by David Hewson
‘Damn.’
So they didn’t need special premises. It could happen anywhere.
‘We are going to get DNA from the Schrijver girl, aren’t we?’ she asked.
‘Vos and Laura are at the hospital right now. We need permission.’
‘Good. Do you really have no idea who he is? A boyfriend . . .’
‘Why would a boyfriend want to drug her?’
He got that hint of condescension again.
‘You’d be amazed, Dirk. If she was hitting some of the clubs. All sorts of stuff goes on. Want to know how he died?’
‘Let me guess. That date rape drug he used on the girl. GBH—’
‘GHB,’ she corrected him. ‘No. At least if he did get that on Tuesday night it’s probably gone from his system by now. We don’t have all the results back.’
He tried to tell himself murder inquiries always started this way. Too many questions, too few answers. But Aisha had one. It was written on her face.
‘One result I do have though. Whoever our friend downstairs is . . . he was poisoned.’
She pulled up a photo on her tablet. A close-up of his mouth. Blue skin, black lips. Something on his gums that looked like dried, caked powder with brown flakes in it.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Not a shadow of doubt. Potassium cyanide killed him. The stuff the Nazis used to use in suicide pills. Secret agents too if they thought they might get caught. So long as your stomach acid’s not too high it’s a really quick death.’
She hesitated then said, ‘I’m guessing here, and this is beyond my remit. But I’d suggest this wasn’t suicide. From the way the stuff was caked in his mouth he was probably unconscious anyway. No sign he tried to spit it out. It just went in and . . .’ She made a cutting gesture with her hands. ‘Gone.’
‘Wonderful. Date rapes. Poison. Tattoos. Cases that were supposed to be dead. What the hell . . . ?’
‘Something else.’ She zoomed in on the powder. ‘What does that look like?’
‘Sawdust. And . . . some grey . . . stuff.’
‘Well done! I may be hiring an intern soon if you want the job. It’s plaster. The kind you can buy from a builder anywhere.’
He stared at the fatal mixture on the dead man’s black lips.
‘What the hell does it mean?’
‘That,’ she said, ‘I cannot tell you. All I know is this. There’s only one place I’ve found where people habitually mix potassium cyanide, sawdust and plaster.’
A flick of her fingers and another photo came up. A large glass vessel with a sealed top, a beautiful butterfly flapping its wings inside, at the bottom a layer of brown and grey.
‘It’s a killing jar. For moths. And butterflies.’
‘Oh,’ he whispered. ‘That really helps.’
One of the intelligence people, a bright woman who’d just joined from Lelystad, overheard. She’d been checking out the sex offender records.
‘Butterflies?’ she asked then hammered the keyboard in front of her.
People argued around the sick and dying. Out of earshot of everyone else, or so they hoped. Sullen, aggrieved huddles in hospital corners, in funeral homes, at crematoriums. Vos had seen this many times before and knew there was no easy way to alleviate their pain. They didn’t want to share it. They craved to pass it on, find someone near to blame. All too often he couldn’t help. Maybe it was an accident, bad luck, simple fate. Or perhaps the world at large had failed them and those responsible had fled. The best thing to do was let the grief and fury expend itself then hope to pick some sense out of the emotional debris left behind.
Even so, there was something strange about the way Bert Schrijver, the woman Vos took to be Annie’s mother, and a third younger man in a blue medical uniform stood stiff and angry in the long corridor by reception. The policewoman was doing her best to keep the older man calm. It didn’t matter. Bert Schrijver needed to let off steam and whoever the medic in the blue suit was he seemed to make a fine and easy target.
An older individual in a studded black leather jacket detached himself from the shouting the moment he saw Vos approach, walked down the corridor the way people did when they didn’t want to be seen, never realizing how visible this made them. Curious, Vos told Bakker to follow and find out who he was. Then he strode up, waited for a gap in the yelling, showed his ID card and waited.
