by Nick Louth
Henk shook his head as he watched. ‘I hope you are not planning to do any more fighting.’
‘This is mental prep, not physical. My body will take a year to fix, but I can sharpen my thinking and willpower right now. Lisbeth was my only link to Erica’s disappearance, and now she likely won’t talk to me. All I’ve got is one lousy phone number she gave me. While I’m doing push-ups and crunches what I’m really doing is figuring what to say to the kind of guy who carves his name in a woman’s belly.’
Once they were left alone Georg spoke up. ‘I don’t think they will kill us. The KPLA hierarchy know they need hostages as bargaining chips. This is a crazy bunch, but I think the worst is over. If they were going to kill us they would have done it.’
‘What makes you so sure?’ I asked.
‘I’ve been kidnapped and held hostage twice before. UNITA in Angola in ‘88 and last year in Sudan. The greatest danger is always in the first few hours, especially if the captors are nervous. The treatment starts to get better as you get to know them. You build routines and knowledge of each other. If we are going to survive, that is what we have to do.’
The young guard came back with a grubby Fanta bottle full of water, and set it down on the floor. ‘Water,’ he said by way of explanation. He left, plunging the room back into darkness.
A glimpse was enough. We knew it was the latrine bottle, used to swill down the drain and floor and, informally, to squash marauding cockroaches. Amy let out a long, low growl of disgust.
Tomas looked around at everybody. ‘I’ve got to drink some,’ he said, apologetically.
Amy shook her head. ‘Tomas, you could get anything from that bottle. And you will get diarrhoea. In your condition it will kill you inside forty-eight hours.’
‘And how long am I gonna last without water?’
‘How about trying to filter it through a shirt,’ I suggested.
‘It might remove some faecal matter, but not bacteria or protozoans. I mean we have no idea…’ Amy’s eyes were closed and her hands were flapping in desperation.
Georg spoke softly. ‘Amy, there is only a litre anyway, between seven. I think we have to let those drink who feel they have to.’
She shrugged.
‘Erica’s idea is a good one, if that is all we can do to clean it,’ Georg said to the group. ‘First we should all search all of our pockets for sterotabs, fragments of soap, even grains of washing powder. I have some clean tissues which would make a good additional filter inside a shirt.’ Everyone mumbled agreement. ‘I will look through Jarman and Salvation’s possessions.’
Margaret spoke. ‘The school cupboard has chalk and paper, we also have pencils, erasers, and a plastic bottle. From the smell I think it used to contain disinfectant, but it is empty now.’
‘Excellent,’ Georg said. ‘We can purify the water. I just need enough light.’ From the faint luminous glow I assumed he was checking his watch. ‘It will start to get light in forty minutes or so. Tomas, can you last that long?’
‘I guess so.’
‘There is nothing useful on Jarman or Salvation,’ said Georg. ‘It looks like they were thoroughly searched.’
I checked my pockets. ‘I wasn’t searched. I still have everything.’
‘Strange time to find gallantry in the KPLA,’ Amy murmured.
We sat in silence until a sallow light began to filter into the hut. Georg started moving. He checked the plastic bottle. It was bleach, not disinfectant. He conferred with Amy and they decided that one or two drops in the latrine bottle would be enough to cleanse it and little enough to be safe to drink. Amy held the bleach bottle while Georg poured in a few drops from the latrine bottle. He took a tissue from his pocket. Amy folded it to a pad and held it over the bleach bottle while she inverted it. Georg carefully cleaned the outside and neck of the latrine bottle, while Amy dripped a few drops of bleach solution into it.
‘We need to wait ten minutes for it to work,’ she said swilling it.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Tomas muttered. ‘This is torture.’
Amy held the bottle to the light. ‘Ugh. It still needs filtering. Look at all that…faecal matter.’
‘I might be shit, but now it is clean shit,’ Georg said.
‘Wait a moment,’ I said. ‘Do we have anything else to drink out of?’
‘I have the communion chalice,’ Margaret said. She passed a small aluminium bowl across.
