But Paul had recognised it in the photograph of Mme Rosa’s sister and little Kristel. She said they lived ‘just round the corner.” But which corner?
The train bar was packed. There were already dozens of people wearing orange, getting into the party mood, knocking back beers and shots and high-fiving and sweating. The barman was dead on his feet. The serious action would really start once they hit Amsterdam at about ten o’clock, and it wouldn’t let up for another 36 hours. He felt exhausted just thinking about it.
He noticed a few people giving him funny looks and he realised his bandage was coming undone and hanging down his back. He went to the toilet and pulled it off and tried to wash his hair and smooth it down over the cut which was still soft and squelchy. He looked a mess. He stepped out into the corridor and pestered a girl into lending him her orange lipstick and he put some on his cheeks like Indian war paint. He found an orange neck-tie on the floor and wrapped it round his head like a bandana. He still looked a mess, but now he looked like everyone else too.
Back at the bar, his head was hurting even more so he took some aspirin with another beer and had an idea.
He googled ‘piercing Jordaan’ and came up with 31 names for piercing and tattoo parlours, all within a few blocks of one another. Only in Amsterdam…
He could picture the nasty metal arrow across Kristel’s face, through the bridge of her nose… It must have impeded her vision, he thought, it was huge, the width of a mobile phone. Perhaps someone would recognise it. If he could find the right someone. If they had a good memory. It was a big if. But at least it was a start. It was all he had for the moment.
“Vos billets, s’il vous plaît!”
The ticket inspector was trying to squeeze through a dense throng of drinkers in the narrow corridor alongside the bar. He was a big man with a drinker’s nose and sweat on his brow beneath his cap. None of the people in the bar seemed to have their tickets with them. And they all thought it was funny. The man looked like he was going to get stroppy but then he cracked a rueful grin and shook his head and moved on towards the next carriage, and as he left he turned round and shouted: “Santé! Proost! Geluk! Gezondheid! Cheers!” and everyone cheered.
Chapter 42
Monday April 29th 2013
The population of Amsterdam is estimated to be around 800,000. When Paul came out of Central Station and set off towards the heart of the city, it appeared that 99% of them were already out in the streets celebrating the new King. And they’d all invited their aunts and uncles and cousins and friends from the suburbs and all the neighbouring towns. And the same number of tourists had come too and they were all trying to squeeze down the same street as Paul, all at the same time, with most of them going in the opposite direction. It was insane, he thought, trundling his wheelie-bag behind him over the cobbles. He’d tried to check it into left luggage at the station but all the lockers were closed off for the duration of the celebrations.
He didn’t know what to do. The party would go on all night. He could see stages and platforms in squares and at street corners with bands preparing to play and DJs setting up and he knew things were just kicking off for the night. There wasn’t much he could hope to do tonight. He thought about going to the Pulitzer but he wasn’t sure he’d be very welcome there after skipping out without saying goodbye the other day… whenever that was. But perhaps there was one place he could go and rest up until the morning, when there may be a brief respite of a few hours while people recovered, before the official ceremonies began and Queen’s Day really took off… He turned off the main drag that led towards Dam Square and crossed Singel and Herengracht and worked his way through the crowds towards the coffee shop. There was music and dancing everywhere. Pop, rock, reggae, traditional Dutch music, techno, African music, Peruvian flute players, a flamenco ensemble and even a choir singing the theme song from the Champions League. Paul thought of Real Madrid and of the doctor and his head was hurting again.
The coffee shop was open. He walked in and saw the owner behind the bar and they exchanged a nod. The place was packed and Paul felt he could get high in no time off the second-hand fumes.
There was no space inside so he went back out and sat down at a table and ordered a beer from an androgynous-looking Asian. The beer came and a few moments later the owner stepped outside and lit a cigarette and stopped by to say hello. They shook hands.
“I need a favour”, said Paul.
“You got it, man.”
Paul was surprised. He didn’t even know the man’s name. And they’d only chatted a few times before for no more than a couple of minutes.
“I need a place to crash for a few hours. Till dawn. I can pay.”
The man looked hurt and raised his eyebrows, shaking his head.
“Got an attic room. Ain’t too clean and could be noisy, but you’ll be on your own. If you got no earplugs, couple o’ grammes of Paki black’ll do the trick!”
He laughed, a big booming laugh and he held out a fist and Paul bumped it.
“Sounds good. Thanks.”
“Desmond”, the man said and they bumped again.
“Paul.”
“Ok man, chill a while. I ain’t goin’ no place. Catch you later.”
Paul drank his beer and then another and watched the world go by. Literally, he thought. An overhead satellite camera couldn’t have picked out a square metre of empty space on a road or a pavement or a canal. The city was a sea of orange with candles and flares and lanterns and barbecues adding yellow tints and wisps of black to the tableau.
Somebody passed him a joint and he took a hit.
