Sleep Baby Sleep

by David Hewson

  ‘Who would?’ he murmured.

  On Sundays the market was closed, he told them. The one day of the week when everyone stopped work. A time for family, for relaxation, for remembering why you spent the other six days shifting boxes here and there, trying to sell them. Struggling to put food on the table.

  ‘But there is food on the table,’ Lia said and pointed at the toasties.

  Schrijver looked at the little girl and laughed out loud. So did she. Then her parents.

  The idea came out of nothing. Maybe it was a good one. Maybe bad. But he had it and the notion wouldn’t go away. There was something he needed, Nina and Annie too, and that was to look outside themselves and view the world from another perspective, with other lives in it.

  ‘We’ve got a tradition,’ he said. ‘Every Sunday. We invite round new friends. And . . .’ He smiled at Mariam. ‘If they can cook we ask them to. Their food. Not ours.’ He reached into his pocket, pulled out the wad he’d taken from Hoogland, and placed five twenties on the table. ‘We pay, naturally.’

  They stared at the money, all three of them, and then at him.

  ‘We’ve never eaten Syrian food. We’d like to. Me. My daughter Annie. Her mother Nina. We’d love that.’

  Adnan didn’t take the money.

  ‘You’re a kind man, Bert. But I heard you had trouble. People in the market. They were talking about it. We’ve got enough problems of our own—’

  ‘They’re my troubles. Nothing that need worry you. A couple of hours. We’ve got a little kitchen you can use to cook.’ He tapped the money. ‘You can find what you need, I’m sure.’

  ‘A tradition?’ Mariam asked. A bad liar, always.

  ‘One I just invented. Please. Say one o’clock.’

  ‘Eleven if I’m to do the cooking,’ she replied and scooped up the notes.

  The little girl yawned and ran her fingers through her curly black hair then put her head on the table, ready to sleep.

  ‘Can’t wait,’ Bert Schrijver said.

  There was the faintest bite of autumn in the air as Vos walked down Elandsgracht to the Drie Vaten. It would have been easy to cross the road to the empty houseboat he called home. But he was a creature of habit. The place was quiet. Sofia Albers poured him a beer the moment he walked in. Sam looked up from his plastic bed by the counter, yawned long and noisily then closed his eyes.

  His phone buzzed. A text from Dirk Van der Berg, the longest personal exchange they’d shared in days.

  I imagine you’ve got the message already but for pity’s sake tread warily. The Zoetermeer Dragon is searching for a scapegoat. She’s a practical woman. The nearest sacrificial victim will do. Especially if he’s dumb enough to offer his head on a plate.

  ‘Language,’ Sofia said when she heard his angry muttered response.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Sam looked at him, yawned again, stretched in his bed and went back to sleep.

  Sofia came and placed some liver sausage and a bread roll in front of Vos. It went with the beer. Dinner.

  ‘You’re looking . . . stubborn tonight,’ she said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Even more so than usual.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  From time to time he mused about abandoning Marnixstraat, not that he had the first inkling what he might do instead. But the idea the job might be snatched from him by a bureaucratic pen-pusher from Zoetermeer, one who thought front-line policing was a spell as acting commissaris in a quiet spot like Leiden . . . that was wrong. Offensive. Impertinent. Undeserved.

  He was good at what he did. Most of the time anyway. He’d earned that brigadier’s badge and wasn’t inclined to give it up easily.

  When he’d finished he bent down, stroked Sam, got a growl in return. No evening stroll along the Prinsengracht this night. The dog could stay in the Drie Vaten once again.

  The houseboat seemed empty without him. Vos sat in the cabin looking at the photos pinned to the planks of the bows. Family pictures from before. There was one from the Amstelpark, Anneliese with her mother on the futuristic little train.

  Another memory. Marly Kloosterman looking at these self-same pictures that night when, a little full of drink, she’d come back here, keen to do so, amused by his shy reluctance. It was all part of the delicate dance of courtship, the process through which strangers got to know one another, tested how much they needed closeness, how preciously they valued their independence. Not long after he’d shied away, daunted by the idea of a relationship so soon after the awkward return to Marnixstraat.

