by David Hewson
He pointed to a low leather chaise longue set back in an alcove, out of sight of the window.
‘Take off your clothes. Lie there. On your front.’ He reached up to the mantelpiece and retrieved what looked like a jar of cream, examined it in his fingers then replaced it on the wooden shelf. ‘I’ll be quick.’
In a little cabin she had a measure of control. It was her place, for an hour or two. She could choose, say no if she wanted.
Not here.
The sweater came off. The boots and socks and jeans. Soon she was looking at her naked limbs. Seeing all the imperfections, the blotches, the stretch marks, the odd scar. Skin and hair. Touched and mauled time and time again, not that she thought about that much any more.
You never knew what they wanted. In different circumstances she’d always ask and say, ‘Do this, don’t do that.’
But she recalled Yilmaz wrestling with the hefty young blade here the day before. No way of guessing what he’d desire by way of proof, of entry fee. No point in wondering.
The chaise longue looked expensive and cheap at the same time. The leather shiny but soft with frequent polish. She lay down, put her arms under her chin, kept her head up, didn’t even try to look back. Opened her bare legs just a little.
She hoped he wasn’t lying when he said it wouldn’t last long.
A sound she couldn’t quite place. As if the logs in the fire were shifting position, trying to get a better look. Then footsteps. She sensed him over her, heard the soft, rhythmic sound of his wheezing breath.
‘A man must leave his mark,’ Cem Yilmaz said and his big knee rammed down hard on her back, pushing her face sideways, right cheek hard into the leather.
Then came an agony so intense, so unexpected she started to shriek and wail, squirming, fighting as something hot and excruciating seared and scorched her.
There was a smell it took a second to recognize amid the agony. Then it came. Burning flesh and skin.
Not long, he said. Just a few agonizing seconds. He let go, stood up, short breath coming in snatches.
She turned to her left side. It hurt the least.
He went back to the mantelpiece and placed a long iron rod in the blazing grate. It looked like a thin sword with an emblem on the end, just fading red. He picked up the jar of cream again and pulled what looked like a surgical pad out of a wooden box above the fireplace.
Then a vanity mirror. The kind upper-class women used in British movies.
‘Sit up,’ he ordered and she did, half-choking with anger and hate.
The burning smell wouldn’t go away. It was her.
Yilmaz walked round with the mirror and told her to look backwards.
One glance towards the window and she knew what she’d see in the oval glass. Seared into the skin by her right shoulder blade was an ornate figure, the source of all that stinging agony. It looked like the letters ‘CY’ in a curious script. Bloody and brown ridges in the flesh where he’d branded her.
She should have guessed. Not that it mattered. She still would have allowed him to brand her anyway. Knowing would only have made the anticipation worse.
‘Here,’ he said and threw her the cream and the dressing. ‘There are some painkillers in the bathroom.’
Her head wasn’t working right. She couldn’t even think of Natalya at that moment. Just how small and frail and damaged this man had made her feel.
‘Put your clothes on. Go take those pills like I ordered. You’re one of my girls now. Like all the others. They’ll know you. So will the men I send.’
Shivering, mouth open, bent over, shoulder shrieking with pain, she clutched at the cheap jacket as if it offered some kind of protection.
‘Get out of here!’ he cried. ‘I don’t want to look at you like this.’
Yilmaz reached into his pocket and took out a fifty euro note.
‘You won’t work until Friday. This can keep you. Someone will call and tell you what to do, who to meet.’ His finger jabbed towards the livid mark on her back. ‘If a man sees that and he didn’t come through me I’ll know. Remember. Now move.’
She scooped up the money and ran into the bathroom. The wound was too tender, too fresh for the cream. So she attached the dressing very lightly, washed down her face, got rid of the tears. Sat on the toilet.
Sobbing.
Fearing.
Hating.
And finally . . . thinking.
She had her bag with her. Took out a ballpoint pen. Scribbled the codes for the front door and the lift on the inside of her left wrist.
He didn’t look at her as she walked out fifteen minutes later, went down to Spooksteeg, tottered along the cobbles on unsteady feet.
