The Harbour Master

by Daniel Pembrey

  ‘Could be him,’ she said.

  On the monitor, a figure jumped between frames down the narrow lane. Stefan froze the recording that offered the best view.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘His jacket was darker, I’m sure.’

  The frustration in the small room grew. It should have been a day of celebration for Liesbeth. To both of my younger colleagues, this sudden quest to track down a pimp probably appeared quixotic. Crimes in the RLD were rarely assigned a high priority. No Dutch householders were implicated; no precious voters in the inner or outer suburbs were affected…

  But I was convinced of the incident’s significance. Any pimp or handler would have known about the cameras in Molensteeg: the stakes and urgency must have been high for him to risk appearing on one.

  Stefan sat back, sighing. ‘I’m going to need you to get Joost to prioritise this.’ The station captain was another of Jan Six’s boys (like Bergveld). ‘There’s too much else in my inbox.’

  I wondered if that included a dead body in the harbour. ‘Just a couple more minutes,’ I said. I patted him on the shoulder, and he leaned forward with another sigh.

  We went back over the time frame once more, from another camera angle. Again Liesbeth came into view, beside the door of a Chinese restaurant. ‘Wait!’ she said suddenly. ‘What about him?’

  A well-built guy had appeared in the doorway opposite Irena’s window.

  Stefan played with the controls, getting us a grainy, partial view of the man’s face.

  ‘That’s him,’ Liesbeth said.

  ‘You sure?’

  She nodded firmly.

  Stefan did something to send the image of the man’s profile to his laptop. Here was the reason he wasn’t allowed to get out more: he soon had a program open and was fixing red dots on the man’s features. It was like something they might use in an animation studio rather than an outdated CCTV-monitoring room. The identification was soon made.

  ‘Looks to be one Jan To˝zsér,’ Stefan said, pausing to read another window that had popped up alongside the image. ‘Hungarian national found living in the Netherlands illegally in 2007… a couple of cautions for minor offences, including possession of methamphetamines…’

  ‘Anything more?’ I asked, leaning in.

  Stefan was silent for a second. ‘An arresting officer comments that he goes by the street name “Slavic”. Widely feared.’

  They usually were.

  Stefan looked at me, seeking direction.

  But something else was nagging: I’d seen this Slavic before.

  Where?

  *

  ‘Henk, could I see you for a moment?’

  Joost had put his bald head and scrawny neck around the door.

  ‘Sure.’

  He led me out of the monitoring room down the corridor. In his hand was a paper file. Joost was one of the few to have his own office. But instead of taking me there, he showed me into an empty conference room, the kind used for conducting briefings on operations. The motion-sensor lights flickered on and he closed the door behind us.

  ‘Take a seat.’

  Why?

  ‘I just wanted to check in with you,’ he said, answering my unspoken question.

  ‘Check in? Should I have someone present?’

  I smiled to let him know I was joking.

  Half joking.

  He smiled back. ‘At ease, Captain Henk.’

  He liked to conflate my old army rank with first-name terms.

  ‘Bas mentioned that you weren’t looking too well this morning.’

  Bas.

  I thought back to the morning’s events with Sebastiaan Bergveld. ‘Shouldn’t you be somewhere else, van der Pol?’ Bergveld had asked at the harbour.

  ‘The case you called in,’ Joost reminded me.

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  I was now on high alert. Joost was an intensely political creature with a knack for remembering details of events and conversations.

  ‘A dead body is always a shock,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘Especially the younger ones. This one would be around the same age as your daughter, I think?’

  I cleared my throat, about to say something but changing my mind.

  ‘How is she doing, by the way?’

  ‘My daughter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, thanks. Enjoying university.’

  ‘You must be looking forward to seeing more of her when you retire?’

  I recalled something else from that morning – my wife’s words. She’s discovering herself… leave her alone!

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘Or will you be getting away? Taking a cruise with the wife?’

