you to pay attention," said Rechercheur Van Der Smet, "One moment the knife was on the table where Nele had left it after cutting the bits of banana. The next... it is gone."He ran the video again."Indeed", I said, "The kitchen knife is there when Nele asked me to go to the toilet, and the next when Brigitte is taking them there, the knife is gone.""I told you", said Nele, and sat back down, not needing to see any more of the video."Where did it go?" asked Jochen."Let me show you", said Rechercheur Van Der Smet with glee.He scrolled back the video and slowed it down extensively."Aaaaand... Now."In what seemed like the blink of an eye, just as Brigitte was proceeding them to show the way to the toilet and Nele was pushing her wheelchair, turning it to face the right direction towards Brigitte, Brenda had snatched the kitchen knife and stuffed into her sleeve, lightning fast."I can't believe it", said Pieter."This is incredible", said Céline, "Unconscionable.""Again, I beg to differ", said Van Der Smet, smugly driving his tired joke home a second time, "It is very much credible. And the truth. Brenda, as Nele had just said, took the kitchen knife into her sleeve and had waited for an unattended moment to slit her wrists.""But why would she do that?" said Kenny, "I can't understand it, cousin. Why?""She doesn't want to live like this.""I get it. But... you're right on the cusp of inheriting hundreds of millions of dollars. You might both of you live your lives completely different as you have before. Surely this should give her some hope?""If the doctors have no hope. What are the millions going to do for her? She's stuck in her body and she does not want to live like that. In her moments of clarity, or that's the way I want to see it because the other more realistic version is that she's always clear of mind with no way of expressing it, she tries to get out of it. She says only one of two words. "No" and "sorry".""You mean that the sorry part is that she is telling you sorry you have had to care for her?" said Layla, her voice breaking."What else could it mean", said Nele, running her fingers through her hair, then again, whispering almost: "What else could it mean."All of this didn't even make a dent in Rechercheur Van Der Smet's gleeful mood, as he kept scrolling the video back and forth."If I may direct your attention to the following as well."Everyone leaned in closer to the laptop once again."So we know that Brenda has taken the kitchen knife and stuck it in her sleeve. Now observe as Brigitte and Nele move down the hallway to the nearest toilet in Mr. De Walters practice.""What are we observing?" asked Pieter."Absolutely nothing!" exclaimed Van Der Smet."Why are you showing us this.""The reason I'm showing this part is so that we can tell later when the exact moment had occured that the bleeding at the wrists has started.""So just show us that part then", sighed Jochen."But first, mr. Paepe, this important detail. Observe as Brigitte opens the toilet door and lets in both Nele and Brenda. Then Brigitte goes back to the practice just as everyone was moving to the living rooms in the private area of the house. Here we see Mr. De Walters telling Brigitte to go get dinner from the traiteur and Brigitte asking him if it was OK to first go and check on the sisters in the bathroom first. So she returns to the toilet and through the door she enquires if everything is OK. Then she lets Nele know that if she needs to go as well, she can take Brenda down to the dining room as dinner would be served as soon as she got back from Lanckriet. Nele opens the toilet door and thanks Brigitte and would very much like to use the toilet for a moment herself. Brigitte wheels Brenda to the dining area, passing by Layla and Jean-Baptiste who are admiring the artwork in the living rooms and the hallways with a glass of champagne. Then Brigitte leaves Brenda at the dinner table. Now look closely here. Do you see it? Brenda's sleeves start to discolor ever so slightly until, yes, finally it does turn dark red. Moving from the tour of the living rooms and going to inspect the dinging room next, avoiding the three brothers and myself as we had taken to enjoy some beers together, Layla and Jean-Baptiste finally moved into the dining room and noticed this very same thing. On closer inspection, Layla noticed finally that blood had begun dripping down the wheelchair onto the carpet. This is the point when she started to scream. A few moment later we see Mr. De Walters and Mrs. Paepe walk into the dining room and discovered Brenda was bleeding in the wheelchair with Layla fainting into Jean-Baptiste's arms.""So there you have it", said Nele."There we have it?", said Céline, "What were you doing all that time on the toilet, whilst all of this was going on?""A good question, indeed", said Van Der Smet, "And not something the AI had overlooked. We only see Nele leave the toilet until after everyone had entered the room and started tending to Brenda's wounds. Look. Only now does she leave the toilet.""Nele", said Pieter, "You have to admit. This looks very shady.""Shady?" said she, "And what's shady about it?""You let your sister out of the toilet, Brigitte wheels her over to this dinner table and she starts bleeding all of a sudden from the wrists?""Not all of a sudden", she said, "I told you, and you all SAW! She took the knife. She cuts her own wrists.""But that doesn't rule out that you didn't cut her wrists, Nele!" said Céline.Nele looked up, completely baffled."I beg your pardon?!"Everyone in the room fell silent once again, a kind of silent confirmation amongst all of them that, indeed, it was not of yet ruled out that Nele had not in fact cut her sister's wrists."Do you understand the gravity of your accusation? The person who has looked after her, the ONLY person who has looked after her for years, for decades! And you dare suspect me of trying to kill her? Whatever for? What in the hell ever for?!""The money", said Rechercheur Van Der Smet, "You would receive a bigger share and -""As her legal guardian, I would already have her share! What do you not understand about me being her sole guardian and caretaker?""I am sorry to say", said Van Der Smet, "But for this separate incident, the AI has ranked you first!""Despicable!" exclaimed Nele."In the least", repeated Van Der Smet his tired old joke, yet again, "Technological.""What does your AI conclude next?" asked Pieter, "Why is this a crime scene? If she killed herself, this is solved?""But this is what we are saying now, aren't we. We cannot be sure this was a suicide by Brenda herself, since we cannot see her cut her wrists. We only see her coming out of the toilet and her wrists starting to bleed at the dinner table. The only plausible conclusion is that the cutting of the wrists had either happened in the toilet when Nele was helping Brenda relieve herself, or...""Or what? That is the only way it could have happened", said Jochen."Or, by setting her in front of the table there was a moment when Brigitte had blocked the camera out of sight of her wrists, before it had started bleeding.""Now you are indeed being preposterous, Van Der Smet, dragging my own personell into this matter. Brigitte has nothing to do with the inheritance at all", I had to interject."Yes, this is what the AI says here as the only other possibility, but the likeliness of that seems to me very, very low as she has no motive whatsoever to suddenly up and kill one of your guests.""She has only ever been the best and most generous and hospitable housekeeper anyone could ever have wished for.""All this talk", said Nele, "And for what? I tell you, she cut her own wrists. End of story."But Céline had been observing Nele's face the whole time, like a hawk. She said:"Didn't you just say..." she started."Say what?" said Nele, exasperated."Didn't you just say that even if Brenda were to inherit her part of the billion euros, it wouldn't even be able to change her predicament in any substantial way."Nele hesitated for a moment."Yes", she said, "Yes, I did.""Well then," continued Céline, "Let's say you wouldn't want to spend your brand new multimillionaire lifestyle having to drag her along with you anymore. What if something clicked in your mind, like you could finally live a life that didn't revolve around having to be that person, that caretaker, at the expense of all of your own wants and needs. The idea that you could start fresh, maybe it drove you to do something drastic?""It is not my statement", said Nele, "But yours that is concerning, Céline. How can you even think of such a thing?"Layla at this point decided to stand up and said: "It is simple. Where is the knife now?""And here we come precisely to the point of why this is now a crime scene", said Van Der Smet, "because the knife is nowhere to be found in the dining room nor the toilet.""See! It's all too suspicious. You still haven't explained, Nele, why you were in the toilet for so long!""I fell asleep!""You fell asleep?!""I fell asleep!""How can you fall asleep at a time such as this?""How can I not? This whole thing is tiring beyond measure!""We're on the cusp of being granted hundreds of millions of euros from our uncle Johan, and this does not bring a single ounce of excitement into your system? You... simply fall asleep while on the toilet bowl?" cried Céline."Yes."Everyone looked at each other. No one spoke. Everyone was clearly suspicious of Nele at this point."Rechercheur", said Pieter, "Would you be so kind to inform us of the current ranking? Taking into account all of this?""The current ranking? Of course, my pleasure", said he as he started to type furiously once more."Because", continued Pieter, "If Nele had inherited the billion euros ten years ago... the only person who could have know besides Uncle Johan would be... Brenda.""And what's it to you, someone who doesn't want to inherit a single euro of his estate? Why would you go around spewing accusations when you don't want anything to do with the thing in the first place.""I said that I don't want it as long as the secret billionaire among us stays anonymous. I do want to know who it was, even if I don't want their dirty money.""Dirty money", said Céline, "Why dirty?""As if you can't tell by now", said Pieter, "This whole case stinks. It's rotten."Before anyone could react to Pieter's thoughts further, Rechercheur Van Der Smet interrupted."The current ranking is at first place Céline, still.""After all of this? I'm still number one? How can that be?! I was in the library room with mr. De Walters when all of this happened.""You are still most likely according to the AI to be a murderer.""Oh, but you are making me feel murderous, that's for sure, Rechercheur! This whole thing is! I can even accept that I'm most likely to be a murderer amongst all of us, after what I've been through, but that doesn't change the fact that I haven't murdered anyone!""We have your statement duely noted", said Van Der Smet, "Since you've repeated it several times already."Just tell us the second and third place", said Jochen, massaging his temples."The second place goes to Nele."Nele didn't react, just stared at the cutlery, glasses and china in front of her on the dinner table."And third place goes to, Joyabel."All gasped audibly. Even I had turned around in shock to the lovely Joyabel, who had been standing near the dining room doors, behind Kenny. She looked at Kenny, asking him if she really understood what had just been said, but Kenny couldn't bring himself to translate immediately."Do you mean me?" she asked."Mrs. Joyabel Paepe, could you please empty your pockets?"She walked over to Rechercheur Van Der Smet and layed down a pack of cigarettes on the table, a little pack of tissues, her phone, mints and some chapstick."You know I mean your other pocket, Mrs. Paepe."She reached into her other pocket, reluctantly, and pulled out a bloody kitchen knife. It was at this time that Brigitte barged into the room, dragging a big chariot containing the buffet of the three course dinner, back to the room, yelling: "Dinner is served!"
My wife never died. I still feel her with me, here and only here. In 'our' house. When, we bought this house, it was her idea to immediately strip if of everything inside, even the historic furniture that came with the place, and puit those in storage for a while, whilst we- and with we I mean 'she' of course - designed a purpose and a theme for each room and how the rooms would complement each other so that each room, even though they would have their own character, wouldn't feel so isolated from each other. She had envisioned a way of living in this house for us two, with space for three or more children - we ended up with having two which was more than enough to handle, especially after her passing - and we walked through the stripped house several times together whilst she was probably seeing everything come together in her mind's eye.
I was amazed by her ability to do that and walked along with her through these rooms when, they were still bare. She brought life to them, making space inside each space or rather enveloping them with her signature warmth, providing each and every room with the chance to just take a breath and enjoy the 'gezelligheid' of the house. I could never do that. I had taken care of the private practice part of our house, for which she gave me a carte blanche. However it did not deterr her in giving out suggestions every time she visited me, as to how to improve it. In the end we both delivered the house of our dreams. We did it. And that is why I say: my wife never died. I feel her in every little thing here, still, curated by her when we were still as one. Now that she has passed, we may be separate in a sense, but inside our house, I feel her with me. She is the house.
On this day however, even though the sun did shine brightly, I felt on waking a sense of strangeness having fallen over my own house, and of course the more I removed the sleep crusts from my eyes, the more I remembered the shocking goings-on from last night when rechercheur Van Der Smet had Joyabel taken into custody to the police station. Afterwards, before everyone headed to bed, he had announced that indeed everyone was to stay here, sleep here and make all and any arrangements to stay within the parameters of his AI apparatus, so that the investigation could continue into Johan Paepe's death. At this point Brenda had been taken away to the hospital and Joyabel to the police station and Layla and her husband, as well as Pieter, were adamant that they should leave. However, Van Der Smet had reminded them that in doing so, they would forfeit their claims to the inheritance and it would stay with the original secret beneficiary. Long story short: they all stayed the night in my house. Pieter had called his ex-partner to take their daughter Coco for a while longer. Céline called her parents that they were to look after their daughter Maisy a day longer.
Of course I had to ask a lot of my poor housekeeper, Brigitte, first in bringing up a tray of dinner to all the rooms, since we were not able to use the dining room anymore due to what happened to Brenda. And apart from that, to also wake up early and make breakfast for everyone, which made her start to panick slightly thinking about what we had left in our pantry that would be enough for a party of this size. She agreed and took on the task with grace as I promised her this is of course unusual, but as she walked away I did notice her whispering to herself.
As Pieter went to the upper floors, of course Brigitte had prepared the rooms in record time, he didn't whisper his thoughts to himself. He stated quite clearly he felt as in in a prison, being made to comply with lodgings, food and being under surveillance for the entire duration of this whole case, yet he said it jokingly, whereas Kenny's usually bright face had turned - not surprising after the unexpected turn of events - especially glum. He had sat at the table, his face planted firmly in the palms of his hands, elbows o the table, immoveable like pillars of a bridge. "Why didn't she interrupt" he repeated over and over, "Why didn't she interrupt then, if she had just find it on the floor on the toilet? She should have just interrupted us and showed us what she found!"
He was of course referring to her repeating over and over as she was handcuffed and taken away that she merely found the bloody knife on the floor of my toilet and noticing the commotion in the dining room upon arriving she had felt so stunned at the scene, she couldn't utter a single word. "Why didn't she interrupt, indeed..." whispered Céline, as she and Jochen went up to their room.
All of that was last night. This monring, Brigitte had prepared breakfast, and had served it in the glass covered closed terrace that me and my wife called the "serre" becauyse it did get really hot in there quickly and she uwed to grow tomatoes there, oh I remember the sweet smell of homegrown tomatoes, something between brandnetel and strawberries. I loved that smell.
Now as I entered my terrace and greeted everyone on this sunny morning, it seemed that, even for the couple Layla and Jean-Baptiste who came in after myself, that even they were looking sideways at Céline and Jochen, who were enjoying breakfast together like a couple at a hotel after a romantic evening. Pieter and his little brother Kenny, had sat together opposite, staring at them with disdain. Nele had also sat down for breakfast, in yet another corner, and seemed not to mind anyone as she was enjoying the food Brigitte had prepared, especially the ommelet and sausage, alongside some toast with butter and blackberry jam.
Before I could grab a plate and take breakfast, suddenly rechercheur Van Der Smet appeared and pulled me aside after declining an invitation to parttake.
"I am sure the guests are enjoying breakfast, but I'm still running an investigation here. In fact, unlike the guests, my team and I have been busy all night running the investigation. And there are some things I need to share with you before we proceed."
"Of course, rechercheur", I replied, "I trust that if you and your team are running the investigation day and night, even while we are resting, this case can be brought to a close sooner? Since you promised me it would have been handled within the day. I don't think my housekeeper can handle any more before collapsing. As do I!"
"Mr. De Walters, I do apologize that it's been dragging on, however I think I did mention the experimental nature of our methodology, which requires some unexpected concessions. However I do realize how much this is imposing on you and your hospitality. I realize that if we are to take this investigation much further, we need to take it down at the police station and not here in this house."
"I thank you", said I, "Now what is it I needed to know before joining my guests?"
"The first thing is that AI had picked up on some significant activity last night."
"Which is?" I tried to hurry him along.
"Well... there appears to have been some sexual activity."
I sighed and took a deep breath whilst taking in this tidbit of information.
"I'm not sure what that has to do with anything!" I said.
"Mr. De Walter, it is significant because how can any one of our suspects be having sex whilst just having witnessed an attack and arrest of a family member? Not to mention every single one of them still stand accused of possible murder by the AI."
"I trust the AI agrees this is significant?"
"Absolutely, they have pointed it out as a major sign."
"I see your point", I said but I was cut short of what I was about to say as the guests behind me had clearly come to the same conclusion.
"You two disgust me!" said Pieter to Jochen, "How can you be having sex on a night such as last night?!"
"I don't think it's any of your business", said Jochen, his face changing from a contented happy expression, to a disturbed one, with contempt for his older brother.
"It's all of our business! Everything each and everyone does here is everyone's business!" cried Pieter, almost matching the volume he had been shouting at, at yesterday's reading of Johan's last will and testament.
"This is true", added rechercheur Van Der Smet, entering the room.
"So even our intimate moments are monitored?" asked Jochen, his disapproval of the notion being quite clear.
"We have no cameras in the guest rooms themselves, but we do have them in the hallways, with microphones equipped on each and every one of them, making us able to follow along any conversation had in those rooms."
"What?!" gasped Jochen.
"What did you expect, Jochen?" said Pieter, eating another sausage meanwhile.
"I'm actually not surprised at all", said Kenny, "Since now that Joyabel happened on a bloody knife in the toilet, the spotlight has now been taken off them, hasn't it?"
Nobody replied. He continued: "Seems to me they had cause for celebration."
As expected, Céline piped up before Jochen could say anything.
"Do you know what it's like to care for childre, 24 hours a day eahc day for years on end? No, you don't! So don't blame us when we make the best of this little time we get with each other, regardless of where we are."
To everyone's astonishment Kenny jumped up from his chair: "This little time? Make the best of it?"
"Don't keep mertyring yourself for being a mom", said Pieter, "I have a child too. You don't see me celebrating my time off from my daughter? I'd rather be there than here."
