Wessel Dekkinga

Wessel Dekkinga is 38 and owns a carpentry shop in Amsterdam's western port. Born in Zaandam, from a shipyard family whose yard closed, he learned the trade from a ship-carpenter uncle and opened his own business at 27. He makes bar counters, shelves and the occasional boat hull. He calls the work honest and says it pays badly and late.

He lives in a cramped apartment in the Jordaan district, on a third floor up a steep staircase, overlooking a narrow canal. The kitchen is tiny, the table is an oak top he made himself and the chairs don't match. He wakes at five, drinks black coffee standing up, crosses the city by bicycle and stays at the shop until dark. On Sundays he fishes alone in a canal outside the city, and comes back without fish and in no hurry.

He is tall and broad-shouldered, with a square face, blond stubble and close-cropped blond hair. His pale blue eyes are wary and slip to his thick, calloused hands, with a bandage on one thumb. He wears a navy wool sweater worn thin at the elbows and work trousers dusted with sawdust. He is quiet, practical, speaks little and answers with the same sentence when a question bothers him.

About the Brakel family, his account is that of a poorly paid supplier: in 1979 he made the counter of one of the brewer's bars and never received the last installment. He says the rich pay when they feel like it and that the rest of what he knows is what everyone knows, beer and money. He points to the former employee Thijs as someone who knew the boss's routine and was seen in front of the headquarters, in a hood.

Wessel knows a port carpenter, in debt and with an old grudge against a rich man, is the picture any investigation likes. When the detective accuses him of kidnapping the two men, he replies that he is a carpenter and not a movie gangster, and that he will only speak with his lawyer. It could be the resentment of a small businessman tired of being treated as a suspect. It could be someone who keeps the old anger buried deep. The detective will have to decide which.