The Copycat

by Jake Woodhouse

  I wonder what it was the dead man in front of me wanted from life, what it was he feared, what made him laugh. What he thought about in those last seconds before life slipped away. Whether he’d be satisfied with the life he lived, or had regret flooded his system for all the little deaths he’d endured along the way? Or was he hoping right up until that very last neuron winked out that somehow it wasn’t the end, that he still had a life to live?

  All of this, because seven years ago I made a mistake.

  Outside, sirens coming. One, two, three … I lose count, unable to distinguish each individual one as they cross over each other, weaving together into a chaotic tapestry of sound. I should be down there, but I find I can’t move, as if my body’s imitating Dirk Zeeman’s. For a single moment of blinding panic I wonder if I have somehow died in here, that when the police come in they’ll find two dead bodies.

  ‘Rykel?’

  Vermeer’s voice downstairs.

  ‘In here,’ I call out. Not dead then, as I can hear her taking the steps two at a time. I stand up just as she steps into the open doorway.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ she says.

  I take her through what led me here, and she listens whilst staring at the body.

  Forensics are already moving in, their gloved hands like little creatures scurrying over the victim. Flashbulbs flicker. Measurements are taken. Fragments of microscopic stuff are plucked with pliers and dropped into evidence vials. The odd bit of banter proving that, in the end, there’s nothing special about death. Or at least not of those we don’t know. We move outside, away from it all, away from the aftershave and the smell of death.

  My phone rings, Maastricht area code. Maastricht’s about two and a half hours away by car. It’s just about possible Benner could have got down there. I answer, expecting the worst, but a woman informs me Jill Zeeman’s been taken into protective custody. I’m told she’s asking about her brother. I tell the woman calling me to stall, but that someone will get back to her soon with news.

  I hang up and get Vermeer up to speed.

  ‘So this wasn’t about a man killing women?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  This wasn’t about a man killing women; it wasn’t about the actual victims at all. They were just pieces in a larger game, the intention of which was to hurt the people who’d hurt him, make them feel what he’d felt at the death of his brother. I think about the need we humans have for wanting others to feel what we feel. Where does it come from? What purpose does it serve?

  ‘We need to get on to Benner. Let’s leave this lot to it.’

  The car I brought is jammed in, so I toss the keys to the uniform wheeling out crime-scene tape and tell him to make sure it gets back to the station later. Vermeer’s car is parked further down and we walk there to find a police forensics van parked next to it. The back doors swing open and two forensics start unloading a large heavy-looking box. They’re being directed by a third man who seems to be giving a lot of instructions for what really is a simple lift-and-put-down job. As we get closer I recognize the one giving the spurious orders as Max Bakker. Last time I’d seen him had been on the island of Vlieland, up in the North Sea.

  He jumps out of the van and walks over.

  ‘Thought you’d moved out of town.’

  Bakker strokes his grey moustache and takes an enormous pull of the cigarette he’s had in his hand since I met him back at the first autopsy I ever attended all those years ago. I think by this stage if the man breathed in just air alone his system might go into panic.

  ‘Yeah. After fifteen years in Amsterdam I decided I needed a change, get some solitude into my life. Some peace.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Turned out peace and solitude are overrated. Anyway, what about you? Last I heard you’d gone batshit crazy.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I can’t deny it. ‘But it turns out going batshit crazy is also overrated. Way, way, way overrated.’

  A crunch from behind him tells us the men have managed to catch the box on the van’s door.

  ‘Hey! That’s nearly three hundred grand’s worth of kit you’ve got in your hands. Bit of respect.’

  ‘What is it?’ Vermeer asks.

  ‘Rapid DNA machine,’ Bakker says. ‘Gets results in ninety minutes.’

  These had been talked about before I’d left, but I wasn’t sure they’d been proved reliable enough to be given the green light. Things have obviously changed in my absence.

  ‘Impressive.’

