Sleep Baby Sleep

by David Hewson

  ‘Not now,’ he repeated and pulled out his phone. Half a bar of signal. It was enough to get through to control, say where he was, demand immediate emergency medical help.

  ‘There are some steps near the private car park behind the De Witt building. If you get problems, ask the security guard.’ A thought. ‘Tell Chandra she doesn’t need to worry about Vincent de Graaf. We have him. If . . .’

  He stopped. De Graaf was laughing out loud. The effort faltered, fell into a cough, then subsided into short and shallow breaths.

  ‘Get here quick,’ Vos added. ‘He’s bad.’

  With his free hand De Graaf was trying to lift a photo stuck to his chest. One among scores, picked at random. All white, all young. All unconscious or dead.

  An echo rolled down the long damp corridor. Voices and sirens getting near.

  Vos couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t take in all the possibilities here. So he did what came easily, bent down over the skinny, yellow creature on the chair, tore the photo of an unconscious teenager from his crooked fingers.

  ‘I want that name,’ he said, staring into Vincent de Graaf’s bleary, liquid eyes.

  The pupils were dilated, the whites tinged yellow. Still they seemed to be mocking him.

  De Graaf laughed and mumbled, ‘Do you?’

  The intravenous pump clicked and shot out another dose. De Graaf let out the faintest whinny as the drug hit him.

  Decisions, Vos thought. In a moment a medic might be here and take De Graaf from him.

  ‘We had a bargain, Vincent. A good businessman always keeps his word.’

  ‘You never did business with me. What do you know?’

  ‘I know we had an arrangement. And if you don’t deliver I’m going to rip that line of morphine out of your arm right now.’ He leaned closer, aware of the stink on the dying man’s breath. ‘Will that hurt?’

  A pause, a hateful look in two failing, jaundiced eyes and then, ‘Too late, Vos. You are always too late.’ A glance at the plastic bag, the clear line running into his arm. ‘Hurt’s beyond me now.’

  ‘I want that name.’

  De Graaf closed his eyes, smiled a pained smile.

  ‘I want that name.’

  Feet coming down the corridor, voices, the loud, stern tones of Jillian Chandra among them.

  ‘Stop this,’ Bakker said, putting a hand gently to his arm.

  ‘Can’t,’ was all he could say before, with one violent movement, Vos ripped the line out of the dying man’s arm. There was the briefest, saddest, softest scream. Blood pumped up, spattered them both.

  ‘Tell me, for fuck’s sake,’ Vos hissed, a finger’s width from the sallow, shiny cheeks.

  But all that came from his mouth was a single gasp of breath, no words at all.

  De Graaf couldn’t move, couldn’t look, couldn’t speak. His eyes were turning still and glassy.

  Vos threw away the torn cannula and gripped his bony bleeding wrist, yelling, shaking, screaming. Shapes flooded through the door, blue medical scrubs, doctors. Uniforms and voices he half-recognized.

  Arms gripped him, forced him aside, pushed him towards the rusty green cabinets, through the photos strewn everywhere like leaves shed by a cruel autumn gale.

  Jillian Chandra was there, Van der Berg with her. Both looking at him in shocked silence. Bakker too and that hurt most of all.

  ‘We need the name,’ Vos shouted, pointing at the naked clammy figure as the medics swarmed around. ‘I told you not to let him go until we had it. We need it now . . .’

  ‘Get Vos out of here,’ Chandra ordered.

  ‘Listen to me . . .’

  Medics swarmed around the stick-thin shape in the chair, taking away the morphine stand, the pump. A doctor in a white jacket was barking orders.

  ‘He’s gone, Pieter,’ Laura Bakker said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ He didn’t move. ‘I’ve something to show you. Outside.’

  He followed her across the strewn cards and photographs, rustling testaments to human misery kept close beneath the cold Zuidas earth.

  Up the greasy steps the rain had stopped, the clouds had cleared. Half a moon cast a silver light on the trees, the cars, the damp roads around them, the tower block above.

  ‘I should have got it out of him,’ he whispered.

  ‘Well, you didn’t. We didn’t. But he left us something. Those pictures.’