  He still felt guilty about that.

  It was late but there was an excuse.

  A sleepy voice answered when he called.

  ‘Pieter? Is that you?’

  ‘I wanted to check you’re OK. I’m still bothered about what De Graaf said. Maybe we should—’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly. It was just him making idle threats. I’m here, aren’t I?’

  He asked about the prison management. What they were saying about De Graaf’s escape.

  ‘They’re being very understanding. I mean . . . I did follow procedure. It wasn’t as if anyone was expecting a man in his condition to try to escape.’ He heard her move, tried to picture where she was, what a fancy houseboat was really like. ‘It said on the news you have someone.’

  ‘Someone. Yes.’

  ‘You don’t sound optimistic.’

  That wasn’t quite right. They were making progress. He just had the feeling there was a piece of the story they hadn’t yet seen.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she added when he stayed quiet. ‘I won’t pry. If anyone’s going to get to the bottom of this, it’s you. I’m sure of that. So are the people you’re working with. I could see it in their eyes when I came round this morning. You’re . . . admired. Needed.’

  ‘The new commissaris doesn’t quite see things that way.’

  ‘I saw her on the news. She does like publicity.’

  ‘It’s the new way. You don’t just do the job. You have to be seen doing it.’

  ‘Putting that poor Schrijver girl on TV like that. Really. It’s disgraceful. If I’m speaking out of turn I apologize—’

  ‘No,’ he interrupted. ‘I’m the one who needs to say sorry.’

  A long pause and then she asked, ‘For what?’

  ‘For what happened. The way I just retreated. Ran away. I could make the old excuse. Work. This job.’

  She laughed.

  ‘No problem. I know that one. I’ve got a bit of police blood in me too. But that’s a story for another time.’

  ‘The truth is, I wasn’t ready. It was all too soon. I didn’t know what I wanted.’ The photos on the cabin walls stared back at him. ‘From anything.’

  ‘Do you now?’

  She sounded interested.

  ‘I’m getting there. First I need to find a man I should have put in jail four years ago. Work out what happened this week too. I really . . . really don’t have a clue.’

  ‘All in good time.’

  ‘In good time I’d like to see that fancy boat of yours. I don’t think Het Parool will be coming round taking pictures of mine. Maybe I can pick up some tips.’

  She hesitated then said, ‘Are you asking for a date? For real this time?’

  ‘Seems so.’

  ‘I’ve got tomorrow off.’

  ‘I very definitely haven’t.’

  She laughed and he liked that sound.

  ‘No. Of course not. Sorry. Anyway there’s some neighbourhood party I have to go to. Later in the week . . .’

  ‘I’ll call. I promise. If—’

  ‘No promises, Pieter. No guarantees. We’re grown-ups, remember? We know how much they’re worth.’

  On that odd and cautious note, they said goodnight.

  He sat for a moment, holding the phone, trying to work out how he felt. Excited. Relieved. Scared. Full of an odd anticipation.

  The houseboat was too much of a mess for visitors. One day he’d ti
dy up. Perhaps get in a cleaner. It wasn’t grubby, just disorganized.

  A place he kept fond things. His own Cabinet of Curiosities, like the photos against the shiny black planks in the bows.

  A couple of minutes rummaging through a cupboard full of old and dusty books, CDs and tapes and then he found it: a cassette of children’s songs his daughter used to love when she was little.

  Vos’s hi-fi was so old it still had a tape deck. The song was the first on the list. Four young voices struggling to sing in harmony.

  Slaap kindje slaap, daar buiten loopt een schaap.

  Sleep baby sleep, outside there runs a sheep.

  Three words from a nursery rhyme. Vincent de Graaf had used them to place his stamp, his mark of ownership, on the women he’d murdered for having the temerity to wake while he and his associates assaulted them.

  There was a cruel and savage logic to that.

  But why scrawl it on a man?

  FIVE

  The city was quiet on Sundays. Light traffic along Marnixstraat. Little in the way of business for the police headquarters at the top of Elandsgracht. One important customer only: Rob Sanders, still offering little but a sigh and a roll of the eyes.

