by David Hewson
Vos walked over to a glass case by the door. There were racks running from one side to the other, and photos of exotic butterflies. Four bright green shapes like bulbs from a Christmas tree were hanging on wires.
‘Pupae,’ Bakker said.
‘Chrysalises,’ De Jong corrected her. ‘They were supposed to have hatched by now. Or so Jef told me when I paid for them. I came in yesterday and found out the heat had failed. He was supposed to be looking after that, checking it every night.’
He’d last seen Braat two days earlier. Since then . . . nothing. Not that he’d called.
‘Why not?’ Vos asked.
De Jong shuffled on his feet.
‘Jef’s a big guy. I took him on because the probation people said he’d be fine. He knew about butterflies too. Supposedly. I’ve seen him get mad. You don’t want to get close to that.’ He glanced at the river. ‘I thought about going down to his boat. It’s just ten minutes. Take the path down to the Amstel. But I don’t . . . I don’t like arguments. Not with his kind.’ He tapped a finger on the glass case. The green shapes looked waxy and dead. ‘I’ve got fifty thousand tied up trying to get this place off the ground. That bastard’s screwed me. Artis and their lawyers yelling at me too.’
‘Artis?’ Bakker asked.
‘They say he stole these things from there. That’s why they fired him. I never knew. How would I? Who steals butterflies?’
The narrow waterway from Zorgvlied was no more than fifty metres away. The Amstel lay at its foot. A little boat like the one Vos saw the night before could easily move around here unseen in the dark.
‘Where exactly does he live?’
‘Why are you so interested in Jef Braat?’
‘We’re nosy like that.’
De Jong huffed and puffed, took out a pen and a little pad then scrawled a drawing of the river bank, a location some way along from the bridge. A name: Sirene.
‘Only been there once. It’s a wreck. Amazed the thing’s still afloat. He’s got those rich young finance folk from the Zuidas living all round in neat and fancy houseboats. Gin palace cruisers. They must love him.’
‘Thanks,’ Vos said and set off towards the river.
There was a long, winding path down towards the Amstel. It was more than ten minutes to Braat’s houseboat, he thought. Erik de Jong was wrong there. Perhaps about much else too.
Commissaris Chandra didn’t look up from the computer.
‘Where’s Vos?’
‘Following up on a suspect,’ Van der Berg said. ‘Could be a good one.’
‘Could be? He’s had most of the day working on this and we’re nowhere.’
She sat back and stared out of the window. Elandsgracht was across the canal, the long street leading down to the Drie Vaten and Vos’s houseboat. She’d got rid of Frank de Groot’s comfy leather chair and replaced it with something trendy made out of tubular steel and canvas. It didn’t look comfortable at all but maybe she liked that.
‘How many people do we have working in serious crime?’
He stuttered over the answer. It wasn’t his job to do a head count.
‘I’m not exactly certain how many are on duty at the moment. Enough.’
A smile surfaced, one of victory.
‘Quite. Enough for someone else to check out that lead. And Vos to be here, in the office, in charge.’
‘The thing is . . . he was at the hospital. Talking to the parents of the Schrijver girl. The lead’s in the Amstelpark. Just round the corner. A few minutes away. It seemed to make sense—’
‘This was his decision?’
It seemed a strange question.
‘It’s his case.’
‘Under my command. Bring him back. Someone else can go knocking on doors. I want him in the office. Senior officers should be here keeping me in the picture. How’s the girl?’
‘She’s twenty-two. I don’t think you’d call her a girl.’
Chandra looked at him and said, ‘I stand corrected.’
Van der Berg had remarried in his mid-thirties. His first wife, a woman out of the clerical pool, was sweet and charming when they first met. A few years of being shackled to a cop who worked all hours and sometimes came home stinking of sweat and beer with nothing to talk about but work had changed her. In the end it had been much like this. There were times when everything he said was going to be wrong. It didn’t matter what the words were. Just the fact he was the one uttering them.
