by Nick Louth
We alone among the fifty or so prisoners crammed into the jail had the luxury of space enough to stretch our legs. Jarman even devised a keep fit regime where he would hook his arms or legs through the ceiling grid and haul himself off the floor. None of us quite took to it with his dedication.
The swelling on Jarman’s foot has gone down in the days since we stopped marching, but the cuts still weep pus and the wound is an angry red. All Jarman has to disinfect the wound is fresh salty sweat after he has done his exercises. This he laboriously rubs in with his fingertips, hoping the salt will outweigh the bacteria. Amy is dubious, and insists we must get him antibiotics.
One morning a small rubber ball bounced into our cell through the cage roof, and we heard giggling from the next cell. After we had tossed it among us for a while, Jarman tossed it back. For the next hour or so, waves of laughter swept the prison as the ball was tossed from cell to cell. To such pleasures are we reduced.
The ball was the cause of a major falling out. Amy had been bouncing it for a while and then tried to throw it through the cage roof into the next cell. Unfortunately, it bounced off one of our bars and rolled straight out through the toilet hole. We had no idea where it might have ended up. When an uproar began in other cells, now deprived of their sport, we nominated Amy to retrieve the ball. This noisome task was almost beyond her, and she refused to put more than her forearm into the dark filthy pipe. We were astonished at the anger the loss of the ball generated in the other prisoners, and even when Sister Margaret broadcast loudly in French the facts of the incident, it did little to quell resentment.
Inevitably, using the toilet was the worst experience. The only shred of privacy was to turn away and cover the ears, but the mess and the smell remained with us. Keeping the place or ourselves clean was impossible, made worse by the fact that at least one of us had a stomach upset at any one time. We soon learned to drink the minimum of our bucket of water and retain what we could for sluicing out the cell.
We were a major attraction for flies and night time creepy-crawlies too, and from mid-afternoon onwards we would hear the claws of vultures tapping impatiently on the zinc roof. Rats were occasional visitors that we soon got used to, but we were all unnerved when one afternoon a rat snake nonchalantly slunk across our cage roof.
Our only ally was time. By the third day we were eating the soup and holding it down, we barely noticed each other’s ablutions and we accepted our filth. On the fourth day a group of new prisoners were brought in. One was crammed into the already-crowded cell next door. He must have heard us talking because he called to us.
‘Where from?’
‘England, Brazil, Belgium and the United States,’ I replied.
‘America,’ he sighed reverentially.
‘And you?’
‘I am from Kinshasa. How many you? How many ladies?’
‘Three women, one man,’ I replied. We exchanged names. His was Moses.
‘Why are you here?’ Jarman asked.
‘Government soldier,’ Moses replied.
‘You just arrived today then?’ Jarman asked.
‘No. Two month ago, but they take me on patrol. I am lucky. I am corporal in signals. I am useful for them. I know how to use the captured radio set.’
‘What about your family?’ asked Amy.
‘My wife is in cell at far end. She is expecting my first son. She have fever. I very worried for her.’ Moses called out to his wife and we heard a weak reply.
‘When is the baby due?’ Amy asked.
‘Maybe today, maybe next week. Not a good condition.’
The silence lengthened awkwardly. I broke it: ‘When you were on patrol, did you meet their leader?’
‘Yes.’ He paused.
‘Tell me about him,’ I asked.
‘Brigadier Crocodile.’ He paused. ‘He very cruel man. Face of the baby, but smile with many sharp teeth.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
Saskia was so tired her eyes could barely focus by the time she parked her dented Ford Escort at her house. She hadn’t got home before midnight for more than a week, but this was the latest. The familiar single mother’s guilt harried her again, and she knew it couldn’t go on like this. Inside her she felt a kick, then a slower movement in her womb as if the baby rolled over.
