The Wrong Girl

by David Hewson

  ‘I’m not a wealthy man. Whatever people say. The army never paid well. The family name’s just that. A name.’

  There was the briefest of smiles. She was thin, still pretty and there was a strength inside this fragile facade. He’d seen that from the outset.

  ‘I’m leaving Henk,’ she said. ‘We need somewhere to live. Saskia and me. I don’t have anyone else to turn to. You’ve all that room.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘You want me to help you abandon my son?’

  ‘Lucas! I can’t stay in that house with him! Not after this.’

  ‘Henk loves you. He loves Saskia. I won’t be a party to breaking up my own family.’

  ‘If he loves me why does he go and have sex with prostitutes behind a curtain in the street?’

  He waved her away.

  ‘Enough. Forgiveness takes time. It’s important to work on it. You know my opinion.’

  He got up and paid the bill for both of them. She followed him to the door and grabbed his arm.

  ‘Lucas . . .’

  ‘If I may drag you away from your battered pride for a moment and ask a question,’ he cut in sourly. ‘Can’t you see Henk needs you? Now more than ever? Or do you believe you’re the only one in the world capable of feeling a little pain?’

  ‘A little pain?’ she echoed, then swore at him and that was a first. ‘Do I get some money from you or not?’

  ‘In return for what?’ he demanded. ‘Nothing comes for free.’

  She squinted at him in disbelief.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want you to give Henk a second chance. If I pay up for this insane pipe dream will you do that for me?’

  She stared at him.

  ‘Is that meant to include sleeping with him too? Because if it does . . .’

  ‘You’re man and wife! That comes with duties and responsibilities. To one another. To Saskia.’

  ‘Jesus . . . I don’t believe . . .’

  ‘If I match your money will you at least give him the opportunity to put things right? And get off his back for a while?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘You can say no. Lose your marriage. Your daughter. Your home. This madcap scheme to help some prostitute you don’t even know . . . There’s your choice.’

  She thought for a moment.

  ‘Very well. I’ll do it. I think we can raise thirty thousand on our own. I expect you can double that, can’t you?’

  ‘Tell me when you need it.’

  Kuyper watched her stamp off down the street in her expensive winter coat.

  Who paid for that? he wondered. Did she ever even ask herself?

  When she was gone he strode to the edge of the canal and found a quiet spot. Called, got through on the second ring.

  ‘What the hell are we going to do about this bloody mess?’ he demanded. And waited for an answer.

  Ferdi Pijpers’s home was a spotless, bare studio in the basement of a run-down block in one of Oud-West’s less salubrious streets. Social housing for the impoverished. The place had a single bed, a table, two chairs, a few pots, pans and plates, not much else.

  The night team had been scouring the room. Two forensic officers were still tramping around in bunny suits. Van der Berg was with them looking faintly ridiculous inside the white plastic.

  One of the forensics glanced at Bakker when she turned up and said she didn’t need to join them in the protective clothing.

  ‘We’re just about done here,’ the woman added. ‘Not a lot to see.’

  They’d found one more weapon, an old handgun, and some ammunition. Probably stolen from the army.

  Van der Berg climbed out of his suit and asked if she wanted to go and get four coffees from the place round the corner.

  ‘Not really,’ she said.

  He looked her up and down.

  ‘I’ll get them then,’ Van der Berg replied and walked out of the room.

  The two scene of crime officers shuffled on their plasticized feet. Bakker asked what they’d found. Not much. The neighbours barely knew Pijpers who’d been placed in the flat by a military charity. From the contents of the kitchen it appeared he lived off ham, eggs and beer.

  She pulled on a pair of disposable gloves, went to the sideboard by the bed and opened the top drawer.

  ‘We’ve done that already,’ the woman officer said.

  ‘Good,’ Bakker noted and rifled through the old clothes, underpants, socks, sweatshirts, found nothing.

  The next drawer down had much of the same. And the third.

  ‘The most interesting thing we’ve got is this,’ the woman added.

