by David Hewson
Just irrelevant. This sudden frankness was awkward, unwanted yet somehow needed too.
‘What do I know? If it happens it happens,’ he said. ‘If it doesn’t then . . . perhaps you save yourself a lot of pain.’
‘And a tattoo,’ she added, turning into the gate.
They walked past a rock pool full of noisy sea lions, barking and honking, then entered the Artis butterfly house, a modern two-storey glass building at the very edge of the zoo. The atmosphere hit them the moment they stepped through the plastic sheet doors, a wall of hot air so humid the moisture seemed to stick to them. A world of lush green vegetation lay ahead, gigantic palms and succulents stretching two floors to the roof. Through the leaves and branches gaudy shapes flitted, some the size of a hand, some like tiny flying flowers darting to and fro. The noises of the zoo outside, animals, exotic birds and excited visitors, were gone entirely. It was as if they’d entered a verdant tropical jungle recreated in the chilly northern clime of Amsterdam.
Kramer was there to meet them. He was a stick-thin, silver-haired man of fifty or so, smart in a white lab coat and steel-rimmed glasses. With him was his assistant, Rik Loderus. He looked the perpetual student with a head of bubbly dark hair atop a round, beaming, bespectacled face. A pair of baggy hiking shorts and a T-shirt covered in bright butterfly designs completed the outfit. The two men could scarcely have seemed more different.
Straight from a school party, Loderus explained when Bakker stared at the bizarre clothing.
‘I dress for the occasion,’ he added then took off his glasses and wiped away the moisture.
A gaggle of kids in uniform was filing along the winding path to the floor above. Loderus called out to them and got happy waves back.
‘I trust this won’t take long,’ Kramer said then ushered them through to the office, pointing out the frames of chrysalises set out for public display along the way.
‘Half of them empty,’ he said with a dismissive wave. ‘Thanks to that thieving bastard. I should never have let him set foot in this place. It was only on the recommendation of others . . .’
He glared at Loderus.
‘Not me, boss. I thought you took him on,’ his assistant commented as they went through the double doors into a small and tidy room where the busy air conditioning brought some welcome cold. ‘Besides, he’s dead. Saw it on the news. Seems he did a lot worse than pinch our butterflies.’
‘Well,’ Kramer said. ‘That’s the last time we take a convict here.’
Loderus sat on the edge of his desk and raised an eyebrow.
‘Lucas. We’ve had ten, eleven men from prison helping out before. None of them caused any problems. A couple are still here. Very good workers.’
‘Never again in my department,’ Kramer repeated. He stared at Vos and Bakker. ‘What do you want?’
‘We’d like to know about Jef Braat,’ Vos said. ‘What he did, where he came from, who he hung around with.’
Kramer looked at his sidekick and said, ‘I’ve got a budget meeting. You can deal with this.’
With that he walked out of the door.
‘Lucas is very busy,’ Loderus explained. ‘Don’t take it personally.’
‘We’re police,’ Bakker told him. ‘We don’t.’
He smiled at her.
‘Good. There’s not a lot I can tell you really. We give ex-cons a chance from time to time. Braat was one of them. Spent some time in the reptile house then talked his way in here. He seemed . . . OK. I wouldn’t have gone out for a beer with him to be honest with you.’
‘Why not?’ she asked.
‘Not my type. A touch aggressive if you rubbed him up the wrong way. That big butterfly tattoo on his neck didn’t look right either. I doubt he’d have lasted. Even if he wasn’t taking our babies.’
‘Babies? They’re insects.’
‘Beautiful insects,’ he said, pointing at the window. Something had landed there. It had huge wings, strange patterns on them in lurid red and blue and yellow.
Vos asked if Braat had any friends.
‘Doubt it. He was only with us a few weeks. Then someone noticed things were missing. Security confronted him. Lucas and I decided it would be best if we left it to them. After which he was gone. Cleared his locker that same day. I kind of thought he might punch someone on the way out but . . .’ Loderus frowned. ‘Most of the guys we get from prison are fine. They deserve a break. If we lose a few butterflies along the way . . . we can always get more.’
