The Harbour Master

by Daniel Pembrey

  ‘Don’t they say that’s the hallmark of a great politician? To be able to inhabit each side’s perspectives?’

  ‘I feel your pain,’ Hawinkels said, quoting Bill Clinton. ‘But to extemporise like that, in a complicated legal case… to dissolve into someone else’s identity…’

  A bright, smiling lady with a bob haircut appeared, carrying a tray with two coffees.

  ‘Thank you, Elke.’

  Hawinkels emptied a sugar sachet into his cup and began stirring. When the door closed again he said, ‘Then the father committed suicide.’

  I tried to imagine the impact of that on Rem.

  ‘He ended up taking six months off,’ the professor continued.

  ‘That’s a long time for a man with Lottman’s ambition.’

  ‘Yes and no. Yes, Rem was a young man in a hurry, but the legal training process is a long one anyway.’ I had the sense of Hawinkels finding firmer, more familiar ground. ‘Three years of law studies here only got them into the Netherlands Bar Association and their local Bar; they then needed to complete another three years in a law firm with supervision before becoming fully qualified, so they were in it for six years, minimum. Seven years now: we require a masters’ degree as well these days.’

  I sipped my coffee, comparing Lottman’s journey to my own in the army and the police force.

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘The father? Ran sandpaper factories.’

  I’d meant what had Rem done with his time off, but this was interesting. ‘Where?’

  ‘Across Scandinavia.’

  It made me think of Norway; I couldn’t help seeking a connection. There was none, of course. Trading routes across the Baltic… historically, it wasn’t unusual for the Dutch to have business interests up there.

  ‘There’s still a family company?’ I asked.

  ‘You haven’t investigated this?’ Hawinkels looked surprised. ‘They sold the company shortly after Rem’s father died, but there’s family money, absolutely. Trusts and trusts of the stuff. Which perhaps explains what has now happened.’

  ‘Maybe.’ I tried to preserve my veneer of knowledge about the case. ‘It’s discreet money though, isn’t it? Hardly well known.’

  ‘That’s Noordwijk for you.’

  ‘Do you have a connection to it?’ I asked.

  ‘There are several connections, in fact. Donations to the law school, and Mrs Lottman’s fundraising abilities shouldn’t be underestimated. She sits on the local Bar Association. Mrs Lottman was an advocate herself, as I’m sure you’re aware. She’s well connected with the local police.’

  There was something advisory in that last remark, a warning in there. We sat in silence for a moment as I digested things.

  Hawinkels eyed his watch.

  ‘Do you ever feel there’s a curse on wealthy families in this country?’

  ‘Is it specific to our country?’ He steepled his fingers and smiled ruefully. ‘Look at the Kennedys, the Gettys, the Hearsts. Haven’t they had their share of kidnappings?’

  Patty Hearst, kidnapped in 1974, was the most often cited example of ‘Stockholm syndrome’. We’d had to consider that, too, back in 1983.

  ‘You’re right,’ I conceded. ‘It puts the Heinekens and Van der Valks in context. The Lottmans too, possibly.’

  ‘Maybe they’re all trying to expiate something – a guilt of some kind. The murderee cultivating their murder… wasn’t that what someone once postulated?’

  I preferred a simpler explanation. ‘We ditched Catholicism for Calvinism, but we can never quite get rid of our guilt, can we?’

  ‘Guilt for what?’

  ‘If only we knew, maybe we could do something about it.’

  He gave a chuckle, then looked again at his watch.

  *

  As I walked to the car my phone rang.

  Stefan.

  ‘Hoi,’ I answered.

  ‘Can’t you get me out of this? It’s a circus down here.’

  ‘Is it fair time already?’

  Tilburg Fair was the biggest in Europe.

  ‘Very funny,’ he said. ‘You know I’m talking about the media, now counting down the hours these bloody suspects gave us. Maintaining this information blackout is a nightmare.’

