‘Next was when stuff got really fucked up. The first guy started complaining of being too hot, but I heard the nurses talking to each other, saying that his body temperature was really low, dangerously low. So one of them left whilst the other one tried to stop the guy from undressing. But he was acting weird, ignored the nurse and stripped down naked. You could see he was freezing – he was shaking hard, and his skin was turning a strange blue colour. The second person who’d got a headache was now starting to complain of being too hot as well, which is when the door bursts open and several men come in. By now there are just six of us who haven’t come down with whatever it is, but we’re all hyper-paranoid; every second you wonder if that little twinge in your head is the start of it, the little pain in your arm a symptom. I tell you, it was fucking terrifying. The men are bringing trolleys into the room and putting all those affected onto them and strapping them in. I saw the blood first. I was watching the first guy whilst he was waiting to be hoisted up, and this little bubble of blood appears in his nostril. It grows quickly, then bursts. Then the other nostril does the same and soon blood’s streaming out of his nose and starting to dribble out of his mouth too, and all the time I’m scared that this is going to happen to me as well.’
I’m pretty good at telling if people are faking it or not, and Polman is not. His delivery isn’t melodramatic; it’s held in, like if he was to let it go something deep and horrible might be unleashed. He was traumatized by the experience. I can see it in him, his own private version of the black wolf.
‘Then what?’
Polman shudders. His hands are in a jumble on the table, and he’s picking at a bit of skin with a fingernail.
‘Then nothing.’
‘There’s more, I can tell.’
Polman glares at me. I hold his gaze. Finally he lowers his eyes.
‘Then they got them all out and we were left in the room until a man came in and told us that by process of elimination we’d all received the placebo so we’d be fine. We’d have to stay in overnight, just for observation, but that was it. We were each given a room and I’m pretty sure they sedated us because I slept like I’d never slept before. Next morning I woke up and there’s a man in the room and he asks me how I am and how do I feel and blah blah. It all seemed so fake, like he didn’t give a shit at all but was just asking the questions because he’d been told to. First thing I do is ask about the others, the ones who got hauled away and he said they’d all been stabilized and that although it had been horrible for them they were now recovering and no lasting damage had been done. He also said that the company would like to compensate us for our trouble and he had some money he could give me. He brought out a briefcase and pulled out a couple of really thick envelopes. He opened one so I could see it was full of notes. He told me it was ten thousand euros and that I could have it. I’d just need to sign a bit of paper.’
‘Did you?’ Vermeer prompts once he’s fallen silent.
‘Yeah, of course. What would you have done? He handed over the envelopes and the papers. I signed. Before he left he leaned over and said that if I ever told anyone about what I’d seen I’d be breaking their agreement and the company would sue me for breach of contract. Then he leaned closer and whispered in my ear that the legal case would ruin me but that would be nothing compared to what he’d make sure happened to me.’
‘This man you talked to, did you get a name?’
‘No.’
‘Description?’
‘Just some corporate guy. Nice suit, clean shaven. He seemed sort of anonymous, like I can’t fully picture him.’
‘What sort of age?’
‘Probably forties, maybe older. He was one of those people where it’s really hard to tell.’
‘Hair colour?’
‘Blond, I think.’
There’s more. I can tell. But for some reason he’s not going to offer it up. Time to force it.
‘Okay, that’s some useful information you’ve given us. But there’s something else, isn’t there?’
Polman looks across at his lawyer and nods. The lawyer reaches into his own briefcase and is soon sliding a few sheets of paper across the table.
‘What is this?’
‘The document Mr Polman was asked to sign in the hospital that day.’
Vermeer and I give it a quick once-through, but it’s not what we expected. It’s an agreement between Bastiaan Polman and a company called Global Solutions BV, not DH Biotech, and is a blanket ban on discussing anything, just as Polman had said.
‘Who is Global Solutions BV? A subsidiary?’
