Before the Dawn

by Jake Woodhouse

  So it’s two lives, not one, he’ll be saving.

  It’s not personal. One dies so two can live. Simple.

  The drone buzzes closer again.

  ‘Where is it?’ the woman says, her voice cracked and harsh. She holds out the roll of cling film, a beaten relay runner passing on the baton.

  Again, the drone moves towards him, pushing him, daring him not to.

  Oh fuck …

  Jaap steps forward, grabs her wrist and drags her to the ground. He flips her over, pins her arms with his legs, and reaches out to grab the roll where she’s dropped it.

  His phone falls out of his pocket, he doesn’t notice.

  He tries to find the edge, spinning the roll round, running his nail on the surface, hoping it’ll catch. Finally it comes.

  The woman’s squirming, shrieking. The cling film hisses as he starts to stretch it out.

  76

  Tanya knows he’s being driven by love.

  Love for her.

  He’s on the screen, the camera far out enough to capture the whole scene, but close enough to read his face.

  Haanstra’s behind her. She’d caught a glimpse earlier, he seemed to be controlling the drone remotely. She doesn’t know how that can be, at such a distance, but right now she has more pressing concerns. She’s discovered that the chair isn’t bolted to the ground, and she’s been waiting for Haanstra to move close enough for her to try and ram him.

  Desperate? Sure. But what else does she have?

  So far Haanstra’s been keeping out of range, though, as if he’s read her mind.

  On screen Jaap has the cling film stretched out, but he’s still not started. The woman’s writhing but he has her pinned down too well.

  Tanya’s breathing is getting out of control, she has to act before it’s too late.

  She starts to scream, the noise stifled by the ball-gag, but it’s enough to annoy Haanstra. He steps close behind her and sends another breathtaking, stinging slap across the side of the face.

  Now! she thinks. Do it.

  All the strength in her legs boosts her back, and she feels herself crashing into Haanstra, knocking him down. She lands on top of him, and he grunts hard like he’s winded badly. She can feel the back of her head against his chest, and she scrabbles her legs, lifts her head, preparing to bring it down on his face, if only she can get into position.

  But before she can she feels herself flipping sideways, Haanstra shoving her off him. Before she can do anything he’s up, grabbing her, hauling the chair she’s in upright.

  She blew it. The chance to save herself, save Jaap from what he’s being forced into.

  He’s still behind her, and she’s waiting for the blow which she knows will come.

  But then there’s a loud knocking on the metal door behind them, the sound reverberating round the space. On the screen Jaap’s still working, his face twisted in disgust.

  Haanstra shoves the back of the chair, tipping her forward onto the concrete floor, her knees hitting just before her face. The top of the chair rams her in the back of the neck.

  She hears Haanstra’s footsteps heading towards the door.

  77

  Kees is back in Amsterdam for the first time since he’d been released from the Bijlmerbajes prison and relocated down to Rotterdam to start the long process of working his way undercover into Van der Pol’s organization.

  Right now he’s asleep in the car he’d driven up in. A noise wakes him and he starts; for a full two seconds he can’t remember where he is.

  Then it all clicks.

  He’s watching a row of garages. The one he’s particularly interested in is ten down. The noise he’s heard is someone walking towards it, their back to him, a dark baseball cap on his head. The figure stops outside the tenth.

  Kees has tracked down the man Van der Pol had wanted found, knows that the garage is paid for in cash by someone answering the man’s description. And it looks like he was right – presumably the figure heading there now is the man himself.

  Kees has Van der Pol on speed-dial. He’d been given a phone along with the car.

  Van der Pol answers before the first ring’s even completed.

  ‘Got him,’ Kees says.

  ‘OK,’ replies Van der Pol. ‘Here’s what you’re going to do.’

  He listens, then hangs up.

  Kees reckons he should be feeling sick. But, as he pops the glove compartment and finds the gun he’d not known was there, he realizes he’s not feeling anything at all.

