The Wrong Girl

by David Hewson

  Nothing.

  ‘Was it a habit?’ Bakker demanded. ‘Couple of times a week. You’d say you were going for a walk. Did Renata know . . .?’

  ‘She didn’t know. And it wasn’t a habit either. Just twice. With that woman.’ He pushed the coffee to one side and sighed. ‘Believe it or not. Either way I don’t care.’

  Vos waited a while then asked again . . . why?

  ‘Because things are bad here,’ he said with a scowl. ‘Renata thinks she wants to leave me but can’t pluck up the courage. I don’t have the heart either. Saskia and her mum don’t get along. She still needs a mother. I’m not . . . enough.’

  ‘So you skip along the road and throw fifty euros on a quick roll with an East European hooker?’ Bakker said.

  ‘This one really doesn’t do subtlety, does she?’ he said to Vos.

  ‘Sometimes subtlety’s wasted,’ Vos replied. ‘I still don’t understand why.’

  ‘To spite her. We haven’t made love in months. I tried one night. Been drinking. It didn’t happen. So the next night . . . I’d had a few. I was walking back from the centre, down Oude Nieuwstraat and saw this woman sitting in a window. She looked . . . interesting. Intelligent. Maybe . . . different.’

  ‘Then a couple of days later you went back and gave her a pink jacket for her daughter,’ Bakker went on. ‘You said it was the wrong size, Henk. It wasn’t, was it?’

  ‘No.’

  He leaned back in the chair and shut his eyes again.

  ‘Shit. This is such a mess.’

  Vos checked his phone for messages. Nothing.

  ‘We need to know, Henk. We need . . .’

  ‘I saw her in the street. OK? With the kid. A pretty kid. Like Saskia. You could see they didn’t have a cent to their name. And here I am . . .’ His hand swept the room. ‘Pretending I make a difference and living off my old man. A bit later I went shopping. I bought that jacket for Saskia. Really. Then I walked down the street again. And she was back there in the window.’

  He frowned.

  ‘I didn’t want to have sex but it was like . . . she expected it or something. As if it was a contract. A business deal. I paid. She delivered. Then I got her talking about the kid. She came alive then. She wasn’t just a hunk of meat on show. She couldn’t stop talking about how much her girl wanted to see Sinterklaas turning up on Sunday.’ He looked round the room. ‘Didn’t get that kind of enthusiasm here. So I made up some story. The jacket was the wrong size. She could have it.’

  Kuyper caught Vos’s eye.

  ‘It wasn’t easy. I don’t think that woman likes the idea of charity. But she said the girl might like some new clothes for Sinterklaas. So I left it there. Then I told myself I’d never go back. Never do that again.’

  Bakker said, ‘And then you went out and bought another pink jacket for your daughter.’

  He glared at her.

  ‘Yes. I wanted to give her a present. Is that OK?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Bakker answered. ‘Is it?’

  That infuriated him.

  ‘Listen! I would have given that woman more. Not just a stupid jacket. Money. A couple of hundred euros or something. But the stupid bitch wouldn’t take it. Some kind of pride or something. Perhaps she thought she wasn’t really a whore.’

  ‘Perhaps in her head she isn’t,’ Bakker noted.

  ‘Are you serious? If you sit under that red light in your underwear and let men do what they want for pocket money . . . what else are you?’

  ‘A mother?’ Vos suggested.

  ‘Only outside that place,’ he insisted. ‘And I saw that. In the street. It’s why I went back.’

  Bakker unfolded her legs and stared at him.

  ‘You’re lying, Henk. Sticks out a mile.’

  ‘No I’m not. You’re just young and ignorant.’ He nodded at Vos. ‘Ask your boss. He knows.’

  ‘Don’t start that . . .’

  Her temper was fraying. Vos held out a hand and got her to calm down a little.

  ‘What else do you want?’ Kuyper asked. ‘I know this looks bad. It is bad. Bad between me and my wife. Nothing to do with you. Or that poor kid. If I knew anything that might help you get her back I’d tell you. That’s the truth.’

  Vos got to his feet and couldn’t stop himself glancing out of the window, down to the playground and the two uncommunicative figures there. Then Saskia got up and went off with the other kids. Back to school he guessed.

