by David Hewson
‘Dirk—’
‘Don’t take this out on me. At least with De Groot we knew where we stood. To hell with it . . .’
The line went dead. Vos swore and got through to Marnixstraat. A somewhat embarrassed night team officer came on the line. A uniform patrol had come across tyre tracks going into the Amstel two kilometres along the bank from where he now stood. Commissaris Chandra had taken control of the recovery herself.
‘No one told me,’ Vos pointed out.
‘I guess . . . well . . . that was up to her, wasn’t it? They’re waiting on a crane or something.’
Another curse. Vos marched over, took Bakker’s arm and told her to requisition one of the forensic team’s vehicles.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
There were more lights now in Braat’s houseboat, figures in white suits moving through the low interior like busy ghosts.
‘You’re going home. Leave this to me.’
There were so many parked vehicles along the bank he had to leave the car by the road and walk the last few hundred metres to the river. Jillian Chandra was there in a dark coat, directing a team of people he barely knew. A small crane was dangling a lifting hook over the black water beneath tall floodlights, a set-up that must have taken a couple of hours to put into place.
He told himself to stay calm, then walked into fray.
‘Fancy seeing you here,’ she said, glancing at him then turning back to watch the crane hook swing towards the river.
‘If I’d known—’
‘When I ask to be kept in the picture I expect it to happen.’
In eighteen years he’d worked under four different heads of Marnixstraat. All Amsterdammers, officers who’d risen through the ranks and knew the ropes and the city around them. Each had his foibles and could, on occasion, turn awkward. None of them would have behaved like this. Jillian Chandra was making it up as she went along and didn’t mind who knew.
‘We’ve got the place where they were attacked. Braat’s boat.’
‘So I gather.’
He looked round. There was no sign of any divers.
‘Have you sent anyone down to look inside the van?’
She shrugged.
‘One of the uniform people came down here and saw the tracks.’ Two men in waders, the kind fishermen used, were guiding the hook towards its target. ‘We get it out and then we take a look.’
‘May we speak, Commissaris? Privately?’
Beneath the fluorescent glare of the floods she looked at him, thought for a moment then said, ‘Of course.’
They walked away from the bank and the mill of people there.
‘You should have sent divers down first.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there may be something there we don’t want to disturb.’
‘I don’t think that’s likely, is it? You’ve found the man’s boat. I’ve got his van. We’ve checked the plate. It is registered to him. I’ve got Braat’s details circulated everywhere. Once we pick him up—’
‘You can’t run a case this way,’ Vos said and knew immediately he was in the wrong.
‘I can do what I like.’
‘If you want me to lead this investigation you mustn’t intervene like this. Without my agreement—’
She stared at him.
‘I need your agreement?’
‘Without my knowledge, then. This is a complex matter. More so than we understand. If an investigation gets pulled in different directions . . .’
‘Complex?’ She looked amazed. ‘A stinking pervert you should have jailed four years ago gets out of jail and does exactly the same thing again? You call that complex?’
‘We don’t know for sure—’
‘I had Schuurman phone me from the boat. It’s clear what happened there. We’ve got this Braat creature nailed. You just have to find him. Any ideas on that front?’
The officers in waders were struggling to attach the hook to something beneath the black water.
‘Not right now.’
‘Best come up with something in the morning. Eight o’clock. My office. You will be there.’
‘Divers,’ he said. ‘You always use divers. One step at a time. We need to be patient.’
She laughed at him.
‘Patience? Is that what let this bastard skip free four years ago? When you—’
‘Commissaris,’ he said with some force. ‘I don’t know what happened four years ago. Not fully. And if I haven’t got a clue then neither have you.’
In the harsh artificial light Chandra glared at him and asked, ‘How did you find out I was here?’
‘I asked control.’
She was the kind of woman who was probably very good at spotting a lie.
‘It wasn’t Van der Berg who put you onto this, was it? I specifically ordered him not to.’
‘I said. It was control.’
Another dry, humourless laugh at that.
‘God. You really are living in the past, aren’t you? The way things were once upon a time. Keep the people above you in the dark. Get on with it in your own sweet way. Just watch each other’s backs and everything will be fine. Because the fools upstairs will never know any better.’
She leaned forward and prodded his shoulder with a stubby finger.
‘What century is this? Remind me.’
‘One where people get drugged and murdered and God knows what else. All in some foul little dump of a houseboat when no one’s looking.’ He was aware immediately he’d risen to her bait and didn’t mind. ‘Same as any other.’
Chandra smiled, victorious.
‘Not for you, Vos. Not any longer. I hope you can find it in you to work with me. If not, I’ll sort out a little place for you in the provinces. You can take your ego there. Maybe look for lost dogs or something.’ A thought. It amused her. ‘You like dogs, don’t you? Got experience losing them too.’
‘Anything else, Commissaris?’
She was on a roll and enjoying it.
‘People like you are what’s wrong with the service. You lack discipline. A sense of order. You’re blindly loyal to those who are close to you. And the rest of us . . . well, we don’t really count, do we?’ The finger came out and jabbed him once more. ‘I’m here to fix you or fire you. Never forget it. Now . . .’
