Stop it, he told himself. Just stop it.
He tried to think about the phone he was tracking. He’d no doubt it led to the fourth and last member of the gang.
He hoped he wasn’t going to be too late. But he was finding it hard to concentrate. He dialled Roemers.
‘Saskia’s number come back on yet?’
Roemers took a few moment to reply. ‘No.’
Jaap swung a right into a narrow street, clipping a parked car on the way round. But he had to slam on the brakes as he straightened up. Ahead, a white delivery truck was turning, trying to do a three pointer in the road, but had got stuck. He whacked the car into reverse, narrowly missing a woman who’d started crossing the road behind him.
He had to find another route.
Rain started spotting the windscreen.
A vacuum was forming in the car’s interior. Opening the window didn’t help.
By the time he pulled up outside the address Roemers had given him, a large detached house which was clearly derelict, some of the windows broken and no lights on inside, it was raining hard, bouncing off the road surface.
Further up the road he noticed a car parked up on the kerb, a white Citroën.
Jaap’s hand scrabbled around the glove compartment for a torch, dislodging an empty takeaway box and two collapsed water bottles. All cars should be equipped with a torch, only this one wasn’t.
He gave up and ran to the front steps, feet slipping on the wet stone. The door was half open. He pushed it with his foot, drawing his gun at the same time.
The inside was a period drama gone to ruin. A large spiral staircase coiled out of the floor, leading up three storeys.
He stopped breathing, listened.
Rain hammered against the domed roof light above the stairs.
There was another noise, intermittent. A kind of groan.
The stairs were solid underfoot, the wood old and thick, not prone to creaking.
Thoughts were jabbing at him, connections forming.
The white Citroën outside like the one Saskia drove.
The victims from Bosnia.
On the first floor he stopped to listen, there were four rooms off the landing, and he thought the noise was coming from the far left at the back of the house. He stepped forward, skirting the doorway.
He pulled his weapon, and poked his head round the corner.
Saskia was slumped on the floor, holding a phone in her hands, her face illuminated by the screen’s clinical light.
Jaap could see her features were twisted.
Saskia’s trial.
Crossing the room took for ever.
He saw what was happening, what he’d missed.
Then he was beside her, holding her, looking at the image on the small screen.
It was Floortje.
Tied up, with a dirty gag wrapped round her mouth.
Kees could hardly see out of the windscreen, the rain washing down in flowing ridges.
If he’d been moving then he could have had the wipers on, but as he was parked up, outside the house where Isovic had been sleeping, he didn’t want to draw attention to himself.
And now the inside of the glass was misting up.
Jaap had left them mid-briefing – it sounded like some family crisis – and without specific orders Kees had decided he’d best get back on Isovic.
But now he was here he wondered if it was worth it.
Why am I bothering? he thought.
The weakness and pain were getting worse, month by month. There was no denying what was happening to him, the disease which was taking over his body.
So why did he feel the need to get Isovic?
Purely rhetorical, he already knew why; the answer was what they called displacement activity. That’s what he was doing, simply not facing up to the inevitable.
A figure was hurrying down the street with a coat pulled up over his hunched head. Kees tried to glimpse the face, but it was too distorted, the water rushing down the glass making it impossible to see properly.
But when the figure ran up the front steps, fumbled with a key and let himself in, Kees got out of the car and followed, making the door just as it was about to click shut.
Wet footsteps rang out on the stairs, Kees tried to remember what floor he’d found Isovic’s flat on. Then they stopped for a few seconds before starting up again, faster this time, and coming back down.
It’s him, he thought. He’s seen the broken door.
A few moments later the figure appeared on the stairs, taking the steps three at a time. As his feet hit the floor and he dashed for the door he noticed Kees, who stepped out of the shadows pooled on one side of the hallway from the single central bulb.
It was Isovic.
Eyes locked, Kees could read Isovic’s indecision – back up the stairs or straight ahead?
Isovic chose straight ahead. Kees saw the flash of a blade being drawn from a pocket. At the last second Kees dropped down and sidestepped, tripping Isovic, using the Bosnian’s momentum to propel him towards the door.
Isovic’s face crunched against glass, and Kees heard a scream loud enough to wake the entire street.
He jumped to his feet, hauled Isovic back through the glass pane, kicked the knife away and cuffed him.
He marched him to the car, skull-guided him into the back, secured him, and got into the driver’s seat.
‘You’re going to talk,’ said Kees, twisting his head round to look right at him. ‘Now.’
Jaap didn’t know how the phone got into his hand, but it had. And almost immediately it started ringing. ‘Unknown Caller’ replaced Floortje’s image.
He hit the green button and held it to his ear.
‘Inspector Rykel,’ said a growling voice in heavily accented English, ‘I’m now going to tell you what to do.’
Tanya was looking at the Interpol file which had come in.
Both men were from the former Yugoslavia, Bosnian Serbs to be precise, and both were suspected of being part of a crew, self-styled the Black Hands, which had terrorized Muslims during the conflicts back in the 1990s.
