After the Silence: Inspector Rykel Book 1 (Amsterdam Quartet)

by Jake Woodhouse

  The scene was already bustling – he counted at least five uniforms – and as he got closer he could see they were all looking skywards like acolytes in some religious painting in the Rijksmuseum. But as his gaze rose he could see the object of their worship wasn’t an angel descending from the clouds on feathered wings, but a body.

  Naked.

  Hanging by the neck from a pulley.

  When the dispatcher had said there was a body he’d assumed he was going to spend the morning fishing someone out of the canal, a tourist perhaps, unused to the strength and availability of Dutch dope or beer. Or the two combined.

  He felt his phone buzzing in his pocket, and checked the screen to see Andreas’ home number.

  ‘Andreas, where’ve you been?’

  ‘Is he not with you?’ Saskia’s voice. ‘I thought you were going with him last night?’

  Shit.

  ‘Uhh … no … I didn’t in the end. So did he leave early this morning?’

  The breeze brought a pungent hit of tar and brine off the canal.

  ‘No, I woke up just now but he hasn’t been back, and he’s not answering his phone.’

  Where the hell is he?

  ‘I’m sure it’s fine, you know what he’s like when he gets stuck into a case –’

  ‘But he’s never stayed out all night and not let me know before.’

  Jaap wondered if there was an implied criticism there, but decided she was sounding too scared for point scoring on an old relationship. And anyway, that was history now.

  ‘Look, I’ll try and get hold of him, someone at the station will know where he is. I’ll get back to you soon, but in the meantime don’t worry, okay?’

  Once Saskia hung up Jaap called the station and got them to check the logs, find out where Andreas had gone last night.

  I really should have gone with him, he thought as he walked the last twenty yards.

  His footsteps announced him, the uniforms all turned as one, and he ducked under the police tape, noticing for the first time an old man sitting in the back of the ambulance.

  One of the uniforms, Ton Baanders, was smoking by the canal edge. Flicking his cigarette into the water, the orange tip looping downward through the air, he stepped over to meet Jaap.

  ‘Hey, how’s it hanging?’ he asked in English syruped with an American drawl.

  ‘Funny guy,’ said Jaap, turning his head up, wondering how difficult this was going to be. His eyes connected with the body, pale skin basted by the sodium glow of a street light, rotating slowly first one way, then back again like the soles of his feet were dancing to an unheard tune.

  Jaap motioned to the old man in the ambulance.

  ‘He the one who found him?’ Because it was a him, that much was visible even from down at street level.

  ‘Yeah, that’s the guy. He was a bit distraught when I arrived but he’s calmed down now. He seems to have something against immigrants, he was banging on and on about them earlier.’

  ‘What’s he called?’

  Ton inspected his notebook as if he’d spent all morning interviewing fifty suspects with complicated names.

  ‘Pieter Leenhouts.’

  ‘Keep him here, I’ll want to talk to him. Forensics up there?’

  ‘Yeah, they got here on time for once. Said they’d just set up and wait for the word.’

  Jaap turned back to the house where three stone steps, a faded bloom of green algae coating their surface, led to a cream front door. There were five storeys, three tall windows on each floor, and in the triangular facade a modern addition, French windows which echoed the roof’s outline.

  Ton broke the silence.

  ‘Not sure I’d top myself if I could afford to live in one of these.’

  ‘He didn’t do this to himself.’

  ‘No?’

  Jaap followed the taut line of the rope from the man’s neck, up over the pulley wheel and then as it sloped down, to where it ended up, jammed between the window and frame.

  Is that all that’s keeping him up, he wondered, or is the rope attached to something else inside?

  ‘He could have hanged himself. Not sure he could have closed the windows behind him though.’

  ‘See what you mean,’ said Ton.

  ‘No sign of Kees?’

  ‘Isn’t that him there?’ Ton pointed back down Herengracht, past the concerned neighbours gathering at the tape, necks craning. A figure, a phone clasped to his ear, was heading towards them.

