by David Hewson
It was Den Hartog who chipped in.
‘You can’t. There are legal issues.’
‘Legal issues?’ Bakker repeated. ‘She’s an important witness in a murder case.’
Van der Berg briefly raised an eyebrow at her before going back to his notebook.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she threw at him.
‘It means there are legal issues.’ He glanced at Den Hartog. ‘Aren’t there?’
‘They’re threatening us over the TV interview she gave,’ Chandra explained. ‘Gave willingly, I might add. A lawyer from the awkward squad’s sidled up to the parents and told them she can get some money out of this. She’s claiming we coerced a vulnerable woman into going public with an admission that was not in her own interests.’
Silence then until Vos said, ‘So I take it we did.’
‘No one’s making any admissions,’ the PR man replied.
‘But clearly she’s got a point. Otherwise we wouldn’t be sitting here discussing it. I’d have her in an interview room downstairs and we might be getting somewhere.’
Chandra turned to Van der Berg and told him to make sure he wrote down word for word what she was about to say.
‘Vos. You go nowhere near Annie Schrijver until the lawyers say it’s safe to do so. We’ll try to negotiate something.’
Van der Berg scribbled at the page obediently.
‘Then what do you want me to do?’ Vos asked.
‘You could start by telling me what you know. If you’ve any idea why this suddenly blew up out of nowhere. That might help.’
He understood quite a lot when he thought about it.
‘What happened is Jef Braat came out of jail and met his biggest fan. An American. Greg Launceston. A rich kid from one of the software start-ups in De Graaf’s old building in the Zuidas. Launceston had form for date rape back in California which is why his so-kind family dispatched him over here. Unfortunately – I’m assuming this is coincidence – he discovered our friend Vincent’s hobbies and this rather fired a passion for them.’
He picked up his phone and showed them the map from the email Louise Warren had given them.
‘Launceston didn’t have a real job. He seems to have spent most of his waking hours chasing everything he could find out about De Graaf. The bars he used to haunt. The places the papers said he left his victims. He seems to have been very good at tracking things down. Eventually he came to believe De Graaf had some kind of base in the Zuidas. Unlike us he found it. I assume through Jef Braat.’
‘How did he know Braat?’ Van der Berg asked.
It was the first decent question Vos had had from him since Chandra snatched his old colleague away.
‘Can’t say. If he spent long enough digging, hanging round the bars De Graaf used, perhaps the two of them bumped into each other. Found common cause. Given they’re both dead it may be hard to find out.’
Bakker was following all this too.
‘So on Tuesday night Launceston met up with Annie Schrijver—’
‘We have to ask her about that,’ Vos broke in. ‘And we can’t.’
‘Well, say he did,’ she carried on. ‘Launceston spiked her drink. Got her back to Braat’s boat. The third man murders Launceston and leaves Annie with him in Zorgvlied. Then pushes Braat into the river hoping we’ll think he did it all.’
‘Very roundabout way of killing people,’ Van der Berg chipped in.
Quite, Vos thought, wishing his old friend was back on the team, not wasting his time taking notes in Jillian Chandra’s office.
No one spoke. Then Van der Berg asked, ‘Why would he kill them?’
‘Because our mystery man thought he’d put it all behind him,’ Bakker suggested. ‘De Graaf’s in jail. The case seems closed. Having this pushy American come back wanting to kick things off again brings back the risk. It means we’ll start looking again and this time round perhaps we’ll find him.’ She looked pleased with herself. ‘So you kill anyone who knows. Braat and Launceston. Then he lures De Graaf out of jail to the Zuidas and kills him too. He’s safe.’
‘Could work,’ Van der Berg commented, nothing more.
‘Unless you have a better idea.’
‘Not my case.’
‘Annie Schrijver might know,’ Vos pointed out.
‘She’s already said she only met the one man and then blacked out.’
‘Maybe she’s lying.’
Chandra grimaced and said, ‘You’re not going to get the chance to find out. Do you have any idea who this man might be?’