Remembering the burned hands on Jaap’s three victims she looked up Black Hand, her pulse increasing, reading that it had been a movement in the early twentieth century fighting for Serbian independence in Serbia.
Nearly a century later, in the conflict which had torn apart Yugoslavia, these men had taken the name for their own group.
She called Europol, got them to check on the modern Black Hands. They came back with a yes; there was a gang. As she was listening to the names being read out she heard one that was familiar. Her pulse pounded in her veins.
It took her a few moments to place it.
The second she did her hand shot out for the phone, dialling Jaap.
The phone’s edges were cutting into Jaap’s hand.
‘… and I’ll be watching the news tomorrow evening at 9 p.m. If it’s announced that the trial has collapsed and Matkovic has been acquitted then your daughter will be released. If not then you’ll never see her again.’
57
Monday, 10 May
18.02
He dropped the phone and pulled out the SIM.
Then he reached into his back jeans pocket and pulled out a lighter. The flame scorched the SIM, casting weird dancing shadows on the wooden walls.
Then he broke the phone up, removed the battery and threw it across the room. That started the baby crying again.
He checked his watch.
Things were now coming to a head.
He was the only one left, all his gang had been killed. Which would have been good, saved him the bother of doing it himself later on.
But for the fact that he didn’t know who was doing it.
And he didn’t have the resources to find out. It’d been driving him crazy for days, ever since the first murder, each further death notching it up even more.
At first he thought they were revenge attacks for knocking off the grow
sites, and when the only Dutch member of his crew, Teeven, who was somehow getting the information on the locations, had also wound up dead, he was sure.
Then he’d heard on the news that each victim had had the palm of one of their hands scorched.
That was when he’d really started to get scared. Someone knew about him, knew what he was here to do.
But despite all this, he was still in a position to win.
And no one was going to find him here.
The smell of damp wood was all around him, he could almost feel the mould spores entering his lungs with each breath.
He looked out of the window, on to the pier hovering over the black water.
Rain had been pockmarking the water’s surface but it was easing off now.
Turbulence turning to calm.
He checked his watch again.
Just over twenty-four hours.
Not long now.
58
Monday, 10 May
18.47
‘We need to get a team on this right away—’
‘No,’ Saskia shook her head, something in her eyes that Jaap didn’t recognize. ‘You heard what he said. If we tell anyone then they’ll … they’ll kill her.’
‘But how’s he going to know? I can take this to Smit, make sure it’s kept—’
‘No!’
‘So what’s the alternative? You losing the trial? Can you do that?’
They were sitting on the floor, backs to the wall. Outside the rain had eased off but was still falling. Saskia was shivering.
‘I … Yeah. I mean, Isovic was our main witness. With him gone there’s a whole load of testimony we’re not going to get. He was really key to our approach. And the judge who got drawn for this trial is the hardest to get a conviction from. When we saw it was him we got worried. So maybe if I mess up there’s a chance Matkovic might walk free.’
‘But it’s not guaranteed, right?’
‘Course it’s not fucking guaranteed. And where were you?’ She turned her head towards him. ‘Huh? You’re her father. You could have been looking after her, but instead you decided to go off on your case.’
‘That’s not fair, and you know it,’ shot back Jaap.
But is it? he asked himself. Maybe she’s right.
He couldn’t focus properly, too many thoughts running parallel.
The image of him leaving his houseboat on Teeven’s phone, was it that Teeven had been part of this plot, scoping him out?
He’d been wrong.
He’d been wrong right from the start and now Floortje was paying for it.
‘We’ve got to think about this,’ he said, trying to keep his voice calm, the waver in it telling him he was failing. ‘I think I can find out where she is, and—’
‘I’ve already said—’
‘This is Floortje’s life we’re talking about, we’ve got to look at all the options.’
Jaap could see Saskia was trembling.
‘It’s just coming up to seven,’ he said, trying to sound calm, ‘and the trial won’t be starting until, what? Ten? Ten thirty?’
‘Later, it’s scheduled in for twelve.’
‘Okay, so that gives us seventeen hours before it even starts. I can find out a lot in that time. We can talk just before you go in. I can let you know where I’ve got to … Saskia?’
He could see she was holding back tears, all the muscles in her face fighting to keep them at bay. Her mouth was open, but there was no sound.
A taught line of saliva joined her lips.
He wrapped his arms around her.
‘Listen, it’s going to be okay. We are going to get her back. I promise.’
Only I’m not so sure, he thought as he held her. I’m not sure at all.
‘We have to get her,’ she said, her tears spilling on to his neck, echoing the rain outside. ‘Jaap, we have to get her back.’
59
Monday, 10 May
19.26
‘Who’s this?’
‘This,’ said Kees, ‘is Zamir Isovic. He absconded from witness protection a few days ago.’
‘Don’t you need the hospital?’ said the desk sergeant. ‘I mean, his face and everything? I don’t want him bleeding all over one of my cells.’
