Absinthe

by Guido Eekhaut

  She was flushed, he noticed. It was the clean, crisp air. It was the action. She enjoyed it.

  “You could have warned me that things were going to be all right,” he said. “I would have been … prepared.” His shirt was drenched in sweat, he stank of it, and of cordite (or whatever was being used as a propellant in munitions these days), and of tension and relief. He needed a shower. He wanted, most of all, a cold beer. It looked like he was not going to have either on short notice.

  “What did you expect? That I was going to let these people stop us from delivering our package?” Even Dewaal looked a mess. Her clothes had dark patches and were torn in a few places. She had scratches on her arms and legs. He was glad he had no mirror because he would look just as bad.

  Eileen was being looked at by two medics who had flown in with a chopper. She was shocked but seemed otherwise OK.

  “You did deploy the whole army,” he said.

  “Some in the Bureau badly needed the exercise,” Dewaal said. But she didn’t sound so casual anymore. He noticed her hands were trembling slightly. She was brave, he knew, but the stress got to her anyway. She looked up at him, assuring him that all this was routine at the Bureau. He knew it wasn’t. This type of action would be rare. “And I wanted to be in Amsterdam by this afternoon. Looks like it will be later.”

  A man in his fifties, hard-faced, with short gray hair, walked over to them. A big and sturdy man. He wore a bulletproof vest over his white shirt and tie. On his hip, he had an oversized black holster with an equally big gun. “Chief Superintendent?”

  “Yes, Veneman? What have we caught?”

  “Three dead. Could have been worse. The others are a nice collection of rented scum. There’s this guy, Tarkovski, who pretends to speak only Russian. Your Miss Calster has recognized one of the others as the murderer of her boyfriend. Parnow is his name, but that’s all we know. Not in our files, it seems. We’ll ask Interpol about him.”

  “Good catch. We’ll interrogate this fellow Parnow about his employers. In Russian if needed.”

  “Can’t do, ma’am. He’s dead. Not a big loss, all in all. But there’s this Tarkovski. He looks interesting.”

  “Yes, we know all about him. Isolate him. He doesn’t talk to anyone; he doesn’t get any news from anyone. And he certainly doesn’t get a lawyer anywhere near him.”

  “Right, Chief.”

  “He’s Keretsky’s little helper. I wonder what he’s doing with an outfit like this.”

  “He wasn’t carrying a gun,” Veneman warned her.

  “Doesn’t matter. He’s at least an accomplice. Thanks, Veneman. Now on to the cleanup.”

  “Towing service is on its way. You want all these cars taken to Amsterdam?”

  “Yes. I want all of them in our garage. And the tech people have to comb through them. A full review.”

  Veneman nodded and walked off.

  “Is this what you had in mind when you came to Holland, Chief Inspector?” Dewaal asked Eekhaut. “This sort of adventure shoot-out, a war on the highway? Is this what went on in Brussels?”

  “Not at all, Chief Superintendent. It’s been a long time since I used a weapon. And all that for a stupid list.”

  “This isn’t finished, I’m afraid. Paperwork, interrogations, answering questions from higher-ups. And you won’t escape any of that, Walter. I want a full debriefing. Eileen Calster has to be questioned. Not today, but it will have to be done tomorrow, and I want to see you in my office by ten. Washed, dried, and ready for the really hard work.”

  She wasn’t joking.

  He didn’t expect a joke. Certainly not after this experience. Was this how things went down in Holland between police and criminals? In that case, he needed to dress accordingly and not risk a good suit. He would need one of those bulletproof vests at least. And more ammo. And an extra weapon.

  A pale black-haired young man approached. “Prinsen,” Dewaal said. She gestured in the direction of Eekhaut. “Inspector Prinsen, Chief Inspector Eekhaut. You haven’t met yet, I assume. Well, now you have. You’ll work together in the future. Why are you here, Prinsen?”

  Prinsen indicated Veneman. “He brought me along. I wasn’t getting anywhere with the Van Gils case.”

  “Pity,” Dewaal said. She rubbed her face with her hands, but all that did was make it dirtier. “I want to get out of here, gentlemen. Get this whole affair back on track. And I want to have everybody in the office tomorrow.”

  She started calling people on her phone. Eekhaut went off to inspect the cars. Their Porsche had holes in it but not in any essential parts. It would take them back to Amsterdam, he assumed. A man in shirtsleeves was changing one of the tires. The window in the back was shattered.

  Close call, he thought.

  The BMW had been reduced to scrap. It had been rammed in the flank by one of the police cars, which had sustained only minor damage and was missing only its front grille and one headlight.

  One of the ambulances left. The bodies were being taken off in a black van. The rest of the assailants had already been escorted back to Amsterdam in an armored bus. Dewaal had been able to call in a lot of cavalry, it seemed.

  He glanced up at a helicopter hovering over the area. A man with a camera hung on the open door. They would be on the news. Behind the police tape, a couple of hundred meters in the distance, more press had gathered. He didn’t like being in the news, but that’s what you got when you shot up a lot of people and cars in a public place.

