He had to get away. Get away from her.
With cold numb fingers he scrabbled for the door handle with his free right hand. He pulled the lever and pushed with his shoulder against the door, but the door didn’t budge. He reached with his right hand across his chest to push away the woman’s hand so he could free himself, but she grabbed his right wrist with her free hand and pulled his arm towards her. She pushed his left arm up against his right arm, crossing them at the elbows and pulled down his right arm to lock his arms together.
The water reached his neck and he was cold, so cold. Ronald closed his eyes against the bright light from the woman’s diving mask. He had to get out, but every twitch of his body was subdued by the woman, who used the leverage on his crossed arms to keep him in the seat. The water reached his mouth and he bucked against the seat, his panic overcoming the numbness of his body.
Oh, please, God. I don’t want to die. Please, please, please.
Ronald tried to keep his nose above the foul-smelling water, straining against the seat belt and the merciless hands clamping his arms painfully crossed. He took a snort of stale air before the freezing water flooded his nose.
His ears were still ringing from the airbag, but now they were underwater as he arched his head back to clear his nose of the water and take a last desperate snort of air, but he timed it wrong and inhaled cold water. Ronald coughed out his last air. By reflex he inhaled more water into his lungs. The pain was unbelievable, his lungs burning in his chest.
Air! Air, please! Please! Oh God, oh God, please, please—
-o-
The struggling body grew slack in her grasp. Katla checked the luminous display of her dive computer in the light of the integrated lamp of her cave-diving mask. Her dive computer gave her a water temperature reading of barely three degrees Celsius. Without her dry suit to keep her body temperature stable, she’d be exhausted and maybe even unconsciousness from hypothermic in about ten to fifteen minutes. She waited three minutes to make sure Heiboer was dead before she released his arms.
The Cayenne was now fully submerged and pressure against the outside of the doors was the same as the pressure inside the car, so she could easily open the driver side door. She stepped out of the car onto the muddy bottom of the river. Grit swirled up and into the car as she stirred the mud. Leaving the door open, she reached inside and unlocked Heiboer’s seat belt. She had expected Heiboer to go into shock from being submerged in the cold water, but he had held out long enough to actually drown. Despite his obvious lack of fitness, his heart had not given out. Katla transferred his slack lifeless body to the driver seat and put the seat belt on, then swam back a few meters and played the beam of her lamp over the scene.
Didn’t look exactly right—he wouldn’t have had his belt on and the door open…
She undid the seat belt again and let the corpse float up and out of the car. The seat belt didn’t retract and Heiboer’s left shoe hooked in the belt. He would’ve panicked and kicked at the belt. Katla wrapped the belt once around the ankle of the corpse and checked the scene again.
Drunk driver crashes into frozen river, manages to undo his seat belt and open his door, only to snag his foot on the belt, panic and drown.
Katla hooked her rally helmet to her diving belt, took another minute to observe the scene in the beam from her helmet, then reached up and switched off her light. The nose of the Cayenne was buried in the muddy bottom, obscuring the still burning headlights, but the rear lights glowed red in the greenish water. The interior light hadn’t survived the crash, or it had shorted when submerged, and Heiboer’s floating corpse was almost invisible against the dark hulk of the car.
Katla switched her headlamp back on and swam away under the ice. She used the compass on her dive computer to swim to the bridge and angled to the shore where her van was parked. The ice was stronger where the water was shallow, but she could stand on the muddy bottom and push up until a large piece of the ice broke off. She turned off her head lamp and stuck only the top of her head through the hole in the ice, carefully scanning her surroundings. The area was remote, but you could never know.
Both embankments were deserted. She crawled out of the water. Under the bridge the embankment was paved, so she wouldn’t leave any footprints. And the ice under the bridge wasn’t covered with snow. She carefully replaced the broken piece of ice so it fit with the hole and looked to the other side of the river. The gently falling snow was already covering the tracks the Cayenne had ploughed in the frozen marsh bank. The jagged hole where the car had crashed into the river was dark against the snow-covered ice. In another couple of hours, the hole might not even be visible anymore.