  Tell me about it, I felt like saying. Stefan was almost three decades my junior, and was now my primary source of official case information.

  ‘And it’s sweltering,’ he complained. ‘Thirty-three degrees.’

  ‘Well, enjoy it while it lasts. The recognition, that is: your posting there came from on high. What’s happening, anyway?’

  ‘They’re putting together an arrest team.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Southern Regions. They’re fielding the AT and the OT too.’

  I was surprised that the arrest team and observation team hadn’t come from the National Police Agency, but perhaps the KLPD had its hands full coordinating with the Belgians – who were still theoretically leading all this.

  ‘Sounds like make-or-break time for van Tongerloo,’ I said.

  ‘Yep. They’re readying the ransom payment.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Or at least some of it. I don’t know – access to information is very limited.’

  I swallowed, starting to sense a miscalculation on my part. ‘Who are the suspects? Where exactly are you all?’

  ‘The Utrecht forest.’

  There was a lake in that forest. Water reflecting off glass…

  ‘Right by the Belgian border?’ I asked. ‘The Reusel crossing there?’

  ‘Yes, a remote hut nearby. Everyone here believes it’s the stronghold.’

  The proximity to Belgium might make sense after all. Had the kidnappers crossed the border to scramble the investigators’ efforts – to brouiller les pistes, as van Tongerloo might have put it? There were smart cameras at the Reusel crossing: another inordinate number of images to sift through, even when assisted by computers.

  ‘Stefan, who are the suspects?’ I pressed.

  ‘We’ve been sworn to secrecy,’ he said hesitantly.

  I bit the inside of my cheek until I almost broke the skin. ‘Come on Stefan, it’s me. What’s going on? What led you there?’

  He paused. ‘The OT. They tracked the mailing of that photo of Lottman from a postbox in Broekhoven.’

  It was an area populated by several well-connected criminal families.

  This was starting to hang together.

  ‘How did they ID the suspects? CCTV? Witnesses?’

  ‘It started with CCTV images, but those proved unreliable,’ he replied. ‘Then they got lucky and found a witness. That was before I arrived.’

  There was a pause, in which I could hear official voices and possibly dogs… Stefan’s name being called…

  ‘And you?’ he asked. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Talking to you,’ I replied, ready to hang up. ‘Please keep me informed.’

  *

  I still wasn’t ready to accept that Rem Lottman was in a cabin in the Utrecht forest. The doubt drew me back to Noordwijk, to Mrs Lottman’s residence – to warn her not to pay the ransom. It was all so different to the way we’d progressed the Heineken case. I was sure that the ‘proof of life’ – the photograph of Lottman – had been manipulated.

  I drove slowly back up Grotiusweg and parked twenty metres beyond her gates. From the glovebox of my car, I removed a flat cap and pulled it on. A band of sweat formed around my forehead as I stared at the glinting gates.

  I put my gun and warrant card away in the glovebox and exited the car, fingers trembling faintly against the closing door. Whatever I did next, it was very important that it wasn’t reported to Joost.

  I walked along the lane, away from the gates, staying close to the black metal
railings that ran around the Lottman compound. There were no breaks in the fence. I was watching out for cameras as well.

  Rounding a bend in the lane, I saw that the fence extended a good thirty metres further. It must encircle the property. It struck me that it had done nothing to protect the Lottman family in the wider sense.

  I walked back to the car and got in. I was about to leave when I heard a grating sound and saw the gates slowly open.

  A dark, top-of-the-range Mercedes nosed out into the lane, the driver’s head turning to look both ways. The windows were slightly tinted, the sun flashing off them; I couldn’t make out the driver’s features. The car looked official. Governmental? Nothing was visible through the rear window.

  The car pulled out, purring away from me towards the seafront and the main road through Noordwijk. Quickly, I locked up my car and jogged over to the gates, which were still closing. Just before they clicked shut, I slid through the gap and stepped onto the driveway.

