The Wrong Girl

by David Hewson

  ‘Don’t you want to know?’ he asked.

  ‘Know what?’

  She was outside somewhere. He could hear voices. Traffic. Even the sound of a bike bell.

  ‘What we found?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘A little girl. A sick girl. Someone was hiding her. There were family problems. They didn’t want us to know.’

  Silence.

  ‘Why did you leave, Hanna?’

  ‘Because I can’t sit around doing nothing. That suitcase, Vos. Did you really think it would fool anyone?’

  A good question.

  ‘It might have fooled them long enough for us to find her.’

  ‘And did they call?’

  ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘How about you?’

  It was out in the open now. And he was glad of that.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she answered and finished the call.

  He hadn’t noticed Bakker slide out of the house and stand next to him, leaning against the wall, arms folded.

  ‘We need to follow her,’ she said. ‘I’ll fix surveillance.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pieter!’

  Vos rarely lost his temper. It was close now. The fact they’d chased Khaled for no good reason. The sick girl in the basement. Hanna Bublik loose, on her own again.

  He jabbed a finger in her face.

  ‘I said no, Laura. And tell no one I had that conversation. Understood? Otherwise . . .’

  He paused.

  ‘Otherwise what?’ she asked.

  The specialist team were looking at the broken door. Surly and embarrassed. As if this was all Vos’s fault.

  ‘I’ve seen enough here,’ he said and wondered where he’d find a cab.

  Up the stairs. Into the street. Cold rain spat on her young face. It felt like freedom.

  Cobblestones shining with the mirrored reflections of restaurant neon, red and green, blue and yellow. Foreign faces looking at her, saying things in foreign tongues.

  Natalya Bublik ached for her mother, craved a way to find her.

  Run.

  But which way?

  The alley had an exotic smell, of food and spices. Lacquered ducks hung from hooks in windows like strangled ornaments. Next to them pieces of meat she couldn’t begin to identify. Guts and fat, livid on cruel and shiny spikes.

  Run.

  She turned right, started. A big shape blocked the way.

  Looked up. Saw a face smiling at her. A hand extending down.

  ‘Come, little girl,’ the man said, beaming. ‘Let’s find your mummy, shall we?’

  His hand was the colour of the dead, mangled ducks across the road. But she took it anyway and when she did his fist closed on her tiny fingers and his free hand closed round the collar of her filthy pink jacket.

  The smile grew broader.

  She knew then she was lost.

  ‘Come,’ he said, no warmth in his voice now.

  Dragged her back to the steps, Natalya screaming all the way.

  The men across the street turned and stared at the windows. The strung-up carcasses. Their reflections in the glass.

  Back down the cold stone steps. The door slammed behind them.

  The boy from Anadolu was at the bottom holding his leg, whimpering.

  More afraid of the man than the wound she’d slashed into his flesh.

  Outside a tune struck up from somewhere. Loud pop music streaming out of a cafe maybe. She wondered why. If whoever did that knew something. Had got a message from the big man, understood what was required.

  ‘Sit, Natalya,’ he said and shoved her onto the low, small bed. ‘Sit and watch.’

  Then turned to the dumb teenager who was supposed to keep her trapped here, lost and hidden underneath the city’s blind, chill streets.

  It took a moment for her to understand about the music. Then it came.

  He needed something to hide the screams.

  Bakker followed him to the cab and pushed her way in before he could close the door. They went to Marnixstraat in silence, his choice not hers, through streets crowded with holiday shoppers.

  When they got to the station he strode to the interview room where they were supposed to be keeping Hanna Bublik. Told Koeman to deal with the suitcase, the real money, the counterfeit notes, the pointless technology they’d sewn into the seams.

  Then pocketed the Samsung for no good reason and went round to the morgue to see if Aisha and her phone geek Thijs had got anywhere with the search for the memory card from Ferdi Pijpers’s phone.

  ‘De Groot really wants to see you,’ Koeman said on the way. ‘He’s very pissed off. I think that Fransen woman’s been giving him hell.’

  ‘Frank can wait.’

  Aisha and the phone geek had been through all Pijpers’s belongings. Found nothing at all.