He wondered why Rebecca Hartley had given birth to twins and only kept one of them. How could she have decided to have one of her own daughters adopted, and chosen the child at random, like Sophie’s Choice… or more likely, she had bribed an employee, or the wife of an employee, Mme Rosa, into finding a family willing to take the second child. And the price of the secret deal and their silence had been a Mercedes.
Paul was sure that’s what had happened. He heard echoes in his head, of what Rebecca had said, and Mme Rosa herself: “ She might just as well have tossed a coin.” A shilling, perhaps… And somehow Kristel, if it was Kristel, knew Neil Morgan… Was that what had happened? Was it Kristel who had tried to kill him? Did Morgan know about that? And what about Sarah? Did she know about her sister? Had she found out? Perhaps she had instigated the whole thing… She had been at odds with her parents when she left school… had that antagonism lasted? Was she getting back at them in some way? Greville was dead… and Cracker Booth was convinced that Sarah had killed him. Another possibility came to mind and he tried to get to grips with what it might mean… Perhaps the woman in Venice really was Sarah, and she and Morgan had eliminated Kristel… had she been blackmailing them? Did she want her share of the Hartley fortune? And then another idea set his mind spinning: had the woman on the Orient Express been Kristel?
The joint wasn’t helping him think straight, but it was helping in other ways. He looked eagerly at the woman next to him and she winked and leant forward and grabbed his chin and gave him a blowback with a large, pure spliff. It was definitely party time in Amsterdam tonight.
Chapter 43
Tuesday April 30th 2013 – Koninginnedag
He woke up the next morning, hearing pigeons cooing on the roof above him, and he felt strangely clear-headed. He hadn’t overdone the beer or the ganja and he had eaten some Turkish kebab from a street vendor and felt heavy and fallen asleep the moment he laid his head on the cushion Desmond had given him. The attic room was small and hot and dark and filled with what looked like Oriental carpets rolled up in brown paper. Payment in kind, perhaps…
He struggled down a ladder and then down through the smoking-room to the ground floor. He ducked into the toilet and splashed water on his face. He looked at himself in a broken mirror above the tiny basin. He saw two halves of his face, with a zigzag crack down the middle. He tried to make sense of th
e image but nothing came to mind. Nothing logical or useful, anyway. A few depressing ideas ran through his head, but he dismissed them. No sentiment; don’t look back. He saw the orange make-up he had put on, now smeared and smudged. He washed it off and wiped his face with a paper towel and tried to brush his hair with his fingers, running them lightly over the scabbed crease on the side of his head. He couldn’t remember what had happened to the tie he had worn as a bandana.
He walked into the main bar. Desmond was behind the counter, blasting steam through a coffee machine.
“Yo, crack of dawn, man. Want some java?”
“Blue Mountain.”
“Comin’ up. Sleep good?”
“Great. You?”
He laughed.
“No sleep for Desmond, man. Three days and three nights and then I sleep till June!”
Paul stepped outside. It was just after seven and the streets were deserted. He could smell barbecue smoke and stale beer. A garbage truck was sweeping up debris to his left and further along the street a smaller vehicle was edging forward with two men spraying high-pressure hoses along the pavements and gutters.
Desmond appeared with a tray. He laid it on the table and put out two coffee cups and a plate of pastries.
“You got a problem. I can tell. What’s up?”
Paul looked at him. Desmond stuffed a croissant into his mouth.
“I’m looking for someone.”
“Ain’t we all.”
Paul pulled out the touched-up photo from his jacket pocket.
“15 years ago. A girl who looked like this. Black spiky dyed hair, metal arrow through the bridge of her nose. Maybe goes by the name of Kristel Van Vliet. Maybe not.”
Desmond studied the photo.
“Not my type but not bad.”
He licked a finger and used it to pick up crumbs from the plate.
“You tried like the police and the internet and the phone book and all that shit?”
“Most of that, yes.”
“So what you got?”
“I was thinking the piercing. It’s pretty distinctive.”
“Could be. Not my scene. But I know a guy who knows a guy…”
He pulled out his mobile and speed-dialled a number. The fact that it was seven in the morning didn’t seem to bother him. He stood up and wandered over to the edge of the canal across the street.
Paul drank his coffee and lit a cigarette. The caffeine hit his system quick and he felt the sense of urgency again. And then a terrible dread. A hole in his stomach. And a hole in his head. Sarah was dead… it was too late.
Desmond came back and sat down.
“Guy can maybe point you in a direction or two. Ain’t no promises.”
“It’s better than nothing. Thanks.”
They drank their coffee and watched a man crawl out of a sleeping-bag on a bench across the street. He stood up and stretched and leaned against the railings and pissed into the canal below.
“German”, said Desmond.
Paul nodded agreement.
