Before the Dawn

by Jake Woodhouse

  ‘What’s that?’ Arno asks from the doorway.

  Jaap holds it up for Arno to see.

  ‘Wow,’ Arno says. ‘Have a nice trip.’

  ‘Nine hundred trips,’ Jaap says after a quick count.

  The house yields nothing else of interest so Jaap tells Arno to bag up the stack of leaflets, see if there’s some real mail amongst it.

  They’re out the door when Jaap becomes aware of a low growl. They turn to see an old guy exiting the house next door. He’s rocking mustard cords and a tweed jacket, complete with suede elbow patches. His hair is thinning and whiter than white. He has a leash in one hand, wrapped tight round his fist.

  The source of all the noise is at the other end of it. A dog which is basically a mini Jabba the Hutt.

  Jabba pulls the old man their way, eyes bulging.

  ‘Have you come to arrest him finally?’ the old man asks, having scanned them both, clearly deciding that Jaap looks like the one to address questions to. His eyes are washed out, like an old watercolour, the skin round them pink.

  ‘What for?’ Jaap asks, keeping an eye on Jabba, whose front paws are scrabbling at the concrete in an attempt to get to him.

  ‘Trying to kill him.’ He motions to the dog. ‘I reported it. Evil man. He just wants to play, that’s all.’

  Jaap looks at Jabba. The thing is stock still now, eyes on Arno, and his teeth are showing through pulled-back lips. The growl’s much deeper than Jaap thinks is possible given its size.

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Are you saying you’re not here to arrest him?’

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘A few months ago, that’s when he attacked him. He should be shot. Animal abuser.’

  The man, in his passion, lets the leash go slack. Jabba notices, lunges forward, jerking the leash out of the old man’s hand, and launches himself at Arno, who’s already powering backwards into the broken door.

  Jaap stamps on the leash as it flies past him. Jabba hits the end of it, spins in the air and redirects his attention to Jaap in a flash of snarling teeth. Jaap barely has time to snatch the leash up, holding it high and away from his body, forcing the dog onto its back legs. Front paws scrabble the air, eyes become even more bulbous.

  The old man is shrieking now. Jaap’s worried he’s going to have a stroke.

  Actually I’m not, he thinks. At least it would shut him up.

  ‘Get your dog under control,’ he says to the man. ‘And I’m sending a team out to assess this,’ he says, handing the leash over once the dog has finally calmed down. The man snatches up the dog, gives Jaap an evil eye, and shuffles away, cooing to Jabba.

  ‘Thanks,’ Arno says. ’Little fucker was going to bite me. And the guy says he just wants to play?’

  ‘Play,’ Jaap says.

  ‘Nice move with the lead.’

  ‘Someone taught me how to do that once, never thought I’d get to use it. She trains police dogs out near Utrecht. She’s no more than five foot, but man, she walks into a field and those dogs snap to it like they’re North Korean military. Any of the new recruits tries any biting on her, well, let’s just say it’s a one-time-only kind of deal.’

  ‘Lesbian?’ Arno says.

  Jaap punches him on the arm. ‘Don’t they give you diversity training on that island of yours?’

  52

  Kees’ plan had been to spend the next couple of days keeping out of Van der Pol’s way whilst trying to work out where he’d get the extra money to pay the balance of his new ID.

  But it’s not working out too well. He got called in again, and is now waiting at the haulage company, a rented lot on a soulless industrial estate, to see the man himself, an experience which is more unnerving each time it happens.

  He wonders, not for the first time, if he’s going to be asked to dig another grave before being knifed himself.

  Nah, he thinks. If Van der Pol finds out who I am he’s not going to be content with a mere stabbing.

  But Van der Pol, when he ushers Kees into the shipping container, seems to be relatively relaxed, pensive almost.

  Which doesn’t stop Kees’ fight-or-flight reaction blasting on. But he manages to control it and takes the seat offered.