The crane engine kicked into life, sending up a scattering of noisy ducks from the rushes. Their wings flapped across the starry sky.
Chandra left him and walked to the bank. The van was coming out of the river, water dripping out of its doors, pouring out of a shattered front window like blood from a freshly opened wound.
Halfway through their argument he’d felt a buzz in his jacket pocket. The phone. A message.
Another foreign number, impossible to trace he felt sure.
Are you suffering yet, Vos? Has it begun?
He typed an answer.
I believe so. What do you want?
There was a pause and he wondered for a second whether it might have been worth trying for a trace. But it was hard to imagine whoever was taunting him had left any pointers there.
Then came the reply.
What we all want. Fulfilment. Recognition. Joy.
By the river someone started to yell for the crane to move.
Hospitals.
Bert Schrijver would never lose that picture of his parents dying slowly, hour by hour, in this self-same antiseptic complex, the air filled with that sickening clinical smell, the corridors echoing to the slow steps of nurses and doctors striding from ward to ward, never stopping to talk to patients or relatives any longer than was necessary.
He couldn’t believe they’d actually managed to make the experience worse. Annie was locked away in the intensive care unit behind a set of double doors only the medical staff could open with their ID cards. The nurse who’d summoned them had gone home. The woman on reception wasn’t sure why they’d been called at all. When she tried to find out, quite half-heartedly, all s
he got was a blank.
Intensive care was in the throes of an emergency. The medical staff were too busy to find out why he and Nina had been told to come to the hospital straight away. In the endless corridors and wards beyond the double doors it seemed someone was fighting for life. Perhaps, Bert Schrijver thought, losing the battle. And just maybe it was their daughter, that one bright light he had, smiling, happy Annie, the flower girl of the Albert Cuyp. The only precious gift left to him, so irreplaceable that a small, much-hated voice had whispered in his ear for ages: One day something dark and evil will snatch her from you and there’s nothing an idiot like you can do to stop it.
In the corner an old woman, straggly grey hair, dishevelled clothing best suited for winter not September, sobbed loudly, rhythmically into a grubby handkerchief. Snatches of her words came to him from time to time. A man’s name. Thomas. Fragments of a whispered prayer to a god whose attention was surely oversubscribed hereabouts.
After a while he couldn’t listen any more. So he left Nina, got a cup of water from the dispenser and sat alone by the toilet door, sipping at the drink, then stuffing his fists in his ears to keep out the racket.
The cries of the living. The whirr of machines. The asthmatic breathing of the air conditioning. Hard footsteps on harder floors.
Three times he’d tried to argue with the woman on reception, demanding to know what was happening. Three times he got knocked back, the last with a firm warning backed up by a wagging finger: Get any more aggressive and security will be round to kick you out for good this time.
Angry, lost, ashamed at his impotence, Schrijver let his head fall between his hands, dripped some of the cold water against his cheeks hoping it would make him feel just the least bit alive.
Cold liquid met skin. Then warm. He realized he was weeping and that made his head fall even further down and the half-full cup fall to the floor.
A soft hand stroked his forehead. Nina was there retrieving the cup, wiping away the little puddle it had left. She sat next to him, moved her fingers from his thinning hair down to his hand and took it.
‘Bert. If we can’t learn how to wait we can’t be here. That’s what you do in hospitals.’
All he needed was for Rob Sanders to walk in and his misery would be complete.
‘Why won’t they tell us?’
‘Maybe because Annie’s not the only one here. There might be . . .’ She glanced at the double doors. ‘Tens of them. Hundreds for all we know. Lot worse than how we saw her too. They’re busy. An emergency.’
‘And Annie’s not? What do they care?’
‘Of course they care,’ she said and the don’t-be-stupid tone in her voice was back. ‘It’s just all that sympathy gets shared around among lots of people. Patients and relatives like us. You can’t expect every last bit of it. That would be greedy and you’ve never been a greedy man.’
The doors opened. Two nurses walked out, half-running, pushing some kind of a machine in front of them. Then came a man in a wheelchair, blue hospital gown around his skinny frame, a bottle of something on a pole by his shoulder, lines in his arm.
Schrijver couldn’t stop himself staring at his face. Grey and bony, white whiskers against pockmarked skin. Marked by something else too. Fear and resignation.
You’re dying, he thought. I know they say we all are. Right from the moment we’re born. But you’re dying here and now, second by second, breath by breath. Won’t ever set foot out of this place again. See the sunlight. Laugh and cry in the open air, somewhere green and cheerful.
‘Worst thing is,’ Nina added, watching the nurses, the ward orderly, and the sick man pass, ‘it all kicks off again tomorrow. Day in, day out. God knows how they deal with it. You get hard, I guess. Otherwise you’d never manage.’
She sighed to herself then, to his astonishment, kissed him quickly on the cheek.
‘One other thing they’ll never say about Bert Schrijver. That you turned hard. Not in you, is it?’
‘Sure about that?’ he asked and regretted it in an instant. She pulled back from him and there was that look of regret, of self-loathing, on her face. Something they both could manage when they wanted.