ChAPter 44
Tuesday April 30th 2013 – Koninginnedag
The man’s name was Gustav. He was Hungarian and he looked like a biker. Frizzy grey hair greased down under a red bandana, and worn, black leather trousers. When Paul walked into the courtyard just off Tuinstraat he was re-potting some geraniums in a small room to one side that could once have been a stable. He looked up as Paul approached.
“Good morning”, he said.
“Good morning.”
“You the guy Des sent?”
“Yeah.”
“So what is it you’re looking for?”
Paul showed him his artwork.
“I’m trying to find someone who may have done a piercing like this. An arrow, maybe two inches long, through the bridge of a nose.”
Gustav looked at the picture and didn’t look impressed.
“Bridge piercings… they call them ‘erls’ sometimes. I think there was a guy called Earl who started the trend. You get some nasty rejection and scarring sometimes. Normally it’s just dumbbells or a ring. An arrow is pretty rare… do you know what it was made of?”
Paul tried to recall the colour of the arrow in the photo of Mme Rosa’s niece. He had seen it for about ten seconds.
“It wasn’t shiny, I don’t think. Quite dull…”
“Probably not steel then. And Niobium would be too heavy for a bridge job… most likely titanium.”
“Is that good? Does that help?”
“Not really. It’s a very common material for piercings.”
Paul sighed.
“Where would you recommend I start looking for the person who could have done it?”
Gustav thought about it. He poured some fertiliser into a watering-can and filled the can at a tap.
“I honestly can’t say. People come and go. There are dozens of places you can get a piercing.”
“I’ve got 31 addresses just in Jordaan.”
“Right. I’d go for the older places. You’re talking fifteen years ago. Check out some of the old-timers. Like Bob… Bob something… he had a place on Tichelstraat.”
“Ok, thanks.”
“Good luck.”
Paul worked his way through the streets towards Tichelstraat. The crowds were already out in force. Along every pavement, people had laid out stalls and mats with all kinds of knick-knacks and bric-a-brac for sale. Everything was priced at one or two euros. People were already setting up food stalls too, with gas-cookers and barbecues and grills and there was street theatre at every corner; jugglers and fire-eaters and mimes… It was just past eight o’clock in the morning and the city was alive again.
He found a tattoo and piercing parlour on Tichelstraat called The Skinshop. The front was closed up by a metal blind and in front of it a couple in orange cheesecloth shirts had set up a stall selling hand-crafted leather goods. Paul asked them if they knew the owner of the tattoo place.
“Sorry, no. Maybe the old guy in the shop across the street… he’s been here for ever.”
The shop in question was a T-shirt boutique and a man was setting out special Queen’s Day T-shirts and a range of souvenir clothing items on some racks next to the door.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“I’m looking for Bob, from the tattoo and piercing place. Do you know where he might be?”
“Sure.”
The man stuck some price-tags on some hats.
Paul waited. The man looked at him. He was cross-eyed.
“Saint Barbara’s.”
“Where’s that?”
“On Spaarndammerdijk.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a cemetery.”
“Fuck.”
“He died about four years ago. His daughter runs the place now.”
“Do you know where I might find her?”
“I haven’t got the faintest idea.”
He turned away and went inside the shop.
Paul pulled out his phone and consulted the list of piercing places he’d downloaded. He was going to have to do this systematically.
He stopped at a café and drank some coffee and pulled out a map of Amsterdam and marked the various places on the map and worked out the best route to cover as many of them as possible in the shortest time.
He set off.
None of the first ten on his list were open, some weren’t even in business any more. One had been destroyed by fire only a few months before. Another was now a dry-cleaners. A place called Body Ink was run by a man called Nik who had gone to Thailand for two months. Straat-Art was part of a small chain owned by a guy in Rotterdam. He got a phone number for the woman who worked in a place called Showtime but she was abusive and said she didn’t have time for this kind of shit and hung up on him. Another place had a sign outside saying it would be open at eleven o’clock and Paul waited but nobody came.
The eleventh place he visited was open but the guy inside said he’d only been the
re for six months and he only used pre-made piercings, not original stuff and Paul looked at the swastikas and SS insignia on the walls and in display cases and decided he’d try somewhere else. The next ten led nowhere either and Paul was getting tired of squeezing through crowds and being jostled and even of having drunken tourists hug him and flash bare breasts at him as he passed. The omnipresent music was giving him an even worse headache. Loud dub echoes resounded through his head and was replaced twenty yards later by a group of children banging on dustbins and plastic buckets and tin cans. He swallowed one of the pills Desmond had given him, with the warning: “It’s like codeine, only better. Don’t drink too much!”
He found himself at the Noordermarkt and sat down and drank a Coke and crossed off the places he’d visited and felt like he was getting nowhere. He looked at the stalls around him and saw people making and selling baskets and wickerwork chairs, hand-carved clogs and sandals, jewellery made from bottle-tops and reclaimed tin cans… He saw caricaturists and fortune-tellers, astrologers and acupuncturists… and then he spotted a man doing a tattoo…
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