After the Silence: Inspector Rykel Book 1 (Amsterdam Quartet)

by Jake Woodhouse

  ‘Sergeant van der Mark’ – she could feel Harri’s eyes on her – ‘and I need access to your CCTV tapes.’

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘There was a fire on Zeedijk, I need to check if any cars passed late last night or early this morning.’

  There was a pause; she could hear sounds in the background, gunshots, theme music.

  ‘Okay, put Harri back on and I’ll talk him through how to set it up.’

  Five minutes later she was sitting in the cramped back office, peering at a tiny black-and-white monitor. Harri had loitered once he’d found the tape in the safe and set it up to play, but she couldn’t bear the smell in such an enclosed space, and asked him if he shouldn’t be watching the front of the shop?

  The tape started, according to the time stamp at the bottom right, at 18.38. She figured that whoever started the fire would have waited until the roads were clearer, and pressed the fast forward button. Lines streaked horizontally across the screen, and the scene shifted between the five camera angles – the fifth was in the shop itself – about one a second. By the time she’d got to midnight she slowed the tape down and started watching.

  Nothing. No movement, no cars. Nothing.

  Then something, a fox. Then nothing.

  This could take hours, she thought.

  She should really get this back to the station and have someone else sit there looking through it. She flicked it forward in quick blasts, until her eyes were going fuzzy and her head began to ache.

  Harri’s voice startled her.

  ‘Would you like something? Coffee?’

  The thought of coffee made her realize how hungry she was. Coffee on an empty stomach was not something she was willing to do but when she turned to look at him there was a kind of hope mixed with embarrassment in his eyes.

  ‘Yeah, that would be great. And if you’ve got something like a sandwich?’

  Three minutes later he was back with a rye and Gouda wrapped in plastic and a cup of something which had all the appeal of dilute engine oil.

  ‘Anything else, I’ll just be out there,’ he said before closing the door again.

  She didn’t know exactly what wild teenage imaginings were running through his mind, but it was clear what the general topic of them was.

  Why are men always like that? she asked herself.

  As if on cue her phone rang. She expected it to be Inspector Bloem asking where she was, but it was Wilhelm. Wilhelm who just didn’t get that their relationship was over. It was four months since she’d chucked him out, and in that time she’d still not worked out exactly why she’d done it.

  Things had been going well, they’d been living together for just coming up to a year, and he’d certainly not changed, or let her down, or cheated on her … But it was always the same, she reached a point where she just couldn’t see the point of carrying on. Whilst training at the academy she’d had three relationships.

  All three had ended the same way.

  And all three men had taken it badly.

  She let it ring and turned her attention back to the screen, wrestled with the sandwich wrapper and started eating, washing each bite of the impossibly dry sandwich down with coffee.

  Time stretched out, she heard a customer come and go, Harri asked her a few more times if she needed anything but he was disappointed each time and had now given up, and she was on the verge of giving up herself, packing it in and taking it all down to the station. She glanced down at her watch; she needed to get back to the scene, Bloem would be arriving any time now, and she reached forward to eject the tape.

  And then, when her eyes flicked back to the screen, there was a flash of something on camera one.

  She reached for the controls and rewound, going too far and having to wait a few moments. There it was, a car, the time showing as 02.19, heading in the right direction. It was going slowly. The head pointed towards the petrol station. She paused the tape and stared at the screen. She could hear Harri talking to a customer behind the door. Coffee and rye curdled in her stomach.

  The image was black-and-white, but she could see the driver was wearing a mask.

  There was a zip where the mouth should have been.

  9

  Monday, 2 January

  11.38

  On the way back, just as they were pulling on to the main road, Jaap ordered the driver to stop, shoved the door open and stumbled out just in time to throw up on the verge. Traffic rushed behind him, exhaust saturating the air, and he wondered what he was going to do now. He could hardly believe it, could hardly believe that Andreas was dead, murdered.

  But he was an Inspector, Jaap’s mind kept repeating, he shouldn’t have been killed.

