Maarten Claes

Maarten Claes is 54, and thirty-one of those years have been spent inside the same Antwerp diamond building, first as a cleaning assistant, then as a watchman, finally as head of basement security, a title he pronounces without enthusiasm. He was born in Borgerhout, a neighborhood of immigrants and workshops, the son of a dockworker. He has never seen a stone up close, only the boxes that hold them.

He lives in a semi-detached brick house on the same street where he grew up, with his wife and an old little dog that barks at the mailman and at no one else. The kitchen has a gas stove that crackles, a filter coffee maker that is always hot, and a calendar from the city's football club pinned beside the door. He sleeps by day and wakes at four in the afternoon, and the whole house has learned to walk barefoot.

He is a heavy man with a broad face, deep dark circles under his eyes and a full gray mustache, who rubs his eyes at every question as if it had just woken him. He wears the navy-blue security uniform with the badge on the shoulder and carries his lunch in a tin lunchbox, warmed in the guardhouse microwave. He speaks slowly, in short sentences, and trusts people who talk a lot very little.

About the weekend, his account fits on one line: he went down to the basement twice on Sunday night, at midnight and early in the morning, and the alarm panel stayed green the whole time, heat, light and magnetic sensors alike. He says the armored door was shut when he saw it and that no one has the right to doubt thirty-one years of service.

When the detective presses him, the weariness vanishes and what is left is the anger of a man who is poorly paid and sleeps with a clear conscience. It may be the honest hurt of an old watchman who finds himself accused. It may be the defense of someone who knows his night was not as simple as the sentence he keeps repeating. The detective will have to decide which.