Absinthe

by Guido Eekhaut

  He put his hands on her shoulders. She stepped back and blindly sat down on the bed.

  Eekhaut squatted in front of her.

  “I’m really very sorry,” he said.

  “Do my parents know?”

  “No, probably not. We can’t let the details of the investigation leak out. So no, they have not been informed yet. When the prosecutor allows it, we can talk to them, as soon as possible. For what it’s worth, the murderer is dead. He was killed in the shoot-out. And we’re concentrating on the real conspirators.”

  “You’ll never get to them,” she said. “These people … Pieter knew them well enough. These people will never be caught. You saw what they’re capable of.”

  “Did Pieter understand the position he was in? The danger?”

  “I think he underestimated them. He didn’t assume he was in mortal danger, or that my life would be in danger. He didn’t. Would he have stolen the list if he’d realized what they would do? I don’t think so. But I’m not sure.”

  “We still have the list. But we’re under pressure to hand it back over to Van Tillo.”

  “Of course you are,” she said. “That’s how it works, doesn’t it? All those murders, the dead people. Evidence must disappear from your files. These are people with real power and influence.”

  “The world doesn’t belong to people like you and Pieter,” he admitted. “On occasion, we’re brutally reminded of that.”

  “What will happen to me?”

  “You know nothing. Almost nothing. That may keep you in the clear. The only one you can testify against was Parnow, and he’s dead. You have seen nothing, and you know nothing of his employers.”

  “Then why do I have to stay here if I’m not in danger?”

  “Just for a couple of days. We need to talk to you some more. Fill in more details.”

  “We are talking right now.”

  “This isn’t an official visit.”

  “Oh.”

  “What would Pieter have done with the list?”

  “Given it to a journalist.”

  “I assume so. Who?”

  “A newspaper that is critical of Van Tillo.”

  “I’m Flemish. I don’t know much about Dutch newspapers and their ideologies.”

  She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “Like Vrij Nederland, I guess.”

  “He knew somebody there?”

  “Pieter knew a lot of people.”

  “So he kept their coordinates on his phone.”

  “Didn’t need it. He knew who to talk to. He always knew where to find the right people. He didn’t need an address book.”

  “But you know nothing.”

  She shook her head. “I was with him for only a year. He often spoke about politics and his ideas and the things he was working on. But he used first names when speaking about his friends. If you want to make that list public, Inspector, you can make it easy on yourself. Take it to all the newspapers in this town, and enough people will want to publish it. Many of them are not happy with Van Tillo or the PDN.”

  “Except that I can’t make the list public.”

  “Of course you can. Things are always being copied. Enough machines to do that. Nobody knows anything. Nobody sees anything.”

  “And you?”

  “What about me?”

  “What would you do if you had the list?”

  “Oh,” she said. “I would know what to do with it. I just told you.”

  53

  “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” Dewaal asked. “You were supposed to interrogate Tarkovski. Or did I get that wrong?”

  “I’ll question Tarkovski right away,” Eekhaut said. He had passed Dewaal in the corridor by their offices. “I’ve been to see Eileen Calster.”

  “Really? In an official capacity? Did you file a demand for that, in triplicate and through the correct channels?”

  Eekhaut shook his head. “No to all those questions.” He wasn’t sure if she was serious.

  She snorted. “Way out of line! Again, I need to fill in a stack of forms, all about you. You have no idea how much trouble you cause. Witnesses are only to be questioned officially, with a second officer present. By the book, Walter. By the goddamn book. I thought you had understood that much by now, didn’t you?”

  He was going to say take it easy boss, no harm done. But he didn’t. He insisted, “She really needed to talk, nothing more. She needed human contact. Jesus, I can’t believe I’m actually arguing with you on this subject.”

  She raised her voice. “You seem to be the one who’s in need of a real conversation. But that’s no excuse for what you did.”

  She looked angry, but not because of his little indiscretion. Not because of the paperwork. He was sure it had to do with her family. Something that was bothering her personally. She was the one in need of an intimate talk, unburdening herself. But that wasn’t going to happen.

