People would always associate Calvino with this case. ‘Weren’t you the guy who worked that unsolved hit-and-run involving a young boy with that blundering Moroccan?’ Calvino, who was only interested in success, couldn’t risk this, of course. He’d undoubtedly devised a plan to prevent it.
He clearly had something up his sleeve. Think it through. Analyse. What had Calvino done? What had he said? What had he concealed?
He saw Calvino biting his lip again when Tomasoa had asked at the end of his monologue if there was anything else he needed to know. He remembered Calvino’s more than cunning answer.
‘Nothing we can’t handle, chief.’
Clever how you could combine a denial and an affirmation in a single sentence. Nobody could get Calvino on this one. But in fact he had concealed from Tomasoa that less than an hour later they would be given an earring with DNA. Marouan had asked Calvino why he hadn’t revealed this. ‘Wouldn’t have looked good for us if the chief had found out we’d received the evidence from a journalist,’ Calvino had answered.
‘But how the hell are you going to handle this one?’ Marouan had asked. ‘Are you going to keep avoiding the truth?’
‘I’ll think of something,’ had been the answer. The dumbest answer possible. Because detectives didn’t just invent any old thing; they were interested in facts. And they reported those facts very factually: exactly the way the facts were. And when detectives took liberties with the facts, or even concealed them, they ended up filing an official report based on a story they’d made up, effectively committing perjury. And that was the direction Calvino was headed.
Had Calvino, behind his back, perhaps told Tomasoa this morning that it was Marouan who’d found the earring? Was that the ‘good work’ Tomasoa was referring to? No matter how Marouan looked at it, that was the most logical scenario he could think of.
Well, if that’s how things were – and nobody was going to convince Marouan otherwise – it meant his partner Calvino was a dirty backstabber. Marouan had always suspected as much. You couldn’t trust Italians, even if half the blood running through Cal’s veins was Dutch, enough cells were infected with the mob gene.
It seemed like Calvino, in the name of their partnership, was arranging as much as possible on his own. Otherwise, how could you explain Calvino heading straight for the woods early in the morning with that Hafez woman, without first coming to the office, without consulting his partner?
Damn, he’d almost fallen for it. Calvino had entered into an alliance with Hafez. It was therefore in Calvino’s interest to keep Marouan at a safe distance. Meanwhile, of course, he had to keep up the appearance that they were working as partners and indicated to Tomasoa that it was Marouan who wanted a line search of the crime scene. As if Marouan had been to the spot himself. Naturally that bastard Cal thought he could kill two birds with one stone this way. Act supportive to his partner while he pulled a fast one behind his back.
Marouan began to smirk. Naturally Calvino wasn’t aware of the double role Marouan was playing. He’d have to keep his cards close to his chest, make sure Calvino didn’t get wind of his suspicions. Meanwhile he’d lie in wait for a chance to catch Calvino and Hafez in the act, to use this as his trump card. Because if Tomasoa was urging them to stay ‘under the radar’, to avoid the media like the plague, he would certainly be surprised to hear that Detective Calvino was messing around with a journalist. And the fact that this messing around wasn’t going to be limited to the crime scene was obvious.
Now it dawned on Marouan that he was out there on his own, as always. Didn’t he have enough problems on his plate?
The large-scale forensic investigation today clearly put his secret mission at risk. Marouan dialled the number on his prepaid phone. Just thinking about the conversation he was about to have made his heart pound.
The voice on the other end of the line sounded as nasal and glum as always.
‘Diva. You have one minute.’ The Slavic accent, broken English and deadly complacent tone of the voice made Marouan’s hands and forehead break out in a clammy sweat.
‘This is no time for joking,’ he heard himself say.
‘I’m not joking,’ the voice on the other end of the line replied. ‘Why would I waste a good joke on an Arab, Diva? You’ve got exactly fifty seconds left.’
‘They’re going to comb the woods.’
‘I wish them a lot of luck. Forty-five seconds.’
