Before the Dawn

by Jake Woodhouse

  ‘I can’t wait,’ Jaap says.

  ‘And now—’ Smit reaches for his phone—‘I’m going to have to make sure anytime anyone is brought into the station their phone gets turned off.’

  62

  From complexity comes simplicity.

  The vast, swirling galaxy of chaos is speeding up and taking form. Jaap can feel it, sense that he’s finally on the right path.

  ‘He goes under several names,’ Borst says once he and Jaap connect on the phone. ‘The most recent one was Alex Haanstra, and he was, or still is, involved with a fairly large criminal enterprise I’ve been working on for years.’

  ‘Van der Pol.’

  ‘Yeah. Thought we finally had him, but it’s like he’s got some kind of guardian angel. Every time we get close the fucker is one step ahead.’

  ‘What does Haanstra do for Van der Pol?’

  ‘That’s the thing, we’ve never been able to pin it down. He’s only been spotted a handful of times over the years, and not recently, which is why I didn’t know for sure if he was even still around. The last sighting was logged three years ago. But it seems you’ve seen him recently.’

  ‘Bumped into him the other day. If you had to guess, what is, or was, his role?’

  ‘There were rumours he’d been with Van der Pol from the start and was his original enforcer, dishing it out to whoever needed it.’

  ‘Dishing it out meaning beatings, or going the whole way?’

  ‘The whole way. The irony is, when Van der Pol started out he basically got rid of all the competition. All these criminals started disappearing and the crime rate plummeted because he made sure his guys operated out of sight. Worked out well for the police chief of that district, boosted his career. Everyone thought he was doing great, but the reality is that it’s competition which causes most of the problems; if you’ve got a massive monopoly you can just get on with it. So the police got complacent, they kept getting low stats, whilst Van der Pol expanded. It’s every cop’s secret fantasy, someone going around bumping off the bad guys for you. I mean, killing innocents is one thing, but when it’s scum you’re less inclined to look, right?’

  ‘So what’s Van der Pol’s main business, drugs? Have you heard of any of his people selling scopolamine?’

  ‘Back then it was, but now he’s into anything you can think of. I’ve not heard of anyone selling scopolamine, and a good portion of his stuff is legitimate businesses now as well. This guy is smart. I’ve been working on him for years and he’s yet to make even a tiny slip-up which we could use. His model works pretty well, I guess. But back to your original question, I think that Haanstra may have been the one tasked with getting rid of the competition early on – one minor dealer I busted was running scared, wanted to do a deal with us, give us the name of who he thought was responsible for a bunch of killings. The description he gave must have been Haanstra. Too bad I wasn’t able to make the deal, or I might’ve been able to get him back then.’

  ‘What happened to the dealer?’

  ‘We’d agreed to meet and I’d got the go-ahead to make him an offer. Only I turned up too late. Knife through each eye.’

  ‘And he specifically said Haanstra had killed someone?’

  ‘Killed many. He didn’t know his name, but he described the eye, the scar tissue. Showed him some surveillance photos, bang. So why are you interested in him?’

  ‘I think Haanstra has been forcing carefully chosen men into killing women for him.’

  Harry whistles. ‘Forced? Really? Then again, anyone connected with Van der Pol … well. We found a body yesterday, been stabbed multiple times and buried at the edge of some woods. Really bad job, whoever did it. The grave was way too small, but they still shoved the body in, dumped some coffee grounds on it to stop animals digging it up, and sort of made a mound with some soil. But, turns out it was right by a geocaching site. This guy was out with his two kids, they found the geocache and noticed the mound close by. One of the kids scoops a bit of soil off. That’s when the father gave us a call. And it turns out the body is one of Van der Pol’s inner circle, Axel Hof. Word on the street is that he’d annoyed Van der Pol. Like that’s all it takes.’

  ‘The chief inspector, the one who got lucky, who was it?’