The man from the previous night looked exhausted, a mess. Unshaven. In need of a shower as the consultant had said. The woman introduced herself as Annie’s mother Nina. She was striking, with high cheekbones, shoulder-length dark hair turning grey and darting, anxious eyes. Vos couldn’t help glancing at the unconscious figure on the bed. A nurse was checking the monitors and making notes. Schrijver watched, tired eyes damp with tears, grubby fingers to the glass.
‘I’ve been trying to calm things down,’ the uniform policewoman objected. ‘I keep telling them . . .’
Vos held up a hand and looked at the man who was the object of Schrijver’s anger. He was early thirties, spiky short fair hair, a face that looked as if it might be genial most of the time. Fit and tough if he wanted to be. A name badge read: Rob Sanders.
‘You’re a doctor?’
‘A nurse. Annie and me. We were . . .’ He sighed. Schrijver swore. Sanders closed his eyes. Staff in hospital met the sick and dying every day. They didn’t normally look quite so pained by the sight. ‘What the hell happened?’
‘We’re trying to find out,’ Vos told him. ‘Someone abducted Annie. On Tuesday night probably. The man with her was killed.’
‘The man?’ Sanders wondered.
‘I thought you were done with my daughter,’ Schrijver spat at him. ‘Don’t think you had any rights there.’
‘I never did. Never would.’ He turned to Vos. ‘How is she?’
‘You work here,’ Schrijver cried. ‘You tell me.’
‘Let it go, Bert!’ Nina Schrijver yelled. ‘It’s not Rob’s fault she’s like this.’
Sanders nodded thanks then headed for the door to her room. Schrijver stopped him.
‘You don’t go in there. I don’t want you near her.’
The woman was close to tears.
‘He’s a nurse, for God’s sake. He’s every right—’
‘No,’ Sanders said. ‘I don’t. I just . . . wondered.’
Vos leaned against the glass and watched him.
‘When did you and Annie stop . . . stop being friends?’
That didn’t go down well. Rob Sanders wasn’t the calm, kind hospital face just then.
‘Is that important right now?’
‘I don’t know. We’re trying to work out her movements. When you all saw her last.’
Tuesday afternoon, Bert Schrijver said, when she was leaving the shop. She’d stopped working Wednesdays a few months before; a six-day week was too much for her. Annie had told him she was staying with her mother that night. He’d assumed the two of them were together. But Nina Schrijver hadn’t seen her daughter since Monday when they had lunch in a cafe by the park.
Sanders came last.
‘We bumped into each other in the market a couple of weeks ago.’ He checked his watch. ‘I’m off shift and clearly doing no good here.’ Nina Schrijver waited, expectant. Then he came and embraced her, kissed her on both cheeks. ‘Tell me if I can help. I know this place like the back of my hand. If there’s anything—’
‘You can stay away from her,’ Schrijver interrupted. ‘That’s what you can do.’
Sanders wandered off down the corridor with a wry, regretful smile.
‘You’re a stupid, ungrateful man, Bert,’ Nina snapped. ‘Did I ever tell you that?’
‘Morning, noon and night. If—’
Vos said, ‘You should go home, both of you. Get some sleep. The hospital will call if her condition changes.’
He got mobile numbers out of them then asked the question that brought him here.
‘We really need to get your daughter examined by
one of our forensic team. It’s important. If that’s OK—’
‘Why?’ her father asked.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Nina Schrijver swore. ‘They found her naked in a graveyard. Why the hell do you think?’ She nodded, staring sad-eyed through the glass. ‘It’s OK.’
Vos’s phone rang. He walked away from the Schrijvers for some privacy. Laura Bakker marched up the stairs, holding up her notebook, a name scribbled on it: Jordi Hoogland.
‘He doesn’t like us,’ she said. ‘Also he’s got a ponytail. At his age. I ask you.’
It was Van der Berg calling.
‘Are you still at the hospital?’
‘On my way back. Tell forensic they can come and take a look at the Schrijver girl. The parents have given permission.’
‘How is she?’
‘Much the same. Anywhere with an ID for the man?’
‘Nowhere. We’re releasing a photofit they’ve run up in the morgue. The commissaris wants us to put out a warning about spiked drinks in clubs.’
