by David Hewson
‘There’s gratitude for you,’ Bakker said as Annie Schrijver headed back towards the Albert Cuyp. ‘At least the commissaris will be happy.’
‘You think?’
Annie Schrijver marched off to the Pilsvogel. Her father followed and didn’t know why. It was a bar he’d used when he was a kid, back when the Albert Cuyp was nothing but a tight local community built around the market. All that had changed. Foreign voices, crowds of young hogging the tables on the street, cramming into the narrow interior. He guessed her friends had left. If they existed at all. He wasn’t sure what to believe any more. Or who.
Nina was there though, seated at one of the barrel tables by the street, a glass of wine in front of her. She looked angry and upset as Annie stormed over.
Schrijver stayed back, wondering if a smarter man might know his place and retreat in silence to the lonely quiet of home. But that wasn’t him. Something needed to be said.
‘What the hell did you think you were doing, Annie?’ he asked when he came up to them. ‘You know the police were looking for him.’
A waitress in a short skirt came up and asked what they wanted. Stood there until Schrijver answered. It was a bar. You had to drink. Beer, he said, and Annie nodded at her mother’s wine.
The girl vanished to the counter so he asked again, ‘For God’s sake. You were going to meet him. After what he’s done—’
‘What he’s done?’ she broke in.
Schrijver looked at Nina and asked her the question that had been nagging him ever since the scene in the hospital the night before.
‘How much else is there an idiot like me doesn’t know?’
‘Search me, Bert,’ she muttered and took a swig of wine.
The drinks came. The waitress stood there until she got some money. Annie knocked back half of hers in one go, closed her eyes briefly, then glanced at her mother and said, ‘I need out of this place. De Pijp. This bloody city. I may need to ask for a loan.’
‘Of course,’ Nina said. Annie always got what she wanted.
Schrijver wagged a finger at her.
‘You should talk to the police.’
‘Why?’ She looked angrier than he’d seen in ages. ‘Really, Dad, after everything they’ve done . . . why?’
‘That man Vos didn’t put you on the TV. He told us. He’s a decent sort. You deal with him. They’ve got Rob Sanders now. You can’t keep avoiding them—’
‘Can’t I?’ she cut in. ‘I don’t owe anybody anything. This is no business of the police. It’s between me and Rob. No one else—’
‘There were other girls,’ her mother said quietly. ‘It wasn’t just you.’
‘Not with him!’
‘Really?’ Nina asked. ‘You believe that? And Tuesday night was nothing—’
‘Nothing to do with Rob. Nothing at all. I just felt like some company. So I went for a drink with that American creep. Next thing I know . . .’ Another big slug of wine went down. ‘I’m in hospital. You two looking at me like I’ve done something wrong. Everything else is a long bad dream. No Rob in it. Wish there was. Things might have worked out differently.’
She stood up and looked at her mother until Nina pushed away her half-finished drink.
Schrijver stopped them before they could flee.
‘That lawyer won’t hide you forever. You’re going to have to talk to Vos. One day. None of this will go away until you do. Doesn’t matter if you run off either.’
When she looked up at him like that, headstrong, wilful, awkward, he saw the child in her, the wayward, always active kid who dashed around what was left of the castle never doing as she was told. The only daughter he had and he’d loved her more than anything else in his life.
‘You know that, do you, Dad?’
‘I do.’
There was a brief and savage look of victory on her face.
‘Well, if anyone would it’s you. Let’s face it. You’re the king of hiding stuff. What’s going on with the shop . . . with everything.’
‘What does that mean?’ he asked and prayed she wouldn’t answer.
‘It means we’re all going down in the shit together, aren’t we? Bust. Bankrupt. Finished. I’m not stupid and nor is Mum.’
There was such calculation behind the remark, such a deliberate attempt to hurt him. Schrijver didn’t know what to say.
‘Jordi Hoogland knows something about you,’ Schrijver said and hated himself on the spot. It was meanness that put the words in his mouth, nothing else. Spite greeting spite.
‘What?’ Annie demanded.
