The Harbour Master

by Daniel Pembrey

  I hung up as I approached my daughter and her boyfriend. Petra was already chatting away animatedly.

  Sergei was smartly dressed and mature, and Nadia appeared to be truly at ease with him. He insisted on buying a bottle of champagne and Petra quickly gave in, laughing. He asked me a series of polite, deferential questions: about my career as a policeman, mostly. Just the one question about the drama at the harbour, which had been all over the news. I asked a couple of questions in return – about his films, his investments – and all the while his pale eyes scrutinised me. Instead of me assessing his appropriateness for my daughter, he was searching me, weighing me up. Perhaps this was just how Russian businessmen had been taught to survive in the motherland.

  All the while, the old doubts and bogeymen were crowding around me. What had I managed to accomplish by first dismantling a highly productive police-informant network in Amsterdam and now ending a system that provided cheaper energy to the whole of Holland?

  Was I getting my just deserts in Rem Lottman abandoning me?

  ‘What do you think, Mr van der Pol?’

  ‘Please call me Henk,’ I told Sergei. ‘Say again?’

  ‘Bear hunting? Would you like to try it some time?’

  ‘We’re talking about St Petersburg, Dad.’ Nadia rolled her eyes.

  ‘Ooh,’ Petra said, ‘we could go to the Hermitage! Nadia, have we not always wanted to go?’

  I was about to ask what was wrong with the branch of the Hermitage in Amsterdam when my phone rang again. It was Johan. I almost rejected the call, then realised how much I wanted to hear my oldest friend’s voice.

  ‘Henk, where are you?’

  ‘Brussels, with the family. You?’

  ‘At home. I just got back from visiting the harbour again. There are quite a few onlookers still down there.’

  I excused myself from the table. ‘That end of the harbour has never seen so much attention.’

  ‘No,’ Johan agreed. ‘Is there any news?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Er… the enquiry, Henk. Whether it extends back to the informants?’

  I sighed. ‘It’s too early to tell. These things take time. There’s a big mess with the Norwegians to sort out. But Joost’s team is on the way out – that much is clear. And they were the main threat.’

  ‘They can still accuse us,’ he said. ‘They may have all the more reason to do so, and far less to lose now.’

  I couldn’t refute that, other than to say: ‘As long as Rem Lottman’s in our corner, we should be all right.’

  As long as…

  ‘All right.’ Johan sounded unsure. ‘Let me know.’

  ‘Okey-dokey.’ I hung up.

  I walked back to the table, where Petra was sitting alone. ‘Where did Nadia and the bear hunter go?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘He has a name, Henk,’ my wife said, finishing her champagne and taking my hand. ‘They went to see a show. Told me to tell you goodbye. Let’s take a stroll.’

  ‘What show?’ I said, stung. ‘There are no shows in Brussels!’

  ‘Perhaps they just wanted some time alone together. Perhaps they’re heading back to their hotel room early, who knows?’

  I grimaced. ‘I thought you didn’t like the sound of him?’

  ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

  ‘You told me so. In Rotterdam.’

  ‘That’s before I met him! I’ve actually grown quite fond of him. He clearly cares a great deal for her.’

  The Grand Place was cast in twilight shadow. On the opposite side of the square was a higher frontage, catching the last of the light. It was dated in gilt – 1697.

  ‘I guess they have their own lives to lead,’ I said.

  Petra squeezed my hand.

  ‘As do we. I wonder whether we might do better elsewhere.’

  She looked at me. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘All this history. All this looking back to the golden age – so far in the past. It would be nice to live in a place that was looking forward. That believed its best years were still ahead of it.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said wearily, ‘not this again.’

  At regular intervals during our marriage – roughly measured in half-decades – I’d floated the idea of moving to the US. Specifically New York City – the part of the country instantly familiar to us Dutch, with our shared history…

  ‘Why would you want to do that, when your career has just got a second wind?’

