by David Hewson
He couldn’t begin to guess how many people were there, chatting, drinking, eating, dancing to the deafening music coming out of a makeshift DJ desk set up on trestle tables in front of a cabin marked ‘Manager’s Office’. Every last one of them was in costume, with masks or faces painted for the occasion. Lions and zebras, giraffes, monkeys and apes, bizarre parrots, some beasts he couldn’t begin to name.
The disguises made them anonymous in the hot and noisy night. Somewhere close by he heard a real animal noise. The squawk of a primate maybe, or a bird alarmed by the racket.
There was no stray piece of paper here, no message on a wall. Vos knew he wasn’t searching for anyone now. Someone surely had to be looking for him.
Laura Bakker sat in the office, face up to a computer screen. Rijnders was running the night team, bemused as to what he was supposed to do. Van der Berg she’d recalled to Marnixstraat just as he was ordering a second beer in the Drie Vaten.
Both men had listened to her odd tale about Vos and the missing dog.
‘He loves that little animal more than anything,’ Rijnders observed. Bakker waited for more: it didn’t come.
Jillian Chandra stuck her head through the door and called out a cheery goodnight. She’d changed out of her uniform and was wearing a shiny chocolate shirt and jeans. A pair of long and lurid green earrings glittered in the office lights. She beamed at Bakker and Van der Berg and asked, ‘Overtime?’
‘No,’ Van der Berg replied instantly, shuffling his new-found hat beneath the desk so she couldn’t see. ‘Just checking the holiday schedules. We’re trying to juggle them between us.’
‘You came to work to think about avoiding it,’ she said with that constant smile. And then she left.
‘I think the commissaris has a date,’ Rijnders suggested. ‘She looked quite . . . human.’
‘Lucky date,’ Bakker grumbled. ‘Does she have to let us know she’s got her beady eyes on us every minute of the day?’
‘Boss class,’ the night man pointed out. ‘It’s what they do.’
‘It’s all they do,’ Van der Berg added. ‘Do you like my new hat?’
He popped it on. Bakker told him he looked ridiculous.
‘Back to Sam . . .’ she said.
Rijnders didn’t like any of this.
‘If Pieter hasn’t asked for help why are we trying to force it on him? We do have things to do, you know.’
‘Much?’ Van der Berg asked.
The night man frowned.
‘Couple of muggings. Young woman missing in De Pijp. Probably late back from a party. Locals are taking a look. Not much if I’m honest. What’s the problem?’
Her fingers rattled the computer keyboard.
‘Ruud Jonker. The name seemed to ring a bell . . .’
Rijnders was known for his prodigious memory. Men and women, victims, witnesses and perpetrators, passed through Marnixstraat in their hundreds each year. Without good reason most officers would be hard-pressed to recall the name of someone they’d dealt with a month before. A face perhaps. Not him.
‘Ruud Jonker? Dead and gone.’
They waited for more.
‘Got to be three, four years ago. Really nasty one. Started with some date rape cases. Some women died.’ He nudged Van der Berg’s elbow. The hat was off now, tucked in a drawer. ‘Come on, Dirk. You remember. Those clubs. And the creepiest part—’
Van der Berg shook his head.
‘That idiot in the press called them the Sleeping Beauty murders,’ Rijnders added. ‘Remember now?’
There was a look of horror on Van der Berg’s face.
‘No, no. That was that sick bastard Vincent de Graaf. It was all done and dusted. Vos put him away. Three dead girls I think, that we knew about anyway. He never said sorry or anything. It was—’
‘And the other bit?’ Rijnders asked.
Van der Berg shuddered but before he could say anything Bakker started tapping the screen. The case files were there. Summer, four years ago. There was a spate of date rape complaints. Women claiming they’d been drugged in clubs and at impromptu illegal parties then woke up the next morning without a clue what had happened to them. Then three women fished out of the river, naked, stabbed to death, traces of a sedative in their bloodstreams.
The men read the screen over her shoulder.