  Jaap watched as Kees stopped, intent on his phone conversation, his left hand throwing out angry gesticulations.

  ‘When he gets here tell him to come straight up. Unless, of course, he’s got more important things to be doing.’

  Ton grinned. ‘Looks like a domestic to me.’

  ‘Yeah, well, domestics should be kept at home.’

  Inside the house a short hallway led to wooden stairs. An antique table stood to his right, on it a cigar box and a pile of letters. Jaap picked them up and looked at the first. The paper was plain, a plastic window revealing a printed name and address.

  His stomach clenched.

  The name was D. Friedman.

  2

  Monday, 2 January

  07.57

  The piercing ring of the phone jerked Sergeant Tanya van der Mark awake. She pulled herself out of bed, feet against the cold tiled floor, and stumbled towards the source of the racket.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Tanya, it’s Roelf, did I wake you?’

  ‘Umm, kind of …’ She shivered, wishing her cheap landlord would replace the chipped chessboard tiles with carpet. Roelf was the station dispatcher, which meant she wasn’t getting back to bed any time soon.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t have any choice, I’m kind of short on options here.’

  ‘What about Baltje?’

  ‘He’s down in Amsterdam for a few days. Some stupid course about reaching out to the community.’

  ‘So he’s living it up in the big city and I’m stuck up here covering for him?’

  ‘Yeah, life’s not fair. I tell that to my kids every day, just to prepare them.’

  She looked down at her feet; one on a white tile, the other on black. ‘Your place sounds like a lot of fun.’

  ‘Has its moments,’ he said. ‘But anyway, the reason I’m calling is we’ve got a fire, out by Zeedijk? And –’

  ‘Call the fire service, they’re generally better at that kind of thing.’

  ‘– and with all these arson attacks we’ve had you know Lankhorst said someone needed to attend any suspicious fires.’

  ‘Is it suspicious?’

  ‘It’s a fire, isn’t it?’

  Tanya tried to see the hallway clock, but it was too dark to make out either of the hands.

  It must be before eight, she thought, I haven’t heard the rubbish collectors yet.

  ‘Okay,’ she yawned, ‘I’m on my way.’

  She’d been wrestling with a dream, the familiar nightmare, when the phone had roused her. Standing there it took her a moment to separate everything out into the right compartments before returning to the bedroom and dressing quickly, her eyes squeezed to slits against the harsh electric light she’d been forced to turn on.

  She drank down a glass of orange juice, just to clear the sour taste from her mouth, and went to the drawer where she kept her ID. She couldn’t find it, and it wasn’t in her jacket pocket either. She gave up and left the house, looking at the photo she kept on the hall table as she picked up her keys.

  Her parents.

  Thirteen years this Thursday, she thought as she stepped out into the glacial air, a hint of woodsmoke catching her nose. A cat, or maybe a fox, startled by her appearance, jumped on to her neighbour’s fence, back paws scrabbling for a few seconds against the wood, before making it over and rushing through the undergrowth with a rustle which quickly fell into silence.

  Tanya checked the post box, hoping for her exam results. If she made Inspector she’d be pu
tting in a transfer request right away. But all she had were offers of faster broadband and falafel delivery.

  She looked at her bike, frost crusted on the black chassis, but turned to the police car. As she got in she paused and sat behind the wheel for a moment before firing up the motor, unable to completely shake her dream. She still had them after all these years. Their power over her hadn’t diminished.

  She shook her head quickly, trying to focus. She didn’t want the distraction, not now.

  Not ever, she thought to herself.

  Off to her right she could see the first hint of dawn, the intensity of the night sky just easing, and over the next twenty minutes as she drove through the flat landscape she watched the transformation of the world from night to day, the horizon cycling through layers of colour like a kaleidoscope.

