‘Can’t they use fingerprinting or something?’
‘She’s a victim, not a suspect,’ I said. I did wonder whether Larsson might try lifting prints in addition to gathering DNA… although the girl’s sausage-like fingers might not even give up that much. I felt a chill pass through me.
Petra was silent, taking it all in.
I looked askance at the little drawbridge onto Entrepotdok, vaguely aware of the hiss of the milk foamer. The skies, once promising, had darkened.
‘Here, I just had time to get you a roll from the market.’ Petra fished out a paper bag containing the fresh-baked bread. ‘I thought the harbour master might be getting hungry.’
She liked to tease me about my early morning meditations down by the water, but I enjoyed the jibe. It’s important not to take life too seriously. On the other hand…
‘Who will handle the case?’ she enquired.
‘The girl? Who do you think?’
We paused as Gert set down the coffees, one slopping into its saucer. Sebastiaan Bergveld didn’t drink here; it wasn’t nearly trendy or expensive enough for his tastes. Still, it was unwise to talk shop so close to the station.
I tore off a piece of the roll and put it in my mouth, noticing an older guy joining the cowgirl at the bar. He was surveying the place too, and our eyes briefly met. But he didn’t have the air of a cop about him. Too unkempt. A tattoo on his neck had lost its shape with the folds of skin that had formed there.
The bread was too floury and stuck to the roof of my mouth; I washed it down with a slurp of my cappuccino, which was scalding hot, burning my mouth and making it worse.
‘You’re especially quiet,’ Petra remarked.
‘Yes. I’m worried about our daughter. She seems so distant all of a sudden.’
My wife frowned. ‘She’s right here in the city. What are you talking about?’
‘But do we know what she gets up to half the time? Any of the time?’ I corrected myself.
‘Henk, she’s a student. What do you expect? What did you get up to as a student? I imagine it’s rather the same. She’s discovering herself… leave her alone!’ Her mouth made a humouring moue.
‘Maybe that’s what I’m afraid of,’ I said into my coffee, blowing on it to cool it down. But something else was nagging – something I couldn’t yet put my finger on.
‘You and I have the same challenges,’ Petra said.
‘How so?’
‘We’re both being invited to let go of what we’re holding on to.’
I set the cup down and ran my hand over my stubble, evaluating her statement.
It was true. Petra was a journalist for Het Parool, the Amsterdam daily newspaper, and a features writer of thirty years’ standing. But features were becoming ever shorter and ever shallower ‘human interest’ pieces now, with the relentless online onslaught of free news and trivia. We’d talked about it enough times, just as we’d talked about Jan Six and Sebastiaan Bergveld from my own, parallel world of frustration. Though the conclusions we’d reached had never been voiced so starkly as this morning.
‘And it hurts,’ she added.
‘Any suggestions about what to do?’
‘Yes, we should go away. Not…’ she added quickly ‘… on a sailing trip.’
I took a cautious sip of coffee. ‘You really couldn’t imagine spending any time on a boat?’
‘Henk, we live on a houseboat.’
‘Where then?’ I was thinking about the biking trip with Johan.
‘What about spending some time in Delft with my cousin? I’m sure Cecilia could use a little help with that conservatory she’s trying to get built…’
‘Hmm.’ I eyed my watch. ‘I should get to work.’
‘Will you give it some thought?’
‘I will.’ I got up, then stooped again to kiss her on the forehead. ‘Thanks for the roll.’
As I left, the unkempt man beside the cowgirl got up too, our eyes meeting once more. And that’s when I worked out what had been nagging at me. The tattoo on his neck – it reminded me of the black mark on Jane Doe’s ankle. Not seaweed. A tattoo.
3
LITTLE HUNGARY
I stood outside the police station – a little fortress of brick with high, bracketed security cameras – checking the photos on my phone. Or rather, attempting to. I was sure that I’d taken photos of the body, but they didn’t appear to have been saved. I was losing my edge.