  ‘Let me look,’ Bakker said and started to sift through the bloody clothes they’d taken from the dead man in the hospital.

  ‘Vos . . .’ Koeman began.

  ‘AIVD wiped his phone,’ Bakker cut in, as she went through Pijpers’s jacket. ‘God knows what else they’ve been playing at while we try to find that girl.’

  ‘They’d say they were doing their job,’ the detective snapped back.

  ‘I’m sure they would,’ Vos agreed.

  Aisha again. ‘You’re sure there was a memory card?’

  Thijs nodded.

  ‘Unless he took it out just before he got shot. If there was something incriminating he’d hide it, wouldn’t he?’

  Bakker had found a tobacco tin.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ Koeman grumbled. ‘He wanted to smoke that stinking thing in reception when he came in yesterday. Got all uppity when I said he couldn’t.’

  ‘Pipes,’ Bakker said. ‘My uncle Kees used to smoke a meerschaum.’ She sniffed the tin. ‘I liked it when I was little.’

  ‘That’s because you were a kid,’ Koeman said. ‘You didn’t know any better.’

  She gave him a caustic look, opened the tin, smelled the tobacco. It was strong. The earthy aroma drifted over the hot, busy room.

  Bakker took out a packet of cigarette papers and held it up.

  ‘Why does a man who smokes a pipe need these?’

  ‘Maybe he does roll-ups?’ Aisha suggested, making a gesture with her fingers. ‘You know . . .’

  ‘Not with pipe tobacco,’ Vos said.

  Bakker opened up the little slit through which the slim papers emerged. Then she retrieved a tiny plastic sleeve from inside.

  ‘Hallelujah,’ Thijs said and took it deftly from her, removed his glasses, looked at it close up. ‘Two gigs. Old. But this is a micro SD card.’ He pulled an adapter from his jacket pocket. ‘Anyone want to take a look.’

  They walked over to the nearest PC. Frank de Groot marched in and told Vos he wanted a word.

  ‘In a minute,’ Vos replied.

  ‘Did I say I wanted a word in a minute?’ the commissaris growled.

  Thijs popped the card into the computer and started to work the keyboard.

  ‘Now,’ De Groot repeated.

  Vos didn’t move. He joined the rest of them crowded round the monitor. De Groot’s voice went up a couple of tones. Got louder too.

  ‘These are the pictures,’ Aisha said. ‘The ones we got on thumbnail.’

  ‘Dead right,’ Thijs agreed. ‘Taken on Saturday. Some of them at two in the afternoon. Some of them at four. Look. You can see the light’s dying.’

  Vos stared at the images coming up on the screen.

  ‘To hell with the light,’ Bakker said. ‘Who’s on it?’

  The commissaris barged into them and told Aisha and her friend to get out of the room.

  Her dark eyes lit up with anger.

  ‘But. But—’

  ‘Leave now,’ he ordered. ‘You’re done for today. Shift over. Be gone.’

  Koeman was shuffling on his shoes looking scared and uncomfortable.

  ‘You too,’ De Groot add
ed and the man left in an instant.

  Bakker went to the keyboard.

  ‘Leave that,’ he ordered. ‘I want to know what happened at this Khaled’s place. What the hell you were doing there.’

  Vos told him.

  ‘We didn’t have anything else to chase, Frank. That call wasn’t coming in. We knew . . . or at least we thought we knew . . . there was something suspicious going on there.’

  ‘Am I just here to sign off your time sheets? Didn’t I deserve to be told?’

  ‘You weren’t around. There was a decision to be made. I made it.’

  ‘And we’ve nothing left now? No clue why this bastard didn’t call? What he’s up to?’

  Vos patted the keyboard and said, ‘We’ve got this, haven’t we?’

  Without waiting to hear more Laura Bakker pulled up the pictures, went through them one by one.

  The newest, from four o’clock came up first. Martin Bowers, Mujahied Bouali, no Black Pete costume this time. Just a pale-faced young man with a scrappy ginger beard standing in the shadows somewhere. Talking to . . . no being talked at . . . by a big, intimidating individual in a long grey coat.

  Thom Geerts. Unmistakable.