He told her about Jef Braat and how they were looking at some other men close to the Schrijver family. Chandra didn’t seem much interested in hearing more. She was management. Details were beneath her. All that counted was that some day soon she could phone her distant bosses in Zoetermeer and say that, thanks to her fine, wise leadership, the job had been done. Case closed. Move on to the next.
‘You know . . . there’s nothing much Vos can say that you can’t get from me. I’ve been on top of the files all day. He’s been out of the office and—’
‘He’s the officer in charge.’
‘They’re nearly there,’ he cried and realized this was why Chandra was asking. If Vos was on to something it would now be found by another officer, one acting on her orders.
‘Get someone else. Just do it, will you?’
He shuffled out of her office, took the back stairs, went into the garden where she’d handed him the long-service medal the day before. There he lit a cigarette and wondered how Jillian Chandra was going to work out in Marnixstraat. Hers was a world where mistakes were never made, only detected. It took old school Amsterdam officers, set in their ways, ignorant of the methods of modern policing, to foul up. She knew by heart the most important lesson of the modern brigade of management: the simplest way to avoid doing wrong was to do nothing at all and wait for those beneath her, men and women who did not have such liberty, to fail.
By the fountain in the middle of the garden he made the call.
Vos was breathing hard. Van der Berg was sure he heard the sound of a duck quacking madly.
‘Our new mistress, the dragon from the south, requires your presence in the office immediately. She says someone else can take over the Braat lead.’
There was a long pause.
‘That’s very generous.’
‘I wouldn’t cross her, Pieter. She’s adamant you get back here now.’
There were ducks. Or geese. Some kind of wildfowl anyway, along with the gentle whir of a puny outboard carried on the breeze.
‘Tell the commissaris I’ll be back just as soon as I possibly can.’
‘Pieter . . . Pieter.’
The quacks came one last time and then the line fell silent.
It was the end of the afternoon and they were breaking the market. Gone were the busy crowds of shoppers who packed the Albert Cuyp six days a week. Men in overalls scrambled over stalls dismantling iron frames, packing gaudy shades. Cleaners patrolled the street washing it down with powerful hoses. Greedy herons pecked for scraps of discarded herring and kibbeling. Paper and discarded fruit and vegetables ebbed on a damp tide towards the gutter and the sweepers with their carts.
Nina Schrijver had grown up with this sight. One so normal she took it for granted. Took everything for granted when she thought about it. The marriage. Bert. The idea that Annie would somehow amble along as the market’s pretty flower girl, selling cheap and sometimes faded blooms with a smile and an occasional wink, until a lucky man claimed her for his own.
There was no reason that shouldn’t happen. Annie had the same flirty skills Nina had used to shift fried fish back when her father had his stall there. But now he was dead, like her mother, the space he’d once occupied taken by an Indonesian family selling sambals and pickles they made at home. And she no longer lived in what was left of the Schrijver castle, instead got by in a studio apartment overlooking the green space of Sarphatipark down the road.
Bert gave her money every week, not that he could afford it. Some part-time work packing shelves i
n a supermarket made up for the rest. There’d been a man for a little while. Bert never knew – at least she hoped he didn’t – but he’d been there not long before the marriage failed. He worked shifts for the council which meant sweaty afternoons of mindless passion in his flat in the Jordaan, the flower van parked outside, her phone turned off in case Bert rang to ask why she was late. Guilt killed off that miserable affair, along with the absence of any real love or joy.
She leaned against the wall of a bar recently sprung up in a shop that had been closed and derelict for a few years. There was little in the way of a social life at all except when Annie came round and they went out for a cheap meal in one of the working-class Indonesian cafes near the tram stop in Ferdinand Bol. But Rob Sanders had phoned from the hospital and said he wanted to meet without Bert around. She watched him ride his sports bike down the street then clamp it to one of the lamp posts while a hungry heron watched as if offended by the intrusion. He felt at home even if she didn’t any more.