A second shape fluttered in front of the glass, then clung to a vine running down the pane, long spindly legs, fat furry body.
Vos looked at it and asked, ‘How do you kill them?’
That seemed to surprise him.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘It may be important.’
Loderus went to a door at the back of the room, pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and opened it. They followed him into a storage area full of filing cabinets running almost to the low roof. Bakker opened the nearest drawer. There were lines and lines of dead butterflies inside, pinned to paper boards, Latin names beneath, desiccated bodies, some ancient, a few more recent. By a blacked-out window stood a row of killing jars. On the wall was a poster: an old pastel drawing of butterflies. She glanced at Vos. He’d seen it too. The images resembled the tattoo on Braat’s neck.
‘We only do it when we really need to,’ Loderus explained. ‘God knows we’ve got enough specimens from way back when people used to pin them up for fun. I hate it . . .’
‘How does it work?’ she asked.
‘We put poison in a killing jar and drop the poor thing in.’
‘Potassium cyanide,’ Vos said.
‘Exactly. How did you know?’
‘Where do you keep it?’
Loderus pulled out his set of keys again and went to a cupboard secured with a single padlock. Inside were bottles and packs of chemicals. He rootled through a few and muttered, ‘It’s here somewhere.’
The two of them came and stood behind him.
‘It should be.’ Nervous, he pulled on his long dark hair. ‘I don’t understand . . . Ah.’
He retrieved a brown jar and pointed to the skull and crossbones on the label.
‘Almost gone,’ Loderus said, unscrewing the lid. ‘Need to order some more.’
Vos looked inside. A thin layer of white powder lay on the bottom.
‘Let me guess. Jef Braat had access to this locker.’
‘I imagine so.’
Vos asked about records. Loderus checked a book. The last time the killing jars had been used was two months before. There was no way of telling if more poison had been taken from the bottle since then.
‘Lot of use that is,’ Bakker said. ‘And he really had no acquaintances here? No one he talked to?’
Loderus shook his head.
‘Don’t think so. I know this looks like a zoo. Show business or something. But we’re a serious scientific operation. The visitors help pay for real research. And maybe we educate them a little too. Lucas is one of the top men in his field. I’m not exactly without qualifications myself. Jef Braat was . . . a man who swept up and took out the rubbish.’
Bakker kept on at him. Vos poked around the boxes. Dead butterflies, pictures on the wall. Poison. Braat could have taken some, could have used it too. And then someone murdered him in turn. It was all conjecture. They needed something positive. A name from Vincent de Graaf might be a start. Perhaps Jillian Chandra was right.
His phone trilled. A message from one of the night team just coming on duty.
I don’t know if you’ve been told or not. But the Schrijver girl’s going on the news. Right now. You may want to watch.
‘Damn,’ he murmured and walked back into the office, found the PC, sat down at the desk and pulled up the live news feed.
A familiar face came on the screen. Lucie Helmink standing outside the hospital, mike in hand, telling people that what they were about to see might shock them.<
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Then the scene switched to Annie Schrijver upright in bed, eyes darting everywhere. The make-up artist and the hair stylist had made her look as if she was in a TV studio. Still, she seemed drained and frightened.
‘Can’t believe we put her up to this,’ Bakker whispered. ‘I’m not even sure I can watch it.’
She went back into the storeroom. They could hear drawers getting opened, her low complaining voice.
Loderus sat down to watch. In spite of the distressed face on the screen he seemed amused.
‘Something’s funny?’ Vos asked.
‘Not that,’ Loderus said with a nod at the computer. ‘Your friend. She’s different. Is she . . . um . . . ?’
He stopped as if he’d gone too far.
‘Is she what?’ Vos asked and felt he was speaking like a cross father interrogating a potential boyfriend.
Annie Schrijver had started talking. She had a quiet, monotonous voice, something unexpectedly hard to it too.
‘Nothing,’ the butterfly man said. ‘Sorry I asked.’
