by David Hewson
Sometimes sympathy was ineffective.
‘What else do you want of me?’ he asked. ‘Say it so I know.’
She struggled with that.
‘I get the message, Vos. You care. The thing is . . .’ She almost looked guilty at that moment. ‘A woman like me always worries when someone seems to care. It doesn’t work out well. Sorry. My problem. Not yours.’
She got her bag, checked the money inside. Vos could see it wasn’t much. He reached for his wallet and she put a hand on his arm.
‘I’m getting out now. There’s someone I need to see. Call when you’ve news.’
He watched her walk straight through the busy traffic, holding up a hand to stop an irate taxi when she felt like it. She wasn’t beautiful but she was striking. Tall, straight-backed in her fake leather jacket and jeans. He could imagine she’d stop people in her cabin window, seated on a stool beneath the scarlet lamp. Just half a smile would do.
She was headed back towards the centre. In a minute she’d be in the middle of the Nine Streets, the shopping area where middle-class Amsterdam bought its luxuries. The red-light district wasn’t far away after that.
Laura Bakker probably thought they could fix someone like this. Prostitution wasn’t a career move. It was a solution, perhaps the only one available at the time. But Bakker was new to the city and still had the optimism of the young. Vos had worked vice for a while, dealt with so many of the criminals who ran the sex rings, usually with a hard, sometimes brutal, discipline. Most women working the cabins gave up through age and a lack of business. Nothing else.
There was the sound of a different ringtone. He took out Renata Kuyper’s phone and looked at the screen. Number withheld. He waited a couple of seconds knowing that Marnixstraat would be hooking on to the call, trying to start a trace. Doubtless finding it was a Net connection that might, at best, provide a general city location, nothing so precise as a mobile mast.
On the fourth ring he answered.
Vos was so occupied by the phone call that he never saw the short and odd encounter across the road. The Kuypers heading into Marnixstraat, Saskia holding her father’s hand.
And Hanna Bublik staring at them, curious. As if the sight of them meant something.
‘Don’t look for me,’ the man said. ‘Do what I say or you’ll make the child suffer.’
Vos checked his watch. Forty-three minutes past eleven.
‘What do you want?’ he asked.
‘I want my brother free.’
The voice was Dutch, educated, calm, with an inflection he couldn’t place. Possibly forced. The man spoke slowly, surely, as if he had no concern about being traced.
‘I need to know the girl’s safe and well.’
There was a pause. Then a high, young female voice said with no audible fear, ‘My name’s Natalya. Who are you?’
‘A policeman. Pieter Vos. Your mother was here a moment ago, Natalya. I’m sorry you missed her. Are you—?’
A sound, an angry squawk that might have been pain. Then he was back on.
‘Enough,’ the man said.
‘Did you hit her?’
‘Not yet.’ He sounded offended by the question. ‘She’s a . . . handful. I guess it’s in the genes.’
‘What do you know about the mother?’
‘The kid told me. What is this? An interview?’
Vos tried to imagine an eight-year-old girl telling a stranger, a hostile one at that, her mother was a prostitute. It was hard.
‘I want you to organize a plane for Alamy, out of Schiphol. We’ll give you the destination. I want safe passage guaranteed at the other end. And . . .’ He was thinking on the fly. ‘A hundred thousand euros.’
‘You don’t want much.’
‘You’re the government,’ the man said. ‘Fix it.’
‘Give me time. A day.’
‘A day?’ He sounded outraged. ‘Do you want this kid alive or not?’
‘This isn’t simple. We need political approval for any money. To fix the plane. Do you think I can click my fingers and make that happen in an instant?’
‘A day then,’ the man said. ‘Play no games.’
That was quick. And easy.
‘So you told me. I want to talk to Natalya again.’
A long sigh. Then she came on the line.
‘Your mother loves you,’ Vos said. ‘Tomorrow we’ll have you home. I promise.’
There was a pause on the line. A sound in the background he couldn’t place.
‘Thank you,’ Natalya Bublik told him very slowly, very politely.
