Koeman came to the window.
‘Alex Hendriks. Something big in the city council. Runs the general office or something. I looked him up in the cuttings this morning. Before I called there. He works directly for Prins. Sorry . . . worked.’
‘How’d you know?’
Koeman came straight out with it. How Anna de Vries’s paper had told him she’d visited the offices and talked to Prins the afternoon before she was murdered.
‘He’s a politician,’ Mulder said. ‘The press talk to him all the time. It was a mugging. We’ll deal with the dead when we’ve got the living out of the way.’
The detective bristled. He got out his book and read aloud the messages on De Vries’s phone.
‘Why didn’t I know about this?’ Mulder demanded.
Koeman waved a finger in the air and said, ‘Because you were busy running round organizing a snatch squad?’
‘You’ll push me too far one day . . .’
‘Can’t wait.’ Koeman checked his watch, looked out into the street. ‘Eleven thirty on the dot. I see no sign of Mr Clean. Just that Hendriks character. Maybe we should pull him in. Maybe . . .’
He stopped.
‘What the hell’s that?’ Mulder asked, looking down Zeedijk.
14
Security at Schiphol was close to the gate. Prins walked up, placed his phone in the tray along with his belt then, to make sure, his black business shoes. The woman by the scanner tapped the Tumi case.
‘Laptop?’
‘No laptop.’
‘No liquids. Nothing sharp. No . . .’
He kept the sunglasses on and smiled at her.
‘I’m very boring really,’ he said and watched as the case slid into the scanner. Then he strode through the arch, no beep, picked it up, walked on.
The KLM gate just ahead. No queue for the business line.
He looked at the bright blue and white plane beyond. One of their oldest MD11s. Gave the desk his pass, went on board.
Three rows of two seats at the front. He was by the left-hand window. Most of the business cabin was empty from what he could see.
A glass of champagne turned up, half a smile from the flight attendant.
Everything seemed to be a lurid shade of blue. That and the early drink gave him a headache.
Prins sipped at it anyway. Waited, hoping. Finally heard the doors close, felt the pushback.
Then looked out of the window and watched as the aircraft taxied slowly towards the runway.
15
Five devils on the street, black, red, orange, blue and livid green, twirling their tails, playfully jabbing their pitchforks at passing strangers.
The tallest was blacked up head to toe, with tall goat-like horns, and looked near-naked. He was carrying a big stereo on his shoulder, cavorting like the rest of them to a deafening pop song.
His teeth were dyed red and he smiled a lot. They all did.
Red teeth. Lurid costumes. Cocky attitude.
Koeman was racking his brain. He’d seen this bunch before.
‘This is all we need,’ Mulder grumbled.
The shortest one, bright in lurid scarlet, chased one of the plain-clothes men, chattering wildly, prodding with his fork, making monkey noises loud enough to reach the cafe.
The song became clear.
Stevie Wonder. A happy number, at odds with the strange, half-sinister spectacle on the street.
It came through loud and unmistakable as the five demons danced to the chorus.
‘Happy birthday . . .’ sang the refrain across the cobbled junction between Zeedijk and Stormsteeg.
‘Happy birthday?’ Koeman whispered. ‘What the fu . . .?’
Mulder was on the secure phone. Koeman looked at his watch. Twenty-five to twelve. It was hard to imagine a lawyer-turned-politician missing the drop-off for his own daughter’s ransom.
Even harder to imagine a kidnapper closing the deal with these clowns outside.
Too many coincidences here.
‘He’s not coming,’ Koeman murmured to himself. ‘This was never going to happen.’
Not that Mulder was listening. The hoofdinspecteur was barking down the line trying to raise someone. Vos by the sound of it. And getting nowhere.
Koeman walked over, waited for a break in the heated one-way conversation and said, ‘He’s not coming, Mulder.’
The bunch of devils was getting closer, looking round the streets. The tall, blacked-up one pulled out a sheet of paper from somewhere.
