‘I’m not, Ed.’
‘Excellent. Where are you now?’
‘Grand Café IRIS, right outside the studio, waiting to see what The Headlines Show is going to dish up.’
‘I don’t know what Marant is planning, but our gal Bernson is in for a rude awakening, trust me.’
‘I take it you’ll be watching too?’
‘You bet. Of course I’ll be watching.’
‘I’ll call you back after the show, okay?’
After ending the call, Farah suddenly felt vulnerable and alone. The lead-in for The Headlines Show was shown, but she kept seeing Parwaiz’s eyes as the life drained from them.
Those eyes would be etched in her memory for ever.
‘Mi-chai-lov.’
After Sander’s email she couldn’t shake off those three syllables.
24
Edward Vallent was pacing around the spacious front room with the fireplace and the broad wooden rafters that had supported the old farmhouse for generations. Cows were once stalled here, but Edward’s brother-in-law Raylan Chapelle had literally broken with that practice by converting the former cowshed into the house he’d promised his wife Isobel when they left Kabul after the Saur revolution of 1978. The house where they would spend their lives together, where they would watch their son Paul grow up and where their two worlds would continue to converge. The world which Isobel painted on panoramic, abstract canvases in melancholic shades of red and gold leaf; the world of international wars and political conspiracies that Raylan documented in his investigative journalism.
Edward looked through one of the small windows across the polder, and saw the setting sun, half-hidden behind clouds, highlighting the skyline of Amsterdam with its blood-red brush. He decided to go outside.
Walking in the fading light, with the perfume of flowering honeysuckle and petunias all around him, he briefly felt as if a burden had been lifted off his shoulders. Earlier that evening, he had carried his sister Isobel up the narrow staircase and put her to bed after she had collapsed with fatigue in her studio. Isobel worked too hard. Since Raylan’s death in the autumn of 1978, Isobel had thrown herself into reimagining their years together in Kabul. Her studio had become the permanent meeting place of past and present, where the dreams of a young woman in love merged with the abject loneliness of an ageing widow.
For Isobel it proved to be an effective way of dealing with her solitary reality. Travelling back in time by painting, to the years when Raylan was still alive, not only gave her the necessary comfort, but it also guaranteed her an exceptionally good income because her melancholic canvases appealed to a growing number of buyers worldwide.
Edward pondered the bitter irony of it all. As Isobel increasingly withdrew into her studio and locked herself away in her romanticized memories, her son went out into the world and threatened to throw away his future by behaving like a cheap imitation of his father. Less than that, even. Like his son, Raylan may have been a volatile man, someone who frequently lost his temper, but he also had a sharp tongue and a ferocious journalistic insight so he could hold his own in even the trickiest situations. And that’s exactly what his son couldn’t seem to manage.
Edward had been powerless in the face of Paul’s decline. The offer he was about to make would be his last. A lifeline, wrapped in a promise. Because Paul didn’t accept lifelines.
He walked back to the farmhouse and switched on The Headlines Show. Marant, whose breasts looked like they were about to pop out of her shirt, was just introducing her guests. Edward heard the name of a certain DJ Maestro and caught something about a comeback following a near-fatal crash in Ibiza. Sitting beside him was former top model Vera Hilbrand who, given the identical bosom, probably had the same plastic surgeon as Marant, but who didn’t look in great shape otherwise because her husband had battered her for years. Edward instantly recognized the third guest as the right-wing populist politician Vincent Coronel, leader of the Democratische Partij Nederland. It was a public secret that Marant shared more than just political sympathies with Coronel, and a large percentage of the country’s TV viewers and tabloid readers relished the combination. Edward didn’t see what Coronel was doing on this particular edition of the show, unless it was to say that he fiercely opposed the general pardon which Parliament had in the works.
Finally, Edward saw the woman he had heard so much about and who, in Marant’s words, ‘had been able to save the life of a badly injured boy-dressed-as-a-girl thanks to Angela Faber’. It all sounded as sordid as a freak show at a village fair.
