Before the Dawn

by Jake Woodhouse

  He ducks sideways, grabs Lumberjack’s arm with both hands, sticks his foot out, and then yanks Lumberjack across it. Lumberjack goes down hard – Kees can’t help but think of falling timber – and his grip loosens on the knife’s handle just enough for Kees to prise it free, grab it in his own hand, sweat making it slippery. He flips it over and slices the cable tie, catching his left wrist at the same time.

  Van der Pol’s already moving forward, Kees knows he’s got a matter of seconds before impact. He stamps down on the back of Lumberjack’s neck and the man goes limp.

  Van der Pol notices that it’s down to just him and Kees, the protection he’s always relied on suddenly unavailable. His eyes flick between Kees and the man lying on the ground.

  For a moment, standing less then ten feet apart, Kees thinks Van der Pol might give in and run.

  Van der Pol weighs up his options. Then a huge smile cracks open his face as he rushes towards Kees, bundling him backwards into the wire fence.

  Which turns out to be electrified.

  The shock pulsing through his body gives Kees extra impetus to fight back, like it’s the burst of energy his body needs. He leans back into the wire, using the next pulse of stinging electrical energy to explode forward, pushing Van der Pol off him and onto the ground.

  Kees lands his full weight on him and hears the deep grunt of Van der Pol losing air. He flips him over, grabs a wrist, and shoves it right up between the man’s shoulder blades. For good measure he kneels in the small of his back.

  Van der Pol tries to squirm. Kees takes a holistic approach, shoves the arm higher, puts even more weight on his knee. It seems to work. There’s less resistance now.

  He leans forward until his mouth is right by Van der Pol’s ear.

  ‘Who were you talking to?’ he says. ‘Who did you give orders to kill?’

  90

  ‘I think you might be on to something,’ Harry says as he slides into the seat opposite Jaap.

  They’re in a café on Waalstraat, one of the old-style ones which still holds the stink of smoke and doesn’t purvey thirty different artisan-roasted coffees from remote villages in faraway places. You want a chai latte with whipped soy cream, sweetened with stevia syrup and sprinkled with raw cacao powder? You’d better go elsewhere, because when you order coffee here you get a chipped mug of hot brown stuff, sugar and cream already added.

  Despite this, perhaps because of, it’s always busy.

  They’re at a table towards the back, tucked away in a curved half-booth, the seat fabric worn, the wood shiny with age and use.

  ‘Have you got any evidence that Van der Pol deals in that kind of thing?’

  ‘No,’ Harry says, looking around to check that no one’s in earshot. ‘But really? He does everything else. I know that snuff movies are supposed to be an urban myth, but if anyone is doing it then he’s gotta be a pretty strong candidate. In my view anyway. So Haanstra’s dead?’

  Jaap nods. A waiter hustles over. He looks like he’s only waitering to prop up his career as a drag queen, eyebrows plucked thin and exaggerated hips swinging like Marilyn Monroe. Harry waves him off. The waiter pouts, spins round and flounces away.

  ‘Looks like Haanstra was working with Bernard Kooy – he’s a possible scopolamine supplier. And I’ve got someone trying to track the bitcoins.’

  Harry nods, like, computers. ‘Well, I’ve done a little digging and come up with something which might be of interest to you. Less digital, more real world.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Actually it’s more of a him.’

  ‘Right, where is he?’

  ‘Luckily for us, he’s in prison.’

  Harry gives him the background as Jaap drives them to the Bijlmerbajes prison complex in De Omval. The prison itself consists of six towers, each joined by underground tunnels. The only thing which makes it look different to social housing are the bars on the windows. And, Jaap knows, those were only retrofitted years after the original construction. The plan had been that no one would want to jump out of the window of their prison cell if they were on the fourth floor or above.

  But it turned out they did.