Kees glanced at Isovic, hundreds of tiny trickles of blood covering his face. It looked full-on horror movie, but he knew it wasn’t serious.
Or he didn’t care.
He couldn’t work out which.
‘I want to put him in a cell, I’ve got a phone call to make.’
‘Look, he’s cuffed, right? So just chain him to that pipe. I’ll keep an eye on him.’
Having secured Isovic to the pipe, which he was pleased to feel was really hot, Kees stepped outside. The rain had stopped and the air was cool, fresh. He breathed in, wet pavements glittering with reflections from the descending sun, and placed a call to Smit, half expecting his phone to be off. But it rang, and Smit picked up.
‘Yes?’
‘Inspector Terpstra. I’ve got Isovic in custody.’
Silence howled down the line.
‘I thought I’d taken you off that case?’
‘I got a tip-off and had to act fast; there wasn’t time to let anyone else know.’
A car drove past, a curling wave of water peeling from its front tyre.
‘Did you arrest him?’
‘Got him cuffed. I haven’t done any paperwork, not sure what grounds I’d arrest him on. Other than resisting arrest.’
‘Get him down to Den Haag and hand him over. I’ll call the head of ICTY and let him know,’ said Smit. ‘Then he becomes their problem.’
Nice to be thanked, thought Kees as Smit hung up.
He’d hoped to leave Isovic here overnight, get some drone to take him down tomorrow, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen.
By the time he’d signed out a car – he’d been picky, rejecting the first two offered – and bundled Isovic into the back it was starting to rain again.
As he headed out of the city, down towards the coast, Kees thought about the next few days.
He had an appointment to go back to the hospital, the latest test results would be in.
The tests which would show how fast the progression was.
The thing is, he thought as he drove, I’m not sure I’m ready for that.
It’d been nearly a year ago when he’d first noticed the numbness, but he’d put it down to coke and ignored it. Then the other symptoms started to kick in, but it still took him weeks before he’d decided he had to see someone about it. Even then he’d made the appointment and cancelled it three times before he actually forced himself to go.
The doctor had spent most of the time staring at a computer screen, two-finger-typing Kees’ answers on a dirty keyboard. Each answer seemed to prompt another question from the screen.
Once he’d left, with an appointment for a barrage of tests, Kees wasn’t sure the doctor had actually looked at him once.
‘How you find me?’
Isovic’s voice brought him back to the present, and Kees realized that he’d not even been paying attention to the road. He looked in the rear-view, catching Isovic’s face behind the cage.
‘Someone grassed you up.’
‘Who?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘No, maybe not,’ he turned to look out the window, a lazy windmill stood in a field of sheep.
‘So why did you run away? I thought you wanted to testify against that guy, what was his name?’
‘Matkovic.’
‘Yeah, that’s the one. So you changed your mind? You don’t want him to be brought to justice?’
‘Oh, I do,’ said Isovic looking back, locking eyes in the mirror, his head nodding as if his seat had transformed into a rocking horse. ‘I do.’
60
Monday, 10 May
20.41
Tanya was getting worried.
She now knew exactly who the victims were, and had confirm
ed ID on the remaining man from Kees’ photos from 57, presumably the next victim, and she needed to let Jaap know as soon as possible.
Problem was, he wasn’t picking up.
After the uniform had interrupted their meeting and told Jaap there’d been a call from Saskia, he had disappeared. At first she’d assumed something had happened to Floortje, an accident maybe. She’d tried to get hold of Saskia but couldn’t reach her either. And it had now been hours.
She thought back to when she’d met Jaap, the case which had thrown them together. There’d been something there, between them, right from the start. But then he discovered Floortje was his daughter, and their relationship maybe hadn’t worked out quite as well because of that.
He’d changed when he realized he was suddenly responsible for a life.
And he was doing a good job. He clearly loved Floortje, the way his face lit up when he was around her, his attentiveness. Sometimes Tanya felt a pang of jealousy, though she knew that was stupid and tried to dismiss it.
And there were times when Tanya helped out, looked after her for him, and she’d started to wonder if she really wanted to be a kind of mother to a child which wasn’t her own.
Not that she’d ever really thought about having children herself; the past, and what had happened there had somehow killed that urge.
She turned back to her computer. She’d managed to match the names to the victims, and the man seen at 57, who they presumed was still alive.
Where is Jaap? she thought, checking her phone again.
They’d been wrong about the case, which was probably her fault; the theory about the cannabis growers had sidetracked them.
She dialled Jaap again, and this time he picked up.
‘Are you okay? Where are you?’ she asked.
‘I had to meet Saskia about something. It’s okay now though.’
She could tell something was wrong. His voice sounded different, harder than normal, as if his vocal cords were seizing up. And she could tell he wasn’t going to tell her anything, at least not now. She decided not to push it.
Into the Night: Inspector Rykel Book 2 (Amsterdam Quartet) Page 21
