Purgatory

by Guido Eekhaut

She turned around and noticed now four other soldiers sitting on rocks next to the gap. In between them sat a man in dirty rags. His hands were tied together with rope. He seemed strangely unaware of the bodies.

  “Who is he?”

  “We found him here,” the lieutenant said. “He does not talk. But he was not here by accident, of that I’m sure.”

  “Has he got anything to do with this ritual?”

  The lieutenant suddenly looked bored. “He does not speak a word, so we know nothing, as I said. Everything is possible. Every story, however unlikely, might be true. Maybe he is a rebel, though he carried no weapons. We suspect he has been here for at least a couple of days.”

  “What will happen to him?”

  “We will take him to the camp. He will talk to us. Maybe he knows more about these victims. Their identities, perhaps.”

  She couldn’t bear to look at the bodies any longer. She wanted out. And she still wondered why the lieutenant had brought her here.

  8

  EILEEN CALSTER LEFT A concise message for Nick Prinsen. She had arrived in her Amsterdam apartment. Nick sat behind his desk, surrounded by the remnants of a previous investigation still scattered around him like body parts after an air crash. Van Gils was absent, but three other officers were noisily discussing current cases—illegal arms deals with some of the more unstable Caucasian republics and human trafficking from the Middle East to Europe.

  They appeared to be ignoring him, and just as well, since he couldn’t hide his joy at the message. In her most recent missive, she had confirmed she would leave Groningen and her parents, intent on never returning. She avoided talking about her parents. Only once she depicted them as taciturn, not in touch with their feelings, and indifferent to her fate.

  If anything, she was running from all her parents stood for. She had tried to educate them—to make them understand the dark nineteenth century was long gone, but now she had finally, or so he hoped, broken with them.

  Prinsen glanced at his watch. He would clock out earlier today. He shut his computer down, locked his desk, and got up. Veneman glanced up for a moment but then ignored him. Prinsen donned his heavy coat, gloves, and scarf and walked down the stairs. Outside, the air was crisp and clean, close to freezing. There would be snow soon, judging from the smell in the air. A sharp, ragged smell of intense, Nordic cold. He walked down Kerkstraat toward the city center. A walk would do him good, even in the cold.

  Would he get a bite to eat first? Would he ask Eileen out for dinner instead? Yes, he would do that. To celebrate the fact that she had chosen her freedom. Her return to proud, complicated, and sinful Amsterdam. He pulled out his phone and chose her number. There she was, right away, slightly out of breath as if she had been running.

  “Hello,” she said when she saw the caller ID. “I’m in the apartment. It’s still a bit cold up here but heating up already. Where are you?”

  “Just left the office. It’s still early, but let’s meet for dinner. My treat. To celebrate your return.”

  She didn’t have to think it over for too long. “Good idea. There’s nothing here to eat anyway. And I’m starving. Probably the change of scenery makes me hungry. Where will we meet?”

  He needed to think that over. He rarely went out, and even when he went someplace for dinner or lunch, he hardly ever noticed the name. He needed to come up with something in a hurry, otherwise he might lose his appeal as a man of the world. “Somewhere around the Dam?” he suggested. “It has mostly tourist places, I know, but there’s an Argentine steak house where we can get proper food.”

  “And where it’s almost dark inside,” she said, knowing at once where he meant. A subtle touch of semi-darkness would add to the culinary delight. “Is that in Raadhuisstraat?”

  “Yes. In twenty minutes?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m on my way,” he said. It would take him ten, at the most fifteen, minutes to get there. He wondered if he needed to bring a small gift. Flowers? No, flowers would be awkward in a restaurant. A present. But what could he buy her? A book? Music? He didn’t even know what sort of books or music she liked. He had been in touch with her for several months now but knew nothing about her taste in books or music. What had they talked about all that time?

  They had talked about her and about her parents and about their mutual feelings.