‘Okay.’ I rummaged in my pocket and produced a tampon. I stripped off the cellophane. It was only two thirds the width of the latrine bottle neck, but I dangled it in the water by its string and it instantly expanded to block the neck.
‘Well done,’ said Georg. There were murmurs of approval from others.
I inverted the bottle and waited for the water to drip out into the bowl. It came slowly, so I prodded the tampon with my finger. Clean water tinkled into the bowl. When there was about a cupful I passed it to Tomas.
‘As this is the communion bowl shouldn’t you bless it for me Margaret?’ Tomas said as he lifted the bowl to his mouth. She smiled as he drank, greedily. We refilled the bowl and gave some to Jarman and Salvation, who were just conscious. Then we refilled it a third and a last time and passed it around. Everyone drank. Despite a faint tang of bleach, it tasted wonderful.
(Erica’s Diary 1992)
Chapter Eighteen
Max stood in the phone booth, took a deep breath and punched out the digits from memory. No-one answered for a minute, then an answer machine kicked in, first in Dutch, then in English. It invited callers to leave a message for a company called Xenix Molecular Solutions BV. Max hung up.
This wasn’t what he had expected at all but the more he thought about it the more it made sense. Xenix sounded like the kind of company that could use a laptop computer stuffed with scientific information.
Tracking down Xenix’s address wasn’t as easy as he expected. It wasn’t listed in the reference books at Amsterdam’s main library, and it wasn’t listed in the Chambers of Commerce directory. The Internet had plenty of references for each word in the company name, but none for all together, and nothing at all referring to the Netherlands.
Finally, a visit to the national bureau for company registrations gave him what he needed. The biggest surprise was Xenix’s date of incorporation. April this year. No wonder it had been so hard to trace. The register had the name of only one director, one L. de Wit, and a company address in Rotterdam. Next day, Max decided, would be a good time to drop in unannounced.
‘No, Max. I put up bail for you, okay. I pay for my lawyer to help you, okay. I pay for you to see my dentist when you get beaten up, okay. I let you sleep in my apartment when you can no longer afford a hotel, I lend you money, I feed you, okay. But you can not have my Jaguar to drive to God-knows-where in Rotterdam, is that understood?’
‘I didn’t know it was a Jaguar!’
‘A 1967 E-type, and you cannot borrow it.’
‘Aw. Go on, Henk. Please?’
‘No. Unless…’
‘Unless what?’
‘I come too.’ Henk smiled, and patted Max’s sleeve. ‘You need someone sensible to keep you out of trouble.’
‘And to make sure I don’t scratch the paintwork.’
‘Precisely so.’
It was five next morning when Henk’s long, low sports car nosed its way out through the darkened streets. When he got to the motorway heading south Max put his right foot down and the big cat’s engine roared and swept them along the fast curve past Schiphol airport, for the ninety minute journey to the world’s largest port.
‘Max. Not above two thousand revs, please. This car is an investment. It is only driven three times a year.’
Max slowed a little, but they still arrived in Rotterdam before six thirty. Henk navigated them through the modern centre with its high rise offices, past drab apartment blocks and endless streets of 1960s housing until the silhouettes of giant cranes emerged from a flattening tree-starved horizon. S
oon they were stuck in traffic heading toward the European Container Terminal west of the city, the low car hemmed in at exhaust level in a long bovine line of grimy container trucks from all over Europe.
‘The road we want is the next left,’ Henk said. Max turned onto a side street between warehouses, glad to escape the stink, and the chuff of air brakes. The road ran on past huge silver storage tanks winking in the dawn, and under the long shadows of berthed tankers, their superstructures towering five or six storeys over the quaysides. Ahead, either side of the street, were two long low warehouses and beyond them a metal-gated quayside, stacked to the sky with containers, like a weathered set of giant Lego bricks.
‘It’s somewhere along here,’ Henk said. ‘Number 16C.’
Max braked and looked sceptically at the map, then stepped out of the car and squinted around him. Off to the left was an endless parking lot for new cars, still in their dull protective wax, and identical except in colour. To the right was waste ground, spread with broken glass, tyres and a graffiti-stained refrigerator shell. He started walking towards the warehouses and the security gate. Henk hurried behind him.