  The figure with the cap moves away from the tenth garage door, and quickly to the end of the row. Kees loses sight of him for a second, before he sees him reappear on the flat roof, walking back towards the tenth door. Kees slips down his seat.

  The man pulls out a gun, lies down on the roof and reaches over the edge to hit the door a couple of times with the butt of the gun.

  After a few seconds the garage door starts to open, revealing shoes, legs, then a torso.

  Once it’s fully up Kees recognizes the man.

  It’s his target, Alex Haanstra.

  Further back in the garage there’s a large screen, a movie playing on it. And in front of it, someone – a woman – is tied to a chair, kneeling with her head to the ground like a religious penitent. On the screen a man is doing something Kees can’t quite work out, too far away to properly see the detail.

  Haanstra stands there for a second, scanning the surroundings. Kees slips even lower. Haanstra steps forward, and at the same moment the man on the roof reaches down with his gun and shoots him in the head.

  Haanstra stands for a moment, swaying like a drunk, the bullet having ripped most of his lower jaw off, then his whole body collapses.

  The man with the gun stands up, pulls out a phone and makes a call.

  There’s something really familiar about him.

  But he can’t see his face.

  Sirens split the air. The man lowers his phone, moves to the next garage along, and lowers himself back down to the ground.

  The sirens are getting closer. The man moves towards Haanstra’s body, weapon out, even though there’s no way he’s getting up again.

  The man kicks him. Haanstra doesn’t move. The man shoots him in the back of the head a second time. Then he turns towards the garage. Kees sees him start, as if he’s just had a shock. It’s almost like he hadn’t expected there to be anyone in the garage, far less someone tied up. He stands there for a moment as if making a decision, before heading into the garage towards the woman, glancing round just before he does.

  Kees gets a glimpse of the man’s face.

  And that’s when he decides to get the hell out of there.

  78

  The woman’s thrashing about, but he’s heavier and stronger.

  He has her pinned, knees on forearms. She’s not going anywhere.

  She stops thrashing, he watches as the fear in her eyes turns to resignation.

  The last rays of sun are hitting the very top of the quarry’s edge, the limestone painted pretty pink. The drone’s in close, but hasn’t moved. It’s all Jaap can do to stop himself from reaching out and grabbing it. Smashing it into a million pieces.

  And he hates to admit it, but the anger is helping what he’s doing, as if his mind’s transferring it from Haanstra to the woman in front of him.

  Is this how they felt? he thinks. Kamp, Groot and Wilders?

  He leans forward, whispers right in the woman’s ear, and starts wrapping her head. The layers accumulate, the soft swish of the cling film unravelling barely audible under the drone’s rotors.

  On the ground his phone starts buzzing, the screen lighting up.

  He carries on wrapping, lifting her head up and back as the roll passes under and dropping it down again.

  The sun falls away, the quarry darkens.

  He notices the glow from his phone. He stops for a second, glances at it.

  The drone starts to move slowly, sideways and away from him.
r />   Beneath him the addict has stopped fighting, her body perfectly still.

  The drone’s still drifting, as if it’s a drunk asked to walk on a straight line.

  The name on the screen is Tanya.

  79

  Tanya hangs up, the swirl of emotions too much.

  Smit takes the phone, and after a moment of hesitation, puts his arm round her. She leans in, exhausted, still not quite able to believe it’s over.

  She catches a glimpse of the body lying just outside the garage. Even from here she can see there’s not much left of his head.

  ‘Stupid question,’ Smit says, ‘but are you OK?’

  In the last forty-eight hours she’d had a suspect fall on her, break her ribs, then blow his brains out in front of her. She’d had emergency surgery, been kidnapped, forced to watch as Jaap was being coerced into killing someone, only to be saved at the last moment by Smit.

  And she has a baby growing inside her with a hole in its heart.

  She doesn’t know what to say.