  I sat forward on my chair. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘It really depends on how you look at it.’ He paused, nodding very slightly, as though affirming a decision he’d just arrived at.

  But no decisions were spontaneously arrived at by Joost.

  ‘You can go early, Henk. If you want to. Full pay through your last six months, pension unaffected…’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why not?’ He gave a defusing smile. ‘Come on, Henk. What are you working on these days?’

  ‘Controls in the RLD…’ I nodded towards the monitoring room. ‘Just made an ID.’

  He gave me a wry look.

  Small fry, it said.

  It was suddenly important to me that he continued to believe that.

  ‘You’ve been a good cop, Henk. My advice? Have people here remember you that way.’

  I looked him straight in the eye. ‘Why wouldn’t they?’

  ‘I can’t put you on a bigger case,’ he said. ‘I need to give the younger ones a chance to come through, to prove themselves. Plus I hate transitions – when you do leave…’

  ‘Well, it’s like you say… not long to go now.’ I got up to leave.

  He nodded. ‘That’ll be all then.’

  I left the conference room. As I looked back through the slatted blinds screening the glass wall, I saw him reach for his phone.

  *

  Stefan and I stood beside the Oude Kerk and the little bridge there that turns into Molensteeg. The canal water was solemn and dark. ‘Thanks for getting me out of the station,’ he said.

  ‘Thank Liesbeth,’ I said. ‘Or rather, thank her engagement, and her prearranged karaoke night.’

  I noticed that the white floating bed in the canal had vanished.

  Reaching for my pack of Marlboro Reds, I offered Stefan a smoke.

  He refused politely.

  It was dusk. Changeover hour in the Red Light District. Couples and tourists departing to be replaced by stag parties and night crawlers. I watched a guy in a tan leather coat and dark baseball cap do his second loop of the canal, sizing up the women in the windows. They could become lost in this process for hours, like on the Internet. Just another modern-day corruption of the primordial hunt.

  ‘You think he’ll show up?’ Stefan asked.

  ‘He has to at some point, it’s his territory after all. He’s pissed on it.’

  The evening hour was changeover time for the women, too. Oude Kerk was the closest cars could get to the narrow Molensteeg; it was a known pick-up and drop-off point. But it was quiet. Maybe the spot had become too known – the drivers, bodyguards and ‘boyfriends’ moving further out?

  I looked up at the buildings. The drizzle sparkled in the light beams that illuminated the big church behind us. Aside from the Oude Kerk, all the buildings were canal-side merchants’ houses with steps up to the front doors and high dormers with hooks for winching merchandise. All built from and for trade. None more than six storeys tall. My gaze swept the lower storeys and returned to the narrow lane directly ahead.

  I flicked my spent cigare
tte into the dark canal. At some point, I needed to get along to Liesbeth’s karaoke night myself. Just for a short appearance. Especially short if certain people were there. Joost probably wouldn’t leave his station post. Bergveld, on the other hand…

  ‘Look,’ Stefan said in a low voice.

  A brief movement in the shadows around the dark mouth of Molensteeg. ‘That’s him, no?’ Stefan was saying. ‘On foot…’

  I didn’t doubt Stefan’s powers of recognition. We started walking, but the man was moving quickly. I hastened my step as we crossed the bridge, the blood starting to pump in my thighs. We were only just keeping up, dodging passers-by who were looking left and right into the neon-lit windows. Deep reds and purples reflected off the man’s slick jacket and his haunches as he moved, animal-like, up the narrow street. Stefan tripped over me at one point – as though I needed a reminder that he was a rookie street cop. But I had to take my chance while I had it.

  We crossed another canal, the bridge there crowded, the Old Sailor bar on the corner loaded to the gunwales. A bright block of green on the TV screen inside announced a football game. When British clubs played here, the bar was a known flashpoint, often at the Ajax fans’ instigation. Tribal affiliations again.