  I didn’t mention anything about Lottman’s silence.

  ‘Besides…’ she said. ‘We just agreed to go to St Petersburg in August.’

  ‘Did we?’

  ‘We did,’ she said, contentedly. ‘Sergei is taking you bear hunting.’

  My phone was ringing. I grabbed for it, but again it wasn’t the private number I’d been hoping for.

  It was Liesbeth.

  Which was strange.

  ‘What’s up?’ I said.

  ‘I just wondered if you needed any help.’

  ‘Help with what?’ I asked, confused.

  ‘You haven’t heard?’

  ‘Heard what? What’s happened?’

  ‘Henk, it’s just appeared on TV, as breaking news…’

  ‘What has? Tell me, Liesbeth!’

  ‘Rem Lottman… it appears he’s been kidnapped.’

  Part III:

  Ransom

  29

  AN UNFORGIVING MISTRESS

  Things were not going to plan. The woman on the phone was having trouble breathing.

  ‘Where was Lottman going?’ I demanded.

  The woman was Francine, Rem Lottman’s assistant.

  I caught my wife glaring at me from across the hotel room. The room was hot, airless; the front of my shirt was damp and I could feel the sweat trickling down my back. What was meant to be a fun trip to the Belgian capital was turning into a nightmare.

  ‘I’m not sure that I can tell you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know if I can even talk to you.’

  I shifted uncomfortably. Most people would be terrified, I conceded, if they were the assistant to an attaché in the Council of Europe and that man had just been kidnapped; she could easily have been abducted with him.

  But what were the facts here? Did we even know for sure he’d been kidnapped? Could he have collapsed, been attacked?

  For the media, the inference was clear. And, more than ever, the media shaped police priorities.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ I asked her.

  ‘Mean by what?’

  ‘Not knowing if you can talk to me?’

  ‘I’ve… I’ve been given a list of people I can speak to.’

  ‘Which people?’

  I caught the sharp edge to my question. It was possible the call was being recorded.

  ‘You’re not…’ she stammered. ‘You’re not on the list.’

  ‘Who gave you the list?’

  The same security personnel who’d failed to protect Rem Lottman in the first place? The ones who’d intervened to save my wife from a Ukrainian biker gang in Amsterdam, when they should have been focused on their man?

  Francine was silent, save for her gulps of breath.

  ‘You know that I’m a Dutch policeman, and that I’m well acquainted with Rem. You know we met in the days leading up to his disappearance. Like everyone, I’m just trying to find out what happened to him. Don’t you want that too?’

  A little cry escaped her.

  ‘Give me something to go on!’ I yelled.

  ‘Henk!’ my wife reproved me.

  ‘I’ve…’ Francine began.

  ‘What?’ I prompted.

  Did she blame herself? I suddenly saw that this might be a more interesting path to
travel down.

  ‘Don’t make yourself feel the guilt of not doing all you could have done. Guilt can be a very unforgiving mistress. I should know.’

  ‘I shared pretty much everything with the investigators!’ she cried.

  ‘Pretty much?’

  Petra eyed me once more. She’d stopped flicking through the Hotel Metropole’s in-house magazine.

  ‘He went to see his amie,’ Francine said.

  A lover? I assumed there was an ‘e’ on the end of amie – that his lover was female – but when it came down to it, all I knew about Lottman’s personal life was that he was a bachelor. Being a senior politician and yet unmarried wasn’t so odd these days. Politics could be almost as unforgiving as the police force in the way it treated married life. I gave my wife a glance that was supposed to be reassuring. I’m not sure it worked.

  ‘Please give me more details,’ I said to Francine.

  ‘Who’s this?’ A male voice had come on the line.

  ‘Henk van der Pol, Amsterdam police. I was with Lottman at the Energy Summit –’

  ‘Don’t interfere with an official enquiry.’

  There was a click and then a continuous, dull tone.