The warehouses looked abandoned, with obscenities traced in the dusty windows and weeds poking up along the edge of the cracked concrete. An ugly squat motorcycle, with matt black paint and flaking chrome was chained to a metal staircase on the left-hand warehouse. The bike’s petrol tank had a curious customised filler cap, a chunk of chrome like a blunt-ended teardrop. Max walked around to look from the front. Then it was obvious.
An anvil. He was at the right place. Max looked around. He was not overlooked by any windows. He felt the crankcase. Cold. The bike hadn’t been ridden in the last hour or so. But it must have been regularly used right up to the last day or so because the concrete beneath was stained dark with oil drips in a variety of places, and not all of them were completely dry. Max wrote the registration number on the palm of his hand.
The staircase led up to a first floor office, set like a wooden scab into the side of the building. Max’s feet rang as he climbed. On the door was a metal plate, marked ‘16C’. The lock was new, and substantial. The wired door glass and windows were shielded with dirty venetian blinds. Max squatted to peer in the gap beneath the blind on the door. He couldn’t see much inside, just a desk and some papers, a grey filing cabinet, a chair with a zip jacket slung on its back, a girly calendar on the wall and a closed door, presumably into a further office. No sign of a laptop computer. Max opened the letter flap and looked through. A stash of mail sat on the floor. One large envelope was leaning against the door.
Resting his face against the door, Max pushed his right arm through as far as it would go. It jammed at the elbow. He couldn’t reach the floor but right at his fingertips he felt the envelope. The door, pressed against his ear, amplified noise and inside the office he thought he heard a click, like a door opening in a draught. Something told him he should hurry. He trapped the envelope against the door, dragging it up by his middle fingertip towards the flap. There was a protruding flange below the flap and the top edge of the envelope stopped dead at it. Max scrunched the envelope, trying to get a fold that he could grip with his thumb.
Max heard a second click and the scrabbling of claws. With an explosive savage growl, powerful jaws locked an excruciating grip on his fist. He shook his arm left and right, sending the animal skidding, but though its rasping breathing sounded laboured the teeth were unrelenting. Max hurled himself backwards until the dog’s head whacked the door inside. While Max was off-balance the beast retaliated, with an immense tug which cut Max’s lip on the letter flap. This was a strong dog, a heavy animal.
Fighting the pain, Max searched his pocket: a packet of tissues, a plastic comb and a ballpoint pen, not much to fight with. He picked out the pen, but there was no room to get his left arm through the letter box beside the right. If only his shoulders were not so broad.
Crocodiles have a method of dislodging prey from any riverbank handholds. Once they have a grip with their jaws, they roll over in the water. Supposed to work every time. Max wondered whether it would work in reverse, whether the prey could free itself from the predator. If so, he would have to be fast, not to give any time for the hound to adjust its grip. He crouched, pulling the dog closer to the door to give himself some free play, then turned his back, which inverted his arm. The dog coughed and let go for a second. It was all Max needed to pull his arm back, dragging through between his fingers the remains of a blood-stained envelope.
Max snatched up the envelope and scrambled down the stairs, while the dog bayed and snarled, hurling itself repeatedly at the door. A bearded stevedore was behind the gate, watching Max run to the welcoming brake lights of Henk’s Jaguar.
Inside the office a man parted the blinds with careful fingers to watch the intruder’s retreat. He muttered the name he had been told. Max. Yes, that would be Max Carver. Of course he had known of him, had heard about him, but had not expected this irritating persistence. Maybe he would do something about Max. But not before he had dealt with her.
Max wrapped his hand in his shirt but still dripped blood over the pale leather upholstery of the Jaguar. He had lost a fingernail, his signet ring, and most of the skin from his knuckles. Worst of all the connective tissues between second and third fingers had been shredded. It hurt like hell.