  Her destination was clear even before the satnav – silent on the long straight road north – barked at her, a pillar of smoke rising up into the apricot-tinged sky. There was no wind at all judging by how straight a line the smoke was forming and it reminded her of a column on an ancient building.

  Should that be Doric or Corinthian? she wondered as she slowed down, and found a mud track leading towards the source, a plot of land wedged between fields with a low hedge marking out the perimeter. Small potholes in the track were frozen solid, fish eyes looking towards the sky.

  Approaching what remained of the house she could see it had probably been one of those typical bungalows built, along with so much in the Netherlands, by a mad eighties architect who had all the visual flair of a blind civil servant. They were dotted around the countryside, cumbersome and out of place, and she’d always disliked them.

  One less ugly building, she thought to herself as she pulled up, parking in the long shadow of the fire engine cast by the low sun. The fire crew – about seven in all, their hi-vis clothing dazzling in the first rays of light – were winding the hose back on to an enormous reel, each turn forcing another spurt of water out of the nozzle. It looked to Tanya like a gigantic python retching.

  The first thing that hit her as she got out was the dark, heavy smell of burning, and as she walked round the front of the fire engine she could feel the heat, radiating like an oven. The building had been levelled, two corner uprights on the far left-hand side all that remained of the structure, forlorn against the sky.

  It was still possible to distinguish some things, the kitchen retained its outline, a fridge severely burned – but still standing – and the bath and toilet blackened, cracked, but still recognizable.

  The lead fireman saw her and started walking her way. As he reached her he offered his hand and they shook.

  ‘Tanya van der Mark,’ she said.

  ‘Paul Lemster.’ His face was weathered; a smudge of soot on his left cheek just below the eye reminded Tanya of a soldier. ‘As you can see, it was pretty much done by the time we got here.’

  Tanya looked around, clocking the lack of a car – impossible to live without one in this remote spot. A vegetable patch sat off to the left, neat rows of winter kale and leeks, pushing free from the tilled earth.

  ‘The owners?’

  He pointed to the remains of the building.

  ‘Looks like a couple of adult bodies there, they didn’t make it out in time. Give us five minutes to get it cool enough and we can take a look.’

  ‘Any idea what started it? More arson?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘In my experience it’s usually something minor, bad wiring or something like that. These buildings weren’t built to last.’

  She walked round the property, just close enough to feel the heat but without it being uncomfortable, and looked out at the surrounding landscape.

  Beyond the hedge lay agricultural land, neat field after neat field, dotted with the black-and-white cows from which the region, Friesland, got its name. To the north, past more fields, a lead-grey sea brooded. She felt the bleakness, and wondered if living out here could drive someone mad.

  As she followed the path of the hedge something caught her eye, just at the base. She knelt down, her left knee feeling the hardness of the frozen ground, and tried to pull out whatever it was, hidden behind the dark green leaves veined with frost. Pushing her hand further in, feeling the brittle branches scraping her skin, she managed to get hold of something smooth. Twigs broke as she pulled it out.

  In her hand was a small doll, which despite the frost looked brand new. She stared at it, the white arms and legs, the crimson dress pristine, and the blonde hair frozen solid.

  A distant ship’s horn barged in off the North Sea.

  So where, she thought, turning back to the burnt wreckage, is the child?

  3

  Monday, 2 January

  08.14

  ‘… not fair. I gave up my job to come here with you, and now you treat me like this.’

  Like what? wondered Inspector Kees Terpstra as he regretted answering for the hundredth time. He’d just turned on to Herengracht and could see the house up ahead, catching a glimpse of Jaap Rykel as he disappeared inside, the streak of white hair running from his right temple marking him out. If Marinette hadn’t chosen this morning to have a go he wouldn’t have been late.

  ‘And you’re never here either. Are you seeing someone else?’ Marinette’s voice rising rapidly, screeching in his ear, metal on metal.

  I wish I was, he thought, someone who didn’t spend all their time bitching about things.

  ‘Or have you started again? Is that it?’