  Maybe he would buy her a diary. A journal. And a pen. Perhaps she needed to arrange her thoughts and write them down. She needed a place, some physical place, to arrange her thoughts about her brother and her former boyfriend, and about her parents. A physical place like the pages of a diary. Where these thoughts could be properly stored away, safely, unseen by others, still close by if needed, but slightly at a distance from her daily concerns. He would never read her diary, wouldn’t want to. He knew the powerful impulse of putting your most intimate thoughts to paper. He had done it himself for a long time. His experiences with his family had not been all that different than hers.

  He entered De Bijenkorf, the main department store in the center of Amsterdam. He took the escalator up, shedding his coat. He found her a black leather-bound journal with lined pages and a standard Waterman fountain pen with some refills and had it all wrapped up as a gift. That took some time, too much time, and when he approached the steak house, Eileen was already there, waiting for him in the street, cold but happy to see him. “Sorry,” he said, “things took longer than I anticipated.”

  “You’re here, that’s what counts.” She forgave him at once. She would forgive him anything, so long as he was with her. She rested her hand on his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. That felt inappropriately intimate.

  They entered the restaurant, chose a table by the window. It was still early. They were alone, except for four young men at a round table, probably Americans. The young men were already halfway through a substantial dinner of steak, baked potatoes, and a salad, each drinking from an oversized beer mug, bantering about something or other.

  She took off her gloves and parka and straightened her hair. She fixed her gaze on him and smiled an engaging, totally innocent smile at him. “Do I look different than last time?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “You look different. I don’t know why, just different.” But he did know why.

  “I may have gained a few pounds,” she said. “And did something to my hair too.”

  He was convinced there was more to it. The changes went deeper. She was no longer the skinny, frightened, but resolute girl she had been months earlier when the police had taken her into protective custody. Not the girl he had met then, the girl he had driven all the way to Groningen, to relative safety. She had clearly distanced herself from the fears she had known then.

  “Why didn’t you come back earlier?” he wanted to know.

  She laughed. “It’s just that I—” The waiter approached them with the menu. Prinsen ordered Mexican chicken and a salad, and she surprised him by choosing a steak, medium done. And beer. He ordered a beer as well.

  “The period of time is just arbitrary,” she continued.

  “Arbitrary?”

  “If I had been gone for six months, you would have asked the same question.”

  “I mean, why stay any time in Groningen, with your folks?” After her boyfriend, Pieter Van Boer, and her brother Maarten had been killed by a Russian hitman, she hadn’t wanted to stay in Amsterdam, although she was no longer in danger.

  “I needed to go back home. Hoping that things would change. They didn’t.”

  “Their son was killed. This would only confirm their prejudices about Amsterdam.”

  For a moment, she looked out the window. The waiter arrived with the beer. “They didn’t want to talk about him at all. He no longer existed. Maybe he never existed to them. There were no pictures of him anywhere in the house.”

  “They continue to deny—?”

  “No, that’s not it.”

  “What then?”

  He noticed tears in h
er eyes. Maybe he shouldn’t press the matter. But then, if he didn’t, if he didn’t know what had occurred between her and her parents, she would remain a stranger. Part of her would remain a stranger to him. A part that mattered most to him, right now.

  She said, “If you leave their community, you leave their life, Nick. That’s how it goes, and that’s how my family sees it. That’s what happened to both me and Maarten. He no longer was their son. I am no longer their daughter. I am no longer part of their community. They’ll greet me when I visit, politely as they would acknowledge the presence of any stranger, and they’ll talk to me, but it will be no different than greeting strangers and talking to strangers. They won’t ask about Amsterdam or about my life there. I only exist when I’m present in their home. I have no existence elsewhere. And don’t assume the talking amounts to much, Nick. Even as a kid I noticed the lack of real words, real sentences. They communicate, that is all they do. Signs, but not deeper meaning. More often they say nothing. I used to be afraid of them, on account of their silences. Because many things were left unspoken. And then my brother left. And I left. We both fled.”

  Nick knew all too well what she was talking about. He was raised in a strict religious environment, although not as extreme as Eileen’s. There was a bond, nevertheless, between them. A bond he regretted. They both had had troubled childhoods. A bond should be about something positive. But this wasn’t.