The baggy blue nurse’s uniform had been replaced by smart jeans and a tan leather jacket. He came over, kissed her on both cheeks. He was young, fit, handsome in a laddish way. But that was just his manner. Sanders understood how to treat women, to make them feel special. It was a rare talent among the men she knew.
‘I need a drink,’ he said and they went inside the bar. It was early and the music was quite soft and gentle. The Eagles. The place seemed to want to pretend it was California.
‘Speaking as a medical man, this,’ he said, pointing at the cocktail list, ‘is what I prescribe for such occasions.’
The barman made two tumblers of Bloody Mary, flavoured with something fiery and sour called kimchi. She’d never have guessed the Albert Cuyp could provide a drink quite so exotic. Even the Indonesian cafes with their cheap, basic meals of chicken and rice and potatoes seemed Dutch to her these days.
But Sanders was single, free. He had the time and the money. She was glad he hadn’t grown the neatly manicured beard that some of the local blades thought essential. Still, he fitted in with this new De Pijp.
‘How is she?’ she asked. ‘No one’s called.’
Annie’s ward wasn’t in his part of the hospital. He still knew people who worked there, had talked to them.
‘She’s stable. That place . . . it’s the best care Annie can get. It doesn’t help having relatives around all the time. You and Bert need to stick to the visiting hours.’
‘Will she be all right?’
‘Yes. She will.’
‘I’m sorry, Rob.’
‘About what?’
‘About Bert. All the fuss he made.’
Sanders sipped at his spicy drink, went to the counter and came back with some tortillas.
‘What does he know? About us?’
‘What she told him. You hit her.’
‘Doesn’t he want to know why?’
Men were so logical sometimes.
‘Of course not. Annie’s his little girl. She went crying to him. Hysterical.’ It was a black day. Schrijver was working. Nina had to deal with the immediate aftermath, not that she could stop her daughter running to the Albert Cuyp in tears. ‘Let’s face it. I don’t know either.’
‘We had a row. I didn’t hit her. Just shook her.’
Annie had backtracked on the whole thing later. She didn’t want to lose him but in the end they broke up all the same.
‘That’s all it was, honestly. A lover’s tiff. Water under the bridge now. Next you’ll be telling me Bert’s never touched you.’
That took her aback.
‘Of course he hasn’t. Never came close. Even when I went for him.’
He raised his glass and chinked it against hers.
‘Now we know where Annie gets it from.’ He stroked his cheek. ‘You should have seen the scratches.’
‘That was it? You shook her? Nothing else?’
The question seemed to offend him.
‘That was it. You don’t think we’d have tried again if it was anything more, do you? Annie wouldn’t. She’s strong. Like you.’
‘Even if that’s true, Bert isn’t. This could break him. God knows he’s got trouble enough with the business as it is. I look at him and it’s like . . . like he’s aged ten years lately. I think things are worse than he lets on.’
Sanders sipped at his drink and kept quiet.
‘When will they let us see her again?’
‘You’re going to have to wait for them to call. They got very pissed off about Bert losing his temper. We’ve got strict rules about threats to staff. If I hadn’t gone and argued maybe they’d have banned him altogether.’
‘Thanks,’ she murmured.
‘Least I can do. Jesus. I still can’t believe it. What was Annie doing hanging round sleazy bars with creeps who do that sort of crap?’
That was a surprise.
‘The police said that?’
‘No.’ There was an awkward, almost childish clip to his answer. ‘That’s where these things happen, isn’t it? Pickup joints where some bastard drops dope or whatever in your drink. Where the hell—?’
‘I don’t know. Do you?’
‘Wouldn’t be asking if I did.’
There was a short fuse to him sometimes. Just like Bert.
‘No. Sorry. Stupid of me. It’s just . . .’ Just what? No one had offered them any answers. So the questions kept dancing round her head, teasing, nagging, taunting. ‘I always thought she stayed local. Around De Pijp.’
He scowled.
‘Don’t ask me.’