  After the fifth inmate ignored the fact that none of the previous four had managed to escape – one killing themselves outright, the other three snapping various limbs – the council had had to stump up the cash for putting the bars on. And now, in a cruel twist of monetary fate, the council’s stumping up again, this time to remove the bars, as the whole prison complex is being turned into a holding area for asylum seekers. The Netherlands’ propensity to rehabilitate not incarcerate, combined with the crisis in Syria, means that there are more refugees in the country than convicted criminals. So turning prisons into housing seems pragmatic.

  They park and get out, Jaap looking up at the towers against the sky. Wisps of cloud streak behind them. He tries to work out how many men he’s put in this very prison over the years but finds the thought too depressing.

  Inside, they sign in and Jaap asks to speak to the duty officer. Who, it turns out, likes beer and fried food. At least that’s what the enlarged stomach which precedes him into the room seems to be saying. He listens to Jaap, makes a few calls, and minutes later Jaap and Harry find themselves in an outside area overshadowed by towers on all sides.

  The square space is filled with metal cages. Jaap knows this is where inmates deemed either too dangerous to mix with others or potentially at high risk of violence to themselves are given their hour-long chance to commune with nature.

  Each cage is no more than two metres by two metres, with a smooth concrete floor and chain-link sides.

  The guard giving them the guided tour stops at the third one and runs his baton back and forth along the chain-link. The man inside, standing with his back to them, doesn’t move.

  His head is shaved, tattoos running right up his neck to his scalp. They’re intricate, works of art compared to the usual dull, blurred images most people choose to mark themselves with. Jaap’s reminded of a painting he’d once seen by Bosch, a writhing mass of bodies having sex and shoving a wide range of hideous torture implements into various body cavities. No auto-fellating aliens, he notes.

  ‘Hey, fuckhead, you’ve got visitors,’ says the guard.

  The man turns, takes them in.

  Jaap notices his eyes seem oddly dark.

  ‘We’ll take it from here,’ Harry says to the guard, who nods, hitches his belt, and saunters off.

  ‘Well,’ says the man once the guard’s out of earshot. ‘This is exciting.’

  His voice is soft, self-assured. He has an unhurried aura. Jaap sees why his eyes look so dark: the man hardly has any whites. He’s wearing the standard jumpsuit, his hands and feet chained together with prison bling.

  On the drive over Harry had given Jaap the run down: Koen Kramer’s an ex-associate of Van der Pol’s, caught twelve years previously torturing a young woman. The arresting officers had written in their report that they’d been called to a small wood just outside Gouda where a couple of teenagers had sneaked off to drop some acid surrounded by nature, but had, in the come-up, heard some pretty terrifying screams. By the time the two officers made the woods a full forty minutes later they could still hear the screaming, and followed the noise through the trees.

  The scene they’d come upon had clearly shocked them. A woman lay on the ground trussed up, while a man was bent over her, gradually working a knife across her flesh in long lines. He’d done the legs, arms, neck, and was now working on her torso, working slowly and meticulously.

  The officers had rushed in and managed to take the man, but in the struggle one of them noticed a second figure disappearing into the trees. The officer who gave chase didn’t catch them, but did note in the report that he thought the man had been carrying a video camera. However, he’d not got a look at his face, and because they caught the man doing the torture, and he denied all knowledge of any one else being there, it was never fully pursued.

 
; The woman, despite the best efforts of the medics, died on the way to hospital.

  So Koen Kramer had been convicted of murder, and had never spoken of his reasons for committing the crime, nor about the other man, refusing to answer all questions put to him.

  Even in the liberal-minded Netherlands, he’d got life. This was one case where rehabilitation was taken right off the table. Because anyone who’s capable of what he did just has to be beyond any kind of talking cure.

  ‘We could use your help.’

  Koen turns his dark eyes towards Jaap. ‘I’m doing something serious here, I’m outside trying to get my vitamin D. It’s for my health. So maybe you can come back later.’

  Which is funny. Because once Harry’d given Jaap the background he’d handed him a two-page medical report. Jaap had glanced at it, noted the words ‘pancreatic cancer’, and read the summary, which, although dressed up in medical language, basically stated that the patient was pretty much fucked.