  ‘Where is he?’ I said, looking up and down both sides of the canal.

  ‘Ahead!’ Stefan stretched out his arm, pointing to the second, narrower section of Molensteeg. We broke into a jog.

  ‘What will we do when we catch him?’ asked Stefan, panting.

  It was extraordinary how quickly the man had dissolved into the shadows. ‘If we catch him, we search him.’

  Under money-laundering legislation, anyone with more than a thousand euros on their person could be brought in for questioning.

  ‘I’ll go ahead, Stefan. Stay behind, don’t let him double back.’

  I ran soft-footed up alongside him, adrenalin pumping. He’d stopped beside a disused bank of cabins, a black door among them. He unlocked it. As he turned to look around before entering, I suddenly had an awful realisation. We were opposite Irena’s cabin. Her curtains were closed, but it would only take the split second as a customer left her cabin for them to open.

  I couldn’t have her implicated this way.

  Slavic’s eyes, like rivers of darkness, found mine. I shivered. His cheeks were gaunt, his cropped hair nail-file grey. He had rope-like cords of muscle in his neck where it twisted to look at me. Searching for a tattoo, I didn’t see one. I almost let him be, but some part of me couldn’t allow that.

  I pushed him through the door.

  Stefan followed us in.

  ‘Police!’ I pulled out my warrant card. ‘Turn on the lights.’

  The small space was lit by the screen of a desktop computer. There was a sour, unwashed smell about the place – the tang of petrol and mechanical parts.

  ‘Turn on the lights!’ I repeated.

  He reached sullenly for a desk lamp behind him, its light putting him into silhouette. ‘Close the door,’ I told Stefan, whose mounting unease was clear. I knew he was wondering why we hadn’t questioned the man in the street.

  ‘You can’t come in here,’ Slavic was saying in broken English. ‘You need warrant.’

  ‘We can with probable cause,’ I said, omitting that it was for a judge to decide. I forced that thought aside. ‘My strong sense being that you’re more of a payment-in-cash kind of guy than an American Express man, Slavic. Now empty your pockets.’

  When you’ve done a career’s worth of police work, you get a feeling about some people – that somewhere, deep down, there’s a piece missing, mentally. They can be normal-looking and presentable (Slavic being both), even worldly or charming. But you know never to trust that things around them will be OK.

  ‘You make a mistake,’ he said.

  ‘Really? Because it looks to me like you’re the one who’s cornered.’

  I made a show of looking around his makeshift den. Cash-drop bags in the shadows, a stowed moped, the computer whirring and clicking away. Right here in the middle of the RLD, almost within gaze of the cameras that had ID’d him earlier – how did he think he could get away with this?

  I let my jacket fall open to reveal my holstered weapon. ‘Empty your pockets.’

  I waved Stefan alongside me. I needed to be able to see my partner, communicate with him non-verbally.

  Slavic didn’t move. I held his inscrutable stare. Did he think we were rogue cops on the take? Did he have something else on his person that he didn’t want me to find?

  Stefan had his service weapon on display, mimicking me. I could tell he was nervous, and I started to feel a sick sensation.

  But I couldn’t back down now.

  There was a flash of movement as Slavic finally went for his inside pocket. But the movement was Stefan, unholstering his Walther P5.

  Slavic sprang forward, forcing Stefan’s arm up; there was an orange flash and a bang so loud that my ears rang. Instinct took over as I used Slavic’s movement and momentum to force him to the ground with a thump and a gurgled ungghhh… I pressed my knee into the small of his back. Quickly I found my cuffs and forced one of his wrists into them, then yanked the other back before he had a chance to recover, snapping on the second cuff and locking it.

  I was aware of ceiling matter drifting down like snowflakes, and the singed smell of cordite.

  The street outside was quieter all of a sudden.

  ‘You OK?’ I asked Stefan. He was nodding, shaking.

  ‘You want to call it in?’

  He was still nodding, but not doing anything.