Koeman recognized the face now. A bunch of buskers from one of the anarchist communes. They liked to parade round the city doing quick street shows then shaking a hat at any tourists stupid enough to stop.
‘He’s not . . .’
‘I know . . .’ Mulder began.
Then a voice cried, in a strained, foreign accent, ‘Prins! Oh Wim! Happy birthday, Wim!’ The music got louder. They began twirling round again, waving their arms, clapping to the song. ‘Happy birthday.’
Koeman couldn’t work it out. Couldn’t believe it.
There was no Wim Prins. Just the man from the council, Alex Hendriks, wandering around like a lost idiot.
‘Screw this,’ Koeman said. ‘He’s mine.’
Didn’t wait to hear what Mulder thought. Just walked straight out into the busy street.
People stared at the demons screeching falsetto, ‘Wim! Wim! Where are you? Oh, Wim . . .’
Mulder was behind him. Had called down officers from the surrounding shops and offices. It was all wrong, had been from the start. There never was a pick-up here. Prins or no Prins. They’d been fooled.
The team gathered round the entertainers. One of them grabbed the stereo and turned off the music. The devils started to realize what was going on. Amsterdam was a tolerant, laid-back city. Ordinarily they might have got away with this and received a quiet word at the most.
Not now.
Koeman had it worked out in his head already. Someone had paid this bunch to come here. Told them a man called Wim Prins had a birthday. That he’d be around the corner just waiting to be surprised.
There’d be no footprints back to whoever placed the order. Probably paid for in cash. Even if the dancing devils did know who it was they’d never say. They were a tribe, lived apart from the police, from the rest of the city. Different creatures on a different planet.
So all they had was Alex Hendriks, a staid, middle-aged council official, standing at the corner of Zeedijk and Stormsteeg looking confused and lost. And more than a little frightened.
Definitely the latter when Koeman marched up, showed his ID, introduced himself.
Koeman smiled, pointed to the bunch of devils.
‘What do you think of the entertainment, Alex?’
‘I was just passing . . .’
‘Don’t say that!’ Koeman put a hand close to the man’s face. ‘Whatever you do, don’t say that. I was just passing. No. It’s downright rude.’
The detective looked back at the cafe and winked.
‘We’ve been in there for the last fifteen minutes. Ten of them I’ve been watching you stand here looking ready to piss yourself.’
A police van was turning up, lights flashing, siren howling. The demons were going inside, however hard they protested.
‘I’ve got to go back to the office,’ Hendriks said, trying to summon up some courage.
‘Your old boss was supposed to be here,’ Koeman said. ‘Eleven thirty on the dot. Meant to hand over half a million euros ransom for his daughter.’ A smile. ‘He didn’t show. You did. Along with a bunch of dancing devils yelling out his name.’
Koeman put away his ID card, glanced up and down the narrow streets.
‘Do I look like a man who believes in coincidence? Or just a fucking idiot?’
Hendriks was shaking then.
‘We’re going to Marnixstraat,’ Koeman said. ‘For a long and interesting chat. The only question is . . .’
He frowned, took out a pair
of cuffs, juggled them round on his right index finger.
‘Are you coming willingly? Or do I drag you there?’
16
It would be warm and sunny in Aruba. He could picture the thirty-minute ride to the coast. Haggling with one of the fishermen about hiring a boat to Venezuela. That would take a thousand euros at least. And if he picked the wrong man . . .
Prins found his fingers wandering to the case tucked into the storage compartment by the window. That was all he had now. All that stood between him and oblivion.
‘Sir . . .?’
The business class flight attendant was a pretty young woman, curly fair hair tucked beneath her blue hat, bending over him solicitously, wanting to take the glass. Prins looked round. One other passenger in the cabin and he was on the far side. The next nine and a half hours would be peaceful. Perhaps he’d sleep. If he did the case was going beneath his feet.
‘I need your glass for take-off.’
