by Nick Louth
(Erica’s Diary 1992)
Max made modest use of Alex’s first thousand euro advance. He moved into a student flophouse in the west of Amsterdam and for fifty euros bought a stolen mountain bicycle from a desperate heroin addict. To blend in a little better as a cycle courier he bought Lycra shorts and shirt, plus wraparound reflective shades at the market in Waterlooplein. He had his hair cropped. The final conspicuous mark which had to go was the bandage. His hand was still sore, so he bought an oversize pair of soft chamois cycling mitts which cushioned him but left the fingers free. Alex’s phone, clipped to the shirt, completed the courier picture.
It was two days later, at 3 a.m., when the call he’d been waiting for came. The voice wasn’t Alex’s and the message was just two words: ‘She’s there.’
Lisbeth de Laan’s apartment was near Beethoven Straat in the old south of Amsterdam, an area of chic boutiques, upmarket patisseries and antiques dealers. Max got there in eight and a half minutes dead. The entrance was between a couple of storefronts, and had seven buzzers set in the brickwork, with peeling handmade labels by each. Lisbeth’s was right at the top. If Alex’s crew had this place under surveillance Max couldn’t see from where. All the parked cars were empty, there was no-one hanging around.
He pressed the button and heard nothing. He waited for a while, then heard a noise above him. Someone was looking down out of a window high above. Max stepped back into the glare of a streetlamp so he could be seen, and waved.
The person disappeared, then the door clicked open. Max pushed it, but there was no-one there, just a piece of string from the lock catch looping up the stair well. He heard Lisbeth’s voice from above and climbed the steep bare wooden stairs, through aromas of cat pee, burned food and joss sticks until he reached her on the third floor.
‘You found me again,’ she said. ‘I just don’t know how.’
Max tapped the side of his nose. ‘Psychic.’
She led him inside the apartment. ‘I was really worried about what those guys in the car would do to you.’
‘So was I. But they were just cops who’ve watched too much TV. Just more questions about Erica.’ Max watched Lisbeth carefully for signs she saw through his lies, but there were none. Maybe Alex was right, maybe she did trust him completely.
‘Where’s the laptop, Lisbeth?’
‘If I had known you would be here I would have brought it.’
‘So where is it?’
‘At my new place, in a different city, very well hidden. You should be glad I’m taking no chances.’
‘You are taking a heck of a risk coming back here at all. Anvil knows this address for sure,’ Max said.
‘Of course. He spent many nights here with me in the past. But he can’t watch the place around the clock. Besides I cleared out in too much of a hurry and I need some things. A woman likes her own bathroom too, so I’m going to take a quick shower. Would you do me a favour?’
‘Sure, as long as it’s not scrubbing your back.’
She smiled. ‘Go into the kitchen and take out the top four car stereos from the left hand side of the freezer cabinet.’
‘The freezer!’
‘Yes, the cold wipes out the security code in the microchip, so the stereo can be used in a different car. They should be defrosted sufficiently by the time we leave. I have buyers for them, and I need the money.’
‘How much of this does Stokenbrand know about?’
‘How much do you think?’ A crooked grin lit her face. ‘He claims to be my best customer. Takes a multichange CD player every couple of months, though of course he pays me nothing. It is quite well known at the police social club that Stokenbrand has good quality stereos available.’
Max clicked his tongue in distaste. ‘Now you are not snitching for him, he might turn nasty. There’s plenty of evidence here if he wants to use it.’
‘A whole industry, I’m afraid. I have a cabinet in a lock-up garage with three thousand blank car keys of every make, and a very neat portable machine to punch them out how I want. But this is my profession. If you have the manuals, and know where to look on the car for the key-type number, you can make precisely the key to fit any individual car.’ Lisbeth walked into the bedroom and closed the door behind her.