  49

  ALEXANDRA DEWAAL KNEW THAT one cliché about hospitals was no longer true: they didn’t smell of disinfectants or death. Modern, well-run hospitals had no smell. They were very careful about that. And so the VU Medical Center on De Boelelaan, where Van Gils had been brought, was as odorless as humanly possible. The public was welcomed in almost neutral surroundings. The receptionists didn’t wear white smocks or lab coats. The place was more like a hotel.

  Nevertheless, people died in here, she knew. A hospital was a place for people to heal but also to die. Medical science had its limits, and the main one was death. Van Gils was improving, however. Others had fared worse in this same building. She was thinking about her mother, who currently resided in another, almost similar institution. An institution where every professional wore a lab coat and a name tag, where the smell of death was prevalent. Dewaal had decided she would never end in such a place. Not if she could help it.

  She asked for Van Gils’s room number. “Visiting hours have ended,” a kind middle-aged woman told her. White coat or not, she guarded the entrance to the place. “Maybe you could come back tomorrow?”

  Dewaal looked at her watch. Half past eight. “I am Inspector Van Gils’s superior,” she said. “He was shot doing his duty. I need to talk to him urgently. You will understand if I ask for an exception.”

  The woman looked at Dewaal, at the state her clothes were in, and then consulted a list. “Please follow the arrows for unit three thirty-four, ma’am,” she said. “Explain to them again why you’re here.”

  And she would. She would talk herself into Van Gils’s room.

  One floor up, she walked down a corridor. A nurse came out of a room. “Ma’am?” she asked. “May I help you?”

  Dewaal explained, again, the urgency of her visit. She spoke in her official voice. She insisted.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the nurse said. “Please follow me. Mr. Van Gils may be asleep. He’s been given a mild sedative, so I don’t know if you can talk with him.”

  “Well,” Dewaal said, “If I only could see him and make sure he’s all right. It’s just a—” A personal thing, she wanted to say but didn’t.

  “He’s all right, under the circumstances. Lost a lot of blood, but he’s stable now. The bullets have been removed.”

  Buckshot, Dewaal wanted to correct her. Pellets. “He’ll probably want to keep some of it as a souvenir. You think that can be arranged?”

  The nurse frowned.

  “It’s a … a thing
with cops,” Dewaal explained. “Superstition, really. The bullet—or buckshot in this case—that doesn’t kill you becomes a sort of a talisman. We don’t expect people to understand.”

  The nurse smiled. “Superstition. Yes, I get it. I think some of it was left at the nurses’ station. Or given to the gentleman that was here earlier.”

  Oh, Dewaal thought. The tech people would probably have collected it. “Doesn’t matter. We’ll sort it out. Can I see him now?”

  “Of course, ma’am,” the nurse said. “Call me when you need me. I’m at the station.”

  Dewaal sat down next to the bed. Van Gils was asleep. She wasn’t going to bother him. There were no get-well cards, no flowers. There had been no visitors. What did she know about Van Gils? Not much. He had been married. But she hadn’t been at the office long enough to get to know him personally.

  And she knew that was wrong. Should have been her first job. Get to know your people. Know all about them. See if you can trust them but also get to know the little and insignificant details of their life. She probably wouldn’t have found out what sort of trouble Breukeling had gotten himself into. Would not have caught that. But nonetheless.

  She needed to change a lot of things at the Bureau.

  50

  PRINSEN CLOSED THE DOOR to the apartment behind him, deposited the key on the cabinet next to the entrance, and switched on all the lights. Then he opened the front window. A light rain was falling, and a few fresh drops hit his face. He pulled off his jacket, his shirt, his shoes, and his socks. Everything smelled bad. He walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower.

  He waited till the water was hot enough, pulled off his pants and underwear, and stepped into the shower stall. He soaped himself thoroughly, washed his hair, rinsed, and left the stall. He welcomed the fresh outside air. He dried off and wrapped himself in a bathrobe. Then he stepped into the living room.

  He realized he had left his gun at the office, in his locker, and that it needed cleaning. He hadn’t even considered taking it home. Not for a moment.

  He switched on the TV. A political talk show he didn’t want to see. He recognized a face or two, but his interest in politics was very limited. He had learned about politics and ideology at the university, but he couldn’t grasp why people got upset about it. The commercial stations had even less to offer him—stupid game shows and soaps. It all looked and sounded the same to him.

  He was vaguely hungry but not enough to warrant action. He had missed lunch. A few hours ago, somebody had given him a cheese sandwich, which he had eaten without tasting it. There had been coffee. After the wrecks and the people had been carted off to Amsterdam, he had helped the traffic police clear the area.

  Afterward, back in Amsterdam, there had been forms to fill out.

  At no point did any of the five agents on the team—Veneman, the three others, or he himself—discuss the operation. No stories were swapped, no congratulations, just people doing their job. Like it had been nothing more than a trip to the zoo.

  Not even that.

  He knew why. He had had the same feeling after the assault on him and Van Gils. You had to deal with it by yourself. Talking about it wasn’t part of the culture. It wasn’t considered professional.

  The only thing you did was write it down in your report. Dead language, dead words. Dry, to the point, businesslike. Sentences, no feelings.