‘Hoi!’ a couple of colleagues called, passing me. I stepped out of their way and, after some deliberation, called Larsson.
‘I just uploaded those photos,’ he said.
‘That was fast.’
‘Not really. Bergveld asked for them.’
I paused. ‘You have one of her ankle? There was a mark there. Struck me afterwards that it might have been a tattoo, distorted by the bloating?’
‘You’re right. I’m running a test on the ink.’
‘Could you also email me a photo?’
‘Should I though?’ he said, half joking. ‘Will it get me in trouble?’
‘You should. It won’t.’
He laughed. ‘To your work email, OK?’
‘Of course.’ I thought about asking him not to mention this conversation, but decided against it. ‘Thanks Kurt.’ I ended the call.
I was about to enter the building, but paused to check my email on my phone first. Larsson’s email had already appeared with the photo attached. I turned around and walked away from the station.
*
Johan answered first time.
‘Henk! How are we looking for the trip? You spoken to your missus about it?’
The bike trip.
‘What about Denmark?’ he went on. ‘Copenhagen? Ferry over to Rødby?’
It sounded like a helpfully brief itinerary. Everything would fit nicely in the BMW’s metal panniers. ‘There’s an idea,’ I said. ‘But I wanted to ask you about something else. A tattoo, actually.’
‘You finally decided to get one?’ he asked approvingly.
For years now, Johan had been trying to persuade me to get a regimental tattoo – just like one of the various tattoos he had on his arms. Most of the men in our regiment had one. But I’d always resisted those types of tribal affiliations. Holland was already becoming too insular, too protective – too uncertain of its relations with minorities, in particular. Though maybe I’m biased. I’d grown up outside the country.
‘You still there?’ Johan said.
‘Sure. Listen, you know about tattoos… I’m working on a case right now where I’m trying to identify one. If I send you a photo, could you take a look?’
‘What kind of case?’ he asked.
‘A girl was found dead in the harbour this morning.’
‘Oh.’
If you don’t say anything, you don’t hear anything, I reasoned. ‘We’re trying to identify the body, only I’m struggling already with it.’
‘That prick Bergveld trying to run you off the case again?’
‘No comment.’
He sighed. ‘You want to meet for coffee, talk it over?’
‘I want to work the case, Johan. Thanks for the offer though.’
‘Send it over.’
‘Don’t share it, it’s an official autopsy photo.’
‘You don’t need to say that.’
‘Unfortunately, in this political climate, I really do. Hold on.’
I paused the call and forwarded the photo to him, double-checking that the email address in the ‘To’ line was Johan’s.
‘You should have it now.’ I returned to the call.
There was a short pause. ‘I do. I’m looking at it on my Mac.’
I bowed my head as I saw Joost van Erven, the station captain, approaching. He discovered a sudden interes
t in his own phone as he passed me.
‘Now,’ came Johan’s voice again, ‘do you want the good news or the bad news?’
‘Both, in that order.’
‘The good news is that I think I can make out what this is, or was – an insignia. Eastern European, it looks like.’
‘What’s the bad news?’
‘It’s probably Hungarian. Vicious bastards. You know that.’
I did.
Had she been branded?
*
The Red Light District, there beside the harbour and the train station, is a curiosity: a flesh market operated by foreigners, for foreigners. Very few Dutchmen ever go there, and even fewer Dutch women work there. Yet the oldest part of the city holds a curious claim on my soul. My forebears would almost certainly have stopped there on their long-awaited return to land, before going on to a bar like De Druif – or getting another tattoo.
I’d left the police station with Liesbeth. It’s always striking how quickly the normality of Nieuwmarkt – a wide, brick plaza that has a market on most days – gives way to the narrow lanes and canals of the RLD proper: the cooking smells of cheap restaurants, the glitter of tacky tourist shops, and of course the neon-lit windows promising dark delights.
The sky was now an iron lid. Heavy raindrops began to fall.
