The Wrong Girl

by David Hewson

  Monster.

  No room for it here. No space at all.

  His second cup of coffee was going cold. The dog was getting bored playing with the bone. Bert had put music on the sound system in the Drie Vaten. Vos hated when he did that. He liked to pick what he heard. Not have it chosen for him. And Golden Earring really didn’t match the mood.

  The red dot hadn’t shifted for twenty-five minutes. He’d nagged Aisha to check the system was working. She insisted the bug was where it said. And that wasn’t right. He’d already zoomed in on the map and worked out the cafe where she must have gone. Not somewhere he knew.

  But there was a name and when he looked it up there was a phone number too. Getting desperate he called, described Hanna, short brown hair, glasses, asked if she was still there.

  ‘What is this?’ the man on the end of the line asked. ‘An answering service?’

  Then put the phone down.

  Vos led Sam back to the bar where Bert started clucking over him. The dog barely noticed when he slipped out of the door and hailed a cab passing slowly beneath the bare lime trees in Prinsengracht.

  Ten minutes along the canals and he was there.

  He checked the phone again. The dot still hadn’t moved. Talked to Aisha once more. Something was happening with the Kuyper case and AIVD.

  ‘Smits, the booking agency man, got shot, Vos. They think this terrorist did it. Henk Kuyper had been there too.’

  He tried to think that through.

  ‘Also we’re not supposed to be talking, are we?’ she added. ‘You’re sure you set it up right like I showed you last night?’

  She’d slipped him the satnav tracker outside the Drie Vaten after De Groot briefed her. Taking care to make sure no one saw her leave Marnixstraat and head out into the dark. It was vital AIVD, more than anyone, didn’t understand he was still inside the case.

  ‘I did just what you said. I’m here. Right where the dot’s showing. I can’t see her anywhere.’

  She did something on the system. He looked at the phone again. It had zoomed right in to the cafe.

  ‘That’s as near as it gets,’ she said. ‘If you can’t see her now I can’t help.’

  Vos looked at the screen and how it corresponded to the layout of the place then went in.

  There was a pathetic, dried-up geranium in a dusty pot on the window ledge by a table. Two cups of coffee still on it. One of them with lipstick round the rim. One just marked with a brown stain.

  He reached over and rummaged beneath the dying leaves.

  The black plastic bug sat there among the roots.

  ‘Found her?’ Aisha asked.

  ‘Not exactly,’ Vos said then went back into the busy street, looked around, saw nothing.

  Hanna stood outside the block in Spooksteeg then drew back the jumper from her wrist and looked at the numbers there, scrawled in ballpoint. A code for the door. A second set of numbers for the lift. Three floors up, straight into his living room.

  She’d watched him key in those numbers. Written them down in his bathroom after he branded her. But now she didn’t need them so she pressed the bell, felt the wound on her back sting and waited. That mark would never go away. She’d wear this man’s initials for the rest of her life.

  Soon she was upstairs. Foreign music playing gently from somewhere. He was alone on the sofa. In a suit for once. The place didn’t smell of sweat or cologne. Cem Yilmaz looked . . . businesslike. Another side to him. One she hadn’t seen before.

  ‘You’ve got the money?’ he asked as she walked in.

  She nodded.

  ‘I need to see it,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  He shook his head and squinted at her for a moment.

  ‘Because of what you are. I get cheated from time to time. This doesn’t sit lightly on me. Or those responsible.’

  She opened the green holdall and took out Renata Kuyper’s DKNY shoebox. The sign on the label on the side said it was for a pair of girl’s trainers. Almost two hundred euros.

  Yilmaz opened the lid and looked at the carefully stacked bundles of notes. Then flicked through them, checking they were all real.

  ‘This is good. We need trust between ourselves. For the years to come.’

  He didn’t need to go to the drawer. The money was stacked neatly on the desk. Green one hundred euro notes. She’d never touched one before.

  ‘You take this,’ he ordered. ‘You find your girl. Tomorrow, when things are back to normal, we talk about how matters stand between us. What work you’ll do.’

  She blinked.

  ‘I thought we’d agreed what work that was.’