Max fetched the four frosted packages and set them on the kitchen counter, then returned to the lounge. On the wall was a framed black and white photograph of Johnny Gee, like something you might find in an Italian restaurant. The handsome dark-haired boxer was wearing a prize belt, posing with a jabbing right and his southpaw fist cocked. The huge looping signature and dedication, dated 1990, took up the entire bottom left corner. On the window ledge were more pictures, an extremely young Lisbeth and a towering Johnny Gee with his arm around her. Several of his boxing trophies adorned the mantelpiece over the electric fire.
Max kept thinking about Alex, about the deal he’d made with him. Something about it didn’t feel right. He walked to the window and peered down into the street. He tried to recall which cars had been parked there before. The reflection of the street lamps made it impossible to see inside them. Somewhere out there was one of Alex’s men. Maybe Anvil too.
The sound of a hairdryer whined through from the bedroom.
‘Max, come in a moment.’
He pushed at the half open door. Lisbeth was facing away, wearing a bathrobe and drying her hair at a full length mirror. The bathrobe was open and the mirror showed her full rosy-nippled breasts, dark pubic hair and the angry scars on her belly: L I V N A. Max reversed the letters in his mind, noting that Anvil’s name needed only straight slashes. Sickened, he turned back to the lounge.
‘Please, stay.’ Lisbeth sat on the bed and patted next to her. Max instead grabbed a small wooden chair, but while moving it knocked a shoulder bag from the bedside table. It landed on the floor with a heavy clunk.
‘Max, please be careful.’ Lisbeth opened the bag and removed a black box little bigger than a cigarette packet. She inspected it for damage.
‘What is that?’ Max asked.
‘It’s a magnetic card reader/writer. The best on the market. With this and a little piece of software I found on the Internet I can clone stolen credit and bank cards onto blanks.’
‘Lisbeth! I never realised what a big time crook you were. Besides, I thought that with PIN codes you couldn’t clone cards any more.’
‘You can, quite easily.’ She shrugged off her bathrobe and knelt naked next to him, the stiffening tip of one pointed breast resting against his arm as she sorted through the handbag. ‘Here’s a card I created last week.’
Max looked at the ABN-Amro card. It looked normal in every way, except it had no signature.
‘Once you get hold of card details you can clone them onto a blank like this, but with one important difference,’ Lisbeth said. ‘The software disables the security code which tells ATMs and point of sale terminals that it works in conjunction with an embedded chip. You see, there are so many cards around with damaged chips that ATMs have a default mode which tells them to use the magnetic strip instead if they can’t detect the chip. Information on the strip is easy to clone, right down to setting a new PIN. That’s old technology.’
‘But how do you get hold of the cards in the first place?’
‘The usual trick is for cashiers or waitresses to run cards through a hidden reader after doing a genuine transaction. But that’s not my method, because you will eventually be tracked down to the place of work. Cars are my speciality, and some models are still so easy to get into. It always amazes me how many stupid people still leave briefcases visible under the seat, handbags in the glove compartment, wallets in jackets slung on a back seat.’
‘And laptops in the trunk,’ Max said.
‘Yes. I break in, copy any cards I find, then return everything. Nine times out of ten, they don’t even realise anything has happened until they get the credit card bill or look at their bank account.’
Lisbeth laughed and took a
pink bottle from the dresser. ‘The Internet has made everything easier. The card cloner costs five hundred euros, the software is free on a Latvian site, and I buy my blank cards from an address in Nijmegen.’
‘Lisbeth, you belong behind bars,’ Max said.
She walked back over to Max and rested her foot on the chair between his legs. He tried to concentrate on reading her tummy, but it was no good. She squeezed the bottle onto her hand and rubbed moisturiser languidly from her arched foot, up her long shapely calves, under and between her thighs, each leg in turn.
‘You missed a bit,’ Max said, pointing to the underside of one knee.
Lisbeth offered him the bottle. ‘Then you had better finish me off, Max. I know you want to.’ She pressed her toes against Max’s groin, confirming the raging hardness there.
‘I think you better finish it yourself.’ Max extricated himself from the chair and walked away while he still had the willpower. There was enough he had done wrong already.
Lisbeth spread herself invitingly on the bed, looking at him with those intense blue eyes. One hand stole between her legs, parting and stroking. Shadows of pleasure flitted across her features, among the still livid scars.
