Stardust: A Sam Smith Mystery (The Sam Smith Mystery Series Book 10)

by Hannah Howe

“When I connect with Gijs de Wolff, I will contact you.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Once again, Saskia’s colleague entered the office. He talked in earnest tones, in guttural Dutch. After turning briefly to acknowledge Mac and yours truly, he returned to his office. Clearly, his words were important, a reminder that Saskia had a lucrative business to run.

  “Now, if you will excuse me,” she said, standing, walking towards her office door, “a businessman from the Middle East; I’m arranging the local security.”

  We nodded, stood and joined Saskia in the corridor. There, she turned to Mac and said, “In March, I might have something for you.”

  “Mac’s the name, hired muscle’s the game,” he said, frowning, eyeing a vending machine and a line of chocolate bars. “Fruit and nut?” he asked Saskia.

  “Try that one,” Saskia said. Then she joined her colleague in his office, presumably to discuss the businessman’s security.

  Meanwhile, Mac helped himself to a bar of fruit and nut chocolate, covered in a cow-dappled wrapper.

  “Not as good as our chocolate,” he complained, “but it’ll do.”

  “You’re a connoisseur,” I said, “of chocolate?”

  “Aye,” Mac said, “chocolate and bacon sandwiches. You can’t beat a bacon butty; divine, a blissful combination of fats.”

  Outside, I asked, “You think Saskia will deliver on de Wolff?”

  Mac munched his chocolate. Without breaking stride, he nodded, “She’ll deliver; you can be sure of that.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  We travelled north, to Grachtengordel. While I wandered the streets, to get a feel for the city, Mac went in search of his old pals. He decided to network, in case we should require further assistance at some point down the line.

  As I walked around, I noted a number of bicycles – they seemed to be everywhere – plus the numerous canals that circled the Oude Kerk and the Red Light District. I also spied a number of electric cars, plugged into chargers. The Old Church and the electric cars, ancient and modern. A touch ironic too that the Red Light District should be located so close to the church.

  My guidebook informed me that the Oude Kerk, a fourteenth century Gothic structure, originated in the thirteenth century when the locals built a wooden church in a burial ground on a sand bank. As the building expanded, from a single-aisled church into a basilica, it developed into a gathering place for traders and a refuge for the poor. Like much of Amsterdam, the church juxtaposed the modern with the medieval, offering an attractive blend for tourists and locals.

  Near the Oude Kerk, I hired a bicycle. The deposit set me back fifty Euros, another item to add to my expense account. I also acquired a bike lock, to combat the Dutch pastime of strolling away with the nearest bicycle. I enquired about a helmet, but none were available. Apparently, the Dutch have hard heads and don’t bother with helmets.

  After a wobbly start, I cycled around the markets and canals, pausing when my mobile phone rang. I spoke to Saskia and, true to her word, she’d secured a meeting with Gijs de Wolff. Saskia supplied his address and I cycled into the heart of the Red Light District.

  Gijs de Wolff rented an office in an old, colourful building, possibly seventeenth century, near the Prostitution Information Centre, hardly an auspicious omen. I climbed a narrow staircase to the first floor office then knocked on a grimy door. A gruff voice said, “Enter,” and I stepped into the office, a box room containing the essentials – a desk, a computer, a telephone, a filing cabinet – along with a number of movie posters, erotic images, which decorated the walls.

  A large man in his mid-sixties, Gijs de Wolff sat behind his desk. His hair was tinged with grey, swept back from his forehead, curling around his ears, thinning at the sides to form a widow’s peak. His eyes were coal black, soulless. He had a powerful face with a firm jaw, flaring nostrils and a silver Vandyke beard.

  “You’re Samantha Smith?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Come in. Sit down. I haven’t got all day. I’m a busy man.”

  “My Victorian ancestors were busy people too,” I said, easing myself on to a rickety wooden chair. “They used to walk ten miles to the market, sell their wares, then walk back home.”

  “Your point?” de Wolff asked.