  Then he thought of the hexagram, Lake and Thunder, and shivered.

  Climbing back into the cruiser and pulling the door shut he nodded to the driver that he was okay, acid coating his mouth, his stomach loose. They nosed back into the stream of traffic and Jaap’s thoughts turned to what he had to do next.

  He had to tell Saskia what had happened.

  He couldn’t leave it to anyone else, and he couldn’t do it over the phone.

  And he needed to find out what it was Andreas had discovered on Friedman.

  By the time they made it back into Amsterdam, his throat raw from the excoriating bile, he felt exhausted, drained, lost, last night’s lack of sleep weighing him down. He forced himself to pull out his phone and dial Kees.

  ‘I’m just arriving back at the station, where are you?’

  ‘I’m out, top end of Herengracht.’

  The car in front braked suddenly, lights flaring like devil eyes, and his driver responded, flinging Jaap forward until his seat belt jammed.

  ‘I’ve got to talk to Smit,’ said Jaap after he’d sat back, ‘after that you’ll have to take me through what you’ve got.’

  ‘I may need a little longer –’

  ‘Just come back, you’ve got uniforms out there, right?’

  ‘Yeah …’ There was a pause, like Kees was taking a drag on a cigarette. ‘… yeah, I have. Okay, I’m heading back.’ His tone said he wasn’t happy.

  The driver dropped him off right in front of the station, and he went straight to Andreas’ desk, three away from his own. In stark contrast to the other Inspectors in the department whose desks weren’t even visible for the piles of old case notes, mug shots, half-empty coffee cups and festering boxes from the Indonesian takeaway just over the street, Andreas had liked to keep things neat. One orderly pile of papers and a laptop.

  Jaap was about to open it up when he heard Smit’s voice from the corridor outside, talking to De Waart.

  Jaap and De Waart had joined at the same time, and been paired together right from the start, cutting their teeth on minor cases. There’d been no need for rivalry, but De Waart was cocky and had spent each case they worked on together trying to undermine Jaap, jostling for position. Until the case where De Waart, trying to make sure it was his collar, messed up and let the killer escape abroad. Jaap never revealed what happened.

  But after they’d both been publicly bollocked by Smit he wished he had.

  They no longer worked together.

  Jaap quickly darted away from Andreas’ desk back to his own. He’d been thinking on the journey back, he wanted to take Andreas’ case, though he knew that would never be allowed. But so far only he knew that his new case was linked and …

  Something moved in the corner of Jaap’s vision and he turned to see Smit’s considerable girth easing through the doorway. Smit looked around before locating Jaap and heading over, resting a buttock on the corner of Jaap’s desk. Jaap feared it wasn’t going to hold.

  ‘Terrible thing this.’ He shook his head. ‘I still can’t believe he’s gone.’

  The image of Andreas, face down in the ditch, flared up, as it had been on and off since earlier, each repetition just as vivid, HD quality.

  ‘There are some things I need to talk to you about, to do with
Andreas,’ continued Smit before peering down his nose at his watch. ‘I’ve got to brief city hall in forty minutes, but when I’m back later I think you and I should have a chat.’

  He hesitated for a moment and put a hand on Jaap’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze.

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Jaap, unsure why the physical gesture from his boss unsettled him so much. ‘What time?’

  ‘I’ll get Elsie to let you know when I’m back,’ said Smit, hefting himself off the desk, one of the metal legs creaking. ‘It all depends on how much of a grilling I get, a dead policeman is not going to make them happy. And I’ll get someone to tell Saskia.’

  ‘No, I’ll do it.’

  Smit looked at him for a moment then nodded.

  ‘If you’re up to it, it’s probably best coming from you.’

  Once Smit left Jaap stood up, wanting to get to Andreas’ laptop, but as he stepped towards the desk he saw Kees walking in. Jaap sat down again and Kees dragged a chair with him, the legs screeching on the floor. His bruise had developed further.

  ‘Okay, so what have we got? ID? Word from the phone companies?’ asked Jaap.