  ‘When they make it something I can plug into my phone, then I’ll be impressed. Mind you, I don’t have to carry it, so maybe it doesn’t matter. Makes my job easier at any rate. As soon as we’re set up I’ll run whatever juicy stuff they’re no doubt scraping off the floor inside.’

  ‘There’s blood under the victim’s fingernails,’ I tell him. ‘Make sure you check that. I’m sure you’ll find it’s not his.’

  ‘Turn here.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘I need to go to the prison.’

  Vermeer glances across at me, but then hits the indicator and we turn. Soon the Bijlmerbajes towers poke into view. The sky behind them is criss-crossed with vapour trails. We clear the first security checkpoint and drive towards the parking area in front of the towers, the car pitching and yawing over a series of speed bumps until I start to feel sick.

  Vermeer asks, ‘How many have you put in there?’

  ‘Got to be over twenty. Haven’t felt the need to keep count.’

  ‘I’ve put eleven. I remember each one.’

  I do of course remember. I just choose not to. How many others did I get wrong? Or was it just this one? Final bump, then we’re into the flat of the car park.

  ‘How many of those have been innocent, though?’

  She hasn’t got an answer for that. There’s a space between a beat-up old Audi and a brand-new Tesla electric car. Vermeer eases us in.

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ she says. She hasn’t turned the ignition off.

  ‘Give me five minutes, then we can concentrate on Benner.’

  Ignition off, the car settles.

  ‘All right. If it’ll make you feel better.’

  I doubt that. How can it? How can it erase the biggest mistake of my career, a mistake that put an innocent man into prison where he got assaulted and permanently brain damaged? And yet here I am, about to do it anyway. I step into the reception area to find it oddly empty. A radio’s playing, a talk show with animated voices. Out of habit I check the CCTV cameras in each corner to see they are flashing their little lights. The airport security scanner is unmanned. I’m just thinking I should call someone when one of the toilet doors opposite the reception desk opens and a man carrying a magazine steps out and sees me. He walks over like there’s something delicate inside his head that he’s trying not to break and eases himself into the chair behind the desk.

  ‘Sorry ’bout that,’ he says. ‘Lads’ night out …’

  ‘Inspector Rykel, here to see Sander Klaasen.’

  My stomach’s been invaded by demented butterflies. The lighting’s harsh. The prison’s ventilation system has a high-pitched whine slightly off-key to my own. When I sign the sheet my signature’s all over the place. Security checks, then through to the inner sanctum where I make my request.

  The man here sorts out the paperwork and then I’m shown into the same room as last time. I step over the threshold into the weirdest feeling. It’s like an echo of last time’s panic, waiting for me here all that time. I’ve always assumed emotions were formed in the brain, but suddenly I wonder if they’re just a force of nature? Maybe they can hang around places waiting to be picked up? If so, then this one’s strong. I try to keep hold of my breath, not let it get away from me.

  I sit down in front of the screen. For half a second I can see blood dripping down it, but thankfully it’s just a trick of the light. Or my head. Nnnnnnnnnnnnhg. What am I going to say? The door on the prisoner’s side opens inw
ards. But the man who steps into the room is a prison guard. He sees me, shakes his head, then leaves. A few minutes later the door behind me opens and a prison warden steps in.

  ‘Inspector Rykel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m the duty warden. Could we talk in my office?’

  I look around at the room we’re in.

  ‘It’s just the two of us,’ I tell him. ‘Let’s talk here.’

  ‘Yes, okay.’ He clears his throat. ‘I’m afraid that there’s been a mistake. You should have been told when you checked in, but for some reason our system hasn’t updated properly and the person who signed you in hadn’t heard about Klaasen.’

  ‘Heard what?’ The room’s tilting ever so slightly.

  ‘Sander Klaasen’s dead. He died shortly after you visited him.’

  ‘What of?’ Still tilting. Soon we’re going to be sliding down towards the Plexiglas.

  ‘Stroke. As you know, he’d got agitated and hit his head against the screen there. He was treated at the time, but he died suddenly a couple of hours later. There was nothing anyone could have done.’