  ‘Christ,’ Laura Bakker murmured. ‘He’s showing him something. Look. There’s a bag.’

  A big bag. The kind people used for camping equipment. Even from this distance the young Englishman looked scared as he peeked inside.

  Then the next frame. Geerts holding something that looked much like a canister grenade.

  De Groot didn’t say anything as she skipped through the shots.

  ‘Who the hell’s that?’ Bakker asked when she came across the other figure. ‘I don’t know him. Shall I put this through to intelligence?’

  ‘You don’t need to,’ the commissaris said.

  ‘But . . .’

  Vos put his hand on hers to stop it on the keys.

  ‘That’s Lucas Kuyper,’ he said. ‘Henk’s father.’

  ‘The soldier?’ she asked. ‘The one who got into all that trouble in Bosnia?’

  De Groot walked to the computer and pulled out the memory card then, while the machine was bleating, stuffed it into his pocket.

  ‘You need to leave us now,’ he said. ‘I want a word with Vos.’

  ‘Fine, fine.’ She was thinking. ‘Do you want me to put together a team and pick him up? We should pull in Mirjam Fransen too. Geerts worked for her. She must have—’

  ‘Officer,’ De Groot barked. ‘The door. Now. You tell no one what you saw here. No one. Do I make myself clear?’

  Laura Bakker was almost as tall as him. She shook her head, hands on hips, and glared at him.

  ‘Not exactly. This is all we’ve got. You want me to forget about it?’

  He was getting red in the face. The walrus moustache was twitching.

  ‘What I want . . .’

  Vos intervened, put a gentle hand to her back, pushed her towards the door.

  ‘Pieter,’ she whispered. ‘What the hell is going on here?’

  ‘Just . . .’

  He tried to usher her out.

  ‘You never wanted me on this case, did you? Not you. Not . . .’ Her eyes flashed towards the big man in the dark suit by the PC. ‘Him either. What they . . .’

  Vos closed the door, waving his fingers as he did so.

  Not long after the argument began, so loud it echoed all the way down the corridor.

  Hanna Bublik walked into the house in Oude Nieuwstraat, shook the rain from her black jacket, stood in the narrow hall.

  The shoulder was hurting again. She went upstairs into the tiny room she’d shared with Natalya. Didn’t bother to close the door as she stripped off her clothes and looked at herself in the mirror. Turned. Saw the dressing Renata Kuyper had put there.

  ‘It’ll heal,’ said a voice from the landing.

  Chantal was there. Young. Stupid. Regretful. Sympathetic for once maybe.

  ‘You hear anything about Natty?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  The girl nodded.

  ‘It’ll heal. It’s just a tattoo.’

  ‘It’s not a tattoo,’ she said. ‘Not this.’

  A look of fear in her dark, dim eyes.

  ‘Oh. I heard he did something different sometimes. When he thought you were special.’

  ‘Special?’

  This kid was so dumb. Sometimes Hanna Bublik wanted to shake her to see if just a little sense would spill out of that stupid, pretty mouth.

  She closed the door. Changed the dressing. Wondered if Vos would pester her again. How she’d react if he did.

  Half-dressed, her phone rang. Cem Yilmaz. He sounded cheery, assured as usual.

  ‘Have you heard something?’

  ‘He called me. When I was in Marnixstraat.’

  A worried pause.

  ‘Did you tell the police?’

  ‘No. They don’t know anything.’

  ‘It’s important it stays that way. What interests them is not what interests us. So long as Natalya gets free . . .’

  ‘Don’t tell me what I know already,’ she interrupted.

  A pause in the conversation. He didn’t like it when she answered back.

  ‘And the money?’ Yilmaz asked. ‘What did he say about that?’

  ‘I can get hold of sixty myself. If you come up with a hundred . . .’

  Silence.

  ‘I told him I could make a hundred and sixty.’

  ‘I offered you seventy. That’s what you’re worth.’

  She’d understood this argument was coming.

  ‘He won’t take any less. I’m thirty short. If you come up with it I’ll do . . .’

  Anything.

  ‘I’ll do whatever you want.’

  ‘Your daughter . . .’

  ‘Yes. Natalya.’

  He thought for a moment.

