The Wrong Girl

by David Hewson

  A handful of short sentences and the phone went down.

  She looked at him and said, ‘Centraal station midday. They want all the money in a bag. From me. No one else.’

  His heart sank. The station was massive. Always busy. The best place from their point of view. They could take the ransom and vanish into the crowds.

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘Don’t know. He said he’d call me when I got there.’ She went for her coat and her bag. ‘I need to get the money. You’re not coming.’

  ‘Hanna . . .’

  ‘Forget it, Vos. This part’s mine.’

  He knew some of the cash was coming from the Kuypers. But there was another source and he was in the dark about that. Where she wanted him.

  ‘I don’t think it’s safe. A lot of money. You on your own.’

  ‘I’m used to being on my own. Besides, we agreed last night. There are things I have to do you shouldn’t know about.’

  ‘Did Natalya tell you anything?’

  ‘They made her speak in English. All she could say was what they let her.’

  Then nothing.

  ‘Which was?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s fine. She loves me. Can’t wait to be home.’

  ‘And you?’

  He watched the way she picked up the green plastic and canvas holdall she’d brought. He hadn’t looked inside. That was a stupid omission.

  ‘I told her the same. What do you think?’

  On the gangplank she checked her watch.

  ‘When I get the money I’ll phone. Don’t come looking. Where’s the nearest cheap hairdresser? I want to look different.’

  ‘Why?’

  The sullen stare.

  ‘To make it harder for your people to see me.’

  He took her two streets from Elandsgracht to the first one he could think of. She went in and he heard her argue for the cheapest trainee they had.

  Vos went to the cafe opposite, a place where they didn’t know him. Watched through the window. Checked his phone again.

  Something was happening in Marnixstraat. Maybe they had a lead.

  That thought nagged at him.

  Twenty-five minutes later Hanna Bublik came out. He barely recognized her. The long blonde hair was gone. Short now, dyed brunette. When he walked over she pulled a pair of old-fashioned spectacles out of her pocket and put them on. In her right hand was the green holdall, cheap and battered.

  Hooker to schoolteacher in a few brief minutes. She was good at this. A practised skill.

  ‘You like it?’ she asked.

  ‘You look as if you’re getting ready to run.’

  ‘I don’t run any more,’ she told him. ‘Those days are over.’

  Her hand went to her hair.

  ‘This is what it looks like really. I’m not blonde. I did it for business. That’s all.’

  ‘It would help if I knew where you were going.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t.’

  In the cold basement Natalya’s fingers clutched the phone. He had to prise them away to get it off her.

  Another man. Just as big. Black this time. Gruff English voice. Dreadlocks and a coloured band in them.

  ‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘You did like I said.’

  His vast hand patted her head as if she were a pet. Dirty hair now. There was nowhere in this new prison to shower.

  All thought of escape had gone. She still saw in her head the bloody kid from Anatolia slumped on the floor by the stairs. Getting kicked and stamped and punched.

  Dead, she thought.

  That was what it looked like. With that last lunge of the monster’s boot something left the dark and freezing cellar. Flitted away like a bird released from a cage.

  Dead.

  ‘What did your mum say?’ the new man asked.

  Her words were in Georgian, so strange now. Old-fashioned. Belonging to another place, one she didn’t really remember.

  You’re the light of my life, child. If they have hurt one small part of you they’ll pay. I’ll make them. But first I’ll set you free.

  ‘Well?’ He was persistent. ‘What?’

  ‘She wants me home.’

  The big hand went to her head again.

  ‘We all do, sugar.’

  ‘When?’

  He laughed. The sound came from deep inside his stomach.

  ‘When we get some money. What do you think?’

  There was a knock on the door at the top of the stairs. He went to answer it. Voices. Another of them there. He had something.

  The new man came back carrying another bag. The kind she and her mother had used when they flitted from place to place. Even theirs wasn’t as old and grubby as this one. Nor did it have such a strong zip and a padlock attached to each end.

  Natalya looked at the thing. The size, the shape of it.

  Looked at herself.

  Then at him.

  He wouldn’t meet her eye at that moment.