The line went dead. He called Bakker straight away.
‘Did you get that?’
She was in the main office with Van der Berg, Koeman and the rest of the team, sitting in front of the computer, going through the logs coming in from the tracking software.
‘It was Skype,’ she said.
‘Did you record the call?’
‘Of course we did!’
‘Good. I’m coming in. There’s something behind the voices. That last time when Natalya talks really slowly. I think she did that deliberately. See if you can work out what it is.’
The moment he was off the line his phone rang again. It was Mirjam Fransen. The call had been patched through to the AIVD office in the centre of the city too.
He told her he was going into Marnixstraat. If she wanted a meeting it had to be there.
‘Too busy, Vos,’ she said. ‘Just one thing to remember.’
‘Which is?’ he asked when she didn’t go on.
‘I understand you have to lead him on and think we’ll give him what he wants.’
‘Good.’
‘Don’t think for one moment he’s going to get it. The Dutch government doesn’t submit to ransoms. For money or kidnapped children. Ismail Alamy’s going nowhere.’
He started the car and looked for a gap in the traffic.
‘Do you want to tell her mother?’
‘We’ve got better things to do. I’ll leave it to you.’
She was gone after that. Vos phoned Hanna Bublik and got voicemail. Then walked into the station. Bakker and Van der Berg already had technicians going over the recording of the phone call. The Kuyper family were sitting in an interview room.
‘Why . . . ?’ he asked.
‘Something doesn’t add up,’ Bakker said. ‘The technical people want twenty minutes to try to enhance the quality of the phone call. Can we talk to them in the meantime?’
‘Have AIVD got anything?’
‘If they have they’re not telling us,’ Van der Berg said with a grimace. ‘We need to get yesterday straight, Pieter. They ought to be able to help.’
He called Hanna Bublik again. Still no answer. Vos watched the three figures in the interview room. All well-dressed, the girl seated closer to her father than her mother. They had the look of money about them. Not that it seemed to bring much in the way of happiness with it.
‘Fine,’ he said.
She got the address from Chantal Santos. An old building on Spooksteeg, a pedestrian alley between Zeedijk and Oudezijds Voorburgwal. Graffiti on the walls. There was a high iron security gate topped with spikes, closed at night to keep out the riff-raff. The place was in the heart of the red-light district but ring-fenced from the trade that was the lifeblood of this part of the city.
Cem Yilmaz lived off that stream. He was thirty-seven, from Ankara via Hamburg. A hulking, muscular man. There were exercise machines in the penthouse, by the window so everyone could see. Yilmaz owned the entire building, countless rows of cabins through the city, four sex clubs, a pizza restaurant and a shop that sold novelty condoms. Most of his business was legal. Only the way he treated his girls when he judged they’d stepped out of line threatened to bring him to the attention of the police. But even then the women were always too scared to complain.
Hanna knew what he was. Knew a little of his background too. When she rang his bell and pleaded with him through the door interc
om she was already working out in her head what she might do if he let her in. Then the door buzzed. She walked into a modern atrium behind the old facade, found the lift open and ready and went to the top floor.
The lift opened straight into the living room. Yilmaz was alone on a vast bright-red sofa. An unsmiling man with skin the colour of pale leather and bulbous, restless eyes. He reminded her of some of the criminals her husband had briefly encountered back in Gori. Thugs who’d come round demanding protection money. For security against themselves usually.
The Turk wore a lurid blue tracksuit bottom. His barrel chest was shiny with sweat. The place smelled of exercise. He told her to sit down then rolled over the sofa, found a box on a coffee table, took out a cigar and lit it. The bright room started to fill with noxious smoke. Hanna had seen him once before, driving round the district in his Maserati. Yilmaz liked to display his wealth.
‘Four times I have asked you here, Mrs Bublik. And on each occasion you deny me.’ He had a deep baritone voice and spoke in a tone that never wavered. ‘Why now?’
She wondered how much to say. The police had been adamant. The fewer people who knew of Natalya’s kidnap the better. But they were struggling in the dark.