The sky was getting darker, rain was starting to fall as they took Vincent de Graaf down in the lift to the Bijlmerbajes car park. The pair of prison nurses handled the wheelchair. Marly Kloosterman accompanied them in silence. The man himself wore a bored smile throughout, clutching his sweater around him against the cold.
A silver Mercedes ambulance had been booked for the short trip to the Zuidas. The driver remained behind the wheel while two medics came and signed the paperwork. Kloosterman talked to them, ran through the arrangements. The ambulance would drive into the clinic car park at the side of the public hospital and there be met by local staff. They were to remain on site until De Graaf’s examination and any scans were complete. After that he’d be returned by a clinic nurse and taken back to Bijlmerbajes.
One of the men gazed at De Graaf in his wheelchair and chuckled.
‘I don’t think he’ll be doing a runner, will he?’
‘If he does I’ll have your heads on a block.’
‘Thank you, ma’am.’
‘No. I mean it. You take him there. You bring him back. No screw-ups.’
He handed over the signed documents and said nothing. She returned to De Graaf and the local nurses then went through the journey ahead. He couldn’t take his eyes off the sky, the blocks of the prison, the walls, the van. It was if he’d forgotten what the outside world was like.
‘Enjoy your treat, Vincent,’ she added. ‘It’s more than you deserve.’
‘You don’t know what I deserve. You’ve no idea.’
‘As soon as I get news you’ve left the clinic I’ll bring Vos back here. You’re going to talk to him the moment you turn up.’
‘I do so hope I’ll feel up to it. These things can be terribly tiring.’ He looked up at her and winked. ‘I don’t suppose you could put back that appointment till tomorrow, could you? Give me time to recover. To . . . um, think.’
‘You promised him a name.’
‘Oh, I’ll give him a name.’ He eyed the nurse’s badge. ‘Robin.’ He looked up at the man and smiled. ‘That’s a nice one.’
‘I could stop this—’
‘No you can’t. Wheels in motion, Doctor. A prison quack must know her place.’
‘Take him,’ Kloosterman snapped and watched them load the wheelchair up the ramp.
There was a crack of thunder somewhere in the east. Autumn was coming and with it the cold and wet, the smell of damp leaves, the promise of dead winter.
Two minutes later the Mercedes was through the heavy gates of Bijlmerbajes, heading out into the early evening traffic. De Graaf sat in his wheelchair, smiling at the nurses, amused by the stern way they returned his gaze.
‘Windows,’ he said. ‘It would have been so nice if I’d had a vehicle with windows. Perhaps on the way back . . .’
‘This is what you get,’ the senior medic told him.
The sound of traffic. Music from the ambulance dashboard up front. A waft of diesel on the damp evening air.
It was as close as freedom would ever get if the likes of Pieter Vos and Marly Kloosterman had their way.
‘Very well,’ De Graaf said then folded his skinny arms over the blue jumper and tried to peer through the windscreen up ahead.
Bert and Nina Schrijver found themselves in a trendy cafe set in the midst of the finance blocks springing up all over the Zuidas. It felt like another city, a different world. Thirty-somethings in expensive-looking casual clothes, bent over laptops and tablets, tapping constantly at their giant phones.
He’d given up trying to apologize. She wasn’t much interested in listening anyway. Schrijver had stopped counting the hours too. If he moaned about waiting one more time she’d scream. The entire afternoon had vanished in silent recrimination, overpriced coffee they couldn’t drink, fruitless calls to the hospital pleading for entry only to be told to phone back later.
After a while you ran out of things to say. All that was left was the guilt and the dark thoughts that came out of nowhere, laughing at the back of your head.
Annie was alive and yet somehow a shadow still hung over them. He couldn’t name it, couldn’t quite see it, but he knew for sure it was there.
Hoogland came on the phone. Schrijver went outside to take the call. The stall was busy. It seemed the Syrian kid was proving popular, bringing in more money than even Annie had managed with her sweetest of smiles.
‘Keep him,’ was all Schrijver said when he heard.
‘What do you mean?’ Hoogland asked. ‘Keep him?’
‘I mean bring him back tomorrow. He’s got no other work, has he?’