  ‘C’mon,’ Smit says, guiding her out of the garage, past Haanstra’s body and towards a patrol car which has just skidded up. ‘Let’s get you checked over.’

  She’s light-headed.

  Time no longer seems linear.

  But still she has to ask. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Smit says as they reach the car, a uniform opening a door for her like she’s a celebrity. ‘Roemers got lucky, managed to trace him here. But we had no idea what was going on. We didn’t know you’d been kidnapped, didn’t know what he was doing to Jaap. If we’d been a few seconds later then …’

  He looks away, the thought too painful to acknowledge.

  Another two cars pull up. Officers get busy taping off the scene.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘Thank you.’

  He squeezes her arm, but seems unable to say anything further.

  It’s only once the car has pulled out that she throws up all over the back seat.

  80

  It’s hours later and the adrenaline which has been propping Jaap’s system up suddenly runs out.

  The tunnel vision he’s been existing in broadens.

  He becomes aware of where he is, what’s around him.

  He’s in an interview room in the basement of his own station, the overhead lights too bright, too clinical. He can see minute detail, the little bumps of paint which had run down and dried, scuffs on the concrete floor, the loose line of dust where the wall meets the ground.

  ‘… and then what?’ asks the man opposite him. Jaap turns his focus back to him, he has a strange face, like his nose is the centre of gravity, all his features being pulled towards it. But his eyes are intelligent. And right now they’re showing doubt.

  ‘Like I told the previous guy—’

  The door opens, pushing a wave of air towards Jaap’s face, and Smit walks in.

  ‘OK, that’s enough,’ he says.

  The interviewer turns and eyes him up. When he speaks his voice is calm and level. ‘I’m trying to ascertain exactly what happened. In every case where a police officer is injured—’

  ‘Get out.’

  The man eyes Smit some more. Then he pulls his files together and leaves the room, Smit holding the door for him. He stops in the doorway, turns and looks at Jaap.

  ‘We’re not finished,’ he says.

  Once it’s closed Smit leans back against the wall.

  ‘You OK?’ he finally asks.

  Jaap doesn’t know what to say. He feels like putting his head down on the table.

  ‘C’mon,’ Smit says after a while. ‘I’ll take you home. Tanya should be there soon, she’s been given the all-clear.’

  ‘What about Arno?’ Jaap asks as they leave the room.

  ‘Arno’s … well, he’s pretty badly concussed, but he’ll pull through. I’ve got someone with him, just as a precaution.’

  They make it out into the night and Smit opens the door of an unmarked, parked in a cone of light by the canal’s edge.

  ‘I should call him,’ Jaap says once they’re moving.

  ‘Really, he’s fine. Speak to him tomorrow.’

  The neon of Amsterdam moves by. Jaap stares out at it, not really taking it in.

  A few minutes later Smit pulls up outside Jaap’s houseboat. He turns the motor off and they sit there in the sudden silence.

  ‘Listen,’ Smit says, ‘I’ll need to go through the full debrief tomorrow morning with you, but after that I suggest you take some time off.’

  ‘Sure, but I’ll need to do the full report as well.’

  ‘No need, I’ll get it all in the debrief and do it for you. Once it’s done you can OK it, but there’s no need for you to slave away on that right now.’

  Headlights appear ahead, nosing forward slowly along the canal side.

  ‘Thanks,’ Jaap says. ‘And for getting there in time.’

  ‘No worries,’ Smit says. He pauses for a moment as if unsure, then says, ‘I know things haven’t been great between us, but I think we should put that behind us, if you agree?’

  He holds his hand out.

  Jaap looks at it for a moment.

  He just saved Tanya’s life, he thinks. And mine.

  No one’s all good or all bad.

  Jaap reaches out and claps it. They shake.

  The headlights are getting closer, then the car stops and the lights flick off.

  ‘I think that’s her,’ Smit says. ‘Time for you to go.’