‘It was Vincent de Graaf . . .’ Van der Berg repeated. ‘He went down for murder. I don’t recall anyone else—’
‘Vos ran the case,’ Bakker interrupted. ‘These are his notes. He wasn’t convinced De Graaf acted on his own. He wanted . . .’
‘I was there,’ Rijnders cried. ‘The day it happened. We’d nailed De Graaf but he was a slippery bastard. One of those guys convinced of his own genius and not so good at convincing anyone else. No one believed a word he said. We got him through a mate he had living in De Pijp. Ruud Jonker. Ran a tattoo parlour in the Albert Cuyp. He was on CCTV in a club in Warmoesstraat the night one of the girls got taken. She was talking to De Graaf. Jonker was with him. Vincent we grabbed straight off. By the time we found out where Jonker was . . .’
Bakker had got there already. All the photos from the scene. A body hanging from a beam in a curious room. There was an old-fashioned barber’s chair in the centre and walls covered with patterns for tattoos: death’s heads, screaming skulls, fierce animals, butterflies.
‘That’s Ruud Jonker,’ Rijnders said. ‘Dead as dead gets. No tears shed for that one.’
‘Someone used that name to get Vos’s phone number out of the Drie Vaten. Then stole his dog.’ She stabbed the screen. ‘This isn’t about Sam at all.’
When she called the dance music in the background was so loud she could barely hear him.
‘Where the hell are you?’
‘By the zoo,’ Vos said over the noise.
‘Ruud Jonker. We’ve worked out . . .’
‘I know. I remembered.’
‘But—’
‘But nothing. I don’t want you under my feet until I know what I’m dealing with.’
‘Pieter . . .’
Then another blare of music and he was gone.
He pulled the van onto the grass verge by the river. Along the road the red and white coat of arms and the four crosses of Amstelveen stood illuminated above the black iron cemetery gate. Lights were on in the reception building behind. The only man alive in Zorgvlied, a security guard, was there somewhere, probably watching TV.
He liked this area. The quiet spider’s web of the burial ground. Then, past the triple bridges that carried the busy southern ring road and the railway tracks across the river, the vast empty space of the Amstelpark, with its lakes and hidden bowers. A place a man could hide, get lost, then walk out free in any number of directions.
Curious tourists rarely found their way here. The locals had to go back into the city for entertainment. Not far beyond the park lay the Zuidas, with its tower blocks rising out of rubble and armies of multinational young. There, in skyscraper offices growing up from the ground like weeds, they manned banks and tech start-ups, and the trust companies used by everyone from foreign rock stars to web entrepreneurs to cut the tax they were supposed to be paying back home.
A stranger never got a second glance hereabouts. Perfect for what he needed.
One last check of his watch. This was like a ballet, a deadly dance to be choreographed. He knew pretty much how long it would take Vos to get here. There was time for one last cigarette and then he checked his things, the gun, the rope, the knife, the torch, the keys.
He threw the half-smoked cigarette out of the open window, pulled on his gloves more tightly, found the mask he’d put in the glove compartment and put it on. Fake fur and rubber with two ears sticking out of the top. A costume wolf. He got out, walked round to the back, threw open the doors and looked at what was there. The cowering terrier and two still shapes in the shadows.
The dog started whining. He yelled at the creature to shut up and to his surprise it did.
Then he reached inside and pulled back the sheets. Pale, grubby skin, slack face, a white cotton gag round her mouth. But she was breathing. Behind them in the shadows, up against the seat, a quivering bundle of fur.
‘Wake up, sleepy head,’ he said, and slapped her round the face.
Ten minutes Vos wasted wandering round the outdoor party by Artis. The noise was deafening, the air rich with the stink of weed. That didn’t trouble him any more, didn’t fill him with any pangs of longing as it once had when he first came back into the police.
All the lurid faces around seemed to stare at him. They were peacock figures, anonymous probably to each other so ornate were the disguises they wore. And he was just a man pushing forty in scruffy jeans, a jacket that had seen better days, dark hair longer than Jillian Chandra would have liked. A city sparrow in a flock of gaudy birds of paradise.