  ‘We did.’ Cem Yilmaz smiled. ‘It’s whatever I ask.’

  He gestured at the money. She put it into the bag, carefully stacking it inside.

  ‘Why do you look different?’ he asked. ‘Those glasses.’

  ‘I don’t want the police to follow me.’

  ‘What if he knows what you look like?’

  She took out her phone and showed it to him.

  ‘This is how he knows me.’

  Yilmaz grunted something. Then added, ‘In future you don’t change your appearance unless I say so. This . . .’ He came over and his vast hand went to her head. Roughly. Then he fingered her hair as if he was buying it. ‘Blonde’s better. Men desire it more. When you go back to work you’ll dye it again. And let it grow.’

  Hanna hesitated for a moment then said OK.

  ‘We’re finished here now,’ Yilmaz told her.

  She bounced the heavy bag on the end of her arm.

  ‘Don’t you want to know where?’ she asked. ‘Or when?’

  ‘I want to know nothing,’ he snapped. ‘Why would I? I’m the banker here. Nothing more. You understand?’

  He gripped her hard by the right shoulder. Squeezing on the wound, the signature he’d left in her flesh.

  She winced. Not as much as he liked. So he squeezed harder. She felt blood start in the healing scab. Finally couldn’t stop herself whimpering with the pain.

  ‘Good,’ he grunted. ‘You understand. Go now. Be here tomorrow morning. Ten o’clock. Then we discuss what comes next.’

  Bakker took Van der Berg to one side in the doorway of Smits’s office. The place was starting to smell, of smoke and blood and the chemicals forensic used. Mirjam Fransen and her people were getting frustrated. The technicians were settling in for the duration.

  ‘Is there something you’d like to tell me?’ she asked.

  He shuffled on his big black shoes.

  ‘About anything in particular?’

  ‘About Vos.’

  He glanced at Fransen, talking quietly down her phone.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Dirk . . .’

  He sighed. A long, deep, familiar sound.

  ‘Later. OK? We’ve enough on our plate.’

  She’d phoned back to Marnixstraat again and got nothing but evasion.

  ‘So he’s put himself out on a limb? To try to get this ransom paid separately?’

  Van der Berg nodded at the AIVD crew. His finger went to his lips.

  ‘Why am I the last to know about everything?’ she wondered.

  ‘Shall we kind of . . . slide out of here? I could really use a . . .’

  ‘Coffee,’ she interrupted.

  ‘Coffee,’ he agreed.

  They walked down the alley without a word. Found one of the chain cafes on Damrak. Two cups of cappuccino and Van der Berg got stuck into a cinnamon bun too.

  Bakker had been working on her clumsiness of late. It had become something of a Marnixstraat legend. That didn’t stop her upending her coffee as she gestured with her hand. Hot liquid spilled everywhere.

  ‘Damn!’ she yelled.

  Van der Berg was there in an instant, mopping up with napkins.

  ‘This is very hard,’ she complained.

  ‘Carrying a cup of coffee? Just a case of practice.’

  ‘I meant being kept in the d
ark.’

  He dumped the napkins then waved the sticky bun around.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘I suppose it is.’

  They could see down the alley. The AIVD crew had come outside. Two or three were smoking. Mirjam Fransen was on the phone again. Looking madder than ever.

  ‘Whatever Vos is up to I hope he’s having more luck than us,’ Bakker moaned.

  Centraal station. Ten minutes to twelve. Vos walked there, hands in pockets, head down, trying to think.

  She’d called him twenty minutes before. Said nothing except that she’d be outside where the trams stopped. He wasn’t to come near. They communicated by phone. That was all.

  The thought of dealing with a ransom drop here filled him with despair. A quarter of a million people passed through Centraal every day headed for the train and metro lines, the trams and buses. The sprawling red-brick building, a hundred and twenty years old, was a Flemish leviathan of towers and crow-stepped gable roofs, a warren of halls and tunnels, platforms, shops, offices. Almost a small city in itself.

  Hanna Bublik was where she said, out in the cold bright day. The green holdall on her right arm. A smaller bag on her left. She’d changed too. The black jacket was gone like the long blonde hair. In its place a plain brown coat. She looked even more like a teacher or office worker.