  Slavic remained face down. I thought to check his pockets but he remained adequately restrained, so I reached for my phone.

  ‘Dispatch?’ I said.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘This is Officer 6-19. I need a car on Zeedijk, corner with Molensteeg – now. Bringing a suspect in…’

  I hauled Slavic to his feet. His eyes were expressionless.

  We frogmarched him out onto Molensteeg. A small crowd had gathered outside. I noticed that Irena’s curtains remained closed. Perhaps because she’d gone home: shift changeover, of course. I cursed myself for not having thought of that earlier.

  Later, I’d wonder what might have happened if Liesbeth had been with me instead of Stefan, and whether the whole day might have gone in another direction without Joost’s little chat and the way it had left me feeling…

  But those were excuses.

  And excuses wouldn’t help the woman hoisted out of the harbour. She didn’t need excuses, she needed justice.

  5

  KARAOKE

  We sat in a bare interview room at IJ Tunnel 3, Slavic with his arms folded and his chair pushed back.

  Just the two of us, me leaning in with my elbows on the steel table between us.

  I’d let Stefan get back to his day job – but not before asking him to dig further into Slavic’s police record.

  There was still time to turn this situation around – to get some kind of result. But for that I needed Slavic to feel intimidated. Not physically. That’s not the way cop interviews work these days.

  We prefer psychological methods.

  ‘We’ll get started in a minute,’ I said, taking off my watch and placing it on the table.

  I needed him to believe that I’d got something on him – a minor offence at least. My objective was to turn him into a snitch. He might be feared on the streets, but a street-level pimp is low on the criminal food chain. I wanted him to help me find whoever was responsible for the body in the harbour. More than anything, I needed him to stay away from a lawyer.

  The door opened and Wester, the custody sergeant, handed me a sheet of paper. I thanked him as he left.

  Slavic watched intently, his brow knitted.

  ‘You prefer Jan or Slavic?’ I asked.


  It was like offering him white or black in a chess game, an imaginary board between us. My hope was that I knew how to use the more powerful pieces. Then again, these Hungarians could be good at chess.

  ‘Let’s go with Slavic,’ I said.

  His face was blank. The knee of his right leg bounced.

  ‘I’m holding a list of items found on your person,’ I continued, making a show of looking down the sheet. ‘Item four: three thousand, six hundred and sixty euros. Made up of seventy-two fifty-euro notes and three twenty-euro notes.’ I put the sheet down. It had done its job. ‘That’s a lot of fifties to be carrying, Slavic. Care to explain where they came from?’

  He shrugged his shoulders, but his knee began bouncing more quickly.

  ‘If you’ve got more than a thousand euros on your person we can open a money-laundering case on you.’ I leant in further. ‘Look into your phone records. Your tax affairs, your employment and residency status: lots of different ways in which life can become very troublesome for you…’

  ‘You hear of Schengen?’ he said.

  So he knew of the EU’s Schengen Agreement, which had been extended to Hungary at the end of 2007, meaning he was no longer in danger of deportation – unlike earlier that same year, when he’d been living here illegally.

  ‘But what about the source of this cash, Slavic?’ I persisted, raising my voice. ‘How long do you think it will take for us to prove that it’s coming from coerced prostitution?’

  ‘You think you get girl to testify?’ he said.

  His knee was still. It was hard to tell from his broken English whether ‘girl’ meant plural or singular. Whether he was talking about girls on the Molensteeg, or specifically Irena. I suddenly wondered whether Irena had gone home for good – whether that might have been her last shift.

  His expression turned quizzical as Stefan entered. Stefan sat beside me, handing me a cup of coffee and setting his own down. He didn’t offer Slavic one.

  My coffee was black. This was the pre-agreed sign that Stefan hadn’t been able to dig up anything more on Slavic, specifically concerning the earlier methamphetamine case. Our guest was staring at Stefan, smiling slyly now.