Prins drained the champagne in one and handed it over. Looked round the cabin again. Wanted to laugh. Life was like this in the sprawling council offices next to the Opera House. Cocooned. Protected from the world outside. It had been the same in the law too, even when Michiel Lindeman was walking the tightrope between the police and the underworld. Nothing from outside ever touched him there. No one.
He looked out of the window at the flat fields stretching to the low grey horizon. This two-dimensional land had always enclosed him, trapped him, held him close. Was it odd to think he could escape it? That a simple act of flight could detach him from the boundless past like a conjuror’s trick?
Drink wasn’t one of his vices. But for the next few hours . . .
The plane kept moving. A line of others ahead. Then the last one cleared. He pulled his belt more tightly around his waist. Felt for the case again.
The flight attendant was strapped in opposite. He looked. She smiled. Then the phone rang next to her. She answered, glanced at him briefly, took off her belt, got up and went towards the cockpit.
Prins looked out of the window. Another plane came into view. It went to the piano keys at the end of the runway. Lined up. Ran noisily down the asphalt.
The flight attendant didn’t come back. The plane didn’t move. He looked at his watch. Almost midday. He wondered what had happened at the cobbled crossroads between Zeedijk and Stormsteeg. Knew that he would never see that grimy street in Chinatown again. Or anything of Amsterdam.
Then the sound changed. The engines winding down. He looked out of the window. A Volvo estate, white with blue and red police markings, had pulled up on the taxiway ahead. A couple of airport vehicles followed it. Behind them was a set of long steps, the kind they used when there was no jetway available.
The young woman in the blue uniform came out. Looked at him. Embarrassed.
‘Mr Prins. There’s a problem . . .’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, undoing the belt, taking out the case. Smiling at her. She was extraordinarily pretty and he didn’t like the idea he’d interfered with her day.
The rear doors of the white police Volvo were opening. He knew what he’d see there. Pieter Vos. A man who never ceased looking. Vos got out in his creased blue coat, swept back his too-long brown hair, looked up at the plane, bright, keen, alert. Young too somehow, as if the past had somehow frozen him the moment his daughter went missing. A man who knew what he wanted straight away, Prins thought. Then came a tall, slender young woman with red hair flying loose, sweeping all round her in the choppy wake coming off another jet that had just started to lumber down the runway, ready to rise free from the unforgiving grip of gravity. To escape.
To escape.
That was all he’d wanted. A moment of peace. Some distance from the grasping, grubby world.
He got up. Brushed down his clothes. Clutched the case beneath his arm. Followed the flight attendant to the door. Waited and watched as she worked the long handle beneath the porthole window.
Finally she got it free, pushed with her slim shoulder, brought sharp Schiphol daylight streaming into the cabin, an icy breeze alongside.
The steps weren’t there yet. Beyond her outstretched arm he could see everything now. Fields and asphalt. Planes and tiny people gathering below. To take him back to the city. To Marnixstraat and so many questions that’d never end.
The woman kept her arm out, holding him back. But she wasn’t looking. There was no need.
Prins simply pushed her sideways, walked on, stood on the lip of the plane door, gazed down, held his breath.
Grey taxiway, grass growing through the cracks. Fifteen metres or so to the ground. Enough he guessed and leaned forward, opening the case as he went, twisting so he fell head first, silent, eyes closed, wreathed in a cloud of flying banknotes.
An escape. A quick and easy one, no going back.
17
Jaap Zeeger finished his statement just after eleven thirty. Waited for a while. Realized no one was much interested. Marnixstraat seemed to have better things to do.
Outside he shuffled his cheap windcheater around his shoulders, crossed the street, walked down towards the Prinsengracht. It was cold and looked like rain. A coffee somewhere. Something to eat. Maybe call in on the Yellow House and do some of the painting and decorating he’d promised. Then, at four, clock on with the courier service for the late shift.
Plenty of things to do. He didn’t need dope or booze or cigarettes to achieve them any more.
Clear and clean.
That was what Barbara Jewell promised them. That was what they got.