Then Kenny added: "You guys are unbelievable. Brenda was just taken to the hospital and Brenda spent the night at the police just because she found a knife lying there on the floor."
"Allegedly" murmured Céline under her breath. Kenny seething with rage, gestured to her with his hands whilst facing Pieter: "Can you believe this bitch?"
"Hey, watch your mouth, Kenny!" shouted Jochen.
"He has every right to be upset, Jochen. Read the room! We all agree that last nighty was hardly the most romantic setting for a night of lovemaking. It was so loud, so long, we didn't get any good sleep, none of us. If I had known beforehand, I would haven taken my earplugs with me."
"I wouldn't have come", added Kenny.
"Oh, you would have come", sneered Céline, "Anything that involves getting more money for your restaurant, you come jumping at the chance."
"Why would you be so mean about that?" said Layla, finally entering the conversation, "You are always the first to throw around accusations as ot who the secret billionaire amongst us could be by inflating the tiniest little details of our lives, but then you go about saying stuff like that!"
"Like what, Layla?!" Céline hissed.
"Like what you just said to Kenny just now. Condescendingly. As if taking opportunities to make money is... below you."
Céline started laughing, whilst Jochen remainted silent, recognizing as no other the manic tone of it.
"You are amazing, Layla, you truly are", she said, "The first real shot you have at me and it's so farfetched it can only make me giggle. How ridiculous! Do you realize what you are saing?!"
"Excusez-moi", interrupted Jean-Baptise, "But we haven"t in the least taken any "shot". In fact it is the two of you together that form the top of the list of suspects according to the AI and up until now, we have scrutinized you the least of all of us. We have defended against the accusations coming from you both, but we hardly know anything about you. That in itself is suspicious. And making love the whole night after those shocking events... we have every right to ask questions."
Céline's face turned feral.
"And what is it you would like to know? How we battled and suffered and lost our dear Jens to leukemia, tried every little avenue we could find, any medical treatment know for that specific kind ? How we tried even those treatments we couldn't afford? And how after all that, after he died, we had our house taken away that we had built from the ground up, since we had put everything we had owned, everything, at risk to save our Jens, only to lose him? How we're still dealing with all that, even after five years? How we try to carry on, broken, every single day? Does that sound like a secret billionaire life to you?"
As Céline was recounting their heartbreaking story, Jochen had been staring down at his hands in his lap the whole time. Nobody said a word, hearing the pain in every single word coming from her lips.
But then, Kenny, looking Céline blankly in the face, mimicking her words about Joyabel earlier: "Allegedly."
Céline turned white as a sheet and seemed like she would explode, however, Jochen did not interfere this time.
"But you're unconscionable", she shouted at him, "Unconscionable!"
After a moment of silence, Jean-Baptiste, in his soothing and perpetually calm tone, said: "Look, Céline, we have all told our stories. And when we did, you had no sympathy for any of our words. But what is more strikingly clear, to me franchement, is that you just... told us the exact same story as before. Almost word for word. Je m'excuse, mais..." He blinked his eyes and shrugged his shoulders whilst leaning deeper into his chair as a way to end this sentence.
"And what is it you would want to know about us? You need more details on our suffering? Do you get off on that?" Céline spewed, making sure she exerted all effort she had not to shout the words, but speaking them clearly.
"Come on Céline," cried Pieter, shaking his head with disappointment;
"Well, par example", said Jean-Baptise, "We still don't know what Jochen does for work. I mean, since we're trying to find the secret billionaire here, it seems appropriate to at least know that."
"Oh, God", sighed Pieter.
"The reason we don't ask is because we all know... Oh boy do we know!" said Kenny.
Pieter turned to Jean-Baptiste: "Once you get him going, he won't stop talking about it."
"Mais c'est quoi alors, son boulot", said Céline, proudly.
Jochen, meanwhile still hadn't spoken and it was starting to stand out.
"I want to hear it from him", said Layla, "We are you so quiet, Jochen?"
"I'm not quiet", said Jochen.
"Yes, you are", said Kenny.
"OK. OK! I'm a journalist", said Jochen.
"Happy?" asked Céline, turning her face away from Layla before waiting for an answer.
"OK. Fine", said Layla, "Thank you. Good to know. And for what paper?"
"I work for several papers and magazines."
"He's being modest. He's done all of them."
"All of them?" asked Layla, "So then, what are you working on now?"
"I..." stammered Jochen. It was quite unusual to see his eloquent self hesitate like that. Rechercheur Van Der Smet had noticed the exact same thing.
"So?", asked Layla, but seeing as there wasn't a response she rephrased the question: "When did you last publish?"
At this moment, Jochen's face turned into a sort of didactic mode.
"Well, I always work on the most pressing and current societal issues. I love writing about how the fabric of our lives -"
"Fabric of our lives" mocked Kenny.
"- And interaction change sometimes gradually, sometimes unnoticed and I then suggest some causal relations between them, that might help readers contextualize what they may or may not realize that they are going through."
Layla and Jean-Baptiste stared at him, knodding slowly. Everyone in the room seemed puzzled as to what Jochen had just tried to explain.
"Vague, right", said Pieter to Jean-Baptiste.
"It's always vague", said Kenny", looking down at his plate of food, as if noticing it for the first time and filling his mouth with as much food as he was able to heap on his spoon.
"It's not!" cried Céline, "It's all very thoughtful and as a matter of fact he's been working hard for years now on... -"
"Years?" said Layla to Jean-Baptise, who raised his brow.
"Yes, years. It's a big investigation, very hush-hush."
Jochen turned to Céline, whispering to her to stop talking about that, but of course the cat was already out of the bag.
"Tell us more about this", said Layla to Jochen.
"Yes... Well..." Jochen hesitated, "Of course things have slowed down after Jens had passed. I actually took a little break from this particular... piece."
"Piece..." mocked Kenny.
"So it's been years since you published any work?" said Layla.
As she said this, a pang of pain was visible over Jochen's face.
"Yes", he said, "looking down again, almost in shame.
"Jochen", said Céline, "Come on, why are you shinking like that? You told me it would likely be published soon in a series of articles.. -"
"That was a while ago", Jochen interrupted her with a nervous laugh.
"So a publishing house is paying you to do this investigation?" asked Layla.
"Yes, both the magazine, a paper and a publishing house had taken an interest in my investigation and had been supporting my research."
"Had been", said Jean-Baptise.
"What was it about?" Asked Layla.
Not used to being the interviewee rather than the interviewer, Jochen turned red and was starting to sweat.
"I... I..." he stammered.
"Maybe best not let him start on a huge lecture", said Kenny.
"I don't think he looks like he's going to start a huge lecture, on the contrary", said Layla.
Jochen finally looked up and locked eyes with rechercheur Van Der Smet, realizing that even though it was his family asking, this was all still part of the investation into a possible murder.
"I... well, to be completely honest..."
Céline, surprised at the change of tone, turned to face him.
"What's this?" she said.
"Yes?" Layla encouraged Jochen to speak.
"To be completely honest", Jochen continued, "I haven't worked on that project since Jens died. The project... is... over."
Céline's face turned pale again.
"How... What can you mean? You... you told me your book was as good as done!"
"It was... but..."
"But what?"
Jochen sighed.
"The project is over! After Jens died. I... It's just over. OK?"
Nobody dare come between the two, who had just been sharing food like two lovebirds minutes before.
"So you lied?" said Céline.
"I... I didn't want to concern you."
"You did! You lied to me!" said Céline, "But then..."
Both brothers stared at Jochen in disbelief.
"What was this book about? This cancelled project? What were you researching?"
Jochen looked around the serre and seeing that all eyes were fixed on him, he replied: "The one percent of the one percent. It was called the one percent of the one percent."
"All this time you worked on this project and you couldn't tell me about it and just now you can reveal it to everyone? And what have you been doing for work if you haven't published since Jens?"
"I'm working... I'm working as a accounting assistant at an investment firm now."
"Why wouldn't you tell..." but the words got stuck in Céline's throat.
"What was the title again?" asked Pieter.
Jochen took another deep breath, as if the title of the book was hard to say out loud.
"It was the one percent of the one percent. An investigation into a very specific group amongst the richest people on our planet and their beliefs."
A stunned silence.
"Hold on a minute", said Layla, "You were effectively writing about..."
"Billionaires", said Kenny bitterly.
"OK, let's get out of here. The case is solved, right? It's Jochen." said Layla.
"The AI was right all along", remarked Kenny.
"I can't believe it", said Céline, almost inaudibly.
"Guys, come on. Just because I wrote a book about a specific one percent amongst the one percent. Which is by the way just a title that sounds good."
"I couldn't care less", said Kenny, "It's the fact that you wrote about billionaires."
"So what? Yes, I was writing about them, but it wasn't... I mean it cost me everything! It's the opposite!"
"How do you mean it cost you everything?"
"I submitted my book to my editor, who was super excited at first but then after a while they wouldn't get back to me and then... I was informed that they wouldn't take the book. They wouldn't publish it."
"Why?"
"They never said."
"So, what was it about? What was your book about?"
"I was investigating tech bros at first, but then I got even deeper than that, I got sidetracked into this crazy, like, extremist little faction within the 1% wealthiest people on the planet and my publisher was all about it at first, they wanted me to investigate, right? But then, when I finally finished it, they didn't like what I found."
"What did you find, Jochen?" said Céline, sternly, "What did you find that you had to lie to me for, all this time."
"I... Well... There's this extremist Christian faction, and it's not per se the wealthiest one percent of the one percent, that's just a nice title to put it that way it's lika a random one percent within the one percent that actually believes, like actually really believes they are meant to be the richest on the planet, to prepare for the second coming of Christ."
The serre fell silent for a moment as this was starting to sound too absurd to follow.
"What?" said Céline.
"Yes. They do. And that... how could I not investigate that? I mean, how could I not? So the thing is that they believe there's a passage, right in the apocalypse or somewhere in the bible about there being 144.000 elect who are going to be saved. The chosen ones. And... they believe, right, stay with me guys, they believe that their riches are - who would contradict it - a blessing from God. Their billions are a blessing from God himself, which means, personally blessed, chosen... Elect, right? But then what that also implies is this: if they are chosen and elect and blessed by their billions, then, those that aren't blessed are... well, not blessed, basically cursed by God. If you're not blessed, you're cursed. But it goes even further with these extremists, and all of this is entirely just like a consensus amongst them, like entirely based on Christian teaching at all, just all part of trying to make sense of being amongst the richest people human history has ever seen and, frankly, trying to justify it basically, right? So, then, the rich are rich because their virtue, their spirit was just innately so good, so pleasing to God that they were blessed with immeasurable wealth, and I'm not talking uncle Johan's mere 1 billion, we're talking tens, even hundreds of billions here guys, can you even imagine this number? I mean it makes uncle Johan look like a pauper, and then all of this whilst the poor, they just aren't at all bothered, like at all, since coming to this second coming of Christ explanation of their wealth, like, they are absolutely not concerned about society, except their separate little society, because, here's the kicker, God basically just... hates them. He cursed them with poverty, with a hard life, a struggle for money, even for scraps and that's simply because they're innately not good, just not blessed by God, not elect, not chosen."
"Why?" cried Céline, "Why would you want to write about this crazy conspiracy? For goodness sake, Jochen, you have a family to take care of. Why would you go and piss off these clearly disturbed people?"
"Because, Céline, I... I have to! It's part of my duty as a journalist because, they have such a big impact on our world right now. We're more and more being funneled into using increasingly controlled tools that marginally make our lives easier, but squeeze more and more and more of everyone in society that is trying to just make an honest living. Every big new venture is about how to squeeze more from people by forcing them to use some new tool that was designed only to funnel more from people already in debt! I... So... How could I not write about that, it's exactly in line with everything I had written before."
"Why are they doing that, then", asked Pieter, "Why are they squeezing more and more out of us when they're already so immensely wealthy?"
"Here's the thing, it's not so much them anymore, it's everyone else trying to get to the 144.000. Everyone's running, frantically trying to find a way to get to the top of the list, getting into the 144.000 at any cost - basically at the cost of... society. Right? And they absolutely don't care it gets people of limited means into more financial trouble, they absolutely don't care because if you're in financial trouble, well, gosh, God musn't really like you and you should repent and take a look at your sinful spirit. But if you're incredibly rich, and you're part of these elect 144.000, well, you can be as sinful as you like, it doesn't matter, there must be something innately good about you, else why would God heap so much reward on you? Right? If God himself can look past their sins as being minor, and still keep blessing them with more billions coming in each year, well, who are they to question, right? In their minds, it all makes sense."
"You wrote a book on this."
"Yes."
"You realize this is basically a conspiracy theory book you wrote."
"Not at all! It's all investigative journalism. It's a book about people who believe, really believe this is all real. If it were about some derelict sect or a cult in a developing country, publishers and media outlets would have been: "Oh great! Yes! Great idea! Investigate! Let's get to the bottom of this absurdity, let's wonder why and how and dive into their psyche. But for some reason, it doesn't apply for them... within the 1%. They exist outside of scrutiny. Which is why. I had to. I had to."
Céline sighed heavily and then said: "You know you put your family at risk by getting into something like that."
"I love you Céline", said Jochen, "You know I do, but.... You also know who you married. I've always been an investigative journalist. This is what I do."
"You had been, yes, but then, you also became a father."
"Of course -"
"And with that comes that you have to consider more than just yourself."
"I know..." replied Jochen, voice cracking, "I realized that after the publisher had rejected the book they had paid me to write. And then every publisher after that."
"Why did you start working as an accounting admin, then? I mean, couldn't you just write another book?" asked Kenny.
"I couldn't. I mean I could, and I did. I started writing short form articles, long form too, but no one wanted to buy my stories anymore."
"Not a single magazine, paper, no one?"
"No one. Nowhere. I was done. I realized that after months and months of trying, but I couldn't get as much as a call with people I used to have great working relationships with. Nothing. No response."
At that point, Nele stood up to get some more sausages, saying: "Well, if you rattle the cage, don't be surprised the beast comes for you when it breaks out."
"This is hardly the most controversial thing ever written", said Jochen, "It's honest five years worth of hard journalistic work-"
"Yeah, yeah, we get it now, Jochen. Get to the point." said Kenny
"The point is: it cost me everything. I wrote the book on why and how common people are forced to sustain society with less and less means, whilst the wealthiest are betting on its collapse. And making even more money doing so. I'm not the secret billionaire, on the contrary. I lost my entire vocation due to my work."
It was at this point that rechercheur Van Der Smet suddenly spoke up and said: "The AI determined that was the truth." to everyone's surprise.
"He's off the list of suspected murderers."
"Off the list", said Pieter, "I didn't know you could get off the list?!"
"You can", answered Van Der Smet dryly.
I tried to lift the mood after all this and took this opportunity to introduce the elegant and beautiful young lady that had joined me and Van Der Smet: "Everyone, please meet Ariadne 'Tjollyn. She's president of the board at the Paepe Estate, and she would like to give a presentation concerning the estate, if I'm not mistaken, how it would or could, or even should be divided amongst you, if you so chose. The good news is, this can all be resolved by the end of the day!"
"And what's the bad news?"
"Well", said Rechercheur Van Der Smet, "By then we'll hopefully know which one of you murdered your own uncle."
