Night Market

by Daniel Pembrey

  NIGHT MARKET

  When Henk van der Pol is asked by the Justice Minister to infiltrate a team investigating an online child exploitation network, he can hardly say no – he’s at the mercy of prominent government figures in The Hague. But he soon realises the case is far more complex than he was led to believe… Picking up from where The Harbour Master ended, this new investigation sees Detective Van der Pol once again put his life on the line as he wades the murky waters between right and wrong in his search for justice.

  Sometimes, to catch the bad guys, you have to think like on…

  About the author

  Daniel Pembrey grew up in Nottinghamshire beside Sherwood Forest. He studied history at Edinburgh University and received an MBA from INSEAD business school. Daniel then spent over a decade working in America and more recently Luxembourg, coming to rest in Amsterdam and London – dividing his time now between these two great maritime cities.

  He is the author of the Henk van der Pol detective series and several short thriller stories, and he contributes articles to publications including The Financial Times, The Times and The Field. In order to write The Harbour Master, he spent several months living in the docklands area of East Amsterdam, counting De Druif bar as his local.

  danielpembrey.com

  Praise for The Harbour Master

  ‘Compelling and fast-moving […] The exquisitely drawn Inspector van der Pol battles his way to the truth in a way that his fictional ancestor, Inspector Piet van der Valk, created by Nicolas Freeling, did in the Sixties’ – Geoffrey Wansell, Daily Mail

  ‘Pembrey is a debut novelist of rare skill, marshalling his material with rigour and intelligence’ – Financial Times

  ‘Daniel Pembrey writes with great authority and authenticity. The Harbour Master is a compelling, highly believable tale set in the flesh markets of Amsterdam and the even seedier corridors of power beyond them, where it’s hard to know who the real criminals really are. You’ll keep turning these pages right till the end’ – Howard Linskey, author of Behind Dead Eyes

  ‘A splendid setting in what promises to be the start of a great new series’ – Ragnar Jonasson, author of the international bestselling Dark Iceland series

  ‘A vivid sense of place and a flawed and believable central character… could herald a great series and career from this new British author’ – Maxim Jakubowski, Lovereading

  ‘The Harbour Master is an accomplished novel, sporting a vividly realised sense of locale matched by an adroit evocation of character’ – Barry Forshaw, Brit Noir

  ‘The style of writing was so enjoyable…this really is an excellent read’ – Sarah Ward, author of A Deadly Thaw

  ‘Henk van der Pol makes for a great lead character – he’s strong willed, courageous and determined to unravel the cases he encounters and serve justice – no matter how complicated they might be…’ – Steph Broadribb, Crime Thriller Girl

  ‘The relationships linking Henk, his wife, and their daughter are flawlessly executed. Pembrey shows great skill as a crime fiction writer. His understanding and portrayal of people, places and situations is remarkable’ – DutchNews.nl

  WE FIRST MEET HENK VAN DER POL IN THE HARBOUR MASTER WHICH CONTAINS PART I, II, AND III.

  Part IV:

  Night Market

  1

  IF YOU GAZE INTO THE ABYSS…

  ‘Don’t go in there.’

  I was standing outside a set of double doors on the nineteenth floor of the Ministry for Security and Justice. The brown-carpeted anteroom was dim; much of it was in shadow. I’d been summoned for an after-hours meeting.

  ‘Not yet,’ the man added.

  He was the assistant to the justice minister.

  ‘What’s this about, anyway?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m unable to advise,’ he replied, his dark features dimly lit by his computer screen. The soft clacking of his keyboard resumed.

  I eyed my watch again. My wife was waiting back at our hotel to have dinner. Apparently, global-security considerations no longer respected office hours.

  I paced over to the tall windows. It was dark outside and The Hague’s skyline winked, orange and white. The westward panorama took in the twin white towers of the International Criminal Court and, far ahead, I could make out the inky darkness of the North Sea… landmarks in the case of Rem Lottman, a kidnapped politician who’d been working for the energy minister, Muriel Crutzen. The case had brought me into contact with her, and she’d encouraged me to consider a job here in The Hague. I still didn’t know exactly what it involved, but perhaps I was about to find out.

  I turned back to the assistant, about to say something, when the double doors to the ministerial office flew open and there he stood.

  ‘Henk,’ he said, appraising me. ‘Is it OK to call you Henk?’

  ‘Is it OK to call you Willem?’

  He smiled and stepped forward, shaking my hand firmly.

  Willem van der Steen was of medium height and a stocky build, with wiry grey hair. His white shirt was open at the neck; his sleeves were rolled up. He looked like he’d be a tough bastard in a fight.

  He was a vote winner, ‘strong on law and order in uncertain times’. ‘We Dutch remain liberal – within limits’ was another of his election slogans. He was known to be a copper’s friend. He’d started off in the force and gone on to run Southern Regions. In some ways he’d remained an old-fashioned bruiser – but now he was one with formidable powers.