  ‘Can’t remember, but I seem to recall he got promoted pretty quick. They probably wondered why he wasn’t as effective at his next position, couldn’t recreate the magic.’

  ‘So the real question is, anyone we can talk to? Have you heard of a Bernard Kooy?’

  ‘No, should I have?’

  ‘I think he’s connected to Van der Pol. He’s a possible for supplying the scopolamine which was found in all the victims’ blood.’

  ‘Doesn’t ring any bells, but Van der Pol’s organization is huge, he’s got outposts all over the country so …’

  ‘There must be someone in his organization we can lean on a little?’

  ‘Let me think about it,’ Harry says.

  ‘OK,’ Jaap says as he finishes up. ‘I’ll get you the details on our victims – can you run them and see if they crop up in connection with Van der Pol?’

  ‘Sure, I’ll have a look.’

  So in the end it’s simple, Jaap thinks.

  A man called Alex Haanstra is forcing men to kill for him.

  And I’ve got to stop him.

  Simple.

  63

  Kees has got a way out.

  And the irony is, it’s Van der Pol who has given it to him. One last job will give him a big pay-off, enough to afford his new ID.

  ‘… three … two … one,’ says a disembodied voice.

  Lights flash in Kees’ eyes. He blinks, pulls back the rough fabric of the curtain and steps out of the booth.

  The station is busy, full of normal people doing normal things like buying a ticket or getting a train. None of them, as far as he can tell, are living a double life. Although he’s not sure that ‘double life’ is the right phrase, because really he doesn’t feel like he’s got double the life, what he actually feels like is he’s on a half-life, or even less.

  He stands there and feels invisible, despite looking different to them all, because no one glances at him. They are managing to give him a wide berth though, like there’s a magical space around him which no one can enter.

  Which, Kees thinks, might be the story of my life.

  He’s not sure how it’s turned out like this, and for a moment tries to pinpoint the choices he made which brought him here. But in the swirling world of the past, where do you begin?

  The machine hums, stutters, then regurgitates a string of photos into a metal tray, saving him from further introspection. He pulls them out, the paper still warm, and holds them up to get a better view. His own eyes stare off the photo in front of him. He has an intense moment of unreality, where he doesn’t know which one he is, the one standing, or the one peering out of the image.

  He folds the four into two, slips them into a back pocket and leaves the station, working through the tide of commuters. For a moment he’s a salmon heading upstream.

  Then he remembers that after spawning, salmon keel over and die.

  A man in uniform is hovering by his car. Van der Pol had made it available to him, and Kees thought it’d make a change from the bike. Which if he’s honest he’s just not that into anyway.

  Kees walks up, the man turns to look at him, ready for a fight, ready to protect his own livelihood because Kees is sure these people work on commission.

  But he takes Kees in slowly, then scrunches up the ticket he was filling out and drops it in a bin as he walks away.

  The roar of the car echoes off the station walls. He lets the pressure build up before releasing the handbrake and skidding out into traffic without even looking.

  Lights flash and horns blare.

  He doesn’t care.

  All he cares about now is getting on with the job Van der Pol has given him.

  The file which had slipped off the passe
nger seat a moment ago hadn’t told him much, a photo, a name, some other minor details, but Kees had done a bit of digging – he hadn’t spent years being an inspector without picking up a few tricks – and reckons he knows where he’s going to find him.

  He’s on the A4 heading towards Amsterdam. The thought of his choices comes up again and he finds himself unable to stop it.

  He starts to go back, cataloging memories, trying to find the moment it all went wrong.

  By the time he’s done mentally lashing himself he’s aware he’s slowed down, the traffic dense around him. A kilometre or so of crawling and the reason becomes clear. There are major roadworks up ahead.

  Used to be they’d put a sign up saying roadworks and leave it at that. But now everything has to be an emotional appeal. He passes a series of signs trying to get people to slow down by other means; one has two kids with the words ‘Our father works here’ written on it.