  He was glad he had left his gun at the office.

  51

  THE WOMAN IN ABSINTHE.

  Linda.

  As if she was waiting for him.

  But first Eekhaut had to get rid of what had bothered him during the day. Alcohol would be most useful in this process. It offered oblivion but not reassurance. After a day like this, he should have gone to his apartment, taken a shower, gone to bed. Tried to sleep away the tension. But it would probably have been a sleepless night. Instead, he had gone to his apartment, taken a shower, dressed in clean clothes, and left again.

  As if that had been a better idea.

  As if alcohol would help answering the questions and evading the answers. He knew better. Ten years ago, he had learned that lesson. Alcohol had no answers to give, and the questions became all the more painful to deal with. You poured the junk down your throat, and the poison remained in your head.

  But he had promised the woman—Linda—that he would come back, and yesterday he hadn’t been around.

  No phone number. No address. Only her first name.

  Absinthe. Not that he had gotten used to the taste. Foul drink, still. But it proved to be forgiving. It forgave him his shortcomings. He now better understood those Victorian outcasts and their efforts to get away from the parochialism of their contemporaries.

  He sat at one of the tables with a glass of the green spirit in front of him, the taste of danger and violence still in his mouth. And she sat at the other side of the same table, holding her glass with both hands, leaning over to him as if they had secrets to share, as if they had known each other for a long time. As if they had become familiar and were likely to share the most shameful secrets.

  “What have you been up to?” she asked. “You look like you …” She left whatever she was thinking unspoken. Maybe he had fallen down some stairs, or a hooker had been rough on him, or whatever.

  “Small misunderstanding with some people who disagreed with the law,” he said. “That’s why I wasn’t here yesterday. Short mission abroad. Your abroad, not mine. And this morning we had a problem with people who needed to speak to our witness urgently. Of course, we wouldn’t let them.”

  “Oh,” she said. Then it dawned on her. “The incident on the highway, down south. I saw it on the news.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you say so? What did you do to get the mafia behind you?”

  “It wasn’t the mafia. Not that it matters, though. We’re investigating a matter of political corruption.”

  “Tell me all about it,” she said. She wanted the unadorned truth.

  They all wanted to hear the real story whenever they got to talk to a police officer in private. It had happened to him before.

  “I can’t say much about it. A very sensitive matter. Some well-known people are involved. People in the business community and politics. And I’m already saying too much.”

  So much for discretion: he bared his soul to a woman he had met in a bar, told her what he did for a living, told her too much already about an ongoing case. This wasn’t good. But at least he seemed to have found an interested soul, and she made him forget all about Esther and twenty years of marriage and hot summer afternoons in the garden and a trip to Seville and long conversations about having children.

  She smiled. “I understand. I work for a large company that shall remain nameless. I often see and hear things that will never leave those offices, and I close my eyes and plug my ears. If I’m not discreet, I can’t do my job. At least not for this employer.”

  “I know,” he said. “Keeping eyes and ears shut. We’re all weak, in the end, and potentially corrupt.” He thought of Breukeling.

  “Are you?” she demanded.

  “What? Corrupt?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am each time I’m not able to solve a crime because I let my actions be dictated by others. I’m corrupt because I let people who have no moral or ethical values dictate my future. Or very few morals and values, at least. Isn’t that the common definition of corruption?”

  “There is only so much we can do,” she said. “And after that, well, it’s out of our hands. But it doesn’t have to mean you’re corrupt. I think you’re being too harsh with yourself.”

  “No, sometimes we can do more. And that’s why I’m not satisfied. Another drink?”

  “A fruit juice, if you please.”

  He got two fruit juices. “We can always do more,” he repeated.

  “Yeah, and risk being spat out by the system. After which we can do nothing anymore, not even the little things that mig
ht make a difference.”

  She knows exactly what I’m talking about, he thought. “Is that your experience?”

  She shook her head. “I too have secrets, Walter. I too need a sense of security. And I can’t find it anymore in the place where I work. If I ask you direct questions, will you answer them? Without holding back or without conditions?”

  “Without conditions?”

  “Yes.”

  “Depends on what these questions are.”

  “Without conditions, Mr. Policeman. Which means: any sort of question. Don’t bullshit me.”

  “In that case: no. No, I won’t answer your questions. Not without conditions.”

  “The same goes for me.”

  “Our situations are different.”

  “In what sense?”

  Eekhaut said, “I defend public interests. At least that’s what I am supposed to do. You don’t. You defend the interests of private capital, I assume. The interests of stockholders. Private shareholders, and not public. That’s the difference.”

  She thought about that. “Maybe you’re right. But we all need a sense of security, even if we don’t know where to find it. Maybe I’m not looking in the right spot.” She seemed amused. “What a random meeting in a bar can lead to! To really deep thinking!”

  “Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger because there’s no risk in damaging … a relationship. That’s why there are help lines for people who consider suicide. Talking to strangers. It’s sort of therapy.”

  “It is? But it precludes serious relationships.”

  “It does. But then, serious relationships are always on the brink of disaster, aren’t they?”

  “You’re always this serious when you drink absinthe? Good thing we switched to fruit juice.”