  Or was there another problem, an official one? Had she been reprimanded?

  He gazed at his watch. “Lunch?” he proposed. It was still early, but a longer lunch break would be a good idea. She had earned it, he felt. They both had.

  She seemed surprised. “Lunch? Here?”

  “No, bloody not here. Somewhere outside. It’s not raining, we can sit on a terrace somewhere. These are probably the last remaining nice days before winter arrives. And a talk, that will do both of us a lot of good. Trust me.”

  Yes, she had to trust him.

  She shrugged and gave in, but not without effort. “Let’s do it, then.”

  They left the building and walked down the street and found the terrace of an Italian restaurant with little cloth-covered tables on the sidewalk. A sign displayed the menu and the specials.

  “There should be more of these terraces in Amsterdam,” he said. “Large enough terraces for tables and chairs. In Leuven we have—”

  “I’ve seen enough of Leuven.”

  “You’ve seen nothing. A street, the interior of a hotel, and the face of the local prosecutor. We have to go back, on our own time. It’s a great little town in the right season with lots of beautiful young people. With pubs, restaurants, terraces, small streets with people drinking and eating, all spring and summer long. The true Burgundian life Flanders is so famous for.”

  “Oh,” she said, “that’s what we hear all the time about your people. Your leisurely mode de vie. Your famous laid-back atmosphere. Good food, beer, and wine. People enjoy life, much more than we here in the north. Me, I’m not buying it. There’s no place comparable to Amsterdam. Excuse my chauvinism.”

  She peered at her phone.

  “Expecting trouble?” He wanted to know everything about her problems, but a white-aproned waiter approached and asked to take their orders. They both chose seafood salads and beer.

  “My mother,” she finally said. “She’s dependent on me, and in an advanced state of dementia. Sometimes she remembers who I am, but most of the time I’m just another face to her. She thinks she’s twenty and the war just broke out.”

  “How old is your mother?”

  “Eighty-two.”

  “She can’t remember the war. How come your mother is that old?”

  “My mother was six when the war broke out. She was ten by the time Holland was liberated. That much is still very clear to her. She lived in a small village in the north for her entire life. Never went anywhere. Now she lives in an institution just outside Amsterdam. She remembers things from during the occupation. She gets things mixed up. She also has these … delusions. The doctors tell me it’s irreversible. And about me having an older mother: she was forty when I was born. None of your business, by the way. My sister—she had two daughters—is a lot older than I.”

  “Oh,” he said. He was saved any further embarrassment by the waiter, bringing the beer.

  “Sometimes she doesn’t recognize anybody at all. Not me, not the nurses. She doesn’t know where she is, doesn’t know who the other patients are. Can you imagine? Livi
ng in a world that has no meaning anymore. Where every experience is absolutely new. Would you be able to live like that?”

  “And you take care of her.”

  “I would, but I can’t. The staff at the home she’s in is too small, so they occasionally expect family members to help out. I can’t. Not with my job. I can’t make time for her. Sometimes when there’s a crisis—when she’s having a crisis—they call me.”

  “Any other relatives?”

  “None. Except my sister, and she still lives in the north, with her husband. Young Prinsen’s parents. My father died a long time ago. Any other member of my family is very distant, in all meanings of the word.”

  “So you’re alone in the world.”

  “Yes, in a way I guess I am.”

  “And frightened every time your phone rings.”

  She looked at him, probably wondering if it was a good idea, confiding in him like this. About her family and her personal affairs. But she had already come this far. “That’s about it, yes. I even have a separate ringtone for the institution. I feel like I’m awaiting her death. She’s eighty-two. This should not have happened.”

  Time to change the subject, he felt. Something else had been bugging him for a while now. Something he had to bring to her attention. “Are you still convinced there’s a leak in your department?”

  She put down her knife and fork and wiped her mouth with the paper napkin. Then she took a drink of beer. “Yes,” she said. “Too much confidential information finds its way into the world. It’s spooky, sometimes. And even while we’re eating and chatting here, I’m not sure we’re not being recorded or anything. There’s a lot of things going on I seem to have no control over.”