  The food appeared at the table. Her steak was larger than he expected.

  “And what about you?” Nick inquired after the waiter had left.

  “Me?”

  “In what sense do you exist? Do you exist only under the shadow of your parents?”

  “Of course not, Nick. That’s the whole point. I have, for a long time now, taken myself from under their shadow, or I wouldn’t be in Amsterdam in the first place.” She sounded as if he had trampled her soul, and he probably had. “Do you for one moment think they would have voluntarily let me and my brother come to Amsterdam? Do you think I went back out of nostalgia? I’m not homesick. I want nothing to do with them, and that’s final.”

  She cut the steak and shoved a rather large piece in her mouth. She chewed on it. They remained silent for a short while. In the street people hurried by, probably going home. A light snow fell.

  “You’ll be looking for a job?” he asked.

  “Yes. I had an offer even before coming here. It isn’t much, but it’ll pay the rent, and I can eat. I’ll go back to the university in September if I can get a scholarship.”

  “Public scholarship?”

  “No, private. A company. My mentor at the university arranged it for me. I wasn’t idle, these past few months. I prepared my escape thoroughly. He’s a really nice man, my mentor. He said, forget the current academic year. Come back, and we’ll sort things out. Without him, I’d be lost.”

  Nick was working on his chicken and considering the necessity of mentors. He assumed he would need one of his own. Would Eekhaut be playing that role?

  She said, “And what about you?”

  “As usual.” Which, he suddenly realized, meant absolutely nothing.

  “I don’t know what usual means. Police work, I assume?”

  “Yes. Research, files, problems, crime, conspiracies. The usual thing. I mean, there’s these long and boring bits in between moments of tension and excitement—”

  “Why are we here, together, Nick?” she suddenly asked as if remembering what she had wanted to talk about in the first place.

  He stopped eating. “Why do you ask?”

  “It’s a meaningful and totally appropriate question. Why are we here, the both of us? Do we have something in common? Is there something between us? I’ll have to know if you’re expecting something from me, Nick. Would feel better that way, if I knew and didn’t have to guess.”

  He was confused. Mainly because he hadn’t figured out what sort of relationship they were supposed to be in. He wasn’t even certain exactly what he felt for her. He had presupposed a bond between them, assumed she felt like he did. But that assumption was perhaps all wrong.

  The little voice in his head told him an insurmountable truth. Of course there’s something between both of you. Why else did you ask her out? Why else have you longed to see her again and waited for her impatiently these last few days?

  “I, uh . . .”

  “Is it on account of you driving me home, the last time we met?”

  “Because,” he carefully said, “you looked absolutely vulnerable, and I wanted so badly to help you.”

  But he knew this wasn’t what she needed to hear from him. She hadn’t come back to him. She had come back to a brand of freedom only Amsterdam could offer her. Freedom from her parents, mostly. And then there had been Nick, whose presence would probably reassure her.

  Not only, and certainly not firstly, because he was a police officer.

  She hadn’t come back to him. His being here was a secondary advantage.

  “You are empathetic, and you love to help vulnerable girls,” she said. “But I’m not the fragile type, Nick. Not at all. At the time I was scared shitless, I’ll admit that much. My boyfriend was killed before my eyes. I was almost kidnapped, I was shot at. An assassin killed my brother. That’s a bit more than a girl is expected to endure.”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “Yes, I guess you do. But I’m not the fragile type.”

  He thought, No, you’re not. I know you aren’t. Because you’ve come back. Otherwise, you would still have been hiding in Groningen.

  “You don’t want me vulnerable, do you, Nick? I hope not. I don’t want you hovering protectively over me. I’ll suffocate if you do.”

  “I don’t want you to be vulnerable,” he said.

  “Because that’s what my parents did. They suffocated me. With their good intentions, but I had enough of their stifling emotional poverty.”

  He wasn’t going to mother her. He wasn’t going to hover over her. But then, Nick, what do you want from her? Wouldn’t he do better to keep some distance from her, for the time being? Until she managed to settle more comfortably in Amsterdam?

