Absinthe

by Guido Eekhaut

  “Mr. Monet,” Van Tillo intejected.

  Monet was breathing heavily and stared at her.

  She’d known exactly when he’d run out of breath and had chosen that moment to speak.

  “We are very much concerned with this affair. Of course we are. It’s a terrible thing that could have been avoided, no discussion there. We’ve made mistakes. Which we admit. On the other hand, nothing is gained by shouting. There are solutions to be found.”

  “What will happen with that list?” Monet asked.

  “We don’t know,” Van Tillo said. “Maybe the thief will take it to the press.”

  “Who is this thief? At least tell me you have some idea of his identity.”

  “We have his name and an address. Do you need more?”

  “Ms. Van Tillo, I’m a businessman. What do you expect from me? That I’ll solve your problems for you?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t expect that. But we’re a political party. We can’t solve this sort of problem on our own. But on the other hand, we do have his name and an address. That has to be sufficient to work toward a solution if professional help can be provided.”

  Monet said nothing. He didn’t have to tell Van Tillo that he’d already made arrangements concerning the sort of professional help she didn’t want to discuss. Some things he preferred to keep hidden from her.

  “Perhaps you have a proposition?” Van Tillo said.

  “I can’t be bothered with these problems, Ms. Van Tillo.”

  “They no longer are just our problems, Mr. Monet,” she said. “Not just those of the Party. This goes way beyond the Party. We’re all in this together. We and you and the other contributors.”

  “Contributors,” he said. “I always hated that word. It sounds so innocent. As if you give money and then that’s it. No further involvement.”

  “Shall we look for a solution together? This is Amsterdam. There are strategies that are possible here …”

  “Mmm,” Monet said. “I may have something for you.” Of course he had something for her. His plans were already drawn up. He had his troops ready. But he wanted Van Tillo and Vanheul to suffer first. Wanted them to panic, so he could freely abuse them. He enjoyed that. Dressing down a former minister and her secretary. Knowing he’d already arranged a solution. And while maintaining the upper hand. Everything under his control. That was important in critical moments.

  He was, at that instant, quite taken with himself.

  10

  IT HAD RAINED BETWEEN seven and eight o’clock over a city that was preparing for an early night. Eekhaut had been eating in a snack bar close to his apartment, and the rain hadn’t mattered much to him. People passed by with umbrellas, while bicyclists hurried past gleaming cars. The snack bar was Lebanese. He had ordered bread with a salad, chicken, hot sauce, hummus, a pâté of peanuts, and mushrooms. Nothing on the menu was expensive. He had drunk sweet, strong tea with his meal. No alcohol was served, even though none of these Lebanese were strict Muslims, if observant at all. Most of the other guests seemed to be from the Middle East: Lebanese, Turks, Syrians. And perhaps one Iraqi dissident.

  He’d often encountered the same mix of people in Brussels. Cunning businesspeople, most of them. Small-time entrepreneurs, always with a keen eye on the bottom line. Hard workers, too. Kept their distance from anything illegal. On this level, crime was the preferred terrain of the Chinese and the Koreans. He didn’t know how things worked in Amsterdam, though. He hadn’t seen many Chinese.

  He preferred not to think too much about Brussels. He’d left Brussels behind. He’d started working there ten years earlier out of necessity. It was after Esther had died. Her death had left him in a bad state. He’d neglected his job in Leuven, with the local crime squad. He’d neglected himself. He slid down an increasingly slippery slope. Although his colleagues in Leuven understood his grief, they had their jobs to do, as had he. But he was losing control. He understood what was happening to him, but it was as if he were looking at a stranger, to whom bad things had happened.

  This state of affairs had gone on for half a year. By then he had lost the confidence of his mates. After a while, he’d been summoned to quit the local force and was transferred to the capital. The transfer was a relief to all concerned, him in particular. He’d worked hard for many years to earn his reputation, and then he’d thrown it out the window. Because of his grief. Without Esther, the world was an empty place with no future. He saw only empty days ahead. He saw an empty house.