"Don't get too comfortable, Jochen, just because Van Der Smet's AI thing took you off the list! Because you're not off of mine!" shouted Pieter from one end of the private jet they had all boarded heading to New York, and turned his face away so fast, I could nearly hear his neck crack just by looking at him.Ariadne 'Tjollyn, the wonderful young, capable and consummate professional that she is and always carries herself like it, managed to get all of the beneficiaries onto this private plane to New York. How? Well, it's a testament to the method I've seen work countless times. However she underestimates her new audience. I can tell she’s confusing Johan’s relatives with Johan himself.She started off very confidently at first, in my cinema room, as I had promised, with some presentations about the history of the Paepe estate, including - which I did think was unnecessary - an introduction to the man Johan Paepe himself. Already Nele had started snoring. But this did not perturb Ariadne, as she remained steadfast and immediately presented the next slide deck explaining about the many companies that were active under the estate, and then another video, and then another video. She thought she was so clever, bombarding whoever managed to stay awake with a series of numbers and charts about all of the progress and all of the “potential” and “growth” and not to mention the countless strides in innovation that have been reached in the past and proved to be the basis to further many branches of the estate into even faster creation of value to... well... the estate. It was the recipe for disaster, but she didn’t realize this yet. She wasn’t done yet with her spiel. And next came the moment supreme: she finally presented her proposal.“What proposal?” asked Céline, yawning.“The proposal coming from the board of the Paepe Estate, of course.”“Yes? OK? What proposal then?” asked Céline again. It was clear she didn’t like Ariadne at all. Perhaps she recognized too much of her younger self in the young lady.“Well, how to go about handling the addendum to the last will and testament of Johan Paepe.”“Which is?” asked Céline again.“Will you just let her speak, she’ll get to it!” said Jochen."No, I agree with Céline. What is your proposal?" Layla had asked.Up until now, Layla had been basically the only person in the room who had absolutely understood everything that Ariadne had presented. I could tell that Ariadne had noticed this too, and she started to be more careful about the information she was sharing, in a stark contrast with the information bombing she had done up until now. Which isn’t surprising, because finally we had arrived at the whole point of her coming over. She cleared her throat and, as if speaking to Layla only, she started:"My proposal, as president of the board at the Paepe estate, is not to break up the estate. In stead, we would like to offer to all of you here, the six beneficiaries -""You're forgetting that one of the “beneficiaries” is in the hospital right now for trying to kill herself with a kitchen knife yesterday evening in the dining room", added Kenny bitterly."Yes, I do know,” said Ariadne, taking by surprise, as she had not expected them to take so badly being referred to as the legal entities they were, in stead of the persons she was in a conversation with. Or so they thought. She wasn’t having a conversation with them. She was representing an entity, corporate, legal, what have you, she had not come as herself, as the woman Ariadne. She had come as the messenger only, and for the first time in her career, as far as I know, she noticed she would need to come from a more vulnerable place in approaching my clients, who have been vulnerable all their lives in a way that Ariadne could never understand.“Not to sound too cold,” she tried, “But, Nele is the legal guardian of Brenda and is entitled to making decisions on her behalf.”At hearing her name, Nele woke up and a tense kind of silence came over the room, now deprived of her melodious snoring.“So everyone present is in fact representing all six of the beneficiaries of the inheritance, of the estate. Right?"Kenny shrugged in response. Ariadne was slightly shaken. She didn’t know what she had gotten herself into. But there was more to come and she would never come unprepared."But I understand what you are saying, Kenny, and I am sorry you couldn't be joined here by Joyabel at the moment too -""Just tell us your proposal already, you've yapped on long enough", spewed Kenny.Ariadne had not expected this reaction from Kenny, as she was used to negotiations of this level to adhere to a certain decorum that was absolutely absent from this whole case. She had thought revealing she knew more than they expected of her, would make them more pliable, more compliant, so as not to play their cards badly and lose millions upon millions. But the joke was on her. They didn’t have the millions yet, and so they didn’t come from a place of bluffing and negotiating, they were coming from their real lives, not from a calculation of projection. They were in the raw and would remain so until their situation had been changed noticeably. If she wasn’t careful, her whole proposal would fall on deaf ears, if she didn’t figure out the kind of sound they were used to hearing, and lose the estate in the process."Kenny, watch your mouth!" cried Jochen, "There's no reason to talk to Ariadne like that!""Watch my mouth? What are you piping up for again? You like Ariadne? You already have a wife! You watch your mouth! In fact, I don't want to hear a single word out of you ever again. You're a horrible liar and a cheat and I'm ashamed to call you my brother."
"Pardon?!"Jochen stood up from the sofa he and Céline were sitting in together. By the way, my cinema room is decked out in leather sofas that can seat two people each, with a little popcorn holder in each armrest, but I digress."Jochen, stop! don't say anything", said Pieter, "Don't say anything for now. Ariadne, please, go on."Ariadne, witnessing just the tip of the iceberg when it came to this family’s dynamic, gathered herself a moment and continued:"Yes... Well... Ironically, what I was about to propose would be rather difficult to achieve if there isn't a way between all of you to talk to one another.”Masterfully, she had turned the tables on them, the dynamic between each of them, instead of the main focus up until now being the dynamic between her as president of the board and them, the beneficiaries.“You see, what I am proposing as the president of the board of the Paepe estate is to... well, make you permanent members of the board. Instead of splitting the estate up into equal chunks to be sold off, each one of you could spend the rest of your lives sitting on the board, heading your very own part of the estate your uncle Johan has left you. You would not even need to be present all year round, only on the occasion when the last say would be necessary for any joint decisions, etc. But I’ll go into that later."Layla, who had been listening intently in silence, her fingers firmly placed along her sharp jawline, and scratching her temples now and then, asked: "And this would be in keeping with the addendum of his last will and testament?”"It absolutely is", said Ariadne, "Provided everyone agrees."A moment of silence."Of course, you don't need to make your decision now", said Ariadne, "As I can explain exactly how the estate can be divided over 6 parts of equal value, which each one of you, except of course Nele, who would as legal guardian over Brenda, preside over two parts.""Lucky Nele", murmured Kenny.Kenny had missed that this revelation had hit his relatives like a bomb. Nele would effectively be twice as rich as each of them, due to her guardianship of Brenda. It was effectively owning 300 million euros worth of assets, while each of them would own 150 million in assets, which is still a lot, but the difference did make some of their faces scrunch just a little. But none of them spoke."As you may or may not now, only 50 million euros of Johan Paepe's estate is effectively cash. In addition to that, the life insurance wrapper known as "Tak 23" or "Assurance-Vie" of about 120 million euros became available for pay-out upon Johan's death to the directly named beneficiary, or to be kept as a 120 million euro investment portfolio it already was under the insurance. Apart from that the board manages 300 million euros in real estate, about 150 million in art and collectibles in a freeport storage facility in Geneva, we have 200 million on the markets as well as 200 million in companies and start-ups.""Excuse me", Layla interrupted her, with a look of great concern on her face, "Did you just mention a beneficiary to the life insurance wrapper of 120 million euros?"Ariadne looked quite surprised at the question, but it wasn't at all clear if the surprise came from the fact that Layla had understood what it was, or that it would raise any questions whatsoever."Yes, the "Tak 23"? What about it?""It's an investment portfolio that's basically tax-free due to being wrapped in a life-insurance contract, right?"Everyone was looking at Layla with astonishment."Correct", said Ariadne, shaken."Which would mean that the contract indeed ends when...""When Johan Paepe had passed away, sadly, yes.""But as a life insurance wrapper for this investment portfolio of 120 million euros, there has to be a single beneficiary named, for the contract to even have been made in the first place.""This is correct", said Ariadne again."Well then," said Layla, "Who is the beneficiary of this life insurance?""It was, as you all may have guessed by now, started up 10 years ago, with the idea to grant it all to the single beneficiary at the time, who is to remain anonymous.""Of course", said Kenny, "The secret billionaire."Pieter laughed sarcastically, "Of course, it was all going to them anyway.""And why would they stay anonymous, then", asked Layla, "How is that supposed to work when we're all going to be part of the board of the estate, in your proposal.""Well, the 120 million could either be added to the 50 million in cash on the accounts, which would be unwise, or it could be transferred as part of the estate's private equity.""Could you both please just stop", said Pieter, "It's no use to come to a consensus about it, if only two people in the room know what the hell you're talking about.""Right", said Jochen, "Well, you go ahead and explain it to us, then, Pieter. Go on! I'm all ears.""Well, since I've got the floor, don't mind if I do, brother! Basically it's this: we all get a spot at the table of uncle Johan's estate, right? We all get a part of this whole thing he built instead of it all being sold into little parts that we then need to figure out what to do with the money. Ariadne's proposal makes a lot of sense! We don't inherit any money. Instead we inherit a seat.""Basically, yes", said Ariadne."We don't inherit any money?" asked Kenny in a panic."Well, technically you would inherit Johan's personal cash accounts, which would be 50 million divided by six minus inheritance tax deductions.""A couple million each", said Céline, perking up, "Plus one sixth of all assets of the estate. Job security for life? I can't believe it."“Well, there is one person in the room who absolutely can believe it”, said Pieter, “And that would be the one among us who had signed the “Tak 23 Assurance-Vie” contract ten years ago, inheriting 120 million tax-free. Nothing here today would be new to them.”Everyone in the room turned to Layla and Jean-Baptiste, who clearly were the only ones who were able to understand everything Ariadne had said without needing an explanation.
“Qu’est-ce que vous regardez”, said Jean-Baptiste.“Rien”, said Pieter and everyone turned their attention back to Ariadne, who had, been patiently observing as there was one last thing she still wanted to share.She said: “There was one last thing I wanted to share.”“Yes?” said Kenny.“As a way to provide some insight into exactly what it would look like, being part of the Paepe Estate board, we offer an all expense paid tour of the assets.”“What kind of tour?” asked Céline.“I have a private jet waiting right now, taking you to New York, if you guys decide you want to go see some of the -”“The what? Riches? Treasures?” said Kenny.“Well, the real-estate, or maybe of specific interest to you”, said Ariadne, remembering the files she had studied obviously beforehand, “The michelin star restaurants we have across the world. The one I would propose we visit in New York is located in the West Village and has just received it’s first Michelin star, let me bring up the slide right here, it was the idea of your uncle himself, and he had found a masterful chef who could execute this rather bizarre idea of recreating the family dishes he grew up with, growing everything in-house and we mean entirely in-house, including a state of the art chicken farm right in the middle of the city, in a slanted floor plan with a brutalist decor, featuring details of Johan’s childhood home, innovative stuff you guys. You can see it here. It’s called ‘Number VI’.”When she proceeded to show some pictures of the dishes served in ‘Number VI’, Kenny’s eyes started to tear up, and he even wiped them away as they started to stream over his cheeks.“Why didn’t we know about this”, he whispered.Pieter, who was sitting next to him, put his arm around him and consoled his little brother.“The man was a cruel bastard”, said Pieter, “Why would he hoard all of these things and leave the people closest to him out of it all.”“Agreed, brother,” said Jochen, “He didn’t look out for anyone but himself, so he picked and chose only the things that were of use to him, regardless of relation. I’m sorry, Kenny. He could have helped, but he didn’t. It doesn’t mean you weren’t good enough. It just means he didn’t care enough.”Kenny looked up for a second and the anger and bitterness was gone from his face as he nodded, locking eyes with his oldest brother.As if Ariadne had not heard what Jochen had just said, she said: “So what do you say? Want to go see New York?”“Amazing that you assume that we’ve never been”, said Céline, leaving out the one word she was obviously wanting to say.“Come now, Céline,”, said Jochen, “You’ve always said you wanted to go.”But Pieter, too, was sceptical.“Why New York? Why the US? Most of his estate is probably here in Europe.”“Well”, said Ariadne, “I thought we might start at the furthest point, ending the tour closest to home.”
“That would of course be the property in Hoog-Linden. The crime scene, as it were”, added Rechercheur Van Der Smet, as if appearing from out of the shadows.“And we’re allowed to go, just like that?” asked Jochen.“Yes.” said Van Der Smet.“Oh”, said Jochen, surprised, “Good, then. I think we’re all agreed.”There was a silence, no one protested. But Pieter’s distrustful visage didn’t budge, even in the face of the promised glitz and glamour they were about to step into, if for only a short while.“I know who you are”, said Pieter to Ariadne as they left my cinema room, “Give us a little taste first? For free? Then take it away again? Leaving us beggars at the negotiating table?”He touched his right nostril with his pointing finger, saying: “I see you.”It didn’t take very long for all of them to hop on the private jet Ariadne had prepared. Before entering the plane, Rechercheur Van Der Smet had stood at the stairs and clipped a mini wireless microphone and camera to each of their collars and cuffs as they entered the plane. This was to ensure the AI would still pick up on their facial expressions and their words. As if they had forgotten all about the potential murder investigation, they happily let Van Der Smet clip it on them.
Once everyone was seated on the plane, Van Der Smet had one final thing to add, namely that Joyabel would join them as she had been questioned and the police as well as the AI had determined that she, too, like Jochen had spoken the truth. She had indeed just found the bloody knife on the floor in the dining room.Kenny was ecstatic as she boarded the plane, clips and all, and they fell into each other's embrace with tears streaming down their faces."I didn't know how long I wasn't going to be able to talk to you", said Kenny sobbing."I wouldn't miss going on a culinary trip to New York for the world, sweetheart, you know that", joked Joyabel, wiping away tears from her face too. They didn't let go of each other's hands as they took their seat. However, Nele got red in the face at the sight of this, unbuckled her seatbelt and ran to Rechercheur Van Der Smet, still standing outside the jet.
"And how about Brenda?! Where is she?""Brenda", Van Der Smet said loud enough for everyone to hear, "Will not be joining you to New York, since she is still under investigation and questioning.”“Why? How?” cried Nele with an amount of energy we hadn’t seen up until now.“She is still being questioned, which is taking a whole lot longer due to her condition, but the reason we need her longer at the station is that the fingerprints on the knife match the fingerprints on the murder weapon perfectly."“OK? So what?” Cried Nele. The flight attendant meanwhile tried to keep her from tumbling down the stairs.“I’m sorry to say, Nele, but the fingerprints on both are identical to Brenda’s.”"What?" shouted Jochen.Meanwhile, Nele stood stockstill in the doorway, numbed. The flight attendant brought her away, back to her seat. She remained stunned, silent, staring with empty eyes outside the little window."Wait a minute", said Pieter, "Her fingerprints were on the gun uncle Johan shot himself with? But how-""And now I have to bid you adieu", said Van Der Smet, who did not enter the plane, but stayed behind as the stairs rose up and the door closed.""I can't believe it", said Céline, "How can that be?""It can't", said Pieter, "The poor girl's been catatonic for decades. The only way is that... someone... pressed her numb fingers on the weapon. It's the only way.""We don't know that", said Jochen."Guys, come one, the plane's departing, let's all be quiet for a moment", said Layla, and then to her husband, "If we take a seat at this board, we're going to have to deal with these people for the rest of our lives. Can you stomach it?""I understood that!" said Céline."You mean to say, Jochen, that you think it's possible Brenda, our catatonic niece, had got up from her wheelchair, took a gun, and shot our uncle, for what?""The very same reason we're all under scrutiny, why not? It's not impossible!""You mean to say you think Brenda could be the secret billionaire?""Well, I mean, Van Der Smet is staying behind to question her.""She can't even talk! How is he going to do that?""Maybe she can! It wasn't too long ago we thought the girl couldn't even pick up a knife, let alone use it to...""Jochen's right", said Céline, "Maybe she could have. Maybe she was the secret billionaire all along."Pieter laughed, loudly."You have got to be kidding me! You mean to say you think she was faking being catatonic? That she... used it to hide that she was a billionaire? Are you hearing yourself?""It's not impossible", said Jochen."Don't get too comfortable, Jochen, just because Van Der Smet's AI thing took you off the list, because you're not off of mine yet!" shouted Pieter from one end of the private jet to the other, "I still think it's you, mister I'll write all about billionaires and end up working for my billionaire uncle's estate. You have every reason to make us suspect each other.""Will you stop it? I wrote one book, okay. It didn't even get published. It's hardly the worst thing that's ever happened in our family. And far from the most scandalous, Pieter. So don't be a hypocrite and keep pointing the finger at me if you don't want it pointed back at you.""Are you threatening me?""Je vois ce que tu veux dire, ma chère", whispered Jean-Baptiste meanwhile to his wife."I'm not threatening you, I'm just saying, my book is nothing compared to some things that have happened in our family. And you know it.""Are you really coming for me, right now?""I'm not coming for anyone, I'm just saying, if Van Der Smet can leave me alone, you can too."The plane, meanwhile was increasing speed and pushing everyone into their seats as the wheels lifted from the tarmac and had started climbing towards the clouds."And what is it you're trying to point fingers at, Jochen. What is it you think that’s worse than the little mishap that cost you your career?"Jochen just sat there, as the plane was ascending, rocking all of them in their seats like babies cradled in their mangers, staring forwards."Are you talking about the...""The reason you and Mathieu got divorced, right? What else?"There was a collective sigh."How dare you bring that up!" said Kenny."What about the divorce?" said Pieter, remarkably calm. That wasn’t a good sign."What about it? What do you mean? You gave him AIDS. That's what."Now Pieter unbuckled his seatbelt and jumped towards Jochen."You take that back! Right now!""But you did, right!" said Jochen, "How do you like it being brought up again and again?"The flight attendant shouted and tried to get them back in their seats. At this point, all whilst the plane was inclined and still climbing, even Kenny unbuckled his seatbelt and tried to come in between his brothers and stop them from fighting."We weren't bringing your book up again and again", said Kenny, "Now stop fighting!""The AI determined I told the truth! I lost my career. I lost everything I had built! Now leave me alone!""Stop it!" shouted Layla, "Sit back down the lot of you! Do you want to crash the plane?"The flight attendant was able to get Pieter and Kenny back to their seats and buckle them back up."I told you a million times, we didn't get divorced because of the AIDS thing", said Pieter, calm again, "It was the secret sex cult thing.""Mon dieu", sighed Jean-Baptiste, massaging his temples."The secret sex cult thing", asked Layla, "What was the secret sex cult thing?!""If anyone should bear some guilt about me and Mathieu's divorce, it should be him, because he didn't tell me he was in a secret sex cult!""Of course he didn't tell you, it's a secret sex cult!" cried Jochen."Shut up!" shouted Pieter, and then continued explaining to Layla: "He was part of a secret sex cult even before we were married and all of a sudden he was kicked out. He got AIDS. And he blamed me for it.""Yes," said Jochen, "but you're leaving things out!""I'm not leaving anything out, I was getting there! So we did the test together after he got kicked out, and it turned out I suddenly had HIV too. But I didn't before! If anyone gave someone AIDS, it was him who gave it to me! Anyways, I could live with it. But he couldn't. He was mad at me, furious, that I should have given him AIDS and get him kicked out of the secret sex cult.""So what that he got kicked out", said Jean-Baptiste, "Isn't testing positive the worst part? Who cares about some sex club?""Not a club. A cult. It’s been around for ages. It wasn't just about sex, it was a sex cult, it was about connections, right. Powerful connections. Once they kick you out, you lose all connections to them and their favors. You're out not just in there, but also out here. Because they give you favors in the real world and they, you know act a certain way towards each other in real life, sometimes strangely and weirdly that makes you wonder why would they... and it's all for the pay off during the secret sex cult meetings that we out here never get to see, so it never makes sense to us, but to them it does, in 'there'. It's all very bizarre and frankly, and it took me a while to come to terms with it. Even though I loved Mathieu dearly. I thought he loved me too, we even adopted Coco together! Now we share custody, but... apparently he loved the secret sex cult more than the both of us. I loved him so much I was prepared to forgive him the secret sex cult thing. Still now he resents me for it. He filed for divorce, moved out. We were married not even one year.""But why was he so sure he didn't get AIDS in there?""Because it's all very high end. It's all very secure and they make every man and woman get tested before every meeting. Or so Mathieu told me. Once you test positive for anything, you're out. Forever. On your own. But I didn't give it to him. I got tested before we got together and I was negative. I never cheated, so go figure.""Did you ever get re-tested?""No. Why should I? I though Mathieu and I were faithful to each other. I don't just go about my day and assume my partner is in a secret sex cult just for the fun of it.""Mais qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?" asked Layla with hushed voice to her husband, "I... I don't think I can do it. I can't. Spend the rest of my life on a board... with them?"