  “I’d like to think that they took some time to smell the flowers, to take in the view.”

  De Wolff grunted, “Time is money.”

  “Don’t you like flowers?”

  “I like money,” he said.

  “And you make your money through pornography.”

  “Adult entertainment movies, with a touch of sophistication and class.” De Wolff rescued a cigar from an ashtray. He sucked on the cigar, filling the box room with acrid smoke. “There is a difference,” he said.

  “If you say so,” I said.

  “I do.” He glanced at his fob watch, drawing the timepiece from his waistcoat pocket. The watch was silver, the waistcoat a loud check, in grey. “I have to be on the set in half an hour.”

  “Performing?”

  “Overseeing the production. Ensuring that my money is well spent.”

  “Your film-making soaks up a lot of money?”

  “Every branch of the entertainment business soaks up money. The gold coins rain down on a fortunate few.”

  “And you’re one of the fortunate few.”

  De Wolff smiled a wolfish smile. He nodded, briefly. Then he sucked on his cigar and asked, “The nature of your business?”

  “I’m looking for a young woman; pretty, slim, ebony skin; her name is Velvet.”

  “So?”

  “She’s in Amsterdam, to see you.”

  “So?”

  “Has she called on you?”

  De Wolff chewed on his cigar. He spat a flake of tobacco into the glass ashtray adding that flake to a small mountain of grey ash. “I can’t remember,” he said.

  I smiled, ruefully, then sought to jog his memory. From my purse, I extracted a range of colourful notes, my recently acquired Euros. I placed the Euros on de Wolff’s desk.

  “My memory’s improving,” he said.

  I placed another note on top of the Euro pile.

  “She called on me, yeah,” de Wolff conceded, leaning forward, gathering up the notes.

  “When?” I asked.

  “Early this morning.”

  “Any idea where she is now?”

  “No.”

  “She called on you to discuss her singing career.”

  De Wolff nodded. He leaned back, blew cigar smoke into the stale air. “Yes,” he said.

  “Can you help her?”

  “I made her an offer, but she turned me down.”

  “The offer involved acting, not singing?”

  De Wolff shrugged a broad shoulder. He offered me a diffident look. “I told her she could break into song, if she wanted to.”

  “Before, during, or after?” I asked.

  De Wolff smiled a thin, painful smile, which barely registered on his thick lips. “When I was younger,” he said, “I used to sing to my lovers before the event; it used to put them in the mood.”

  “Very romantic,” I said.

  “I am deeply romantic. And I still possess a good singing voice; I daresay I could sing for you.”

  De Wolff’s line of banter reminded me of Slick Stephens. Maybe such repartee went with the territory. However, unlike Slick, who was a bag of bones and raging hormones, I sensed that de Wolff spoke from memory and that his days as a Lothario were long gone.

  “Velvet,” I said.

  “What about her?”

  “She rejected you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Because she wanted to sing, and not act in a movie.”

  “Yeah.”

  “When she called on you,” I asked, “was anyone with her?”

  “No,” de Wolff said, “she was on her own.”

  “Where did she go, after leaving you?”

  “I told you,
” de Wolff said, “I don’t know.”

  “Where is she staying?”

  “I don’t know. I made her an offer, she rejected me; end of story.”

  I nodded, stood and walked to the door. “Thank you for your time.”

  De Wolff stubbed his cigar in the ashtray. He paused, to admire the spiral of smoke. Then, with his fingers flicking through the wad of Euros, he said, “Wait. There’s an epilogue.”

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  “I told her to try the nightclubs, particularly around the Old Town, if she’s interested in singing.”

  “Her response?”

  “She said she would.”

  I dropped another note on to de Wolff’s desk then left his office. Outside, the air was fresh and cold, offering a welcome relief from the cigar smoke. I hunched my shoulders against the cold then walked towards my bicycle. Another late night lay ahead. Maybe I’d catch up on my sleep in the morning. There had to be an easier way to make a living. Maybe there was. But I needed this. As I said to Alan, this is what I do.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Saskia Mertens lived in Grachtengordel. So I cycled through the streets, to her apartment. Along the way, I admired the network of olive-green canals, rode over humpbacked bridges and glanced at the seventeenth century canal houses, all handsomely painted. On the surface, peace and tranquillity reigned supreme, and the laidback, easy atmosphere lulled the mind. Indeed, my bicycle, and its sedate pace, offered a sense of harmony.