Then did something she’d never tried before even though so many men had offered her the opportunity. Walked into the nearest coffee shop, one owned by Yilmaz for all she knew, and asked for some dope. Ready-rolled.
She didn’t know how to handle it or what she was paying for. How strong it was. How quickly it might call up an oblivion she craved.
They didn’t allow you to light up inside any more. She didn’t even smoke. Hanna Bublik walked out and sat in the cold, damp winter air, next to a couple of stoned idiots on chairs in the street. Got one of them to pull out a lighter, drew the thick, heavy smoke inside her.
Closed her eyes. Found herself looking into a black empty place inside. One that seemed to go on forever.
Saif Khaled lived in a narrow pedestrian street not far from Zeedijk. Chinese shops and supermarkets. The exotic fragrance of a nearby restaurant filled the air.
Bakker parked her bike by the grubby brick front wall and pressed the bell. Vos stood back and looked the place up and down. Four floors and a cellar with a blacked-out window and a separate door at the foot of some stairs.
It took a minute then someone answered. Khaled looked much as he did in the pictures Ferdi Pijpers had taken. Full black beard, wavy shiny hair. Late forties, calm. He grunted when Bakker showed her ID and then, on her tablet, the photos from the previous weekend.
‘I’m amazed it took you so long,’ he said and showed them in.
A neat house. Clean floors. Clean rooms. The smell of disinfectant mixed with incense. He led them to a front room, went to the kitchen and came back with three glasses of mint tea.
Vos sipped his, struggling with the too-hot glass. Bakker pointed out Bowers in the shots.
‘Bouali,’ he corrected her when she spoke his name. ‘That’s what he called himself.’
The story came out. Pat and straightforward. Khaled occasionally took in Muslims in trouble. Broke, lost, looking for help. Temporary accommodation to get them back on their feet. No questions asked usually. None stayed for more than a week. That was a strict, unbreakable rule.
‘Who pays for this?’ Bakker wondered.
‘I’ve got relatives who can afford it. Many times over.’ He raised his glass in a kind of toast. ‘Charity doesn’t cost much. He said he needed somewhere to stay. He wasn’t asking for money. Just a bed.’
Khaled looked at the images on Bakker’s tablet again.
‘Who took these? Your people?’
‘A deranged soldier,’ Vos said. ‘The man who shot dead Ismail Alamy last night.’
He looked at them again.
‘Was he following me? Or Bouali?’
‘We don’t know.’
He didn’t believe that.
‘Really? This Englishman got my name from somewhere. He called and asked to see me. I wouldn’t let him in here. So we met in the street. I listened. I said no.’
‘Why?’ Vos wondered.
‘He wasn’t being honest with me. I don’t ask many questions. But when I do I expect good answers. He wasn’t long in the faith. Wouldn’t say what brought him here . . .’
‘So why were you expecting us?’ Bakker asked.
The pleasant facade vanished.
‘I do read the papers. I saw what happened to him.’
‘You could have come
forward,’ Bakker suggested.
‘And say what? I met this man for ten, maybe fifteen minutes. Once. All I knew was he wanted somewhere to live. Someone to talk to maybe.’
‘You should have told us,’ Vos said.
That got to him.
‘Why? Out of some misplaced duty? This lunatic was taking photos of me. Am I truly supposed to believe you didn’t know? Just because I’m Muslim. Then you shoot Ismail Alamy—’
‘We didn’t shoot him,’ Vos cut in. ‘I told you. It was a disaffected soldier. We think he picked up your name through the newspaper. If Alamy had accepted our offer of protection it would never have happened.’
‘Protection?’ Khaled scowled at both of them. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Very,’ Vos said. ‘Did you know Ismail Alamy too?’
The veneer of friendliness had disappeared altogether.
‘I knew of him. We never met. I wish we had. But then you people threw him in jail. For no good reason, as the courts said in the end.’
‘We’d like to look around,’ Bakker said.