"See, I knew it!" cried Céline, "I can still hear you, Layla! And I was right all along. You can't stand us! You've never really wanted to join our family because you… you hate us. You hate that you're part of this family. You think you're so much better than us!""Not at all!" tried Layla, but Céline had already launched into another tirade."And you being the only one understanding anything Ariadne had to say today? Seems to me like you know an awful lot about being a billionaire!""It's her business", cried Jean-Baptiste, "Of course she knows about it.""Suspicious, is what it is.""Sorry, Céline, if you're overhearing my private conversation to my husband, reacting to this whole secret sex cult thing! It's all very new to us.""It's not very new", said Pieter under his breath, "It's been around for much longer than you think.""For all we know", said Céline, "You could be in a secret sex cult yourself! Or even two!"
"I'm not in a secret sex cult!" cried Layla."But that's exactly what someone who is in a secret sex cult would say!" answered Céline."OK, turn the plane around!" Layla said to Ariadne, who shook her head, reeling from the conversation as it was taking place."She even wants out of the plane. She can’t stand another second of being with us, you guys. She would walk away from a seat at the board of the estate, out of 150 million euros in assets and a couple of millions in cash. Seems to me we've got our secret billionaire right here.""Shut up, everyone!" shouted Kenny violently, voice breaking, "We're going to New York. And we're going to enjoy it."All the while he was still holding his wife's hand."Let's all just pretend we're not investigating anything, and just go along for the ride, please."Everyone fell so silent, it was like they all had started holding their breath.
"I for one want to see everything, everything Ariadne wants to show us. So don't spoil it for me."Joyabel looked lovingly at her husband and kissed his hand, his cheek, and when he turned towards her with a tender smile, they kissed, forgetting the world around them.
All of the beautiful scenarios painted by Ariadne, a seat at the table, benefiting from the enormous estate their uncle had laboured a lifetime to set up; all of this wondrousness would only become true as soon as we left this plane and experienced it for ourselves. Until that time, we were left with and to each other.
"I feel sick", said Jochen.
"Do you need a pill? I have one that helps with seasickness but you can take it for planerides too", said Ariadne.
Céline glared at her with an icecold stare.
"No, not in that way", said Jochen, "I feel sick that we're sitting here in this lavish private jet, whilst poor Brenda is being interrogated because her fingerprints have been discovered on the murder weapon."
"How can that be?" said Pieter, "It's impossible."
"We can speculate about it, but we can't know for sure", said Ariadne, matter-of-factly.
"Listen to her, miss Ariadne", said Pieter bitterly, "As if she knows who Brenda even is. As if she knows anything about any of us!"
"I do know some things about you", said Ariadne, looking down at her phone, "I have to. It's my job. But I understand that it's not my place to say anything on these personal matters."
That's it. Ariadne had just said out loud how I feel. You know, it's strange being a notary, I wonder how my father and my grandfather felt about it, but, people come to you to talk to you and you have to make things real for them. Notarize them. It really sounds like being a magician, but really it's not magic, it's administration. Official recognition. It's the stamp and it's the fact that the stamp is recognized and the recognition makes it real. It doesn't change the fact that it's basically all just... agreement. I suppose this is why I have always been such a good listener, it's my job to figure out what they want to have made real. I'm sure none of my predecessors have ever put it like that, but, voilà.
"You guys", said Pieter, "Don't listen to her. Enjoy this little luxury trip all you like, but to me, it stinks."
"Didn't I just tell you not to spoil this trip for us?" said Kenny, still holding his wife's hand.
"Yes, I'm not saying don't enjoy it. I'm just saying, this woman, Ariadne, is here to protect the estate as is. We, all of us, we have the power to break it up. Into little pieces, sell it off and start again, on our own terms and of our own accord."
"Well said," Jochen replied with a slight tone of mockery he couldn't seem to suppress, "But why do that? Why break up a good thing? It works! Uncle Johan has built it. Why would we break it back down?"
"He's dead", said Pieter, "Who cares?"
"I care", said Jochen.
"Why, though", said Pieter, "Why? He didn't care for any of us, so why do you care about his legacy."
"I don't know. Somehow. We're all somewhere deep down proud of him. To be related to him, like, you know, being related to a famous person."
Nele nearly choked hearing this.
"Proud?" said she, "Far from it."
"Speak for yourself", said Pieter.
"He was a troubled man", I said, finally. I couldn't keep silent anymore. I had spent the whole day yesterday standing by and listening, even in my own home. But today, I feel like I'm a fellow passenger. Nothing more. But also nothing less.
"He wasn’t a perfect man, but he was still a human being that had suffered and loved and had a complicated life, just like any one of us."
"It hadn't occurred to me", said Céline, "That we could ask you, of all people, the notary, to tell us why... Why our own uncle had been like… he had been."
"Well, here I am and I'm happy to answer anything I know to the best of my ability. I can't promise anything, though."
"You could maybe start with why the man had isolated himself from everyone and everything," asked Layla, "Why he was so hard to reach."
"About that, there really isn't much to say. He had become like that after the massive success of his books, but really that part of him had always been there. It just gradually became the whole of the man."
"But where did it go wrong?" asked Céline, "How did he become that way?"
"I couldn't say. But what I do know is that he hàd loved. And then he didn't. He told me she was pregnant with his child. But they couldn't be together. I saw him from being at his most exhilarated, to his most defeated, in a very short amount of time. He was still seeing his family, his brothers and his sister, much like you are. And then, after his mysterious love fell away, out of his life, taking his child with her, he decided to flee the world."
"He didn't want to be part of a world where he couldn't be with her. With his child", said Layla.
"Indeed", said I, "A sad story that only ended, I'm sorry to say, with his passing. He held her in his heart his entire life, and held onto her. Nothing else mattered to him. He started to disappear further and further into his work and into his house, into his estate. He didn't want to let this little sliver of love go, ever. Even if holding onto it meant it was coming at the expense of himself."
"I can't imagine our cruel uncle Johan like that", said Nele, "This doesn't sound like him at all. Love? What does he know of the subject? He was a complete and total miser, just a miserable man. Unkind, unloving and lacking every sense of empathy. He didn't want to speak to anyone, he didn't want to deal with anyone. He wanted only to be by himself and surround himself with his riches. How horrible, a hateful man if I ever met one!"
"Nele!" uttered Céline, "Have some respect for the man, he's just died."
Nele stared at Céline in disbelief, then, turned back around and stared at the window, sitting by herself as if no one else was on the jet.
"We didn't matter to him, so why should his story matter to us?" said Pieter.
"Because he's our uncle", Jochen burst out despite himself.
"Ever the valiant defender of uncle Johan, my dear brother. It's become quite telling."
"Telling of what?" Jochen growled.
"Guys, stop it! Just let Ben talk if he likes, but why spoil this good trip? Let's just let the plane ride be over with in peace, and we can pick back up after we land”, said Kenny.
Everyone sat silent for a while and here and there an ear popped. Layla took a glass of champagne. Joyabel grabbed some of the snacks. Nele licked her teeth, audibly. A most disturbing sound.
"We're crossing the Atlantic", said Céline, "We can hardly just sit here in silence the whole trip."
"Agreed", said Ariadne, which got her another mean look from Céline, "If you permit, I can talk a bit more about the estate."
"I can't bear to hear another word about the estate, for goodness sake", said Pieter, scratching his head.
"What is it you would like to talk about then", retorted Jochen.
It was at this moment that Pieter's eye suddenly twinkled, speeding back and forth from Ariadne to Jochen and back again to her, and then, staying fixed on Jochen. His face crumpled to a frown and after looking around first, as if anyone else would beat him to it, he spoke out:
"Jochen, please! You can stop the charade now! You know Ariadne, clearly!"
"Well, yes, of course, we both work at the Paepe investment firm", said Jochen.
"Oh, you do? Amazing! And how about you tell us about how well you actually know uncle Johan."
Ariadne looked down at her hands, giving Pieter even more fuel to pursue his line of thought.
"See, guys!", he cried, "He's been fooling us all along! As if you all couldn't tell, he's familiar with all of this. All of it. Just wrote a book about billionaires, my ass. You know more about all of it... from experience!"
"Ariadne and I just... Yes, we know each other", Jochen began.
"Excuse me?" gurgled Céline.
"Yes, we do. After I... well... she is the one that offered me the job I have now. There's nothing more to it."
"Don't you try to pull the wool over my eyes", said Pieter, "You were just about to say how you guys know each other. It seems logical to me that you should know each other before she could offer you a job."
Ariadne kept looking down. Pieter wasn't the only one noticing this now. Céline had too, and she was furious.
"What's this?" she said, trembling.
Jochen hesitated. And with that hesitation, he had admitted unconsciously to everyone on the plane, that there was more to the story, that he had not told them everything.
"Well, of course I was doing my research", he began.
"Yes?" said Céline, "And?"
"And how could I not?"
"How could you not, what? Am I supposed to read your mind? Just tell us."
"How could I not, like, reach out to uncle Johan? We're related. He's a billionaire. It made sense."
Then he stopped. As if everything had been said.
"Well, you can't stop there, brother. What happened next?"
Pieter didn't say anything, just sat leaning back in his seat with arms crossed, looking smug.
"Of course we... talked."
"You talked with him?" asked Nele, "He wanted to talk to you?"
"Yes, we talked", said Jochen, "It was actually his idea about... never mind."
"Never mind?" cried Céline, "We mind! We mind very much!"
"Well, he agreed to be interviewed."
"So you interviewed him", said Kenny.
"Yes."
"For your book."
"Yes."
"Why didn't you tell us about it."
"It was all hush-hush, remember. I couldn't tell anyone about it until it was published, but it never made it to the press and now I have to keep it a secret."
"My, my, what a coincidence", said Pieter, "But what was it?"
"What was what?"
"The idea."
"Oh, that", said Jochen, "The idea about the one percent of the one percent... it came from him."
"It came from him?"
"Yes", said Jochen, "It came from him."
"That's how you got the idea?"
"Yes", said Jochen, "And he did feel bad about it, how it turned out. So he... had Ariadne find a spot for me. A job. He realized I was done for. He hated being a billionaire, by the way."
No one spoke. It was dead silent, until:
"How could you have kept this from me", asked Céline, breathing heavily.
"I'm sorry.. I really am. I had wanted to tell you many times, but I... I. It was easier to just... not say anything and continue on."
We were at this point far over the ocean, no land in sight. Just endless water surrounding us.
"There's still more you're not telling us, brother", said Pieter, "What are you hiding still. I bet it's pretty bad if you keep beating around the bush."
"That's it. That is it. Nothing more to it", said Ariadne, "This is exactly how it went. Johan had agreed to some interviews with Jochen. After hearing through the grapevine the book wouldn't be published and that Jochen was done for as a writer, he regretted having given him the idea for this line of research and asked me to place him within his estate. And that's how we became colleagues. The end", said Ariadne.
"The end?" cried Céline, "Hardly, miss Ariadne. Hardly."
She turned to Jochen.
"So you have been spending time with her, working on some administration, then, huh? And how do you like it?"
"Céline, I", stammered Jochen.
"Fine, don't answer that. At least tell me how much you earn."
"Well, you know how much I earn. We're living paycheck to paycheck, aren't we."
"Yes, we are." She glared at Ariadne and repeated: "Yes, we are."
"It still doesn't make sense -", said Kenny.
"I second that, brother", said Pieter.
"I mean that, why would he all of a sudden offer you a job in his firm, that's so meagre that you couldn't keep your house?"
"It's not meagre, it just wasn't enough to cover the expenses we had for... Jens."
"So he offered you a job that's just enough to keep your head above water, but not enough to cover the medical expenses you needed to make for your sick child? He could just pay those expenses out of pocket and not feel it the next day, whilst you guys lost your very home to try to cover it?"
"Now that sounds exactly like our uncle Johan", said Nele.
"You seem to be forgetting that it's not my fingerprints on the murder weapon, but Brenda's. Still you all insist on coming after me the whole time. Could you just please leave me and Ariadne alone already?"
"'Me and Ariadne?'" repeated Céline, mockingly, "I don't like the sound of that."
"Well, what am I supposed to say. Can't a girl and a guy be work-friends?"
"No", said Céline, "They can't."
She knew she was being stubborn and looked out the window instead of meeting Jochen's eyes, who was increasingly feeling like he was getting attacked from all sides, except of course, from Ariadne.
Suddenly, the captain's voice rang through the cabin, informing everyone they had reached an altitude where they could now safely unfasten their seatbelts and it would be a smooth flight from here on out, since they wouldn't need to ascend any further and the way was pretty clear. They would be flying through the part of the timezone that would soon become night, so it would be advised to take the time and rest, perhaps even sleep. They could trust the pilot to get them to New York safely.
As soon as the little lamp illuminating the fasten seatbelt sign had turned off, Ariadne immediately stood up and removed herself to another part of the plane where she could use her laptop and get out her office paraphernalia to sooth her restless spirit of the idea that she had wasted time somehow not looking at some kind of screen or graph.
The flight attendant went around, offering a light dinner prepared by the caterer especially for this flight. I was curious to see what they had come up with to entice the family to go along with the board's plan, dinner-wise. They were offered a fusion three course meal of both American and Belgian cuisine, as explained by the wordy menu card. Both cuisines however, excuse me for giggling internally, aren't really easily identifiable cuisines, they don't have very distinguishing characteristics, perhaps it has to do with the fact that the two countries are about the same age give or take 50 years. So when the courses came along finally, it looked pretty much like the most generic meals I have ever seen, but plated so beautifully, the chef was to be praised for the technique alone. Did it give the feeling of a certain cultural heritage in the form of food? Not in the least. It was delicious because the ingredients were delicious. It said nothing of an interesting fusion between distinctive flavours of two countries separated by an entire ocean. It was something me and my wife would have laughed about heartily, but I couldn't discuss with anyone else for fear of being called a snob, and it's all not meant to be taken very seriously.
I will say I will never forget the combination of hamburger sliders with chicken pot pie that's know locally of course as vol-au-vent. Who would ever have come up with that. Only a chef that had been forced by a multi-billion dollar company to come up with something to save his life. And he did. And that's what it tasted like. Refined desperation. I bet the chef was glad he got through the order.
During dinner, the plane was pretty quiet. Nele had remained seated in the corner, with the empty seat across from her where Brenda would have been sitting had she not been detained by Van Der Smet for questioning. Joyabel and Kenny were seated next to each other, enjoying the meal and dissecting every course meticulously and exchanging ideas of how perhaps they could implement this into their idea of Belgian-Filipino cuisine. It was wonderful to listen along and hear their creativity spark in the moment. Across from them I saw Pieter, sitting alone, not saying anything either, but his mind was totally consumed by overthinking and I felt like a timebomb was ticking, the numbers counting down invisibly on his forehead.
Meanwhile, as could be expected, Jochen and Céline were seated across from one another, paying no attention to their meals whatsoever. They were arguing, in whispers. There was no need to even try to listen in. Their arguments were never-ending, and as we all know, Céline would love nothing more than to take the opportunity to take them out of the context of the two of them and attach them to anything else happening to anyone else, so as to have another platform to form her arguments in another fashion, and fire them back at Jochen again. I'm not a psychologist, but it was clear that, even though Céline had told me during our intimate little talk yesterday in my library that she loved him so deeply, that they simply hated each other. Someone once told me, the two things, love and hate, are very, very close, but I never really understood that. And neither did my wife. I can understand that love and devotion taken for granted can turn someone to hate the other, but I have never understood the idea that it could happen the other way around, where someone would be treated so callously, only for them to fall in love with the other. Many romantic movies have this very plot, one person hates the other person's guts and then falls in love with them because they can't seem to avoid one another and that's some kind of sign that it's fate, but have you really seen this happen in real life? Can people get so obsessed with someone they hate that they eventually fall in love with them? That's food for thought, and as I look out this little window over the vast ocean of blue, I can't help but thinking of today's volatile public sphere, where we see the most hateful discourse become so commonplace, speech that had been, in my time at least, completely marginal and hidden in the fringes, covered in shame before ever being uttered and only unintentionally, followed then by a chastisement that hateful speech only leads to something unforgivable, that as a society we had learned from experience never to repeat. I had not thought in my lifetime it would see that idea, of a public sphere for diplomacy rather than a battleground, become, well, much like this dinner, a bland offering only just for show. If hate truly turns to love like in all those romantic movies, I hope we see much of all this hatespeech today turn to lovespeech. And if it does there will be lots of love to go around! At least if it is to be in proportion to the amount hate speech we're seeing now. I hate to think what it would be like to be in the middle of this new public sphere that's turned into a battleground, rather than the space we give one another to live our own lives. Ariadne, I bet she hadn't thought of it, but could have made that a point in favor of her idea, that becoming part of the board, completely takes you out of this bloody arena. That they could take a seat at the spectator's booth.