Katla stepped into her Citroën van, where dry clothes and a thermos of hot coffee waited.
VERMEER
Up in Katla’s loft, the old Sony Discman played a homemade compact disc, a sober twelve bar blues piece—brushes moving over a snare drum, a syncopating floor tom weaving around a growling bass—while Bram Merleyn leant against the wall, his fingers leaping over the valves, a waterfall of sixteenth notes pouring from the flared bell of his saxophone. He liked the loft, converted by Katla into her gym. His blindness made the view unimportant, but his ears appreciated the acoustics and his nose enjoyed her scent, nowhere as evident as in the place where she exercised.
The blues loop stopped with a drum roll and the taped murmurs of the musicians were drowned by the patter of hail stones against the window.
Listening to the nasty weather outside, Bram felt ambivalent about playing in the warm loft. He used to play outside year round, his only criteria a spot out of the wind so his fingers wouldn’t get too cold. Deep winter he’d play under the awning stretching the old part of the Raadhuisstraat, wearing fingerless woollen gloves, flight case at his feet, open to receive. Suffering the blues for small change. Not this winter, though. Since he refused payment for helping her with her homicidal enterprise, Katla slipped money in his pockets to show her appreciation. Not enough to refuse, but enough to keep him off the streets in foul weather. He’d become a fair-weather street musician, the kind he used to scorn for lack of dedication.
The next track started and Bram waited out the piano intro, which segued into a jazz tune borrowed from Hank Mobley’s Workout album, a melody consisting almost entirely of B Flat, D Flat and E Flat. The bass would hit two bars and leave two for Bram to fill. He was about midway into the piece when Katla’s macaw Kourou started barking downstairs. Used to the more raucous interruptions from the average drunken barroom crowd, Bram played on, repeating the theme before moving into another improvisation.
As if her presence downstairs permeated the air in the loft, his thoughts turned to Katla. Bram lowered his saxophone, while the recording played on. Although he had a fairly accurate picture furnished by Zeph’s descriptions, in his mind Katla appeared like an old Egyptian goddess, a creature with a human body and the head of a wolf. That image came most often when he’d lie in her arms and listen to her talk about her work, her cool detached voice so incongruous with her warm embrace, the hands caressing his skin capable of snapping the bones underneath.
He turned to the CD player and found the stop button.
“Are you finished?” her soft voice spoke from the stairwell.
“No.” Bram capped the mouthpiece to protect the reed, unhooked the saxophone and placed it on the stand near the wall. “But you’re home, so I might as well stop.”
The pungent smell of sewage assaulted his nose as Katla came near. “Did you crawl through a drain?”
“No, a river.” Katla touched his nose. “Why don’t you make me an espresso while I jump in the shower.”
-o-
Moving carefully to prevent piping-hot coffee from spewing on his hands, Bram held the tiny cup under the twin spouts of the espresso machine. Due to the sound of the machine he couldn’t hear if the cup was almost full, so he measured by weight. Of course, he could count off the seconds the machine was gurgling, but the grind of the coffee i
nfluenced the speed at which the cup filled. He could hear the bathroom door and carefully carried the espresso to the coffee table in front of the couch.
Katla bounded into the living room. “Just what I needed. A shower and coffee.”
“You took the thermos with coffee I made you, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but nothing beats a fresh brew.”
Beeps sounded as she switched on her cell phones. Part of her professional paranoia—Katla rarely walked around with an active cell phone, claiming she could be triangulated. Just as she carried her bank cards in a special wallet that prevented scanners from reading the RFID chips. One of the cell phones gave the harsh beep of a missed call. Katla slurped her espresso and played the message on the speaker, some guy called Vermeer requesting to be called back.
When the message was over Bram tilted his head. “New assignment?”
“No, it’s my Sphinx phone.” Her voice was pensive. “Never get calls from Pascal.”