Some, Vos told her. He was clever, meticulous. All that choreography the night Sam was snatched showed that. The man was familiar with technology. The map coordinates. The phone he’d managed to smuggle to De Graaf somehow then wipe remotely. The text messages from an ever-changing array of untraceable foreign SIMs. An active man able to handle a boat, navigate the narrow waterways around the Amstelpark. That ringing cry through the dark next to the Zorgvlied cemetery.
Another day, Vos. You will hear from me again. That I promise.
‘He’s . . . educated.’
‘What about Rob Sanders?’ Chandra wondered.
‘It can’t be him. Forensic didn’t find a single incriminating thing in his apartment. No foreign SIMs. No books. This man reads books.’
Chandra looked smug.
‘Books? Really?’
‘Really. Also . . .’
Two things he couldn’t get out of his head. One was the picture of Vincent de Graaf’s right arm covered in bruises and cut marks. The other the tattoos quickly scrawled on Launceston and De Graaf by their killer.
‘Sanders is a nurse. He wouldn’t need twenty or thirty goes to get a needle into someone’s arm. And that tattoo . . . Sleep Baby Sleep. He puts it on the women because they’re trophies. It’s the final act of possession. Why go to the trouble of doing that to two men? Doesn’t add up. It’s not Rob Sanders.’
Van der Berg sighed and closed his notebook. Den Hartog pulled out his phone and started to check his messages. Vos wondered what he’d said.
Then Chandra threw a blue forensic folder on the desk and told him to read it.
The report was an hour old. They’d taken DNA samples from the bathroom in Sanders’ flat in De Pijp. They matched the traces in the felt band of the suede hat Van der Berg had picked up outside the Drie Vaten on Wednesday night.
By all rights she should have revealed that at the start of the discussion, not the end. He’d been set up.
‘You need to cut out the clever stuff, Vos,’ Chandra ordered. ‘It’ll be the death of you. Me too if I allow it. Just find Sanders and put this mess to bed. Do you have no idea where he is?’
‘The best person to ask is—’
Her voice rose. Van der Berg’s head went down. Den Hartog too.
‘How many times do I have to say it? You can’t go near Annie Schrijver. So what else?’
Before he could say anything Bakker leapt in.
‘We need to check out a couple of bars. Starting with that one in the Albert Cuyp. What’s it called?’
‘The Mariposa?’ Van der Berg said. ‘You know what that means? In Spanish?’
‘Butterfly,’ Vos replied. ‘Thanks, Dirk.’
Chandra scooped up the blue folder.
‘Go near that family and you’re digging your own graves. I’ll be the one who pushes you in.’
Bert Schrijver had given the young Syrian a money belt for the market that morning. A leather pouch with a hundred-euro float in it. Ordinarily Adnan would have offloaded some of the cash back into the office during the day. But Schrijver’s foul temper meant he was reluctant to come inside again. So, close to the end of the busy afternoon when the stallholders were looking round, getting ready to start the long and laborious task of breaking the market and looking forward to Sunday, the only day the Albert Cuyp closed, he went into the adjoining alley and quietly counted the takings.
Out of the way so no one could see. He�
�d lost track of how many times they’d been robbed on the long and arduous journey from Aleppo, across the sea to Greece then on through countries he could barely name until they wound up in Amsterdam. A kind of home. A place of safety for him, his wife Mariam and their four-year-old daughter Lia even if it meant sharing a single room with so many others in a squalid block near the IJtunnel.
Carefully he went through the notes. Almost fourteen hundred euros plus the fifty-dollar bill that was all an enthusiastic American woman could offer. Big money. Bert Schrijver looked as if he could use it. Adnan would be happy with his share: ten euros per hour. In his head he could already see himself proudly returning the takings to Schrijver in the office, placing the money on the table and hoping that might cheer him up.
As he was sorting the bills into some kind of order a shadow came and blocked out the light from the market.
‘Thinking of running?’ Jordi Hoogland asked.
He was a broad and powerful man. The kind Adnan and his family had met a lot on that difficult journey across Europe.