  At Vos’s insistence they’d brought him some clothes from home, let him sleep, shower, try to bury the miserable lost figure they’d seen the night before. But still he wouldn’t talk. Sanders just sat there through a string of interview attempts, a fit and intelligent man of thirty-three, white shirt now, black trousers, fair hair washed, clean-shaven. Silent except when he wanted something. It was almost as if he thought that at some point they’d give up, open the door, let him walk free then head off back to De Pijp and home.

  Which might well happen. Nothing the night team had uncovered linked him further with either Zorgvlied or Braat’s houseboat. There was the hat, which still hadn’t been put to him on Vos’s orders. And there’d been no taunting text for once. Did that mean the game was over? Work done?

  Mid-morning Vos went in with Laura Bakker, a tray of coffees and some pastries from the canteen. It was her turn to try.

  ‘Are you listening, Rob?’ she asked. ‘Anyone in?’

  He had an alert, rugged face. Handsome in a way. Vos could imagine him plying the bars and clubs where the young went to flirt and more of a night.

  Bakker placed the nurse’s hospital ID card on the table.

  ‘You get access to the medical stores. Easy to pick up GHB.’

  Sanders shook his head.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ she wondered.

  Nothing.

  ‘Where would you go to get some potassium cyanide?’ she asked.

  He sighed and just looked at them.

  ‘You know,’ she went on. ‘The stuff you used to kill your new American pal, Greg Launceston. When you took your ex-girlfriend to Jef Braat’s boat so you and your pals could gang rape her then blame the whole thing on Braat.’

  There was a flash of anger in his eyes but not a word by way of reply.

  ‘If that’s what happened of course,’ she went on. ‘I mean, we have to assume it is because, let’s face it, if it wasn’t you’d surely say so. Something like . . .’ She leaned back in her chair. ‘Oh, I couldn’t have been gang-raping my ex-girlfriend Tuesday night because I was down the Concertgebouw listening to Wagner. Or spiking the drink of some other brainless girl I felt like hitting on because it’s so much easier with women if they’re semi-conscious. Means you don’t have to turn on the charm . . .’

  ‘Won’t work,’ Sanders said in a low, gruff voice. ‘Don’t bother.’

  ‘But it has,’ Bakker replied with a grin.

  Vos opened the box they’d brought and placed the hat on the table.

  ‘Let’s not talk about Annie for the moment. Let’s talk about your hat.’

  Sanders was staring at the thing, looking puzzled.

  ‘It is your hat,’ Bakker said. ‘We know that. Found your DNA inside the band. You being a nurse and everything . . . you know what that means.’

  ‘It was my hat. Was.’

  Bakker turned to the video camera on the wall, held up two thumbs and let out a little cheer.

  ‘Well,’ she said with a sigh. ‘That didn’t hurt, did it?’

  ‘When did it cease to be your hat?’ Vos asked.

  ‘Is this important?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We’re not saying,’ Bakker told him, folding her arms. ‘Not until you tell us where you lost it. Three can play this game.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘In a bar somewhere maybe. I don’t remember.’ He frowned. ‘I imagine drink had been taken. Weed had been smoked. One of those nights. It’s not a great hat. Didn’t notice for a while.’

  ‘And you a medical man too,’ Bakker tut-tutted.

  ‘I’m just a nurse. That’s all.’

  Which bar, Vos wondered. The Mariposa?

  ‘Maybe. Lots of bars in De Pijp. I do the rounds. Why do you want to know?’

  Vos kept it short: the hat was left in the Jordaan on the night Annie Schrijver and Greg Launceston were found in Zorgvlied. There was a connection.

  ‘I don’t drink in the Jordaan. I don’t know anyone called Launceston. What connection?’

  ‘It was left by the man who drove them there on Wednesday night.’

  That seemed to surprise him.

  ‘Wednesday night I was at home watching television. On my own. I never went to the Jordaan. Or Zorgvlied.’

  ‘What about Tuesday?’

  ‘Same shift. Worked till midday. Did some shopping. Went home.’

  ‘Watched TV?’ Bakker suggested.

  ‘Spot on.’

  ‘Why did you break up with Annie?’ Bakker wondered. ‘Her father said you hit her. Was that it?’