  A sea of lost faces, the sleeping, the vanished.

  ‘What use are they? Even if we could find them . . . what good would it do? With any luck they’ve mended their lives. The last thing they need is the likes of us bringing all that poison back again.’

  ‘True,’ she said. ‘In principle. But . . .’

  She’d brought one picture from inside and held it out in front of him.

  Vos fell silent, unable to imagine what this might mean.

  They must all have come from the same camera. A cheap instant one, he imagined from the shiny square paper. Someone had written dates in a neat hand – blue ballpoint – in the corner of each.

  The picture in Laura Bakker’s fingers was from four years before. Not long before the Sleeping Beauty case broke.

  The face there was younger but recognizable all the same.

  Annie Schrijver, slimmer, paler, with longer hair, almost a schoolgirl.

  Eyes half-open.

  Awake.

  Vos’s phone throbbed and he knew what he’d see there: another text from another untraceable number.

  Any the wiser?

  Vos hit the redial button. Four ring tones and then an answer.

  ‘Not much,’ he said. ‘Are you?’

  A laugh. A man. Dry. Not young. Then something switched in, the robot voice.

  ‘Nice try,’ it said. ‘Goodnight, Brigadier. Sweet dreams.’

  FOUR

  The dreams weren’t sweet. They were dark and discomfiting. Naked bodies, dead, unconscious, some crooked in a leather barber’s chair, others floating in a swirling river that rose to swallow them. And Annie Schrijver everywhere, the face of a victim but something knowing about her too.

  That last had stuck with him all the long morning, through the awkward briefing with Chandra, Van der Berg by her side. No one mentioned his tantrum the previous night. It wasn’t that they were being considerate. The case had simply moved on to fresh and more difficult pastures.

  Working on a tip from Annie Schrijver’s mother, the night team had finally got a name for the man found dead in Zorgvlied. An American, Greg Launceston, who’d been working for one of the tenants in the De Witt building. Rob Sanders hadn’t been seen since clocking off at the hospital the previous afternoon. Every duty officer in Amsterdam now had his photograph and instructions to arrest him on the spot. A small team had broken into his flat in De Pijp and found nothing incriminating so far.

  Vos had a hunch Sanders would turn up one way or another. More than anything though he wanted to pick up where he’d left off with Annie Schrijver and that was proving impossible. The hospital said she’d be allowed home shortly but every request for an interview was being rebuffed. To Chandra’s disgust the parents were directing inquiries to a law firm notorious for handling anti-police cases. There were questions about the pressure Den Hartog had placed on Annie to go on TV. At least that meant Chandra was more occupied with thoughts of damage limitation than interfering in an investigation that seemed to grow murkier by the hour.

  The photos from De Graaf’s subterranean lair were posted around the walls of the serious crimes unit, a team of desk officers and civilians set on identifying the victims they so cruelly portrayed. Four women had been traced, all missing, now presumed dead.

  ‘We’re not going to find them all, are we?’ Bakker asked, staring at the sea of faces. ‘They weren’t human to him. Just trophies to gloat over.’

  They’d fixed an appointment with Willem Strick, De Graaf’s former partner, in his office at the De Witt building.

  ‘Um . . .’ She nudged him and pointed discre
etly across the corridor. Marly Kloosterman was there getting out of the lift, bright-eyed, scanning the office. ‘Your friend’s here. Do you want me to . . . ? Look busy?’

  He didn’t answer. Just got some coffee and found a desk where the three of them could talk.

  ‘I’m genuinely sorry, Pieter. Sorry we fouled up. Sorry he’s dead.’

  Marly Kloosterman was flicking through the preliminary report from the morgue. It said Vincent de Graaf had died of pulmonary oedema. He’d effectively drowned as his lungs filled up with fluid caused by the massive morphine overdose administered through the pump.

  ‘Not your fault,’ Bakker told her.

  She didn’t look as if she agreed.

  ‘Did you get anywhere with that phone I gave you?’

  Forensic said it had been remotely wiped. Someone had a way into it from elsewhere. The moment they thought it was compromised they sent a command which restored the thing to factory defaults.

  ‘That’s a shame.’ She placed the papers back on the desk. ‘I really haven’t been any help at all, have I?’