‘That’s the thing.’ The lawyer leans forward in his chair and drops his voice. ‘I’ve checked it out and it doesn’t exist.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Exactly what I said. There isn’t, and never has been, any company called Global Solutions BV.’
‘So this agreement here is junk then.’ Vermeer taps the paper.
‘The one with Global Solutions BV is, yes. The original one with DH Biotech is still legitimate. But regardless, my client feels that the threat made against him was serious.’
As we finish up, thanking Polman for his time and assuring him that we’ll keep him updated, my brain races through naked bodies, blood and someone desperate to keep a lid on it all.
A lid which I am going to blow sky-high.
I think of the part of me still up on the roof. It’s like it’s trying to tell me something.
Just Like the Others
Strategy meet. Beving, Jansen, Vermeer, myself.
I present my case. I’m persuasive. Vermeer’s now coming round to my way of thinking. Which is DH Biotech is at the heart of this. Beving’s more cautious. Wants more details. I give him naked bodies and blood, victims and volunteers. I give him a company desperate to keep its name clean. I give him mysterious men who threaten all those involved. I think he’s starting to get it.
‘The problem I think we’re going to run into in prosecuting this is that presumably DH Biotech’s original contract with the volunteers would most likely have mentioned death as a possible adverse outcome? We’ll have to check with legal on this, but I can’t believe they’d be allowed to run these trials without a clause like that. And if that’s the case then what do we get them on?’
Which is what I’ve been worried about too. We’ve got a killer, but we’ve also got a large company that seems culpable.
‘Probably get bumped down to some kind of financial impropriety,’ Vermeer says pensively. ‘They hide the result from potential investors. Pretty toothless. They’ll probably get a fine and a slapped wrist.’
‘And to even prove that you’re going to have to link the fictitious company with DH Biotech. Given Polman was handed cash that’s going to be pretty difficult. They can just deny.’
‘Unless we can find the man who gave it to him,’ I say.
Right now Polman’s sitting with a sketch artist trying to conjure up a face he’d seen years ago right after a traumatic event. I’m not exactly pinning my hopes on it. Maybe there’s another way.
‘Get down to the AMC and see if by some miracle they keep security footage from that long ago.’
Jansen nods and heads out.
We’re getting close, I can feel it. It’s like being on the edge of a black hole, the pull becoming stronger and stronger. Only we don’t know what we’ll find right at the centre.
‘We also need to go back to the other volunteers. They have to talk to us now we can prove the second agreement’s not legally binding. If we can build more detail from them, we might just get lucky.’
More ideas are tossed around, some swatted down like flies, some more persistent that can’t be got at. Meeting adjourned.
‘Keep me updated,’ Beving says.
He stands to go but looks like he’s about to say something to me. I know what it’s going to be. Yesterday he’d been about to take me off the case and by rights he should be doing that now. But at the last moment
he decides against it. Instead he tells me about the search for the arsonist.
‘The teams are still out there, but we’re getting to the stage of diminishing returns. Realistically I can probably only keep them on it for a few more hours.’
What happened to all that we’ll-find-him-and-we’ll-break-him stuff which had me choking up yesterday? But I just nod, like it’s fine. He leaves and Vermeer and I ready ourselves. A quick refuel and a toilet break.
On the way out the desk sergeant I managed not to punch yesterday calls out to me.
‘Phone call for you.’
I take the receiver. It’s Stephanie Dekker. She sounds nervous.
‘I think I may have something?’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s to do with what we talked about the other day.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘I … can we meet? I’d rather not say on the phone.’
Once I’ve got her location I hang up and explain to Vermeer. We agree to split up.
‘Rykel,’ she calls out as we head in different directions, ‘you okay to drive?’