Liesbeth updated me on her enquiries as we walked: ‘I called the university and the science museum, as you asked. Zero for two, I’m afraid. No missing persons report, and no event at the museum the night before last. I also called the missing persons info line, and the Sea Palace – the restaurant out in Oosterdok… they weren’t too helpful.’
‘It’s a busy restaurant,’ I conceded. Sometimes Petra and I went there at the weekend for dim sum.
‘Yes,’ Liesbeth agreed. ‘And that’s about all I can do for you, without clearing it with Sebastiaan.’
I nodded. I hadn’t told Liesbeth about the dead girl’s tattoo; I didn’t want to implicate her in my investigations, which were fast becoming semi-official. As far as Liesbeth knew, we were here in the RLD for routine checks – to ensure that the women were working out of free will, which was legal… ‘free will’ being the operative words. A female police officer’s presence was standard procedure.
‘Let’s walk down Molensteeg,’ I suggested. ‘Keep your eyes on the doorways.’
And the men loitering in the shadows there, I implied.
Molensteeg is a narrow lane known as ‘Little Hungary’. Aptly so, as Hungary was, almost exclusively, the homeland of the girls in fluorescent bikinis trying to draw my attention. We were in plain clothes, Liesbeth wearing a navy-blue wax jacket. I was in my moss-green bomber jacket, vinyl and less waterproof, but at least padded; beneath, in a pancake holster, was my service weapon.
The RLD could be a trial, I won’t deny. Sex was still good with Petra, but not wild and abandoned like at the beginning, when our need for each other was like a constant hunger.
Things evolve. I locked eyes with Irena, a Hungarian woman of indeterminate age in a tiny, silly police uniform complete with shiny black cap, and heeled boots that prevented me seeing her ankles. She gave me a hesitant, knowing smile. We kept walking.
‘See anything?’ Liesbeth asked.
‘No. You?’
She shook her head. There were CCTV cameras in most parts of the RLD, causing the pimps to make themselves scarce. But all these girls wouldn’t have come here from so far away without handlers. We passed one in a tiny orange bra and underpants, expression beseeching; she tapped the glass aggressively. There, distinct on her ankle, was the swirling insignia – a bit like a yin and yang sign.
We emerged out into the airy square by the Oude Kerk, a huge brick church that spoke to my Calvinist soul.
‘Look,’ Liesbeth said.
Further down the canal, a white four-poster bed was floating, tethered to an old merchant’s house. The thin, blue-white veil around the bed appeared ethereal in the dim light. It was as if we’d suddenly left the RLD and found ourselves in Venice.
‘Idea for your honeymoon?’ I ventured.
Liesbeth smiled. ‘Marc’s organising that. And he won’t tell me anything.’
There was something rehearsed about her response. Perhaps because she’d had to deal with the suspicion that she might be improperly sharing information with her prosecutor fiancé.
‘Probably for the best,’ I remarked. I thought about treating Liesbeth to coffee and cake, but there wasn’t time. ‘Let’s double back along Molensteeg. I want to talk to one of the women there.’
Irena was still in her window, wearing her UV-bathed police uniform. We stopped at her door. She opened it warily and turned on the harsh overhead light, instantly ageing her. The cabin was tiny, too small for the three of us. The instruments of her trade lay around: a pair of handcuffs, none too sturdy; a skin-coloured sex toy, not so large as to make the customers feel inadequate; rolled, clean towels for the unclean bed; a little washbasin, and a bin beneath – good-sized – for used condoms.
I was supposed to keep my gaze at eye level – except when there was good reason not to. A dark-green mark peeked out beneath the hem of her black hot pants.
‘It is old bruise,’ she said.
I nodded. Pimps used violence far less often these days. Too easy to spot, and bad for business. Psychological methods were preferred, namely blackmail. There was a stigma about prostitution in the women’s home countries, and it only took one camera-phone photo…
‘You remember my colleague Liesbeth?’ I said in English.