“He sounds arrogant. Is he a friend of yours?”
“Not exactly, no. Why do you ask?”
He hesitated, then said, “I don’t like his voice.”
“I didn’t hire him for his voice.”
“Who is he?”
“Sphinx’s accountant. Come to think of it, I didn’t hire him. Emil hired him.”
“I’d get rid of him,” Bram said. “His voice oozed deceit.”
“Oozed?” Katla sniggered. “You once told me you couldn’t give a character analysis based on a few minutes of conversation. This was a twenty-second Voicemail message.”
“Character analysis, no. But I can tell if someone is dishonest.”
“I check the books every month, Bram. Pascal isn’t stealing. At least not overtly.”
“He sounds like a sycophant.”
“He is a sycophant.” Buttons clicked softly as Katla dialled his number. “You want to listen in?”
“Sure.”
A recorded message came on, a husky female voice announcing, “You’ve reached Vermeer Financial Services. At the moment no-one is available to take your call. Please leave a message after the beep.”
Katla waited for the beep. “Katherine Sieltjes returning your call, Pascal. I’m—”
Abruptly the receiver lifted at the other end. “Ms. Sieltjes? Hang on.”
A hollow thunk as Vermeer put the receiver on the desk. The hum and echo on the line disappeared as he switched off his answering machine. The receiver picked up again. “Thank you for returning my call, Ms. Sieltjes.”
“No trouble, Pascal. Is there a problem?”
“On the contrary, an unexpected windfall.” Vermeer paused for dramatic effect. Bram put his hand on Katla’s shoulder and held a finger to his lips. Her hand patted his in confirmation. Vermeer cleared his throat and resumed, “Cott and Sons are having an auction. You know, the shipbuilders in Scotland?” Katla gave an affirmative murmur and Vermeer continued, “Cott built two vessels for a company that went bankrupt. They’re auctioned off for bottom prices. One is a freighter not unlike the Gizeh. With a bit of luck we could buy it for two-thirds of the regular price. Maybe even half. With Sphinx’s current financial status and future prospects, that investment would turn profitable in less than two years. I’d like to meet this evening at Sphinx, so we can talk things through.”
Bram signalled ‘slow down’ with his hand.
“What’s the hurry?” Katla asked. “Can’t this wait till tomorrow?”
“The auction starts tomorrow at ten and bidders have to be there in person. Your signature has to be on the letter of authority or our representative cannot deal over there.”
Bram put his hand on her shoulder and drew his hand across his throat.
“I’ll call you back, Pascal.” Katla broke the connection. “What do you think, Bram?”
“What does Vermeer stand to gain in this deal? Does he have stock in Sphinx?”
“Five percent,” Katla replied. “Non-voting. Pascal might get a commission on this deal. Not from us, but from the seller.”
“How long would it take, this appointment?”
“An hour, maybe two. I’d take a taxi, I don’t feel like driving.”
“How is your leg?” Bram slipped his hand under her robe. The bullet that tore up her leg had been removed by one of his friends, but the removal had left a nasty scar. As soon as she’d been able, Katla had booked a flight to London, where a discreet surgeon repaired the damage as well as he could and glued the suture shut. According to Katla, the scar now resembled the silvery trail of a fat snail.
He stroked the scar softly. “Are you sure you didn’t exert yourself?”
“I may have. A little. But I couldn’t walk around with my cane. I’d be too easy to remember.”
“You still limp. That doesn’t attract attention?”
“I can walk straight for at least a hundred meters, before I have to rest. It hurts, but—”
“A hundred meters?” He shook his head. “Katla—”
She put her finger on his lips. “I know what I’m doing. I’m not overexerting myself.”
“You don’t think maybe it was a little too soon to start working again?”
Katla sighed. “Maybe you don’t want me to work again?”
“I’m just worried. Prescott told you it’d be months before you’d be able to—”
“It’s been months, Bram.”
“Fine.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Call the sycophant and tell him you’ll be at the meeting. I want to hear his reaction.”