  He walked past her and went to stand by the ticket machines.

  Then he phoned.

  ‘Let’s keep this brief,’ she said. ‘He’s supposed to call any minute. You didn’t bring anyone, did you?’

  He groaned.

  ‘Just me. Like I said. Is that so hard to believe?’

  She was watching him from the tram stop. Glancing round everywhere too.

  ‘You’re so desperate to be trusted, Vos. Someone must have really let you down once upon a time.’ A pause then she added, ‘Or you did that to them.’

  ‘Probably both,’ he remarked.

  ‘I’m sorry about that little toy you planted on me. I hope it wasn’t expensive.’

  He muttered something under his breath then said, ‘Have you got everything?’

  She raised the green holdall.

  ‘Is there any point in asking where you found the rest?’

  ‘None at all.’ She stood back as a bus lurched towards her. Then checked her watch. ‘I’ll call you when I hear something.’

  Vos bought himself a coffee from a stall. Thought about how he’d handle this from the other side. They had to assume she was being watched even if she didn’t know. A simple hand-off – go to the man in black, give him the bag – wouldn’t work.

  Stations were good for crowds. Good for other things too.

  For ease of mind he went to the nearest ticket machine and bought two singles to Schiphol. An obvious destination. One of the most popular short routes there was from here. And the tickets would save them any hassle on the train.

  There were two towers on the station. Hanna was looking from one to the other. Puzzled. Most people were. One was a clock. The other looked like one but with a single hand that baffled newcomers since all it indicated was the direction of the wind.

  Northerly, Vos thought. He knew that steady bitter chill of old.

  Then she stopped, raised the phone to her ear. Eyes fixed on the cobbles and the steel tramlines through them, listening intently.

  It couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds. After that she was marching into the station, phone locked to her ear.

  He watched her go past, not a glimpse in his direction. Then she called.

  ‘He says I have to catch the train to somewhere called Vlissingen. Platform five. Carriage three. The upstairs compartment. It goes in four minutes. Where the hell’s Vlissingen?’

  A three-hour ride south.

  ‘A long way,’ he said. ‘There are lots of stops before that.’

  Schiphol. The Hague. Delft. Rotterdam. Middelburg. They could be headed anywhere.

  ‘Hanna. I’ve got a ticket you can use.’

  She was walking so quickly it was hard to keep up.

  ‘I’ve got a ticket already,’ she told him.

  Platform five. The double-decker train was pulling in as they got there.

  It was one of the long-distance services. Lots of space. Not too busy.

  She went upstairs in the third carriage and sat in the last part of the forward section. He went to the opposite end.

  Quick turnaround. Station staff yelling at tourists to get on the train.

  Then they pulled out. Vos picked up a spare paper someone had left. Pretended to read it. Looked around.

  Eleven people. Four women. Six men. One kid no more than twelve. A boy.

  Hanna was staring out of the window. Phone in hand.

  Natalya might be anywhere on the train. He could put in a call, halt it at an early stop. Haul everyone off. Question them until they narrowed things down.

  Vos put down the paper and wondered how he could be so slow.

  They wouldn’t have the girl here. Too obvious. Too easily detected. It had to be more complicated than that. And when things were complex you approached them slowly. Let a picture emerge. Analysed it. Worked out where to go next.

  Maybe seven minutes to the next station, Sloterdijk. After that Lelylaan.

  Then the airport station at Schiphol.

  He couldn’t believe they were going far.

  Rapenburg was a quiet narrow street. Old houses. Some offices. Neat cobblestones. Like Zeedijk without people, neon and sleaze. Residential, Kuyper guessed. He didn’t know this part of the city well. But it was obvious most people were out to work.

  A good place to hide.

  Another red door. Much like Smits’s office. No name on the bell. He rang it anyway. Waited a long minute. The sound of bolts being drawn back, a key in the lock. Then a curious, not unfriendly face. Clean-shaven, recently by the looks of it. There was the rough, red shadow of a vanished beard on his cheeks.

  Perhaps fifty. A bulky man he wore a capacious knitted brown cardigan, the sleeves too long, and pale cream trousers. The size of him seemed odd. And gross.