But Edward’s repulsion assumed truly spectacular forms when he heard Marant mention his own name.
‘Edward Vallent, editor-in-chief of the Algemeen Nederlands Dagblad, was quick to react to last night’s broadcast in which we discussed the working methods of one of his journalists. Someone who beat another woman so badly she had to be taken to hospital.’ Suddenly it was no longer about a martial arts gala, but about ‘his journalist’.
‘Let’s see what Mr Vallent had to say,’ Cathy Marant said, and before he knew it, Edward saw himself on the screen. Red-faced, he looked into the IRIS TV camera.
‘I would like to know what’s happened to the values of journalism if we continue to tolerate the libellous reports of Cathy Marant?’ he heard himself fume. Somebody must have fiddled with the colour balance in the editing suite, because he looked shockingly bad. Red-faced, with bulging cheeks and drool coming out of a mouth distorted in anger.
Marant appeared on screen again. ‘You may well ask what Mr Vallent is getting all worked up about. The indisputable fact remains that Farah Hafez didn’t bat an eyelid when she dispatched another woman to hospital. But that’s not all.’
Edward gasped for breath. Projected on the screen behind Marant was a crystal-clear photo of Farah, looking like she was about to lay into a paramedic.
‘It may be a coincidence,’ Marant exclaimed in mock-surprise, ‘but here’s the same Farah Hafez, the journalist who we now know as a woman who packs a mean punch. This photo was taken this afternoon by an onlooker at a demonstration of illegal Afghans in The Hague. It looks like our girl has a thing for hospitals. Here she apparently wants to stop a paramedic from doing his job. I’ve got this to say to Ms Hafez, assaulting your opponents is one thing. But keep your hands off our paramedics!’
Edward hurled the remote control with such force that it shattered against the wall. Enraged, he keyed in Farah’s number again.
25
Whenever Farah was overcome by emotions, she instinctively switched to her mother tongue. Sorrow, rage or triumph were all expressed in Dari. She couldn’t help it, and nor did she want to. It was part of her nature.
Marant was in every respect like the opponent Farah had brought down at Carré the evening before last. A seasoned vulture who was out for the blood of her kill and the kudos of a scoop and was prepared to pull the nastiest tricks to get what she wanted.
When she saw Edward’s picture on the display of her vibrating iPhone she knew what to expect.
‘I thought we’d agreed to speak after the broadcast,’ she sighed.
‘Is there something you forgot to tell me this afternoon, Hafez?’
‘I didn’t know photos were taken this afternoon.’
‘Clearly there were and you’ve seen them now, so why don’t you tell me about what happened!’
‘I spent a long time trying to resuscitate my uncle … and when the ambulance arrived to take him to hospital, he was already dead. I wasn’t allowed to accompany him … I was in a real state, true. But I didn’t touch the man, Ed.’
‘She’s clever,’ Edward sighed. ‘Marant even gets me to stop trusting you. What possesses that woman?’
Meanwhile they saw the same Cathy Marant on screen with Danielle.
‘We’ll begin with the distressing story of the seriously injured boy who was found by former soap actress Angela Faber the other night,’ Marant said rather melodramatically. ‘Thanks to her quick in
tervention, our first guest this evening was able to save his life: trauma surgeon, Dr Danielle Bernson.’ Polite applause. ‘Danielle, how do you think this boy ended up in the Netherlands?’
‘I can’t tell you everything I know,’ a visibly nervous Danielle said. ‘It’s confidential information. But there are clear indications that we’re dealing with the victim of a gang of international child traffickers.’
‘You say there are indications,’ Marant continued. ‘Can you give us a clue?’
Danielle hesitated. ‘The boy’s clothing was rather unusual,’ she finally said. ‘He was wearing a traditional Middle-Eastern robe, jewellery, and he was made up to look like a young woman.’
‘What does it do to you, seeing a child like that?’ Cathy asked with just the right dose of pathos as the camera zoomed in on Danielle who was clearly perspiring.