  ‘Then it’s settled, you’ll have a hundred from me. I won’t ask anything of the child until she’s older. I’m not an animal.’

  The room shrank in on her when she realized what he was saying.

  ‘No, no, no. Please God no. She’s my little girl—’

  ‘You want her alive, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course but—’

  ‘I fail to understand you, woman. If this profession is acceptable to you why should it be objectionable to your daughter. Besides . . . these things tend to run in the family.’ He laughed. ‘Unless you think she’s going to be a lawyer?’

  No words. The enormity of what she’d just accepted unwittingly silenced her completely.

  ‘That’s my offer. There’s no going back,’ Yilmaz added. ‘Don’t think that, please. A bargain’s a bargain.’

  Silence. She wasn’t sure how she could say it.

  ‘I’m a busy man,’ Yilmaz added briskly. ‘I require an answer now. Yes or no.’

  ‘Yes,’ a frail voice said and it was her.

  ‘Good. Then we have an understanding. What else did he say?’

  ‘He’s going to call me in the morning and arrange the pickup. After that they’ll let Natalya go.’

  ‘So I’ll add one hundred to your sixty on this basis. Bring along your contribution so I can see it. Do what the man asks. Cem Yilmaz will get your daughter back. You keep my name out of this. Understand?’

  She couldn’t think of anything to say.

  ‘Are you still there?’ he demanded. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The police must suspect nothing. I require you to act normally.’ He was thinking. ‘They’re not stupid. Perhaps they’ll be watching you.’

  Hanna Bublik leaned over on the bed, wanted to cry.

  ‘Normally?’

  ‘Don’t do anything to make them suspicious. Go to work tonight. Find a window. Be visible. I know I said I wanted no more of this. But it would be best for appearances. I stake my claim when your daughter’s back home. Then we speak of future arrangements.’

  Her mind was racing. There was
nothing she wanted less than work at that moment and he surely knew it.

  ‘Not tonight . . .’

  ‘I risk much here too. For no immediate return. You’ll do what I say or I can’t help you.’

  She whispered something. Wasn’t sure what it was.

  ‘Call me tomorrow when you hear something,’ he said. ‘Goodnight.’

  Natalya’s bed was in the corner of the tiny room, close to the gable window. All made up. She walked over and tidied the sheets. It felt as if she’d been gone for weeks, not days. The room seemed empty without that smart, questioning voice, the sudden laughter that came from a book or a cartoon on the little TV they owned.

  She called Renata Kuyper’s mobile and told her they’d need the money in the morning.

  ‘Fine,’ she said and didn’t sound that way.

  ‘Can you do it?’

  ‘I’ve got our thirty. Henk’s father’s matched that. I’ll bring it round when you tell me.’

  ‘Thanks.’ It was hard to say that word. ‘When I get the chance I’ll repay you . . .’

  ‘That’s hardly likely, is it?’

  ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘It isn’t.’

  Renata Kuyper hesitated then said, ‘I have to ask. Have you seen him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Henk.’

  ‘Why would I see your husband?’

  ‘He went out this afternoon. I haven’t heard from him since. He doesn’t answer his phone.’ There was something curious in her voice. Puzzlement more than trepidation. ‘It’s not like him.’

  ‘I’ve not seen your husband. I’ll call tomorrow.’

  That was it. No more prevarication. Yilmaz had told her what he wanted and asked a price she couldn’t refuse. Doubtless he’d have his men check the street to make sure she did as she was told.

  She went to the wardrobe and got the things for work. The cheap satin underwear. The condoms. The gels. The wipes and two clean towels.

  And an old shawl that had followed all the way from Georgia. She’d put it round her shoulders to hide the wound on her back.

  Then she went out into Oude Nieuwstraat. There was only one empty cabin. The red neon light flickered manically and would, she knew, make her headache worse. But a few minutes later she was sitting on a stool in the window, half-naked, staring out at the passing faces, praying no one would ring the bell.

  Twenty minutes Vos and De Groot talked alone in the side room of forensic. The rain had turned heavy, the sky black. The downpour made a constant drone beyond the barred windows. Even that didn’t cover the angry voices from forensic. Louder and louder they rose until everyone in the adjoining office could hear.