‘Do you have the authority to do that?’ He laughed. ‘No. If you did you wouldn’t be asking, would you?’
‘If there’s nothing to hide . . .’ Bakker began.
‘The basis of your law, as far as I understand it, is that you must show my guilt. Not that I must prove my innocence. It didn’t happen for Ismail Alamy, of course. But why stop trying?’
He got up and took their glasses.
‘Where were you on Sunday?’ Bakker said, watching him.
Khaled thought for a moment.
‘I don’t have any guests at the moment. I went down to the canal and watched a little of the nonsense. A man in a white beard. Little blacked-up elves running round doing his bidding. The things that amuse you people . . .’
‘And then?’
‘Then I came home and read. On my own. I didn’t bother with Leidseplein if that’s what you mean. There’s only so much pantomime a man can take.’
‘On your own?’ she repeated.
He put their glasses on a tray.
‘I’ve answered your questions. I met Bouali for a few minutes. I’ve never spoken or communicated with Alamy at all. And now they’re both dead.’ He stared at her. ‘Are you happy?’
‘There’s a young girl missing,’ Bakker snapped. ‘Kidnapped by people associated with them. Don’t you even care?’
A shrug.
‘There’s so much to care about in the world. I try to focus on matters that are close to me. Things I can affect in some way. There’s nothing I can do for that child. I’m sorry.’
He gestured at the door.
‘Perhaps you’ll have better luck elsewhere?’
Outside Bakker was fuming. Vos looked at the house again. A big place for one man. In front of the nearby restaurant a couple of Chinese waiters were starting to argue with a customer. Someone who’d rushed outside without paying. Not a good idea in this part of the city. He was going through his pockets for money, trying to stay out of sight.
‘What do you think?’ Vos asked.
Bakker took the lock off her bike.
‘I think he probably enjoyed wasting our time. We don’t have enough for a warrant. Do we?’
He shook his head, walked over and looked at the menus. The fleeing diner threw some money at the waiters then scuttled off down the street.
‘Do you like Chinese food?’
‘This isn’t the time, Vos.’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘It isn’t.’
He turned and looked at the house again.
‘Did I miss something?’ she asked.
‘Probably not. Let’s get back to Marnixstraat.’
Halfway there his phone rang. Vos pulled in to the side of the road to take it.
They were in the Nine Streets. Vos found himself staring at a shop window full of seasonal kid’s clothes. Snowflakes and reindeer. Thick wool caps. Expensive children’s toys.
Bright jackets. A pink one there with a pony on it.
Mirjam Fransen, furious as usual.
‘What in God’s name do you think you’re doing, Vos? Saif Khaled’s on our watch list. You’re not supposed to go near him without our permission.’
He wondered if he ought to buy Bakker something for Christmas.
‘I never checked your watch list. I’m looking for a little girl.’ He told her about the photo of Khaled and Bowers on Pijpers’s phone. ‘We have to follow these things up.’
‘Did you find anything?’
The pony jacket cost seventy-five euros. Probably as much as a woman like Hanna Bublik could net in an hour or two.
‘I found out your surveillance people have a habit of leaving Chinese restaurants without paying the bill. Why did you have people there?’
Silence then.
‘Is there something I should know?’ he asked.
‘About what?’
‘About Saif Khaled? Martin Bowers? That phone tap I asked for on Henk Kuyper?’
‘Enough of this shit, Vos. You’re making things worse.’
‘Is that possible?’
‘It is.’
‘We need to offer a full ransom when they call.’ He was trying to sound reasonable. Hoped it worked. ‘Not this fake one De Groot’s put together. You can come up with the money. Mark the notes. Put GPS in the bag. Do stuff I don’t even know about . . .’
‘Not going to happen.’
Vos had a pretty clear picture of how the handover might take place. Plenty of examples of extortion and kidnapping in the past. A minion, sometimes an innocent one, would be sent for the pickup. He’d check the money was there then take it to a more senior party. A stack of paper wouldn’t fool them for more than a few minutes. Then the link man would be on the phone.
He walked away so that Bakker couldn’t hear him.
