Book Read Free

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

Page 18

by Jake Woodhouse


  ‘It’s not that simple. There’s a girl who’s been kidnapped, and if we don’t find and stop whoever killed Friedman, then we’ll lose our chance to save her.’

  And get Andreas’ killer.

  Grimberg’s eyes lasered into him, before flicking away. He walked over to his chair and slumped into it.

  ‘You know what? People like that, they deserve to die’ – he slammed his hand down on the desk, knocking off a pile of papers which flurried into the air – ‘they deserve to die like fucking dogs.’

  ‘Look, we’re all upset about this. And if the person responsible was abused by him then I don’t want to bring them in either, but there’s a life at risk.’

  Grimberg sat, dead still now after the pacing, his eyes fixed on Jaap.

  Jaap continued. ‘Friedman used to work as a sports teacher and I’ve got someone checking up on where. I remember you saying a lot of these cases aren’t even reported to the police –’

  ‘And you want to check our records,’ Grimberg butted in. ‘See if there is anyone from wherever it turns out he worked?’

  ‘It’ll be the quickest way of seeing if there is a match, something we can follow up.’

  ‘No. Our records are confidential, they have to be otherwise people wouldn’t ever come to us for help. Look …’ He paused, ran his hand through his hair. ‘… people live with this, and some come to terms with it. Some though, despite what help we give them, keep it inside, stay silent for years and years. It’s only after the silence is broken, by themselves, when they’re ready, that proper healing can happen. Breaking into that too soon can be highly detrimental to their recovery.’

  ‘I realize that, but in this case there is a little girl who we might be able to save, and that’s got to be worth something, hasn’t it?’ asked Tanya, anger, or something Jaap couldn’t place, in her voice.

  ‘I’ve got a duty of care to these people, they’ve been damaged, in some cases irreparably. I can’t just have you charging around –’

  ‘What it comes down to is this.’ Jaap leant forward over the desk, planting his balled fists on straight arms to support him. ‘I’m investigating three murders and a kidnapping of a child. I’m trying to stop anything else happening to her, something worse. You’ve seen what abuse does to people, so give me access to your files and maybe we can stop another victim coming through your door. I can get a warrant for this, but we need to see it now.’

  Grimberg just stared at him, then looked down at his hands.

  Tanya spoke up, her voice more controlled this time.

  ‘You have the chance to help save a little girl, I don’t see how you can refuse to help us.’

  Grimberg chewed his lower lip.

  49

  Wednesday, 4 January

  16.37

  Jaap had split up their duties: Kees was to focus on Friedman and Zwartberg, whilst Jaap got to run around with Tanya.

  Fucking typical, Kees was thinking as he made his way to Friedman’s house, the cold air not improving his mood, he makes a big show of including me in what he’s doing, then fobs me off with the shit work. I bet he’s fucking her too.

  The interior, when he got there, was no warmer than the air outside. Kees flicked on a light switch and the hallway was revealed. A massive oil painting, a pastoral landscape with eighteenth-century wigged noblemen and rustic shepherds, hung on the wall in a gilt frame.

  Below the picture two slender vases with a blue floral pattern on a white background and a surface which looked like cracked ice. And supporting them, a dark wooden side table, their reflections slightly blurred on the polished surface.

  I hate all this old shit, he thought to himself before heading forward.

  His temples had been pounding since he woke, a mushroom cloud exploding over and over, and each step only made it worse.

  He spent the next twenty minutes searching the house, but, just as he’d said, there was no laptop. As he left the building something caught his eye, just by the doormat.

  Kees bent down to pull it out, the tiny corner of paper revealing itself to be a business card. He felt the roughness of the textured paper against his fingertips, and turned it over. It was completely plain with a string of numbers and letters, the embossed shiny surface of the black ink catching the light, running across the centre which didn’t seem to make any sense at all.

