‘I didn’t believe the terrible story at first’

‘I’ve researched dozens of suicides or had them investigated, and sometimes even saw three in one day, but I’d never experienced anything like this. One afternoon in March 2003, the switchboard put a car mechanic through to me. He had called a customer who sounded very strange, who spoke slowly, very drawling. The mechanic asked if he was okay and was answered: ‘I have slit my wrists and am lying in the forest of the Caitwickerzand, near Uddel.’

‘It all seemed very unlikely to me. Surely someone who has slit their wrists to commit suicide doesn’t answer when their auto mechanic calls to tell you not to bring your car in yet because some parts aren’t in stock yet? I thought: this is a joke, the customer is making fun of his mechanic. But as unbelievable as it is, you need to investigate a report, so I called that customer. He answered and I cautiously asked what was going on. He also said to me, very slowly, ‘I have slit my wrists and am lying in the woods.’ “You’re not kidding me are you?” I asked. “No,” he replied.

“Just to be safe, I sent a car to that area and kept the man on the line. ‘I’m going to have a consultation, I’ll put you on hold’, I said, and I called colleagues, the control room and his home front with my mobile. His wife answered. ‘Hello ma’am’, I said cautiously, ‘we received a strange message that may relate to your husband. I just want to check where he is and how he’s doing.’ “He’s gone to work,” she replied. ‘He is depressed, partly because of the hassle with his job.’

“Then I thought, shit, this is serious. I asked for a helicopter urgently, as dusk would soon set in and it would be difficult to find anyone in a forest. The police helicopter was not nearby, whereupon the control room found an Apache with an Air Force thermal imaging camera ready to fly to the Caitwickerzand.

‘Meanwhile, I continued the conversation with the man. I heard the sound of his footsteps, I thought, so I asked if he would make himself visible to my colleagues who were looking for him. “I can’t get up,” he replied. Because that didn’t rhyme with the footsteps I heard, I continued to doubt his story. Later it turned out that I didn’t hear his footsteps, but his elbows on which he crawled. Since his voice was getting weaker and my colleagues couldn’t find him, I asked them to drive through the woods with sirens so that I could hear that sound over the phone call with that man, and signal that they were nearby.

‘Suddenly the man stopped answering. Shortly after, his battery was also empty and the connection was lost. That was a scary, exciting moment. A few minutes later, a colleague reported on the walkie-talkie: ‘I found him. He is dead.’

‘It’s a strange idea that I spent about an hour and a half talking to a man who was facing a death of his own choosing. I drove to his house with colleagues to inform the family.

“A few months later, his two daughters asked me to go with them to the place where their father was found. Two very sweet, intensely sad twenty-somethings. They held each other and became very emotional. I can withstand the most horrific incidents, but their grief entered me deeply. I hated that this father let the hassle at work outweigh the fact that his children had to miss their father.

“I learned two things from this incident. The first is that you should always take a report seriously and act quickly, no matter how improbable the story sounds. And the second is that you should not jump to conclusions about a report of suicide. We are regularly called by people who have taken too many pills, are on a bridge or building ready to jump, are on the railway or have their wrists slit. When they call us, they are usually regretful optants or attention grabbers.

“But this man really wanted to die. We suspected afterwards that he took the call from his car mechanic because he wanted to be found. Not by civilians and certainly not by his family, but by the police. And that’s why he talked to me for so long. He wanted to be found, but only after his death. Tragedy wants him to succeed.’