‘Lisbeth, for Christ’s sake, give it a rest.’
‘You asked me to finish it myself, yes? So I will, but I want you to watch. I want to imagine you, big and deep inside me.’
‘No, Lisbeth.’ Max’s throat was incredibly dry, and he couldn’t move.
‘You want the laptop or not? And you said you owed me. If I don’t touch you, you are not being unfaithful to Erica.’ She licked her fingers, then traced a slow circle between her wide spread legs, her hips undulating slowly.
‘Oh, Max. This feels so good. I’m imagining your tongue here.’ A ripple ran down her body, lifting first her shoulders and breasts, then her tummy, hips and legs. ‘Now strip. I want to see you naked.’
Max couldn’t speak, his breathing was coming hard and his groin ached. He wanted to deny her, but another part of his mind was saying: why not? Who knows exactly where the line between right and wrong falls? In a few moments his clothes were scattered on the floor, his erection bobbing up harder than he’d ever known it.
Lisbeth’s eyes devoured him and she began to use both hands on herself, one circling above, one dipping below. She moaned his name rhythmically. After a couple of minutes her legs stretched and lifted balletically off the bed, toes splayed as an immense orgasm approached. Lisbeth’s face was creased as if in agony, her entire body trembling. Max only stroked himself a few times, but it was enough. They came simultaneously, worlds apart: Lisbeth now howling ‘Johnny!’, Max’s mind filled with Erica, pale and naked and still. Only as he spattered on Lisbeth’s carpet did he realise the Erica he saw in his mind was lying in an open grave. He fell to his knees, moaning.
Lisbeth’s gasps dissolved into sobs, her fists kneading the bedclothes. ‘It’s no good, it’s no good. He’s always there.’ She threw her moisturiser at a gilt picture on the bedside table, knocking it to the floor. ‘Bastard! Why can’t you let me live?’
Max picked up her bathrobe and draped it around her shoulders, then sat next to her on the bed. Lisbeth rested her head on his shoulder and sobbed. They stayed that way for several minutes.
Finally they stood and dressed, as silent as guilty lovers. Only when Max walked to the door did Lisbeth speak.
‘I’ll get the computer to you tomorrow. I promise. Meet me at two in the afternoon by the sightseeing boats on the Damrak.’
He nodded. She took his shoulders and looked up into his eyes. ‘I apologise for using you, Max. It’s just I don’t know what to do to fill the emptiness left inside me.’
‘You loved him and he’s not here any more.’ Max rested his lips briefly against her torn cheek. ‘But time heals all in the end.’
Chapter Thirty-One
Saskia’s rusting Ford roared into VIP parking bay at Utrecht Laboratories. It was five past eight, and Professor Friederikson was already waiting for her in reception. He escorted her down to his basement laboratory. She looked at the antiquated equipment, the yellowed walls and the ancient refrigerator, surprised that a world renowned expert should struggle for resources as if he was just another research student.
The professor sat her down at his desk opposite the tank of Anopheles gambeii mosquitoes, in front of a dish of orange tablets and a densely-inked trace print out from a chemical analyser. He started to talk before she had a chance to examine what she was looking at.
‘I powdered a pill then mixed it with a solvent before putting it in the thin layer chromatagram. The trace we have here contains talc and dextrose and all the other rubbish one would expect in an amateur narcotic, but among these proteins here,’ he pointed to a series of six tight inky peaks on the print out, ‘Will be the active ingredient we are looking for.’
Friederikson scurried across to a desk and brought over a cage of five white rats. ‘These have had the equivalent of two tablets each mashed into their food, and they’re still alive. We’ll keep them under observation.’
‘But toxicity can take months to establish!’ Saskia wailed.
‘Yes of course,’ he snorted. ‘We are confined to schoolboy science. It is the best we can do in such a short time.’
He opened the refrigerator and took out the vial of Caroline Sivali’s blood. ‘I just finished a thick film slide of the sample a few minutes ago. Your daughter’s blood is seventeen per cent infected. We’ll see if we can bring that percentage down.’