  She went to a police storage box and pulled out a small photo in a frame, now enclosed in a plastic evidence bag. Bakker took it out and found herself staring at a picture of a young boy in scruffy clothes, perhaps seven or eight. He had olive skin and a gap-toothed smile. Behind him was desert with a big khaki military vehicle manoeuvring in the half-distance, throwing up dust.

  Van der Berg came back with the coffee and placed four cardboard cups on the table. She didn’t touch hers.

  ‘Afghanistan,’ he said. ‘Rijnder got the story out of the army overnight. The boy was an orphan that the camp kind of adopted. He lived with them. Used to run errands. They were teaching him Dutch and English.’

  He swigged at his coffee.

  ‘Pijpers looked after the kid apparently. He wanted to get permission to bring him here. He said it wasn’t safe to leave him behind. Not after he’d lived in the camp and learned the language. The bosses said no.’

  She knew what was coming.

  ‘And?’

  ‘One afternoon he wandered out of the compound and never came back. They found him a couple of kilometres away two days later. You don’t want the details.’ More coffee. It looked as if he needed it. ‘Ferdi Pijpers went crazy. Accused the commanding officer of abandoning the lad. Next thing he’s out of the army and back here trying to live on a pathetic pension.’

  Van der Berg took the photo and put it back in the evidence bag. He didn’t bother to pull on gloves. Perhaps there was no point. It was obvious what had happened here. A sick ex-soldier had come back full of hate. Seen what was happening with Alamy. Decided to take it out on the preacher. And perhaps Holland too.

  ‘The fool didn’t do that Georgian kid any favours,’ the forensic woman grumbled.

  ‘Ferdi Pijpers was crazy,’ Van der Berg remarked. ‘Don’t look at someone like that for logic. And we made him that way’ He stabbed his chest with a forefinger. ‘Us.’

  Silence then. A little embarrassed by his outburst Van der Berg asked if there was any news from Marnixstraat.

  ‘Not that I know,’ Bakker replied. ‘But then I only know what I’m told. Which isn’t much.’

  ‘Laura . . . we could all just buy badges, print “I apologize” on the front and stick them on our chests if you like. Would that help?’

  She laughed. Bakker liked this funny, decent man.

  ‘It might. Sorry. I just feel . . . out of things somehow. Am I a pain?’

  ‘On occasion.’

  The two socos were packing up.

  ‘Is that it?’ she asked. ‘A photo of a dead boy? Is that all we know?’

  The woman went to the box and pulled out a bigger evidence bag. Inside was an old and heavy laptop.

  ‘It’s got a password. We need to hand it over to technical. Maybe they can get inside.’

  ‘Can I see?’

  The forensic officer muttered something but put the computer on the table anyway. With her gloved fingers Bakker took it out of the bag and turned it upside down. The battery was missing. There was a power cable still plugged into the wall socket by the table. Ignoring the groans from the soco she attached it and hit the power key.

  The log-on screen came up after a long wait and lots of whirring.

  ‘Like we said,’ the other forensic officer announced, ‘it’s got a password on it. We hand these things
over to technical. They can deal with it.’

  Bakker clicked on the button marked ‘Password hint’.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ the man moaned.

  They all looked at what came up next. A very long reminder. One line that said, ‘Unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’

  Bakker thought of her Sunday school classes. The quote was from Matthew if she remembered correctly. Ferdi Pijpers must have had a religious upbringing too.

  ‘What was the boy called?’ she asked. ‘The Afghan kid?’

  Van der Berg checked his notes.

  ‘Farshad. We checked with one of the translators. Apparently it means happy.’

  She typed in the name.

  Farshad.

  Nothing.

  ‘This is ludicrous,’ the forensic woman murmured. ‘I want that thing now. It’s going to people who know what they’re doing.’

  FARSHAD.

  One last try.

  farshad

  The screen cleared.

  The desktop came up.

  Her fingers flew across the keyboard.

  ‘We’re in,’ Bakker said.

  De Groot’s office. The commissaris, Vos and Mirjam Fransen sat uneasily, aware Hanna Bublik was on her way. Coffee and biscuits on the table. No one touching them.