  He released my hand and led me into his office. There was a pattern to the appearance of these ministers’ rooms, I was discovering: modern, workmanlike, unpretentious. In van der Steen’s case, I glimpsed an oil painting in the shadows: a marine vista, choppy seas. A ship sat in the centre, listing, valiantly holding its course.

  There was a circular glass table strewn with papers. A phone sat in the middle.

  ‘A conference call ran long. The Americans like to keep us late.’

  It begged questions that I couldn’t ask.

  ‘Drink?’ he asked, closing the door behind us.

  The offer surprised me.

  ‘Still or sparkling?’ he added, correcting my misapprehension.

  ‘Still.’

  He poured a glass for me, emptying a small bottle of water.

  ‘Please, take a seat.’

  I sat on the opposite side of the table.

  ‘You come highly recommended,’ he said, emptying another bottle – sparkling – into his own glass.

  ‘Indeed?’

  He sat down. ‘The energy minister.’

  No surprises then… or none yet.

  I waited for him to go on, struck by a tightening sensation in my chest – a wariness of what might be coming.

  ‘You’re over from Amsterdam?’ he asked. It was as if he were softening me up with small talk. He knew where I was from, surely.

  ‘Just for a few days.’

  He studied his fingernails, which were slightly dirty. It looked like he might have been doing some gardening, and not quite managed to scrub away the soil.

  ‘What I’m about to tell you, I’m sharing in confidence. Is that understood?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I wondered how much was in my file. Did it mention that my wife was a former features writer for Het Parool, the Amsterdam daily newspaper?

  ‘We’ve got a situation over in Driebergen.’

  Driebergen, near Utrecht, was the headquarters of the old Korps Landelijke Politiediensten (KLPD) – the National Police Services Agency. The KLPD was now a unit within a single, newly merged Dutch police force. Not everyone had been happy with
the unification. Office politics.

  ‘What kind of situation?’

  ‘There’s a specialist team over there which is investigating child exploitation. You may be aware of them?’

  I stayed silent, but I knew about the team… more or less. They always seemed to be in flux, given changing police priorities and public perceptions.

  ‘It’s a six-person team,’ van der Steen went on. ‘It needs to grow, but before we grow it, we need to clean house.’

  ‘Oh?’ I took a sip of water.

  ‘We had a series of busts lined up. Mid-level members of what we’d managed to identify as a major paedophile network. The busts went bad.’

  I noted how the minister used ‘we’ for what was being described as a tactical operation. The justice ministry oversaw the police of course, but van der Steen’s words implied an unusual level of involvement.

  ‘We now believe we’ve identified a kingpin in the same network,’ he went on. ‘In your neck of the woods, it turns out, Henk. We can’t risk an operational failure this time.’

  ‘You say the bust went bad… How?’

  ‘All the addresses had been hastily abandoned by the time the arrest teams arrived. Cleared of any computer material, cleaned almost forensically. Every single one.’

  ‘Addresses in Holland?’

  ‘Three of them, yes. The other addresses were in Belgium, Luxembourg and southern England.’

  I gave a low whistle.

  ‘All recently vacated.’ His words reinforced the point.

  ‘A tip-off?’

  ‘Almost certainly, but by who… that’s the question.’

  ‘An insider – a plant?’

  ‘That’s one theory. A theory that needs proving or disproving, and fast.’

  ‘And you want me to look into it?’

  His grey eyes held mine. They shone in the low light, like steel.

  ‘Why me?’ I asked, shifting in my seat.

  ‘Four reasons,’ he said, holding up the stubby fingers of one hand. ‘Evidently you’re a man with experience of life.’

  I was fifty-six. ‘Thanks for reminding me.’

  He smiled, briefly. ‘You’ve got an outsider’s perspective. At least, that’s what I’m told. Don’t underestimate the value of being able to sit outside the tribe and see what’s going on, in ways that others can’t.’

  Funny – the energy minister had told me they needed me ‘inside the tent’ after the discoveries resulting from the Rem Lottman case. Now they wanted me back outside again – but under their supervision. Things evolve.

  ‘And as I said, you come highly recommended. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if you weren’t.’

  I nodded impatiently. ‘That’s three reasons. You mentioned four.’

  He locked eyes with me. ‘There’s no one else willing and able to do this, Henk.’

  In my thirty-plus years as a policeman in Amsterdam, I’d seen a lot. But child abuse cases were known to be different. The images that the investigating teams had to look at each day, the victims’ stories they encountered… you can’t leave that stuff at the office, can’t go home and forget about it. It gets into your mind, your dreams.

  ‘If you take this assignment, it will change you,’ van der Steen warned.

  ‘Does that point to an alternate explanation?’ I said, stepping back from the precipice of the decision he’d asked me to make. ‘That someone on the team turned? Went native?’

  Turned into a paedophile, in other words.

  He shrugged. ‘That’s another possibility. These operatives have to stare at a lot of images. Perhaps, yes, it could… release certain things in certain men.’

  He was looking at me searchingly.

  ‘I don’t pretend to understand what motivates older men to become interested in young children,’ he went on. ‘And let’s be clear about this. We’re talking about the sick stuff here, Henk. There’s a lot of it going on all of a sudden. As many as one in five of us may have leanings that way, one police psychologist in Leiden is now loudly proclaiming.’