  9

  NOT FAR FROM THE Argentine steak house, Eekhaut was at the Red Lion eating grilled chicken with fries and peanut sauce. He had a large glass of Amstel beer on the side. It wasn’t real beer, in his opinion, but nothing better was served. He’d never been a fan of Dutch beers, used as he was to the stronger, more complex Belgian brews.

  As usual, the Red Lion was busy. Even in the middle of winter, a loyal clientele ate there. It was the sort of eatery tourists would only seldom visit; a somewhat old-fashioned place where waiters were almost as permanent a fixture as the never-changing menu. This was a place of decent Dutch food, only slightly influenced by the culinary import from the former Indonesian colony (hence the peanut sauce).

  On his occasional visits to Amsterdam before he moved here, this area, around the Dam and the Kalverstraat, had been like a home away from home. Now, these last four months, it was home, although he would always be a foreigner. He already had adopted the lifestyle of the better class and occasionally shopped in the Bijenkorf, the grand department store on the other side of the Damrak.

  This wide but never enticing avenue was lined with tacky bars and restaurants, all catering to foreign tourists. Just two buildings made the area interesting. The first was the Beurs van Berlage, an old stock exchange designed early in the twentieth century by a Dutch architect whose name the building bore. It was no longer a stock exchange but served as a venue for modern art and design exhibitions and a conference center.

  The other building was the Bijenkorf. Much like Harrods, it catered to the well off, although its prices were somewhat more democratic than its London counterpart. In the stiff-lipped Dutch democratic tradition, it sold its own fashion brands, and there was an extensive tearoom restaurant on the top floor. Eekhaut had bought clothes there a couple of times. That’s what he’d been doing just now. He had a
lso gotten a Stephen King novel, Duma Key.

  He slowly enjoyed the chicken and peanut sauce. It wasn’t a sumptuous meal, but he wasn’t hungry. Even after three weeks, he still had the stench of burned bodies in his nostrils, which was impossible since there had been no smell at all. He didn’t sleep well either. Perhaps he dreamed of corpses, but he couldn’t remember his dreams. He still imagined those caricatures of humans united in death. He remembered the absolute silence that prevailed in the clearing. The message in blood, but what was its significance? So far, no clues.

  He had warned Dewaal that they were staring into the void of a meaningless message. Or one that meant something only to those who’d committed the crime. That was solely for the members of the conspiracy, inside of the Society of Fire. Maybe it was meant for a specific person, even. Someone who was supposed to find the victims. Why leave messages in a place like that? Who was expected to read them?

  And who was the so-called informant manipulating?

  In the meantime, they had made little progress. They had some DNA. They would find people to whom it had belonged, and then what? They’d find out in the next few days.

  Meanwhile, he was thinking about Linda. Not long ago they’d been drinking on a terrace here in Amsterdam, enjoying the last of the good fall weather. Unfortunately, their favorite bar, the Absinthe, had closed some time ago. They’d been amazed one evening to find it boarded up, with only a brief notice posted, informing them it wouldn’t reopen. Part of their life had gone. Three weeks later a Japanese restaurant opened in its place. They decided not to eat there for sentimental reasons. There were plenty of Japanese restaurants in Amsterdam.

  From another table a woman sat watching him. He noticed her and nodded to her and then looked outside. He hadn’t spotted her attention at first, but now he couldn’t ignore her. He had been deep in thought. He glanced at her again. She looked about forty. She was dressed in jeans and a white blouse and had her jacket hanging over the other chair. An extravagantly tailored jacket. And over that jacket, an overcoat, equally expensive-looking. He had a policeman’s eye for such details. It had come in handy in his previous jobs. It was always the details that gave away who people were and what they pretended to be. Their physiognomy, the way they ate, the way they talked, the way they looked at other people. And the clothes. At times, they tried to hide their true selves with gestures, loud talking, and clothing that cost a lot. But underneath, under the veneer of loud or civilized behavior, he knew he could and would find their true selves: scared, lonely, perverse, cruel—whatever.