  Upon my arrival, I chained the bicycle to a railing outside Saskia’s house. Her house was tall and narrow, consisting of three floors and an attic. I rang the doorbell; Saskia answered then escorted me into her house, up to the first floor where I found Mac reclining on the floor, repairing a model railway.

  “Revisiting your childhood?” I asked.

  “Shush,” Mac said. “This is a tricky operation; it requires concentration.”

  Suitably warned, I left Mac to his task and joined Saskia by the window. “It’s lovely and warm in here,” I said, “but cold outside.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, “January tends to be our coldest month.”

  “Do you think we’ll have snow?”

  “None is forecast, but the temperature is close to zero. If the canals freeze over, which is rare – maybe once every ten years – people will gather to skate under the stars.”

  “That must be quite a spectacle,” I said.

  “It is,” Saskia agreed.

  I glanced through the window, to the street, to the people walking from A to B in their warm coats, gloves, hats and scarves. “I hope Velvet is safe,” I said, “somewhere warm, indoors.”

  “You think she’s on the streets?”

  “Possibly. I don’t really know her, but I sense that she’s been led astray; I think she’s a follower, not a leader, and her friend, Lia Jansen, has tapped into that aspect of her character.”

  Saskia listened politely while I expounded on my theory. Then she scurried into the kitchen to prepare dinner. With dinner ready, Mac abandoned his model railway maintenance and joined us in the dining room.

  The dining room, a long, narrow room, offered a true sense of Saskia’s home. The room was neat, clean, picturesque, a snapshot from an ideal home magazine. Silver decorated the sideboards while lace adorned the windows. The dining table was long, solid, made from mahogany. Eight people could sit around the table, with room to spare. Silver-framed photographs depicted Saskia’s family; her husband was a handsome man, in his late forties, while her children looked suitably mischievous. Presumably, the model railway belonged to one of her children. Apart from the model railway, I saw no sign of clutter, an act that bordered on the miraculous when you have children in the house.

  As we tucked into our dinner, erwtensoep for Saskia and Mac, gado-gado for yours truly, I said, “I’ve been admiring your city.”

  “There is much to admire,” Saskia said, “and certain things to frown on.”

  “The architecture is distinctive.”

  She nodded, “Many buildings date from the seventeenth century, the Golden Age when trade and culture prospered. Naturally, after any Golden Age, there is a lull, a decline, and we had to wait until the nineteenth century for the glory days to return. Of recent times, the biggest legacy dates from the 1960s when our youth adopted the hippy culture; that progressive attitude, encompassing soft drugs and prostitution, still underpins our city and reputation today.”

  I nodded then said, “Many of the houses appear to lean forward.”

  “Canal houses were deliberately constructed to tilt forward,” Saskia explained. “The interior staircases are narrow, so owners need an easy method to move furniture and heavy goods to the upper floors. Consequently, a hoist is built into the gable to lift the objects up and in through the windows. The lean allows loading without objects thudding into the front of the house.”

  Again, I nodded. Then I devoured my gado-gado and sipped my wine. “Lovely meal,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Saskia smiled.

  “Your family are out for the evening?”

  “Yes,” she said, “visiting my in-laws.”

  “Your home is immaculate.”

  “Thank you.” She smiled again, with obvious delight. “Of course, with work and a family, you have to be practical.” She shrugged, “I do what I can.”

  Saskia Mertens ran a high-powered business, looked after her family and kept a neat home. I felt a sense of inferiority, Sam the globetrotting gumshoe who struggled to cook beans on toast.