  Van der Pol’s desk is neat, a few piles of invoices which Kees knows Van der Pol insists on approving himself, and his cheap mobile which looks early 2000s at least. Kees is sure Nokia don’t even exist any more. Maybe Van der Pol bought a job lot years ago to keep him in burners. He knows why Van der Pol insists on using these old phones – they’re far less hackable than the newer ‘smart’ phones. Each layer of added complexity simply adds a layer of something which can be manipulated, more ways for people to hack in. Kees worked a case where a computer tech had turned on the mic of a suspect’s phone remotely, allowing them to listen in on a conversation. The conversation had led to arrests, but the case had proved a massive headache for all involved, the defence making much of the fact that what they’d done was basically illegal.

  Kees realizes the shipping container is part of this too, easy to sweep for bugs, and very difficult to listen in on, no internet in here, just a single electrical cable from the generator outside powering the strip lighting overhead.

  ‘Job done?’ Van der Pol asks as he finishes signing the papers on his desk. He puts his pen down, leans back in his chair and gazes at Kees.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Van der Pol carries on staring.

  Kees sits and waits, returning the stare, concentrating on the end of his nose, hoping Van der Pol can’t make out what he’s doing. He’s learnt it’s easier than looking him in the eye.

  ‘OK, here’s the deal,’ Van der Pol says, leaning forward suddenly. ‘We’re down a few, as you know. I’m going to need you to step up the next couple of days, there’s a job needs doing.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can dig any more holes,’ Kees says, holding his hands up.

  Van der Pol waves them away. ‘No, this is less manual. More … cerebral, shall we say. I need you to find someone for me.’

  ‘OK,’ Kees says. ‘Who?’

  Van der Pol pulls a small file from under the invoices and slides it across the table.

  Kees opens it up, sees a page or so of text with a photo on top. He looks at the photo. It’s not anyone he recognizes, a middle-aged man with anonymous features, a slightly round face and trimmed hair, colour unknown as it’s a black and white shot. But on closer inspection Kees spots something unusual by his left eye, some scar tissue maybe, giving him a squint look.

  Van der Pol writes on a piece of paper and shows it to Kees.

  ‘If you find him you’ll get this, as a bonus.’

  Kees stares at the paper.

  He wonders if there is a God.

  A cruel, malevolent one whose main purpose in existing is to continually fuck with him.

  Because the number on the paper is pretty much exactly what he needs.

  ‘Once I’ve found him, what do you want me to do?’

  Van der Pol looks at him for a moment, then breaks into a smile. Kees is reminded of a nature documentary he’d seen years ago – some old guy lying in the jungle, explaining in a half-whisper that for chimps, a group of which were busy picking insects off each other’s backs only metres away, a smile was a sign of aggression.

  ‘Just find him,’ Van der Pol says, Kees still seeing nothing but teeth. ‘Then I’ll let you know.’

  Van der Pol’s phone buzzes, he checks the screen and signals to Kees that they’re done. Kees gets out of there as Van der Pol swivels in his chair and answers the phone.

  He’s ten feet away from the container when he realizes he didn’t take the file, so he doubles back. Just as he’s getting close he can hear Van der Pol, his voice raised, more agitated than he’s ever heard him. He moves closer.

  ‘… so you think I don’t know that?’ Van der Pol’s voice stops, as if he’s listening. ‘I’ve got people on it. We’ll get him.’ Another pause. ‘Ye
ah, well, get this. If I go down then you’re coming with me, remember that.’

  Kees hears something smash against the shipping container’s wall, the noise reverberating through the metal.

  He waits a few moments before retrieving the file.

  As he’s out of there – Van der Pol hardly glancing at him – he’s starting to wonder just who it is he’s meant to be finding.

  53

  If you took every piece of junk mail which gets pushed through every door all over the world every single day, Jaap’s pretty sure the amount you’d end up with would be so vast that it might actually shame people into doing something about it. Like passing a law making it illegal to send out flyers advertising such non-trivial items as the Best Vacuum Cleaners in the World, or the latest, speediest stairlifts.

  Luckily he has Arno to go through the mail they’d picked up at Vink’s house, and, even more luckily, after a mere half-hour, Arno’s found something. A statement showing Vink’s monthly rent payment on a property in the countryside on the way to Utrecht.