  ‘That’s good,’ Jaap says. ‘Thinking of your health. I like that, shows a certain responsibility.’

  Koen shrugs. ‘Gotta do what ya gotta do,’ he says. ‘But I’m sure you’re not here out of concern.’

  Jaap tells him they’re not, and lays out what they want.

  ‘Weird that the initial investigation didn’t really delve into that side of things, don’t you think?’ Koen says when Jaap mentions the report of a second man.

  ‘We’re here now.’

  In a cage two down a man starts howling like a B-movie werewolf. Koen appears for the first time unsure, an internal battle going on.

  ‘Fuck it, why not?’ he says after a few moments. ‘I wasn’t the only one there that night, obviously. There was someone else, and he was there to film it.’

  ‘Film you torturing the woman?’

  For the first time Jaap sees Koen’s eyes blink. He’s reminded of Sanders’ ghost dragon.

  ‘Yeah,’ Koen says, slowly running a tongue over his lips. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because that was his job. That’s what he’d been paid to do.’

  ‘By him?’ Harry holds a photo of Van der Pol up against the cage.

  Koen flicks his eyes towards it and then back to Jaap. He nods. He nods again when Harry pulls out a photo of Haanstra and asks if he was the other man there that night.

  ‘Had you done the same before?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. A couple of times at least. Van der Pol paid big for video. He didn’t like to go without, so after I ended up in here I heard someone else took my place.’

  Jaap holds up a photo of Kooy. ‘Recognize him?’

  Koen mulls it over then shakes his head. ‘Nah, but I was inside. I did hear the guy that took over was called Kooy. That him?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jaap says. ‘Yeah, that’s him. So tell me, what did Van der Pol do with the videos once he had them?’

  ‘Fuck knows. Maybe he jerked off to them.’ Koen steps closer. He fumbles his dick out of his jumpsuit. It’s limp, pathetic. He grabs it and starts trying to coax it into life.

  ‘You think I’m bad?’ he says, giving up, tucking himself away. ‘Haanstra and Van der Pol are worse. Waaay worse.’

  91

  Knowledge is not enough.

  To actually convict, evidence is required, enough facts to prove beyond any kind of doubt that to do otherwise would itself be criminal.

  But can I get enough evidence? Jaap thinks as he accelerates hard away from the kerb where Harry is just getting into his own car. Can I get the proof?

  Because finally things are starting to connect.

  Harry’s fired up too; he missed what he thought was his best chance to bring Van der Pol down when the raid Tanya’d worked on turned out to be a set-up. But the news Jaap’s brought him is resurrecting his chances. Jaap gets the feeling he’s not going to let another opportunity slip by.

  He checks the time. Smit’s press conference is due to start in less than half an hour, and Jaap reckons he should have the most up-to-date information beforehand. After all, this could be a much bigger coup for Smit to pull off. Linking these killings and the distribution of the films to Van der Pol would be enough to bring down a massive criminal enterprise.

  Somehow Jaap believes Smit will be up for that.

  He dials Roemers on the hands-free.

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Give me time. And Jaap?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you.’

  Smartass, Jaap thinks as he hangs up.

  Despite knowing the broad outline, there are still details which he can’t work out, small things about the case flapping round his head like loose ropes in the wind.

  Not that that’s unusual; if you went into the police hoping that you’d know everything about every crime you investigated, you were going to be very disappointed indeed. There are some things, Jaap’s learnt the hard way, you’re just never going to know. But that doesn’t stop his mind from probing.

  And one of the things it keeps coming back to is, he still doesn’t get how Haanstra knew Pieter Groot had been transferred to the hospital. Sure, he may have been watching the station and got lucky. But really, why would he? Same goes for Kooy.

  Just by the Concertgebouw a lorry starts a three-pointer, blocking traffic in both directions. Only it turns into a nine-pointer before the driver actually makes it round, allowing the sluice gates of traffic to flow again.

