by David Hewson
Vos recognized the photo. It had been pinned to the wall of Jonker’s tattoo parlour when they arrived to find him hanging from a beam next to the old barber’s chair he used for his customers. Like the note left on the door of his houseboat the evening before, this dead man’s features seemed designed to taunt him.
You’re a clumsy man, Vos.
You miss things.
‘Usually because people lie,’ he murmured.
Schuurman said his people would be here all day. Possibly tomorrow too. The Zorgvlied people weren’t happy. The whole of Paradiso would have to be off-limits to the public. There’d be complaints. This corner of the cemetery, outlandish in parts, funny even, was quite an attraction for those who knew about it.
‘They do,’ Laura Bakker agreed.
The words took him by surprise. He hadn’t noticed she was off the phone.
‘You look worn out, Pieter,’ Aisha Refai observed. ‘How much sleep did you get?’
‘Enough. What do you know?’
In the concise, professional fashion he’d come to expect, she told him. There was little in the way of physical evidence at the moment, and what they’d found probably came from the victims. But they’d worked out how the two had been brought here. A small boat had steered through the narrow canal that ran from the river round all three sides of Zorgvlied, then back to the Amstel, branching off beneath the busy road into the neighbouring park. The channel was little used but just about navigable. Breaks in the weed and mud tracks up from the bank suggested one man was responsible. There were slide marks that indicated he’d dragged both victims up into Paradiso, placed them there for someone to find, laid a line of diesel around the stone angel then waited in the boat for the show to begin.
‘Quite a show too,’ she concluded.
‘No arguing there. What killed him? I thought I saw a wound.’
Like all forensic people she hated guesswork.
‘A little early to say. He’d been hit on the head. Schuurman doesn’t think that would have been fatal. There were facial bruises, scrapes on his knuckles. He’d been in a fight. And lost. You asked us to look for date rape drugs.’
Vos waited as she checked something on her phone.
‘We haven’t had time to work on him yet. But I passed that suggestion on to the hospital. They found GHB in the woman’s urine.’ She looked at him intently to make sure he understood. ‘If she lives you may well have saved her.’
GHB. The same drug used in the Sleeping Beauty cases.
There were so many things awry here. The timeline for one. A neighbouring stallholder saw Annie Schrijver leave her home in the Albert Cuyp around five two nights before. The next day she wasn’t due to work so it took a while for her mother to get worried. If someone had slipped her a date rape drug the night she disappeared it would have worn off, or had more serious consequences, by the following morning. Yet she wasn’t found until the evening, still drugged.
His phone went. Jillian Chandra.
‘I want you to keep me up to speed with what’s happening,’ she said before he could utter a word. ‘We could have two murders soon, a lunatic loose in the city—’
‘Of course. But—’
‘Do you have a lead yet?’
If only. Murder was often predictable, the product of anger or envy, drugs or drink, lust or hate. It was usually close and spur of the moment. Careful planning and deliberation were rare. Even the most common kind of homicide outside domestics – gangland killings – came with a history, a lineage, like footprints in the blood. Though men and women who took the lives of others never appreciated it, they tended to work to an unspoken template. And for that the police were deeply grateful.
This had the same feel as the Sleeping Beauty case that preceded it. Like jazz, it appeared at first to be improvised. Yet behind the casual ad-libbing lay structure and some kind of careful plan. At that moment he couldn’t begin to discern either.
‘Ask me in an hour or two,’ he replied and knew it sounded desperately weak.
‘I’m asking you now. The media are going to give us hell. I looked at the files from four years ago. If we’re going through that nightmare all over again . . .’
If, he thought.
‘Perhaps it’s someone with an axe to grind. Maybe a friend of Jonker’s. Maybe . . .’ Aisha Refai wandered back to the stone angel and the pool. There were carp in it, Vos saw. Fat orange fish swimming lazily in the greenish pond set among the many corpses in the Paradiso earth. ‘Whoever it is they’re organized. They know their way around.’
‘What about the girl?’