So she told him. About the chaos in Leidseplein the day before. He knew of that, of course. Sat and listened to the story of Natalya’s disappearance without blinking. Hanna left out the Kuypers. They seemed irrelevant.
He listened, nodding, then made himself a coffee, Turkish-style, one for her too. She sipped the strong, black liquid. The grounds were like mud at the bottom. When she was finished he sat down again, shrugged his huge shoulders, got a towel to start wiping down the sweat on his chest and biceps.
‘And?’ he asked.
‘I thought you might be able to help.’
‘How?’
This was awkward. It had to be said.
‘I heard you were Muslim too.’
The big eyes narrowed.
‘Do you think every Muslim’s a terrorist?’
‘No.’
But she’d heard rumours. Some money went from the gangs into the brotherhoods. That was one way they managed to get girls smuggled into the city, especially from the countries of the Caucasus that had fallen out of the old Soviet Union. Sometimes they’d be trafficked through Georgia. Everyone knew that.
‘I just thought I’d ask. In case you hear something. You could tell me. As a favour.’
He finished his coffee and put the little cup on the table in front of him.
‘What am I? A charity? How many people do Cem Yilmaz favours?’ He looked her up and down. ‘How many favours have you done me?’
For some reason he kept a blazing fire in the room. Logs crackling beneath a large, old chimney. It made the place too hot. Exaggerated the smell of him.
‘I’ve never done anything to get in the way of your girls. I never would.’
‘Nothing is nothing, Mrs Bublik. You want my help. Why should I offer it?’
Not now, she thought. Not with Natalya missing. Taking his money was, she understood, a one-way trip. There would be no turning back. Not in safety.
‘I just want to get my daughter back. When that’s over . . . we can talk.’
The look again. Up and down. Like a butcher scanning a carcass.
‘You’re a decent-looking woman. I could do business for us both. More than you could ever imagine on your own behind a window. They say they want money? How much?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How much do you have?’
‘Not a lot. Perhaps . . . perhaps the police will help.’
He laughed.
‘Why would they help you? You’re not Dutch. You’re just a piece of meat to them.’
‘And to you I’d be different?’
The words just slipped out and she regretted them immediately. Yet he didn’t seem offended. If anything he looked impressed.
‘The offer was made in good faith,’ Yilmaz insisted. ‘I’m a businessman, nothing else. We trade. We both prosper. If you wish to come to work with me perhaps I can assist. Ask questions of people who may answer them. Perhaps . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I guarantee nothing. Except that if I ask no questions there’ll be no answers.’
‘I can’t work with this going on.’
He shook his big, crew-cut head.
‘Yet last night you were sitting in a cabin window looking for customers. Or trying to.’
She stared at him.
‘I own those cabins, Mrs Bublik. I’m a good landlord and an excellent employer. All I ask in return is loyalty.’
‘I’m begging,’ she murmured.
‘I can hear it.’
Yilmaz beckoned her to a desk by the long window over the narrow canal. There he pulled open a drawer and let her see the contents. It was stuffed with money. Euros. Sterling. US dollars. Notes in currencies she didn’t recognize. Lots of it.
‘Money comes. Money goes.’ He picked up a wad of euros and held them out. ‘All I require is your agreement to join my little family of ladies. No more freezing in cold cabins. You meet better gentlemen. They pay more. You work less.’
And I am your slave.
He knew that was what she was thinking. It was written in his face.
‘She’s eight years old,’ she pleaded. ‘All I’ve got.’
‘I’d like to help. But for a man like me there must always be a price.’ He laughed. ‘What’s the problem? It’s one you’re paying already.’
She said she wanted to think about it and asked for a phone number. He frowned, wrote one out, asked for hers, then put the bundle of notes back in the drawer.
‘I’ll ask around in any case,’ he added. ‘I’m not a heartless man. Just a practical one.’
He opened another drawer, pulled out a vial of oil and took off the top. It smelled strong yet fragrant, almost feminine.