  “And your office?”

  “A lot of security measures were taken right after I arrived, but who guards the guards? There’s all the other organizations that concern themselves with bits and pieces of national security, up to and including military intelligence. They usually have technology equivalent to ours, if not better. I can’t guarantee that all my people are trustworthy. I can’t guarantee they’re not corrupt. Sometimes a politician inquires about details of an ongoing case, details he’s not supposed to know anything about, and he won’t tell me who whispered in his ear. Yes, we’ve got leaks.”

  “It is entirely possible that Van Tillo—”

  “You’d do better not to use that name in public, Walter. Not even on a terrace in Amsterdam. Some subjects are taboo. Not long ago, she was minister of justice. She still has friends in that department. And elsewhere. A lot of people think as she does. Holland is no longer the friendly, open country it once used to be. Hasn’t been for some time now.”

  “Neither is Belgium.”

  “No. The score isn’t good.”

  “Question is, can you trust me?”

  “We’ve been here before. This question, I mean.”

  “Yes, but has the question been adequately answered?”

  “You need that in writing? Well, here it is. You wouldn’t be here if you were corrupt. You would still be in Belgium, and you’d be a commissioner yourself. They wouldn’t have sent you off to Holland if you had many good friends in high places.”

  “That’s your norm? I’m a failure, and so you can trust me?”

  “Yes, that’s about it.”

  “You’re weird, boss.”

  She smiled. And he didn’t know what to think of that smile.

  When he got back to his office, someone had dropped all of Tarkovski’s material on his desk. A MacBook, a dozen memory sticks, an external hard drive, and three cardboard boxes with paper files.

  He had expected more paper, but even these Russians had entered the digital age.

  “Do I have to go through all this?” he asked.

  But there was no one to answer the question. So he sat down. Opened the MacBook and switched it on. Someone had left him the password on a yellow Post-it. Nice set of icons at the bottom of the screen, ready to play games with him. He entered Tarkovski’s virtual space and encountered at once the main problem: everything was in Russian.

  Of course it was in Russian.

  He had a look at what was on the sticks.

  More Russian.

  Graphs, images, lists.

  All in the unreadable Cyrillic alphabet.

  He needed a translator. But that would take forever.

  He grabbed the phone. He was going to ask some technical expert to have a closer look at the innards of the computer and look for hidden files.

  54

  HENDRIKA VAN TILLO LOVED meetings. She loved encountering her supporters, people with similar ideas to her own, people who would follow her blindly. That’s what the whole political circus was about: manifesting herself in public. She didn’t like closed meetings with her staff, and she certainly didn’t like the political arena of the Parliament. She loved the street, and the street loved her back.

  People shouting, the intensity, the rush, the crowds, the smell of sweat. She loved it. It was something animal. It told her things would be OK for Holland, as long as people wanted to see her, listen to her. Listen to her ideas.

  A few journalists had posed critical questions. About immigration and about citizens of foreign descent. About the political solutions the PDN stood for. What to do with those people of foreign background who had been here for so long, who had a Dutch passport, or those who had assimilated, even if their papers weren’t in order? What to do with problems in the ethnic neighborhoods and with unemployed youngsters? How to deal with the economic problems, unemployment, the chasm between the poor and the very rich? Would she want to be a member of the government again? What would she do at the next election?

  She didn’t like that. Those questions.

  She could handle the press. She had her answers ready. Stock answers, mostly. The journalists were never happy with those answers, but so what?

  Who is the main financier of your party, Ms. Van Tillo? Why does your party not publicly discuss its funding? How much money does your party have?

  Those questions she would not answer. Or she would become angry. Don’t get angry, Vanheul had warned her, because when they see your reaction, they’ll want to know more. They knew when something interesting was in sight. But she would ignore Vanheul. Who was chairperson of the Party after all? She had to deal with the answers. In her own way.

  “Did we finally get that list back?” she asked him. It was the only real question on her mind right now. At least none of the journalists had asked about the list.