‘They’re going to turn the house inside out.’
There was a pause, a kind of icy breathing.
‘How did they find out about the villa?’
‘How many seconds do I have left?’ Marouan asked recklessly.
‘Damn it, remember who you’re talking to, sheep-fucker! Tell me what you know.’
Marouan swallowed hard. ‘A child was run down in the middle of the night. And he didn’t just fall from the sky. Otherwise they’d have found a parachute or angel wings.’ Marouan couldn’t help himself.
‘You should be doing stand-up, Diva. So they don’t know where that child came from? So what?’
‘So they’re going to investigate the scene of the crime,’ Marouan said. ‘They’ve called out the forensics experts. To analyse the traces of blood they found for DNA. You don’t have to wonder where that’s going to lead them.’
Marouan tried to bluff his way through his fear, but from the reaction he got, he wasn’t very successful.
‘You’re going to delay their case. Waste their time.’
‘You’re obviously not familiar with the police system. If my boss arranges something with the Examining Magistrate, do you think they’re going to listen to a detective who suggests they send everyone out for a long lunch?’
‘Just keep them away from that villa.’
‘Impossible! How the hell can I keep this case under wraps if I’m repeatedly surprised by this shit? I can’t fucking work like this if I’m constantly a step behind the facts. If you don’t want it to get out, I need to know what it is!’
‘Listen, ty parshiwaya skotina, you little shithead. Your job is to be my eyes and ears. That’s what I fucking pay you for. So I’m telling you to muck up this case, and you’re getting cocky with me. Are you telling me that you can’t work like this? You worthless piece of shit!’
By now Marouan was a complete wreck.
‘I’m asking you something, asshole!’
‘No …’ muttered Marouan.
‘No? What no?!’
‘No, that’s not what I mean.’
‘What did you mean then?’
‘Never mind.’
‘I’ll decide that too. You just do what I tell you to. I repeat: waste their time. And now you’re out of time!’
Immediately the line went dead. Marouan hurled the phone through the car and, ranting and raving, took a sharp turn in the woods, which hurled the car into a ditch.
He continued ranting and raving. He banged the flat of his hands on the steering wheel, threw the car door open, paced back and forth cursing, and then slammed the flat of his hands on the Corolla’s roof, over and over again, as hard as he could.
Until he no longer felt any pain.
9
With Susanne still nestled in his head, his heart and every muscle of his body, Paul rushed to Ponte City, the round, ramshackle tower near Highland Hills. Constructed in the seventies as a luxury residential high-rise to attract whites, over the years it had fallen into disrepair and literally rotted away from the inside. On the fiftieth floor he’d meet the informant who could tell him more about the new name that had surfaced during his inquiries, that of the Russian oligarch Valentin Lavrov.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Lavrov, with a sophisticated organization, had become an international player in the market for gas and mining companies, whereby billions of dollars in profits were funnelled through a complex network of international banks. Lavrov’s AtlasNet was based on a worldwide system of highly influential contacts that reached into the t
opmost circles of business and government.
During an official three-day visit to South Africa a few months earlier, the Russian president Potanin announced that cooperation between the two countries would be strengthened. This seemed to relate especially to the exchange of nuclear fuel and technology for future nuclear energy projects. In the meantime, behind the scenes, there were intensive discussions between government officials led by Nkoane and a team from AtlasNet, which of course was headed by Valentin Lavrov. These negotiations concerned the rights to develop uranium mining on South African territory. AtlasNet wanted to acquire these rights from the South African government.
Paul knew that enormous sums were at stake with the sale of mining concessions to foreign enterprises. It was highly likely with this deal that many of these concession dollars would be misappropriated by Nkoane himself. That’s why he expected a lot from his upcoming meeting. Apparently there was now inside information that would enable him to prove a thing or two.
The only question was whether he was going to make it on time. Paul detested being late and cursed himself for losing track of time in Stella’s Coffee Bar. The man who could almost certainly give him more information about Nkoane had probably already taken off.