‘Don’t know. Wouldn’t say.’ He stared at her. ‘You care to tell me?’
‘That’s enough,’ Nina said and took her arm. ‘We’re leaving.’
The waitress was back picking up their glasses. She looked at him and asked if he really wanted his untouched beer.
‘Paid for it, didn’t I?’ Schrijver retorted.
When she was gone he left the drink, went back to the shop, dragged open the green doors, headed straight for the office.
So Annie knew they were headed for the rocks. He should have guessed. She was never slow.
Still there was something bothering him, something he needed to check.
Night was falling on Amsterdam and Rob Sanders was saying nothing at all. Chandra had ordered them to use the interview room with two-way glass. Now she stood on the observation side with Vos and Van der Berg watching Bakker and a statement officer trying hard to persuade the man at the table to speak. Even if it was just to confirm his name.
Swollen lips from the tumble he took in Sarphatipark. A plaster on his cheek to cover the graze there. He looked like a bum who hadn’t slept in days. Vos suspected Sanders had taken flight the moment it became clear De Graaf’s secret room had been found, stayed out for the night wondering what to do, where to go. Perhaps it was inevitable he would find his way back to De Pijp and the Schrijvers. Where else was there left to go?
All they knew for the moment was what they’d gleaned from the encounter in Sarphatipark: he’d phoned Annie Schrijver and tried to meet her. Why, they didn’t know.
The commissaris was a dangerous mix of emotions. Relief that they finally had the man in custody. Intense frustration that she couldn’t wrap up the case with a quick and informative confession.
‘This has gone far enough. You need to put the evidence to him,’ she demanded.
At Vos’s orders they hadn’t yet raised the question of the hat from the Drie Vaten.
‘Not now.’
She sighed and came very close, a habit she had, a blunt attempt to intimidate people. Perhaps it worked in Zoetermeer.
‘What do you mean, not now?’
‘I’d rather save it until he’s starting to talk.’
‘Why?’
Van der Berg stepped in for once.
‘Because if we introduce it when he’s in this kind of mood he’ll just shrink further into his shell. Then it’ll take a lot longer to get anything out of him. When they clam up like this all that usually unclams them is time and patience.’
The way she reacted to the last word told Vos it was one she hated deeply. She glared at Van der Berg, then Vos.
‘You think he date raped Annie Schrijver four years ago? With Vincent de Graaf?’
Probably, Vos said, remembering the photo of her they’d found in De Graaf’s stash. That in itself was odd: eyes open, that frightened stare straight into the lens.
‘And after something like that she went out with him? There has to be more to it . . .’
‘There does,’ he agreed.
But to charge Sanders with rape they’d need either a confession or an incriminating statement from her. Neither of which appeared forthcoming.
‘Annie Schrijver formed a relationship with him afterwards. A long one. A close one, it seems. Even without recent events she’s not minded to help us. Nor is he.’
Chandra was barely listening.
‘I want this thing wrapped up. The
hangover from four years ago. Zorgvlied. That American pervert. I want this bastard charged and in court as soon as we can manage it. There’s too much bad publicity flying around already. The longer it goes on the worse it becomes.’
Vos stayed silent.
‘Unless you’re still persisting with the idea we have the wrong man.’
‘There’s nothing we can charge him with at the moment. We don’t have the proof.’
Chandra gazed at him, astonished.
‘Proof? We’ve got his DNA on the hat he dropped. It places him in the middle of everything.’
He shook his head.
‘No. All it does is place a hat he once wore outside a bar. Nothing else. We don’t have a print, a hair, not a single piece of direct physical evidence that says he was involved.’
‘Which is curious,’ Van der Berg agreed.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Chandra grumbled. ‘I wish to God I had my people from Zoetermeer here. They’d have this in front of a judge in the morning.’
Vos waited to see if Van der Berg would chip in there. When he didn’t he said, ‘If we try to wrap this up on speculation rather than evidence some clever lawyer will take us to pieces in court.’ He hesitated then said it anyway. ‘We’ve enough trouble with lawyers as it is.’