  ‘I hope so,’ he said. ‘If I find any part of this tale doesn’t stack up I’ll bring you down to Marnixstraat myself. And then this is formal.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘I don’t see any reason why your wife needs to know what we’ve talked about,’ he added. ‘Not at the moment.’

  Bakker sucked in a long breath and glared at the man opposite her. But she kept quiet.

  Kuyper got up and went to the door.

  ‘You’re wrong there. She does need to know,’ he said. ‘From me. It’s time . . .’ They watched him. For a few seconds he seemed a man in agony. ‘It’s time we sorted this out one way or another.’ He gazed at them both. ‘I should be grateful to you for bringing that to a head. Maybe one day I will be. Miracles do happen they say.’

  Outside they passed the playground. Renata sat alone and miserable on a bench seat, oblivious to them. Then her phone rang.

  In this dream she was at the top of the stairs. The monster at the bottom, thinking she couldn’t see him, grinning, leering, happy. Hungry.

  And then he started to come for her. Step by step. Slowly. Deliberately.

  Outside was the deafening racket of a world in chaos. Bombs and chattering weapons. Men yelling. Women screaming. The smell of something sharp and hot. The walls of the building, old and dusty, kept moving in and out, like a great animal made of brick, breathing its last.

  Blood came into it somewhere. It was on the face and the chest of a man she thought must be her father. But he was dead. Long dead. All she’d seen was the single picture her mother had brought with them all the way from Georgia to Amsterdam. A handsome, beaming man in a baker’s apron, standing in the countryside somewhere in summer, his arm around a young and happy woman wearing a garland of flowers in her hair.

  The wounded, dying apparition she saw in her dreams wasn’t quite like this. But dreams lied. And so did pictures.

  This nightmare had been rumbling around her head as long as she could remember. She’d first woken screaming, sweating, terrified from its grip in a rickety cot that smelled of pee and worse somewhere in the dead, lost land they’d travelled through on the way from an uncertain past to a fragile present.

  But in Amsterdam, in that little gable room she’d come to like, love even, it hadn’t visited much of late. It was only a week ago that the night terrors returned. Worse than ever. Noisier. Bloodier. And a monster who kept getting closer with each passing night.

  Still invisible now but so near she could smell him. Something rank and rotten on his hot and steaming breath.

  This dream girl backed against the wall. Looked down and saw something moving in the dark. Just three steps left now and then he had her.

  ‘Mummy,’ she whispered.

  ‘Mummy’s not here,’ the creature said in a deep, strange voice, amused.

  ‘Mummy!’ she shouted.

  One more step on the stairs. Her little arm swept the darkness in front of them.

  Swept the dream away too. Memories returned. The knowledge that she was still in the second place, the little cabin where the Black Pete had taken her, rattling around in the back of an old and rusty van.

  ‘Mummy’s not here.’

  Natalya Bublik looked up, fearful but curious too because a Bublik woman always was. Her mother told her that.

  It was just a man, dark-skinned, clean-shaven. Khaki jacket like a soldier, black jeans. Heavy boots. Something in his hand. She looked. A mobile phone and a set of keys.

  No balaclava, she realized, and knew this was bad s
omehow.

  ‘Who are you?’ Natalya Bublik asked straight out, looking into his dark and unfeeling eyes, trying to see something there.

  He didn’t answer. Someone behind spoke, though, words she couldn’t begin to understand. Then he came too. Bigger than the first one. A rough brown sack in his hands. Some words on the side. Like the name of a company.

  He shook out the sack. It was bigger than she was.

  ‘Get in there,’ the man said in gruff and guttural Dutch.

  She stood up, ready. Before she could step inside the sack they dragged the thick hessian over her.

  This was what happened when you fell asleep in the daytime. Monsters coming for you. Strange men treating you as if you belonged to them. Like a thing.

  Their arms lifted her, not roughly, not gently either. And then, with a warning to keep quiet, she was taken out of the little bathroom, rushed into fresh cold air and the city.