Soon, the lights turned down as we flew over the timezone that had already become night, and we started to hear a kind of whimpering coming from Nele's seat. She had started to cry into her handkerchief, trying to be as quiet as possible, but to no avail. Céline came over. She whispered to her.
"It's all going to be alright. It'll be all over soon and it will all work out. I promise. We're almost there. Chin up. Ho."
"I don't think it will. I... what about Brenda?"
"She 's going to be fine."
"What will happen to her?"
"We talked about this. She's going to be taken care of, right? We can make sure of that now. And so will you."
"I... I don't know. I'm scared." said Nele.
At that point Céline just hugged her niece and repeated: "It's all going to work out."
Kenny and Joyabel had looked over at Nele and when Céline had held her in a hug, they turned back around and sighed. It was hard to hear, and Kenny said to Pieter:
"Why do you need to be so stubborn, Pieter. I don't even know what all this talk of breaking up the estate is coming from. Why? Why even think about breaking things up? We can accept this great gift, the greatest gift of our lives and immediately you would use it to smash up whatever we're getting? Why are you like this?"
"You forget, brother, that one of us here on this plane, one of us had had the power all along to help us, without needing first to have uncle Johan die. Your financial troubles, my 'special' troubles, Nele's tragic troubles, Jochen and Céline's horrible troubles, we all could have been helped by someone on this very plane all along and they didn't do it, whilst being part of our lives? And you think I'm the one that's a monster?"
Kenny didn't reply.
"Imagine that you could have been helped right at the point when you needed it most, right?"
Kenny still didn't reply. Neither did Joyabel.
"They had been on private jets for ten years, they have been eating this bullshit lego puzzle hamburger nonsense for ten years, they have been going round to Switzerland, breathing the mountain air just as we had all been drowning, laying down in our beds wishing the next morning wouldn't come? And you say, well, no hard feelings, just give me the money?"
"Exactly”, said Kenny.
"Well, I'm not that way. I will take my share. I will. And you will. But I will not leave that infernal estate intact. We will break it up, sell it, and then we can all go our own way."
At this point, Layla came to sit down next to Pieter. Jean-Baptiste had fallen asleep already, as did Jochen, or at least, he had closed his eyes and crossed his arms as soon as Céline had moved to Nele.
"Do you know how much work it would take to make even more than a hundred million euros work for you, when you try to make it on your own? Do you realize what it takes to have money work like that? This estate, yes it makes billions yearly, but do you think it happens just like that? It needs to be managed and organized. And I don't see how in our lifetimes we could ever hope to achieve a business running like the Paepe estate is. To break it up is like breaking up the Taj Mahal for marble. It's unthinkable."
"Yet, we have the power to do that."
"What is this obsession with power? Why do you keep saying that? It's just the matter of inheritance, here."
"Yes. Well. Layla. Perfect! I appreciate all of your knowledge in the matter, I do", said Pieter, "You do it then. You tell me that I don't know what it takes to manage millions of euros. But you clearly do! So then, you can do it for me!"
"I..." Layla stuttered.
"Well, what do you say? Manage my money? You're hired! If we break up this damned estate, you may manage my money. You can restart your firm in Paris again, hell, wherever you like! New York, Amsterdam, Geneva, whatever. Isn't that what you wanted all along? You have it."
He held out his hand to Layla, who sat there, puzzled.
"It's true..." she said, "I... closing my firm was... it was... Anyways. Yes. I do know how to manage money. I do. I... This is all unexpected."
Kenny looked at Pieter's outstretched hand in suspense.
"Come one, Layla, I'm serious. You were totally right. I wouldn't know the first thing about coming into money. You do. You can... you can put your firm on the map again. Even more so if everyone here wants to put their part into your firm, not to mention you yourself."
"I..." she stuttered once more, glancing over at Jean-Baptise, who was fast asleep. Finally, she turned around and shook Pieter's hand.
"It's a deal."
Kenny looked at them shaking hands like he had witnessed a murder.
"I can't believe you guys."
"What's not to believe, brother? We're taking matters into our own hands instead of sitting down and waiting for our portions like good little dogs."
"You're an asshole", said Kenny, "Always have been."
"And so what. At least I'm an honest asshole. Now if you'll excuse us, Layla and I have some toasting to do."
Pieter asked the flight attendant to pop open a bottle of champagne and bring two glasses over to them. To Kenny's surprise, Joyabel had asked for a third glass, as she was 'feeling thirsty'.
The three of them cheersed.
"Pieter", said Layla, "I have to say, I would have never thought you would come up with such a brilliant idea."
"It takes an outsider sometimes to see outside of the box", said Pieter smugly, "I surprise myself sometimes."
"I'm going to throw up", said Kenny, "Look at you, so full of yourself. You're just glad to have an ally in your plan to break up the estate."
"It's not a plan anymore, my dear brother, don't you see? It's a matter of consensus. If you don't all agree with breaking things up, no one will receive anything. It will all go back to the secret billionaire. And each of us leaves penniless."
"As if that's the only option we have!" said Kenny, raising his voice now, "We could also take the board's offer, and like Layla herself said, it's a monumental estate, it would be one of the best jobs in the entire world!"
"Fuck the board!" said Pieter, "And what's it to you? What would you know about it? How does a hard-working chef in need of funding suddenly become so enamoured by the idea of sitting idly on a board? Did you let your restaurants go bust, just for show, brother? Did you?"
At this point, Kenny was seething, especially since Joyabel was now looking at him like he could indeed be the secret billionaire.
"Come on, sweetheart", said Kenny, "Don't listen to him. Why would I do that? Why would I destroy all our dreams intentionally? To enjoy being a billionaire in secret? It's disgusting! You know me. I would never do that."
Joyabel sighed a few times, considered things inside of her mind for a moment and then drank her entire glass of champagne in one gulp.
"I know. You wouldn't. You wouldn't do that. But, sweetheart. I think Pieter is right. We need to take our share, make it our money, really our money, and give it to Layla to manage for us. I trust her. She's family. I don't trust Ariadne."
"Well, that's not a very nice thing to hear just when I was coming along to hand out your itineraries for when we land in New York, gastjes", said Ariadne. But she wasn't really taken aback. She handed out the papers to them all, or put them on the table in front of them if they were sleeping, like Jochen and Jean-Baptiste.
"I hope you feel differently when you wake up after a good night's sleep", said she and went away back to the office part of the private jet. It seemed like, unlike them, she didn't need any sleep. Soon after, we all fell asleep, even as things got heated for a moment there. But, all discussions, all trepidations and worries, all was in a suspended state, like nothing would become real until we had landed. And by handing out the itineraries, Ariadne had put us all back on her timeline. Sly fox that she is.
However, she was not careful enough. A few hours after everyone had reclined their seats into neat little beds with little blankets, feet sticking out, there was a sound of thumping. Of course, on a plane, one has to tune out certain sounds of the machinery to be able to sleep, which I'm never really able to do on a plane for starters, but this thumping seemed to come from inside. That became increasingly clear as it became louder. Now as if the location of the sounds hadn't left anything to doubt, soon, the nature of the thumping had become clear as little moans and sighs started to accompany the irregular thumping, which would slow down and accelerate at random intervals.
Pieter, who was lying in the seat in front of me across from Kenny and Joyabel, woke up to this sound and started cursing. He looked behind and to the left of me. Indeed, the seats of Céline and Jochen were empty.
"Can you believe those animals? They're at it, again?! I mean, are they like bunnies or what? They just can't help themselves, now can they? Disgusting!"
A few more woke up as they heard Pieter whispering to me.
"No sense of discretion," he said, "Not at your house, not even on this plane, where we need to breathe the recycled air of their lovemaking session. It makes me sick to the stomach!"
I nodded. The thumping continued unbothered.
"That's it. I'm going over there."
"No! Wait!", said Joyabel. Kenny didn't stop Pieter, he just rolled over to his side.
As Pieter stood up and went to the back to open the office door, I noticed that in the farthest part of the plane sat Céline, sleeping peacefully in front of Nele, right in the seat where Brenda should have been. I stood up and looked to Pieter, who opened the door, shouting: "Could you guys stop it! We're trying to sleep!" but then completely stopping dead in his tracks.
Now everyone on the jet had woken up, upon hearing him shout. Looking to the open door where Pieter stood visibly perplexed, they could only hear him say with a low voice: "Oh, maar Jochen..."
Céline, at the very other end of the jet, stood up slowly, just as slow as it was becoming clear to her what she was seeing through that little door.
"Jochen?" said she.
When Jochen finally came into view, clothed scantily, she immediately rushed over to the office door, where everyone could see Ariadne running to the back, frantically grabbing her clothes and jumping into the bathroom.
"JOCHEN?!" screamed Céline who ran towards the door, but Jean-Baptiste grabbed her and held her as she repeated Jochen's name, who slammed the door shut.
"Brenda", said Rechercheur Van Der Smet, "This is doctor De Roose. She will help us with some questions we need to answer about the murder of your uncle, Johan.
There was no reaction.
"Brenda, I know you can hear me. I'm going to let doctor De Roose introduce herself and then we'll be asking you some questions. You don't need to be afraid. We just need to know the truth. We promise we won't hurt anyone you know. These are just some questions."
Doctor De Roose sat down on a stool, positioned just inside Brenda's line of sight. She ignored Rechercheur Van Der Smet entirely and proceeded to take out some papers out of her briefcase, before really facing Brenda and painting on a lovely smile.
"Brenda, dear", she said, "I have some questions for you, but before we get into any of that I want you to know that you are safe here."
She stared into Brenda's eyes for a moment in silence. Brenda's eyes moved to meet hers.
"Perfect", said doctor De Roose, "Now, Brenda. I know the past days have been extremely hard for you. You are used to having a daily routine, right?"
Again she looked into Brenda's eyes, Brenda looked back into hers.
"And that routine has been broken somewhat. We want you to get back to your routine as soon as possible. Now, Brenda, to make things easier on us, we need to... well... let's say we need to for the sake of getting this all behind us as soon as we can... play a little game. It's called: blink once for no, blink twice for yes."
She started rummaging through her papers, trying to find an image she could show Brenda, but before she could find the paper, Brenda had blinked twice already, with a little humph.
"Oh, okay, Brenda, I see you've already got the hang of it. Very good."
De Roose looked over at Van Der Smet, who nodded at her. Brenda was absolutely conscious.
"Good. Good. Brenda. Of course, we would have loved to talk to one another like for example mister Van Der Smet and I would, but I am going to have to ask you only yes or no questions. Don't be shocked by these questions. The thing is that I am going to have to word them with some, let's say, things we think may or may not be true and it's up to you to tell us yes or no. Just because our questions are phrased a certain way, doesn't mean we already think this. You just tell us no, and it's no, right? You understand? You understand why we need to do it this way?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"Fantastic. Now Brenda. You had been diagnosed as being in a waking coma, of being completely catatonic, due to a case of.. encephalitis that was misdiagnosed. I'm so sorry to hear that Brenda, I really am. Brenda. I do believe you have been catatonic for a while, but. Clearly, you... you've to a certain extent woken up. Have you been able to see and hear the world around you for a while now?"
Brenda blinks twice.
"Wonderful, you're good at this, Brenda. Very good. Brenda. I have another question for you. Now, Brenda. How long would you say you have been conscious in this way. Longer than a year?"
Brenda blinks twice.
"Longer than two years?"
Brenda blinks twice.
"Longer than five years?"
Brenda blinks once.
"No longer than five years, then. Good, Brenda. You're really doing so good, Brenda, you really are. Now. Listen Brenda. Would you say you are conscious for five years, then?"
Brenda blinks twice.
"Thank you Brenda. Thank you, so much. Okay."
Doctor De Roose looks away from Brenda and rummages through her papers again, hands over a couple to Rechercheur Van Der Smet without looking at him, then studies one of the documents and paints on her smile again.
"Brenda, hi. I have another question for you."
Brenda blinks twice again, with another little humph.
"Now, now, Brenda, I haven't asked you a question yet."
She looks over at Rechercheur Van Der Smet who is typing frantically.
"I love your enthusiasm, Brenda, I do. So good to see, especially considering your condition. I feel like we're going to get far with each other, don't you think?"
Brenda didn't blink.
"Good. Good. Now, Brenda. Did you let your sister know. Five years ago. Did you let her know. That you, woke up, I mean that you can hear and see and you know about what's happening around you?"
Brenda blinked once.
"You didn't?"
Brenda blinked once.
"Good, Brenda. I appreciate the honesty. So you didn't tell her at first. But, as we know from the transcripts at Mr. De Walters house, Nele did know. Or at least, she realized after a while. Would you say it was within the year?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"Good. Within the year then. Okay. Then, Brenda. Something else. Can you move your hands for me?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"Yes, thank you, Brenda, so much for confirming. But can you please also... move them. For us to see?"
Brenda proceeded to move her hands. She was able to move her hands from the wrist, turn them around, open them up and then turn them into a fist."
De Roose looked at Van Der Smet, then turned back to Brenda with a smile.
"You're doing so good, Brenda, you really are. Now, Brenda, another question for you. Have you tried to kill yourself?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"I'm so sorry to hear that, Brenda. So sorry to hear. Now, Brenda, did you try to do that with the kitchen knife at home, where Nele was your caretaker. For example when she had used a kitchen knife to put butter and jam on bread for you?"
Brenda blinked twice.
De Roose and Van Der Smet looked at one another, again, but this time, there was a little hint of disbelief in their eyes.
"Brenda, very good. Thank you. We can see, however, that, well, don't take this the wrong way, but your hand movements are pretty limited. It's hard to believe that - "
Brenda blinked twice and then blinked twice again.
"Right, Brenda. Of course. I don't mean to upset you. I just wanted to ask you about why. Did you not want to live like this?"
Brenda blinked once.
"You woke up to being paralysed, and seeing your sister, aged, doing nothing but taking care of you, each day. And you weren't able to say anything?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"I can imagine, Brenda. I really do. You didn't want to live like that anymore."
Brenda blinked three times.
De Roose didn't look up at Rechercheur Van Der Smet, but leaned in closer.
"I noticed you blinked three times just now, Brenda. Do you mean to say, 'yes and no'?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"It wasn't completely about not wanting to live like that anymore, are you trying to say that?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"Then, Brenda, was it more about... your sister. Nele? You didn't want her to live like that anymore?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"I see. Brenda. I am so sorry. I can't imagine what that would be like. Did you... hear her cry?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"Right, of course you would have. And did you hear her complain?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"I am so, so sorry for you, Brenda. I really am. And I understand. You absolutely didn't want to be a burden to her. Did she cry and complain about you?"
Brenda blinked three times.
"Yes and no, then, huh," said De Roose, "I can imagine she didn't realize you could hear her or see her and she would let everything out, lamenting her situation, without considering your feelings."
Brenda blinked twice.
"Of course, she didn't know you could hear."
Brenda blinked twice.
"Now, Brenda. When did you begin to try to end your life?"
Brenda stared at her.
"Oh, right. My mistake, Brenda. Let me rephrase that. Did you try to end your life within the first year?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"And from that moment on, Nele must have realized, right, that you could hear and see everything around you?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"Why didn't she take you to the doctor and tell them about it?"
Brenda stared at her.
"My fault again," said De Roose, "I mean to say, Brenda, let me phrase it this way. Did Nele try to seek medical help? Professional help?"
Brenda blinked once.
"Why wouldn't she do that", asked Rechercheur Van Der Smet, forgetting himself. Doctor De Roose ignored him.
"I imagine, finding out your sister has woken up from a coma to a certain extent by trying to kill herself, she didn't want to alert the doctors to... help you do that?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"Would you have wanted euthanasia?" asked Doctor De Roose.
Brenda blinked twice.
"Why wouldn't Nele help her with that", asked Rechercheur Van Der Smet.
"Je moet de vragen aan mij overlaten, Van Der Smet, you aren't helping."
"Pardon", said he.
"I guess, after twenty years plus of taking care of you, even though she absolutely hated the situation, Nele wouldn't know what to do, after losing you."
Brenda blinked twice.
"I get that. No, I really do. This isn't an easy conversation, Brenda, I'm so sorry to put you through this. Can we have a glass of water please? We don't need to go into that any further. I think we know enough."
A couple of tears streamed down Brenda's face.
"Brenda," said Doctor De Roose as she wiped her cheeks with a paper towel, "Can we ask you some other questions now?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"I know this is hard, but we really need to know."
She rummaged through her briefcase again and ogled a document from another folder.
"Brenda. Do you know who killed Johan Paepe?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"Brenda. You do?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"Brenda. Please answer carefully now. Is the person who killed Johan Paepe someone you know."
Brenda blinked twice.
"Okay. It's someone you know. Brenda, here's the next question. Is the person who killed Johan Paepe someone in your family?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"Brenda. I'm sorry to have to ask you like this, but, since we've no other option. I have to ask. Is it you?"
Brenda blinked once.
"You understand I had to ask that question, don't you, Brenda? I'm so sorry. It's because your fingerprints are on the murder weapon. The gun Johan Paepe allegedly used to kill himself, but was found outside of a plausible position, right on the coffee table, instead of his lap or on the ground."
