by David Hewson
There was only one story on the news. The outrage in Leidseplein. No mention of a missing girl at all. Did Henk care? Did anyone?
She steeled herself and tiptoed up the stairs. The door to the tiny office was ajar. He was at the computer, the pallid light of the monitor flooding his stolid face.
‘Can we talk?’
He sighed and got up from the desk.
‘Not now,’ he said and closed the door.
For thirty minutes De Groot listened to AIVD. Then another half hour was spent going through the logs. The commissaris set out what he wanted: an immediate review of the overnight investigation.
‘Mirjam Fransen’s right about one thing, Pieter. There are a lot of boats in Amsterdam. And we’ve nothing from this dead clown to point us in the right direction.’
Frank de Groot shook his head.
‘I want you all wide awake tomorrow when this call comes in. Talk to the mother. Tell her we’re doing everything we can. Check we’re on course. After that go home and get some sleep.’
Bakker didn’t move.
‘I’d like to run over the CCTV we’ve got of Leidseplein.’
De Groot frowned.
‘There are about forty different feeds. It’ll take days, weeks to go through all of them.’
She wasn’t happy with that. Any more than Vos. They had what seemed to be a version of events now, based on an initial interview with Saskia Kuyper and others in the square. Bouali had grabbed hold of the girl when she wandered off near the theatre then promised to find her parents. Saskia hadn’t liked the way he was acting. So when he was distracted she gave him the slip.
After that they were left with guesswork. The assumption was that Bouali alerted one of his accomplices, dressed as a Black Pete too, who picked up Natalya Bublik by mistake. The two girls did look similar and they had an identical pink jacket with a very specific design.
‘Timing,’ Bakker said. ‘It seems . . . confusing. And the Kuyper girl . . .’
‘What?’ Vos asked.
He’d sat in on that interview for a while. It seemed straightforward.
‘She sounded really vague,’ Bakker complained. ‘That was all.’
‘She’s eight years old,’ De Groot grumbled. ‘What do you expect?’
‘Just a touch more detail. It was almost as if she was telling a story.’
‘Enough of this,’ the commissaris insisted. ‘Leidseplein had something like ten thousand people in it at the time. What looked like bombs going off. The kid had just been snatched. No big surprise she can’t dictate a decent witness statement.’
‘That’s why I want to look at the video.’
De Groot glanced at Vos as if to say: this is your call.
‘We need to look,’ Vos agreed. ‘But in the morning.’
He got up, brushed down his blue jeans and shabby donkey jacket. It still bore dust from the chaos in the square.
Downstairs they discovered Hanna Bublik had left the station already. Nothing Van der Berg could say would keep her there.
‘I need to reconfirm the existence of beer on this planet,’ the detective said mournfully.
Silence.
‘Pieter?’ he asked.
‘Not tonight,’ Vos said then wandered out without another word, strolled alone down Elandsgracht, picked up Sam from the Drie Vaten and led the dog across the gangplank onto the cold, dark boat.
The police had done their best to be friendly, especially the dishevelled, polite brigadier who seemed to be in charge. When they finally ran out of vague promises a friendly, bleary-eyed detective called Van der Berg took her to reception, gave her his card and one for the brigadier, Vos, then offered to find a lift home. While they were talking another man came up, miserable and guilty. He introduced himself as Koeman and said he was the officer dressed as Black Pete she’d first approached when Natalya went missing. The one who’d given her a hard time.
The moment he started a stuttering apology she just looked at him once then walked out.
November drizzle was putting a sheen on the broad street outside the police station. She didn’t want their lift any more than she craved an apology. All she needed was Natalya back home.
They seemed to understand the price of that. The release of a man she’d never heard of. And money perhaps. How much they didn’t know. Didn’t seem to want to discuss it either. She was a foreigner. On tourist papers. No right to work, even as a whore. All she had to her name was three and half thousand euros kept in cash, stuffed in an envelope beneath Natalya’s mattress, the pile steadily growing as she worked over the months.