  ‘You be a good kid,’ he said.

  Lucas Kuyper told them AIVD had spent five years trying to plant his son inside Barbone’s network. He was his son’s only direct contact with the organization. Since they were family that was deemed safe. The cover was his sacking after leaking a bunch of papers that were either unimportant or deliberately inaccurate.

  Set loose on his own as bait.

  A month before he’d reported back that someone was finally circling the hook.

  ‘Work it out,’ Fransen added. ‘We’re talking big players here.’ She frowned. ‘Barbone met Henk once. It was out of the blue. He caught Henk on the way from taking Saskia to school. In that little park opposite his house.’

  ‘Barbone knew where he lived?’ Bakker wondered.

  ‘That and a lot more maybe,’ Lucas Kuyper told her. ‘This is a game of chess. Of poker. That’s why you people should stay clear. Barbone wanted proof. Evidence Henk was on their side. The Alamy case was coming up. They wanted him to get the preacher freed. I think they understood Alamy might give them all up to save his own skin otherwise.’

  De Groot sat motionless, no expression on his face. Then drank his coffee, said not a word.

  ‘They asked him to offer up Saskia,’ Kuyper went on. ‘They knew about me. About my past. They thought they could ransom her for Ismail Alamy. She’d be safe, they said.’

  Van der Berg’s eyes never left the commissaris.

  ‘So your son went along with that and set up a sex worker’s daughter to take her place?’

  Fransen shrugged.

  ‘Henk’s a free agent. Left to his own devices. We gave him the support he asked for. No footprints to them. None back to us if things went wrong.’

  Bakker picked up the photos: Bouali with Thom Geerts and the man next to them.

  ‘These are footprints.’

  ‘If we’d let them find their own weapons do you think he’d have thrown smoke bombs?’ Lucas Kuyper asked. ‘No one was going to get hurt . . .’

  ‘Except a stupid British kid you conned.’

  Fransen scowled.

  ‘Bouali was the drone they gave Henk to work with. The idiot pulled a gun on us. If he hadn’t I’d have got him out of there . . .’ She hesitated. ‘Somewhere safe.’

  ‘Away from us?’ Van der Berg asked.

  ‘Why do we have to keep repeating ourselves? This was not your business,’ Kuyper said archly. ‘Besides if you live by the sword you die by the sword. My family have served the Dutch military for a century and a half. We know that even if you don’t. And Henk—’

  ‘If Vos hadn’t barged into Westerdok we’d have stayed in control,’ Fransen intervened. ‘Either Barbone would have showed and we could have grabbed him there. Or we’d have implicated Alamy and persuaded him to talk to get himself free.’ She stared at De Groot. ‘The girl would have been released. The screw-up’s at your door.’

  ‘And then they’d know your son was jerking them around,’ Van der Berg said.

  She threw bac
k her head, shook her dark hair.

  ‘Jesus. It’s like talking to children. We knew Henk wasn’t going to get inside whatever he thought. He’s white. He’s Dutch. They’re never going to trust him completely. That wasn’t a serious option.’ She looked at Kuyper. ‘Maybe they thought this was a play on our part all along. Which frankly I find worrying.’

  They waited.

  ‘One more day and we’d have been there. Either Barbone in our hands or Alamy tied to the kidnapping and desperate to cut a deal.’ Her face hardened. ‘If he knew he was never getting free he’d have served us the whole network on a plate.’

  Her fingers went to the table and scattered the evidence photos there.

  ‘That was the prize. Years of work. Thrown out of the window because Vos wanted to play hero.’

  ‘We were looking for a missing girl,’ Van der Berg repeated. ‘We still are.’ He stared at De Groot. ‘Aren’t we?’

  Fransen did the patronizing stare again and said, ‘They didn’t come up with a ransom demand, remember? The kid’s gone. And so’s Henk. Somewhere.’

  She glanced at Lucas Kuyper. He nodded, took over.

  ‘AIVD tried to track my son yesterday. He’s been acting . . . out of character.’