  I pulled the cap down further over my eyes, my heart beating hard. A nightingale emitted its warbling song. I paced up the driveway, which curved around the tall hedge designed to confound prying eyes.

  Into view came a vivid green lawn. Pink roses bloomed from islands of moss and lichen that were intended to bind together the earth and sand, to protect it from coastal erosion.

  Something felt very wrong.

  The house was on the highest point of the rising ground but was relatively modest; it wouldn’t have looked out of place in a less salubrious Amsterdam suburb. Built from grey brick, with flat horizontal lines, its picture windows looked out onto the sea from beneath green-and-white striped awnings.

  I crouched down. From the west came the insistent, indifferent sound of waves. It was amazing how quickly it happened – I hadn’t noted any cameras pointing my way.

  ‘You!’

  He came out of nowhere, his bulk appearing before me as I sprang up. I recognised too late the plain-clothes police type.

  As I turned on my heels – ‘Hey!’ – his weight was on top of me. I fell face first into rose thorns and then a soft bed of earth.

  37

  IN CAPTIVITY

  ‘You really are making a mistake,’ I told the arresting officer. Big guy, heavy jaw.

  He led me to the back of Leiden police station, not a kilometre from where Jan Hawinkels worked.

  ‘I’m a policeman.’

  ‘So you said.’

  He raised a large hand before I could speak again. ‘I know, it’s all there in your car – your warrant card, your other ID…’

  Did I not even resemble a cop now? My torn, muddy face couldn’t have helped. You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression, they say.

  The officer spoke to the desk clerk. ‘Another one found at the Lottman place in Noordwijk.’

  She sighed and pulled out a charge sheet. ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Trespassing,’ the officer said, ‘resisting arrest, impersonation of a police officer, failure to produce valid ID…’

  As if in some horrible cartoon, the clerk had trouble keeping up.

  ‘Name and address?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘Henk van der Pol,’ the arresting officer answered for me. He flipped a page of his notebook and read out my home address on Entrepotdok.

  ‘No possessions?’ the clerk asked.

  The officer turned to me. ‘OK, hands up.’

  He patted me down. ‘These.’ He handed her my car keys and lighter. ‘And just the clothes he stands in.’

  She took my fingerprints and sealed them.

  ‘Come this way,’ he said.

  ‘Where’s the magistrate?’

  ‘Relax.’ He placed a hand behind my shoulders, guiding me. ‘All in good time.’

  A commotion erupted at the door: another arresting officer pushing in an old, dishevelled man who was jabbering drunkenly about Holland no longer belonging to the Dutch. The desk clerk dutifully flipped to a new sheet.

  ‘Shoplifting,’ the arriving officer said over the drunk’s babbling. I was steered past him towards the stairs leading down to the cells. ‘He’s got a bottle of rice wine in his inside pocket…’ the policeman was saying. ‘Again.’

  *

  They’re just like you imagine them from the movies, the cells. A concrete room – bare but for a bed, small sink and toilet. My arresting officer retreated through the steel door, which creaked on its heavy metal hinges and then slammed shut.

  I pounded it once. ‘The magistrate is supposed to validate the arrest, damn you!’

  ‘He’s coming,’ I heard the retreating voice say.

  I kicked the foam mattress off the bed. If the grey and lime-green colour scheme was meant to be calming, it wasn’t working.

  I replaced the mattress and sat on it, elbows on knees. Between my two soiled boots was a line of ants making their way determinedly along a crack in the concrete. The police had means of keeping me for up to thirty days if they could get a magistrate to agree. I stood up again and paced the small cell.

  How long I’d been pacing for I don’t know, but finally I heard footsteps. The observation hatch opened and a voice said, ‘Sit on your bed.’

  Away from the door, in other words.

  I did so.

  The door groaned open. There stood my arresting officer. ‘Come with me.’

  He led me past another cell, which contained the jabbering drunk, and into a room where the magistrate was sitting. He was my age or a bit older and had a tired, decent air about him.