‘She’s in intensive care. We’re going there next.’
‘Don’t know much, do we?’
There was a long, dissatisfied sigh and then she hung up.
Vos looked around him. In the daylight Zorgvlied seemed more like a well-manicured park than a cemetery. Finding Jonker’s grave hadn’t been easy. The narrow canal around the burial ground wasn’t an obvious way in.
He called the office and got Van der Berg.
‘This is a rare one, Pieter,’ he said. ‘How’s Sam?’
Vos had a feeling he was going to get asked that question a lot.
‘He’s with Sofia. He wasn’t hurt. I don’t want to keep saying that to people all day long. So tell everyone, will you?’
‘Sure.’ Van der Berg sounded vaguely offended. ‘What else can I do for you?’
‘See if there are any listed sex offenders living within spitting distance of Zorgvlied. If there are check whether there’s even the slightest connection with Ruud Jonker or the Sleeping Beauty case.’
‘Anything else?’
‘This,’ Vos added, sending him the photo he’d snatched on his phone. The girl from the rave at Artis.
‘Pretty panda,’ Van der Berg said.
‘There was an illegal party near Artis last night. See if we pulled in any of the organizers. Anyone who might know this kid. She passed on the message.’
The clatter of keys came over the phone.
‘Seems we had a couple of calls from the neighbours moaning about the noise.’
‘Did we do anything?’
A pause and then, ‘We sympathized. No arrests. No names taken.’
Wonderful, Vos thought, recalling the way the creatures crowded round and stood ready to leap on him if he’d persisted in trying to talk to the girl.
‘If you don’t get anywhere in an hour give that photo to the media. Tell them we don’t think she did anything wrong. All the same we—’
‘We’d like to eliminate her from our inquiries.’
‘Quite.’
Van der Berg paused for a moment then asked, ‘Is it all happening again? Like before?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘The commissaris is getting very jumpy. The media are sniffing round like crazy. It’s just the kind of story they like.’
‘We don’t even know what the story is yet.’
‘No.’
Something in Van der Berg’s voice indicated he had something to say.
‘What is it?’
‘I’ve been going through the notes. About the Sleeping Beauty case. It seems someone from the prison left a message for you two weeks ago. They thought maybe you’d want to interview
Vincent de Graaf again. He was hinting he wanted to talk.’
‘And?’
‘It was that doctor. Marly Kloosterman. The one you . . . and her . . . well, I don’t want to pry.’
‘I never got any message.’
‘No. Sorry. Well, you know now.’
There was one last word with Schuurman and Aisha then he walked back to the car by the entrance to Zorgvlied and tried to picture the previous night’s movements in his head.
‘Jesus. I’m being slow,’ he moaned as Bakker came and unlocked the car.
‘Why?’
He didn’t answer, just looked up and down the lane, trying to think this through.
‘Pieter. We’re d
ue at the hospital. Will you kindly tell me what’s going on?’
If he hadn’t been so exhausted and confused by the long night he’d have seen it earlier. Annie Schrijver and the unidentified victim had been taken to Zorgvlied in some kind of small boat or dinghy. But Sam had been snatched in the centre of the city. Whoever took him couldn’t have got there on the water. There wasn’t time. So a vehicle must have been involved.
‘Maybe he came back and got it after he left in the boat?’ Bakker suggested.
‘Maybe.’
‘Perhaps there were two of them.’
Except it didn’t feel like two. Not that he was going to say that. It sounded ridiculous. For all he knew there might have been an entire team teasing him, sending him racing through the city the night before.
She was right, though. They needed to be at the hospital. Vos called Van der Berg again and told him to get some uniform officers down to Zorgvlied to check the river banks.
‘Looking for what?’ asked the voice on the other end of the line.
‘Tyre tracks,’ Vos said.
The moment they got to the hospital they went to find the duty consultant. There was an awkward question to be asked. A thin middle-aged man of Chinese appearance, heavy-eyed as if he’d been up all night, the medic was scrolling through data on a computer screen in his office. It seemed there wasn’t a lot new to say about Annie Schrijver’s condition. It was serious. All they could do was wait.