  Two minutes later Jaap’s at the station. He rushes towards the press room, just catching Smit before he goes in. When Jaap’s finished updating him, Smit says, ‘You’ve got the say-so of a dying man in prison? He’ll be dead by the time it goes to trial so his testimony will have to be recorded. It will get ripped to shit by the defence. You know that.’

  They’re standing just outside the room where the biggest and most important conferences are held. Smit’s team has done a good job of rousing pretty much any journalist within driving distance. He’s sold this one big.

  And he’s not happy to have anyone, least of all Jaap, make him step out there and cancel it. Cancel his big moment in front of the cameras.

  ‘I’m just asking for more time, I think there’s a bigger prize here.’

  ‘Van der Pol?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Have you got anything other than the testimony of a convicted felon?’

  ‘Not yet, but—’

  ‘Listen—’ Smit looks around, before continuing ‘—Van der Pol is basically untouchable. People have been trying for years to get him and no one has. And I’ll tell you why that is, he’s smart, and he doesn’t make mistakes. I’ve been closer to the current investigation to bring him down than you think, and sometimes I get so fucking frustrated that we can’t get him on anything. So unless you’ve got something concrete, I’m going out there to announce we got the killer and you are going to take that leave.’

  A press officer steps out of the room and gestures to Smit.

  ‘OK?’ Smit says after a few moments’ silence.

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ Jaap replies.

  Smit gives him one last look before turning round and pushing through the door, walking up to the lectern like a returning hero. As Jaap walks away he hears Smit opening up, welcoming the press, warming them up for something big.

  Something stings his mind. He stops dead in the corridor. Then he walks back to the door and looks through the glass pane.

  At Smit holding the stage like an orator. His suit crisp, the scrape on his shoes still there, but hidden from the press by the lectern, his gestures and speech designed to give the impression of a strong hero, fighting the good fight. And winning it too.

  The sting in his mind intensifies, and starts off a cascade of thoughts.

  Suddenly he starts to run.

  92

  Harry Borst’s just stepping up to his car when he feels a squirt of something on his neck. He’s just been calling in a favour, and has a possible lead on Kooy’s current
location. Instinctively he puts his hand up and can feel a liquid, stinging slightly. He turns round, ready to lay into whoever or whatever has just sprayed something on him. But things are slowing down, and the turn seems to take for ever, his reflection in the shop window becoming increasingly distorted.

  He has the strangest sensation that he’s just eaten some raw garlic, his mouth almost puckering from the pungency.

  The whole world’s suddenly heavy, the dimensions all wrong. He can feel the miles of air above gradually crushing him down towards the ground, even though he’s still standing, His feet feel weird, like they’re not there but there at the same time. And now there’s a face, a face which seems familiar, but he can’t quite place it.

  ‘Let’s go,’ says the face, the words slow and underwater. The figure turns, and Borst finds himself following, each step on a world which is no longer stable. Some footfalls are hard and jarring, others sinking voluptuously into the spongy earth.

  As they reach the figure’s car and he opens a door, a name comes to him, deep in the confused ballooning thoughts he’s having. He knew he was supposed to be doing something, for the inspector he’d just been talking to. But he can’t remember what. Or the man’s name.

  He gets in, sits, does as he’s told, a sense of strange unease lurking under a sort of apathy.

  Bernard Kooy slides in behind the wheel, turns the key in the ignition.

  Borst thinks he should call someone.

  But he can’t think who.

  Half a second later he can’t even remember his own name.

  Despite himself, he grins. More and more until there’s nothing left.

  93

  Kees has a choice.

  Up ahead is a fork in the road, left leading to Schiphol airport, right leading to Amsterdam.

  He’s used some of the money from the bags in Van der Pol’s boot to get his new passport, his new identity, and as a bonus – to pay for the sheer shitness of his life these past four years – there’s enough cash to last him pretty much whatever time he has left.