Vos worked his way back towards the street, ready to give in and call Laura Bakker. Then say . . . what?
I lost my dog. I gave his lead to a stranger who vanished with him, leaving curious messages in his wake. And the name of a murderer who killed himself years before.
Any ordinary member of the public who turned up at the doors of Marnixstraat with a story like that would get a raised eyebrow from the uniform officer on duty at the desk and told to come back in the morning when the drink had worn off.
‘You,’ said a young female voice, trying to make itself heard over the din. ‘Vos.’
He turned and saw a slim figure in a black and white panda costume, rings around her eyes, white powder over her face.
‘Me,’ he said, seeing she had a scrap of paper in her hands. She turned it: a picture of him from the paper a few weeks back, running an update on De Groot’s dismissal from the service. ‘You know my name. How about yours?’
She grinned then, a line of fine white teeth, straight like those of a child.
‘You can call me Li Li.’
He turned his head to one side and tried to imagine her without the face paint. She didn’t look Chinese.
‘A panda name,’ the girl said, turning round in front of him, twirling a stumpy white fake fur tail in her fingers.
Vos pulled out his police ID and flashed it in her face.
‘I’m a brigadier with the Amsterdam police. I want a real name. Not a pretend one. If I don’t get it you’re coming with me . . .’
Three tall figures came and cast a shadow over her from the strobe lights behind. A couple of gorillas, a tall, muscular lion. Maybe two hundred people here. He was on his own.
‘Pandas like to have fun,’ the girl said. ‘You don’t seem fun at all.’
‘Beat it,’ the lion ordered in a low American grunt. ‘You’re damaging the mood.’
Twenty minutes and he could have teams out to close the whole thing down. In other circumstances he might have considered it.
‘I think you’ve got a message for me. Hand it over and then I’m gone.’
The panda face frowned.
‘No message.’
The three men shuffled closer.
‘What then?’
She leaned forward, stretched up and whispered in his ear.
‘A present. He left you a present.’
‘Who?’
A shrug.
‘Some guy.’
She reached into a pouch on her belly and pulled out a fifty euro note. ‘A present for me too. Just to deliver it.’
Vos held out his hand. She went back into the pouch, pretended she couldn’t find it while the three men around her started to laugh. The music got louder. He would put in a call about this place. Once he was on his way.
Then she retrieved an envelope, plain brown, something thick in it, held the thing in front of her, teased him with it, giggling all the while.
‘Thanks,’ he said when she finally handed it over.
He walked through the broken fencing, away from the noise and the cloud of weed smoke. Inside was a pamphlet about somewhere familiar.
Vos stared at it and all thoughts of calling a team to break up the party behind him vanished. It was a brochure headed by a black and white shield with four crosses, the coat of arms of Amstelveen, the suburb to the south of the city. Beneath that two words, ‘Begraafplaats Zorgvlied’, a photo of a high iron gate, another picture of trees, scores and scores of grey slabs beneath them stretching into the distance.
He’d been there often enough in the past. It was one of the oldest cemeteries in Amsterdam, a sprawling burial ground set in parkland by the banks of the Amstel. Maybe four kilometres south.
A cab was crawling towards him hunting business. He flagged it down.
Back in the midst of the music and dope the panda called Li Li sipped her cocktail and watched him go. One last thing to be done.
She texted the number she’d been given. The single word he’d asked for.
Delivered.
Schrijver tried the bars the young liked in the busy square of Gerard Douplein. No one remembered seeing a young woman like Annie: tall, slim, striking with a blue streak in her blonde hair and a little ring in her nose. Unusual features, he thought, but looking around him: not so much any more. His daughter was pretty, vivacious, talkative. Would chat to anyone. That came from selling flowers in the street. She was so much better at it than he. But she was trusting too, and Bert Schrijver had lost that facility a long time ago, before the divorce even, when he was starting to realize the family castle was built on sand, with only his own feeble talents to shore it up against the coming storm.
He went to another place near the Heineken brewery, pulled out his phone for the friendly barman to show him a picture of his daughter, beaming in the busy market, holding out a bunch of roses like a bouquet for a lover.