  Just as he’s finally easing past the last of the works and the road ahead is clearing he spots another, final sign. It tells him that somebody loves him, so he should slow down. For their sake.

  He reads it, and is surprised to find he’s laughing.

  Then he hits the pedal and accelerates hard.

  64

  He’s like a ghost, Jaap thinks, floating through the criminal underworld leaving barely a trace.

  He’s been tracking Haanstra through the system, finding possible mentions of him in cases all over the Netherlands. The database which had replaced the old HKS had taken a few years to really start paying off, but with more and more information being fed in it’s starting to yield results.

  Harry had emailed him all the names Haanstra has been suspected of using and Jaap’s run searches for them all. He’s slightly dismayed at the number of hits it gives him. But he digs in, knowing that it’s sometimes the dullest work which can swing a case like this.

  It seems Haanstra’s never the main subject of any investigation, he’s only tagged tangentially, but as Jaap goes through mention after mention a disturbing pattern emerges.

  None more so than in the case he’s looking at now, a murder which happened just over five years ago.

  The victim was a twenty-year-old woman who’d worked at a facility for the mentally ill, and who’d gone missing from her parents’ home – she’d been between flats – on the night of her death. She’d gone to bed as usual at just after ten-thirty. The next morning she wasn’t there, her father raising the alarm at just past eight.

  Her body was discovered three days later by a farmer who was rotating his flock of sheep, moving them to a new field so they could feed on fresh, luscious grass. The inspector attending the scene noted no obvious cause of death, but the PM had later concluded that she’d suffocated. During the investigation a woman came forward who claimed to have seen a man leaving the field who looked, her words, ‘wild and out of breath’. Armed with a description, the investigators gradually built up a picture of a suspect, one which fitted an ex-patient from the place the victim worked.

  The patient in question, Menno Helling, who’d been ordered to the facility four years previously after a violent attack on a random stranger, had been released eight months earlier, and whilst he was still on a cocktail of drugs prescribed by the psychiatrist at the facility – Jaap couldn’t help but think of what Vink had told him about LSD – had been deemed ‘low risk’.

  A manhunt ensued, culminating two days later in a chase which led to a multi-storey car park in Dordrecht. The officer giving chase caught up with him on the third floor and approached, trying to keep the suspect, who was highly agitated, calm by talking to him.

  Backed up against the railing, the man kept apologizing, saying over and over that he’d been made to do it. The officer, reasoning that if he kept him talking there was less chance of him jumping, asked who. It took several goes at the question but finally the man answered. A ghost, he’d said. A ghost called Haanstra.

  Then he’d jumped, splattering the contents of his head all over the concrete below in front of a group of horrified shoppers.

  Given the man’s problems, and that the PM showed he’d not been taking any of the drugs prescribed, his final words hadn’t been given much weight. There’d been no follow-up. The officer filing the report had put Haanstra’s name in, which nowadays would immediately raise a red flag as it was already in the database. But the old system didn’t do that. Unless the officer explicitly searched for Haanstra he’d be unaware of any other mention.

  And clearly he hadn’t.

  Because a crazy person is reason enough – why try and make work for yourself?

  Jaap sits back in his chair, his head starting to spin.

  How many others are there? he thinks.

  His phone buzzes towards the edge of his desk. He grabs it just as it teeters off.

  It’s Harry. ‘There’s someone we could speak to. Interested?’

  ‘Yeah, who?’

  Jaap listens to the details and hangs up. Harry’s driving up, but it’s still going to be a while before he gets here. Jaap grabs the photo he has of Haanstra and heads down to the cells where Vink is still being held.

  ’Recognize him?’ Jaap asks as he hands the photo to Vink.

  Vink, less cocky than yesterday – an overnighter in a cell can work wonders – takes it with a kind of alert fatalism. But when he looks at it something changes in his face.

  ‘What?’ Jaap asks.

  Vink chews his bottom lip. ‘Yeah, that’s the guy I was telling you about, the one I saw on Vlieland.’