As soon as it reached five she’d be able to put down a deposit on a place of her own. Try to find a real job. Hairdressing maybe. Or looking after little kids. She liked that idea. Felt she might be good at it. Perhaps overly protective but that would diminish with the years. One day they’d become normal, the way they used to be in Gori. One day she’d be able to walk down the street without feeling people were looking at her.
It took twenty minutes to get back to Oude Nieuwstraat. The red lights were on in the cabins running down from her house. Girls in the windows, sitting in their underwear, smiling, beckoning at the few men stumbling up and down the shiny cobblestones, hoods up, just looking mostly.
Chantal met her on the stairs. She looked shocked, worried. Younger than usual. No make-up either.
‘The police were here,’ the Filipina girl said. ‘They said someone took Nat.’
She always shortened her daughter’s name. It annoyed the hell out of her.
‘What do they want, Hanna?’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied and that was true.
‘But . . .’
‘Not now!’
She wasn’t going to discuss this with the girl. And that wasn’t because Marnixstraat told her not to talk to anyone about the case.
Chantal shifted on her bare feet. She was wearing girlish pyjamas with a flower pattern on them. No more work that day.
She glanced up the stairs in a way that meant something.
‘What is it?’
The girl ran a nervous hand through her dark hair.
‘I was out all afternoon. There was no one here. When I came back . . .’ She nodded at the door. ‘It was open. Someone’s been in our rooms. They pinched some of my clothes. I didn’t have . . .’
Hanna went up the narrow staircase, all the way to the little gable room at the top. The door was open. When she went in she could see straight away what had happened.
The few clothes they had were scattered around. Natalya’s single bed had been turned over, the mattress spilled on the floor.
The padded brown envelope which contained all their money was ripped open and empty. They’d even taken the necklace her husband had given her when they were married all those years before. It was cheap, an amber pendant on a silver chain. But she’d kept it, let Natalya wear the thing from time to time. A reminder of when they’d been a family. Together. In love. Seemingly secure.
Chantal stood behind her in the door and said, ‘I don’t know how they got in.’
As if that mattered.
‘They want the rent tomorrow,’ the Filipina kid added. ‘Will you be OK?’
‘Not now. Can I borrow some?’
She said nothing.
Hanna turned on her.
‘I’ve lent you money when you needed it. You know you’ll get it back. What with Natalya . . . I might need money there too.’
Her round, brown eyes grew wide.
‘What kind of money?’
‘I . . . I don’t know. They haven’t said. I don’t . . .’
No family. No friends. No one to turn to. That was the cost of coming all this way. Why it was so important nothing happened to them until she managed to find her feet.
She put Natalya’s bed back the right way and returned the mattress, tucking in the sheets without thinking. They needed washing. So did some of her clothes.
The pink jacket.
A sudden wave of regret brought tears to her eyes. According to the sympathetic detective in Marnixstraat that was all that caused this mistake. The fact that her daughter and the kid of some wealthy Dutch family shared the same piece of clothing. A jacket Hanna would never have bought in the first place. It was too expensive. The thing had come to her as an odd gift. A tip from a customer who’d seen the two of them later on the street then found her again in a cabin not long after.
‘You could always have a word with Cem,’ Chantal said. ‘Just do what he wants. You’ll get the money. Maybe . . .’ Her hand went to her hair. ‘Maybe he can help with Natalya too. He knows people.’
‘Like terrorists?’
That’s what Marnixstraat said. They’d snatched her thinking she was the granddaughter of a notorious Dutch soldier, one who’d been mixed up in a massacre a couple of decades before.
A black monster rolling up the stairs. An idle boast: I’ll kill it. What kind of mother had she been?
‘I don’t know,’ the girl whined. ‘It was just a thought. You could call the police. About the money . . .’
‘I didn’t say they took money. Did I?’