  Vos checked his watch. Just over seven hours now before the old Samsung in his pocket rang again. This was going to be delicate. He’d discussed the approach with De Groot. Fransen would have to OK any ransom bid. They had to wait until she’d got through what she wanted to say.

  She’d turned up pink-eyed and pale. Much of the night had been spent dealing with Thom Geerts’s family. He was separated from his wife. They had two kids, ten and twelve. The wife hated the service, blaming it for the failure of her marriage. Geerts’s murder was one more thing to lay at AIVD’s door.

  ‘We’re all shocked,’ De Groot said. ‘If there’s anything we can do . . .’

  ‘Such as what?’ she cut in sharply.

  ‘Such as anything,’ De Groot added and caught Vos’s eye with a look that said: I had to offer.

  They went through the file on Ferdi Pijpers. He was, as he’d told Koeman, ex-military intelligence. At one time he’d been a liaison officer with AIVD. But the contact was minimal and came to an end when he got bounced out of the service.

  ‘There’s no reason we should have had him under surveillance,’ Fransen added.

  ‘None at all that I can see,’ Vos agreed.

  She stared at him.

  ‘He was in here yesterday. He spoke to one of your officers.’

  De Groot took care of that. Koeman had acted properly, he insisted. The man had made vague racist comments, the kind of thing officers got all the time on the street. There’d been no reason to take him seriously.

  Mirjam Fransen nodded and stayed quiet.

  ‘We haven’t heard anything about wiretaps on Henk Kuyper,’ Vos said. ‘I asked for that yesterday. We’re still unhappy about his movements in Leidseplein. His radical sympathies. This business with the kid’s jacket . . .’

  ‘I’ve got a colleague to bury,’ Fransen interjected. ‘A bereaved family to deal with. An internal investigation of my own. This bastard Barbone on the loose. I don’t have time to piss around bugging people like him. His father was a senior officer in the army for God’s sake. It was his kid who nearly got snatched . . .’

  ‘Nearly,’ Vos repeated. ‘A phone tap can rule him out. I’ll fix it.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Not in something like this. It has to come through us. We were chasing big fish here. Now I’ve got nothing except a dead officer.’

  He waited. That was it.

  ‘Barbone . . . whoever he is . . . he’s your business,’ Vos went on. ‘The rest’s a straight criminal case. One solved murder. One kidnapped kid.’

  She shot him a vicious look.

  ‘Don’t be naive. We’re talking terrorism. I’ve got the ministry and all manner of people in The Hague on my back right now. When I get a break I’ll see what I can do.’

  There was a knock on the door. One of the uniform women officers came in and said Hanna Bublik had arrived.

  Fransen glared at them both in turn.

  ‘You’re not offering any ransom. I won’t allow it.’

  ‘Fine,’ De Groot said. ‘Let’s see you tell her that to her face.’

  The one who brought her food this time was new. Skinny, short, dim, she thought. Barely spoke Dutch. He looked scared and muttered to himself in a language Natalya couldn’t identify.

  He had a pack of orange juice, a pastry and a carton of milk. And the grubby pink pony jacket. He watched her put that on then emptied the bucket and fetched a bowl with hot water, soap and a towel.

  She looked more closely at him then. He was like one of the older brothers who came to pick up the little kids at school. In his teens, no more. Dark eyes, clean smooth skin. She was starting to feel detached from the world beyond the blacked-out window. It felt important that she try to work to stay close to the idea she’d rejoin it before long. One way was wondering about her mother. Worrying what she’d think. Trying to imagine what she’d be doing.

  She had no friends. At least Natalya had a couple at school. Little Ollie, the funny kid whose mother was on her own, working the night life too. Tom, the serious one, who always told her off if she didn’t eat the muck they handed out to the poor kids for free at lunchtime.

  Boys. She always preferred them. The girls seemed weak, frightened or just plain silly. They liked to gossip about clothes and other kids in school. To form alliances and start vendettas. To scuttle round the playground whispering about the latest girl they hated.