I don’t even respond. Down in the car pool I’m assigned a small unmarked. Drives well, fast, tight. Nothing like the Stang, though. Ten minutes of blurry windows and I’m standing outside a house in Amsterdam-Zuid. Stephanie practically tears the door off its hinges as soon as I knock. She ushers me inside, and I catch her checking out the street as she closes the door. I decide not to tell her my houseboat got burned down. Through a corridor strewn with kids’ toys and photos on the wall of modest holidays on windswept beaches with grey skies. I don’t see a father in any of them, just two kids. The kitchen is heavy with the gluey scent of last night’s pizza. A cereal packet stands on the surface like a sentinel. Stephanie turns to face me, clutching the worktop behind her for support. She’d sounded nervous on the phone, now it’s kicked up several notches.
‘I found this,’ she says, handing me a few sheets of paper she pulls from a drawer next to her. There’s a smudge of eyeliner by her right eye.
I check the papers. Pathology reports for the volunteers who died. Not all of them, though. There’s one missing.
‘Where did you get these?’
‘I can’t tell you. But you didn’t get them from me.’
She’s edgy, something inside forcing her to do the right thing but now she has she just wants me gone. I get that. What I don’t get is why, again, there are only five, not six. Six people got the placebo, the other six people got the drug, but there are only five reports. I start to wonder what happened to the sixth. Did one survive the drug? Is that possible?
‘That’s all there was. See these?’ She points out each report’s number in the top right corner. ‘I checked the numbers either side and they were for different people.’
‘Not the missing volunteer?’
She shakes her head.
I pull out the list of names, check them. It looks like one of the two brothers didn’t die after all, the one lacking a pathology report is Rein Benner.
‘So you reckon this one, Rein Benner, didn’t die?’
‘I don’t know, but there’s no pathology report and there would be if he had.’
I suddenly feel like a wave’s swelling behind me.
‘One last thing.’ I show her a photo. ‘Was this the man who told you to keep quiet?’
I hold up a photo of Judge Muller, the same one I’d seen at his house of him and the mayor. I’d found it online, an article about a fundraising event both men had attended. In it, Muller’s wearing his pinstripe suit.
She stares at it, face furrowed, but finally shakes her head.
As soon as I’m outside I get Jansen on the phone.
‘No footage,’ he says. ‘They don’t keep it that long.’
‘There’s something else.’
I tell him what I need him to do. He promises to get right back to me. My thoughts have been shaken up. I let them settle out until I can see clearly. Two goths walk past, hooded and brooding, listening to music on their tinny phone speaker. Chains clank on black jeans.
My phone’s alive in my hand. Jansen.
‘You were right, a Rein Benner was discharged. It was three weeks after the trial.’
I get into the car and sit, not aware of my surroundings. My mind’s shifted gear; it’s like Tetris in there, different parts all sliding into place, getting faster, stacking up. Trial gone wrong, people dead. A man, who I’d thought might be Muller but wasn’t, threatening Stephanie Dekker to keep quiet. Another man, Rein Benner, who may have been the only one to have been given the drug and survive.
And Klaasen. He’d always protested his innocence because he is innocent. Because I fucked up he went to prison and got beaten into a vegetable.
I check the pathology reports against the images I have of the volunteers.
Somehow I’m not surprised to find that, by process of elimination, Rein Benner is the photo which has been bugging me, the one who is so familiar.
‘Who are you?’ I ask the photo.
I get no response, just a pair of eyes staring back out at me. Eyes which I’m starting to think could be the eyes of a killer.
Ignition on. Foot down. Amsterdam slides into a blur.
Back at the station I’m told Beving has left for a meeting down in Den Haag with the police commissioner. In the incident room I try to get hold of Vermeer but her phone’s off. I find the desk that has the file on DH Biotech Jansen compiled and dive in. By flipping back and forth between multiple sheets I work out who was on the board when the trial actually happened. Unsurprisingly Muller and Kleine are there, and three others. I scribble down their names and hit Google. My existence narrows down to the screen. I’ve plugged into the Matrix, part man, part machine.