‘Why?’
‘We’ve got the TV and newspaper people banging on the door asking if the Sleeping Beauty killer’s back in town.’
‘The Sleeping Beauty killer’s stuck in prison, dying by the day.’
‘Then a copycat maybe. She still wants that warning out there.’
His phone beeped. It was a photo sent by Van der Berg. A man about forty, wispy beard, thinning hair. A butterfly tattoo running up one side of his neck.
‘You asked for a sex offender living near the river, didn’t you? Well, here you are. Jef Braat.’
Bakker was craning to get a look at the picture.
‘Sentenced to two years for sexual assault a while back. Served half, released two months ago. Records think he did a lot more than that. Whoever our dead man is he was killed with some poison you find around butterfly people. At least the kind that use killing jars. Braat was working at Artis until two weeks ago. In the butterfly house. Left suddenly.’
‘Got an address?’
‘Houseboat on the river out in the wilds on Amsteldijk Noord about a kilometre beyond Zorgvlied. Right now he should be at work in some new little butterfly house they’re building at the kid’s zoo in the Amstelpark.’
Just across the highway from Zorgvlied, attached to the network of narrow canals running out from the cemetery.
‘I’ll tell the commissaris you’re on it. She’s very interested in your movements right now. Want a few officers to keep you company?’
‘For a kid’s zoo? Send Laura all the background you’ve got. See if we have anything on a man called Rob Sanders. He’s a nurse at the VU hospital. Used to be Annie Schrijver’s boyfriend. And someone who works down the Albert Cuyp. Jordi Hoogland.’
As soon as he was off the phone the Schrijvers came up to talk.
‘We’re going to take your advice and go home for a while,’ the mother said. ‘You will find who did this, won’t you?’
‘Of course,’ Bakker answered straight off.
‘In time,’ Vos added.
‘Time,’ Bert Schrijver grunted and made the word sound like a curse.
The Zuidas was the new home for money in Amsterdam, a budding Dutch Wall Street or Canary Wharf. Among the towers for banks, financial specialists, trust houses and global insurance firms, tall cranes stood like giant storks feeding on stumps of half-built office blocks. Corrugated iron fences hid patches of bare grass waiting for the next construction crews. Fancy corporate offices loomed over minimalist apartment complexes purpose-built for the area’s new residents: the single, the unattached, the wealthy, the foreign.
Vos drove through the construction traffic out towards the Amstelpark, a pleasant sprawl of greenery, lakes and play areas next to the growing financial suburb. Laura Bakker went through the information coming over from Marnixstraat, reading out the details as they crawled through the lines of cars and trucks. Jef Braat was thirty-eight, jailed for assaulting a tourist outside a bar in the red light district. The attack fell somewhere short of rape but that may have been because he was beaten up by a couple of men who’d intervened when they saw what was happening.
‘Should have gone down for more,’ Bakker grumbled.
There was no point in moaning about the length of sentences. A working officer could waste all day on pointless gripes. What was interesting was the date of Braat’s release. There had to be a reason why a long-dead case like this had suddenly reignited now. Perhaps it was simple: the man who lit the fire had just come out of jail.
Her phone beeped.
‘Dirk’s been through records,’ she said. ‘Rob Sanders is clean. Jordi Hoogland’s got a couple of convictions for drunkenness and assault. Nothing recent.’
‘What did Braat do for a living before he went to jail?’
She went through the file.
‘Driver for a financial company in the Zuidas. The De Witt Trust. The boss was a character witness in court. Said he was a good employee, trustworthy, loyal. Helped cut the sentence.’
Vos pulled into the entrance to the park. They couldn’t take the car any further.
‘He did some volunteer work for Artis while he was inside,’ she went on. ‘They gave him a job in the butterfly house when he was released. He got fired for some reason.’
‘The De Witt Trust? You’re sure?’
She tapped her phone.
‘That’s what it says here. Why?’
‘Vincent de Graaf founded the De Witt Trust. They must have known each other.’
She checked the report on her phone.