  “The AIVD has it,” he said. “That’s the latest, as far as I know. A lot has happened after the business on the highway. A lot of people are worried. Still, no one has connected the dots. Nothing points to us yet. We’ll deal with the AIVD if need be, Hendrika.”

  “I want to see Monet, Kees. Set up a meeting. At once.”

  He had expected that. She wanted to speak to Monet. Monet, on the other hand, was not interested in speaking to her. Not after the botched abduction. But he would speak with her. He had no choice. There were obligations. Mutual obligations.

  And, of course, his name was on that list.

  55

  TARKOVSKI’S ENGLISH WAS ACCEPTABLE. Neither his grammar nor his pronunciation was very good, but it would do.

  Problem was, he didn’t want to talk. Not in English and not in any other language.

  This time, Eekhaut mused, I’m going to do this by the book. As Dewaal wanted. A second officer present and a sound recording made. Prinsen was the other officer. The young man stood by the door, patient, arms folded, giving Eekhaut the space to develop his strategy.

  Develop his strategy. This was what Eekhaut had in mind.

  Although he didn’t have much of a strategy.

  “Who was Parnow?” he demanded. He sat in front of the young Russian, whose face had been marked by the incident on the highway. I don’t look undamaged myself, Eekhaut thought, but at least neither do you. One of Tarkovski’s eyes was mo
re or less completely swollen shut, he had cuts on his cheeks and forehead, and one hand was bandaged. The cavalry had been a bit rough with him.

  It didn’t matter. It did for Tarkovski, but Eekhaut didn’t give a damn.

  It offered him the opportunity to play the Good Cop.

  “They didn’t exactly treat you nicely, did they,” he said. This time a reaction came. Tarkovski blinked.

  Good, Eekhaut thought. The subject is alive. We’re getting somewhere. Not far yet, but it’s a start.

  “As I see it, you’re here only to handle your boss’s finances. You’re a glorified bookkeeper, that’s all you damn well are. You lead his Dutch office. You are a graduate of Saint Petersburg University, you’re from a decent family, no criminal background. How did you get involved with these gangsters?”

  Tarkovski said nothing. He didn’t even look at Eekhaut. The wall and the ceiling held more interest for him than the somewhat damaged police officer.

  Eekhaut observed the young Russian’s body language. He had used the voice of reason. Some fell for that. The really hardened criminals did not, of course. They laughed at him and his reasonable voice. But Tarkovski was no hardened criminal. He wasn’t any kind of criminal. Not in Eekhaut’s book.

  He had, however, chosen the wrong friends.

  “I’m returning to my previous question. Who’s Parnow? One thing he’s not: a friend of yours. Clearly not. I refuse to believe you have friends like Parnow. That you mix with that sort of company. At least not voluntarily. A young fellow like yourself shouldn’t have that sort of friend.”

  “He is no friend,” Tarkovski said, and he cast a quick glance at Prinsen, by the door.

  Good, Eekhaut mused. A reaction. Four words. Conversation would be a bit easier after this. “Your name is Andreï, isn’t it? Do you mind if I use your first name? Makes talking easier.”

  Tarkovski shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “That’s right,” Eekhaut said, “whatever. I can do whatever I want in here. You, on the other hand, can do nothing at all. You’re under arrest. For a number of crimes. You can do nothing but wait for your trial and hope the judge hears a few arguments in your favor and doesn’t give you a long sentence. Not something like, for instance, ten years. Imagine ten years in the presence of the likes of Parnow. The whole time, day in and day out. I don’t want to think about it. Neither do you. You won’t be safe, not for one minute. And certainly not when they find out who you work for. As for me, that’s an entirely different matter. I’ll walk out of here and go to a movie or the park, and I’ll meet my girlfriend. And we’ll go to my apartment and fuck our brains out. Maybe after that I’ll enjoy a long vacation, somewhere without a winter. All of the things that you’ll have to do without. For ten years. Or for a shorter period, depending on what you tell me.”