‘No.’ She poured the rest of the drink into his. It was too spicy and too strong. ‘I say all the wrong things. You’re being very supportive. I appreciate that. Bert would too if he could see straight.’
‘Jordi Hoogland,’ he said out of nowhere.
‘What about him?’ she wondered.
‘Why was he hanging round the hospital? What’s Annie to him?’
It seemed an odd question.
‘Not a lot. I don’t think she likes him much to be honest. Him and Bert have known each other since they were kids. Bert’s soft when it comes to things like that. Jordi works for next to nothing.’ She watched him and asked, ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Just wondered.’
He downed the cocktail in one and choked a little on the heat.
‘You’ve got my number,’ Sanders said. ‘If there’s anything you need I want you to call. Don’t think twice. When they let you and Bert into the hospital it’s best I stay clear. If he loses it again they really will kick him out for good. Nothing I can do.’
‘I just want Annie back. Will that happen?’
Out in the street one of the cleaners accidentally upended a fish bin. Herons pounced on it, spearing at the pieces with their broad sharp beaks.
Sanders didn’t say anything and she thought of Bert’s furious words in the hospital earlier that day. How all they did was make you wait, say useless things that told you nothing. Never let you near the truth.
‘Did you hear? I want her home. With me. Where I can keep an eye on her.’
‘I want that too.’
He kissed her cheek. He liked kissing, she thought.
‘Take care.’ Sanders got to his feet, pointing a finger at her the way some men did. ‘Call. I’m here for you. And Annie. Always.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, watching him go.
Some people walked through the door. Four young men, beards, the old-fashioned clothes that seemed in vogue. The same number of women, a couple of them drunk or stoned already. The volume of the music went up a notch. Perhaps you didn’t need to wander so far from the Albert Cuyp to find trouble if you wanted it.
She went to the counter and bought herself a glass of wine. Twice the price of a local cafe. The barman looked at her as if to say: Are you sure?
‘I came from here,’ she told him. ‘A while ago. When things were different.’
‘Nice,’ he replied and stifled a yawn.
/> Jef Braat’s home was just as the butterfly pavilion man had predicted: a wreck. An old barge listing in the green water of the Amstel a kilometre along from Zorgvlied, on a bend of the river surrounded by open fields and the flat landscape of polder.
‘Makes your pad look positively swish,’ Bakker observed as they waited in a clump of trees to see if anyone was coming or going. ‘The commissaris isn’t going to be best pleased we’re out here watching ducks when she wants you in her office.’
‘Depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On what’s inside.’
The Sirene was grey and black, a long rectangular cabin set on what looked like an industrial hull. Vos got hassle enough for his own shabby houseboat on the Prinsengracht. The city authorities would have towed this wreck to the scrapyard without a second thought.
Grey curtains covered all the porthole windows. The gangplank was rotting timbers running through a patch of overgrown irises. A post-box hung off a pole on the bank. It didn’t look as if Braat got much mail. Maybe the place had stayed empty while he was in jail. Neglected for a couple of years. Forgotten.
Bakker had her handgun out and was checking it, getting ready for a forced entrance. Vos didn’t like weapons. The thought of what they might do distracted him. Besides, the place looked empty. Unless Braat was the kind of man who slept through the afternoon.
With Bakker squawking behind he crossed the rickety timbers from the rough grass bank and stood beneath the rusty shelter above the door. There was, to his surprise, a bell. He put his finger on it and kept it there. No sound came from inside. Vos put his ear to the timber hull, heard nothing at all, then stepped back and looked.
‘Please tell me you’re not going to do something stupid,’ she begged.
‘Such as what?’
‘Going all macho on me and trying to kick the bloody door down.’
‘Promise,’ he said and took a pair of latex gloves from his pocket then nodded at her to do the same.
‘I don’t trust your promises.’
She came and stood by him, the weapon raised. Vos pushed the barrel to one side. Then stepped back as if he was going to kick the door anyway.