‘Hello again.’ Liesbeth smiled warmly.
‘I hope it’s OK for us to drop by, to see how you’re doing,’ I continued.
‘I’m OK,’ she said. Her eyes flitted between mine and Liesbeth’s, her lashes clumped with mascara. You might imagine that the women would be more comfortable talking to female police officers, but this wasn’t the case. Shame among other women? Or competitiveness? Something more basic, I’d come to conclude. They kept hoping for a person who’d protect them. A guy with a gun was a good start, in their world.
‘Business still good?’ I persevered. Sex workers could clear a couple of grand a day here in the RLD.
‘Sure,’ she said. The sides of her mouth crinkled into a smile, but so briefly that she may as well not have bothered.
‘And you’re still sending money home to Budapest?’
I’d never received a good answer as to how she was converting euros back into the crumbling Hungarian forint.
She waved a hand over her face, sweeping a stray section of her fringe over one ear. Always with half a mind to seduce… though she was trembling.
‘Sure,’ she said again.
Of course the trembling could have been drugs, another method of control – but I was getting the feeling she was holding back out of fear.
Time to turn up the heat, then. ‘Could we see some of the money? To satisfy ourselves that you’re receiving it.’
‘It’s gone. I took it to the bank this morning.’ She was looking beyond me now, out into the lane.
‘Dressed like this?’
‘Could I speak with you alone?’ she said to me.
I turned to Liesbeth. Secretly, I’d been hoping for this development.
‘I’ll get us some coffee,’ Liesbeth said, the little bell by the door tinkling as she left.
I sat on the red, PVC-upholstered stool in the window – the one she normally occupied – and crossed my arms. ‘Go ahead then, Irena.’
But she was looking past me again, at something – or someone – outside. I thought it might be Liesbeth, but I didn’t want to turn and lend weight to the object of her gaze.
‘You must leave me alone now,’ she said.
That was odd. A moment ago she’d wanted to speak to me. ‘I’m a policeman, Irena. Even I don’t g
et to choose to do that.’
‘You are putting me in danger.’
I thought about showing her the photo of the tattoo, but decided against it. ‘There was a body, a young girl, found in the harbour this morning,’ I said instead.
The blood visibly drained from her face.
‘Would you, or any of the other girls here, happen to have heard anything about –’
‘Please go.’ Her voice rose. ‘Go!’
Not part of the plan.
I backed away, hands up in a gesture of surrender. Her entire slight frame was shaking in the tiny blue shirt.
‘You know how to reach me,’ I said.
I exited the cabin onto the street, my eyes adjusting to the duller light. Liesbeth was waiting.
We walked a few steps towards Nieuwmarkt and the police station. ‘Everything OK?’ we both asked, almost in unison.
‘No,’ we said together.
‘You go first,’ I told her.
‘A man showed up. He was trying to see into the cabin, while staying out of the range of the cameras.’
I looked up at one: a spherical, 360-degree camera strung between the buildings above the lane like a street lamp.
‘Did you ID him?’ I said.
‘Partially, but his back was to me. He left pretty quickly. He was on the phone.’
‘And you didn’t think to follow?’
Liesbeth paused. ‘I thought we were just doing routine checks here today? Is there something you’re not telling me?’
‘Irena was afraid,’ I said, sidestepping her question. ‘More than afraid.’
4
SLAVIC
Liesbeth and I stood in the cramped CCTV-monitoring room at IJ Tunnel 3, Stefan de Windt at the controls of the grey bank of dated monitors. Stefan was a young, fair-haired cop with a tendency to wear his gun in a shoulder holster at all times around the station. He needed to get out more. Unfortunately for Stefan, he’d become rather too good at making sense of the hundreds of camera feeds dotted about the station’s precinct, which – following the first of several planned reorganisations – covered the RLD.
We’d been going over the feeds from the cameras on Molensteeg, with Liesbeth trying to identify the man who’d sent Irena into a state of terror.
The Harbour Master Page 2
