‘Don’t move!’ My heart was thumping in my chest. ‘Put your hands where I can see them!’ I was contradicting myself.
His other hand raised a little block with a wire dangling from it: the most improvised explosive device I’d ever seen, but doubtless a deadly, effective one. Clearly he’d hoped to break in and hide the device somewhere aboard. Had he reckoned on it igniting while Petra and I were asleep? I’d modernised the boat as much as possible, but it was still over fifty per cent wood and tar. Slavic had devised our crematorium.
The temptation to put a round into him was almost overwhelming. I looked over my shoulder, up at the expensive apartments in the old brick packing houses. Would his death spasms trigger the device?
I edged closer, to see better. My eyes were adjusting to the dark. He’d brought the bottle beneath his chin. Its cap must have been off, because I caught the wavering fumes of the accelerant – petrol? white spirits? – before I saw his eyes, those rivers of darkness, shining back at me. He’d managed to draw me in close enough that the fireball would engulf us both if the device went off.
I stopped, lowering the gun slightly, as he moved crab-like down the gangplank. He backed away towards his moped. I had to give chase – but that meant getting on my bike, which was thirty metres away. I ran, hearing a drone as he accelerated away.
The engine fired first time. I opened the throttle and roared down Entrepotdok after him, the belly of the BMW rearing alarmingly as I negotiated the speed humps. I’d forgotten my crash helmet beside the boat; my eyes watered with the velocity. Down to the end of Entrepotdok we flew, swerving to the little drawbridge, when all of a sudden a hatchback was reversing out in front of me. I slammed my foot down on the rear brake and slid around to a halt, tyres squealing.
‘Move!’ I yelled over the burbling of the bike. With no crash helmet, my voice was unimpeded.
The driver held his hands up from the wheel in a ‘what the fuck?’ gesture.
‘Fucking move!’
Slavic was getting away.
A woman sat in the passenger seat with a crying baby.
Slavic was turning west onto Prins Hendrikkade.
I used my horn to no avail. Then I let out the clutch, nosing around the back of the car. There was faint resistance, and a shattering sound as I ripped the hatchback’s rear bumper off; now the driver was moving, getting out of his car as I rode away across the drawbridge. But I could feel that something was wrong with the bike’s powertrain. The engine was running fine but the bike was lurching unevenly, the delivery of power to the rear wheel erratic. Something must have been wrenched out of alignment.
Shit.
Slavic was turning right into the IJ Tunnel. My bike gave a burst of speed and I made the turn, too. Why was he heading to North Amsterdam? The bike lurched violently again; I knew it was now or never.
I yanked the throttle fully open. All that prevented the front wheel from flying into a fatal wheelie was gravity as I swept downhill into the mile-long underwater tunnel. But when my front wheel rejoined the tarmac I saw his brake light flying towards me as he slowed for the traffic. I slammed into him; his moped and body skittered separately between traffic, crossing the central reservation.
My own bike flew out from under me. I could feel the gritty tarmac.
Cars were stopping behind me. I struggled upright in their glare, tasting something tangy, metallic: my own blood.
I pawed my wet, naked head.
The central reservation was made up of traffic cones at the mouth to the tunnel. Slavic and his bike had slid straight through them.
He, too, was stumbling to his feet, into the path of an oncoming red city bus. It blared to a halt, hydraulics hissing, everything amplified awfully by the tunnel’s acoustics.
My gun was in my jacket pocket but drivers were out of their cars; one was pointing a camera phone at us.
I staggered over to Slavic, who was retrieving something from the open luggage compartment of his moped, the seat ripped clean off.
He held up the bottle of liquid. In his other hand was a Zippo, the little flame menacing.
His face wavered again in the dancing light.
Perhaps he wasn’t thinking straight after the crash, because liquid was dribbling down his other hand; the smell of it reached me just as everything bloomed and blossomed orange, and the next thing I knew I was on my arse again amid floating cinders.
He was running, burning, away from the tunnel. I stumbled after him. Flames licked at his legs and arms. Further up, the wall became short enough to tumble over to the harbourside. He staggered to the water’s edge. I could smell his burning flesh.
He slipped in noiselessly.
I made my way unsteadily over to him. He was thrashing in the water, turning it white. My phone trilled.
A text from Petra. I struggled to read it, my fingers bloody.
Nadia had called… she was at her boyfriend’s house on the coast… Pieter was Nadia’s boyfriend, the guy from the Kriterion… the goth?… Nadia was OK…
But Nadia could never be OK while Slavic was alive. I looked up from my phone at him. He would always be there, in the shadows, waiting, lurking…
‘Shh,’ I managed, raising a finger to my cracked lips.
He was moving – just.
My voice sounded distant to me. That old conundrum: What’s so fragile that when you say its name, you break it?
His dull eyes barely communicated anything, starkly pale and deep-set in his blackened head. Pieces of his skin were falling off. Soon he was immobile, the hypothermia having claimed him.
‘Silence, Slavic. Silence…’
It felt like an eternity, but eventually his charred head slipped beneath the icy water, the harbour sucking him under.