‘No, sir. This is Mr Schrijver’s money. I count it for him. I give it him. Then I get my wages.’
He smiled and brandished a fan of notes. Hoogland just stood over him, a bitter smile on his face.
‘That was my job you took. Years I worked at it.’
Fear. It was always there. Always would be after the barrel bombs began raining down on Sulaymaniyah, the neighbourhood where they lived. His people had stayed out of the civil war. Perhaps the government planes made a mistake. Or they wanted to send a message. No one bothered much about motives when those metal canisters began raining from the sky on houses, schools and hospitals. They were just afraid, like now.
‘I never meant to take anything from you, mister. You asked me to work here. I just did what I was told. If—’
He held out a fifty from the wad of notes. Most of what he expected to earn that day.
‘Here. You take my wages. I never meant to offend you. Or anyone—’
One punch straight into the place they often aimed for. The soft belly beneath the rib cage. You winded a man that way. His head came down. Your knee came up, met with a chin or lips, it really didn’t matter. Once you’d got those blows in you’d won.
Adnan went over with little more than a whimper. Somewhere along the way he’d learned that screaming just made things worse.
Hoogland’s hard fists rained down on him until all he could do was wind himself into a tight, pained ball, crouch at the Dutchman’s feet, hands over his dark hair, taking each punch and kick as it came.
After a while they stopped. His mouth was full of blood. His lips were swollen.
One more kick and Hoogland rolled him over, dragged his slender frame up against the black brick wall, patted him down.
The wad of notes went and the cheap phone Adnan kept for calling Mariam. She was struggling to find a kitchen job that included child care.
Hoogland’s fist closed on his jacket, his other hand on Adnan’s windpipe. Face hard against the wall he listened to the man’s rants, wondering when they’d end.
One last knee to the groin. Hoogland’s mouth came up. Spittle flying, he snarled, ‘If I so much as see or smell you in the Albert Cuyp again I swear I’ll rip your head off. Chuck you in the canal. Who’s going to miss you? One more stinking rag head. I’d be doing the world a favour.’
Maybe that was true, Adnan thought, as Hoogland pulled him back to the point where the alley joined the emptying street.
‘When I let you go you run. As fast as those skinny legs will take you. If you stop I’ll be there. And then it all gets worse. With me?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Adnan whispered through swollen bloody lips.
Hoogland let go. The Syrian looked at the Albert Cuyp. He knew markets. Knew flowers. Thought perhaps just this once they might be in luck.
But run he did.
The market was pretty much over by the time Vos and Bakker got there. Cleaners were out hosing down the street, sweeping away the rubbish. Small electric trucks wove through the last of the customers, taking down stalls and shifting scaffolding and timber boards. A new crowd was turning up for the Albert Cuyp. The early shift of the Saturday night people starting to cram into the cafes and the cocktail bars that were springing up everywhere.
They stopped outside the Mariposa, a few hundred metres along from Schrijver’s flower stall. That was closed already, just a few bare green stalks on the pavement betraying its presence. The sliding doors to the shop were shut. No sign of life at all.
‘Not that we can go there anyway,’ Bakker said, anticipating Vos’s thoughts.
He was staring at the bar on the other side of the road.
‘God, I’m an idiot,’ he murmured.
The outside walls had been painted, desert scenes, cacti, mountains, bottles of tequila, glasses of margarita.
‘That was Ruud Jonker’s place. Where he had his tattoo parlour.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Not the kind of thing you forget,’ Vos muttered and they went inside.
Stainless steel chairs, shiny mirrors, abstract art on the walls, stripped pine. A board full of exotic cocktails twice the price of a beer in a local dive. The early evening crew was starting to gather, three deep at the counter already. There were just a couple of men busy behind the bar and it was hard to tell them apart. Early thirties, combed brown beards, striped shirts with braces, heavy workmen’s trousers. Vos went to the counter, flashed his ID and said he wanted to talk to whoever was in charge.
The two glanced at each other and the nearest said, ‘We both are. Can it wait?’