The first died four years ago, and his only daughter is a mildly successful beauty blogger who moved to the US three years ago and, according to her Instagram feed, was only yesterday at a beach party in La Jolla, California. I think she’s pretty safe for now. The next also turns out to be dead, a legit-looking car accident on the A15 between Dordrecht and Rotterdam. His son lives in Singapore. Also pretty safe.
Which leaves the third, Stefan Zeeman. Still alive? Check. Offspring? One daughter, one son. Son Dirk lives in Amsterdam, daughter Jill in Maastricht. The alarm’s ringing in my head, faint, but persistent. Vermeer’s phone’s still dead. Jansen’s off. Beving’s out. Time’s speeding up. Fuck it.
Dirk Zeeman works at the Philips head office. I get on the phone. Several layers of bureaucracy, each requiring a new connection. Finally get him.
‘Dirk Zeeman? I’m Inspector Rykel and you need to listen to me very –’
‘Sorry, I’m not Dirk. He hasn’t come in today.’
‘Did he say he wasn’t going to be?’
‘No, we actually tried to call him a little while ago to see if he was okay –’
‘Did you speak to him?’
‘His phone just rang out. We were just talking about maybe calling his wife and –’
‘Home address. Right now.’
As soon as I’ve got it I’m in the car, dialling Vermeer. Nothing. Damn. Jansen’s phone is now on but goes to voicemail. I leave one and flick on the siren and lights. It takes me ten minutes to get to Plantage and I skid to a stop outside a house on Henri Polaklaan, completely blocking the road. The car’s blue lights flicker everywhere in the narrow streets. People already at windows. The house I’m looking for has window boxes with spiky grasses. Black paint on the front door glistens like it’s still wet. The door itself is open. Heart rate through the roof. The alarm in my head’s turning into a whine. Toe the door open. Quiet inside.
‘Dirk Zeeman?’
The house gives me nothing. I step in and check the downstairs: two sitting rooms, kitchen and a bathroom. A single white orchid in a slender black vase. My face in the mirror behind. Up the stairs. The seventh floorboard creaks, the rest are silent. Landing, choices. A grandfather clock – spray
ed bright pink – ticks. I don’t have long. I pick a bedroom at the back.
The door’s ajar.
Toe again.
The whine’s now a full-blown howl.
The door swings open.
It’s just like the others.
Burn
It’s quiet. Peaceful almost. The bed’s made, the curtains hang in thick folds either side of the window, the glass filled with the contorted branches of a large elm. The bed’s a double, flanked by side tables. Resting on each one is a book. The first looks like an original copy of Storming Heaven by Jay Stevens, the other is a translation of Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. A piece of artwork hangs above the oak headboard, a wide canvas sliced vertically by silver birch trunks, some close, some further away.
I’ve made the call, and soon the place will be crawling but for now it’s just me and the body. The clock’s ticking on the landing. I realize the fact I can hear it means the howl has subsided. For now. It does that sometimes, disappears, makes me believe it’s gone before it comes back louder than ever. I need to be prepared. Buddhist initiates often sit with dead bodies to unlock the key to impermanence, so I sit now with Dirk Zeeman, a man I didn’t know, a person I never will. A man killed not because of anything he did, but for his father’s sin.
He’s kneeling, his body slumped forward, forehead on the carpet. Which is soaked with blood. The soles of his feet are facing me; they’re slightly dirty, as if he’s been walking around barefoot. He has a tattoo on his right ankle. I can’t work out what it is. His toes are curled in and his arms are sprawled out, not quite as neat as the other two victims. Both hands are on pristine carpet, the depth of the weave soaking up a lot of blood, limiting the pool. I crouch down. There’s something under his fingernails. I can smell his aftershave, a heavy musk curdling with the scent of death. I lean in closer. It’s blood caught in his fingernails. Could well be from his attacker. I can’t get Rein Benner out of my head. Could it be him, could he be the one behind all this?
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