‘Why’d you want some from me, then?’ Chantal snapped then walked back downstairs and slammed her door shut.
No choices now. None at all.
Hanna Bublik showered and got some work clothes. As she was about to go out her phone rang. It was the brigadier from Marnixstraat, Vos.
‘Do you know anything?’ she asked.
‘We’re working on some leads.’ He sounded like a bad liar. ‘I meant to ask. Do you know anyone with a boat?’
The question astonished her.
‘A boat? Are you serious?’
He sighed. It was a patient sound. Not aimed at her.
‘Yes. I’m serious. I think she’s on a boat.’
‘We don’t really know anyone here. No one with a boat.’
He made sure she had his mobile number, said she was to call him any time, day or night.
‘Is there anything I can do to help now?’ he asked.
She looked at the little room and the ripped brown envelope.
‘Nothing I can think of. Apart from the obvious.’
‘I’ll get Natalya back. We’ll give them whatever they want.’
‘Including money?’
‘If it comes to that.’
There didn’t seem anything left to say or ask. When he was gone she got her clothes, the cheap condoms, the gels, put them in the little plastic washbag that came with the beauty kit her husband bought her the last Christmas he was alive. Then she walked up Oude Nieuwstraat until she found a spare cabin, called the number for the rental guy, paid for three hours. That took half the money she had left.
The tiny booth was too hot from the electric fire. It smelled of damp and sweat from whoever had it before.
She stripped down to her cheap gold satin bra and knickers then perched on the high stool in the window. There to discover what she should have known. No one wanted a weeping whore, at any price.
Across the city Natalya Bublik sat where she was told, arms round herself in the pink jacket she’d hated from the outset. The only fixed points in her small life at that moment were sounds: the gentle lap of water against a wooden hull, the occasional screech of a bird, the rattle and hoots of trains pulling in and out of Centraal station.
Black Pete was still in the boat. Maybe two of them, beyond the locked wooden door. She’d do whatever they wanted, everything they said. Because somewhere, deep in the soft, formless depths of her memory, was an echo of this strange sequence of events. In a story her mother told her. Or a half-forgotten, deep-buried recollection hidden inside the nightmare that kept returning, that of a shadowy monster rolling up the stairs.
Real or imagined there was a message here, one she would not forget.
Do not move and do not speak.
Be nothing. Do nothing except wait and watch and think.
Then one day you will be invisible. And in that single precious moment slip free.
2
Hanna Bublik was waiting for Vos when he showed up at Marnixstraat the next morning. Sam trotted along beside him on a lead. Sofia Albers had to go out of town to see her sick mother. Someone in admin could look after the dog until she got back.
‘What kind of policeman brings his pet to work?’ she asked as the little terrier sat at her feet, bright eyes begging for attention.
‘Sam’s not a pet. He doesn’t like being left on his own.’
The dog put a paw on her leg. Same clothes as the day before. Fake designer jacket, nylon masquerading as leather. Cheap jeans. No make-up on her thin, lined face. Poverty hung around this woman and she didn’t like it.
‘Down, boy,’ he said gently and passed the lead over to the genial clerk from the back office who’d come out to greet them.
She watched the woman walk Sam away, chattering to him.
‘I promised Natalya a dog. When we get our own place.’
‘Then I’m sure she’ll get one someday.’
He found some coffee. Bakker turned up. She’d started to dress less conspicuously now she was settling into Marnixstraat. No more home-made suits from her aunt back in Dokkum in Friesland. Today black trousers, a blue jacket, a plain jumper underneath. Her red hair tied back tightly behind her head. A look that said: professional. And . . . I’m here to stay.
The three of them went into an interview room together. The voice recorder stayed off.
‘So you know nothing?’ Hanna said when he had briefed her on the investigation.
‘No,’ Vos insisted. ‘We know he took your girl by mistake. We know she’s still in the city. We’re looking for some associates of the man who was shot.’