  ‘Free agent,’ Fransen repeated. ‘He’s trying to recover something out of the mess you people dumped on him. Alone. The idiot.’

  ‘And we’re supposed to find him for you?’ Bakker asked.

  ‘AIVD are looking too,’ Kuyper said. ‘This is important. Henk’s on our side. He’s risked a lot. He could maybe still deliver. And . . .’ That shrug again. ‘He’s a soldier. Like I was. If they think he was playing them all along . . .’

  ‘He’s dead too,’ Fransen intervened. ‘Should that happen . . .’ Her finger pointed at each of them in turn. ‘You will all pay.’

  She picked up her phone, checked the messages.

  ‘There may still be something for us to recover here. For your sake I hope so. Lucas?’

  Kuyper got up. Put his trilby hat on his head. Looked like a genial old man again.

  ‘These two . . .’ She pointed at Bakker and Van der Berg. ‘They’ll keep us informed on anything and everything you hear and do. About Henk. The Bublik kid. A full log. As it happens. You know where to find me.’

  They left then. Bakker, Van der Berg and De Groot didn’t move.

  The commissaris’s desk phone rang. He took the call. It was a long one. De Groot made careful notes on a pad.

  ‘News?’ Bakker asked the moment he was finished.

  ‘We’ve found the second boat where they were keeping the girl,’ De Groot told them.

  He pushed across an address. Then pulled up a map on his monitor and turned it round. Showed them the spot.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Van der Berg muttered. ‘She was right under our noses.’

  A red houseboat, no windows visible, moored on Bloemgracht just a few streets away.

  ‘On it,’ Bakker said getting to her feet.

  De Groot sighed and stopped her.

  ‘No, you’re not. Give me a chance, will you?’

  Van der Berg hadn’t moved an inch. He knew this man.

  ‘I’m going to give this to AIVD,’ De Groot said. ‘We can send some people along to accompany them. Let’s keep this Fransen woman busy. Maybe she’ll be grateful in the end.’

  Bakker shook her head.

  ‘We want her gratitude? What about . . . ?’

  Van der Berg did get up then and said, ‘What do you want us to do, boss?’

  De Groot scribbled out a name and an address then passed it over.

  ‘This boat was rented too. From the same owner as the one in Westerdok.’ He pointed to the map. ‘Smits, the man Vos talked to. His office is behind Damrak. Go and ask him if he happens to know Henk Kuyper.’

  ‘And AIVD?’ Van der Berg asked. ‘That nice woman seemed to think we were her go-betweens.’

  ‘I’ll deal with that,’ De Groot said.

  Vos went back to the Drie Vaten, did his best to make pleasant small talk with Sofia Albers while she made him a coffee. It wasn’t easy. She looked both mad and embarrassed.

  Then she decided he could spend some time with his dog and fetched Sam from the flat upstairs. She’d bought him a new toy. A rope shaped like a bone.

  ‘Tugging,’ Sofia said. ‘You’re good at that. So’s he.’

  He went to the bar’s narrow, timber-planked upper floor with his coffee and a speculaas biscuit in the shape of a Christmas tree, holding the rope in one hand while Sam growled and grabbed at it with his sharp white teeth.

  What he’d told Hanna Bublik was right. The dog would never give up. There was only one way out of this and that was to trick him.

  ‘Oh, Sam,’ he said, looking at the door. ‘There’s Laura!’

  The terrier gave up straight away and turned to check, tail wagging madly.

  Vos chuckled. When Sam’s furious, cheated gaze came back on him he launched the rope bone the length of the bar.

  The dog loved this game. He scampered through the rickety chairs and tables, raced down the steps to the main bar, careered through the furniture chasing the toy.

  It had fetched up by the door. By the time he got there three chairs were on their sides and a glass had shattered on the floor.

  Sofia looked at it.

  Vos looked at it.

  ‘Oops,’ he said.

  She marched out with a dustpan and brush and reached the shattered glass before Sam could get there. Then went to the dog who happily let her take the rope from his mouth, something he’d never allow of Vos.

  The two of them came back.