  ‘You say your name’s Henk van der Pol of Entrepotdok, Amsterdam?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You claim you’re a police officer?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Have you checked that?’ the magistrate asked, craning his neck.

  The arresting officer looked blank.

  ‘Do it.’

  He turned back to me. ‘You have the right to a lawyer. If you can’t afford one, a public one can be made available to you. You don’t have to answer any questions. Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand. Now can I make a call? I’d like to tell my wife what’s going on.’

  He looked me squarely in the eye, then reached inside his jacket pocket. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘just use mine.’ He pushed the phone across the table.

  It would be his work phone: a withheld number. My wife didn’t answer.

  ‘Petra, it’s me,’ I said into the voicemail void. ‘I’ve been unavoidably detained in Leiden, I’ll call you when I can get back to Amsterdam.’

  The magistrate nodded, as if confirming I’d done the right thing. ‘If you’re who you say you are, this shouldn’t take long. Though I have to ask: what in God’s name were you doing at the Lottman residence without ID?’

  ‘I was following a lead. Maybe not in the best way.’

  ‘I’ll say.’

  The door opened and the arresting officer looked at me, expression bovine. ‘There’s a call for you.’

  The magistrate eyed him, then me. ‘Take it,’ he allowed.

  I stood up and followed the officer through to a neighbouring interview room with a desk and a phone.

  I picked up the handset warily. ‘Hello?’

  ‘How bad do you want things to get, Henricus?’

  The room temperature felt like it dropped several degrees.

  ‘I’ve got options,’ Joost said. ‘I could even get you into Scheveningen at short notice. How d’you feel about that?’

  The heavily fortified prison was ten minutes away, if that. Nothing felt far apart anymore.

  I laughed sharply. ‘Even you couldn’t twist the justice system in such a warped way, Joost.’ I was thinking of the magistrate on the other side of the wall. He wouldn’t be biddable. That wasn’t how things worked here in Holland. />
  ‘Who needs to twist anything?’

  Joost let the question hang there and I felt a chill pass through me again, like a ghostly form entering and then leaving my body.

  ‘You’ve ignored a parking fine. The new legislation applies to policemen too, as I’m sure you’re aware.’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ I said.

  The arresting officer eyed me sharply.

  ‘Corner of Koningslaan and Willemsparkweg,’ Joost explained. It sounded like he was reading notes. Less so as he continued: ‘I’m sure you remember. Norwegian guy named Lars Pelt lived in a house nearby?’

  Dimly I recalled getting the ticket. Under new legislation, people could be jailed for unpaid fines if arrested for a separate offence.

  ‘That crime scene belonged to Bas Bergveld,’ Joost went on.

  Of course: I’d received the ticket while involved in a fracas with Bergveld, one of Joost’s boys.

  ‘By extension, that crime scene belonged to me,’ Joost continued. ‘And you fucked with it, causing me a lot of problems. So now I’m fucking with you. Do you see how this works? Are you getting the idea? It’s really not that complicated.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Scheveningen accepts the full spectrum of prisoners – from minor to the most serious. It’s certainly a possibility.’

  ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’

  ‘I don’t think so, but please enlighten me if I am.’

  ‘I’m supposed to have received three visits before being liable for arrest for an unpaid fine.’

  ‘Yes. But then you haven’t exactly been in your precinct much of late, have you Henk? Gallivanting around the place as usual, interfering when you’re not needed or wanted. Should my men attempt to pay your houseboat a visit? Ask after you with your wife?’

  ‘This is bullshit.’

  ‘It is and it isn’t.’

  ‘Don’t you have work to do in Tilburg?’ I said, seeking the high road.

  ‘Not really,’ he replied. ‘You’ll see.’

  What did he mean by that?

  ‘Actually, you won’t,’ he continued. ‘Because you’ll be in a police cell down in the basement of Leiden police station until after the situation in Tilburg is resolved.’