“You think there’s something fishy?”
“Just call him.”
The speaker emitted a series of beeps as the phone redialled Vermeer’s number.
The sycophant picked up before his machine could kick in. “Vermeer Financial Services.”
“Sieltjes, Pascal. You wanted the meeting at the office?”
“Yes, please. At ten, if possible?”
“Who’ll be there? Emil?”
A slight hesitation. “Mr. Bootz will be there, and maybe his representative if he doesn’t attend the auction in person. It won’t take long, Ms. Sieltjes. I promise.”
Bram patted her shoulder and nodded.
“I’ll be there, Pascal.”
“Thank you very much, Ms. Sie—”
Katla broke the connection. “And?”
“For someone with five percent non-voting stock he sounds relieved and pretty grateful. His commission on this deal must be astronomical.”
“You think the deal is crooked somehow?”
“He hesitated before he confirmed Bootz’ attendance.”
She put her hand on his chest. “You don’t think Emil will be there?”
“I don’t know, Katla. Too many incongruities. I’d be wary, but you should trust your instincts.” He caressed the low curve of her back. “You can handle yourself.”
Katla snuggled up to him. “We have some time to kill.”
“I forgot. Killing makes you horny, doesn’t it?”
“Your concern makes me horny.” Katla pulled him to the bedroom by his belt buckle. “I need some of your loving before my dangerous meeting with my accountant.”
TRAP
The crane rolled along the quay, the empty twenty-foot container hanging from the hook looking like a morsel in the long beak of a heron.
Chen leant over Nicky’s shoulder. “Pity about the rain, Sai-Lo.”
Nicky glanced at his face. “What for, Younger Brother?”
“It’s a nice view.”
Even for an industrial landscape the Amsterdam harbour didn’t qualify as a nice view. Drab buildings on a drab quay with grey water darkened by oil sludge. Saturday evening and the harbour was deserted except for their crew, huddled in dark windbreakers, trying to shield from the stinging rain.
“Maybe for a Joy Division fan,” Nicky replied, halting the crane near the bow of the ocean freighter berthed at the quay. “On the verge of following the singer into suicidal bl
iss.”
“Joy Division?”
“Harbingers of New Wave. Stale music in factory halls.”
“I know what you mean,” Chen replied. “Didn’t know you were a fan.”
“I’m not. That’s why I don’t think much of this view.”
In the parking lot in front of the two-story office building the small crew watched the container swing over the warehouses. The opening rotated towards the quay and Nicky slowed the hook’s rotation to prevent the four chains from twisting together. When the container was suspended over the alley between the warehouses and the office building, he pushed the lever to turn the hook again. The container rotated slowly, but when he tried to lower the metal husk to the ground, it kept rotating and grazed the top of the warehouses. He drew the container up again, sticky sweat coating his armpits as it kept rotating, and he cursed silently.
Chen shook his head. “The opening has to be—”
Nicky held up his hand to motion him into silence, waited until the container stopped its rotation and drew another lever to turn the hook the other direction. As the container drew parallel with the small alley between the offices and the warehouses, Nicky lowered the big metal box a little too abruptly, the empty metal husk hitting the concrete with a dull clang.
“It should hug the wall.” Chen pointed down. “The open doors shouldn’t protrude past the warehouses.”
“This crane is not equipped for transporting containers, Chen. And I’m not a professional crane driver. I need some help to move the thing.”
“Can’t you drag it along the ground?”
“No, I can’t. I told you before, the best way to put that container there would be by forklift truck, not by crane. Except the space doesn’t allow for the forklift truck to back out, unless you move those stacks.”
“Okay. How do we work this?”
“Get four men to turn the container into position. Make sure no-one steps between the container and the wall, or it’ll crush him.”
Chen grabbed the two-way radio, but Nicky halted him. “Go down there and explain what needs to be done.”
Peccadillo - A Katla Novel (Amsterdam Assassin Series Book 2) Page 3