  ‘Henk Kuyper,’ he said. ‘Come in. Please . . .’

  He followed the waddling figure down a narrow corridor into a small room at the back. There was one window onto a tiny courtyard. Nothing else except a desk with a computer on it and two chairs.

  The man took one, fell into it heavily. Kuyper sat opposite him at the desk. The sound of a radio newscast was coming out of the PC. More about the economy. And the football riot. Nothing else.

  ‘I am Khaled,’ the man said and held out a flabby hand.

  Kuyper took it. Warm, soft and dry. Five years he’d been waiting to get close to these people. Now it felt unreal.

  ‘Here.’

  He poured two glasses of water from a bottle next to the PC. San Pellegrino. Warm. Flat.

  ‘What a mess,’ Khaled said with a shake of his head. ‘So many high hopes at the beginning. That we might free our brother Alamy. Right a few wrongs.’

  ‘The girl . . .’

  ‘And this offer of yours. A daughter. Granddaughter of a monster. It seemed so . . . generous.’

  ‘I thought I’d meet Barbone.’

  Khaled’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Who’s Barbone?’

  ‘Please . . .’ Kuyper sighed. ‘Smits said—’

  ‘Smits is an employee. A minor one. A fool. He shouldn’t speak out of turn.’

  ‘The girl—’

  ‘—was not your daughter. The weapons Bouali possessed . . . they were not what we expected. You toyed with us, Kuyper. This was all a game, wasn’t it? A dangerous one. From everyone’s point of view.’

  The man’s attitude annoyed him.

  ‘If you thought I wasn’t genuine why did you go along with it?’

  Khaled frowned, puzzled.

  ‘Curiosity. And because we believed there might be some advantage. Why else?’

  ‘I did my best to help you,’ Kuyper insisted. ‘If I want
ed you in jail why am I here alone?’

  The man in front of him puffed out his cheeks then looked around the room.

  ‘What was it that play of yours says? Conscience just makes cowards of us all.’

  ‘A coward wouldn’t be here,’ Kuyper said.

  ‘True. But you have a conscience, don’t you? It’s cost us all dear. Now Barbone is mad. With you. With me. With everyone. He tells me I must leave Amsterdam. A city I enjoy. He’s not a man to upset. Life isn’t safe here any more. Why?’

  ‘You took the wrong girl. Not my fault.’

  Khaled opened a drawer and retrieved a sheet of paper.

  ‘Pink jacket. Blonde hair.’ He pushed the printout across the table. ‘This is the picture you sent us. This is the girl we took. Please, Kuyper. Abandon this pretence. Barbone’s no fool. He saw through you that first day in the park.’

  Kuyper looked at the sheet. The photo was Natalya Bublik. He’d taken it in the street surreptitiously when she was coming home from school with her mother. Cropped Hanna Bublik out of the picture. If things had gone the way they should none of this would have mattered.

  ‘I must have made a mistake,’ he murmured.

  ‘A big one,’ Khaled agreed. ‘Not to know what your own child looks like.’

  The way he sat was wrong somehow.

  ‘This girl you took has no value,’ Kuyper said. ‘If you let her go . . .’

  The bemused look again.

  ‘You assume she’s still ours. You assume so much. Why?’

  ‘Because I don’t believe an eight-year-old child’s your enemy.’

  A shrug. Then Khaled took a packet of cigarettes from the right hand pocket of the bulky cardigan, shook one free, lit it. His hand was trembling.

  ‘What can I give you?’ Kuyper asked.

  ‘Freedom. Tell your people I want out. Safe passage from Holland. Let me be honest. I’m like Smits. An employee. Not a fanatic. I do this because I must. My family’s in their custody in Iraq. You think I choose to cause this trouble?’

  Kuyper stayed silent.

  ‘I sense we’re both at the mercy of others, Henk. If we can find a solution that’s to our mutual advantage . . .’

  A glimmer of hope.

  ‘I’ll take you in myself. See what we can do.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ Khaled said firmly. ‘After all this nonsense how can I deal with the likes of you? Get me someone whose word means something.’