  Her, sometimes.

  That was how it went. She was foreign. They had no money, no nice clothes. Her mother did some kind of job Natalya dimly understood. It involved things, secret things, that were both necessary and wrong. Accepted by the city. Welcomed by a few of the men she’d seen come round, knock on the front door, whisper words that always seemed to be accompanied by a flash of money. And then her mother would say sorry, leave for half an hour or so. Come back looking happy and sad at the same time.

  This life set them apart. Even serious Tom, whose mum was a teacher at the school, on her own, kind, a little severe sometimes, seemed to go home to a different world to the one she knew. But that was the way it had always been. They’d been alone for as long as she knew, travelling, fleeing, rushing out penniless into the night. Life wasn’t going to change. Not quickly.

  On top of which she was getting bored.

  Natalya looked at the skinny kid watching her eat breakfast and asked, ‘What’s your name?’

  Just the sound of her voice seemed to affect him.

  ‘What’s that got to do with you?’ he asked in a gruff, odd voice.

  ‘Being friendly.’

  ‘You don’t need my name. You’re in jail here. People in jail don’t ask things.’

  They’d double-taped the box on the wall so she couldn’t mess with the light switch any more.

  ‘You only go to jail if you’ve done something wrong,’ Natalya told him. She pointed a tiny finger across the room. ‘That’s you. Not me.’

  Scared. She could see it.

  ‘Can I get a book?’ she asked. ‘Some crayons. I want to draw something.’

  ‘Draw what?’

  He wasn’t going anywhere either.

  ‘I could draw you. Even if you won’t tell me your name.’

  He laughed then. Big teeth, a little yellow, gap at the front. She felt her head was a camera sometimes. It memorized everything she saw.

  ‘Little girl can draw?’

  ‘Can if I have the stuff.’

  He got up and climbed the stairs. Five minutes later he was back with a plastic bag. Red dragon on the side. A sketchbook and a pack of cheap crayons.

  ‘Make me look good,’ he said.

  Sh
e took out a black crayon and a red one. Quickly drew something on the first page and showed him.

  It was a crude animal. A big dog. A wolf maybe. Red eyes, red claws, red teeth in a big leering grin.

  He laughed and something about the way he did that made her smile too.

  ‘Knew you were rubbish,’ he said. ‘Little girls.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Long way away. Place called Anadolu.’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘Here they call it Anatolia. The Dutch get everything wrong.’

  She drew something else too. Something he didn’t see.

  ‘You?’ he asked.

  ‘Nowhere,’ Natalya Bublik said.

  He didn’t like that answer.

  ‘Everyone comes from somewhere.’

  She didn’t answer. Didn’t take any notice. Her head was over the book, crayons out, four in the crevices of her fingers of her left hand. Busy.

  He soon got bored watching her.

  ‘Girls,’ he said and left her on her own in the semi-dark of the damp, chill cellar.

  Natalya looked at what she’d scribbled. It was a Black Pete. Not bad either. And underneath the word ‘Anatolia’ in clear, careful letters.

  Her mother liked to watch her mess with crayons. She said that was a talent she’d got from her father. Not from her. She had a joke. One thing she could draw, she said. A black cat at night. And then she’d scribble out a square in black pen. Nothing but ink. And they’d laugh.

  Tears then. She wiped them away quickly, hating herself for the way they’d crept up without warning.

  Then she looked under the bed and found the things she’d hidden the night before.

  The knives. The saw. The chisels and the screwdrivers.

  If the big man saw this it would be trouble again. He was strong, brutal. She recognized that look. He could do worse than take away the stupid pink jacket.

  But a little kid from Anatolia . . .

  She picked up the biggest knife of all and gingerly ran her finger along the edge.

  The tiniest line of blood appeared and she had to stifle a whimper.

  Sharp.

  Vos ran through where they were with the search for Natalya, leaving that morning’s message till the last. Hanna Bublik listened carefully. Sceptically. When he was finished she said, ‘They know where you live, Vos?’