Yilmaz held out the bottle and said, ‘You can do me a favour now and rub it in if you want.’
She got out her phone and typed in his number. The voicemail icon was flashing. Nervous, with shaking fingers, she found the one message there.
It was Vos, asking her to come into Marnixstraat. They had something.
‘I have to leave,’ she said. ‘The police want me.’
He watched her go without a word.
Outside, in the graffiti-stained alley of Spooksteeg she wondered about the Turk. Did he really know people? Or just want her as part of his tame circus of willing whores?
There was no way of knowing. So she called Vos, got his voicemail then, and left a message that she was on her way.
Henk Kuyper was adamant: they were interviewed together or not at all.
Van der Berg listened to his whining and shook his head. Vos sat at a desk wondering when forensic might have a finished version of the phone recording. They were late. Bakker kept crossing and uncrossing her long legs, punctuating the performance with awkward, tetchy sighs.
‘We’re not accusing you of anything,’ Van der Berg told the tall, unsmiling man across the table.
‘I don’t want Saskia left on her own. You can’t interview an eight-year-old as if she was a criminal.’
‘No one was suggesting anything of the sort,’ Vos broke in. ‘We’re just . . .’ He’d had a quick chat with Bakker before the interview began and checked through her notes. ‘We want to make sure we understand what you think you saw yesterday.’
Kuyper sat back in his chair. His wife was at the end of the table. The girl stayed between them, close to her father.
‘I’m not a fan of the police,’ he grumbled. ‘I don’t like the way you’re partial.’
Van der Berg blinked.
‘Partial? We’re trying to find a kidnapped girl. It might have been your daughter.’
‘But it wasn’t. Maybe if you’d been doing your job none of this—’
‘Ask your questions,’ Renata interrupted. ‘Ask anything you like.’
A cold, bleak moment between the
two of them. The girl took out a shiny new phone and started to play a game on it. Bakker placed a laptop on the table and took them through the CCTV. If the timings were right – and there was no reason to think they weren’t – she had spotted something. Natalya Bublik was snatched just moments after Saskia vanished. It wasn’t impossible this was a mistake on the part of whoever kidnapped her. Two people looking for a pink jacket. But something still seemed odd.
Renata followed everything carefully, listening to the timeline Bakker set out.
‘I don’t know what you want me to say?’ she told them. ‘Saskia wandered off while I was in the square. She wanted to see Sinterklaas. Then we heard the explosions. Henk turned up. He went into the crowd and found her.’
‘Where?’ Vos asked, looking straight at him.
‘Around the back of the theatre,’ Kuyper said. ‘It seemed the obvious place to look.’ A sly, caustic glance at his wife. ‘At least it seemed obvious to me. If you were a frightened child, running away from a stranger and all that panic in the square, you’d try to hide, wouldn’t you? Saskia?’
The girl looked up from her phone and said in a bored, petulant tone, ‘I was trying to hide. Then Daddy found me.’
Bakker looked at the phone.
‘You’ve got a new one, Saskia?’
‘I keep spares,’ her father snapped. ‘Don’t most people?’
The girl went back to her game.
‘How did you get away from Black Pete?’ Bakker asked.
‘Ran.’
That was it.
‘Wasn’t he holding you?’
‘Not when I ran. He let go.’ She looked at her father. ‘That was the right thing, wasn’t it?’
‘The right thing,’ he said and patted her hand. ‘Then I found her. And brought her back.’
Saskia was still in the pink jacket.
‘Given the circumstances,’ Bakker said, ‘I’m surprised she’s still wearing that thing.’
‘Not my choice,’ Renata snapped. ‘I asked her to wear something else. Ignored as usual.’
Kuyper glanced at her, briefly furious.
‘Why shouldn’t she wear it? She likes it. We were lucky. That’s all it was. I don’t know about your . . .’ He waved a finger at the laptop. ‘Timings. Why you’re asking us. Wouldn’t you be better helping that woman? Finding her child?’ He hesitated then said it anyway. ‘You could let Alamy out of jail too. He’s no reason to be there.’