‘It’s heart-rending,’ Danielle said with a frog in her throat.
Cathy Marant paused briefly while Danielle took a sip of water. Her hand was shaking.
‘Let’s go back to the boy’s appearance,’ Marant said, mustering as much empathy as she could. ‘It would appear that we’re dealing with an ancient tradition from Afghanistan, which has now landed on these shores.’
‘That’s right.’ Danielle sounded less uncertain now. ‘Bacha Bazi, it’s called. Young boys are dressed as girls and ordered to dance for rich older men.’
‘And what happens to them afterwards?’ Marant asked in an insinuating tone.
‘They’re sexually abused.’
A few shots of shocked audience reactions were shown in the ensuing silence. Then it was back to the table, where Marant had assumed a journalistic pose and stared straight into the camera.
‘The possession of dancing boys is a status symbol in Afghanistan,’ she explained. ‘Boys, aged seven, eight, nine, are recruited at markets or on the streets. When they turn eighteen or they’re no longer considered attractive, they’re at great risk. They must fear for their lives because they know which prominent men have secretly abused them for years. Not infrequently, young men are found with their throats cut. Despite an official ban, the Bacha Bazi ritual is spreading rapidly and now it appears to have reared its illegal head in our country.’
Marant then turned demonstratively to Vincent Coronel. Farah saw the bewildered look on Danielle’s face.
‘Mr Coronel,’ Marant said affectedly, ‘what do you make of this development?’
‘Like everybody else here, I’m shocked,’ was Coronel’s quick response. ‘But you see what foolishly believing in multiculturalism has brought us. I mean, if we tolerate all these Afghans within our borders, we effectively allow these people to bring their reprehensible cultural customs and traditions into our country.’
Farah understood where the conversation was going. Danielle could only watch powerlessly as her story was hijacked to give Vincent Coronel the chance to spout his views on mass immigration to the Netherlands.
Farah swore. In Dari of course.
26
Marouan Diba sauntered past the one-armed bandits lined up in a row in the small pub that was home to a handful of hard-up losers. The sound of the levers being pulled down in different rhythms resembled that of rifles being loaded and unlocked.
The clattering of coins increased the revulsion he felt about his next anticipated loss, yet strongly reinforced his desire to defy fate.
He’d driven downtown, parked the Corolla, and then found a seat in front of a slot machine at Tante Roosje on Rembrandtplein. With a glass of beer in one hand and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, he fed coins into the machine, practically on autopilot. Marouan’s thoughts at this moment were like the fruit symbols on the screen in front of him: they tumbled without the slightest chance of finding each other. The payoff was not a victory, a masterly inspiration, a brilliant idea or a great insight. Zilch, no huge rush of coins, jingling cash flow or silvery climax.
And again and again, his pathetic behaviour kept flashing through his mind: how he’d avoided his partner, how he’d shrunk to the size of Tom Thumb during the conversation with Tomasoa, Park and Calvino. But the thought of the man with the Slavic accent dominated everything. How the hell was he going to make it clear to him that as part of the new MIT his hands would be completely tied?
Then he saw Danielle Bernson on television. Drowned out by the noise of the levers and sporadic ringing. He stumbled towards the television and turned up the sound.
‘The boy’s clothing was rather unusual’ he heard her say. ‘He was wearing a traditional Middle-Eastern robe, jewellery, and he was made up to look like a young woman.’
Marouan rubbed his face with both hands. It had become an instinctive habit any time problems arose that were bigger than his own shadow. Gra, hadchi chhal mqouad! Shit, what a fucking disaster! He knew it. He was a fucking idiot, the scapegoat, a born loser. If anyone should have kept Danielle Bernson from talking to a Dutch prime-time audience about how much this case really stank, then it should’ve been him.
A Dutch hmara, a stupid chick, who’d studied to be a doctor, now raising a huge hue and cry in millions of homes about an innocent child who was smuggled into the Netherlands.