  ‘How do you do that?’ he asked. ‘I mean . . . get him to give it up?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ She handed him the toy. Sam sat down, performed a passable impersonation of obedience, wagged his tail until Vos let him tug at it once more.

  ‘Are you really OK, Pieter? I know it’s none of my business.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he insisted. ‘Hanna Bublik was there because I’m working on her daughter’s case. And I didn’t want her left on her own down Oude Nieuwstraat. OK?’

  She said nothing. Looked half-convinced.

  ‘I can’t tell you any more,’ he added. ‘I’ll be gone in a little while. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Gone working?’ she asked hopefully.

  He saluted and said in a very serious tone, ‘The Amsterdam police never rest, do we?’

  She muttered something that sounded like ‘sarcastic bastard’ then fetched him another speculaas.

  There was a shadow at the door. The part-time barman had turned up.

  ‘Come on, Sam,’ she said. ‘Bert can look after this place. I’ll walk you. Where’s your lead?’

  Where’s your lead?

  She’d taught him that little incantation. It worked immediately. The dog dropped the toy and trotted off to the door.

  Bert came over and said hello. He was a tall man with elegant silver hair and a permanently cheery smile. When he wasn’t working in the Drie Vaten he doubled as a bit-part actor and appeared in adverts.

  ‘Anything you want, Vos,’ he said. ‘You just ask.’

  He winked and sipped at an imaginary glass.

  ‘I will.’

  When he’d gone back to the bar Vos took out his phone. He hadn’t peeked inside Hanna Bublik’s green holdall but he had placed the bug in a little side pocket. One that looked as if it never got used.

  The app for his smartphone he’d got from Aisha with a little help from her geek friend.

  It seemed simple enough. A map of the city came up. A red blip moved along Spui. Then, as he watched, stopped.

  Smits. No first name. No details. Just a mobile number and an address for the agency. It was a tiny office on the ground floor of a block in an alley off Damrak. In the main street there were hordes of tourists heading for the dope cafes and dodgy attractions. The racket of a construction site in the busy road. Touts and baffled visitors
, struggling with maps in the steady breeze.

  Henk Kuyper left them all, dodged into the narrow alley, checked the numbers.

  He’d never been here before. Had dealt with Smits by phone alone. The two of them had met briefly on the boat in Westerdok when the Georgian girl was first snatched. Kuyper insisted on that. He wanted to make sure she was well treated. To have them understand the cover story: this was a mistake on their part. He had offered his daughter as ransom for Ismail Alamy as Barbone demanded. But Bouali had screwed up somehow and the others in the team – men he didn’t know and couldn’t control – had snatched another young girl, in a similar jacket, instead.

  Did they believe him? He wasn’t sure. Smits still wouldn’t let him meet anyone else. Too soon, he said. The moment Alamy was free . . .

  The idea was AIVD would pounce and free the girl if Barbone showed up. If not they’d raid the place after two days and link the plot to Alamy. Then offer him a grim choice: a life in jail or another identity, in another country, in return for giving up the network.

  After that Henk Kuyper would go back to being what he was: an AIVD agent. The games, the pretence, the lies would come to an end. Finally he’d get his life back, try to mend his marriage. Mirjam Fransen had wanted him to go all the way from the very beginning. To see if he could infiltrate himself directly into one of the cells as a participating member.

  A nice idea when they first floated it in a genteel office in The Hague five years before. His father was there, smiling proudly. This was what Kuypers did. Gave themselves for their country.

  Duty.

  A sly, all-encompassing word. But Lucas Kuyper had worn a uniform. Taken orders. Given them. Paid the public price when things went wrong and thousands died for no good reason. Then privately surfaced inside AIVD as an adviser in a new world where the line between good and bad, friend and enemy was so much harder to define.

  His son had taken on the job without a second thought. He was a Kuyper. One of the warrior class as his father reminded him. There was a service to be rendered. It was in his blood, after all.

  None of them had known a dogged Amsterdam police officer would track down the houseboat in Westerdok within a day. Nor that Barbone’s men would spirit the girl out of there, without Kuyper’s knowledge, to an unknown location before she could be rescued.