Marjolein Teeuwen

Marjolein Teeuwen is 33 and has kept the carpentry shop's accounts for eight years. Born in Utrecht, the daughter of a post office clerk, she learned arithmetic from her mother, who read the newspaper by the hallway light, and started as a shop cashier before moving on to entering invoices in ledgers. About the job, she says she handles invoices, bank, wages and taxes, and that without her the shop would have closed already.

She lives in a small, immaculate apartment in the De Pijp district, with a gray cat, a bookshelf ordered by color and a bicycle leaning in the hallway. She wakes early for breakfast, does her Saturday shopping with a list and folds her clothes by size. She likes mint tea, choral music and spreadsheets with the first column left-aligned, and has little patience for people who ask too many questions.

She is short and thin, with short curly red hair, freckles and large brown-framed glasses. She wears a beige turtleneck under a brown corduroy blazer and a green wool scarf she never takes off all year. Organized, dry and defensive, she answers with numbers and distrusts anyone who asks more than necessary, even when the question is simple.

About the carpentry shop's cash, her account is frank: it's bad, no large order has come in since summer, and the owner is two months behind on the workshop's installment. The bank warned it will take everything in December, and he didn't even complain, which astonished her. About the former employee Thijs, she says he is a good carpenter, quiet, and that every now and then he still turns up to return a borrowed tool.

Marjolein knows the bookkeeper, who has the gate key and stays late in the office, is the first with access to everything that happens there. When the detective asks whether she brings the hostages food at night, she replies that she brings a folder of receipts and that he is wasting time on the bookkeeper while looking for two men. It could be the dry indignation of someone always invisible. It could be someone using poise to hide a stumble. The detective will have to decide which.