‘You’re sure you’ve not seen her?’
The man was busy.
‘That’s the flower girl, isn’t it?’
‘Annie.’
‘Annie,’ he agreed. ‘She was in here a few nights ago.’
‘When?’
He rinsed a beer glass with water, half-filled it from one of the pumps and placed it in front of Schrijver.
‘I don’t recall. Here. Have one on me. It’s ours. We’re trying—’
‘I’m not here for beer. I’m trying to find my girl.’
‘Sorry,’ the barman said.
Schrijver tried to frame a question but there wasn’t a good one in his head.
The phone trembled in his pocket. Annie’s number was flashing on the screen. He marched out into the street, short of breath, heart pumping and he didn’t know why.
‘Love,’ he said. ‘We’ve been looking—’
There was a dog barking high and scared in the background.
‘Where am I?’
Her voice sounded wrong. Confused, dazed, half-asleep.
The dog yelped again then fell silent. Something was happening, something was moving.
A muffled voice came on the line and Bert Schrijver fought to answer the question: Do I know this man?
‘You’re her father, aren’t you? Do you understand what she does at night? Where she goes?’
‘No,’ he found himself replying. ‘How would I? She’s a grown—’
‘Time you did.’
Annie moaned again, sounded barely conscious.
‘Don’t touch her,’ Schrijver said. ‘Don’t you dare. I’ll—’
‘What?’ the voice interjected. ‘You’ll send me some flowers?’
‘Please.’ The words just seemed to form themselves. ‘She’s all I’ve got.’
‘All the more reason you should take care. The cemetery. Zorgvlied. Among the graves. Come and get her.’
A drunk stumbled along the pavement and bumped into him, almost knocking the phone from his fingers.
‘For God’s sake don’t hurt my girl—’
The line went dead.
The cab got caught in traffic. At the river it shook off the nighttime crowds and ten minutes later turned onto th
e single track lane that ran by the Amstel, past empty parks and solitary houses set behind trees on one side, the wide and placid river, dimly lit by occasional houseboats, on the other.
The driver kept moaning, first about the sluggish road, then, when they turned onto the narrow dark lane, the fact he had to pull in every time he met an oncoming car. After a while that stopped, most of the lights too and the houses with them. Through the open window Vos could hear the odd bird call and the distant bark of a dog. A deep tone, not that of a frightened terrier. The crowded, sweaty city seemed distant here. The night was cooler, filled with the sounds of nature, not man.
The phone sat in his hand. A photo of the panda girl was there, snapped without her knowing before he fled the strange party in a corner of Artis.
As the taxi slowed, a tall structure appeared ahead on the right, the reception building for Zorgvlied, a familiar coat of arms in front illuminated by a few street lights. They had to stop. A car was coming towards them, another cab. As the vehicles met the oncoming one stopped. The driver wound down the window, popped his head out and asked, ‘What’s with this place? Pitch dark and two rides to a cemetery. Are the dead having a party or something?’
Vos didn’t wait to hear an answer. He threw some money onto the front seat and got out.
A torch was shining near the tall black iron gates at the front of the cemetery. There were two men there, one in uniform behind the railings, quiet, listening. On the river side another, thickset and yelling in a coarse accent, slamming his fist on the bars.
The guard aimed his torch beam at Vos as he reached the gate, sighed and said through the railings, ‘This is a graveyard. It’s the middle of the night. I don’t know who you are, friend, but the message is the same as I gave this lunatic here. Piss off. Come back in the morning. If you don’t I’m calling the police.’
Vos pulled out his ID and clamped it to the bars.
‘The police are here.’ He glanced at the man next to him. Burly, muscular, wayward hair and beard, he looked frantic. ‘Who are you?’
It took too long to get the story out of the man called Bert Schrijver. Everything came out in a jumble with names – Annie, Nina, the Albert Cuyp – that Vos had to check and recheck along the way. The security guard listened all the while, in silence. The man’s pain was clear to see.