When he finally arrived at the deserted high-rise, he was immediately struck by the metre-high heap of discarded furniture and debris dumped in the building’s indoor courtyard. As he looked upwards, the smell of rot penetrated his nostrils and he could hear the sounds of the city echoing and mingling with what seemed to be screaming in this tubular concrete amphitheatre. It came from above. Paul saw that windows and walls on some of the upper floors were completely broken away. His common sense told him it would be wise to turn around and leave. Right now. But since he believed that journalists shouldn’t always listen to common sense, he took the only remaining working lift which, jerking and rattling, carried him to the fiftieth floor.
Once there, the noise of the city seemed to have ebbed away, transformed into a steady and dark murmur, as if he could hear his own blood pulsing in his veins in the menacing silence. Because many of the walls were gone, he had a view of a large part of the dusk-shrouded fiftieth floor, but he didn’t see any movement. Then suddenly he heard a dull thud from close by, as if someone had fallen down on the concrete floor and quickly tried to stand up. Paul didn’t move, listened attentively, and heard the sound again. It was coming from behind a thick column about ten metres in front of him.
Cautiously circling the pillar, he discovered a black man on the other side – firmly bound, but in a makeshift way – who was trying to free himself with spastic movements. The man was unrecognizable. His face was a bloody mess; he’d been beaten to a pulp. He was still conscious, but couldn’t utter a sound because of the black tape across his mouth. His eyes were wide open in anguish.
Paul was about to help him when he heard sharp commands barked in Russian behind him. Before he knew it, he was being punched, beaten and kicked in places that he’d never known could hurt so much. He’d also never realized how long a person could tolerate such a beating without losing consciousness. They kept hitting him. The men who were going at him knew exactly what they were doing and how far they could go. They employed exactly the amount of force needed to beat him bloody and break his bones in such a way that he was fully conscious during this thrashing from start to finish.
A stocky, bald man with a goatee appeared from behind the pillar. He was wearing a white shirt with short sleeves, under which tattooed spiders walked towards the tattooed stars on his forearms. His bald scalp gleamed with sweat and an oversized pair of mirrored sunglasses were resting on his hawkish nose. A man in his sixties with the look of a condor and the build of a gladiator.
Now positioned in front of Paul, the man grabbed an inhaler, took a deep breath and held it seconds long, while in the reflection of the glasses Paul watched the two baboon-like brutes who had just given him a good beating. After the condor exhaled with a deep sigh, he casually nodded in the direction of the struggling man tied to the pillar and then turned to Paul.
‘Do you know this man, Chapelle?’
He asked this in a heavily-accented English that left you with the aftertaste of home-distilled vodka. Paul was amazed that the man knew his name. He shook his head.
‘But you did have an appointment with him?’ whispered the condor, leaning even closer to Paul. ‘And you don’t seem the type for a blind date.’
Now he began humming a melody, something classical. He walked over to the man against the pillar, stood right in front of him with his legs spread wide, then turned his bald head towards Paul.
‘I’d guess classical music isn’t your thing. You strike me more as a jazz lover. Like your father. You don’t know what you’re missing, Chapelle. Mozart, Goddammit! Don Giovanni.’ He clumsily sang a few notes, waving his arms theatrically. The man bound to the column began to thrash about involuntarily.
‘Pentimento, pentimento. Repentance, repentance! Remorse after sinning. But that remorse usually comes too late. Look!’ The condor pulled out a USB stick, which he then dropped back into his shirt pocket.
‘This bastard wanted to give you this. Do you know why? Because he’d forgotten our agreement. Agreements are not made to be forgotten. Because when you forget, you can’t fulfil them.’ He chuckled. ‘Agreements – no, these are laws. And if you violate an agreement, you break the law. Could it be any simpler? A moron could understand it.’ He nodded towards the man against the pillar. ‘But this balbes here simply forgot.’
The condor casually snapped his fingers and while one of the baboons restrained Paul, the other untied the black man and dragged him to the edge of the floor where the wall was broken away.