He nearly added more but thought the better of it. Instead he went to the interview room door and called for Bakker. She was well over shift. Exhausted officers rarely got anywhere. It was time for someone else to take over.
‘OK,’ she said when he told her to go home. ‘I don’t think Mr Sanders is about to talk, I’m afraid. About anything. Doesn’t even answer when I ask him if he wants a lawyer.’
Vos brought in Koeman from the night team and left instructions. Sanders would be told he was going to be detained for further questioning about two murders and a case of sexual assault. He would be allowed a few hours to sleep and to shower. In the meantime, they’d find him some fresh clothes. No belt, no objects he might harm himself with, and someone to keep a suicide watch throughout.
‘If he looks as if he wants to talk, call me,’ he told the night man. ‘If he doesn’t, don’t push it. We’ll come back in the morning when he’s had time to think. Might be easier then.’
Chandra listened, arms folded, huffing and puffing. When Koeman left to tell his officers she said, ‘This is deeply unsatisfactory.’
Bakker looked mutinous. She stared at Chandra and asked straight out, ‘Have you worked investigations before, Commissaris? I mean . . . directly?’
That, Vos thought, really helped.
‘As it happens . . . yes. I was acting commissaris in Leiden for a while—’
‘Leiden?’ Bakker almost laughed. ‘Not exactly crime central, is it? If Rob Sanders doesn’t want to talk there’s precious little we can do. We either wait until he unbuttons his lip. Or we find something that’ll do it for him.’
‘Go home, Bakker,’ Chandra told her. ‘You’re annoying me.’
Then she sniffed the air and turned on Vos.
‘Have you been drinking?’
The tequila was good in the Mariposa. He’d say that for the two brothers running the place.
‘Just the one. In the course of duty.’ He checked his watch. ‘Duty being well past I feel it’s time for more.’ He smiled, at her, at Van der Berg. ‘Good night.’
Jillian Chandra moved to stop him leaving.
‘Tomorrow you get somewhere with this farce. Or I’ll find someone who can.’
The harder Bert Schrijver tried to unravel what had gone on that evening the more stupid he felt. So Rob Sanders had phoned his daughter. For reasons Schrijver couldn’t begin to imagine she’d gone to meet him.
All the same he knew it was idiotic to worry about things you couldn’t affect, couldn’t control. Pointless to obsess over your own problems too when, however large they seemed, there were always others with worse.
Such as innocent refugees beaten up and robbed by a thug like Jordi Hoogland.
There was an address for Adnan. It was scribbled in what he presumed was the young Syrian’s own careful handwriting in the books. Desperate to get away from the Albert Cuyp, Schrijver grabbed a tram to Centraal station and walked the rest of the way. Wouldn’t have been a good idea to take the van. It was just possible he’d do what Hoogland suggested and drink himself into a stupor somewhere that night.
Adnan Mathan and his family lived near the docks. Third-floor room in a tenement that stank of bad drains and cooking. The scared-looking woman who answered the door wasn’t keen to let him in. Nothing personal. This was a place for immigrants and people who helped them. Schrijver guessed he didn’t look like either.
He stood there and called through, ‘Adnan. It’s Bert from the market. I know you’re home.’ He tried to find the right words. ‘I know what happened. I came to apologize. Also I owe you some money.’
The woman opened the door a little wider at that and Schrijver saw: one big room that seemed to be packed with people. Adnan, his wife and their young daughter were huddled in the far corner on two single mattresses. Still Schrijver waited on the threshold. You had to be invited. That was only polite. Everywhere as far as he knew.
Eventually the young Syrian came over and took him out into the corridor. Beneath the weak yellow bulb of the landing his face looked swollen and bruised.
‘Jordi Hoogland speaks for himself and no one else,’ Schrijver told him. ‘What he did was wrong and by God he knows it now. He won’t be back our way for a long time. Here . . .’ He held out a hundred euros from the day’s takings. ‘These are your wages. A bonus as well.’
The Syrian stared suspiciously at the money.