‘No,’ Bakker told them. ‘It can’t.’
They’d remodelled the place so much it was unrecognizable, turning what was once a chaotic den into an open space with cramped tables and tall chairs. The clearest memory Vos had of that night four years before was of finding Ruud Jonker swinging from a beam by a rope next to a red leather chair. He couldn’t place that anywhere here. The premises had changed so much.
Then one of the men led them into a small office at the back. A computer, a desk and a few chairs. A beam in the ceiling. No barber’s chair, no drawings of butterflies on the wall. But this was where they’d found the individual they’d believed to be Vincent de Graaf’s sole partner in a cycle of rape and murder, one much larger and wider than any of them had suspected. A man who’d killed himself when he knew they were closing in.
Vos left it to Bakker to get the story. The near-identical beards were the owners, Tom and Anton de Vogel, two brothers from what sounded like a fancy address in the Canal Ring. They’d opened the place eighteen months before.
‘Where did the name come from?’ Vos asked.
The one they were talking to was Tom.
‘It’s Spanish. We wanted a Mexican theme. We do some fancy tequila and mezcal.’
Vos glanced up at the beam, stared at the man in the blue striped shirt and heavy trousers and asked the question again. Tom de Vogel tugged nervously at his long brown beard.
‘We’re not great believers in coincidence,’ Bakker added when he kept quiet.
‘There were all these butterfly posters on the walls when we took over the lease. Tattoo art.’ He laughed. ‘Still that leather chair too. I’m amazed you took away the rope. Seemed a good joke . . .’
‘A joke?’ she said.
‘Sorry. Poor taste. I apologize. The truth is this place had been empty for a couple of years. No one wanted to take it on. It wasn’t the history. Everything was a mess. Took us eighteen months to convert it the way we wanted. Get permission. Find the right architect. Came in at twice the budget we expected. Mariposa. It sounds nice.’
Vos wanted to know where the money came from.
‘Family,’ he said. ‘Dad’s in banking. He wanted to set us up in business. We didn’t . . . We didn’t want to trade on all that bad stuff. And we haven’t. We’re not ghouls. We sell drinks. That’s all.’
Vos p
ulled up a photo on his phone.
‘What about him?’
A file shot of Braat from criminal records.
De Vogel grimaced.
‘So you do know him?’ Vos said.
‘Jef. Just a first name. Started coming in regularly a few weeks ago. Seemed to know a few people.’
Then a picture of Launceston from the morgue. De Vogel went white at that one and whispered, ‘Jesus Christ. So it was him. In the paper. He’s dead.’
‘Let me get this clear. You knew we were asking for help identifying this man. You recognized him. You did nothing.’
‘That wasn’t the picture in the paper,’ De Vogel objected. ‘I mean . . . it could have been anyone. His name was Greg or something. Acted like he had money.’
‘You knew him?’
He was getting twitchy.
‘Not really. He just came in with Jef a couple of times. Creeped me out to be honest. We never went out of our way to talk up all that stuff about the tattoo guy. It was years ago. Most people round here have forgotten all about it.’
‘Greg Launceston hadn’t,’ Bakker suggested.
He was back to tugging at the carefully coiffured beard.
‘True. The idiot wouldn’t shut up. He begged us to let him come in the office and take photos. I couldn’t wait to get him out of the place.’ He blinked, as if trying to remember something. ‘He even talked about buying us out at one point. We thought about it too. Then everything went quiet. He said he’d found somewhere . . . more suitable. Whatever that means.’
Vos knew and so, from the look on her face, did Bakker. Launceston had discovered the hidden basement in the De Witt building.
‘Listen,’ De Vogel pleaded. ‘It gets really busy in here of an evening. Anton and me try and run the place on our own as much as we can. It’s just booze and finger food. We’re trying to pay off Dad’s loan—’
‘Do you ever get women pass out?’ Bakker asked.
The face behind the beard turned a shade rosier.
‘We know the rules. We don’t serve drunks—’
‘Not talking about drunks, Tom. Are we?’