  Back at the car I find Vermeer on the phone. She’s spread papers out on her lap and across my seat. I scoop them up with a shaky hand and sit down. Sounds like Vermeer’s on with Jansen, working on locating Rein Benner. I feel stunned. Unreal. I pull out another pre-rolled joint. I know she’s not going to like it, and I should get out of the car, but I’m not sure my legs are going to hold. I wind down my window. Vermeer breaks off what she’s saying and holds her hand over the mic.

  ‘Rykel, this is a police car, you cannot do that in here. You shouldn’t even be doing it in front of me.’

  I stick my head out of the window and take a few pulls.

  Vermeer’s back on with Jansen, but she flashes me a look. Easy for her. She hasn’t just found out she was responsible for putting the wrong person in prison who, out of desperation, finally killed himself. More pulls. It’s starting to work.

  But then I think about how long he’d been there. And I’m responsible for every second, every second of his wasted life inside. How much pain is that? How much suffering? If karma’s real, then I’m fucked.

  The black wolf isn’t howling now. He’s retreated, but I know he’s still there in the darkness, stronger than ever, his lips pulled back into a ferocious grin.

  I inhale a few more times until it starts to burn.

  Vermeer hangs up on Jansen. ‘You done breaking the law?’ she asks.

  ‘I’ve been upholding the law all my career. And it’s just got an innocent man killed. So no, maybe I’m not done.’

  ‘Who? Who’s been killed?’

  I tell her about what I’ve just learnt. I expect her to say something, maybe even tell me it’s not my fault. But she simply turns the engine on and reverses out of the space, drives through the car park and back over the speed bumps. This time she hardly slows down at all. I hit my head on the roof. I get the feeling that’s exactly what Vermeer wants to happen. We drive in silence all the way back to the station.

  And still the glistening grin.

  Is This a Joke?

  Rein Benner. The man of the moment. Or ghost of the moment might be more apt. Because Vermeer and I have been at this for hours now, as well as four returning members of the team who had been poached for the acid attack, plus Jansen, plus a few others who are chipping in, and we still have pretty much nothing on him.

  Born in Haarlem, he then moved to a flat in the ill-fated Groeneveen estate where he grew up with his younger brother and their father. Mother was on the birth certificate but seems she split early on. Went to the local school and then got various low-paid jobs as a waiter in central Amsterdam, enduring drunk tourists night after night. It was during this period he, and his brother who was starting an apprenticeship at a bodywork place out in Weesp, signed up for the trial. Given neither of them were earning much it must have looked like easy money. These things always do.

  The last time we have any kind of official documentation was the hospital discharge papers Jansen had found earlier. After that, nothing. His last known address is his childhood home, and although it was years ago Vermeer and I decide to head there, leaving the team to carry on working.

  The drive’s short and we’re soon parked and walking into the apartment complex itself. These were the buildings an Israeli-owned Boeing 747 crashed into shortly after take-off from Schiphol back in 1992 and many lost their lives in the impact. Many more subsequently lost their lives to a mysterious auto-immune disease. At the time there was no information on what the plane was actually carrying; it was a freight not passenger flight, but conspiracy theories flourished. The official view was that El Al Flight 1862 was carrying computer chips, perfume and fruit, and therefore there was nothing that could harm anyone.

  The most persistent of the various conspiracy theories centred around chemicals destined to be used in the manufacture of chemical weapons, especially given the dire health effects those exposed to the aftermath suffered, a theory which turned out to be true. Six years after the crash it was finally admitted that the flight had actually been carrying nearly 200 litres of a chemical used in the manufacture of sarin nerve gas. But it didn’t stop there. It was further discovered that Boeing used depleted uranium as a counterweight in the tails of 747s. Anyone there that day received a massive dose of radiation, alongside the sarin precursor.

  Despite that, the place has been rebuilt and we walk past the Flight 1862 Memorial with the names of the known victims. Known, because the buildings housed so many illegal immigrants that the death toll that day was definitely higher than the official numbers.