‘You don’t owe me a bonus. You didn’t do this.’
Schrijver took his hand and stuffed the notes into his palm.
‘It’s not sympathy. It’s common sense. You got me more money today than we’ve had on a Saturday for as long as I can remember. Take it.’
The young man did and looked grateful.
‘Can I come in?’
‘Why?’
He wondered what their lives were like in Aleppo. Not fancy, he guessed. But not poor. Much like market people everywhere. Can’t have been easy to move from that and find yourself confined to a hovel, crammed into a room with people you probably didn’t know. Scratching a living in a foreign and occasionally hostile land, a family to feed.
‘I want you back working for me. I’d like to know who you are. Your wife. Your daughter. I’d like to meet them.’
Adnan hesitated for a short while then stood back and beckoned with his arm. The room was badly lit, hot, airless. The curtains were little more than ragged sacks. Someone was cooking in the corner on a gas camping stove. Perhaps a dozen or more people, mostly young, mostly miserable Schrijver guessed, living in a single room. There were babies there. He could hear them, smell them.
His wife was Mariam. She looked older than her husband, or perhaps was just worn down, stick-thin with close-cropped, roughly cut black hair. Schrijver wondered if she was ill. The daughter Lia was four, tired but smiling. Not thin at all. That was where the food went.
‘We’re grateful you gave Adnan some work, sir,’ Mariam told him in a voice that was serious and not in the least servile.
‘I’m Bert. No one calls me sir. Any more than I call them that.’
His words brought the faintest of smiles to her dark face.
He wanted a drink. A beer. A couple of gins. Instead he said, ‘There’s a cafe round the corner. Keeps late hours. I use it sometimes if I’m working nights. We could go there to talk. Quietly. In private. If it’s OK . . .’
‘It’s OK,’ she replied with a grateful glance, then took her yawning daughter’s hand and led the way.
It was a ten-minute walk, longer than Schrijver realized. But they didn’t complain. The distance wasn’t much for them, he imagined.
The place had been there years. Just three customers left and thirty minutes to closing time. Che
ap white tables, uncomfortable chairs. Coffee all round. Without asking Schrijver bought some food at the counter: cheese toasties, biscuits, a fruit yogurt for the little girl.
‘Who are you?’ he asked when he came back and watched the way they fell on the plates.
Adnan opened his jacket and took out his little photo album. Best keep your belongings close to you on the road, he said.
Schrijver knew nothing of Syria except what he’d seen on TV. He’d have struggled to find it on a map. These were pictures from what they called the good times. Before the war. It seemed a warm and sunny place, full of happy people. Their stall looked bigger and smarter than his, with exotic flowers he’d never seen in the Albert Cuyp. There were pictures of them with relatives on a beach, cooking round a barbecue. He didn’t ask who the others were and they didn’t want to say. Then Lia as a baby, a toddler surrounded by so many furry animals she was almost drowned by them.
‘The toys couldn’t come,’ the little girl announced, jabbing a finger at the picture. ‘No room.’
‘Sorry about that,’ Schrijver said as if it was his fault.
Photos of Mariam, healthier, happier, wearing a white apron and a chef ’s mob cap. She was serving up exotic food from the counter of an open-air restaurant. Old wooden tables in front, red and white chequered cloths on them, every seat taken by a beaming customer.
All of this was gone now, Schrijver understood. Not just gone but vanished. Never to be recovered. Lives and livelihoods all lost, disappeared in smoke and dust and blood.
Mariam was a cook in a restaurant run by her brother nearby, Adnan said.
What happened?
He didn’t dare pose the question. The answer seemed to hang over them, live inside the little album of memories the Syrian kept in his jacket, one last link to a home they’d never find again.
‘My mum’s a good cook,’ Lia told him with a wise and certain nod.
‘I bet.’ He looked at Mariam. ‘You found some work?’
‘Soon,’ she said. ‘Not easy finding a job with child care. We don’t want to live on hand-outs. In . . .’ Her face grew briefly hard. ‘In a place like that.’