  Jaap gets out just as Tanya emerges from the car ahead. He’s not aware of running across the space separating them, but suddenly she’s in his arms.

  The two cars pull away, reversing in unison, leaving them alone.

  Later, sleep eluding them both, they sit on the sofa, staring out at the streak of moonlight smeared across the canal.

  ‘So she’s all right?’

  They’ve tried to avoid talking about it, all that matters to Jaap is that Tanya is unharmed, but their conversation had gradually gravitated towards it, as if they couldn’t resist its creeping pull.

  ‘Yeah, I mean, she’s not got much of a life waiting for her. But I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘Why her?’

  ‘You mean why did Haanstra pick her?’

  She nods.

  ‘I don’t know. I still don’t get why he chose the victims. The women, I mean. Or if he told Kamp, Groot and Wilders to find their own victims. And he played us, he knew we were after him and moved first. How is that even possible?’

  He watches a ripple pass through the moonlight.

  ‘This case is just so screwed up,’ he went on. ‘You’ve got a guy who goes to all this trouble to get video of someone killing someone else. Haase said it’s linked to some childhood trauma. But I’m not feeling it. When Haanstra called me he seemed too cold, too in control, y’know? It’s not like he was emotional about it. He was businesslike.’

  ‘He was. I hardly got to see him, but he didn’t strike me as crazy. Everything he did was deliberate.’

  Jaap shakes his head. Beside him Tanya nuzzles closer. In the end he wonders if it matters. He’s got Tanya back, that’s the important point.

  That’s rational, how it should be, logic triumphing.

  ‘Yeah, maybe. Anyway, Smit’s offered to write the report up for me, once he’s debriefed me tomorrow.’

  But even as he says it he knows logic can’t trump the feeling in his stomach, that simultaneous contraction and expansion which tells him something’s not right.

  ‘Sure he’d love to take the credit.’

  ‘He saved you. He saved me, for that matter. Right now I don’t really care if he gets a good news story out of it.’

  He kisses her.

  ‘Let’s go to bed,’ she says.

  The thought comes to him just as he’s drifting off, jolting him awake. It was something Haanstra had said.

  We’ll be watching you.

  Emphasis on the ‘we’.

&nb
sp; Did he mean him and Tanya, or did he mean someone else?

  DAY SIX

  * * *

  81

  Smit’s not in when Jaap makes it to the station. Which is hardly surprising; he’d left his houseboat well before the sky had even thought about getting light, never mind actually doing something about it. He’d woken at the point in his dream where he’d been wrapping the cling film round and round. His heart had been thudding, and he’d needed to get up, get out, anything to try and bring things back to normal.

  Whatever that is, he thinks.

  He caffeinates himself well beyond standard levels and starts work, his mind humming like a loose electrical connection. As he goes through the process of compiling everything Smit’s going to need to write up the final report, the feeling which had woken him so early, the feeling which he has been trying to ignore since last night, just gets stronger.

  He tries telling himself it’s nothing, just the stress, something which will die down of its own accord. But that does nothing to dampen it.

  Because the more he sits there going through the details, the more he feels there is something wrong with this case, something which doesn’t fit. He’s been an inspector long enough to know that his instincts are usually right, that he should trust them. But maybe, counters another part of his brain, it’s just an after-effect of yesterday, the adrenaline still wreaking havoc in his body, his mind.

  By the time Smit makes it in, the sky finally brightening and the caffeine wearing off, Jaap’s still no closer to shaking the feeling that something’s wrong.

  He walks into Smit’s office with a pile of notes, sees that Smit’s already set a recorder up next to a large cafetière of coffee and a plate of pastries.

  Jaap wonders if Smit’s the one with something wrong in his head. Maybe he’s had a mini-stroke which no one has noticed, but which has altered his personality. Because in all the years Jaap has worked for him, all the times he’s been in his office, he’s never once been offered so much as a glass of water, let alone coffee and pastries.