  We find the flat on the third floor of the second block. Current occupants know nothing about anything. Decision made to split up: I work left, Vermeer goes right. We’re both armed with a blow-up picture of Rein Benner which is mostly met with blank stares. On the fifth, though, I get a result. A man in his late fifties opens the door. He’s wearing jeans and a loose woollen jumper which is untangling at the cuffs. He has a full head of white hair and a beard to match. Stick a cap on him, give him a rugged polo neck, jam a wooden pipe in his mouth and he could captain a shipping vessel in the North Sea. When I show him the photo and ask if he’d ever seen the man in it he nods.

  ‘What, Rein? Yeah, I knew him.’

  I invite myself in and soon I’m sitting in his living room, which is surprisingly light, and looks out over well-tended gardens with tall trees and a large curving pond. Music’s playing quietly. I recognize it but it takes me a few moments to pin it down. Beethoven. Symphony. Can’t remember which one. The man invites me to sit and then eases himself into what looks like an original Eames chair, the tan leather worn and smooth. The walls are covered with tiny woodcuts, all the same size, and they all seem to be of the same scene, which looks familiar, though I can’t work out what it actually is.

  ‘The National Monument,’ he says, catching me looking at them. ‘Been cutting it for twenty-five years. One per day. And I’ve only missed four days since I started, and that was because I was in hospital. Those four missing days still bug me.’

  ‘That’s a lot of days,’ I say, looking at all the works. I find myself wondering why anyone would want to make images, even if they are overly impressionistic, of the most ugly monument in Amsterdam? I mean, Rembrandt did his own face over and over again, but still.

  ‘This is nothing. I’ve got a lock-up I rent down the road. I keep them there. Every day I take the oldest one down and drop it off on the way to work. Then the new one goes up in its place. Helps give me a sense of progression.’

  ‘You don’t sell any of them?’

  The man seems to contract. It almost looks like disgust.

  ‘Sell? I’m not selling these. That’s not the point. I work mornings stacking shelves at the Albert Heijn on Stadionweg, have done for the past seventeen years. Badly paid and tough work, but it gives me the afternoons to do this. I don’t have a lot of money, but
I worked out early on that time is so much more important. At least it is to me.’

  He shrugs, though I’m not sure why. I haven’t contradicted him. Maybe it’s some ghost of his own he’s still fighting. I remember Leah saying that artists should be pitied; they can’t get on with their lives like normal people because they’re driven to create by some inner demon. I suddenly realize they must have their own black wolves. Creating art is what feeds their white wolf.

  ‘Anything else?’ the man asks. He’s looking at me and I realize I’ve been staring out of the window.

  ‘You said you knew Rein Benner?’ I ask, trying to get back into the swing of it.

  He breathes in through his nose and leans back in his chair. Beethoven crashes and judders to the end of a fast moment and then eases into a timorous slow one. Three? Seven?

  ‘Oh, I knew Rein all right. Him and his brother grew up here.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘He was all right, bit of a handful, but then a lot of the kids round here don’t have the best role models. Rein and his brother didn’t either, truth be told. But there was something about him. He was … smart somehow. I found him in the garden once. I’d gone out for a smoke at night and heard someone crying in the bushes, just over there.’ He points to a cluster near the water’s edge. ‘I didn’t know what to think, so I tried to entice whoever it was out and eventually Rein appeared. He’d had some argument with his father, and from the look of things he might’ve been bashed around a little; he had a bruise on the side of his face. Wouldn’t admit it was his dad that had done it, though.’

  ‘Did he say what the argument was about?’

  ‘Yeah. He knew I was an artist so I think he maybe felt a bit more comfortable talking to me. He’d told his dad he wanted to be an actor and wanted to go to acting classes. Reading between the lines I think the father saw this as some affront to masculinity and showed him what real men do. His dad was, what do the kids say nowadays, a class A dick? In case you hadn’t got that already. Their mother had probably worked that out early on and left, leaving him with the kids to fend for themselves.’