  A low mumbled, ‘None of your business.’

  ‘But it is, Rob. I’m always interested in why a man hits a woman. There seem to be so many different reasons, all with the one outcome. Did she . . . offend you perhaps?’

  ‘Annie asked for it.’

  It was said so plainly she couldn’t help but laugh.

  ‘She asked for it? Didn’t know her place or something?’

  ‘I mean,’ he snapped, ‘she asked for it. She hit me. I hit her. It was a row. People have them.’

  ‘Need a little more than that.’

  He leaned forward and stared into her face.

  ‘There is no more. We had a row. There was bad behaviour on both parts. That’s why we broke up. My decision. Not hers.’

  ‘What did you row about?’ she persisted.

  He waved away the question and gazed at the wall.

  They waited a while then Vos pulled out a photo of the dump of a barge called the Sirene and said, ‘Tell me about Jef Braat.’

  Sanders blinked rapidly then closed his eyes.

  ‘This is his houseboat.’

  ‘I never went to Braat’s boat. I loathed the man. He was just a barfly.’

  Vos placed more pictures in front of him. Limbs and skin, intimate and medical.

  ‘He was more than that. Braat was part of Vincent de Graaf’s rape club. The Sleeping Beauty case. Remember?’

  Not a word.

  ‘The odd thing is . . . Annie wasn’t seriously hurt beyond the drugs. Scrapes from the ground and getting moved. She was stripped naked and we haven’t found her clothes. But she had none of the usual injuries, bruises, abrasions, cuts, we’d expect. So maybe it wasn’t what it appears. Perhaps—’

  ‘What do you think I am? An animal?’

  ‘That,’ Bakker said, ‘is what we’re trying to establish.’

  He looked bored and stared at the table.

  ‘Your hat was left by the driver who dumped her in Zorgvlied,’ Vos said. ‘After Annie was taken to a houseboat, drugged, not once but twice. And still survived while two men died.’

  ‘Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘A medical man would know how to do that. A medical man would hav
e access to the drugs. To De Graaf too when he came in for a scan. Where were you Friday night?’

  Silence. One last photo.

  ‘Look at it.’

  Sanders didn’t.

  ‘Look at it!’ Vos yelled.

  It was Annie Schrijver from the collection they’d found in De Graaf ’s basement. Wide-eyed, staring straight into the lens. A teenager, frightened for her life.

  ‘Four years ago Annie Schrijver was raped by that bunch. I think it happened in that place right next to where you work. Where someone put him to death with a morphine drip in the arm just when you went missing. The kind of thing a medical man might know about.’

  Sanders couldn’t take his eyes off the picture.

  ‘Most of the women De Graaf and his friends raped they didn’t kill,’ Vos went on. ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Because they didn’t wake up. They didn’t see. But . . .’ He put his finger on the photo. ‘Annie did. And still she lived. Then she kept quiet. So maybe . . . maybe . . .’

  ‘Maybe she wasn’t a victim at all,’ Bakker cut in. ‘Maybe she was all part of the game. Along with you. I think we ought to arrest her. Bring her in here. See what she says and—’

  He was on his feet, furious.

  ‘After this week? The way you made her suffer . . .’

  ‘We’ve got a job to do, Rob,’ Bakker said, unmoved.

  ‘And we’ll do it,’ Vos added. ‘One way or another. With your help. Without it.’

  Difficult interviews hung on moments, seconds like this where a suspect’s resolve wavered, like an acrobat trembling on a high wire. They recognized it, waited, hoped.

  ‘Whatever,’ Sanders said then went back to staring at the wall.

  They returned to the observation area behind the glass. Jillian Chandra and Van der Berg were there. Perhaps had been all along.

  ‘We nearly had him,’ Bakker grumbled.

  ‘Give it time,’ Vos said.

  Chandra glared at them.

  ‘Time? We don’t have time.’

  She’d been talking to the lawyers. The hat apart, they had nothing to link Sanders to the case. Without more evidence they’d have to release him.

  ‘If you don’t get somewhere with this today, I’ll redraw the whole team and start afresh. There’s a serial rapist, a killer out there—’