  I took a sip of water, wondering what response that hypothesis had got from the psychologist’s colleagues on the force.

  ‘There’s another point to consider – and I’m sure I don’t need to spell this out for you as a seasoned policeman. Investigating the investigators: it’s not for everyone.’

  It contradicted the bond of loyalty among police personnel. I’d been in the army, which had the same ethos – though it was for reasons of survival there.

  ‘A plant, looking for a plant,’ I said meditatively.

  He gave me a tight smile.

  ‘How would that work?’ I asked.

  ‘We’d get you a regular job on the team in Driebergen. You’d be one of the guys. But we’d also pair you with someone from the security services.’

  ‘A handler?’

  ‘You could put it that way, yes. We’d work on your cover – give you an alternative identity of sorts.’

  ‘My existing one’s not unblemished.’

  ‘I’d be suspicious if it was. You’re a human being.’

  There was a crushing silence.

  Sexual exploitation, trafficking, drugs, corruption, aggravated assault, homicide cases even – I’d worked them all, but the one area of policing I’d stayed away from was child abuse. Every cop felt in their heart the Friedrich Nietzsche quote: ‘Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you…’

  ‘I also read about your altercation with the Amsterdam police commissioner.’

  My old friend Joost. In abeyance since the Lottman case, but still there… still ready to cause problems in all areas of my professional and personal life.

  ‘Take this assignment, and that problem goes away.’

  I didn’t doubt the justice minister’s ability to make it so.

  ‘And if I say no?’

  He paused, choosing his next words carefully.

  ‘Then, like the others I’ve offered this assignment to, you’ll walk out of here. You’ll forget this conversation ever happened and, as agreed, you won’t mention it to anyone. In your case, Muriel will no doubt send you off to some other ministry. Somewhere easier. Environmental protection, maybe…’

  I grimaced. ‘Just how important is this to the justice ministry?’

  He leaned forward, pressing his palms onto the table. ‘I’d say it was vital… but that would be understating it.’ He paused for effect. ‘You can judge the decency of a society by how it treats its women and its children. If we’re not protecting our children, then what the hell are we doing?’

  He was good, van der Steen. He knew what drove us. The real coppers that is, not the Joosts of the world.

  ‘It’s an unusual case,’ he continued. ‘Outwardly, it’s all supranational networks, technology, and collaboration with counterparts from other countries. In another sense, it’s a classic little locked-room mystery.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘At least one of the six men – yes, they’re all men – in Driebergen is rotten. Your job, if you think you’re up to it, is to determine which, and to ensure that the rot stops there.’

  I tried to visualise the airless environment I’d be entering, the smell of it – but couldn’t quite get there.

  ‘How do you know the insider is on that team?’

  ‘If you decide to proceed, you’ll see the file.’ He paused, and then asked with finality: ‘Is the mission clear?’

  I found myself nodding slowly, and added a more emphatic nod.

  ‘Think about it,’ he concluded, sitting back again but still scrutinising me with those steely eyes. ‘Talk to your wife – in general terms – about a possible posting in Driebergen. You’re married?’ he asked, as if he might have misheard or
misread something.

  ‘Yes.’

  I eyed the painting over his shoulder. The ship, attempting to hold its course in the gathering storm, listing badly.

  ‘With a daughter,’ I added.

  ‘Then think it over.’ His lips twitched. ‘But not for too long.’

  2

  THE FILE

  ‘Driebergen?’ my wife asked, mouth agape.

  ‘Keep your voice down.’

  ‘Don’t tell me to be quiet, Henk. It’s not The Hague, nor Delft – like we agreed!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you mean, no?’

  ‘No – you’re right.’

  We were sitting in the bar of our hotel. The lighting was low; the room was full of flat, grey shapes and figures. I was tired of negotiating everything with everyone. Wasn’t life supposed to become easier as you neared retirement and cast off children and responsibilities? My life seemed to be going in the opposite direction.

  I signalled to the barman for more drinks.

  Petra clamped her hand over her cocktail glass, narrowly avoiding the candle flame as she did so. It guttered.

  ‘OK, one more drink.’ I corrected my order, raising my empty, sudsy glass.

  ‘But why Driebergen?’ Petra demanded.

  ‘Because it’s the headquarters of the old KLPD.’

  ‘I know that. I was a features writer once, remember?’

  How could I forget? I felt like saying.

  ‘You were talking about a role with one of the ministries here,’ she said. ‘Why go there?’

  ‘Because the minister asked me to.’

  A fresh Dubbel Bok arrived. Thank God.

  Petra’s face was screwed up with incomprehension in the flickering light. As soon as the barman left she said, ‘Which minister?’

  My voice was low. ‘The justice minister. It’s a confidential assignment. They’ve got a problem with one of the teams there, and that’s about all I can share.’

  My wife had been a journalist for as long as I’d been a policeman. In putting up a ‘Do Not Enter’ sign, I might as well have confessed everything on the spot. It was just a matter of time.