Friederikson opened it, and with a teat pipette deposited a few drops in a petrie dish. Then with a fresh pipette he dropped onto the blood a few drops of colourless liquid.
‘That is a solution of the powdered tablet. I have tried to filter out the impurities as best I can. Now all we can do is wait to see if it kills or inhibits the parasites.’ Professor Friederikson shrugged. ‘Thank God we are doing this in secret. Any science journal would shred my reputation for such rough and ready work. But then we don’t want to be famous, do we? We just want to save your daughter’s life.’
The phone rang and Friederikson snatched it up. He offered the receiver to Saskia. ‘The transfusion service, for you.’
Electricity has officially arrived. Crocodile came in and announced this to us. Unable to contain his excitement, he opened up the cells and trooped us out to admire the creaky old diesel generator towed behind the Land Rover, which was now painted with camouflage colours. Proudly, he told us that his rapid reaction forces (at this he pointed to the Land Rover) had liberated it from the hospital in a daring raid on the government-controlled village of Mologwe.
While we watched, Crocodile ordered Rambo-Rambo and Dakka to the rear door of the Land Rover from which they dragged a battered refrigerator. Dakka seemed surprised by the weight of it. He slipped and the door came open, spilling medicine bottles, vaccines, ampoules, and various medical packages onto the mud.
The long trip through the heat would already have ruined all of it, but it still angered us to see it all dropped in a muddy useless heap. Crocodile seemed to be angry too, gesticulating until five of his men gathered and stood the refrigerator upright. Crocodile closed and opened the door. Once he was satisfied the hinges and seal were intact, a grin spread onto his face and he tapped the top. ‘Civilization!’
(Erica’s Diary 1992)
Max was caught in a typical Amsterdam summer shower as he waited for Lisbeth at the tourist boat marina. Dozens of low glass-topped boats manœuvred into busy jetties, disgorging hundreds of tourists who shrugged up their raincoats and sheltered under colourful umbrellas.
Behind Max a dented maroon van cruised by. It had one cracked headlamp, held in place with tape, and corroded wheel arches. The driver lowered his tinted window, and stuck his head out to reverse into a parking space. If Max had turned around he might have recognised the driver. This was the ordinary-looking middle-aged man who had sat next to him on the plane from New York. The man who had i
ntroduced himself as John Davies. And Lisbeth would have recognised the younger muscled man who sat in the vehicle’s dark interior.
A huge coach pulled up at the roadside, and a large party of middle-aged Koreans headed towards a jetty. A European woman with sunglasses, headscarf and a large shoulderbag converged with them, and turned to Max. It was Lisbeth. He hurried up to her, she handed him a ticket and they waited in line to board a low glass-topped boat. A bearded captain, nautically dressed in blazer and cap, was taking pictures of each couple as they boarded, forcing smiles from the reluctant with an absurd squawking rubber bird. Max and Lisbeth grinned, arm in arm like lovers, and squeezed towards the back of the boat.
Lisbeth passed across the shoulderbag and whispered in Max’s ear. ‘This is about as safe as we can be. No cops, no Anvil, and hardly anyone here speaks English.’
The boat reversed away from the jetty, made a sharp right and slid under a low bridge into a broad, curved canal. A tape crackled into life, describing in a half dozen languages the architectural features to be seen from the water.
Max undid the bag. The casing of the laptop was badly scratched but the computer powered up okay. The e-mail program was password protected. Max tried a few of the obvious birth date and middle name candidates, but none of them got him in. After half an hour he shrugged and put it back in the bag, his head in his hands.
‘I’m at a dead end, Lisbeth. Three weeks she’s been gone, and this was the only real hope I had. I guess we have to find Anvil’s hiding place before he finds either of us. If there is any place you can think of, any places you ever went together…’
Lisbeth shook her head. ‘It wasn’t that kind of relationship. We never went out for meals or to the cinema or on holiday together. It was more physical than romantic.’
‘Yeah, why am I not surprised about that.’