  Christ, I could use some of that right now.

  ‘I’ve got to go, I’m working a murder investigation here, I haven’t got time for –’

  ‘That’s part of the problem, you never have time any more. You’re always too busy’ – the stridence softened – ‘and we never get … to … talk.’

  ‘Okay, okay. We’ll talk tonight, when I’m back, but it’s going to be late.’

  He glanced up the canal to the house, uniforms milling around outside, his own breath blossoming in front of him. ‘I have to go.’

  He hung up before she could respond.

  God, what was up with her? Ever since they’d moved here eight months ago, from the very first moment they’d pulled up outside the apartment – the apartment they’d both chosen – he’d known that something was wrong, could sense a seam of resistance, something hard, inflexible, forming in her. And okay, moving somewhere new was bound to be a bit difficult at first, he knew that, had made allowances, had given her time to try and settle in, hadn’t forced her to look for a job straight away.

  Despite the fact that on what he earned alone they were struggling.

  And didn’t she understand he had to put the hard work in now, that to rise up the ranks required a huge amount of time and effort?

  He strode towards the house, taking the anger out on the ground, and had to jostle his way through a small crowd of people who’d been attracted to the red-and-white tape – insects writhing on flypaper.

  A man, fat, face like pummelled dough, tried to ask him what was going on as he made his way through.

  ‘Police business,’ he snapped as he ducked under the tape and into a space free of the crowd. He could hear the man – his voice slightly high, petulant – saying something about there being no need to be so rude, and he felt like turning round and responding but managed to control himself.

  Ton Baanders stepped forward.

  ‘Glad you could join us.’

  ‘Fuck off, Sergeant.’

  Ton laughed.

  ‘Jaap said to go straight up.’

  Kees hadn’t yet worked with Jaap, but he’d heard the stories. How he’d shot and killed someone and had some kind of breakdown, disappearing for over a year before returning to duty. Some people said he’d got into some weird eastern religion whilst he was away, that was what made him come back, carry on being an Inspector. Kees reckoned he didn’t look the type, but who knew?

  He headed over to the front door, wond
ering what it’d be like to shoot someone. Ever since he’d started gun training he’d wanted to know. Maybe he’d ask Jaap.

  Just as he reached the first step he spotted someone walking down the canal towards him, texting on her phone.

  For a few long seconds Kees thought it was Marinette.

  His girlfriend coming to kick up a fuss right in front of everyone.

  The embarrassment of that would be crushing, and he was just starting to move, head her off when he saw it wasn’t her.

  She had the same silvery-blonde hair, and a shapeless coat in the same drab navy blue, and her face was similar, but slightly thinner and the nose a bit more pointed. His heart, which had ramped up on seeing her, was starting to slow now he knew it wasn’t Marinette.

  As if sensing his gaze she looked up and stopped short, took in the scene quickly; her eyes caught Kees’. Just as he read surprise, and maybe a touch of fear in them, she turned round, and walked fast the way she’d come.

  ‘Hey, stop!’

  She heard him, and just went faster.

  He was after her, having to push through yet more people at the tape – bovine murmurs of complaint filling the air – and once he was through he saw her disappearing round the corner, into Oude Leliestraat, the narrow street which joined Herengracht with its neighbouring large canal, Singel. She dodged round the bollard which kept traffic out for most of the day, and disappeared from view.

  He broke into a run, the rush of cold air making his eyes water, his feet slipping on the bricks as he started off. He made it to the corner, where the dodgy falafel joint was already pumping out grease into the morning air, mingling with the damp, herbal hit from the Coffeeshop four doors down. She was about ten metres ahead now, and running. Pushing harder he gained ground and was close enough to catch a blast of camphor.

  Must be from her coat.

  She was just reaching Singel, heading for the bridge which would take her over into Dam Square, her coat flapping out behind her – thick seaweed in a strong tide – and he was nearly close enough to grab it as she flew across the road, not even looking from side to side.