  XT56SUGK9DYUSNGH

  He pocketed it and went back to the station. Next on his growing list was to check up on the stole of Zwartberg’s. As far as Kees understood, it was kind of like a football scarf, different churches had different patterns, so if he trawled round enough churches someone must be able to recognize it. He’d have to make a list of places to visit, starting with those in the Jordaan.

  But when he got to his computer it was the card he felt drawn to. There was something deeply wrong with it.

  Sitting at his desk he stared at the numbers and letters. It just didn’t make any sense.

  ‘… and then she says, “but that’s too big to fit in my hole”.’

  Laughter erupted from a few desks away, a joke he’d heard at least four times already over the last few days, doing the rounds of the office like a viral infection.

  He hadn’t even found it that funny the first time.

  A business card usually had a name and contact details on, so this wasn’t a business card. What was it for? Was it some kind of password or code? But if so why have it printed on a card?

  He wrote out the letter and numbers and tried to rearrange them into something meaningful, but, having never been any good at crosswords, he gave up after a few minutes.

  A yawn prised his jaws open, forcing his head back. He closed his eyes.

  Voices he’d been half hearing came into focus.

  ‘… so it’ll be Rykel, not De Waart?’

  ‘That’s what the rumour is.’

  ‘I guess he’d make a better Station Chief than Smit, but he’s a bit young, isn’t he? That would piss off Felco and Bastiaan.’

  ‘Yeah, but Felco is pissed off anyway, I’ve never met anyone like that, and they couldn’t make Bastiaan Chief, he’d blow the department budget in like a week.’

  ‘He’d probably bet it all on one match –’

  Kees’ eyes flicked open. Jaap to be Station Chief? If that was true then he’d really messed up.

  Shit!

  Why had he done it? He could feel the moisture on his palms. How could he have been so stupid? He got up, had to move, think it through, and he headed off, needing to do something to neutralize the unease.

  ‘Hey, Kees?’ Martijn’s voice from behind him.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Did you know about this, Jaap being next in line?’

  He turned to look at him, the bulk concentrated round his stomach making his shoulders and head seem tiny.

  ‘No, I hadn’t heard.’

  ‘You’re working a case with him, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah … yeah, I am.’

  ‘Looks like your chance to impress then.’

  Kees swallowed.

  ‘Yeah, I guess it is.’

  Later, once he’d calmed down – the only way that Jaap would ever know was if Smit or De Waart told him – he went back to his desk and looked at the card again. A thought had occurred to him, and he fired up his laptop. He typed the collection of letters and numbers printed on the card into a browser, prefacing it with ‘www’ and ending with ‘.com’. He hit return and waited for the page to load, but a ‘could not connect to server’ message appeared. But, trying again, this time with ‘.nl’, yielded a result.

  His phone rang.

  ‘Inspector, this is Sergeant Boekestijn. You’re the contact point on e-fit 4751?’

  A simple page appeared, asking him to log in or register.

  ‘You’ve found her?’ The pulse in his veins sped up, and he shifted forward in his chair, typed in a made-up email address and hit ‘Submit’.

  ‘Yeah, got her down in holding now,
but she’s not happy.’

  As Kees hung up another screen, ‘Thank you for your registration, your download will begin shortly’, flashed up, and the download window started showing the progress bar, fifty-seven minutes remaining.

  Down by the holding cells – strip lights blinking and buzzing making him feel sick – he asked the duty officer where she was.

  ‘She’s in there, refused to speak to us.’

  Kees pushed the door, walked in, and stopped short, completely unable to breathe. There were four women, two prostitutes and an alcoholic by the look of them, but it was the one on the end of the bench that caught his attention.

  ‘You bastard,’ Marinette hissed. ‘Is this your idea of a joke? I’ll get you sacked for this.’

  Fuck, he thought, those fucking, fucking idiots.