  *

  Petra set her magazine down beside the full fruit bowl on a low table.

  ‘Lottman was visiting a lover the night he disappeared – according to his assistant,’ I told her.

  ‘Really,’ my wife said, raising one eyebrow and crossing her arms, a combination that spelled trouble.

  I suddenly craved outside air, and a cigarette.

  ‘Henk, we came here to be with our daughter. To get away from all this.’

  ‘All what?’ I asked. ‘Rem Lottman’s security team saving you from a gang of psychotic bikers?’

  ‘And what – who – put me in that situation in the first place?’ She stood up forcefully.

  She was right.

  I let my head fall into my hands. My brow was hot and damp.

  Petra put her hand on my shoulder. ‘This is not your responsibility.’

  I looked up at her. ‘That’s debatable. What’s not debatable is that, without Rem Lottman, I’m finished. He was backing me against Joost.’

  The Amsterdam police commissioner had wanted to get rid of me for longer than I could remember.

  My wife sat back down opposite me. ‘I thought you said Joost was finished.’

  ‘I thought he was, until now.’

  She picked an overripe plum from the fruit bowl but let it fall back in again. ‘Could there be something else going on here?’

  ‘Huh?’ I said, massaging my temples.

  ‘When we first met, what case were you working on?’

  How could I forget? The kidnapping of Freddy Heineken in 1983: one of a spate of abductions of high-profile business people – the Van der Valk hotel family, Albert Heijn’s grandson… For a brief period in the 1980s, Holland overtook Colombia as the kidnap centre of the world.

  Even in that context, the Heineken case stood out, for the ease with which the kidnappers had extracted a ransom of thirty-five million guilders (fifteen million euros) and achieved notoriety. My role in the investigation had been peripheral, but the wounds had barely healed – throughout the police force. If we couldn’t keep a man like Freddy Heineken safe, who could we protect?

  Had those wounds just been reopened?

  ‘It’s not about that,’ I said.

  ‘Then what is it about? I’m sure the Belgian police will have their best people on this. Let them do their job.’

  I didn’t want to get into my feelings towards Rem. I didn’t understand them fully myself. Feelings of friendship?

  No, it was a deeper reliance than that.

  ‘I’m assisting an enquiry into the Amsterdam police force at Lottman’s behest. Without Lottman backing it, I’m exposed.’

  ‘You haven’t mentioned this.’ Having been a features writer for Het Parool, Petra was trained to seek the scoop.

  ‘I couldn’t. It’s highly confidential.’ I had to tell her now because I needed her to do something for me. ‘The government was running a covert operation via senior personnel in the Amsterdam police force and various foreign diplomats, exchanging gifts for energy-supply contracts with favourable terms. The diplomats were all from oil-producing countries.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘What kind of gifts?’

  ‘Fifty-carat diamonds. A Verspronck painting no one knew existed.’ I paused. ‘Nights with high-end Ukrainian escorts.’

  ‘That escort at the Royal Hotel who was beaten up?’ Her mouth fell open. ‘What was Rem Lottman’s role in this?’

  ‘It’s not clear. I’m realising there’s much I don’t know about the man. But by the time I confronted him over it – at the Energy Summit – he wanted everything to be cleaned up, and he wanted my help doing that.’

  ‘This enquiry you just mentioned?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I wiped the sweat from my forehead. ‘The fallout’s bad. A dead Norwegian diplomat, a painting taken back from them… a powerful Ghanaian diplomat put on “do not enter” lists at Benelux airports. That sheikh, too… there are a lot of powerful people suddenly upset with us.’

  ‘Willing to kidnap?’

  ‘Who knows? Kidnapping is how powerful figures seek redress in the criminal world and the people involved in this haven’t exactly been law-abiding, have they?’

  ‘Have you told the investigating team?’

  ‘I haven’t had the chance. They’ve already shut me out.’

  She gave me a sceptical look. ‘You’ll talk with them in the morning though, won’t you?’