  Kees took him through what he knew; the victim was Dirk Friedman, a diamond merchant with a business on Oude Nieuwstraat.

  ‘Did you go there?’

  ‘I interviewed the main staff, wasn’t much of interest. They all thought he was great, couldn’t believe it was him, you know, the usual.’

  ‘Nothing of interest?’

  ‘Well, there was one thing. Carolien van Zandt, she’s the general manager, mentioned that she’d left something in the office on Thursday last week and when she’d gone back to pick it up she heard Dirk Friedman arguing with this guy called Rint Korssen? Apparently he owns a stake in the business, so he doesn’t work there day to day but kind of drops in now and then.’

  ‘This woman, Van Zandt, did she say what they were arguing about?’

  ‘She claimed not to have been able to make it out.’

  ‘And you checked up on this guy, Korssen, was it?’

  ‘He’s in Rotterdam, said he’d be back on the first train tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Not really, I checked Friedman’s diary, just to see. The last entry was on Sunday morning, he had a meeting at eleven a.m. with some charity called Vrijheid Nu, and I’ve lined up his lawyer to make an official ID, once the morgue gives clearance.’

  ‘The charity was open on a Sunday?’

  ‘I called them, the guy who he was meeting is called Hans Grimberg, he’d gone in specially to meet Friedman.’

  ‘What does the charity do?’

  ‘Something to do with abused children.’

  ‘We’ll need to talk to Grimberg, he might have been the last person to see him. And the phones?’

  ‘The numbers are all pay as you go, no way to trace who bought them.’

  ‘Did you get the logs?’

  ‘They said they’ll fax them over.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I doubt they’ll be here yet.’

  ‘What about the house?’

  ‘Nothing much there. The door wasn’t forced though so he knew the killer.’

  Jaap suddenly thought of his houseboat, the door broken – he hoped the officer had got a locksmith in to fix it up by now.

  ‘Okay, chase the phone company, I’ve got some calls to make, and get as much info as you can on the company Friedman owns, we’ll go there but I want to be prepared.’

  Kees got up to leave, then paused a second as if making up his mind about something.

  ‘Listen, I’m really sorry about Andreas, I know you two were … close …’ He paused before continuing. ‘… but I’ve got it under control here, so if you want to … um … just take some time, that’s cool?’

  Despite everything that had happened, despite all the fear and revulsion and anger, Jaap’s instincts told him he was being worked. The studied calm of Kees’ voice was proof enough that he was really hoping to be in charge of this.

  ‘Thanks, let’s see later. Chase for those logs, I’d like to see them when I get back.’

  Jaap watched Kees leave. He’d transferred in from somewhere south about eight months previously, and it was clear he wanted to go places. And, to Jaap, it looked like he didn’t care how he got there. He hadn’t worked with Kees before, but a few of his colleagues who had didn’t much enjoy the experience.

  I hope, he thought as he started back towards Andreas’ laptop, he’s not going to be difficult.

  A voice called his name from behind him.

  What now?

  Jaap turned to see the uniform from earlier. He told Jaap he’d got the door replaced and the locksmith had transferred the old lock over – the lock itself hadn’t been damaged, just the door and frame. Jaap thanked him and pocketed the key.

  Lucky I didn’t go home last night, he thought as he sat down and opened up the laptop, wondering what linked Friedman to the Black Tulips. Did they do business together and they were afraid Friedman, under pressure from the police, would talk?

  He and Andreas had evidence that the Black Tulips smuggled guns, drugs and women for the sex trade, maybe they ran a sideline in conflict diamonds too. Or Friedman’s business was a front, a way to launder some of their big profits into clean money.

  The screen came on and asked for a password. Jaap knew it, punched it in, and started looking for recent files on the desktop, hoping Andreas had left something here which would help.

  He spent a few minutes searching, a sick feeling pooling in his stomach as time and again he came up with nothing. There was nothing on the laptop, no old case files, no emails, nothing.

  It had been wiped.