  ‘There’s been a misunderstanding, they weren’t supposed to arrest you –’

  ‘Of course they weren’t, but you made them.’ Her face was twisted up, lines appearing where there were none before, blood pulsing under her skin like a rash.

  ‘No, listen to me. There’s someone we’re looking for, she just looks like you, and they’ve got the wrong –’

  Before he could do anything she was up off the bench, her hand hitting his left cheek, the sting bringing tears to his eyes.

  The other women cheered.

  50

  Wednesday, 4 January

  17.05

  Tanya checked her watch, but it hadn’t changed much from when she’d last looked. It was still a few hours before Ludo Haak was due to collect rent from whatever group of immigrants had fallen into the trap of illegal subletting.

  But here she was, sitting in a car across from the apartment building anyway. Jaap had agreed to meet her later before he’d rushed off to Haarlem, but she’d felt drawn here, a voice nagging at her, telling her that Haak might turn up early, and if she missed him … Well, that didn’t bear thinking about.

  She’d only been to Amsterdam a few times over the years, day trips where she took in the canal district with its wealthy houses, boutique shops, jewellers, high-fashion leather handbags and artisan chocolatiers whose wares would have to be very sweet to get rid of the bitter taste their price would create.

  Commerce polished the veneer of respectability, a sense that all was right with the world. But out here in the suburbs things were different.

  This was the Amsterdam tourists rarely saw.

  This was the Amsterdam of poverty, drug addiction, social and racial segregation. She thought back to what Visser had said, his pessimistic view. Then she thought of the girl with Haak.

  The girl with red hair, Adrijana Fajon.

  She thought of him ordering her to get undressed, of his pale body, the tattoo like a livid scar, the feeling of desperation, lack of hope, fear and revulsion.

  She knew that feeling all too well.

  Her fingers tightened on the wheel.

  She shook her head, tried to focus on her breath, anything to clear what was going on in her mind. Her heart was slamming in her chest like a monkey trying to escape a cage.

  The file had come through much later than promised, but she’d read it before leaving the station. There wasn’t much, parents an art teacher and cleaner who’d reported her missing from a cafe in the centre of Ljubljana. Someone at a nearby table had keeled over with a heart attack, and in the confusion Adrijana simply disappeared. The police had been notified, run their investigation, and, failing, had passed it on to Interpol within a couple of months.

  At Interpol her image just sat on a webpage.

  Tanya had managed to get the name of the man in charge of the original investigation in Ljubljana, and had sent him a message. So far he’d not got back to her.

  A car, blacked-out windows and shiny hubcaps – classic drug-dealer motor – was slowly crawling down the road towards her, rhythm pounding from speakers which would have cost more than she earned in a month.

  If the owner had even paid for them, that is.

  It pulled to a stop right by her and the window, in which she could see her face reflected, slid down halfway. A hand appeared from the dark interior, the middle finger raised, a large gold ring with a skull and wings catching the dying light.

  The car moved on.

  She was in an unmarked, and she wasn’t in uniform. But they could spot her just the same. Maybe waiting here wasn’t such a good idea. As she reached for the ignition key she noticed a tremor in her hand.

  51

  Wednesday, 4 January

  17.29

  Kees was heading out of the station; the news of what had happened would be spreading like wildfire, and he wanted to get clear of its path.

  He also wanted to get to the dry cleaner’s, see if he couldn’t get a lead on the woman who’d knocked him out.

  ‘Kees, I was hoping to have a word with you.’

  He turned to see De Waart coming down the front steps. Cigarette in one hand, a styrofoam cup in the other, steam rising like smoke signals.

  All day he’d had the uneasy feeling he was being watched. Who would be watching him he didn’t know, so he’d tried to dismiss it. But when he’d walked into Smit’s office earlier and found De Waart there, dismissing it got a whole lot harder. He didn’t like that De Waart knew what he was doing, that De Waart now had a hold over him.

