Ellen Mulder spoke to him in a quiet voice.
‘The cause of death was a bullet to the back that went right through her left lung and aorta. A second bullet pierced her forehead, entered her brain and exited just above the second cervical.’
Joshua looked at her blankly.
‘She was dead after the first shot,’ Ellen said, as if to reassure him. Then she pointed at the wound on Danielle’s forehead.
‘The surrounding skin is scorched. The bullet came from close by.’
‘From how far away?’
‘It was up close and personal.’
Joshua could hardly suppress his desire to let out a barrage of obscenities.
‘How well did you know her?’ she asked.
Joshua was silent. He wanted to shake Danielle awake, but could only passively watch.
‘We’re not like the gods, Joshua. We all have our faults, we can’t control everything,’ she said. ‘We don’t know ourselves, hardly understand what others are capable of. To make all of this a bit more bearable, we alleviate our guilt by getting really good at something. Specializing. I do dead people. You do the guilty ones. But we often forget that reality is much more complex than what our specialty entails.’
He looked at her, pained.
‘Don’t beat yourself up. Concentrate on collecting the facts so you can catch the lowlife who did this.’
‘What else can you tell me?’ Joshua asked hoarsely.
With mathematical precision, her rubber-gloved fingertips touched the bullet wounds in Danielle’s upper and lower body and came to rest on her right thigh.
‘She was raped, Joshua.’
He turned and walked over to the window with the opaque plexiglass, somehow thinking there’d be a gust of fresh air to alleviate his nausea. Behind him Ellen covered Danielle Bernson’s body again with the sheet. She pulled off her rubber gloves and dropped them in a bin. Then she walked towards him. He could feel her warm breath as she stood behind him. Then he started talking. And the words just poured out.
‘You set certain boundaries for yourself when you start out in this profession. But over time those boundaries are crossed. You don’t notice it. Until you realize …’ He turned around ‘… you’ve overextended yourself, and not for the first time.’
‘There’s always a way back, Joshua.’
‘When will your report be finished?’
‘I’m going to start straight away.’
‘If I can get a copy tomorrow, I’d appreciate it. Thank you, Ellen.’
He felt her eyes as he disappeared through the swinging doors. He wanted to go home, crawl into bed, sleep and wake up next to Farah, who would then persuade him to lift anchor, start the engine and head for the horizon with the swans trailing behind them. Oh Farah. His mobile rang and when he looked at the screen, he saw her name.
‘Joshua?’
‘What is it?’
‘I’ve got someone here I think you should speak to.’
7
The airplanes landing at Schiphol Airport were coming in low. Marouan thought back on the time when he was still only a policeman and wanted to be a detective. But they were determined to keep him on the street. After all, he was the one who kept the Moroccan bad boys in check. Outraged, he filed a complaint. Of course there was denial all around. Even the newspapers came to report on it. Suspicions of discrimination. It pissed off the brass.
He thought back on cruising around with his Belmondo bravado once he’d made detective and had returned home for a holiday. Driving under the starry Marrakech sky while his brother accused him of being a Khilqa. He lay there that night with his weary head between Aisha’s breasts. Back home beside the woman he’d fallen in love with so very long ago.
Even now he wanted to lie with her, wanted to make love to her, fill their jaded existence with cries that would arouse hope: they could still be happy. He would go to the dusty field right beside the family home to give his son a piece of his mind. Why couldn’t he learn to give the ball a good kick with the side of his foot, so the ball stopped spinning out of control nowhere near the goal? He would lay his hand on Jamila’s shoulders and reassure her. She was already aware of how beautiful she was, but oblivious to how threatening and unscrupulous the pockmarked losers that buzzed around her were.
He stopped the car right in front of the Rembrandttoren. He left the engine idling, keyed in the number and a moment later heard her sleepy, surprised voice.
‘It’s me,’ he softly said, and he realized his eyes were stinging.
‘I know,’ she replied. Her voice was caring.
‘Were you sleeping?’
‘What is it?’
He heard a hint of panic in her voice. Normally he never called her at this time of night, and when he did he usually kept it short, only asked a few questions to show some interest. It gave her time to routinely sum up the events of that day into a meaningless story, before he’d say he wouldn’t be long now. And then they could both hang up, relieved. And everything would be okay again, for the time being anyway.
But now it was different.
Despite the fact that she’d been woken out of a deep sleep, she immediately knew it was him, and for a split second he even thought he heard a muffled sort of joy in her voice. He thought of the many times he’d lain awake listening to her breathing, how it regularly turned into soft snoring, sometimes faltered; and then he would stroke her and her breathing would calm down.
‘What is it?’ she repeated.
‘Don’t worry. Everything is fine. How would you like to stay a little longer?’ He said it as calmly as possible, and took her silence as confirmation.
‘Aisha?’ He swallowed a few times before he continued. ‘Kiss Jamila and Chahid for me. Tell them I love them.’
When he hung up, he stepped out of the car and approached the large glass entranceway of the Rembrandttoren. He flashed his ID at the guard behind the desk. The guard came to the door, distrustfully gazed at Marouan’s bandaged hands and then his ID.