Henk didn’t say a word. The moment Max was in, Henk gunned the car out onto the main road in a squeal of tyres. His rapid and emphatic gear changes and the harsh set of his jaw telegraphed his mood.
‘I’m taking you straight to a hospital.’
‘Okay.’ Max unwrapped his hand carefully, and inspected his palm. ‘Jesus Christ. The licence plate for the bike’s gone. I wrote it on my hand.’
‘So the dog ate it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I want breakfast too. This is too frightening on an empty stomach.’ He looked at Max’s mangled hand. ‘So now, will you please leave finding Erica to the police?’
‘How can I? I’m their only suspect. Henk, if I have one advantage in all this over everyone else, it is that I know I have nothing to do with Erica’s disappearance.’
‘But have you told them about Lisbeth and the phone number?’
‘No. I’ve promised Lisbeth to keep her out of it. She helped me with the phone number, so it’s the least I can do. I don’t think she will ever speak to me again as it is.’
‘You should try to apologise to her.’
‘I will, if I can track her down. But the phone book is stuffed full of de Laans. Over here it’s like Smith or something.’
Henk pulled into a hospital car park, then pointed at a swing door. ‘The accident department is in there. I’ll catch you up when I’ve cleaned your blood out of my car.’
Two hours later they were finishing breakfast in a busy roadside café. Max’s right arm was in a sling, his hand stitched and bandaged like a boxing glove. He passed the bloodstained envelope across for Henk to open.
‘Let’s hope it is not just an electricity bill after all the trouble you took to get it,’ Henk said, his delicate fingers unpicking the seal. Inside was a single piece of paper, written in Dutch.
‘It’s an appraisal.’
‘For what?’
‘Diamonds. It’s from an Antwerp-based company.’
‘How much?’
‘Doesn’t give a value. But there’s an uncut weight of 1,200 carats and it says ‘“a high percentage of gem quality stones of good clarity and colour.” Max, this sounds like a lot of money. And look at this last paragraph: “With reference to the documentation issue, we think that it would be possible to find a solution. Please contact us directly”.’
‘Stolen diamonds?’
‘Or at the very least smuggled,’ Henk said. ‘You could show it to the cops.’
‘Sure, and the first question they would ask is how I got it. Plus the interesting bloodstains. No, Henk, we can’t go back to them until we have something conclusive tha
t proves where Erica is.’
‘So what now?’
‘We watch that office until someone arrives.’
Henk groaned. ‘That could take days. And what will it achieve when you find someone? Are you going to cudgel them to the ground with your injured fist?’
‘Hey, Henk.’ Max smiled. ‘Why do I get the idea your heart isn’t in this?’
‘Because I’m an art dealer, not a private investigator. I had planned to spend this afternoon with my framer discussing the merits of a sweet little watercolourist from Nijmegen. Then I wanted to go home and sink into a long hot bath under fluffy mountains of foam.’
‘Then leave me here. I’ll take the train.’
‘Max, you don’t have any money.’
‘Okay. Then I’ll hitch. I only need one thumb for that.’ He held up his left hand.
Henk leaned on the steering wheel and stared across at Max. ‘You amaze me. Really. So stubborn.’
It was half past ten by the time they returned to their surveillance. Max had suggested the car was not quite the anonymous type ideal for surveillance, so they parked in a derelict residential street a few hundred yards away and walked the rest of the way. The quiet side street past Anvil’s office was now full of huge container trucks, queueing to get out of the quay and onto the main road. Max and Henk walked down the right hand side until they could see the office on the left, through gaps in the crawling line of trucks. The motorcycle was gone. In its place was a white Toyota. There was no-one inside. At the top of the staircase facing the office door was a man in a suit. Max fished out a long-lens Nikon and took his picture, then ducked into a doorway as the man turned to descend the stairs. A huge truck interposed itself for a frustrating half minute.
When it moved on Max had a glimpse of the man getting into the car. He was wearing a bow tie. Max knew him. He had even spoken to him, though the name took a while coming. The tallest of the three academics in the restaurant, a friend of Professor Jürgen Friederikson and the short and florid Van Diemen. And he knew Erica.