  They’re heading there now, pulling off the A2 and cruising through an increasingly rural landscape, Jaap having to resort to his phone as the car they’ve signed out has a faulty satnav which every few kilometres tries to change their destination to a street in Nairobi. Which, it claims, will take them six days and eighteen hours. It also helpfully draws their attention to the fact that the chosen route includes a ferry crossing and tolls.

  ‘Left here?’

  ‘Seems to be saying that,’ Jaap says.

  Arno slows down and they both peer at the narrow track winding away from them into a thick wood. It looks too narrow for a car. It also doesn’t seem like it’s been used since the time of horses and carts.

  ‘Fuck it,’ Arno says, spinning the wheel and nosing onto it.

  Branches scratch the car’s sides, clawing at Jaap and Arno through the open windows, but Arno carries on, the car pitching and yawing like a boat on rough seas.

  ‘We got enough to arrest him, bring him in?’

  ‘We don’t really have enough for a warrant yet; at a push we could use the LSD found at his house, though that’s slightly tenuous. Let’s wait and see what he’s like – his reaction to us turning up will be telling.’

  ‘You think he’s the one forcing all those men into killing?’

  Jaap thinks about it. ‘I don’t know,’ he finally says. ‘You got the team working on linking him to any of the other women?’

  ‘Yeah, told them to call the moment they found anything. So far no call.’

  A few minutes in, just as it seems to be narrowing further, the track suddenly opens out into a clearing.

  ‘You have reached your destination,’ the phone tells them.

  Jaap checks out the clearing, sees the cabin. Horizontal overlapping planks of wood form the walls, silvered with age, topped by a sloping roof smothered with a low-spreading plant. A pipe leads down from the roof into a large plastic water butt on the left corner. The door is ill-fitting and worn.

  At the edge of the clearing a squirrel spread-eagles halfway up a tree trunk, waiting to see what they’ll do.

  A car is parked to one side, the front windows fully down.

  ‘Looks like he’s home, you take the back,’ Jaap says.

  As Jaap approaches, the front door opens and he recognizes the man from the photo.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ Rogier Vink says.

  He’s thin, cheeks sunken. Shadowy pools of purple below his eyes show Vink’s not getting his eight hours.

  ‘Rogier Vink,’ Jaap says, ‘I’d like you to come with us.’

  ‘What? What the fuck for? Are you arresting me?’

  Jaap thinks for a moment, weighs it up.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘I am.’

  ‘What for?’

  Jaap thinks another moment.

  ‘Possession of drugs,’ he says, ‘and cruelty to an animal.’

  54

  Killers are like fruit.

  At least that’s what one of Jaap’s early mentors had told him once when he was training to be an inspector.

  They’d been working a case where a male prostitute had been hung from a branch, a rope tied round his feet, and his throat cut so he’d bled out like a slaughtered pig. The killer had actually captured most of the blood in a series of buckets and taken them from the scene. One of the techs had mentioned they’d had blood pudding and eggs for breakfast.

  Jaap’s mentor had dropped his wisdom-pearl when they finally caught their main suspect, who – even when presented with some pretty solid evidence against him – maintained his innocence. His mentor had barrelled the guy into a cell, saying that like fruit, killers needed time to ripen. Which is where the metaphor had broken down a bit, as he’d gone on to say that, once ripened to perfection, you splattered them against the wall, their guilt oozing down for all to see.

  Jaap thinks back to that day and wonders if it hadn’t been warning enough. Get out whilst you’ve still got your sanity, because clearly policing hadn’t done much for his mentor’s state of mind. It was only a few months later that a call had come in saying a man had been spotted naked, except for a pair of orange wraparound sunglasses, standing in Dam Square, his left shoulder twitching up to his ear seemingly at random. When Jaap turned up a huge group of tourists had been gathered round him, perhaps thinking it was some kind of performance art. Some had even thrown coins onto the ground in front of him.