*
I walked up towards the Ibis hotel.
Blue lights flickered wildly, Liesbeth appearing among them.
‘Are you OK?’
Bergveld joined her, wide-eyed, reaching for his phone.
‘I’m leaving town,’ I pre-empted him. ‘Going away. Don’t worry.’
I started walking away again as a call came in.
PRIVATE NUMBER.
‘Henk.’
Lottman.
I wondered where his Mercedes, his mobile communications centre, was now. The first TV reporters had arrived on the scene with a satellite truck, but the images of a burning tunnel would already have hit the social networking sites. Rem’s networks, too.
‘They were a package deal, Henk.’
My phone was wet with trickling blood. Liesbeth was following me, mouth agape.
‘What do you mean, they?’
‘A package deal just like you and your wife, when you contacted me. They were brothers.’
‘Brothers,’ I repeated dumbly, feeling a plunging sensation inside.
A male paramedic had caught up with me, at Liesbeth’s insistence. She was standing next to him, eyeing my head. I waved them both away.
‘Jan and Zsolt To˝zsér,’ Lottman said into my ear.
‘Twins?’ I was incredulous. You couldn’t make that up. But it was now clear where all the confusion had sprung from…
‘Actually not. They were almost identical, but if you looked closely, you would have seen distinct differences. One had a mole above his left eye.’
‘Slavic with the mole?’
‘Come by my office first thing tomorrow,’ Lottman said. ‘We can discuss it then.’
*
This time his office didn’t look so big. There were more cardboard packing boxes, indents in the deep carpet where furniture had stood.
‘Slavic had the mole, yes,’ Lottman confirmed. ‘Or rather, Jan. It was Zsolt who you followed to the Conservatorium Hotel. Who was also parked on Prins Hendrikkade, on his moped, surveying the aftermath of his younger
brother’s handiwork…’
I’d never got close enough to the older one to see the difference. ‘Who is Zsolt?’
‘The older brother, living in North Amsterdam.’
‘But what does he do?’
Lottman sighed, like a storyteller feigning reluctance.
‘The To˝zsér brothers came here to Holland during the financial crisis. Zsolt as the brains, Jan the brawn. Various schemes involving fraud, extortion and intimidation, bribery, blackmail –’
‘Blackmailing how?’
‘Prostitution was Jan’s speciality. Photos, videos that they threatened to send to wives, colleagues. A lot of bankers were being laid off, there was a lot of fear.’
‘What a gift to society.’
‘Welcome inside the tent.’ Lottman pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘Jan – or Slavic as you know him – was a problem from the start. His methods were too crude, he ran too many risks.’
‘He was caught.’
‘Yes. Only, while Jan was nothing but a headache to us, his older brother Zsolt turned into the most productive informant that the Amsterdam police force has ever known.’
‘Operation Boost?’
‘Not just vehicle theft. All kinds of high-value goods: stolen art, diamonds. High-end prostitution, too. Paedophilia, drugs and guns through Rotterdam –’
There was a tap at the door and his assistant appeared, looking like a twig in comparison to Lottman.
He stood suspended, mid-sentence.
‘Your next appointment –’
‘Two more minutes.’
She withdrew, the sound of the closing door barely perceptible.
Lottman went on: ‘Your Jan thought he had carte blanche to do things.’
‘Like dumping bodies in the harbour.’
‘I’m still awaiting Joost’s report on that, but I think we can anticipate the results.’
Had Joost been the one to visit Irena at the shelter?
‘As you wish,’ I said. ‘But one question… how did you satisfy yourselves that Zsolt and Slavic weren’t playing both sides, all the way along?’
‘By creating our own force within a force, specialising in handling these types.’
Jan Six. Joost. Bergveld…
‘IJ Tunnel 3 was a guinea pig,’ Lottman went on. ‘But it all needs to be rethought now. Time to clean house. Brussels beckons, old Henk.’
I nodded.
‘And here’s where it becomes difficult for you – if I’m understanding events down there at the harbour last night correctly. The To˝zsér brothers were intensely loyal to one another – that was their strength, and their undoing. It was what caused a lot of our problems in handling them.’
‘Go on…’
‘You know very well where I’m going. It wouldn’t do well for you if Zsolt got wind of how his brother died.’
I tried to say something, but no words came out.
‘So, returning to what we were discussing in my car: do we have a deal, Henk?’
13
DUTCH LIGHT
Six months later
Waterland (that’s the name of it in Dutch), to the north-east of Amsterdam: location of another body, found submerged in a dyke.
Just beyond the remote hamlet of Ransdorp and its brick church – squat-looking, as though huddled against the elements. Bright clouds scudding across the sky, alternately diaphanous white and silvery-grey.
There’s a rinsed quality to the light in Holland. None of the particulates that create those rosy glows in warmer climes. You’ll see this austere cleanness in any Dutch master’s work.
‘This is where it was found,’ Stefan indicated.
I nodded. The dyke water was dark and still – brackish, giving off a putrid odour.
