Night Market

by Daniel Pembrey

  But I was taking van der Steen’s warning seriously.

  ‘Well,’ Petra said, crossing her arms, ‘I’m not leaving Amsterdam without good reason.’

  ‘Last week you said that you couldn’t wait to get off the houseboat and be nearer Cecilia in Delft.’ Cecilia was her favourite cousin.

  ‘Oh, I’ll be getting off the houseboat all right,’ she said. ‘And finding dry land. In Amsterdam, close to our daughter.’

  Our daughter Nadia wouldn’t be leaving the nation’s capital any time soon. Her social set could only countenance living in one Dutch population centre, and it certainly wasn’t Driebergen.

  ‘Should we get something to eat?’ I suggested. ‘It’s late.’

  ‘Too late.’ Petra sniffed. ‘I’m no longer hungry.’

  I sighed exasperatedly, craning my neck. ‘Can I see a menu?’ I asked the barman.

  ‘We only do snacks. The restaurant, over there, serves food.’

  ‘Of course.’

  We sat in silence.

  Finally I said, ‘OK. I’ll tell you the mission I’ve been asked to undertake, but you mustn’t share it with anyone.’

  ‘As though I would!’

  ‘Anyone, Petra. Not Nadia… no one.’

  ‘Why would I share it with Nadia?’

  ‘You won’t.’ I paused. ‘And you must promise me that.’

  ‘Fine,’ she said.

  ‘Van der Steen wants me to look at the team investigating child abuse.’

  Her eyes narrowed.

  ‘One of them is suspected of passing on police information to suspected paedophiles.’

  Her head dropped.

  ‘They need to plug the leak.’

  ‘Why?’ she said, looking up again, her face screwed up in a silent wail. ‘Why this, of all the roles you could have taken?’

  ‘Because someone needs to do it.’

  ‘But why you?’

  ‘Would you rather I crossed the road?’

  ‘Oh, don’t do your lone-knight thing with me, Henk.’ Petra had her head in her hands.

  She was right about most things, but not everything.

  No one is.

  ‘Child abuse.’ She was mumbling. ‘There’s a reason child offenders live in mortal danger in prison and the rest of society –’

  ‘Well, maybe if there were more women on the team in Driebergen, things would be different.’ I was thinking about Liesbeth, a team member of mine who had a knack of winning trust and gaining insight into cases. She was the one who’d helped me break open the Lottman kidnapping case, with an early interview she’d done…

  ‘So it’s women to blame now, is it?’

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just speculating that it’s not healthy to have an all-male team –’

  ‘Therefore, some unfortunate woman – or group of women – must now bear a further cost for these men’s depravities?’

  Jesus, was this not difficult enough without turning it into a full-on gender war?

  ‘Looking at those images changes the neural pathways,’ she cried. ‘It rewires the brain!’

  ‘Please keep your voice down.’

  She shook her head. ‘If it’s true of legal porn, it must be doubly so with this.’

  I was about to challenge her on the pornography point but her words rang true. I thought again of those six men in the office in Driebergen…

  ‘I don’t want you looking at that stuff.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘I’m serious, Henk. I don’t want that stuff in your head, and in our house, and in our bed!’

  ‘All right, dammit! Then I’ll make that the condition with van der Steen – I’m there to watch the watchers, but not to watch. Now, can we please get something to eat, before the restaurant shuts down and I shut down, too?’

  *

  At the justice ministry the following morning, van der Steen’s assistant led me into a small meeting room. A beige paper file marked Confidential sat on the polished wooden table.

  ‘You can’t take it away,’ he said.

  It felt like an unnecessary piece of theatre – I had my smartphone with me, able to photograph anything inside the file.

  ‘In a few moments, someone from the AIVD will drop by to introduce himself.’ The Algemene Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdienst is the Dutch secret service, charged with ‘identifying threats and risks to national security which are not immediately apparent’. It carries out operations at home and abroad, working with more than a hundred different organisations and employing over a thousand people – all of whom are sworn to secrecy about their work.