  He wanted to fill that emptiness.

  But with what?

  They’d never had children. Hadn’t wanted any, had let the opportunities slide by, had never really taken the time to think about children. Esther was the one who couldn’t imagine a life with kids. She had no maternal instinct.

  And he had complied. Hadn’t gone against her. And so an emptiness was created, which became even more pronounced after she’d died.

  So the transfer to Brussels had been arranged. He wanted to fill that emptiness with new people and things and work. The capital seemed to provide the opportunity. It came down to working overtime most of the time, working unusual hours, taking on duties from other officers, taking the unpopular assignments, but in the process pissing off a number of people with his acrimonious attitude.

  He quickly acquired a reputation. A reputation he didn’t really want but couldn’t get rid of.

  He became a liability.

  He wasn’t often promoted—or not at all, because office politics were beyond him.

  He sold the house in Leuven after his transfer but didn’t want to live in Brussels, so he bought an apartment, still in Leuven, close to the railway station, and he commuted. The place was large enough for him, with less emptiness to fill.

  His sparse holidays were spent at the seaside or deep in the Ardennes forests. In places with so few people he could endure life. He saw his family occasionally, but he seldom felt any need for their company. They couldn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know. That he didn’t lead a normal life, or what passed for normal to them. He had no regrets. He didn’t look back. He looked forward. The past was a story with details and premises that couldn’t be changed. He didn’t care for the sort of people who were constantly hashing over the past.

  He folded his paper napkin and finished his tea. He looked at his watch. Ten past eight. Still early. He rose, nodded to the owner, and stepped outside. It had stopped raining. The rain had left puddles on the pavement. He’d worn a raincoat, out of caution, but he wasn’t going to need it.

  His first night in Amsterdam. What of it? He’d brought a compact city guide that he’d already studied on the train, searching for things to do in the evening. He walked along Utrechtsestraat, toward the center. He could go to Leidseplein, home to a variety of pubs and bars, but he wasn’t really in the mood. He had no need for public entertainment. And too crowded, presumably. He wanted something much more intimate.

  Two items in particular in the guide had intrigued him. He walked along Kalverstraat and passed the Dam at the Royal Palace. Then he strolled into Nieuwendijk. Around the corner from Gravenstraat was a pub, the Belgique. Belgian beers, said a sign by the door. Not that he was nostalgic for Belgian beers, but this seemed a starting place as good as any.

  He entered. An old-fashioned pub, not large at all, welcoming visitors with the golden smell of beer. Busy, already, with people crowding the bar and sitting at the small round tables.

  He took a position at the bar, attracted the bartender’s attention, and ordered a Leffe Brown. Which came on draft, to his surprise, and not from a bottle. It was the sort of beer he drank in Brussels, after work. At the Mort Subite. The most typical of all Brussels pubs. The unofficial watering hole of part of the Brussels detectives. Where after a day of stakeouts, typing reports, filing, and clashes with superiors, a good pint—and, more specifically, an authentic Geuze—tasted like a product made in heaven.

  Glass in hand, he looked around.
The customers were mostly male, about his age. Two, three women. There was no smoking. Darkness had already descended on the city. It even penetrated the bar. The collection of beer bottles behind the counter was vastly impressive. He had heard seven hundred different beers were being brewed in Belgium alone, and most of them seemed represented here. He had no intention of trying them all.

  He slowly sipped from the Leffe. Why did he come here? A Belgian pub in Amsterdam? Out of curiosity? The only thing he could do here was hang around and watch people. There wasn’t enough light to read a book.

  He left after he’d finished his beer. The air was crisp and fresh. Summer had already passed, after several months of nearly tropical heat. People welcomed the cool late summer weather. He preferred this season above others. Contours of people and buildings were sharp due to the rain. One could breathe so much more freely than during the summer. Even in a city this size.