I thrust my chin down into my coat, using the lapels as protection from the wind to get a Marlboro going.
‘Two nine-millimetre shots. One to the head, one to the chest. Guess they weren’t taking any chances.’
‘Any ideas about the model?’
‘Sounds like it might have been a Sig Sauer.’
‘It’s a common enough weapon,’ I said.
‘Army model, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Many go missing after active service.’
‘Really?’ he said. ‘I bet yours didn’t.’
‘No.’
He looked around. ‘There’s a tool rental place at the north end of Ransdorp. I guess we should speak to them.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘In case they saw anything? Look at how flat it is…’
Holland’s blessing and curse. All that waterborne navigation moving goods and items around so easily… the dead-level horizon… the barely reclaimed, primordial swamp. This scene wouldn’t have looked much different in the Middle Ages.
The low flatness of Holland could make a man mad.
‘Worth a try.’ I made a point of looking around too. The church tower was the tallest structure for miles.
That and the pylons scarring the horizon.
My phone buzzed. A text from Petra: she was meeting Nadia later that afternoon for coffee. They’d started a news blog together, which was getting traction. Google was already paying them meaningful amounts of money to advertise on it.
Wish my new schedule allowed for it. Give her my love. I thumbed the message into the device, then slipped it back into my inside pocket.
Liesbeth walked over; she’d been going from house to house down the bricked main street of the hamlet.
Both Liesbeth and Stefan were on my team now.
‘There’s a caravan park over by the water. We should probably ask around there too,’ she said. ‘What d’you say we get a coffee and a sandwich at the Swan, then I’ll head over?’
The Swan was the name of Ransdorp’s only bar. How fitting. Serene on top, frantically kicking beneath. ‘I need to get back to the station. But you two carry on.’
As I turned towards my unmarked police car, my phone buzzed again.
‘Henk.’
‘Joost.’
Jan Six’s sudden successor.
‘The murder of Zsolt To˝zsér leaves a major gap in police capabilities,’ he said evenly.
‘Indeed.’
‘Any preliminary findings?’ His steady voice dripped with accusation.
‘I’m guessing it was a settling of scores. He would have had some determined foes by now, after all those years as an informant…’
‘Really.’
I paused, allowing him to fill the gap that ensued.
‘This changes things.’
‘No doubt.’
‘We’re all going to have to do more with less, Henk.’
‘Agreed.’
I was ready.
Things evolve.
Part II:
The Maze
14
DAY TRIP
Petra and I were beside the Old Harbour in Rotterdam when the call came in.
PRIVATE NUMBER.
‘You’re not going to take it?’ she asked.
‘No. They can manage without me.’
She raised both eyebrows in surprise. This was the first time we’d been away in months. Leading a team at the IJ Tunnel 3 police station wasn’t proving easy.
‘Why don’t you have some more of that cranberry brownie?’ she said.
I grimaced.
We were sitting outside at a Danish café. The Old Harbour is all that is left of old Rotterdam, a city whose marine fringes form Europe’s biggest port – ‘the Maze’, as it’s called. All that cargo moving around those labyrinthine docks…
The city itself must have been a fine-looking place once – when my father first knew it, perhaps, before he joined the merchant navy. That is, before the Germans flattened
Rotterdam. Then the architects got to work, turning it into a series of geometric shapes and concepts that were dead on arrival. The yellow and white creation hovering above the old harbour buildings was known as the ‘flying saucer’… or was that one the ‘wilted sunflower’? Either way, the older buildings before us were the only ones left with any life in them. Nooitgedacht (‘Who’d’ve thought?’) read the name of one of the old wooden boats opposite us in the harbour.
‘Do you want anything else?’ asked the café’s owner, a stout lady with ruddy cheeks. She was ready to clear our plates.
‘We could use an ashtray.’
Petra shot me a look. I was down to two cigarettes a day now: one after lunch, the other after dinner. It only made me want them more.
‘Sure,’ the owner said.
No fuss from her.
Rotterdammers are like that: down-to-earth and humble, certainly in comparison to the materialism and hot air found in Amsterdam these days.
I lit a match and took infinite pleasure in that first draw on my cigarette. The gulls called out above us, the putter of an engine crossed the water.
‘What time are we meeting Nadia again?’ Petra asked.
‘Hmm?’
‘Our daughter. What time are we meeting her?’ she repeated.
Nadia was here for the Rotterdam International Film Festival.
‘Five, I think.’
‘Let me call her and check.’
She began pressing the screen of her phone.
I let the sun bathe my face. I was starting to relax, the muscles in my neck de-tensing for the first time in weeks. The light streamed blue-white off the water, splitting prismatically through the table’s glassware. Sometimes I flatter myself, imagining that I glimpse the world as a great painter does, seeing the rents in the filter of everyday life that allow the bigger world to come tumbling in. But maybe I just have my head up my arse.
Petra was arguing with Nadia.
‘We’ve come all the way to Rotterdam!’
Pause.
‘A whole hour on the train, young lady!’
Pause.
‘Well when, then?’
The Harbour Master Page 9