‘Police investigation,’ Marouan cried. He knew how to exploit his authority and signalled to the man to open the door. ‘We think there’s a problem with your alarm system,’ he said, standing in the vast marble lobby. ‘Police central dispatch says there’s something wrong in the penthouse boardroom. For fuck’s sake, hasn’t anyone noticed anything?’
Without waiting for an answer, Marouan continued. ‘We’ve got to get to the bottom of this quickly,’ he said as he pressed the lift button. ‘Planning on joining me?’
He leaned against the chrome lift walls, and he could feel the sweat trickling down his back. The security guard was wearing a badge with his name and the City Secure logo.
‘Good company. Perhaps the best. How long have you been working for them, Clive?’
‘Six months or so.’
‘And before that?’
‘Why?’
‘You’re lucky, at CS they only hire the best.’
Clive gave him a guarded smile. Marouan pulled out a pack of chewing gum and offered him a piece. Clive hesitated, but then pressed one out of the strip.
‘Big plans for the future, Clive? Or do you want to stay in security?’
‘Detective. Maybe.’
‘Ah, now you’re talking. Detective, really?’
Clive nodded.
‘Fine profession.’
The lift doors slid open. Marouan spotted a frosted glass corridor that held promises of a boardroom. ‘Let’s do this quickly,’ he said. ‘I have lots of other things to do.’
They walked through the corridors, and through two large rooms with glass walls, oval conference tables, chairs and video screens. Nothing special, except the breathtaking view from 150 metres above Amsterdam. After checking three rooms, one in each corner of the building, they were now in the fourth space among large white leather sofas, a Steinway grand piano and a bar. The power boardroom.
Marouan could see Schiphol in the distance. An airplane glided b
y. He imagined the passengers pressing their noses against the porthole windows, watching a mosaic of bright lights increase in size.
‘You don’t need to be a detective, Clive,’ he said, smiling. ‘With a job in this building, you’re the king of the hill.’ Marouan casually glanced around. ‘The windows don’t open?’
Clive shook his head. ‘Safety reasons.’
They walked back to the main corridor where Clive pressed the lift button and then rang his colleague via his security radio to say that everything looked okay. Then Marouan noticed stairs behind a glass door.
‘Where does that go?’
‘It’s the door to heaven.’
‘Then I’d better give that a quick check too.’ He said it with a grin and took the steps two at a time, released the safety lever and was suddenly standing in a circular cage with the night sky and the stars almost within reach.
The structure’s door wasn’t secured with a lock. A flat roof without a railing stretched out in front of him. He felt strangely calm as he walked towards the edge. King of the hill.
Then he took the plunge.
Aisha was waiting for him. How long had it been since she’d done this? She stood in the doorway, as if she sensed something special was going to happen today. As if she knew that this time he was coming home for real. She smiled at him and he could smell the garlic, ginger, toasted almonds and orange blossom honey she’d put in the meal cooking in the tagine. He tried to find the words to tell her how happy he was that she’d been waiting for him tonight. She just smiled in reply; words weren’t necessary. She understood.
She welcomed him home and shut the door.
8
Radjen Tomasoa knew that if you wanted to stay the course in this line of work, you had to be prepared for everything. You had to let as little as possible get to you. But how could he have anticipated what was now coming? It hit him like a sledgehammer. He’d downplayed all the warning signs. An immense feeling of guilt hung over him like a cloud.
He helplessly stared upwards to where Detective Marouan Diba’s broken body was lying on the steel points of the five-centimetre-thick glass entranceway canopy. The glass had cracked in a random pattern from the force of the fall, like a thick layer of ice shattered by the impact of a large stone.
The Oracle. That’s what Diba had been called, because of the mysterious manner in which he knew all those years ago exactly where he needed to be to find 600 kilos of raw cocaine in the belly of a cargo plane. Thanks to this amazing discovery, Tomasoa suddenly had in Diba an investigator of national renown.
But then wild rumours started making the rounds. The finding of this cocaine had the smell of an inside job, a shady job behind the scenes. The night before the confiscated load would have been officially destroyed, a switch had taken place. The real stuff had disappeared out the back door only to be traded again.
There were persistent rumours, but not a shred of evidence. Diba seemed to have lost his focus and more often than not seemed distracted and gruff. Colleagues started to distance themselves from him. Eventually Diba had only one man left who openly stood behind him. But earlier that evening Calvino had made it clear that he’d had enough too.
If you believed the other rumours, Diba’s marriage was also on the rocks. And apparently he was regularly spotted in the casino alone. True or not, Diba had functioned just fine all those years. Anyway, Radjen Tomasoa didn’t believe in discussing personal problems with his people. What he believed in was discipline, perseverance and self-reliance. Tomasoa stood by the theory that men were created to face the fiercest storms, and never lose their bearings.
Of course he’d noticed that Diba was no longer the same old detective who, bursting with ambition, was always in overdrive. Diba had turned into a fat man with a very short fuse who always got into arguments around the coffee machine. The last time the newspapers wrote about Diba was to tar and feather him because of the clumsy way he’d handled Dennis Faber’s arrest.