The door opened. The consultant they’d seen earlier bustled through dictating to a nurse scribbling on a pad by his side. The man barely saw them. Schrijver was up before Nina, standing in front of him, blocking his way.
The doctor scowled at him then apologized.
‘Oh, right. The Schrijvers. I didn’t recognize you.’
‘Someone called. They said Annie’s condition changed. We’ve been sitting here hours.’
‘I’ll be in theatre if you need me,’ the nurse said and walked off.
The consultant had dead eyes. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.
‘It all got hectic,’ he said, clearly trying to marshal his thoughts. ‘Coach crash out near Schiphol. Didn’t you hear the news?’
‘Had enough news of our own,’ Schrijver said.
‘They called about Annie,’ Nina repeated.
He thought about this then nodded.
‘Right. Follow me.’
Heart pumping, breath coming in short gasps, they went through the double doors.
They never tell you out straight, Bert Schrijver thought. There’s always a roundabout route. Maybe they just don’t want to say it. Because that might steal away a little of their own lives too.
They rounded a corner. Annie’s room was two doors along. A couple of nurses were bustling through, sheets in their arms, and straight away he told himself.
Too late again, you useless bastard. Did nothing for her when she was alive. Couldn’t even make it into the room when she gasped out that last pained terrified breath.
He was crying again and couldn’t help it, the warm thick salty tears running down his bristly cheeks.
Schrijver stumbled into her room, heard the hated machines laughing at him in their tinny electronic tones.
‘Annie . . .’ Nina said by his side. ‘Oh, Annie. Darling . . .’
She lay on the bed. Fewer wires and lines now, not so many bleeping machines.
Eyes wide open, blue he remembered, not that he’d been able to recover that particular memory before. Her face was so pale it was hard to believe warm blood flushed her cheeks. Fair hair tousled and greasy, that silly sapphire streak in it.
‘Mum,’ Annie Schrijver said and started to weep. Careful to avoid the lines and cables, Nina approached and threw her arms around her daughter, held her as close and tight as she could.
Bert Schrijver could only watch, lost for words at that moment as the consultant spoke calmly and clearly about how the worst was over. That perhaps as quickly as a day from now Annie would be free to go home.
Home.
Wherever that was. A dump by the Albert Cuyp full of flowers he’d been mentally ticking off for a funeral. The Schrijver castle, now teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Or her mother’s little flat more likely.
He’d failed her. Schrijver knew that, accepted it now, and that knowledge seemed to piss upon all the relief and joy he felt that she still lived.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
The words just came out. As soon as they did he knew Nina would turn on him with that familiar, accusatory look.
‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so . . .’
The two of them were blubbing, more than he’d ever seen since Annie’s grandparents passed away.
He sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand. The consultant said something none of them heard and left.
Schrijver squeezed his daughter’s fingers. There were marks still there, the little cuts she got from handling thorny rose stems. Stigmata were all he’d given her over the years.
‘What . . . ?’ he began and could think of nothing else.
‘Not now,’ Nina told him as the three of them came close on the hard white cotton sheets, amidst the electronic drone of the machines above the bed.
Ma
ybe never, he thought. Perhaps it was the best, the kindest way.
Vos watched the van swing above the river leaking filthy water as it travelled to the bank. Jillian Chandra was in charge. He’d no desire to start a public fight with her. No wish to do anything except get to the bottom of the strange sequence of events that had begun with Sam’s disappearance the night before. Which meant going back to the Sleeping Beauty case. He hadn’t managed to get to the bottom of that four years before. If he was honest with himself, he’d known it all along.
That also meant undertaking the delicate task of renewing his acquaintance with Marly Kloosterman, the doctor in the prison hospital. An interview with Vincent de Graaf, now her patient, was called for. De Graaf had asked for it. Time to give him what he wanted.
The men working the crane were starting to yell for the van to come down. Vos had seen countless vehicles recovered from the drink. Canals usually. It was a tricky task, dangerous sometimes. Best left to the experts. Not that Commissaris Chandra would have agreed. She was running Marnixstraat. She knew best.
The crane chugged and heaved. He’d watch this all the way through then return to the Drie Vaten, sink a couple of beers, talk to Sofia Albers and try to remember what the real world was like.
‘Bring it down to the ground now,’ one of the recovery team yelled.
A sturdy man, someone Vos recognized from occasions like this in the past. The waders that reached up to his beefy chest were drenched and covered in weed. Putting a tentative hand to the van’s rear nearside wheel he turned and asked Chandra to move back from the area they were going to use to land it.
She did, reluctantly accepting there were a few things here beyond her. At that moment Vos felt a twinge of sympathy. There’d been a common refrain in Marnixstraat since she’d arrived, one he quashed whenever he heard it. A whisper that said it was only gender and foreign blood that made a woman like her rise so rapidly through the ranks, buoyed by a fashionable tide of political correctness.
All of which might be true. Still, it didn’t lessen the difficulty of being both female and from an immigrant background. Life must have been tough for Jillian Chandra when she was starting out. She’d never acknowledge the fact, or that it had shaped her. Or, and this had only just occurred to him, that it left scars, something brittle, almost fragile, behind the steely facade of which she made such a visible show.