  I was happily married. I enjoyed my occupation. But what did I want out of life? Saskia Mertens had it all. Should I strive to match her? Should I seek to become the perfect housewife? And what about children? Alan had been through that cycle with Alis, his teenage daughter, and Elin, his late wife. Did he regard me as mother material? We had never seriously discussed the idea. Maybe my hormones were playing up. Maybe I was being irrational. Maybe I should sink another glass of wine and allow my thoughts to drift into the ether.

  We’d moved on to the after dinner mints when Saskia said, “You talked with Gijs de Wolff.”

  “Yes. Not a pleasant man, but I think he was straight with me.”

  “Velvet called on him?”

  “Yes. He made her an offer, which she refused. Then she disappeared. According to de Wolff, she wandered into the Old Town, to the nightclubs.”

  “Then you should search the nightclubs,” Saskia said. In delicate fashion, she nibbled an after dinner mint, consuming the chocolate a morsel at a time. “I can spare you a couple of hours, and two of my personnel. It will still be difficult, but if we plan and explore different sectors it will increase our chances of success.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “One day, I will return the favour.”

  “When I am in Wales,” Saskia said.

  While we talked, Mac consumed a number of chocolate mints and copious amounts of white wine. He seemed to have hollow legs; alcohol did not affect him at all; no matter what the time, the environment or the situation, he maintained a clear head.

  “Are you up for that, Mac,” I asked, “a night scouring the seedier streets of Amsterdam?”

  “Up for it?” he mused. “Aye, Missy; anything that broadens the mind and adds to my education suits me fine.”

  Mac helped himself to another chocolate. Then we made plans for the night ahead.

  Chapter Fifteen

  With a list of nightclubs to hand, we went in search of Velvet. I provided Saskia with Jeremy Loudon’s picture of Velvet, which she distributed to two of her colleagues. It was kind of her to help, a show of international cooperation that builds bridges and forges alliances; Saskia Mertens was a shrewd businesswoman; she knew that isolationism got you nowhere, that teamwork brought success.

  During the early hours of the morning, I wandered through the nightclubs where I encountered DJs playing punk, hip-hop, r’n’b, disco, soul, reggae, electronic music and drum’n’bass. Bright lights fla
shed while people lounged, feet up, watching movies. To my surprise, I also encountered a poetry reading. Under the disco-balls, students laughed, joked and gyrated, but I caught no sight of Velvet.

  In the nightclubs, the noise was loud enough to make your ears bleed, while the lights were bright enough to send you blind, but everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. Maybe the clouds of smoke, emanating from numerous joints, loosened the inhibitions and soothed the senses. Maybe. However, at 4 a.m., we called it a night, returned to our hotel and regrouped for the morning.

  The following evening, after eight hours much needed sleep, we were back on the street, touring the Red Light District. With my breath hanging in the air, I gazed at the window brothels and listened to punters haggling for sex.

  The narrow lanes contained a curious mix, a sleazy buzz combined with a festive atmosphere. Nevertheless, despite the festive feel and occasional laughter an uneasy undertow remained, which ensured that you did not dawdle for long.

  As I walked the streets, I spied people in search of sex, onlookers who were merely curious, numerous sex toys in numerous shop windows, drug dealers and drug addicts, though not as many as I anticipated.

  At one point, a young man tried to take a picture of a prostitute bathed in her crimson-lit window. However, a pimp pushed him to one side. The scene threatened to turn ugly, until an older man with a cooler head intervened and pacified the situation.

  From my guidebook, I learned that only five percent of Amsterdam’s prostitutes were born in the Netherlands. Also, red lights were flattering, especially when used against a dark background because they made your teeth sparkle. Women in the 1300s knew this fact; they carried red lanterns to the ports when rendezvousing with sailors.

  In one street, I noticed a line of fashion studios, art galleries and cafés, owned by entrepreneurs who had taken up wanton spaces abandoned by prostitutes. But still no sign of Velvet.

  Back amongst the sleaze, I was gazing through a sex shop window when I phoned Alan.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Hi,” I said. “It’s your wayward wife.”