Danielle Bernson was a bint el zenqa. A fucking slag! The sense of his own impotence made Marouan furious. He kicked the slot machine, pounded it with his flat hands, shook the unwieldy thing back and forth and considered giving it a headbutt. Anything to unleash his anger, to severely punish himself.
But he managed to get himself under control and left everything for what it was: his beer, the astonished regulars in the pub, the betrayal on television. He stepped outside, pulled the prepaid phone from his coat pocket, and via the speed dial rang the man he hated from the bottom of his heart.
27
Immediately after Joshua Calvino arrived at the WMC’s Intensive Care Unit he seized the opportunity to speak to the head nurse in private.
‘Not one of my finer moments,’ Mariska said candidly, ‘but I agreed to keep Danielle in the loop, which I probably shouldn’t have. I promised to call her as quickly as possible if there was a problem with the boy.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ Joshua wanted to know.
‘I side-stepped protocol. Once a patient is transferred to us, we are entirely responsible.’
‘So why did you agree to keep her in the loop?’
‘I know something about Danielle’s background. I could see how involved she was with this boy. When complications set in during the night that revealed a ruptured spleen, I immediately called her. She then took it upon herself to come to the OR and against all protocol persuaded the senior trauma surgeon who operated not to remove the boy’s spleen.’
‘That takes guts,’ Joshua said admiringly.
‘You don’t see the kind of commitment Danielle exhibits very often in our work. So when she called me this morning and asked me to look the other way when she and Angela Faber showed up to visit … well, I thought, if it’s brief, okay …’
‘But …?’
‘When I saw Dennis Faber and that photographer who was with them, not to mention that TV woman … what’s her name again?’
‘Marant, Cathy Marant.’
‘Yes, her. Then I immediately stood my ground, said it was unacceptable.’
‘What was her reaction?’
‘Danielle wasn’t interested in what I had to say. She had the determined look of someone who was going to get what she wanted. At all costs. Once I realized this, I had no choice but to call Hospital Security. But this hospital is pretty big, so before they got here, the whole media circus had already picked itself up and left: in and out in no time.’
‘Yet still long enough for an article in De Nederlander,’ Joshua said.
‘I then informed my department about what had taken place,’ Mariska said.
‘Only then?’ asked Joshua, surprised.
‘You know, detective, I hate to see someone like Danielle, who hasn’t
been working here very long and is so dedicated, get into trouble early on. Yes, I hesitated about reporting her, especially because I first saw it as an isolated incident. But once I read the article, I realized how naive I’d been.’
‘I’d like to speak to your supervisor,’ Joshua said. ‘The boy needs police protection. The sooner the better.’
Mariska gave him the number of her supervisor. Joshua got a resolute woman on the phone who told him she’d had men in flak jackets with automatic weapons positioned in front of an ICU room before, so she was used to it. With the promise that she’d cooperate fully regarding the boy’s safety in her hospital, Joshua concluded their conversation. He called Tomasoa immediately afterwards to inform him about the latest developments.
Tomasoa preferred short lines of communication and a quick follow-through. As efficiently as he’d put a rush on the forensics investigation, he put things into action now. Normally, if there were indications a witness was in danger, a threat assessment was first made to determine how serious the risk actually was. But after hearing Joshua’s account, Tomasoa decided to bypass standard procedure: he made protecting the boy a ‘high’ priority. In any case, after a short consultation with that evening’s chief duty officer, Tomasoa got the go-ahead to post a uniformed police guard at the boy’s hospital door. If and when there were signs of an increased threat, for example in response to the TV broadcast this evening, then Tomasoa wouldn’t hesitate: he’d ensure that a heavily armed presence was placed right outside the ICU.
Pleased by how swiftly and efficiently Tomasoa had reacted, Joshua went in search of a television. With the help of Mariska, he located one in a day room, where he had to convince a handful of bewildered patients of the importance of switching the channel from the dancing celebrities on ice to the live broadcast of The Headlines Show. The Dutch politician Vincent Coronel was already holding forth about the dangers of the multicultural society.
Butterfly on the Storm Page 26