What Tomasoa blamed himself for was that he’d spoken to Diba about all these matters, but had missed the fact that Diba’s problem ran considerably deeper, too deep to ease with a few kind words or even a harsh reprimand.
Nobody had dared speak to Diba, nobody had realized what might have kept the Oracle from taking the free fall that landed him on the Rembrandttoren’s glass canopy. All Tomasoa could still do was swear to the City Secure guard Clive Trustfull that he’d personally see to it that after tonight he’d never have a job with a shred of responsibility.
The first TV truck had already arrived on the scene. Tomasoa saw the IRIS TV logo and shouted to the officer by the barrier tape not to let anyone through. It was nevertheless unavoidable that plenty of people would begin their morning with an article or a short TV item devoted to the tragic death of a once-celebrated detective. And that would be followed by the most speculative stories in the media over the course of the day.
The infamous drug bust from years ago would be raked up again. New life would be blown into the rumours of shady deals and secret contacts with the underworld. The police station in Amsterdam would be besieged by journalists, photographers and camera crews. Every cop, detective and employee coming and going to work would get a microphone stuck in their face. Hadn’t they noticed anything? Reporters would take up strategic positions with the Amsterdam police station looming behind them like some eerie backdrop. From that vantage point, they would report as seriously as possible, rattle off an account of the events, while throwing the building a glance over a shoulder now and again.
What had played out behind the walls of the police station? That same night a suspect had been whisked off to hospital with serious injuries after being interrogated, and a detective who’d been present at that questioning had taken his own life.
Whatever strategy Tomasoa devised to control the fallout today, his whole team would be damaged. Calvino would have a particularly hard time of it. After all, he’d been the suicidal detective’s partner. Hadn’t he noticed anything?
As he drove back at high speed to the station, Tomasoa was already calling in his first tactic. The number of Diba’s wife in Marrakesh had to be traced. Their home had to be searched for any clues as to his motives. All contact with the media would now have to go through him. Not a single employee was allowed to speak to the press. He would prepare the press release himself. Normally a job for the Public Relations department, but he chose not to let this one out of his hands. And right after Detective Calvino had questioned the driver, he had to report directly to him, hopefully before the news of Diba’s death reached him. Tomasoa wanted to tell him in person.
After he’d passed all that along, Tomasoa began to formulate the content of the press release in his head. He wanted to focus on stress, problems in Diba’s private life, even if his gut feeling told him there had to be more. If Kovalev survived his injuries, hopefully he’d be able to shed some light on what had happened.
But that hope was short-lived. Before he even reached the office, Tomasoa received a call confirming that Kovalev had died of a cerebral haemorrhage.
Back at the office, he racked his brain about how best to inform the Internal Investigations Unit about what had gone down during the interrogation. Suddenly Calvino appeared in his doorway, looking like he’d just finished a week-long round-the-clock shift of duty.
‘Here you go. The driver’s full confession. Complete with exact dates, descriptions of people and locations, with the villa in the Amsterdamse Bos as the last nasty bit of business.’
‘Good work,’ Tomasoa said, ‘where is he now?’
‘In the canteen, drinking a coffee and eating biscuits with a police guard at his side.’
‘Okay,’ Tomasoa said absentmindedly. He’d rarely felt so ill at ease as today. Calvino had already had quite a rough night, but still he continued. Calvino was a man capable of weathering a storm. A man after his own heart.
‘Joshua, Diba is dead.’ There was no other way to put it. The cold,
hard facts were all he had to offer Calvino, as if this made the message less awful. ‘He threw himself off the roof of the Rembrandttoren.’
In the ensuing silence Tomasoa imagined Detective Diba taking the plunge again, but this time through Calvino’s eyes.
His long-time idol had fallen.
9
Joshua Calvino felt a wave of nausea rush over him. He leaned against the doorframe. ‘I should have seen it coming,’ he said in a flat voice.
Tomasoa got up and walked to the window. ‘I don’t know where it went wrong, Cal, or when it started: if he was indeed a mole, had debts, was having an affair or had a drinking problem. But apparently there was a lot going on and none of us saw it.’
‘I saw it.’
‘I don’t know what you saw but I know you made a big effort to protect him. You shouldn’t blame yourself for anything.’
‘Has his family been informed?’
‘Not yet. I’ll call his wife in Marrakech as soon as I get her number.’
Joshua had met Diba’s wife on a few occasions. A timid woman who must have been beautiful in her youth. But worries and body fat had added an impenetrable layer, making sure that her beauty had become practically invisible. It was as if she was a Matryoshka doll who’d been hidden in a fatter, uglier version.
‘Take a few days off, Calvino. That’s an order,’ Tomasoa said. He turned around and walked back to his desk. ‘There’ll be an internal investigation into what went on in the interrogation room, they’re going to dig into Diba’s life and no doubt yours as well.’
‘Who’s going to round off the boy’s case, handle the follow-up on the driver’s statement?’
‘The Lombard case is a matter for the national guys.’
Butterfly on the Storm Page 40