  When Jaap and a couple of uniforms had taken him, he was mumbling under his breath, eyes not seeing, and two days later he was signed off permanently for psychiatric reasons. He was, at least, given a full pension.

  So now Vink’s in a cell, and Jaap’s letting him stew, rather than ripen.

  Under guard.

  He’s not having anyone else in this case commit suicide.

  He’s in the main office prepping when Tanya calls to tell him she’s been discharged.

  ‘I’m just about to interview, I’ll pick you up as soon as I’ve finished.’

  ‘Really, I’m fine. I’ll get a cab. And I think they need the bed, there’s this nurse who keeps walking past and doing the oh you’re still here sort of look.’

  ‘Get their name, I’ll have them arrested. And I’ll send someone round—’

  ‘Jaap, I’ll get a cab. Least the department can do is spring for the fare. You go and get your guy.’

  And she hangs up before Jaap can say anything else.

  He grasps the handle and steps inside.

  After dismissing the two uniforms and going through the prelims, Jaap starts by asking about Heleen.

  ‘I already told you I didn’t kill her or have her killed like you said. That’s crazy. I was trying to help her.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s true. You did say that before. But I’m not convinced.’ He pulls out a print-off of the email exchange, points to Heleen’s last email. ‘Read that out aloud.’

  Vink hesitates then reads it out. ‘ “You shouldn’t be here, leave me alone.” ’

  ‘Which to me says that she doesn’t want your help.’

  Vink stares at him across the steel-topped table, one hand cuffed to a low rail underneath the surface, his hollow cheeks and the dark rings under his eyes more pronounced by the overhead lighting.

  ‘She was a patient of mine,’ he eventually says. ‘I got too attached, which is why I went to Vlieland. I was trying to get her out of that cycle.’

  ‘The mutilation?’

  ‘That’s how I met her. I’d found her online, on a forum for people who were into that kind of thing. I got in touch with her and offered to help. She’d seemed receptive, you know? So we eventually agreed to meet and I started working with her, trying to get her to stop. A lot of these people have deep trauma in their lives, and the self-mutilation is a symptom of that. I can help them get to the bottom of it, help them see it for what it is, and move on.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Jaap says, shifting through the file he’s brought
with him on Vink’s background. ‘I must’ve missed the part where you spent years studying this. Like which medical school, that kind of thing.’

  ‘You don’t need to go to school to be good at something. Bit of paper showing you jumped through some hoops? Means shit in my world.’

  ‘Right,’ Jaap says, knowing that he actually sort of agrees. A bit of paper is no guarantee. ‘So you’re self-appointed. And self-taught.’

  ‘Fucking proud to be as well, that’s why I get results. I guide them through a healing process, which is unique for everyone.’

  Vink uses his free hand to pull up the sleeve of his cuffed hand. Jaap sees the scars, thin lines all running in the same direction, from the inner elbow upwards, heading for the armpit.

  ‘This is my qualification,’ he says. ‘You got a problem, you’d rather go to someone who knows about it from a book and looks down on you, or someone who’s been through it and come out the other side?’

  Vink’s not a fruit. And he hasn’t ripened. Or stewed. Or whatever.

  In fact, once he’d got over the initial shock of arrest, the opposite seems to have happened.

  ‘And do you sleep with all the patients you manage to lure over the internet? Is that part of the healing process?’

  Vink doesn’t answer, he just stares at Jaap, defiance in his eyes.

  ‘And these?’ Jaap pulls out the LSD tabs. ‘Is this part of your protocol as well?’

  ‘Some of these people have been to psychiatrists before and been given medicine which seriously fucks them up. It’s almost barbaric. This stuff?’ He points to the tabs. ‘Used right, this stuff can be seriously healing.’

  ‘So you let them trip out on acid and they get better?’

  ‘I’ve helped many people with this, so you can keep your condescension. Means nothing to me. I sleep at night.’

  ‘Just having these could be life, you get that right?’

  Vink shrugs, like life’s part of life.

  ‘I didn’t kill Heleen. I haven’t killed anyone. You want to charge me with possession then go ahead, but all you’ll be doing is stopping me from helping other people.’