  ‘Cherchez la femme,’ I said. ‘Rem’s assistant said that his last known move was going off to see his lover…’

  Petra was shaking her head when something seemed to occur to her. ‘What’s his assistant like?’

  I recalled seeing Francine the night of the Energy Summit.

  ‘Young, well turned out… now scared. Everything you’d expect of an assistant to a power player who’s been abducted –’

  ‘Sexy?’

  ‘You could say.’

  Was Francine his mistress?

  ‘You always ask the right questions –’

  She’d already seen where I was going, and waved her hands in front of her now. ‘No Henk, not again…’

  ‘Someone needs to locate and quiz the lover, fast.’

  ‘You’re starting to sound like a tabloid editor!’

  ‘Rem would have confided in that person.’

  ‘The police team investigating will find out. Anyway, what about the rest of the family?’

  It was a good point. His parents… did he have siblings? ‘I’ll ask Liesbeth to look into it.’

  ‘Not that family,’ Petra cried. ‘Ours! Don’t even bother to ask for my help until you’ve made time for Nadia and Sergei.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now, in Brussels! And, the trip to St Petersburg we talked about.’

  I had no choice. ‘Deal.’

  My phone rang before Petra had a chance to say more. It was Stefan.

  ‘Boss – you seen the latest news?’

  Picking up the hotel room’s remote control, I flicked on the TV.

  ‘The kidnappers just released an image,’ Stefan said. ‘You should take a look.’

  30

  THE PHOTOGRAPH

  My heart almost stopped when I saw it: an unkempt Lottman against a dull background, holding up a folded copy of De Telegraaf.

  I stepped closer to the TV screen. It was yesterday’s edition of the paper in his hands. Though he was physically bigger, Lottman looked just like Freddy Heineken in the photo; it was the exact same arrangement as in the photograph taken of the captive beer tycoon in 1983.

 
What was the wide-eyed expression on his face – surprise? Submission… humiliation… resignation? Was this a man who’d undergone a psychological earthquake, whose every assumption in life had been shaken? Or was there still some political calculation behind those dark pupils, trying to send a message over the heads of his captors?

  Three decades ago, I’d stared at an eerily similar image for hours, trying to observe, rather than assume, the dominant emotion. The more I’d looked, the harder it had become, the photo acting like a mirror of sorts, trapping my own feelings – fatal for any objective, facts-based investigation… and yet there had been as much going on in those dark eyes as in one of Rembrandt’s self-portraits (the later ones, when the old master had gone broke).

  Lottman wasn’t in pyjamas like Freddy Heineken. He wore his suit and tie as though everything were normal, although – like his black hair and thick eyebrows – his clothes were dishevelled; the knot of his tie was severely askew. Evidently he’d been manhandled. His fleshy cheeks had reddened. From anger – or exertion, perhaps?

  Or was it the heat in the room where the photo had been taken?

  I kicked the bed’s baseboard, vexed by my lack of access to the investigation.

  Then I looked again at the newspaper Rem was holding up. Dutch was of course spoken in Belgium and De Telegraaf was widely available here. Still, the choice of paper was significant. The headline looked innocuous in comparison to the ‘original’, the title of which was burned into the memories of anyone who’d worked the case: POSSIBLE TO TRACE HEINEKEN KIDNAPPERS.

  This time it read: STALEMATE IN BRUSSELS…

  The rest of the headline was hidden by the fold of the newspaper.

  I studied the rest of the photo.

  The background was different. The original had been just like an Old Masters painting: a mustardy-green in the middle darkening to a blackish-brown at the extremities. This one was dull grey and yet there was a slight shimmer. I took a picture of the digital TV screen with the camera on my phone just before the image vanished, replaced by a perfectly coiffed newscaster in her studio. She was speaking French and describing Rem as a haut fonctionnaire, a label that would guarantee him a certain type of police attention here in Brussels.