  In Noordermarkt, a few minutes from the Kuyper house, Vos suddenly stopped and got off his bike. There was a new cheese shop he’d heard of A pretty little place on the square by the church. Bakker followed him in, clucking all the time. Then watched as he bought two cheese croissants and took them to a bench outside.

  Every Saturday the square was packed for the weekly farmers’ market. But this was Tuesday, in winter. The place was empty.

  Vos gave her a croissant and asked her opinion.

  ‘I still think he’s lying,’ she said.

  ‘I meant about the croissant.’ He looked very sage. ‘Good way of judging a cheese shop. I mean . . . it’s not just about cheese.’

  She took a bite and said it was lovely. He tried his and nodded.

  ‘Not as good as my local in Elandsgracht.’

  ‘Should we really be discussing the merits of cheese croissants right now?’

  ‘I’m thinking too.’

  ‘Thinking what?’

  ‘Thinking I wish you’d called in sick as I suggested.’

  She grimaced and cast him a filthy glance.

  ‘Not going to happen.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. He took another bite. Crumbs tumbled down his scruffy winter jacket. ‘Doesn’t stop me wishing.’

  ‘Because . . . ?’

  ‘Because there’s something wrong here. Something we haven’t seen. And maybe our friends in AIVD have. They knew there was going to be trouble in Leidseplein.’

  ‘And they shot that British idiot damned quickly,’ Bakker added. ‘Doesn’t change the fact Henk Kuyper’s lying, does it? We should bring him in.’

  Vos finished the croissant, balled the paper bag and threw it into a nearby bin. She tried the same and missed.

  ‘He’s lying. But not about everything. Didn’t you see when he talked about his marriage? That’s real enough. He feels guilty. Dirty. Perhaps he doesn’t know why he did it. Or if he does he’s not letting on.’

  Bakker half smiled and for once looked reluctant to say something. Vos pressed her.

  ‘Don’t men just do things like that? If they’ve had a few beers and . . . feel like it?’

  ‘Well I don’t . . .’ he objected.

  ‘I didn’t mean you! You’re not normal.’

  ‘Thanks!’

  ‘Not like that anyway. Kuyper’s ex-security services. He must know about operations and guns and stuff. He’s shifty as hell and we’re sure he’s not telling the truth. We should pull him in.’

  He wasn’t in a rush to answer. Then his phone rang. De Groot with confirmation of Alamy’s release. The man would be freed from detention at Schiphol that afternoon then handed over to his lawyers. Much to AIVD’s fury there was nothing anyone could do to stop his release. If he wanted he could simply cross the road, go into the airport terminal and fly out of the country.

  ‘Is it on the news?’ Vos asked.

  ‘If it isn’t it will be any minute. Have we got anything on the girl?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not a word on that woman’s phone? Nothing from this interview with Kuyper?’

  ‘Not really.’

  A long pause.

  ‘I want to be at Schiphol when they let Alamy out,’ Vos said. ‘Maybe I can get a statement out of him. Something we can relay to the kidnappers, asking for her to be set free somewhere.’

  ‘Fine,’ De Groot said.

  ‘And I want Henk Kuyper’s mobile and landline tapped. There’s something funny there.’

  De Groot sighed.

  ‘I’ll have to ask AIVD to do that. He used to be one of theirs. I can’t just ride roughshod over them. Are you sure?’

  The question surprised Vos.

  ‘Of course I’m sure. I wouldn’t ask otherwise. He saw Hanna Bublik twice. He talked about being in Leidseplein. He gave her that jacket. Out of guilt and sympathy he says. Maybe he’s right. Maybe not.’

  ‘I’ll talk to her,’ De Groot said with a sigh and then was gone.

  Side by side mostly, except when the odd wandering pedestrian got in the way, the two of them cycled back along the canal. Just before Elandsgracht, not far from the Drie Vaten, Renata Kuyper’s phone rang in the pocket of Vos’s worn navy jacket.

  He’d been thinking about this conversation ever since he heard Alamy might soon be released. It was important to be prepared. A step ahead if that were possible. Four if he was lucky.

  ‘I’ve seen the news. You’ve lost,’ the caller said calmly. ‘Now you know how it feels.’

  Same man. Foreign. Confident.

  ‘How’s Natalya?’ he asked. ‘Can I talk to her?’