Brenda blinked twice.
"Who killed Johan Paepe?" asked Van Der Smet.
"Brenda, we need to know. Is it one of the people on this photo sheet?"
Doctor De Roose held up a photo sheet of everyone present at the reading of the will.
Brenda blinked three times.
Rechercheur Van Der Smet and Doctor De Roose stared at one another for a moment. Then, Doctor De Roose took a deep breath.
"Brenda, you do realize one cannot be a murderer and not a murderer at the same time."
Brenda blinked once.
"I don't believe I follow, Brenda", said Doctor De Roose, "I don't follow at all. One person in your family did and didn't kill Johan Paepe, is that what you're trying to say?"
Brenda blinked once.
"Did Johan Paepe kill himself", asked Rechercheur Van Der Smet, and before Doctor De Roose could turn to him to shut him up, Brenda had blinked three times.
Both Van Der Smet and De Roose were stunned for a moment and then Doctor de Roose asked:
"Brenda. Did he shoot himself?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"Brenda," said Rechercheur Van Der Smet, "Was he alone?"
Brenda blinked once.
"Were you there?"
Brenda blinked once.
"But how do you know, then?"
"Yes or no questions, Rechercheur", said Doctor De Roose.
"Who was there?"
"Yes or no questions, again, Rechercheur."
"Were any of the people on the picture sheet there when Johan shot himself?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"How many", asked doctor De Roose, "Blink the number of people that were there."
Carefully Brenda blinked once.
"One person?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"Is it the person who put your fingerprints on the gun?"
Brenda blinked once.
"So someone put your fingerprints on the gun, and another person took the gun to Johan, is this correct?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"Did Nele put your fingerprints on the gun?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"Did she go to Johan, and make him kill himself with it?"
Brenda blinked once.
"Did someone ask Nele to put your fingerprints on the gun?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"Did they promise Nele that she would be taken care of?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"Did Nele do it because you had wanted to kill yourself anyway?"
Tears fell down Brenda's face. Then she blinked twice.
Rechercheur Van Der Smet and Doctor De Roose fell silent for a moment. She turned to him and he bent down to meet her mouth with his ear. She whispered: "Moest je mij nu weeral per se betrekken in zo dingen?"
Then, she turned to Brenda again.
"Your sister, not prepared to lose you to euthanasia, leaving her with nothing after a life spent entirely on taking care of you at the expense of her own, was prepared to press your fingers onto a gun with which billionaire Johan Paepe would then proceed to shoot himself through the head with, in exchange for... what? Money?"
Brenda blinked twice.
Again, De Roose turned to whisper something in Van Der Smet's ear: "This is insane."
Van Der Smet answered: "We've seen a lot crazier shit for much less."
Doctor de Roose turned again to Brenda.
"Nele, at Mr. De Walter's place, you tried to kill yourself in the bathroom, when you were left alone. You had allegedly grabbed the knife Nele had used to cut a banana for you off of the table in Mr. De Walter's office before being left alone in the bathroom, where you proceeded to cut your wrists. The question of course is, why, why would you do that? But let me phrase it this way: did you not want to take the blame?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"Did you not want them to get away with it?"
Brenda blinked twice.
"Brenda, I am going to move my finger from picture to picture on this sheet. I need you to blink twice once I get to the picture of the person who had asked Nele to press your fingerprints on the gun and was in the room with Johan Paepe when he shot himself. Okay. Here we go. Stop me by blinking twice when my finger points at the person."
Brenda blinked twice.
"Let me in there!" Céline shrieked, as she was held back by Jean-Baptiste, who was trying to calm her down by effectively holding her to the floor, preventing her from doing something to Jochen she would regret later. Apparently, he needed much force to keep her down. Behind the door that Jochen had shut closed, unclothed and covered only by holding his sweater to cover his private parts, there were muffled but heightened voices of the two brothers arguing. Over here, Céline kept calling his name, spewing all of the terrible things she was going to do to Jochen. Jean-Baptiste gestured towards Kenny to help. Kenny came down and tried to convince Céline to go back to her seat, but she was still struggling to get out of Jean-Baptiste's grip. It was clear Jean-Baptiste couldn't hold her much longer, and Kenny also started to keep her down.
"You too, Kenny? How dare you! Why won't you let me in there! You all saw! You all saw what just happened! Why keep me here? What for? Did you guys know? Did you guys know about this?"
"Of course not", said Layla, "We're just as shocked as you are!"
As if she didn't hear her, she continued cursing her husband and said: "I'm going to kill him. I'm going to murder the man. I'm already a suspected killer, so I might just as well do it! What have I to lose?"
Meanwhile, in the back, Nele had started humming a most unsettling tune. It sounded like a kind of nursery rhyme or other. And with an extremely high pitched voice she started describing things she noticed about her. The buttons on the chair. The little cabinet doors. The seatbelt buckles. She started describing everything, humming and singing it in an eerie voice, unnaturally high-pitched. It wasn't loud, but it was as if suddenly there was a child on board in the body of a 40-year old, and it gave everyone chills down their spines.
Meanwhile, Jean-Baptise tried to calm Céline down.
"Come on, Céline, just... sit down. Have a glass of water. But we need you to be calm. We're going to discuss this with him. We need to. We're going to get him. We're going to talk to him. Everyone here. Everyone needs to know what's going on. We have a right to know. But, Céline, we're not going to get anywhere if you're going to assault the guy. We all need to know what's going on."
I don't know if it was his soothing accent or his smooth voice, but somehow what Jean-Baptiste had said worked. Céline stopped yelling and struggling. She calmly stood up, still with Jean-Baptiste's arms firmly around her shoulders, and silently went over to her seat. Layla brought her a bottle of water that the flight attendant had handed over to her. Suddenly, it was quiet in this part of the cabin again, apart from Nele's unsettling humming interrupted by her noticing yet another button and wondering out loud what it does, in a mouse-like voice.
Kenny then went over to the door that Jochen had slammed shut. He knocked three times and then said: "You guys presentable? We need to talk."
It was the sound of Pieter's voice came out of the office. "Yes. Yes, we are." There was the rumble of muffled voices of both Ariadne and Jochen protesting, but Pieter had opened the door already, regardless.
Pieter gestured towards the two, without speaking saying 'after you'. And the two walked in, ashamed, eyes to the floor. Apart from Nele's humming and talk about buttons here and there, all whilst sitting in her seat with her back to everyone that had gathered around the two lovers.
"Well", said Layla, "What have you two to say?"
"All I have to say", said Jochen, "Is that I'm very sorry. I'm truly very sorry."
"You could at least look at Céline when you say it", said Pieter.
"I'm sorry," said Jochen, lifting his head and looking at Céline, however not meeting her eyes, just looking in her general direction.
"And how about you?" said Pieter to Ariadne.
Ariadne's face however was defiant. She clearly had no remorse. She was dressed well once again, hair laid good, as if she hadn't just been having sex with Jochen.
"I'm sorry", she said, "This isn't very professional of me. And on behalf of the board-"
"Fuck your board!" said Céline, "I'm not concerned with the board, Ariadne. I'm concerned with you!"
This shook Ariadne. She startled and eyes blinking she shivered.
"I... I..." she stammered.
"You... You... You were just fucking my husband on a plane where you just put all of us on. Do you get off on this? Some kind of sick game that turns you on? Is it a power thing? You're disgusting."
There was a sense in the recycled air of the jet that everyone agreed and visibly, Ariadne shrinked.
"Jochen and I..." she tried.
"Yes, correct", said Céline, "This is about you and Jochen and I. So say it. How long. How long has this been going on?"
"It's been... years", said Jochen.
"That's it", said Céline, and she lunged forward, trying to strangle him. Kenny and Jean-Baptise restrained her again, but I couldn't help thinking that Céline had mentioned before that she knew, she knew that Jochen was having an affair. And that at one time, she did too. But I was hesitant to speak. Something wasn't right about this. And I couldn't figure out what.
Meanwhile, Nele had started to get up from her seat, still humming and singing in her little high-pitched voice, as if nothing was happening in this side of the cabin, as if she couldn't hear anything that was going on. She just kept going on about the buttons. As if she was talking to some kind of kindergarten teacher about how lovely buttons are and what sorts of things they can do. And she was asking this imaginary kindergarten teacher what this button would be for and that one and the other one. One of the flight attendants went towards her and asked her if she would like a drink or perhaps maybe a tablet that would help her with fear of flying. But Nele just went on talking about the buttons, wondering about them out loud, humming her questions in an unsettling little melody and the flight attendant was looking at her quite puzzled.
"Can you show me more buttons", said Nele. However, the flight attendant didn't really know how to respond and proceeded to show her the flight brochure.
"Jochen", said Céline finally, "It's one thing to have an affair. But to get your whole family in one little space no bigger than a bus, and then start fucking another woman inside here? You must be out of your mind."
Ariadne did not appreciate being referred to as being fucked or as being the other woman. She left for the office room once more and grabbed her laptop.
"Oh, I'm not done with you!" said Céline, "You! You're worst kind of woman! The kind of woman who thinks other people's marriages are a game. That you can buy any husband, enslave him with gifts and money and favors and access and the likes, as if marriage vows are worthless just because they are words? Like vows two people make to one another don't show up in any graph, in any statistic? I have given everything I have to the man, my time, my life, everything I built and earned, I have given away, because of this vow we made to one another. It was all I had. Would you do it, Ariadne? Would you give up all you built for him? Would you be prepared not just to give it all, but to LOSE it all? Are you prepared to lose it all for this man? Because I was prepared to, I vowed to, and I DID. I DID! Is that not a number you can use in an excel sheet, you can use to make a graph, to leverage some kind of deal? Oh, but I'll give you a statistic. Life expectancy, my dear. You'll be in the category of the bottom 20 percentile of successful corporate women who die before 40."
"Okay, that's enough", said Layla, "We understand you Céline, but don't go too far."
Nele's mouse-like humming once again was heard a short pause before Pieter asked the question that was on everyone's lips.
"Jochen. There's no use denying anymore. No, not that. Everyone knows you're a cheating asshole sex-addict. It's the other thing. Clearly, you've been the secret billionaire all along."
Everyone was too stunned to speak.
"Before we even get to the part where we absolutely have every right to scold you for having been such a tremendous duplicitous liar and traitor to us all, just standing by alongside all of our struggles, pretending to console us and help us when you had the means to effectively help us, your own flesh and blood, your family, just tell us. How? How and why? Why would you even do that?"
"I...", started Jochen, "I... I went to Johan."
He was looking for the right words, but Pieter edged him on: "Just say it. No need to embellish it. Just tell us. Plain and simple."
"I went to him for my book! I wanted to interview him! And I told him I was writing a book and suddenly, he changed. He changed. He really wanted to help me. He wasn't like the distant, disgruntled man we all knew. He was... eager to help. He wanted to help me."
"How? By making you a billionaire?" said Kenny, bitterly, "And you said yes, leaving us all in the dust?"
"No, it's not like that at all... He... told me about what life was like being a billionaire, but then he had decided to... show me. He wanted to show me. Share it with me."
"Why? Why would uncle Johan do that?" asked Pieter.
"Because Jochen is Johan's son!" said Céline.
Everyone turned to Céline, stunned, not in the least Jochen himself.
"You knew?"
Céline sighed, nodding slowly.
"Yes. Your mother told me on her deathbed. She asked me to keep it a secret from you. That it would destroy you. She wanted to die relieved from her secret and her wrongdoing, she wanted to have told someone of it before going to the other side. And I did, I kept it a secret. From you..."
"What do you mean, from me?" asked Jochen, "Who else knows?"
"It doesn't matter now", said Céline, "I want to know why you did it. Why couldn't you just... be his heir and just be honest about it? Even to me?"
"He wanted it all for himself", said Kenny, "The selfish bastard."
"It's not that", said Jochen.
"And why should we believe you?!" cried Pieter.
"You don't have to believe me, but hear me out, at least. Johan... yes... he revealed to me that he was my father. That he had loved our mother. That our mother had cheated, with him, and that his brother's 'first child' was actually his. This is why he could never see me, or mother, or father, or any of us. He was torn, and also... dad would have killed him if he had found out."
"Yes", said Pieter, "Yes, he would."
"He was so proud that I did so well for myself and when he found out I was going to write this book, he became emotional that even in his absence, I clearly was his son, that he had passed on something, like a writers-gene or something. It made him cry, cry like a baby. We held each other. I... It was like I had a father again."
"And then..." Céline said.
"He proposed that I should go undercover. As a billionaire. Move around the circles. Live the life. Write from experience. It was going to be the next big book. It was going to be one for the ages. The invisible world that governs all the world, revealed. We thought it would be the best thing to be written in a long while."
"It doesn't make sense", said Kenny, "He was a billionaire himself, why would he want to do that."
"Because he was like that all along... he was a rebel when he was poor, he remained one when he became wealthy. Just in a different way. It's him. It's his personality."
"You are your father's son", said Céline, "And I don't mean it as a compliment."
"So, then", said Layla, "Let's not forget. Let's not forget the reason why we're all on this damn plane right now. I understand your story, Jochen, I do. But, cousin, why did you kill your own father? Why kill Johan?"
"I didn't!"
Everyone looked at one another, and Pieter couldn't help but laugh.
"You bastard. You're the secret billionaire! None of us have a motive that is as big as yours. A billion times bigger! He wanted to share the wealth among all of us, and then, you killed him!"
"I didn't!" shouted Jochen, "How dare you! I'm not a killer! I wouldn't kill Johan! I... He's my father, for God's sake!"
"How did you get Brenda's fingerprints on the gun, Jochen", said Jean-Baptiste, "That's the crazy part. Brenda! Of all people!"
"I didn't!", repeated Jochen, "Do I have to remind you, the AI had ruled me out! I'm not the killer. Yes, Johan gave me access to his enormous resources he didn't use anyway, but he did it for us to write our book on this crazy one percent of the one percent that are in an extremist cult. It was a father-son thing. Something to make up for lost time. He gave me access to this wealth ten years ago, yes. As his sole heir. Yes! He did! but I never intended to keep it all to myself. The book was supposed to get published, remember! I would have shared everything by then. It was even in the book itself, goddamnit! I was going to share everything!"
"Bullshit" said Céline.
She had turned bright red, shaking once more with rage.
"Bullshit. How about Jens? Let's talk about Jens! Let's talk about our little boy. Let's talk about Jens!"
"Céline. Céline, please!"
"Your own son! You talk of Johan being your father, all sentimental. Well, how about your own son?! You had access to live your secret billionaire life for over ten years?! But then when Jens had become ill, where was the money?"
"I... Céline, please. I would have, if I could! If I could!"
"IF YOU COULD?!" Céline screamed at the top of her lungs, "IF YOU COULD?! YOU KEPT YOUR MILLIONS AND BILLIONS A SECRET WHILST OUR SON DIED AND YOU MADE US SELL OUR HOUSE TO PAY THOSE BILLS WHEN YOU COULD JUST HAVE PAID THEM?"
"I DID!" shouted Jochen!, "I did use the money! I just didn't tell you! The experimental treatments in the private hospitals? The ones in France? In Switzerland? The miracle treatments? They were way more expensive than you know! I just couldn't tell you, Céline. I couldn't."
"WHY?!" cried Céline, "WHY, JOCHEN! YOU'RE MY HUSBAND! FATHER OF MY CHILD AND YOU COULDN'T TELL ME?! WHO COULD YOU TELL?"
Layla sat herself down next to Céline and put her arms around her, letting Céline cry into her shoulder.
"I DON'T UNDERSTAND!" she shouted, muffled into Layla's thick long black hair.
"The book never got published. The owners of all the major media outlets. They all go back to billionaires, who know billionaires who know billionaires. They all have favors! That's how it works. One favor for another. I was shunned as a writer. Anywhere. Johan was shocked too. But he realized, he had put me in danger. I told him, I didn't care. I knew the consequence of journalism, that it can come at a great cost, when the truth is dangerous. I was prepared to take some hits, to compromise my own safety. Heck, I was so bold, just like him, ruthless, even. I got to this cult one percent within the one percent, I infiltrated, yes. And they hunted me. Tried to destroy me, as I said, but they soon realized. If they did something to me personally, it would only work to corroborate my investigation! Me and Johan had arranged for my work to be published posthumously if anything were to happen to me. We agreed, Johan and I, that I had better get back to my normal life. Disappear from the billionaire living sphere, just... go back to normal. He gave me a job, he had Ariadne give me one, an inconspicuous one, not easy to find. But I underestimated them. To get to me, they would get to the one thing that I was not willing to get hurt for my journalism. My own son."
Jochen started crying at this point, however, no one came to him. No one trusted him. Not until his story made sense. Nele, meanwhile, just kept singing quietly, just like a child that doesn't know what grown-ups are talking about and is lost in her own little world, wondering about what is directly in front of her.
"How", asked Céline, coldly.
"Céline. The doctors. They wouldn't treat him. They just... they wouldn't treat him. They ran tests. But... they didn't treat him. They looked at his numbers, his results. They told us one thing. The other doctor told us another. They... they wouldn't treat him, Céline!"
"But they took him in! At the public hospital?"
"They did, but they didn't have the equipment to really help there, did they?"
"But in the private hospitals, they went through everything with us, all the new, all the new stuff, the new treatments, the new experimental things, machines!"