Lights still blazed across the house, including Caroline’s bedroom. Saskia stormed up the path. If the babysitter isn’t good enough to get a six year old to sleep, then…
The front door opened before Saskia could get her keys out. Standing there was Hennie, the fourteen-year-old babysitter, her face as white as snow. ‘Saskia, Caroline’s really sick, and she’s been throwing up and her legs hurt and I gave her lots of water but she threw it back up and she keeps asking for grandpa but he’s dead isn’t he, and she doesn’t know who I am and I lost your mobile phone number…’
‘It’s okay, Hennie, it’s okay. And thank you for staying.’ Saskia felt queasier than at any emergency room scene as she walked quietly into the child’s bedroom and the humid, biscuity aroma of child sweat. Caroline lay on her back, her dark hair drenched on the pillow, her mouth wetly open and lips pale.
‘Mummy! It hurts me.’ She began to cry as Saskia embraced her, and the doctor herself felt her eyes prickle as she squeezed her arms around the hot, moist trembling bundle of her child.
‘There, it’s okay. Mummy’s here now. So what’s the matter with you then? You are so hot!’
Saskia moved Kusje, the small pink fluffy elephant from Caroline’s pillow and made a mental note to rinse out the streamer of vomit that stained its leg. As she felt under her daughter’s jaw and neck she noticed Caroline scratch herself. Looking down she saw three tiny, slightly swollen marks on the back of the child’s hand. Old mosquito bites, which she would have noticed before if not for these awful long hours. Oh God. Please, not that. Not my own little mite.
The thermometer shook in Saskia’s hand, and she closed her eyes and uttered a little prayer before she dared looking at the result. The prayer was not answered. Caroline was running a monstrous fever, almost as high as Erskine’s had been. Saskia felt along the child’s abdomen. The spleen was as hard as a walnut.
‘Hennie, darling. Can I ask you a big favour? I need you to come to the hospital with me, to hold Caroline in the car. I know it’s late. I’ll ring your mother en route to let her know.’
‘Okay. Is Caroline very sick then?’ Hennie asked earnestly.
‘She could be. I need to test her blood, and driving in is quicker than waiting for an ambulance.’
‘She’s not going to die, is she?’ Hennie’s eyes were wide, her mouth open in anticipation of total reassurance.
‘No, of course not,’ Saskia stretched a smile over her face like an ill-fitting mask, while hot tears dissolved her vision. ‘I work at the hospital, Hennie. We make people well again.’
Inside her, the unborn child kicked in denial.
Der Ridder stood at the end of a row of five graffiti-daubed boarded- up houses in the shadow of an eight lane flyover. It was a traditional Dutch bar with garish lights, a billiard table, and carpet fixed on the table tops instead of the floor. The centrepiece was a big old Wurlitzer jukebox, and around it the walls were lined with antique earthenware pipes and horse brasses which rattled every time a big truck thundered along the highway. A cat was asleep on a bar stool. The only customer was an aged West Indian in a corner, with a trilby perched on the back of his head, drinking something long and blue.
Max ordered beers for him and Leo and another crème de menthe on the rocks for the haggard middle-aged barmaid who was hard at work polishing the beaten copper top of the bar. She had bottle blonde hair, grey at the roots and an overcooked skin which looked almost orange under the bar lights. Maybe she had polished that too.
‘Pretty quiet in here tonight,’ Max said.
She nodded. ‘Every night’s like this. Owning this place is as good a way to get into debt as any I know.’
�
��Maybe I can help. Just want a little information.’ He placed a paper swan on the bar, folded from a hundred euro note. ‘About Luc de Wit, alias Anvil.’
She shook her head too quickly, her polishing faltering. ‘I don’t know him.’
Max knew she did. He said so.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘I never see anything, I never hear anything, and I never tell anything. That’s what keeps my windows unbroken and my son safe in school. You understand what I’m saying?’
Somewhere nearby an express train screamed by on its way south to Utrecht, Eindhoven and the Belgian border.
The old guy had looked up from his paper, and was staring at Max. ‘I saw you today,’ he said. ‘With the cops.’
‘That’s right,’ Max said introducing himself. ‘Okay if we join you?’
‘Sure. You can get me a big Blue Curaçao, easy on the ice, while you are on your way.’