  ‘He was still alive when we got there,’ Vos said. ‘If I could—’

  She shook her head.

  ‘He was a very sick man.’ She tapped the printout. ‘Nothing was going to keep him alive after that.’

  ‘I could have got a name.’

  ‘Vincent was never going to give you anything. He as good as told me when he left.’ She grimaced, scraped nervous fingers through her short hair, looked worried for a moment. ‘I think he maybe threatened me too.’

  ‘Threatened you? How?’

  ‘It was just a stupid thing. He said . . . He said he wouldn’t usually be interested in someone my age.’ She smiled. ‘Nothing left to spoil apparently. But for me he’d make an exception. Not for himself, you understand. His friend.’

  ‘His friend’s still out there,’ Bakker said.

  ‘His friend killed him, didn’t he?’

  ‘Looks that way,’ Vos agreed. ‘We can still get someone to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘No. I should never have mentioned it.’ A thought; she glanced at him. ‘But if you want to come along . . .’

  ‘Marly . . . this is serious.’

  ‘Oh, please. Whatever drove Vincent on . . . whatever’s driving this accomplice of his now . . . it’s not vengeance, is it? Nothing quite so noble.’

  ‘I still think . . .’

  ‘No. I don’t want any of you wasting your time on my behalf. You’ve better things to do. I’ve got to get back. The shit’s going to be flying over this. Not your way. I’m the one who fixed that transportation.’

  But it was just what the prison did in the circumstances, Vos said.

  ‘It was. And it went wrong. I put my hand up. I’m to blame.’

  ‘Obvious you don’t work round here,’ Bakker growled. ‘You’d be busy finding someone else to carry the can.’

  There was a difficult atmosphere in the office. Jillian Chandra had been taking calls from her superiors in Zoetermeer. Word was they were less than impressed by results so far. Den Hartog was stomping round the corridors like a man with a hangover. Van der Berg seemed to be out of Vos’s team for good, working by her side, barely talking.

  Vos pulled up one of the autopsy pictures on the computer. It was something he’d seen briefly in the angry confusion of the previous night. He pointed to the photo: Vincent de Graaf’s right arm, the one that had taken the morphine line that had killed him. The drug went in through a small needle fixed into the vein. But his arm was covered in bruises and puncture marks from near the shoulder to the wrist, dark red blood marks on them. More than a dozen. Not a man fond of injections, or even the thought of them, Vos found it hurt just to look.

  ‘This thing you put in a someone’s arm,’ he said, pointing to the tiny plastic and silver device.

  ‘A cannula,’ Kloosterman told him.

  ‘Are they hard to insert?’

  ‘Can be if you want to get it right.’

  ‘So many—’

  ‘De Graaf’s veins were like him. They never wanted to cooperate. I used to struggle sometimes and I must have inserted thousands of those things.’

  Bakker, less squeamish, rolled up her sleeve and pinched the blue line beneath her pale skin there.

  ‘Can anyone do it?’

  Kloosterman thought about that.

  ‘In theory I suppose. It’s just a short, sharp needle with a tube on the end. You find the vein, you drive it in. If the arm doesn’t work you try the back of the hand. I insist a doctor does it. We have the time and we have the staff. In an emergency you’d leave it to a nurse.’

  She peered at the photo more closely.

  ‘Some of those marks probably date back to someone in the clinic struggling to get one into him. I really don’t know. It’s not something we record.’

  ‘Would it have hurt?’ Bakker asked.

  Vos had gone a little ashen-faced. Kloosterman noticed and it amused her.

  ‘Needles,’ she said. ‘When you don’t have many they terrify you. If someone sticks them in you day in and day out most people barely feel them. When I was a medical student my flatmate used to let me practice on him. Although . . .’ She looked a little coy. ‘It is possible he had other reasons for cooperating. We did end up married. For a while.’

  ‘You’re saying it wouldn’t have hurt?’ Bakker persisted.

  ‘Vincent de Graaf was a very sick man. He was no stranger to needles. Can you blow that picture up?’

  Bakker did and they looked at the map of bruises, yellow and purple, on De Graaf’s bony dead arm.