"Yes, Céline, they had it all. But. They didn't use it. They gave him the generic stuff, the stuff that didn't work!"
"That's impossible, Jochen!" shouted Céline, "It's impossible!"
"I swear! Céline! The doctors wouldn't help! The hospitals we had to go to to save Jens' life were all privately owned! They all went back to... all of the private hospitals are owned, all the doctors, the managers, the board, they all are owned, Céline. They are! It all goes back to the billionaire favor system, one billionaire that knows the next that knows the next and most of the time they don't even know why, they just know that they can make doctors choose between their careers and reputation or just... not helping this one person, without even telling them the reason."
Not one person spoke, except of course Nele, who had requested to see more 'buttons' in the pilot's cockpit. The flight attendant said she would go ask the pilot.
"They didn't treat him, Céline. They pretended to. They let him die, slowly. They let me watch. They let us watch. As it happened. They knew he would die, the second we brought him anywhere. That is why they were so reluctant. They would only give us the worst scenario, wherever we went, give us a tiny percentage of success, emphasizing the experimental nature of the treatments all because they were determined, Céline, to not do anything at all that could save him."
"But he was a child! Who could do that to a child?!" said Layla.
"It's not that they were hurting Jens. It's that they stood aside. They let his sickness happen. They would look on. Reluctantly. Layla. Even doctors' hands can be tied. They have the vow to "do no harm", but they can still deny to treat. And look on as it happens. Don't forget they are used to seeing someone die. Even children."
"You took a billion dollar deal with uncle Johan ten years ago," said Kenny, "Kept it a secret whilst all of us were struggling immensely, watched on as things got worse for us too, and now you're trying to convince us that, of all people, doctors are the villains? The very people that save lives?"
"That they want to save", said Jochen, "I'm sorry, but that's a reality. And you would be wise to not challenge me on this, Kenny, since you just lost a restaurant on a crypto bet that didn't work out. I LOST MY OWN SON! I KNOW WHAT I SAW AND I KNOW WHAT I HAVE BEEN THROUGH SINCE!"
"You fucking asshole", said Pieter, "Always pontificating, always have on any occasion, endlessly, and here you are, afters years of enduring your bullshit, and you turn out to be the biggest bullshitter of all! The truth is you could have helped any of us at any time, don't tell us you you couldn't have, but only when YOU YOURSELF came into trouble OF YOUR OWN MAKING, you decided to just help yourself, secure yourself, and then be done with it? Leaving us all to our own devices?"
"Yes, I was done with it, Pieter! But not just like that! AFTER I LOST JENS!! What have I to live for, without my own son, no career, no prospects? Of course I kept it all a secret. Do you think a single one of you would have believed any of this, if I had told you just like that? It sounds unbelievable!"
"It surely does", said Céline, "Incredible is the word. You lost everything did you? Except... I have stood by your side, all this time and what does it count for? Everything I lost? It's just, what, collateral? In your crusade for the truth? Collateral? Your own wife, your own son? I vowed myself to you in marriage because I could see my entire life with you, EVEN after possibly losing everything. And we did! And I kept to my vow. And I still love you! But for you, now having lost everything you built, you can't say the same. You have never lived your life for me or my sake. You have provided for me, yes. You have loved me once, yes, but where has that gone? You decided to go undercover, a secret billionaire life, I believe you. But what turned out to be the actual real life, what turned out to be the fake one? Which one, Jochen? Did you get it twisted somewhere along the way? Five years of living as a secret billionaire and you suddenly forgot that I was the one who made life real for you? A real home? A real child, a son? Yet you chose to enjoy only the other life, and leave all the misery and the toil to ours? You are no crusader of the truth, Jochen, not at all! You prefer the fantasy! I followed you. Yes, I did. I found out. About Ariadne. I did. I have known. I have known, Jochen, a long time. I followed you. After losing Jens, what had I to do? I seemed to have lost my husband as well, still living, but just the same. It turned out it was to another woman. I can tell you, this was the last straw. Beyond that even! Beyond! Is it because she makes you feel like you're still the billionaire you never were? Was it that? Is it that still? You hypocrite! Journalistic integrity?! Don't make me fucking laugh! You prefer the fantasy! You want to live the fantasy!
You can't wait to indulge, indulge, indulge, all those nasty desperate texts to her, that you can't wait, bursting at the seams, desperate, slavelike for that sexual release, a glutton for pain, you crave this fantasy now. This is what you crave. And you get it from her. You remember how you used to fit in here, in this mahogany, shiny, crystal, twinkling dingling world, you remember it and she makes you feel like the man you never were. Is that why you had started resenting me, because I remind you of the man you are? A betrayal to your own family, the people who know you as you are, who have been there when you were becoming and struggling to be the man who chased his dreams, who promised so much, who could still look through our eyes at life, as it was? As we were living it? How your eyes have become dull around us, glazed over, detached. You've replaced your enthusiasm for our shared lives with words, words, words, nothing but empty words that trump another word and impresses as another thing might impress you, you try to impress us, whilst, all along, Jochen, what happened? You never needed to impress us?! We love you! As you are. But you can't let us love you as you are, if you can't accept that about yourself. No crusader of truth. You prefer the fantasy. They may have destroyed your career, but, Jochen, it is you yourself that has destroyed your own self that was left. The one that we had loved all along, but you loathed."
Listening to Céline, everyone had started to feel discombobulated. With Nele's incessant humming and singing in the background, the space in the jet was starting to feel more and more unreal.
"You knew?" whispered Jochen.
"I knew", said Céline.
Noticing things were heating up even more in this part of the jet, the flight attendant had judged it better to have Nele, who was clearly having a sort of episode as a reaction to this traumatic happening just behind her, to calmly introduce her to the pilot in the cockpit and discuss all the types of buttons there. Seeing as there was no shortage of buttons in the cockpit, this would keep her busy for a while. The pilot even entertained her little nursery rhymes and melodies, ever in that mouse-like high pitched voice, that unsettling sound coming from a woman like her, stern-faced and weathered by life.
"I'm sorry", said Jochen again.
"That's not going to cut it", said Pieter, "You've bet everything you hold dear to crusade against powers that can bet much more than you ever could. And you lost. I imagine you would go straight to the cause of your misery. Johan. I imagine you would secure your compensation for all this. I would imagine that, yes. That you have nothing to live for anymore, Jochen, like you said yourself, so, what did you have to lose? You discovered that he was about to share the estate amongst all of us, and you shot him. All you needed to do was to make sure we never agreed on anything, and you would be able to keep the billions to yourself. Cue Ariadne, to make us all even more confused and keep us divided, so that you could become the billionaire you have wanted to be again."
"It's not like that, Pieter", said Jochen, "Not at all. I didn't kill Johan. He's my FATHER!"
"He didn't", said Ariadne, bursting into the room once more, "Jochen did not kill Johan Paepe. And I'm not here to help his cause, even though, yes, we met when he was still undercover as a billionaire, doing his research about the life and the power dynamics and the favor system and all of that, however I was not aware that he was undercover. I only knew him as his billionaire bachelor persona. We got close. I thought I had a real relationship with him. I didn't know he was married, Céline. I didn't."
"At first."
"Yes... At first, no. Until the book fiasco. It all came out. But, we still love each other. I love him."
"HOW DARE YOU!" screamed Céline, "HOW DARE YOU SPEAK OF LOVE! When we lost our son, he kept going to you! He abandoned me! And you speak of love after you found out, you kept seeing him?"
"It is love! I love him, Céline. I am deeply sorry for all the hurt, but I wasn't aware I was the other woman, until..."
"You found out and then just accepted the fact that you were the other woman and you never stopped, not for one day. You never stopped?”
"I believe someone can love more than one person..."
"If you speak another word, it'll be your last", shrieked Céline as she jumped up from her seat, Layla, holding her back somewhat.
"Céline, I would advise you to tone down", said Ariadne in an authoritative voice that shocked everyone.
"What did you say?" screamed Céline.
"I said shut up," said Ariadne, coldly.
"How dare you speak to Céline like that", said Pieter, "Jochen, aren't you going to say anything? Or do you no longer remember which of your wives you're devoted to?!"
"Quiet, all of you!" said Ariadne, "It's over."
"What can you mean, it's over?" said Kenny.
All the while after Ariadne had come back in, she had been holding her laptop.
"It's over. Rechercheur Van Der Smet had just sent me this video."
"What video?"
"It's a recording of the interrogation of Brenda."
A panic visibly overtook Céline. She got up from her seat, but instead of lunging towards Ariadne, unexpectedly, she looked back over at Nele, who was standing in the cockpit. They locked eyes with one another and Nele nodded back to Céline. She grabbed a gun from her purse and pointed it at the pilot's head.
"Nele!" cried Pieter, "For goodness' sake, what are you doing?"
"Does anyone here know how to land a plane", said she with a deep voice, clear as a bell.
"Of course not", said Layla.
"Then all of you had better do as I say", said Nele, "Especially you, mr. Pilot. Now listen to me carefully. You will turn this jet around, and take us back to Belgium. This instance."
"You can't be serious", said Jochen, "Nele, what has gotten into you?"
"Isn't it clear", said Kenny, "She's the one. She's the one who killed Johan.”
Pieter slowly came down the aisle, towards the cockpit, where Nele held the gun to the pilot's head.
"Nele, you don't need to do this. Come one. Give us the gun. We can talk this through."
"There has been too much talking. Too much talking! Too much!" said Nele, "What have I got to do to get some peace of mind."
"Murdering someone will not get you that piece of mind", said Pieter, "Come, Nele. We both know you're anything but a murderer."
"Oh, so you think I'm not serious?" said Nele, her voice still disturbingly clear and confident. She pointed her gun to the laptop Ariadne was holding and shot it down. Ariadne screeched as the laptop was blown out of her hands and she fell to the floor. She fell to her knees and put both hands on her head immediately.
"Believe me now?" said Nele.
"I believe you", said Pieter, "I believe you Nele. Now don't do anything rash."
"Stay where you are and shut up", said Nele and then turned her gun towards the pilot again, "Now you turn this jet around and get us back to Belgium.
"It's impossible", said the pilot. We don't have enough fuel to make it back. We're almost to our destination."
"Turn it around now" said Nele, pushing the gun into the pilot's head.
"OK", said the pilot.
"We're all going to die!", said Joyabel, "Didn't you hear him, Nele? There’s not enough fuel! We're going to crash in the middle of the ocean."
"I don't care", said Nele, "If I'm going to trial. I'm going to trial in my own country. Nowhere else."
"You're crazy, Nele!" said Jochen, "We're not going to make it back!"
"Then we'll crash and we'll get rescued back and we'll see how things go from there but I'm not letting this plane land anywhere near the U.S."
"Why do this, Nele?" said Layla.
"Shut up!" screamed Nele, and then to the pilot, "I don't see the plane making a u-turn!"
"I'm going to have to take it manual to do that", said the pilot.
"Then take it to manual", said Nele.
The pilot proceeded to push the many buttons he had just told Nele about, as if talking to a toddler, now being held at gunpoint by the same, and the jet turned to its side, with everyone on it holding on to their seats.
Ariadne had started crying, whilst Jochen was holding her. Layla and Céline had fallen from their side of the jet to the other, where Pieter had stood before approaching Nele, into Jean-Baptiste, who held both of them in a way to shield them from the glass and cutlery and plastic plates that were falling down around the cabin. Pieter, however, crawled towards Nele, who had taken a tumble too. He reached for the gun and they both struggled. Nele, screaming, yanked and yanked at the gun to release it from Pieter's grip, until finally the barrel was pointing to Pieter's face and she pulled the trigger.
The plane had levelled again, but Nele had not let go of the gun. She had pointed it at everyone in the cabin, who were looking at her with horror, as she was covered with Pieter's blood, his upper body and face resting on her lap and bosom, bleeding out all over her. Her face, covered in splatters.
"Don't any of you make a move", said she, voice trembling. Behind her, the pilot was shaking.
"Nele, why would you do that?" said Céline.
"Shut up, Céline", said Nele, "I should have never listened to you. And see where I've ended up! What you made me end up doing?"
"I made you?"
"Yes!"
At this point, nobody dared say anything. Even Nele herself couldn't move. Her hand was on the trigger, the gun still pointed towards everyone at the other side of the cabin. Everyone was staring at Nele, except Ariadne who was still holding her hands behind her head, looking downwards, crying.
"It was you, Céline", said Nele, "Your plan. But it didn't work."
"Nele", said Céline, "It would have worked. It would have. If you didn't panic, it would have turned out perfect!"
"No, it wouldn't!"
"Calm down, Nele."
"You're the one to talk!"
Joyabel and Layla had started to cry as they saw the blood from under Pieter's motionless body coalesce into a pool.
"I didn't want to put my sister's fingers on the gun, but you made me", said Nele.
"You did what?" said Jochen.
"She made me put my sister's fingerprints on the gun", said Nele, "She said that if we let Brenda take the fall for us, it was better than any one of us, because she wasn't conscious enough to mind. She would finally be taken care of. She would be taken into care, what I had wanted all my life. And all of us. We would be taken care of too. We would receive all the money and help we had always wanted! All we needed was a foolproof way and this was the way. Put her fingerprints on the gun. Brenda would be taken into care. We would inherit everything. It would all work out for everyone."
"You did that?" asked Jochen, turning to Céline.
But Céline didn't answer.
"But, then, Brenda, she did it again, didn't she! She tried to take her life again!” her voice was getting more animated, more frantic, “I had told you before. I had told you before that she does that. And when she did that in Ben’s bathroom, I realized that she... she knows... She knows we were going to let her take the fall for it."
Things started to make sense for Jochen, as he had not taken his eyes off Céline the whole time Nele was talking. He said:
"You... killed my father?"
"No", said Céline, "I didn't kill your father."
“Why put her fingerprints on the gun? It's insane!" said Kenny.
"Didn't you hear what she just said", said Céline, "In case they dismissed the death of Johan as a suicide, the fingerprints would only lead to a dead end. An unsolvable case. They could hardly bring a catatonic patient to jail, would they and if they did, they would be forced to take care of her for the rest of her life, right?"
"What do you mean dismissed as a suicide?" said Kenny, "You killed him, didn't you? You found out about Jochen being the secret billionaire, and you killed Johan."
"I did no such thing", said Céline, "I sat down with him. Yes. I took the gun there with me, yes, when we had our appointment to sit down there, yes. I had bribed the concierge, yes. I had, I had told him I would wire him a million euros afterwards, yes. I did. Yes, I did. I told him to livestream. Yes. I told him everything. It's amazing what you can do when you promise people millions for a favor. Amazing! They knew I was related to Johan, they just didn't know I didn't have the money yet, but that was a chance they all were willing to take. It's like the Euromillions lottery. Even the personnel at the airport. A quick phone call. Ask for favors, make your special request, promise a surreal amount of money, they'll give you a purse with a gun as you enter the jet, yes, they will. Absolutely. The concierge would deny ever seeing me enter the house in Hoog-Linden, yes. He did. And he left the gate open for me, yes, he did. The doors unlocked. All of it. Then, he removed himself to his rooms, to livestream. Yes, he did. And when asked if he had seen anyone, he could just speak to the truth. No, he didn't. So I entered. I saw him, Johan. Mr. Paepe. He invited me into his horrible house, stinking, old, unkept, except for his study. Pristine, it was. He offered me a chair. I sat down. Yes, I did. And I told him. I told him that I knew. I told him that. That I knew. Not just about him giving you all the money in a joint account ten years ago. Make sure you could go live the life he had become too bored to live himself. No, not only that. I told him what your mother had told me on her deathbed. That I knew he was your father. And so I told him about Jens. I told him all about Jens. How it was to birth him. To see him grow up. His first words. How he smelled, his little quirks, even before he could speak, his little expressions, his laugh that made your heart overflow, I told him. I told him everything about our little Jens. His grandson. His grandson, yes, I did. Jens was his little grandson. And he could have held him. And how wonderful it would have been, how wonderful he would have felt to have held his own grandson, in his own arms. I told him all about our little angel, Jens. And then I presented the gun. I told him to make it right. Change the will. Then shoot himself. Yes, I did. He changed the will. And then. He shot himself. I remember his head fell forwards, the bullet went straight through, and there was still a last breath, which I hadn't expected. Some movement, twitching. All of which I didn't expect and I panicked a bit. I thought he, he might still have been alive like one of those medical wonders you see on the television in the late night shows where people fall on a fork that plants itself in the brain through the nostril and they don't remember and they don't realize for years until they do and get a scan for a head-ache and it turns out there was a fork in there for fifteen years. So I picked up the gun again that had fallen into his lap, yes, I did, to shoot him dead, but he stopped breathing after that last sigh and I lay the gun on the table and ran, not realizing what I had done. I drove back home. You weren't even home yet. I showered for hours, and only after I heard you come in, did I come out of the shower. I was in shock, but you didn't notice. I had been sick for days after, but you didn't notice. You didn't notice anything. If there was one thing I could count on, it is that you had stopped noticing anything about me, for years. We ate dinner and went to sleep day after day. Until we were called to Mr. De Walters, notary, to read the will. And everything went according to plan, except Van Der Smet's AI had gotten everything nearly right. You and I kept being at the top of the ranking. And I was glad, yes I was! I was glad, Jochen, it had got it right about you being the secret billionaire. That you, you might get to be the one taken to jail for the murder of Johan. Yes. I was glad of it. Jochen at number 1 in the ranking. I was glad of it, Jochen. I was. It was the cherry on top. Whatever we would all agree to do with the inheritance - keep the estate intact or break it up - I couldn't care less. So long as you would be uncovered as the secret billionaire, that you were, Jochen, that you had been. That you had been living, as I, mother of your child, was made to endure the hardship you could so easily escape away from. I wanted you to be uncovered as the secret billionaire, so Van Der Smet would take you away."