Max got him the drink and slid it across the table while he sat down. Leo disappeared into the toilet. After a few seconds he came back in, muttered to Max something about leaving the back door ajar, and sat alone on a different table from which he could see the bar entrance. All good, professional precautions.
The old man introduced himself as Joseph Gimbel. ‘You’re with the cops, but you no look like a cop and your twitchy friend, I don’t know where he’s from. What’s it all about?’
‘I’m looking for a British woman called Erica Stroud-Jones. She disappeared in the centre of Amsterdam about a week ago. Know anything about it?’
‘Read about it in the paper. Why are you looking down here?’
‘I figure Anvil may know something.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m asking the questions. Or if you want it another way, you buy me the drinks,’ Max said snatching away the Blue Curaçao so it sloshed onto the table.
The old man tutted at the waste and grabbed the drink back, downing the rest of it in one, and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he leaned forward to whisper. ‘Listen man, I’m here every day. Sometimes he comes in, sometimes he don’t. He don’t pay me no attention. I hear things. I can listen out for news on the girl. Make it worth my while. Right?’
‘Two hundred euros?’
The man sucked his teeth and shook his head. ‘Anvil is a dangerous guy. That won’t even buy me a basic funeral. Make it a thousand. You see, Dorothy would like to see me away with flowers, a proper casket and such.’
Max sighed. ‘You wouldn’t know what to do with a thousand. Three hundred or nothing. Half now, half when you get what I want.’
Joseph nodded.
‘Get me his home address, names of his friends, and find out what kind of crooked business he’s in with Xenix Molecular. And any whisper about Erica. Where she might be and why she’s being held. Okay?’ He counted out a hundred note and two twenty fives from his borrowed stash and pushed them across the table. Joseph stuffed them hurriedly in his pocket.
Suddenly the traffic was louder and Max could hear Leo deliberately clearing his throat. The door was open and just inside were three badly-shaved guys in oil-stained overalls and heavy boots. The biggest man, crew-cut with a broken nose, was holding a dog. Joseph raised his hand and greeted them but they ignored him, instead watching the cat leap from its stool and behind the bar.
The dog was a fighter, a piggy-eyed bull terrier crossbreed with chewed stumps for ears and a ripped lip which gave it a vicious half smile. Something about it made Max’s injured hand twinge beneath the bandage.
The dog urinated against a bar stool then turned and examined the room below tabletop level like a U Boat commander looking for easy targets. The moment it spied Leo it threw itself to the end of its chain in a frenzy of snarling and barking, claws scrabbling furiously on the wooden floor.
‘Terug! Gotte verdomme!’ Broken Nose stuffed his cigarette in his mouth, and held the choke chain like a waterskier. ‘Terug. Terug!’
‘A real cutie, ain’t you, Terug?’ said Max, bending towards the dog to distract it while Leo escaped.
‘Terug!’ said a beefy short guy, pushing past Max to escape the animal. Broken Nose had his arms almost jerked from their sockets as the beast rounded to its new target. Max snatched his fingers back from the snarling frenzy of its jaws, but a frothy skein of saliva flicked across his shirt and hung there.
‘Kind of a weird name for a dog,’ said Max, wiping the spit off his shirt. The evil piggy eyes devoured him.
The barmaid leaned across. ‘Terug means ‘back’. The dog’s name is Mandy. And get your friend off my table. Just because it’s carpet don’t mean it’s for walking on.’
Leo jumped from one table to another to the accompaniment of the barmaid’s complaints, until he was out of harm’s way by the door to the toilets. ‘That dog’s a bitch,’ he muttered.
‘Never met a Mandy who wasn’t,’ Max replied. He returned to Joseph’s table and whispered to the old man: ‘I’ll meet you here at eight o’clock tomorrow. Okay?’
Joseph tapped his forehead in mock salute. ‘Make it the day after. One thing I can tell you for free. None of them’s Anvil, but that’s Anvil’s dog.’