This part of the city was so ordinary. So quiet. So . . . normal. Down Elandsgracht people walked their little dogs, cleaning up after them as they went. Shoppers and the odd tourist. People buying bread and meat from the organic butcher’s. De Wallen was nothing like this. One day, Zeeger told himself, he’d move to the Jordaan. Get a full-time job. Settle down. Maybe find himself a girlfriend. A wife even. Fall into the kind of life he once sneered at. Away from uncertainty and the sudden threat of violence.
He walked past a coffee shop, wrinkled his nose at the stench of the joints from a couple of lowlifes hunched on a bench seat outside. The statues of Johnny Jordaan and his band were ahead of him. The bridge. The way back into the centre. Some time to waste. Some time to think.
A voice called.
‘Hey, Jaap!’
He walked on.
One of the deadbeats smoking outside the shop looked familiar. No name. Just a reputation.
Picked up speed. The canal. Boats. The cop Vos lived near here somewhere. He knew that too.
‘Hey . . .’
A hand on his arm. Firm and strong. A miserable, bearded face, dark with dirt and smoke. Lost eyes. Black and malevolent.
He’d looked like this once. Before the Yellow House saved him.
‘Remember me?’ the bum asked. His friend was next to him. A big guy too. No cops nearby. Just ordinary people and they knew best to walk on.
Zeeger said, ‘I think you’ve got the wrong man. Sorry . . .’
The other was on the phone.
‘There’s a call out for you,’ the first one said, moving closer, putting his arm round Zeeger’s skinny shoulders. ‘People want to talk.’
He tried to struggle free. Mumbled, got scared, confused.
The way things used to be. He didn’t feel so clear and clean any more.
So he did the stupid thing, the old thing. He kicked out with his feet, got the guy in the shins, started to run, down towards the bridge and the little bar on the corner.
Didn’t get more than four steps before they were on him. Dope didn’t make everyone slow. Or peaceful. He got a couple of kicks to the legs to bring him down, a couple more in the gut to keep him quiet.
Someone over the road was shouting. Talking about calling the police. But from what Zeeger’d heard in Marnixstraat the last thing they’d have on their minds would be a reformed druggie getting a shoeing from a couple of deadbeats in the sh
adow of Johnny Jordaan’s statue in Elandsgracht.
He crouched on his knees, tried to roll into a ball, mumbled something pathetic.
‘They want to talk to him, moron,’ the other guy said. ‘Leave the bastard some teeth.’
‘Yeah . . .’
The boots stopped. No point in running. No point in doing anything but wait.
Jaap Zeeger had spent most of his life getting told what to do, what to think, how to feel. If it wasn’t Jansen’s minions shoving dope down his throat it was Barbara Jewell talking patiently, endlessly, trying to unravel the mess that was his life.
That was the way of things. It was never going to change.
A couple of minutes later a black Mercedes drew up. Two tall men in suits and sunglasses got out. Talked to the dope-heads. Gave them some money and told them to scram.
One of them reached down and picked up Zeeger by the collar.
Another face he knew. One of Jansen’s, one of Menzo’s, he wasn’t sure.
‘People want to reacquaint themselves, Jaap,’ the man said pleasantly. ‘Get in the car, will you? It’s only polite.’
Zeeger struggled to his feet, wiped some blood from his mouth. Felt himself. No ribs broken. No damage really. He’d had worse.
Then walked to the Mercedes, climbed in.
18
Blood on the asphalt. Lavender banknotes flying round the stranded jet like leaves caught in an exotic blizzard. Emergency vehicles. Police and ambulance. Prins on a gurney, medics round him working frantically.
Vos followed them inside the nearest ambulance, Bakker behind him.
Four medics working. Lines. Monitors. Syringes.
He wasn’t breathing. Head a mess. Shoulder to one side, blood leaking through his shirt.
Vos found a gap between the two men working on his right, leaned, tried to get close to his ear.
‘Talk to me, Wim. For God’s sake . . .’
The man’s eyes were open, unfocused, flickering in fear and bafflement.
The House of Dolls Page 23