  The police force was no different to anywhere else when it came to politics. There were people who tried to avoid it, turned up and hoped that doing their job well would be enough. And then there were people like De Waart, people who could sniff out an angle, people who wouldn’t hesitate to use knowledge, justified or otherwise.

  And what little he knew of De Waart told him that he was one of the players.

  Fair enough, Kees was too, but he didn’t like the position this put him in one little bit. Smit letting it slip that Kees was ratting for him was highly unlikely, but De Waart?

  Well, De Waart he didn’t trust.

  ‘I’m just heading out.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Just out.’

  ‘Anything I should know about?’

  ‘Not really.’

  De Waart narrowed his eyes.

  ‘You know, I’d have thought you’d have been able to tell us more this morning, because let’s face it,’ he said turning his head, trying to make eye contact, ‘this is a good opportunity for you to make new friends.’

  ‘My social calendar is kind of full as it is.’

  De Waart laughed, and slapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Come on, I’ll walk with you, wherever it is you’re heading.’

  The sun was falling, dragging darkness behind it. He glanced at the ice, a hard skin on the canal. A van slowly crossed a bridge; Kees recognized it as the same one which had got in his way the day he chased that bitch.

  The one that looked like that other bitch.

  De Waart was talking, and Kees had to tune back in.

  ‘… so do you think it could have been done?’

  ‘Uh … Yeah, I don’t see why not,’ answered Kees trying to work out what he was talking about, he was having trouble concentrating.

  ‘That’s what I thought, so I started to think, maybe it was erased on purpose, you know, to hide something?’

  ‘Yeah, could be.’

  De Waart turned his head to look at him for a moment, as if trying to decide something. They passed a young couple, faces jostling together, long hair and clothing so similar it was hard to work out which was the girl. Then Kees realized they were both girls. He thought of Carice.

  Carice and Tanya.

  He felt himself stiffen.

  ‘Okay, so if you come up with anything you’ll let me know?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Kees said, ‘of course.’

  ‘And seriously, it’s good to have friends around here, especially as things are going to be changing soon.’

  They shook hands, both playing the crushing game, and De Waart turned and limped back the way they
’d come.

  It took him fifteen minutes to reach the Oudezijdes, the medieval heart of the city, which had deteriorated since into seediness, his mind occupied the whole time with images of Carice and Tanya, powerless to stop them.

  The dry cleaner’s was wedged between a novelty sex-toy shop for the tourists and another selling Asian porn DVDs, and inside an old man was sitting, sewing buttons on a shirt.

  The air was hot and stank of chemicals.

  Somewhere out back an iron hissed like a snake.

  Kees gave him the ticket, flashed his ID, and told him what he wanted.

  The man, grey hair combed over a shiny scalp, peered at it, and then shook his head.

  ‘Doesn’t tell me much, it says a coat, and the cost.’

  Kees pulled out a print-off of the e-fit.

  ‘That’s Helma.’

  ‘Surname?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I sometimes deliver to her house, it’s just round the corner.’

  52

  Wednesday, 4 January

  18.27

  Jaap’s eyes were on the road.

  But all he could see were the pictures of Andreas.

  He wondered if they’d ever go.

  It was dark, stars appearing in the gaps between the sodium lights which rushed past him on the motorway.

  Andreas was thirty-two when he died, so the photos must be at least fifteen, maybe seventeen, years old.

  I never suspected he’d been abused, he thought, does Saskia know?

  Andreas had grown up near Groningen and Jaap needed to find out if Friedman, or Zwartberg, or even Haak, had ever lived there. Or Korssen.

  Since he’d seen Andreas’ body sprawled out in Amsterdamse Bos he’d not been himself, emotions had been running loose, changing too quickly for him to really know what they were, flashes of feelings he couldn’t identify.

  And now this, proof that his partner, his friend, had been abused. Proof that he’d been carrying a secret around with him, letting it gnaw away at his insides, and all the time Jaap had had no idea.

 

‹ Prev