  He walked back south and passed Magna Plaza and the back of the Palace. To the right of the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, he knew there was a quietly hidden bar, Absinthe, which he’d read about in the guide.

  He found the place and stepped inside. The bar was nearly empty. The owner had done up the place in mock Victorian, including heavy, dark furniture. It went well with the idea of the formerly prohibited green substance. Time folded in on itself here. Ghosts of former residents and artists seemed to live in the dozen or so bottles of green spirits, from a time when absinthe was the drink par excellence of poor artists and prostitutes, a vice along with other vices such as tincture of opium.

  He ordered a glass of the stuff. It was poured as tradition demanded, over a cube of sugar. He took the glass to a table in a corner and sat down. Waiting for something to happen. In a place like this, things always seemed on the verge of happening. He kept an eye on the customers and took a sip.

  The clientele was younger than that of the Belgique. Attired differently too. Urbane, maybe even sophisticated. As if the green spirit attracted people from a totally different walk of life.

  He wondered what Alexandra—Chief Superintendent Dewaal to him when at the office—did in her spare time. What kind of person was she? A homemaker caring for a husband and three children? Or single and going to the opera every Thursday evening, inviting younger men to her bed afterward? Anything seemed possible. He knew nothing about her. On arriving here, he hadn’t even known his boss was a woman. He had inspected her outfit and had judged her on that basis. Judged her wrongly, probably. She probably lived in some fancy suburb. He knew nothing about her. His conclusions would all prove to be wrong.

  The clothes she had worn, however, had conveyed one simple message: she wasn’t going to be analyzed by him, wasn’t going to be judged. This had been her external side, and he wasn’t going to get under her skin. She had worn the most perfect outfit for a meeting with a new colleague, giving nothing away but inviting speculation. And she had wanted to impress. Had succeeded. That’s why they had lunch at Krasnapolsky: because she wanted to impress him.

  More people entered the bar. People in their thirties, early forties. Loud, quite taken with themselves. One of the women lit a cigarette. Nobody objected. She was tall and slender, a natural brunette with wavy, shoulder-length hair. She glanced at him over her shoulder for just a moment. She didn’t interrupt her conversation with the blond man at her side. They both drank absinthe.

  Around eleven, he drank his second glass. It was the perfect drink for an evening when you wanted to forget all about the job. The brunette was still sitting at the bar. Her companions were on their way to total intoxication. Fourth or fifth glass. He had eyes for the woman only.

  She didn’t resemble Esther.

  Let this be clear: she does not look like Esther.

  And even if she did look like Esther, he wouldn’t meddle with the ghosts from times past. He had better things to do. Make plans for the future, for one thing.

  But in his mid-fifties, he had little future in front of him. And what was there was diminishing swiftly. Why not just concentrate solely on the present? Observing a woman at a bar drinking absinthe and ignoring him as if she knew he kept looking at her, even when he tried not to?

  He did nothing more than look. His glass was empty. He could have it filled again, but then he would have had to approach the counter, where the woman was sitting. And her presence, her physical presence, would be more than he could endure. At least from close up.

  So he waited.

  He wasn’t drunk after only two glasses of absinthe.

  What he was waiting for, he didn’t know. He couldn’t explain. Not even to himself.

  11

  IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT when Breukeling drove into the street where he lived. His wife would chew him out for being so late, but he’d brought her a nice present—a manila envelope with a number of high-denomination banknotes inside. Enough for a trip to a very warm country and some clothes and things. And afterward, there would be more money yet, more than he’d seen in his life.

  That would ease the pain of his being late.

  He had no regrets. Not about what he’d done. Nobody would ever find out what he’d done. He would maintain that he had left the memory stick at the front desk in the justice department offices, with clear instructions for the stick to be delivered to the prosecutor. That had been the limit of his involvement. It would appear that they had lost the stick. It sounded plausible. Things always got lost at the justice department. In reality, he had given the stick to a young Russian fellow, as agreed. In exchange for the cash. Nobody the wiser. The money would allow him an expensive vacation with his wife. Far away from the dreary Dutch weather. He would grab some clothes and message the office he was taking some time off. He would claim he’d inherited some money. Or had cashed in his savings.