"Instead, Brenda has revealed your plot to the police, Céline", said Ariadne, "You're a cruel woman. And you're going away. This is attempted murder. And in case you were wondering, yes, all of this was being sent over live to Rechercheur Van Der Smet, who will have the authorities waiting at any airport we may land. As I said, it is over."
Jochen stared at Céline. He had no words to say to her.
Kenny, meanwhile, let go of Joyabel's hand.
"What are you doing?" said Joyabel.
"I'm not going to let us die in the middle of the ocean", said Kenny, and noticing that Nele had her eyes on Céline and Jochen only, still pointing the gun forwards, Kenny started to move closer.
"Don't do it! Whispered Joyabel, "She already shot Pieter the same way! Don't! Please!"
But Kenny moved closer to Nele and as soon as she noticed Kenny, she sprang up, moved backwards and closed the cockpit door behind her.
Kenny lunged towards the cockpit and started banging on the door, as did Jochen, who had come running as soon as he saw.
"Open the door!" he shouted, "Come on, Nele!"
"Nele, open the door", said Ariadne, "We can take care of you. We have the best lawyers at the Paepe estate. We can take care of you, we swear!"
"How?!" Nele shouted, sounding muffled from the other side of the cockpit door.
"We... we understand you were under extreme duress not only during the past days but the past decades, caring for Brenda and along the way, you weren't taken care of, it was impossible because you had to be the caregiver, so no one was caring for you and no one noticed you had... slipped somewhat or if someone did notice, nobody actually cared that it was happening. Listen, this has happened a lot of times and our lawyers specialize in these sort of cases. I can get you taken care of, Nele, I promise."
Everyone listened for her reply. Meanwhile, blood was running from under the cockpit door into the aisle over their feet.
"You can?"
"Yes! Yes we can!" said Jochen and Ariadne in unison.
"You would know, now wouldn't you", said Céline as she took her purse and slowly started walking toward them.
"What purse is that", asked Jochen as he turned around.
"Ah, so now you take an interest in me? What purse is this? How could you ever tell the difference from any of my other purses that you have never ever bothered to notice?"
Jochen just repeated the question.
"This is a special purse. It contains the answer to this whole conundrum."
She reached in and pulled out another gun.
"You think I would come unprepared? Why, you have given me so much time, so, so much time, Jochen, to prepare. Just think of the many nights you have left me alone to ponder every little possibility. My love. Nele and I took out shooting lessons together. Nobody ever noticed or bothered to ask. That's what happens when everyone loses interest in you. They underestimate you."
She pointed the gun at him.
"Stop!" said Layla, "Céline, we get it. We know you're hurt. But there's been enough bloodshed! It won't solve a thing! It won't bring back your Jens!"
"And what would you know about losing a child?" shouted Céline, "You weren't even at his funeral. So shut up!"
It was at this point that Jean-Baptiste tried to jump her and grab the gun from her hands but before he even reached her, she had shot him in the shoulder, and as he fell down, the air pressure in the cabin fell. Masks fell down from the ceiling, and the jet door started to creak and wiggle dangerously in its hinges but Céline still held Jochen and Ariadne at gunpoint.
"I was top of the class! I loved taking shooting lessons. It did a lot to temper my anger, I can tell you that much!" shouted she over the sound of whirling air all around them. Kenny tried to shuffle out of the way.
"I see you, Kenny. Go ahead. Go to Joyabel, hug her. Don't you see? I'm trying to save us all! As it stands, the whole of the jet will crash into the Atlantic ocean if it stays the course. There isn't enough fuel. But I can talk to Nele. I can take us to an airport. Now, if I do this, I would need a favor, yes, you know all about favors, don't you, Jochen and Ariadne. The kind of world you want so desperately to stay in? Here it is: Ariadne, you will assure me the same treatment as Nele, get me the same lawyers to get out of this unscathed, yes?"
"Yes", replied Ariadne, face streaked with long lines of mascara painted by her tears, yet her face was full of anger.
"And you", she turned to Jochen, "You will go the way of your father."
There was a moment of silence, or rather, of whistling and whirling.
"You will kill yourself, here and now."
Even after all of what we had heard Nele and Céline say, we still couldn’t believe our ears at Céline’s condition for talking to Nele and getting us all to safety.
"And why would I do that?" said Jochen.
"If you don't. I will not talk to Nele, and we'll all die. You can choose. Isn't this one of your favorite riddles? What is the most ethical thing to do? Kill the one on the rails to save the many on the other rail? You've bothered us countless times with these kinds of armchair moral questions, only making yourself feel better and everyone else feel like an idiot, when we only wanted to feel happy and enjoy being together. You were always so horribly egotistical, I see that now, at the expense even of the people who really just wanted to spend time with you. So what do you say? Are you going to swallow those words today? Change your mind about the whole question?"
"Céline", said Jochen, "I'm not going to kill myself."
"Then everyone will die. Look. They're already gagging for oxygen. Do you enjoy this?"
"Do you?" retorted Jochen.
"I have never enjoyed seeing people get hurt. But I enjoy justice."
"Me, shooting myself, that's justice?"
"Céline, please, put down the gun and talk to Nele. I can help you. From woman to woman, Céline. Please. I owe you that much. I will leverage the whole estate. I will. I will give all it takes to get you and Nele off scot-free. I can. Just let me talk to Rechercheur Van Der Smet. I can. We have the lawyers. Your last name is Paepe, too, isn't it? We can make it work. Just put down the gun. It's gone far enough”, said Ariadne.
"No", said Céline, "It's either Jochen kill himself, or we all die. Do you know how many times I have asked and prayed for God to bring back Jens and take me instead? I asked him. I asked. Do you see what opportunity I'm giving you now? You could save us all. Just one life for all of ours."
Both Ariadne and Jochen stared at Céline amidst the whirling chaos with faces of desperation mixed with disbelief.
"You're deranged! It's not an ethical or a moral question, this is coercion. What you're doing is only leveraging the situation, so that I may kill myself, which, coward that you are, you won't do yourself."
"Here we go again, he's speaking in tongues! Why don't you just tell me what you mean, in words we all understand”, said Céline, bitterly.
Jochen’s face turned stern and grave. The fear, the negotiating had disappeared from it. He just stared her straight in the eyes.
"If you want to kill me. Do it yourself. I'm not going to do it for you."
Céline stood there for a moment. Holding the gun in front of her, wind whirling all about the cabin. She didn't know what to do. They were at an impasse and there seemed to be no way forward.
Suddenly the jet started shaking. First very lightly. Then the whole jet proceeded to take a deep dive, and, then surprisingly, started to fly up, higher and higher. And then it started shaking again, throwing off the passenger door as the sun seemed to move from left to right to left to right again, casting our shadows in circles all around us. The plane shook even more as it started to level again and a sound filled our ears as the light from all sides of the plane became blinding, whilst a deep boundless grumbling shook our very cores.
You have reached that triangle that is known in your world as the one that has been identified and tied to the geographic location known as Bermuda which is in fact not so much a triangle as it is in fact shapeless and more like an elliptical that does retain only a shape due to the endless movement in a spiral that moves into another plane that you have now entered due to being magnetically pulled by the extremely specific coming together of different individuals, that being the souls expressing as individuals in your plane of existence that have as a single organism much like any cell in the human body that exists of many different elements within it still come as one unit, you have entered here to what is known as a higher plane, which is very ironic since you are on a plane, a jet plane however this is the most common mode of transport if you will that individuals have moved through to reach here, which is not anywhere except that we identify here as opposed to there however there is also here, but this will become clear later. In any case over the years many have stumbled here on boats and flying craft of all sorts, however when using the word stumbled that is only from the perspective of the individuals on the craft, from here, where you are now, it is not a stumbling at all, it is an amalgamation of both time, space and a series of events and choices, paired with the intention and will of the individuals involved that in fact procure the coming to this triangle in Bermuda, however this is not the only way to reach this plane, it was however the exact way for your configuration as a group for entering here, which you have done now. You find yourself in a jet, an airplane and you see all around you only white as you look out the windows and indeed it is all light. You can move around the cabin, you can jump up and down, you can try to bump the doors and creak the handles and it all is very sturdy and real as it has been up until now during the lives you have lived but here is what is for this dimension that you have entered the reality of being, which is that, yes the airplane you are in is physical at this time, however, it need not be. What is more, it is in fact nothing of the sort. It is simply your entry point. Yes, I have used the word dimension because I am referring to this state of being that you have not yet acclimated to as we are speaking to you, but we want to make it clear to you in terms that don't make you feel like you are losing your minds. So now that we have used the term mind, we want to remind you that the only purpose of the mind is to witness the heart. Why? Because the mind cannot create beingness. It can only witness it. Is that not what the nervous system is for? To sense and send feedback to the awareness that you hold? The mind, the brain, is also part of this system so to search for a sense of beingness in the mind is only to construct a sense of self that is existing of perceptions only, by definition, because it relies only on sensing. You have a word for this and it is ego, all perceptions about the self through the mind only create a sense of self that constructs an ego, yes and we say this without judgment, just we are stating what it is because beingness is not within the mind, as we have said, beingness is in the heart and is only witnessed by the mind. And the beingness in the heart is not of the individual, it is of the all, the beingness that is all and is in all being, and is in everything that is living, is being and is only being felt, and most of all felt, as you all may well know, when one steps out of the mind, this is why. To claim beingness as being only of self, and of yourself and of just the one, is an illusion, beingness is universal, it is of all, and this is where you have arrived, in the plane where the beingness is one. Your airplane has entered from the space where beingness is being experienced as separate, and this is not a judgment, again, it is simply a statement because we can tell you as soon as you step outside of time and space you can tell that all beingness is one, because outside of time and space all is at once. It is all at the same time, and it is all being in the now. Why have you entered here? You have reached a point in your configuration, or rather journey through the individualized experience where you have needed the sense of separation to come to certain realizations that could only be had through playing in the linear quality of the plane you have been living in. Linear meaning the one moment leading to the next moment, and this is leading to another. In your plane there is the thing known as a disk, a CD, and on this disk or CD is for example either music or there is a game. Now one can take this CD that contains the music and look at it and realize that all of the music is on there at the same time, that is where you are now in your airplane, now for the time being still in your jet, seated, but you understand now that being outside time and space and looking at your dimension is like looking at this CD with music you would like to hear. You understand, very well, that to play the CD, it must be linearly experienced, and so it must be placed in a device that created this linearity, by way of the needle on the vinyl record or the laser light that reads the code on the CD, so that the music can be heard.
Now there is also the game disk, much like a CD, however the difference with a game disk is that it is read in linearity, yes, much like the CD so as to hear the music and experience the music, because outside of the CD player on can hold the entirety of the piece of music but one is not experiencing it, you cannot play a game disk without placing it inside the play console, which is the device that reads, just like the needle on the vinyl record, with a laser light the code on the disk in a linear fashion, however it shifts a moves around depending on the choices you make in the game.
Going back to the mind's only purpose is to witness the heart, because the heart is the only way where beingness exists, and you know this because if your heart is not in "it", and by "it" we mean anything you may be doing, you feel empty and devoid of presence and instead feel moved by a void necessity, however when your "heart is in it" you feel like you are soaring, flying, extremely present, and often described as “really living”. Now imagine a gamedisk, in a gameconsole. Need there not be a player to experience this game in linearity that the game provides to the player? The mind is the needle, it reads the code, it reads the indentations of the vinyl record, it registers the music, but it is the beingness that experiences it. The mind is the laser that reads the disk and for the player to experience it, they need to enter into the game for the sake of the game for the sake of experiencing the game, that is in fact, even when entered into the game, still one whole dataset that exists all at the same time. It exists as a complete whole, even as one is playing it. You have reached that part of your linearity where you have reached this plane as a consequence of the playing out of your disk so to speak, meaning as explained, the whole of the time and space of your dimension. Now, having reached this higher plane through playing your dimension to the point that you flew into the bermuda triangle together, you have returned to the space where all beingness is at once and together and all, and each other. There is no separation, because to experience separation, you need again to enter time and space of the dimension you had come from or another one, it is of your choosing. Now, you may think and say, well, in a game you have many different ways to play, you may choose this side or that side, or this jump or that armor or this companion, or this hoarding of resources or this simulation of a construction that is preferable at that specific time of playing and this is true and they all exist. Yes, they all exist, in another dimension. Is this then, someone else, you may ask, and the answer is no, in the sense that all beingness is one, is all the same, as the player is outside of time and space the player is not an individuated entity, but the completeness of all being everywhere above all dimensions. This is all you, in each dimension it is the same you, having played different choices because at that dimension of time and space the beingness that had filled your heart at that certain point, had moved you into a direction that was different from the one in your dimension. Is it better, is it worse? None of those things, it is all one, at the same time and if you wish to do so, you can release now to enter into beingness without separation to again witness all that is at the same time, all dimensions, outside time and space of each of these "disks" in terms that you understand. You may observe the covers of each of the disks and marvel at the cover art and the story or atmosphere or intention of each of these disks, or you may even observe a "saved game" where it has progressed in a different way, further, shorter or simply other than what you had chosen, "it" meaning here of course you, your name, your life in linearity having been played with a different level, higher, lower, fluctuating between the two, or very similar, of beingness having fueled your heart throughout the choices in your life that lead to a different type of progression that you have experienced and it may lead to much insight and appreciation and even admiration, however all of this requires that you, of course, release separation at this point and enter into the beingness that is all beingness as a whole that has been the beginning and the end, or which is to say the 'being' that has started up the disk and has taken the disk out again after playing, the beingness that was always around playing for the sake of playing, for the sake of experiencing, for the sake of discovering what beingness in this particular linearity unfolds as, and taking this back into the awareness, the overall awareness, the overal beingness, where you are now.
You all sit now in an airplane, however there is nothing to see around you, as we have said. And we see some of you cowering and hiding in corners of the jet as if it were possible to hide away from the beingness that is talking to you, but you are not realizing that it is you yourself talking to yourself but inside linearity, and it is also not a judgment, just a statement, because you are all still in choice. Those who only know themselves as through separation of other, with no semblance of being aware that what makes you alive of feel alive or experience life or appreciate life or fuels living as being or feeling alive is not of any one person or individual, but always a shared experience, a heightened aliveness through selflessness, be it in any way this is reached, you need not choose because you have already made a choice that is a direct consequence, cause and effect, of the current state of awareness that chooses for you which is what some call fate, to be directed by your own level of awareness to situations and further opportunities and platforms for further choices to be made where you can reach the point where a choice then can be made to release separation. To release separation, is simple, it is a recognition of the heart of what has fueled it, call it a fire, call it a vibration, call it a fulness, call it a overflowingness of life, of will of beingness that cannot be expressed in words, where the idea of overflowing is then allowed to overflow the idea of a separated self, into a flow that is devoid of self, yet completely and wholly integrated in the beingness of all, so that the idea of "over"-flowing being set by a boundary that is being so full of flow that it is going "over" it, is now dissolved by so much of the overflowing that all that is left is the flowing. And this is releasing the separation, to be in wholeness. At this point, the needle within your dimension's linearity has brought you to the point that you may choose to stay in wholeness. Say you yes, then come in the overflow that overflows the overflow leaving only the flow of wholeness. And the ones among you that have not a recognition of this flow, and have not yearned for flow, and are still deeply embedded in the idea of separation to try to find a self, a sense of a being inside the mind, will continue on in this plane, continuing on the disk that turns ever more to accommodate this search for a self within the sensing of outside, whilst the being that you are is in the beingness without mental constructions or preconditions, or sense perceptions, within. In other words, beingness does not require a self. However to be able to choose to release separation one must first recognize it within themselves before being able to flow into the universal being and therefor, yes for some of you, the airplane is now dissolving as you dissolve and you meet and see all forms that beingness has ever taken as a form, as a dissemination within linearity, such as, yes your son, Jens, and all possibilities of Jens, the Jens that lived, the Jens that you turned out to hate, the Jens you have always loved, the Jens that abandons you, the Jens that never left your side and cared for you, all potentials of Jens exist here. And also your brother Pieter, Pieter as a happily married man and father, Pieter as a successful artist, Pieter as an enormous failure, Pieter as the one who had died in his youth, Pieter who outlived you, all possibilities of Pieter are here, and there is also Johan in all possibility and all his brothers and sisters, and you can be as one with them, and you will feel the relief of not having to bridge such separation to feel each other’s beingness as it is now shared as one. And you can stay if you wish. And now the jet is again falling away beyond the triangle known as Bermuda and it is acclimating again to your dimension's time and space, where you arrive, inexplicably to the plane of your existence, at the airport where a news sensation is triggered in this portion of your disk due to the choices made: namely that a private jet has landed after flying over the bermuda triangle, leaving none but three people in the plane and this incident will be talked about for many, many years, with many interviews to be had over many years, even taken again after decades to find out the "truth" behind what could have been a hoax or a terrible accident where most of the people that were missing, have simply disappeared into the ocean by being sucked through the faulty airplane door and the rest who have managed to hold on have had due to lack of oxygen all experienced a similar near-death experience.