  Back upstairs Jaap gets Frank down in Hoenderloo on the phone.

  ‘Frank, I’ve got a face. Need you to show it around, check if any of the park staff recognize him.’

  ‘Sure, get it over to me.’ Jaap hears him pause to do the snorting thing again. ‘And I may have something, I just got off the phone with one of the day staff, they said they’d heard a noise in the rough area where Kaaren was killed.’

  ‘What kind of noise?’

  ‘Well, he reckons it was a drone. One of those flying toys people have. Says he watched a video online last night which reminded him of it. Don’t know if it’s linked or important or anything, but I thought you should know.’

  Jaap hangs up. The fly buzzing round and round Haase’s office. A picture’s forming.

  One he doesn’t like at all.

  He spends a few minutes on the internet.

  The picture is clearer now.

  And he really doesn’t like it.

  Because it means he missed something fundamental, something which he should have been onto right from the start.

  He calls the team together in the incident room.

  ‘I missed something,’ he says. ‘At the time of Heleen’s death a witness, Piet, a surfer on Vlieland, said he’d heard a kid flying a drone. And I’ve just had word that one of the park employees heard something similar right about the time Kaaren was killed.’

  Jaap looks around, seeing if they’re getting it.

  ‘Haase was asking me about a trophy. As in, is the killer taking any? I said no. But he is taking a trophy.’

  They know where he’s going with this now.

  The room settles into a crystalline silence.

  ‘He’s not only forcing people to kill for him,’ Jaap says. ‘He’s filming them doing it.’

  65

  ‘This one here?’ the salesman says, foaming with enthusiasm. ‘This one here’s the shit.’

  He’s in the nearest shop he could find which stocks drones, trying to get a handle on what they can do. Beats beat from hidden speakers, forming the template for Jaap’s own heart rate.

  A long central table stretches away from him carrying a huge range of different types of drone, each mounted on a stand. Prices range from very little to numbers which Jaap can’t quite understand. Expensive toys, he thinks.

  ‘How difficult is it to fly?’ he asks, having to crank his voice up to compete with the music. He picks one up
, noting how light it is, how fragile it seems.

  ‘Seriously? A kid can learn it in a few minutes. It’s easy. Though to be honest, I’m pretty sure most of the men who buy them for their kids end up using them more themselves.’

  He opens a cabinet door and pulls out a control. To Jaap it doesn’t look that different to one he’d had as a kid for a remote-controlled car. The salesman starts taking him through the various functions. Jaap cuts him off.

  ‘What’s the range?’

  ‘On this one? This one can fly up to two kilometres away.’

  ‘And the camera?’

  ‘Full HD quality, 1080p. The camera’s gimbal-stabilized so there’s no wobble. And you can lock it onto a moving target and the drone will follow it.’

  Jaap thanks him, hands the drone back and walks out.

  He gets into the car he’s parked outside the shop on Kalverstraat, right next to an English-language bookshop, and pulls away, heading to his meeting with Harry.

  Once moving, he dials Haase, catches him between clients. He explains what he’s found.

  ‘There’s your trophy,’ Haase says. ‘And it kind of fits in with what I was saying earlier, about the killer being stuck, trying to relive the trauma in an effort to get through it. Watching it over and over might be part of that.’

  Jaap kills the call. He’s feeling a kind of light-headed calm.

  Twenty minutes later he pulls up at the address Harry had given him, sees Harry’s already there, leaning against his car. His phone goes off just as he’s getting out of the car. It’s Arno.

  ‘HelpingHand has appeared again,’ Arno says when Jaap answers. ‘Stefan was also on a forum, a different one, but he had contact with a user on there called HelpingHandz, that’s with a “z”, and there was exactly the same pattern as before. He befriended him, then agreed to meet three days before Heleen died, and then the day before he got the location and time of Heleen’s death.’

  ‘I need you to get the team looking at every possible place he might be communicating with anyone else—’