‘De Graaf was in prison himself by then. The man who spoke up for Braat in court was the general manager. Willem Strick.’
As far as they knew the Sleeping Beauty case had never come near Vincent de Graaf’s work. There’d seemed no reason to chase that line at the time. De Graaf’s deadly hobbies appeared to be part of a private fantasy acted out with Ruud Jonker. And perhaps others they never found.
They left the car with security then stepped inside the park gates. Bakker looked at a map of the area set up by the entrance.
‘This place is huge. How do we—?’
Vos had taken his daughter Anneliese here from time to time when she was little. In fifteen years the place had hardly changed.
‘We catch the train.’
When they walked ahead they met a miniature track running from a tiny platform. There was a sleek white engine that must have looked like a futuristic rocket when it was made decades before. A handful of excited young children sat with their parents in the open carriages behind, begging to leave. In the cab of the engine stood a cheery driver in a striped cap who saluted as Vos flashed his ID and got on board.
‘The police always ride for free,’ the man said with a grin. He looked happy to play train driver for the kids. Then he squinted at Vos. ‘Don’t I remember you from years back? With a little girl?’
The visits here were part of a different life when Vos had a family, a settled home. Something that seemed like stability. He didn’t recognize the man at all.
‘Your memory’s better than mine,’ he said as Bakker climbed into the open carriage beside him.
The driver tooted his whistle. The kids cheered. For a moment Vos was back with Anneliese, excited by his side. A proud father who wanted nothing more for his daughter than for her to be well and happy and settled. Just like Bert Schrijver who was now, he hoped, at home, getting some sleep, more likely half-awake, praying for the phone to ring.
‘This Braat character’s got to be involved,’ Bakker insisted as they set off.
‘You think?’
‘Too many connections for it to be a coincidence. Vincent de Graaf. Artis.’
‘Connections . . .’ Vos murmured.
She looked exasperated. He could do this to her sometimes.
‘You think I’m wrong, don’t you?’
‘No. I just don’t know if you’re right. Anyway . . . I hate jumping to conclusions. Cases are like . . .
like . . .’
He was supposed to mentor a junior officer like Bakker. To teach her the ropes. There was little need. She was quick, incisive. But she was young, which meant she saw things in black and white. And Amsterdam was rarely so accommodating.
‘Like what?’ she asked.
‘They’re narratives. Like a story. Lots of little pieces of string tied together loosely, hopefully, as you go. Then . . . at the end.’
Vos leaned back and closed his eyes. It was warm, the end of summer. The park was empty save for a few families. Away from Marnixstraat and the angry, frightened family in the hospital, there ought to be time to think. Except the more he tried, the more things didn’t add up. He kept seeing Jillian Chandra’s persistent, demanding face asking . . . why? Was the Sleeping Beauty killer really back in business? He kept remembering Marly Kloosterman too, the one woman he’d nearly fallen for when he came back into the police and was struggling to find his feet. That had blossomed briefly until nothing but his own timid reluctance had brought the brief affair to a close.
‘At the end you pick it up and pull. Either the knots hold. Or they fall apart in your fingers.’ He opened his eyes, smiled at her and shrugged. ‘In which case you return to the beginning and try to tie them back together. Just differently.’ The stop was coming up, and beyond it a playground where three kids were lounging on a roundabout looking bored. ‘Until you find some context they’re nothing more than little pieces of string. Maybe useful. Maybe not.’
They got off next to the kid’s zoo, asked an attendant selling tickets for the rides how to find the butterfly pavilion. He pointed to a modest wooden building on the far side of the complex then wished them luck.
There was a sign on the door promising a grand opening in a week’s time. A man in grey overalls was sweeping up sawdust and plaster from the building work. He was sixty at least with a thin silver beard and a narrow, almost skeletal face. Bakker asked where they could find Jef Braat.
‘Who wants to know?’ He looked at their ID cards and introduced himself as Erik de Jong. The money and the organization behind the little butterfly house in the making. Given it looked little more than a large shed with a glass roof and a few plants inside, that seemed a stretch. ‘He’s supposed to be here. With his damned pets.’