‘If you could persuade the parents to go home for a while that might help,’ the doctor said. ‘Her father needs a shower. And a change of clothes. Some manners might not go amiss but I guess that’s asking a lot.’
‘Do you have any idea what they’re going through?’ Bakker asked.
‘Yes,’ the man replied with a curt smile. ‘I do. Part of my job. Part of yours too, I imagine. Or do you lie to people?’
‘We try to help.’
Vos glanced at her and Bakker fell quiet.
The doctor picked up his clipboard.
‘They can’t just sit in a corridor here day and night. We don’t have room to put them up. The best thing is for them to go home. Sleep. Get clean. Wait until we have a clearer picture—’
‘How much GHB was she given?’ Vos asked.
‘Too much. Beyond that I can’t say.’
The timeline still bothered Vos.
‘She was last seen late on Tuesday afternoon. When we found her last night she was unconscious. Would one dose . . . ?’
‘No,’ the consultant answered, getting the point straight away. He gave them a brief lecture about gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid, one Vos didn’t need. He remembered most of the details from four years before. GHB acted directly and swiftly on the central nervous system. In small doses it could be a stimulant or aphrodisiac. In larger quantities, especially when mixed with alcohol, the chemical could lead to a sleep so deep it was hard to rouse the victim. Overdoses, intolerances or simple allergies could lead to breathing difficulties, unconsciousness and death.
‘The young still seem to think it’s a sweetie of choice whatever we say. GHB’s odourless, though I gather it’s got a mildly salty flavour.’ The doctor stared at Bakker. ‘Remember that if your drink tastes funny in a nightclub.’
‘I don’t do nightclubs,’ she replied. ‘Where do you get it?’
‘Anyone who knows a bit about chemistry can knock it up,’ Vos told her. ‘They make it at home. Give it names like Lollipops. Juice. Desert Rose.’
‘True,’ the man agreed. ‘We have it here as well. Not knocked up in someone’s bedroom. Mainly it’s used to treat narcolepsy. Severe disruption of sleep patterns. A drug’s a drug. It’s the way you administer it that makes the difference.’
Vos’s phone buzzed. It was a text from Jillian Chandra asking for an update.
‘So if she got doped on Tuesday night,’ he went on, ‘that still wouldn’t explain why she was in a semi-conscious state last night?’
‘No.’
‘But if he administered a second dose yesterday?’
The doctor thought about it.
‘Depends how much. If it was small she’d sleep like a log for a while. If it was bigger . . .’ He checked his phone for messages. ‘Then I’d call it murder. Two heavy doses would kill anyone. But these kids . . . they think this stuff is just harmless fun. You go clubbing. It makes you feel good. If you find a girl you like you slip it in her drink. Get her home. Do what you like. She sleeps it off and in the morning she doesn’t really have a clue what went on. How often do they complain to you?’
‘Hardly ever,’ Vos replied. It wasn’t just the shaky memory. There was the shame, and the nagging feeling that dogged so many victims of sexual assault, male and female. The idea that somehow, in their carelessness and stupidity, they were to blame.
‘Is Annie Schrijver going to live?’ Laura Bakker asked.
‘Hopefully,’ the doctor answered, heading for the corridor. ‘I do have other patients to deal with. You’ll excuse me.’
One last point had to be settled. Vos stopped the man and said, ‘Do you know if she’d been assaulted?’
It was clear from the response in his eyes it wasn’t a welcome question.
‘By assaulted you mean . . . what?’
‘Had she been beaten up?’
‘Not that I could see. Few bruises on her shins. From what I heard she got dragged through a graveyard naked. Probably from that. I don’t think she was in a fight if that’s what you’re getting at.’
‘Had she had sex recently?’ Bakker added.
The man took a deep breath and stared at her.
‘We’re trying to save her life. To do that I need to focus on medical priorities. Nothing else.’