‘For God’s sake, why?’ Paul mumbled, foreseeing what was about to happen. As he spoke, blood dripped from his mouth.
‘There are penalties for breaking the law, Chapelle.’
The condor gave an order in Russian and the battered man was pushed over the edge like a sack of rubbish. Seconds later Paul heard the thud of his body landing on the rubbish pile a hundred metres below.
The bald head with the trimmed goatee and mirrored glasses now loomed over Paul, who was trying not to hyperventilate. The man ran his right hand across Paul’s forehead – almost fondly – down his cheek into his neck, which was covered in sweat. Paul shuddered as the wheezing condor threateningly whispered in his ear.
‘Fascinating to see how sons follow in their fathers’ footsteps. As if it’s a biological imperative.’
He clutched his inhaler again, eagerly sniffed up the oxygen, and then grabbed Paul’s face with both hands, as if trying to compress it with all his might.
‘I like clear agreements, Chapelle. Your father knew that. And whenever I hear bells ringing somewhere, I know there’s treachery in the air. So I’ll say it only once. Don’t write about things that are none of your business.’
Paul couldn’t move a muscle. His body was being restrained with the force of a pneumatic tool and his face was completely immobilized between the condor’s hands. When he suddenly let go, lightning struck his lower back, as if a steel fist wanted to drill a hole right through his spine. He collapsed on to the ground like a rag doll and gasped for air. He immediately felt a stabbing pain, this time in his upper back. He couldn’t breathe and his surroundings began to spin around dizzyingly fast.
He was pulled upright and subjected to a new round of punches and kicks with the force of a freight train. When the sole of a shoe hit him full force in the face, he heard an eerie cracking. Then came the liberating darkness.
10
From a distance, Farah and Parwaiz could see the fluttering celestial bodies made of kite fabric hovering above downtown The Hague. Blood-red, canary-yellow and bright-green fighter kites with small tails whooshed around them. Farah remembered them. Their next-door neighbour in Kabul used to make them out of bamboo and ricepaper. These were their modern incarnations, kite fabric made of ripstop ny
lon and frames of flexible fibreglass.
As they drove up Prinsessewal and past the Palace gardens, Farah glanced sideways at Parwaiz. His age-ravaged face had transformed into that of an astounded boy. Open-mouthed and all eyes, he peered at the colourful kites in the sky. Farah was touched by his vulnerability. Despite everything he’d been through, Parwaiz could still be moved. Naive is what most people would call it. Genuine was the word Farah was thinking of.
She manoeuvred the Carrera cautiously through the traffic on Lange Vijverberg as slowly as possible to allow Parwaiz a good view of the Dutch parliament buildings.
‘Splendid, splendid!’ he said. ‘Those beautiful buildings have been the home of democracy for centuries!’
Democracy, my arse, Farah caught herself thinking. The mere thought of the Dutch government’s treatment of refugees like Parwaiz over the years infuriated her. First they were branded potential war criminals, next they were denied any chance of a fair process. Under the legal system in the Netherlands you were innocent until proven guilty, but the Immigration and Naturalization Service played by different rules. If someone was found guilty after its own investigation – without being consulted – that person would then have to prove otherwise! All by themselves. Justice turned upside-down. It was too bizarre for words.
As her anger mounted, Farah raced into the underground car park at such speed that Parwaiz uttered a cry of distress and clutched her arm in a reflex.
‘I’m sorry, kaka jan,’ she apologized. She parked the car, helped him out, rang for the lift and in no time they were standing in the August sun at the foot of the William of Orange statue. Her anger dissolved.
For several minutes they looked out over the tree-lined square which had filled with enthusiastic kite-fliers, protesters and baffled tourists. The atmosphere was animated, festive even.
Farah noticed that despite his fragile body Parwaiz walked over to a kite-flier with something of a spring in his step. The man was trussed up in leather straps, which in turn had been attached to kite ropes.
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