‘Nothing,’ she repeated.
‘Hanna,’ Bakker said. ‘This is the most important inquiry we have at the moment. We’ll do everything we can to bring Natalya back.’
‘And he’ll call,’ Vos added. ‘He has to. They want something. As long as they do . . .’
The lost look on her face silenced him.
‘Do you know anyone in Amsterdam?’ Bakker asked her.
‘Most of the people I meet don’t give me a name. A real one anyway.’
Vos glanced at his watch without thinking. She glared at him for that.
‘Am I wasting your time?’
‘No. I was wondering when he might ring.’
‘He said he wants money. How much?’
That had puzzled Vos. Still did.
‘He was vague . . .’
‘How can I pay him? The likes of me?’
A good question. One that worried him.
‘Let’s deal with that when it happens.’
‘And this man he wants released? Who’s he?’
Vos had thought he might not need to address that question. That the papers would offer all the answers that morning. They were full of the outrage in Leidseplein and the shooting of a young Briton who’d adopted a foreign name and thrown three flash grenades into the crowd. But there wasn’t a single word about the kidnapping of a child. Given the time the press had to work on the story there could be only one explanation. Someone, De Groot or AIVD, had demanded and got a media blackout on the grounds that it might jeopardize the case.
He gave her the brief facts.
‘I want to see this man Alamy,’ Hanna Bublik said. ‘I want to look into his face and ask him why my daughter’s been stolen from me.’
‘Why don’t we find you somewhere to sit here?’ Bakker suggested. ‘We can keep you up to date during the day.’
‘No!’ Her voice wasn’t shrill. Nowhere near hysterical. It was firm and controlled and when she spoke she looked only at Vos. ‘What good am I doing like that?’
‘If . . .’
‘You wanted to go over the CCTV footage,’ Vos cut in.
Bakker nodded.
‘Then do it. We can talk to Alamy. If he can say something. Give us a message to pa
ss on . . .’
Hanna looked at him, surprised. As if not many people took note of what she said.
‘You’ll do this?’
He got up, checked Renata Kuyper’s phone. Lots of battery. A good signal.
‘We need to go now. Laura, have a word with De Groot’s office. Get us clearance into the secure unit at Schiphol. We’ll keep it brief. Either Alamy plays along or he doesn’t.’
Hanna finished her coffee, got up from the table. Looked grateful.
‘What if the kidnapper calls?’ Bakker asked.
He took out the phone.
‘Everything coming into this line gets monitored whether I’m here or not. Control can listen in the moment I answer. He won’t ring from a traceable phone. We know that . . .’
‘But . . .’
He pointed to the door.
‘Talk to Frank’s office,’ he said. ‘We’re leaving now.’
An awkward breakfast in the narrow house on the Herenmarkt. Saskia picked at her cereal, barely eating. Henk Kuyper ate steadily in silence, going over the details in the paper. He looked a little hung-over.
‘Why’s there no mention of what happened?’ Renata asked when he wouldn’t look up from the page. ‘The girl . . .’
‘They print what they’re told,’ he muttered and reached for another croissant. ‘What do you expect?’
She blinked, fought to hold back the fury.
‘This isn’t a game. One of your crusades. It’s about real people. That little kid’s gone missing . . .’
Saskia brushed back her long fair hair and put her hands over her ears. Then shut her eyes tightly.
A nod at their daughter.
‘Don’t you think she’s been through enough?’
‘Jesus! It’s nothing to what that poor woman’s having to face. Are you serious?’
He reached out and touched Saskia’s hair, then stroked her cheek. She opened her eyes and smiled at him. Renata couldn’t read the look on her daughter’s face. The girl was always closer to her father. Henk was never there to tell her what to do. He was in his study, working the computer, making quiet phone calls. Fixing the world. Drinking wine. She was the one who had to tell Saskia to tidy her room. To stay and do her homework however much she hated it.