  10

  Monday, 2 January

  11.49

  ‘Just there,’ said Tanya, pointing to the screen.

  The screen paused and both of them, the tech guy and Lankhorst, leant forward. They were in Lankhorst’s office, a small room just off the main open-plan section. It smelt of bleach.

  They studied the image in silence for a few moments.

  ‘It’s not much to go on really, unless we can get the plates,’ said Lankhorst.

  ‘No, but the very fact that he was there, heading in the right direction, at that time in the morning, has to count for something? And what kind of a freak drives around in a mask like that anyway?’ said Tanya.

  He looked back at the screen. ‘That’s the only way to get there, isn’t it?’

  ‘The only other way would be by boat.’

  ‘Is there any way to get this magnified a bit?’ Lankhorst asked.

  ‘This isn’t the movies,’ said the tech guy. ‘You can’t just zoom in and get high-res images, those cameras just aren’t set up for it.’

  He tapped a few keys, moved frames backward and forward until he settled on one and enlarged the image. But they couldn’t really make out the plates, a smudge of letters and numbers. They spent a few minutes trying to work out the various combinations it could be before Tanya noticed something on the screen.

  ‘What’s that on his neck?’

  ‘A shadow?’

  She leant in.

  ‘No, it’s more like …’

  The heating clicked on, a radiator responding with a series of bangs, Morse code.

  ‘… it’s like a birthmark,’ Lankhorst finished, still peering intently.

  Tanya moved closer to the screen.

  ‘It’s not a birthmark, it’s too …’

  ‘So what is it?’

  ‘A tattoo,’ she said still staring at the screen. ‘It’s a tattoo, shaped like a spider.’

  ‘Okay, check it out, then let’s meet in twenty minutes.’

  Tanya made her way to her desk, pulling up the Herkenningsdienstsysteem, the national database that had a record of everyone who had ever been arrested. Which sounded great until you realized that all the info had been inputted in such a haphazard manner that finding people was far harder than it sh
ould have been.

  She filtered for tattoos on the neck in distinguishing features as a first shot, result 127. Way too many to go through. She tried to narrow it down to Leeuwarden, which returned zero hits. By the time she had to meet Lankhorst she’d managed to get a list of twenty-five. She printed off their records and took the papers back to Lankhorst’s office, where he was waiting.

  A ceiling light flickered.

  ‘So, let’s start. What do you think happened?’

  ‘Given that nobody was tied up and left to burn at any of the other fires,’ said Tanya as she sat down opposite him, ‘I think we’re safe to assume that it’s not the same people, unless they were doing trial runs.’

  ‘I think it’s unlikely.’

  ‘So do I.’

  The door opened and she looked up into Bloem’s face. He was smiling.

  ‘Come in, Wim, we’ll go through this all in a minute, I’ve just got to make a call.’

  ‘So that’s where you are,’ said Bloem once Lankhorst had left. ‘I thought you were supposed to wait for me on Zeedijk?’

  ‘I found something,’ she said directing him to the screen. Bloem kept his eyes on her.

  ‘What is it?’ he finally asked.

  As she explained, pointing out the tattoo on the man’s neck, she could feel Bloem’s eyes boring into her.

  ‘And?’ he said, fake yawning.

  She thought about her ID card.

  Don’t give him the satisfaction.

  Instead she turned to the tech guy.

  ‘I think I lost my ID card, I can’t find it anywhere, could you get me another?’

  He nodded as Lankhorst stepped back in.

  ‘Where are we at?’ he asked.

  Tanya put her hand on the records she’d got from the database.

  ‘I’ve got twenty-five people here with prior arrests and tattoos on their neck.’

  ‘Any look right?’ asked Lankhorst.

  ‘I haven’t had a chance to look.’ She pulled them towards her, passing each one on to Lankhorst as she’d glanced at them.

  ‘Ugly bunch,’ remarked Bloem, who was looking over Lankhorst’s shoulder. ‘I wonder if anyone’s done a study on looks and criminality? It would certainly make it easier for us, just arrest all the ugly people.’