‘This is a criminal investigation,’ Vos said. ‘One murder. Maybe soon it will be two. We need to answer those questions.’
‘You mean you want to examine her? You’ll need consent. That girl can’t give it. Nor me. If—’
‘What about the parents?’ Bakker wondered. ‘If they say yes?’
He didn’t answer.
‘We’ll deal with it,’ Vos told him.
‘Ask nicely,’ the consultant said as he headed off. ‘Those two are in a state. And afterwards . . . get them out of here. They need that. So do we.’
Back in Marnixstraat Van der Berg was wondering if there was a way he could side-track Jillian Chandra’s efforts to follow Vos and Laura Bakker’s every move. The serious crimes unit had a way of working, one that had been established over decades under a succession of station heads, all of them male, all of them from Amsterdam. Everything was primarily hands-off, delegated to a front-line team. Murders and other high-level crimes couldn’t be tackled by committee. The commissaris of the day gave the job to a suitable brigadier then stepped back and, for better or worse, left the troops to the task.
Chandra wasn’t cut out for that arrangement. She was the kind of boss who stood behind you as you worked, watching every keystroke, waiting for the moment she could stick her nose in and say, ‘No. Not like that.’
It hadn’t happened yet. But the moment couldn’t be far off.
He’d pulled out every file he could find on the Sleeping Beauty case from four years before. There were surprises there, lacunae and oddities that were easily visible to someone fresh to the facts and blessed with the benefit of hindsight. It was clear, as Rijnders had said, that Vos hadn’t been entirely convinced by the result. One suspect, Vincent de Graaf, a high-level mover and shaker in financial circles, convicted of murder, sexual assault and the illicit administration of drugs. The second, Ruud Jonker, owner of a lowly tattoo parlour in De Pijp, dead, suicide it seemed.
The three murdered women were in their twenties, dumped in the Amstel river not far from the Zuidas, dead from frenzied knife attacks. Each of them – and this was the creepy part Rijnders had recalled – had a message tattooed on their shoulder. The same three words, ‘Sleep Baby Sleep’.
Once the story started to hit
the papers several other women came forward to complain they’d been drugged in nightclubs in De Pijp and the Zuidas and thought they’d been sexually assaulted afterwards. But none had tattoos, any clear recollection of where they’d been taken, what might have happened there. A couple pointed out De Graaf in an ID line-up. Most didn’t. Jonker was dead. Trapped, De Graaf was happy – almost proud – to confess to three murders as part of what he claimed was violent love-making that went too far.
For four years nothing like the Sleeping Beauty deaths happened again. There had to be a reason for that gap. Van der Berg was checking with a couple of the intelligence people going through the sex offender records when Aisha Refai came up from forensic, grinning ear to ear.
‘Please tell me you’ve got a name,’ he said.
‘For our customer on the slab? No. Names are your field, Dirk. Not ours. Getting anywhere?’
When he didn’t answer she waved her tablet at him and Van der Berg let her get on with the show.
Photos.
A corpse. Neat hair, fashionable trimmed beard. White, fit, muscular, athletic perhaps. Maybe thirty. Probably good-looking when he was still breathing. Cleaned up ready for the pathologist’s scalpel, eyes closed, a line of dried blood running from his left nostril, he just looked dead. Then some close-ups. A wound at the side of the head, probably a blow from a hard object like a hammer.
The tattoo on his shoulder was very like the ones from four years before. The familiar single line of text, ‘Sleep Baby Sleep’.
Van der Berg felt out of his depth.
‘Don’t you need, like, a shop or a parlour or something to give people tattoos?’
She closed her eyes and ran a palm across her forehead.
‘My God. Where do you start?’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve got one.’
Aisha laughed.
‘In that case I won’t. This is a very simple thing to do. A single colour, just three words. I talked to someone who runs a parlour this morning. He says it’s a piece of cake. Probably used what’s called a portable line gun. You can pick them up online for forty euros. If you can write your name you can tattoo someone. Especially if they’re dead.’