  ‘I’d say you’re looking for a very clumsy nurse who’s well out of practice. Or a rank amateur who discovered it wasn’t as easy as he thought.’

  Vos flicked over to the general photo of the scene. The naked skinny corpse on the barber’s chair, the stand, the equipment behind.

  ‘A rank amateur couldn’t set that up.’

  Marly Kloosterman patted his knee.

  ‘It’s a bag, a pipe and a pump, love. You could pick up how to use it on YouTube if you wanted. Oh dear. I’m not being helpful, am I?’

  Bakker had the car keys out. She wanted to be gone from Marnixstraat, hunting round the place where Vincent de Graaf died such a strange and mysterious death. So did Vos, if he was honest.

  ‘You’re a lot of help,’ he said. ‘We have to go. Is there anything else?’

  ‘Not that I can think of.’

  He had to say it.

  ‘I need to know you’re safe. De Graaf met this man. If he really did pass on your name then—’

  ‘Oh, please. I’m a big girl now. Unless a certain brigadier I know is in the neighbourhood. It’s quite a boat. Did you see Het Parool at the weekend?’

  The question threw him. He hadn’t.

  ‘I was in the Beautiful Homes section.’ She pulled out her phone and showed them a picture of the two-page spread. The place looked impressive even though the photos were tiny: a long, shiny green boat, elegant rooms, a bedroom with a double divan, ornate linen and a chandelier. ‘I do tours, but only for special friends.’

  Bakker had her long arms folded and was staring at the two of them.

  ‘Would you like a quiet moment together?’ she wondered.

  Silence.

  ‘Obviously not,’ Kloosterman announced. ‘Still. Can’t blame a girl for trying.’

  She wandered off with a little wave. Bakker up scooped her bag, checked her gun, got her jacket.

  ‘I really like your friend. Not sure about that houseboat. Bit over the top.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No. I mean it. About liking her. She’s different. Sense of humour. You could use that. Been a bit grumpy of late.’

  ‘Thank you again.’

  On the way downstairs his phone bleeped: an email. It was from Marly Kloosterman. A copy of the article from the paper and a message.

  Just a reminder, Pieter. One day. Please . . .

>   The lawyer called Petra Zomer had phoned Nina Schrijver the night before after seeing the interview on TV. She was partner in an activist firm based in the city centre, keen to take on social cases, everything from immigration appeals to child custody and police persecution issues. By the time Annie was ready to leave hospital Zomer was behaving as if she owned them already. Her firm organized the transport. One of its seniors warned off the media as much as was possible while Zomer fielded calls from Marnixstraat demanding a fresh interview, staying noncommittal, promising she’d get back to them.

  Bert Schrijver wondered where the money for a fancy lawyer was going to come from. The police, Zomer said. In the end. Until then the firm would work for free, no win, no fee. With long black curly hair and a lively, ever-smiling face she looked like a student of twenty-three, dressed even younger, had tattoos running up her thin, taut arms. Nina was sold on her already. Annie didn’t have – or want – much of a say. The debate was over before he realized it had even begun.

  Annie’s return home was quiet in the circumstances. A blacked-out Mercedes took her round the side. Zomer got her to pull the hood of her jacket over her head then walked her in through the back door. Her mother and father followed. There were still plenty of photographers and reporters around, all looking for new pictures of the rape victim who’d been brave enough to go public, but they’d been sent a fake tip-off to look for Annie going in the front.

  Inside, Zomer told them she’d had four offers from magazines and TV stations, promising big sums for ‘the full story’. Not now, Nina insisted. Maybe not ever. What mattered was getting Annie settled, getting her well. Bert Schrijver watched and stayed quiet. There was still a distance between the three of them, something unspoken, a place no one much wanted to go. At least he and Nina were equal there for once.

  He’d closed the doors to the market side of the building. Adnan was selling hard on the stall. Hoogland was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he’d given up on the flower trade finally and tagged onto one of the other businesses. Or joined the team that broke the market nightly, taking down the stalls, scouring the filthy street with sweepers. There was always casual work to be had and Jordi Hoogland knew everyone hereabouts. Even if they didn’t like him they needed hands from time to time.