  ‘My handler?’ I clarified.

  The assistant didn’t answer my question.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said.

  The door clicked shut behind him and I opened the file. There appeared to be two parts: a review of the operation van der Steen had mentioned (the bust that had been lined up and failed), and then an overview of the team in Driebergen, SVU X-19.

  The nomenclature was familiar. ‘SVU’ stood for ‘Special Victims Unit’, the ‘X’ denoted that it didn’t appear as a matter of public record, and the ‘19’ distinguished it from other teams operating in that same capacity.

  Conscious that I had little time before my handler arrived, I turned back to the beginning, scanning each page in turn. There are different ways to digest files but I like to avoid reading ahead, instead reliving the experience of the investigation – what was known at which point.

  As I discovered, Operation Guardian Angel had grown out of a routine police check in Liège, Belgium. A Belgian police team had paid a house call to Jan Stamms, a convicted sex offender, to ensure that he was abiding by the terms of his early prison parole. They took a cursory look around Stamms’s suburban, semi-detached house, including his basement – where they heard a distant cry. The lead officer assumed that the cry had come from the neighbouring property.

  Luck (or its absence) can come in many forms in police work, and in this case it was a throwaway remark by the lead officer’s partner, Veronique Deschamps, to the neighbour, who happened to be out in her front garden: ‘That’s quite a pair of lungs someone in your household has,’ Deschamps reported commenting.

  ‘But I live alone,’ the neighbour replied, perplexed.

  Veronique Deschamps then insisted on a more thorough search of Stamms’s property. The first team still missed the sealed-up door in the basement, so good had Stamms’s handiwork been, but his clear nervousness prompted them to persist and bring in search dogs, which quickly found the location of a passage down to a second basement.

  In the concealed chamber were two four-year-old boys, a basic latrine, cameras and lighting equipment… plus a computer with editing software and thousands of hours of video footage. The room also contained a set of workmen’s tools.

  The twin boys required immediate medical attention. The video footage was too distressing for the local police team to review. However, by interviewing Stamms over a thirty-six-hour period, they elicited a confession to the existence of a video-sharing venue on the Dark Web called ‘Night Market’.

  I found myself nodding admiringly as I read the report. The Liège team had covered an impressive amount of ground before handing over the case to the Belgian Federal Police, who in turn discovered that Stamms had tried to resolve a payment problem with a bank in Amsterdam. The Federal Police speculated that the payment he’d expected to receive there was in exchange for his supply of video footage. A growing belief that the network was centred in Holland caused overall control to pass to Driebergen.

  The door opened and the assistant asked, ‘Do you want a drink, by the way?’

  I blinked in consternation. ‘No. How much longer do I have?’

  ‘A few minutes.’

  ‘Who is m
y handler, anyway?’

  ‘His name’s Rijnsburger. You’ll meet him soon enough.’

  The name didn’t mean anything to me. I waited in silence for the assistant to leave again, returning immediately to the file. There was a lengthy section on the build-up to the arrest teams going into the various different locations to apprehend the mid-level suspects already mentioned by van der Steen…

  I wanted to take in all the details. But more than that, I needed to get to the section on SVU X-19 itself. Van der Steen had suspected that the leak (resulting in the failure of the arrests) had come from SVU X-19 – only why?

  If you decide to proceed, you’ll see the file…

  I flicked forward, thinking that there must be an elaborate Joint Investigation Team, with investigators from the various countries involved. Any one of them or their immediate colleagues could have had access to information about Operation Guardian Angel, and leaked it…

  Aware that Rijnsburger might walk in at any moment, I skipped to the final section. Dumbstruck, I took in each of the SVU X-19 team members’ short bios and photos in turn.

  Manfred Boomkamp was a twenty-year KLPD veteran.