‘If we don’t go through with this the way they want . . .’
‘This is your case, Vos,’ she said and didn’t try to hide her disdain. ‘You said so. Deal with it. But you’re not giving criminals government money.’
Bakker ambled over. Vos called Hanna Bublik. Still voicemail.
‘Jesus, Hanna,’ Vos whispered. ‘Where are you?’
Then left one more message.
The Nokia phone found in the pocket of the dead Ferdi Pijpers now lay dissected on a plastic tray. Aisha Refai was poking through the pieces with a pair of tweezers, messing with the sixteen gig flash memory, when Thijs the freelance phone geek walked in. Twenty-three, tall and earnest. He worked as a consultant for telecoms firms in the city. She only called him when she was stuck. He knew that too.
Thijs stared at the dismantled phone on the desk and said, ‘What in God’s name are you doing? An N96? That’s like a work of art.’
‘It’s a phone,’ she said. ‘A phone.’
‘A phone in bits now.’
She told him what had happened. How the Nokia was found in a shot man’s pockets. Already wiped.
‘Hard or soft reset?’ he demanded.
‘Hard?’ she said uncertainly.
He sat down, pulled on a pair of latex gloves and started to reassemble the thing.
‘So you turned it on and found nothing?’
‘Correct,’ she said, trying to sound patient. ‘Why do you think I called you?’
‘Because you need a genius.’ He grinned. Thijs looked nice when he did that. ‘Coffee helps kick off the genius cells by the way.’ He nodded at the new machine. ‘Double espresso.’
She grunted something and went and made him one. When she returned the phone was back together again. He was sliding out the keyboard from under the body. It looked neat. Small screen, early smartphone, made in 2008 from what she’d read. But a museum piece.
Thijs put in the power cable and hit the on button.
‘There are two ways to reset an N96. Hard and soft. You type . . .’ He scratched his head, as if trying to recall something. ‘Asterisk hash 8780 hash for hard. Three zer
o for soft.’
‘You can’t imagine how much that knowledge has enriched my life.’
He grabbed the coffee cup, raised it in a cheery toast and took a sip.
‘UDP.’
Nothing more.
‘Pardon?’
‘UDP. User Data Protection. Clever little thing Nokia came up with to make sure you wouldn’t lose your stuff. Even if the phone crashed. So long as the flash memory’s intact you’re covered. So . . .’ He watched the screen come alive. ‘It’s still there. You just need to know where to look.’
She folded her arms, kicked her stool back from the desk and watched him.
The supercilious grin on his face didn’t last long as he clicked through the buttons.
‘Any luck?’ she asked as he started to run out of options.
He put the phone down, took a deep breath and asked where the SIM was.
‘There wasn’t a SIM in it.’
‘Really? And this is how you found it? In the morgue? Wiped?’
‘At the risk of repeating myself . . . yes.’
‘It doesn’t work like that. This thing’s been completely erased. The data area. The system area. Completely blank. You can’t do that from the phone itself. The only codes that work are the ones I told you.’
This was interesting.
‘But you could do it, couldn’t you?’
He waved his arm.
‘Naturally. But not from the phone. You have to plug it into a laptop. Go deep. If you know what you’re doing it’s a minute’s work. But you need your gear.’
She tried to think this through.
‘He could have done this himself. At home. Before he went out.’
‘Then why take the phone with you?’
‘To make calls?’ she said wearily.
‘You’re not listening, sweetheart.’
‘Don’t call me . . .’
‘It’s blank. Not even set up. My theory . . .’
He liked to think of himself as a detective from time to time. Which drove her nuts.
‘Someone got the phone after he was shot. Either on the way from the airport or here they plugged it into a laptop and knew what they were doing.’
‘So there’s nothing there at all?’
‘Devoid of data. Not a bit or byte in sight.’ He turned the phone over in his hands. Almost affectionately. ‘Cool piece of kit in its day. Five megapixel camera. GPS. Carl Zeiss optics. Wi-Fi. HSDPA. DVB-H, not that that was much use . . .’