Max nodded and then turned to leave. The three guys had spread across the room, blocking the exit. Mandy was lying silently on the floor ahead of them, smiling up through the lip rip. It looked hard at Max, lifted its head and began to chew the leg of a heavy cast iron table. Everyone in the room winced. Max’s own teeth ached in sympathy with the high-pitched grinding noise, and he half expected to see sparks.
The beefy guy said something aggressively to Max in Dutch.
‘Hey, you are the first people I’ve met here who don’t speak English,’ Max said. ‘Just think of all the fun topics we could have discussed.’
‘He says stop provoking the dog,’ said the barmaid.
‘By existing you mean? By having the nerve to want a quiet drink?’
The beefy guy jerked his thumb towards Leo and released a stream of gargled invective. Again the barmaid translated: ‘He says by bringing your pet monkey in here. Mandy bites monkeys, he says.’
‘Well isn’t this just a den of racial harmony,’ Max said. ‘I always thought the Dutch were so together until I came to this pig pen.’
At this translated provocation Beefy removed a torque wrench from his overalls pocket. But it was only when Broken Nose squatted down to release Mandy from her chain that Max and Leo scrambled through the door to the toilets. Max slammed the door behind, but it had no catch. Leo ran on into the men’s room, skidded to a halt and rattled a door handle ‘Shit. I had opened door, now is locked!’
Max held the outer door against a kick from outside. ‘Try the women’s room. I can’t hold this long.’ The next kick smashed the door open an inch or two, enough for Mandy to get her jaws around the base of the door. Max couldn’t get a grip on the tiled floor to push it back and watched as the dog bit a fist-sized chunk out of the bottom edge of the door. With one final shove, he smashed the door back into the dog’s brindled snout and pelted into the women’s toilet behind Leo. The African had opened a small window and was climbing out head first from a cistern. Mandy’s approaching panting and the sound of claws scrabbling on a tiled floor gave Max the feeling he wasn’t going to make it. He grabbed a spare toilet roll, squeezed three fingers of his good hand into the tube and turned to face the snarling dog. ‘Good doggie!’ Max said, and provoked by this slander, Mandy leapt for him.
Max stuffed his padded hand into its jaws and felt the full pressure of its bite. His fingers slid out, leaving the dog with a mouth jammed full of paper. Leo was out of the window now, and Max stopped only to squirt a handy aerosol air freshener into the dog’s eyes before joining him. They emerged onto a children’s play area with a couple of swings and a plastic see-saw. They vaulted a hedge, crossed a used car forecourt and circled around in a half-mile loop to the subway station, making sure they weren’t being followed. Only when they were finally heading back to Amsterdam did they rel
ax.
‘I used to have a dog when I was a kid,’ said Max.
‘What type?’
‘Just a mutt. I’ve always liked them.’
‘Mandy’s best friend, yes?’ said Leo, and they both laughed.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The aged Ford screamed up Amstelveense Weg, and up onto the southern ring road, heading east for the Randstad Medical Centre. Saskia had her mobile phone pressed to her head talking to Paul Jeker, the duty registrar at intensive care. She floored the accelerator as she passed a poorly-lit quarry truck on the inside, earning herself an angry baritone horn blast. Once clear, she looked in the mirror. On the back seat a nervous Hennie was holding Caroline on her lap in a blanket. The child was twitching and trembling, mumbling to herself. The car reeked of vomit.
Saskia needed to know for certain, and the only way was to do again, now, in the middle of the night, what she had spent all day doing. To take a drop of her precious daughter’s blood on a thick film slide and compare it under a microscope with that of Erskine, to look for the grey rings in the blood cells.
‘Soon be there, soon be there. Just hold on.’
The familiar concrete shape of the Randstad’s entrance seemed as welcoming as a mother’s arms. Saskia drove straight into the ambulance bay under the main entrance, flashing her pass at the security man. Two orderlies and a nurse were with Paul Jeker at the scratched double doors through which over the years so many people had been rushed, not knowing whether they would live or die.
Fifteen minutes later, seated at her microscope, Saskia held back her head and howled. Jeker, standing at her side, held Saskia’s head and stroked her face as she clenched her fists and hammered them on the desk.