  Jacques Rahm was from Luxembourg’s Police Grand-Ducale.

  Tommy Franks, formerly with the London Metropolitan Police’s Flying Squad, was on secondment from the UK’s national Child Exploitation and Online Protection agency.

  Ivo Vermeulen represented the Belgian Federal Police.

  And there was a fifth nationality involved: Gunther Engelhart was from Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt.

  SVU X-19 was the Joint Investigation Team. They’d built a mini states-of-Europe in Driebergen.

  I sat back, and exhaled hard. Was it some kind of experiment? Did they believe that it would be more efficient to centralise the joint investigative work? Had the rationale been to avoid precisely the kind of intelligence failure that had then occurred?

  And what of my ability to take on these men?

  I leaned forward again, reaching into my inside pocket for my phone, when there came a rap at the door. It swung open to reveal a tall, white-haired man in a tailored navy suit. He was rheumy-eyed.

  ‘Henk van der Pol?’

  I didn’t deny it.

  ‘My name’s Wim Rijnsburger, I believe the minister has mentioned me. We’ll be joined by a psychologist shortly. Please, come this way.’

  3

  THREE DAYS LATER

  It was an overcast morning as I approached the main entrance to the low building situated beside the busy A12. Only when I pulled into the car park did I appreciate how much Driebergen was otherwise surrounded by forest – the kind of dense forest that you no longer expect to find in central Holland. At some level, the location symbolised separation from the newly combined national police force headquartered in The Hague.

  I still had a few minutes to spare before I was due to meet with Manfred Boomkamp, the commander of SVU X-19, so I locked up the car and reached for my cigarettes and lighter. My phone reception had dropped to a single bar of coverage.

  I got a Marlboro Red going, reflecting on the last few days: the surprisingly small change to my identity required for me to assume the role here; the questions from the police psychologist that I never wanted to hear again…

  A man to my right was trying to get his cigarette lit with matches. I recognised him as Tommy Franks, the English member of SVU X-19. His brown eyes were lively, fox-like. He had fine, sandy-coloured hair and a curiously old-fashioned, thick moustache.

  I offered him a light.

  ‘Haven’t seen you before,’ he said, exhaling his first draw.

  It felt prudent to reveal nothing about my posting at this point. ‘I’m here for a short while. Henk, by the way. And you?’

  ‘Tommy. The same – here for a spell.’

  We stood in that spirit of temporary camaraderie afforded by smoking areas.

  With his free hand, Franks stroked the tips of his moustache like a pet. I looked away from him, surveying the car park. ‘There are some nice cars here.’

  ‘There are,’ he agreed.

  I was eyeing a midnight-blue BMW 3-Series convertible in particular. The plates were German, temporary.

  ‘It’s mine,’ he said.

  Perhaps he was awaiting a reaction. He didn’t get one.

  ‘Damn sight cheaper over here than in the UK,’ he added, maybe reading my thoughts. He had the veneer of a well-spoken Englishman, but I could detect a regional British accent beneath. I couldn’t tell which.

  ‘Better get back to it,’ he said, discarding his half-finished cigarette.

  ‘Nice t­­o meet you.’

  ‘See you around.’

  *

  I picked up my security pass at the front desk, and a receptionist escorted me to Manfred Boomkamp’s office. The open workspaces I saw on the way were like any others in the police realm: functional, sparsely furnished, and adhering to a ‘clean desk’ policy – no personal items left out.

  Boomkamp had his own office, which had permitted him to hang a framed photo showing two grinning girls on pushbikes. The girls looked to be in their early teens. Boomkamp himself was clean-cut and angular-faced. He had silvery-blond hair and disconcertingly blue eyes. As I approached his desk, he uncoiled himself from behind it. He was one of the taller Dutchmen I’d met, and that was saying something.

  ‘Welcome, Henk. Sit down.’ A file was on the desk in front of him. Mine, almost certainly. ‘How are you settling into the area?’