‘Have you lost your mind? He’s living in a hostel somewhere. We don’t even know who he is. He might be a terrorist.’
‘Don’t be stupid. Does a terrorist want to work a flower stall? He’s making me money. More than you ever do. Maybe if I watch him I can learn how to stay afloat.’
‘He’s smiling at people and running up bouquets on the spot. Neat trick but I don’t need him to do it.’
‘You should check your smile in the mirror, Jordi.’
That didn’t go down well.
‘Annie can smile at them,’ Hoogland replied. ‘She’s good at that.’
‘Annie won’t be back on the stall for a while.’
Maybe never, he thought.
‘Then I’ll do it. Or get some other market bum . . .’
‘You make shit bouquets. Even I can manage better.’
‘If we wind up needing a rag head to fix things . . .’
‘We?’ Schrijver yelled. ‘Since when was it . . . we? This is my business. Not yours. You can piss off and take your thieving fingers elsewhere for all I care.’
It was a cruel, unnecessary thing to say. Hoogland was no angel but at least he’d been loyal. Or, more accurately, turned up to work for pennies, paid late on occasion, when no one else would bother.
‘If he’s illegal and you employ him they’ll fine you. Put you out of business.’
‘I’m almost out of business already. Let me worry about that.’
‘You’re a fool, Bert,’ Hoogland barked. ‘Bigger than you know.’
The line went dead.
‘Handled that well,’ Schrijver muttered to himself.
He looked back in the cafe. People were standing up, going to a huge flat-screen TV set against the back wall. Nina was among them, hand to her mouth, tears in her eyes.
On the TV he saw the reason. Annie was there staring into the camera, looking sick and scared. Something else too that was obvious now she was blown up four times life-size on the screen, something that seemed alien, wrong in the child he’d always raised to be polite and decent and truthful. But that was on the surface and the surface was all a stupid man saw. Not the private life, the seething hidden world that lay beneath.
Evasive was how his daughter seemed. There was no other word.
He marched back into the cafe and took Nina’s arm.
‘We’re going to see her. I don’t care what they say.’
‘Laura,’ Vos called. ‘Get in here. I need you to watch this.’
She wandered into the office and joined the two men at the computer.
Annie Schrijver was nodding as the interviewer went through what she called ‘the story so far’.
‘Story?’ Bakker murmured. ‘It’s a bloody outrage . . .’
Vos shushed her. Lucie Helmink was pushing the mike closer to the figure on the bed, urging her on.
‘Now tell us, Annie. What do you think happened? In your own words.’
‘As if they’d be somebody else’s!’
‘Laura . . .’ Vos said.
‘Laura,’ Loderus echoed more softly.
She was silent then. So was Annie Schrijver.
‘What exactly do you remember?’ the TV woman asked.
A frown, a pained look at the camera then she said, ‘Nothing much. Going out for a drink. With a guy. Waking up.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘In a van somewhere. Blacking out. Coming to . . . here.’
‘You didn’t know this man?’
‘No.’ It was said with the slow, extended petulance of a child. ‘He bought some flowers. Seemed nice. A . . . guy . . . I didn’t know. It happens.’
‘You didn’t think . . .’
‘He wasn’t wearing a shirt with the word rapist on it. I’d probably have noticed.’
‘This sleeping beauty’s got claws.’ Bakker whispered.
‘Where did you meet him?’ echoed Lucie Helmink.
‘Some place.’ She screwed her eyes tight shut, looked as if she was struggling for a memory. ‘Nearby I guess. I don’t remember a car. Or a taxi. My bike . . .’
‘Just any place?’ Helmink asked. ‘This man was a stranger. You went with him—’
‘Not just any place!’
Her eyes flickered from side to side, as if looking to someone for comfort.
‘Couldn’t have been. I wouldn’t . . .’
‘Somewhere you thought you were safe?’
‘Must have done.’
‘And what happened?’
‘Had a drink,’ she said, close to a whisper. ‘Talked. He was . . . OK, I guess. Otherwise I wouldn’t have stayed. Not stupid . . .’
‘No one thinks you’re stupid.’