  There was the noise of traffic. Of people. He was outside, somewhere busy and anonymous. No second chance of finding him through a stray sound. Perhaps, Vos thought, he knew this was how they’d discovered Westerdok.

  The message tone beeped and a new photo came through. Natalya still in the pink jacket, seated on a tiny bed. In her hands a tablet with the TV news on it. Lead item: confirmation of Ismail Alamy’s release.

  ‘There’s nothing for you to bargain for any more,’ Vos said with real conviction. ‘She’s an eight-year-old kid. A little girl. Let her go. Just leave her somewhere and tell her to walk into a cafe and call us. You can be long gone by the time we start looking.’ He had to say it. Not least because it was halfway true. ‘It’s Natalya I’m interested in right now. Not Ismail Alamy. Not you. She should be back with her mother.’

  There was laughter on the phone.

  ‘What is this, Vos? Are you a detective? Or a social worker?’

  ‘I want her freed.’

  ‘Really? Then why are you all so reticent?’

  This was new. Unexpected.

  ‘Reticent?’ Vos asked.

  ‘A child’s kidnapped. And you never tell your citizens. What kind of country is this? Where a little girl can disappear and no one cares?’

  ‘When a kidnap’s live publicity doesn’t help,’ Vos said.

  ‘Doesn’t help you.’

  His voice was cultured, light, amused.

  ‘Tell me what you want,’ Vos said.

  ‘Money.’

  ‘Hanna Bublik’s just a poor immigrant. She’s got nothing. She—’

  ‘I know who the mother is. I know what she does.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Never mind. You must pay a price to see this child again. I don’t care how you find it. From your rich citizens, perhaps. The Kuypers for a start. Tomorrow we’ll call again and discuss details.’

  ‘We can discuss them now,’ Vos interrupted. ‘How much?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ the man insisted. ‘Then this . . . adventure is over. One way or another. Good day.’

  The line went dead. Vos leaned against the wall.

  Bakker came to him and said, ‘I gather that didn’t go well.’

  ‘Why the hell wouldn’t he name a price?’

  ‘I can’t imagine.’

  ‘Can’t you?’ he grumbled and to her annoyance said nothing more.

  Vos called control straight away to see if they had a
nything on the number. He wasn’t in the least surprised when they said no.

  One minute later the email and the attached images and videos started to hit their targets. All the city newspapers. International and local news channels. News blogs. Amateur radical websites that had never been party to the blackout AIVD had engineered among the traditional media.

  By the time they got back to Marnixstraat the story was breaking everywhere but Holland. The local media were bound to follow suit before long, however much the authorities begged them to stay silent.

  This was the modern world. Some things would never remain secret. Soon Natalya Bublik’s photo would be on Dutch TV just as it was on CNN and the BBC at that moment, the same picture Vos had seen earlier, and others too.

  ‘I need to call the mother,’ Vos said. But all he got was voice-mail.

  In the dining room overlooking the park, Saskia back in school, Renata Kuyper listened to her husband say what he wanted.

  He spoke with little outward emotion, as if this were a business conversation. A transaction to be concluded. A relationship in the course of amendment.

  Then, when he was done, he looked into her eyes and asked if there were any questions.

  A million.

  ‘Why?’ was the only one that came out.

  ‘Because I was bored,’ he said. ‘And curious. Resentful for the way you used to sneak into the spare room as soon as you thought Saskia was asleep. I thought you didn’t want me any more. I wanted . . .’ For a moment the words seemed to elude him. That was rare. ‘I wanted to know what it was like to be detached. From emotion. From love. If there was still any meaning left.’

  ‘Was there?’

  ‘Not that I noticed.’

  She nodded.

  ‘So you went down the red-light district and banged the first hooker you found out of intellectual inquisitiveness? Not because we sleep in separate beds and you felt like it?’

  He was barely listening.

  ‘I gave her a jacket I bought for Saskia. I thought maybe that would ease the pain. Mine. Not hers. I felt guilty. Ashamed. And all it did was make things worse.’

  ‘But you had the peace of mind to go out and buy another in its place?’ she asked. ‘To bring it here? Because that evened things out?’