  ‘Fine, thanks. I’m staying for a few days at the motel until I find something more permanent.’

  I didn’t need to name the motel – there was only one in Driebergen.

  ‘Has your wife joined you yet?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Let me know if we can help. I’m sure my own better half, Mariella, could show’ – he paused, glancing at my file – ‘Petra around. Driebergen’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it grows on you. The forest here can be quite lovely in spring.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  I didn’t know whether Boomkamp had been informed of my real mission here. The AIVD had told me to reveal only that I was an internal transfer, further to my job disappearing in Amsterdam. Effectively it was true – things with my former boss, Joost, had ended in a debilitating stalemate. And yet the guilt of my deceit was already starting to grow.

  ‘We need to get you operational as soon as possible.’ Boomkamp eyed his watch. ‘Helpfully, we have our weekly team meeting at eleven hundred hours. I’m going to have you shadow one of the other men.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Ivo Vermeulen. He’s a specialist in technical analysis, which – with child exploitation – usually constitutes the heart of the investigation.’

  I digested this information. Vermeulen was from the Belgian Federal Police, so would have been closest to the events in Liège that had launched the ailing Operation Guardian Angel.

  ‘Ivo’s a good man,’ Boomkamp added, ‘but he’s busy. We all are. We’re behind with our targets.’ He gave a tight smile. There were lots of tight smiles going around all of a sudden. ‘We don’t have enough men, even with your arrival.’ Then, almost as an afterthought: ‘It didn’t need to be this way.’

  Perhaps he was referring to the merger between the KLPD and the national police force.

  ‘But,’ he conceded, ‘we all have marching orders.’

  There was a pause in the conversation.

  The experience of coming to this remote location in the forest, and of being among such a group of men – even the terminology used by Boomkamp: it was like rejoining the army.

  I asked, ‘Were you by any chance in the forces?’

  ‘Do I give off that impression?’ He laughed. ‘In fact, three of the men here were. I’ll let you find out which.’
/>   ‘D’you mind telling me who does what?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Roles.’ The way army teams are put together, each man has a different, complementary area of expertise.

  Boomkamp swivelled his chair from side to side. ‘Like I said, Ivo handles technical analysis. Gunther Engelhart specialises in technical surveillance, which is similar but different. Tommy Franks is more versed in traditional forms of surveillance. Similar, but different again. Whereas Jacques Rahm is into suspect psychology. The psychology of suspects, I should clarify.’

  ‘Similar but different?’

  ‘Definitely different. Rahm’s work I don’t pretend to understand so well. But apparently we need it.’

  ‘Marching orders?’

  ‘Marching orders.’

  There was no mention of leaks, or of suspects being tipped off.

  He held me with his stare. Just like the justice minister had.

  Then I remembered something else from my meeting with the justice minister.

  ‘I thought this was a six-person team?’ I’d counted five, including Boomkamp.

  ‘It’s six now. Question being what your role here turns out to be.’

  ‘Can I ask,’ I said, deflecting his remark, ‘whose idea it was to staff the team from different countries?’

  But before he had a chance to answer, there was a sharp rap at the door.

  ‘Enter,’ he said.

  A fleshy face appeared round the doorjamb.

  ‘What is it, Engelhart?’

  The German’s small, dark pupils flicked my way. ‘We’re all ready in the meeting room.’

  ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’ The door closed and Boomkamp sighed, then said, ‘Put the other men at ease, would you, Henk? Go out for a drink with them or something. They’re curious about you, and there’s only so much I can tell them. You came here highly recommended.’

  It was a police euphemism; he was conceding that he’d been instructed to take me. Or was he maintaining a clever cover of his own?

  *

  The weekly meeting took place in a typical briefing room, brightly lit and smelling of institutional cleaning products. Seated around the long table were the two men I’d already met – Engelhart and Franks, the latter man’s eyes widening as he recognised me from the smoking area – plus two others.