  He was done with the whole thing, as far as he was concerned, and glad of it. Six months ago, the young Russian had promised to solve his financial and other problems. He had even been given an advance, also in cash. In exchange for a few small favors. Nothing spectacular. The young man had wanted some documents from the Bureau files. After which some people could no longer be prosecuted, for lack of those same documents.

  Breukeling knew he couldn’t play that little game for too long. People would get suspicious. Mistakes wouldn’t be tolerated and couldn’t be used too often to cover up what he was doing. He didn’t plan on playing the game too long and risking getting caught. The Russian told him he would get a big opportunity and reap a lot of cash. Enough to start a new life elsewhere, with a new identity even. Which meant he would have to leave the Netherlands forever.

  That opportunity presented itself two days ago.

  The monitoring operation. The stakeout. He had gotten the job, and the Russian had told him exactly what to do with the recording. The other officer, the new one, Prinsen, had been an unwelcome presence and had nearly spoiled the whole thing, but Breukeling was too smart to let Prinsen foul up his business. He had put on a little act over the phone, and Prinsen had been easily fooled.

  After that, it had been a walk in the park. Prinsen—the new chief’s nephew, no less—had bought the story about the recording for the prosecutor. The fool. Considered himself smarter than the other officers. Nobody was smarter than a seasoned detective like Breukeling.

  Freedom called. He felt the envelope. A lot of money for so easy a job. Enough money and more coming. A new life, for both of them. He wouldn’t even have to return after the holiday.

  What the young Russian planned to do with the recording didn’t concern Breukeling. He would probably destroy it. In a matter of hours, he and Mrs. Breukeling would be lying on a white beach under a tropical sun, and he would tell her that the old life was behind them and a new one was beckoning. He’d send a note to the office, offering his resignation. They’d be surprised, but what could they do? He’d be out of their jurisdiction, and they wouldn’t even have any real proof of his wrongdoing.

  He closed the car and walked toward his fr
ont door.

  Then he hesitated.

  Something was wrong with the front door.

  In the dark, he couldn’t see what it was. Had somebody splashed white paint on the door or what? Had somebody been mucking around? One of the neighbors who didn’t like the police? A bit of vandalism? Wouldn’t be the first time.

  He stepped closer.

  It wasn’t a spot of paint.

  Someone had hung a white plastic shopping bag on his doorknob.

  What the hell?

  He reached for the bag. He wanted to see what was inside.

  A fireball rolled over him. The pressure from the explosion splintered the front door. The facade of the house was blown away. Windows of nearby houses were shattered.

  Something that had been Breukeling a few moments before hung limply from a nearby tree.

  TUESDAY

  Amsterdam

  12

  EEKHAUT HAD SLEPT WITH the window ajar. The cool nocturnal air had been welcome. The absinthe had had no impact on the quality of his sleep. Maybe he had dreamt, but he couldn’t remember.

  In spite of his expectations, the city around him had been quiet when he went to bed. The occasional screeching from the trams and music from the neighbors hadn’t even bothered him. He could have closed the window against the noise, but he hadn’t. He preferred to have his bedroom ventilated. Although the outside air could hardly be called fresh.

  His breakfast was a matter of pure improvisation. He hadn’t been able to stock his kitchen with food. He had fetched some groceries from an all-night shop down the street run by an Indian youth, where almost everything that could serve as breakfast was exotic and spicy. So he made do with only a few biscuits and marmalade and a cup of tea. He needed to do some serious shopping but would have to get a more substantial breakfast somewhere in the vicinity first, in one of the snack bars that seemed open from very early in the morning. It would be a high-caloric breakfast, unfortunately. Probably eggs, ham, sausages, toast, and beans.