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

by Jake Woodhouse

  Thing is, thought Tanya, if we did arrest people for looks you’d be first to be pulled in.

  She handed another sheet across and looked down at the next one.

  The same spider tattoo, on the same side of the neck. She slid it over to Lankhorst. He held it up to get a better look.

  ‘Follow this up,’ he said after he’d studied it for a moment. He handed it back to her. ‘Looks like most of his arrests have been in Amsterdam. If you need to go down there, let me know.’

  He looked at Bloem and Tanya. ‘I’m sure you two will make a brilliant team. Give me an update by the end of the day?’

  Tanya went back to her desk, Bloem telling her to write up her initial report. But she sat down and read record seventeen. The man with the tattoo was called Ludo Haak, prior arrests for aggravated assault, armed robbery, and extortion. There was nothing on arson or murder, and the last offence had been over eight years ago. Seems like Haak had cleaned up his act.

  But as she scrolled further down she noticed the last time the record had been accessed.

  Friday.

  Last Friday.

  She checked the name of the person who’d looked at the file, Inspector Andreas Hansen, from Amsterdam’s Western District Homicide Squad.

  ‘I thought I said do the report?’ Bloem’s voice shot out from behind her, making her jump.

  ‘Yeah, but I’ve got something interesting here –’

  ‘There’s this thing called chain of command, you heard of it?’

  Tanya thought about her exam result. She felt sick.

  Please can I have passed, she offered up, then I can transfer out of here.

  Once she’d sensed that Bloem had stepped away she picked up the phone.

  ‘Hey, Sergeant van der Mark from the Leeuwarden station. I’m looking for Inspector Andreas Hansen? Yes, I’ll hold.’ She looked down at the photo of Haak. Was he the killer? Was this the guy who’d tied them up and burnt them to death?

  ‘Inspector Rykel, can I help?’

  The man’s voice was deep, but soft. Tired maybe.

  ‘I was trying to get hold of Inspector Hansen.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘I’ve got a suspect in a case I’m working, they’re on file with several previous, and Inspector Hansen was the last person to look them up on the system.’

  ‘When?’

  He sounded more interested now.

  ‘Last Friday.’

  ‘What’s the suspect called?’

  ‘Ludo Haak.’

  ‘And what’s he suspected of?’

  ‘Murder, two people got burned in their own house last night.’

  ‘Give me your number, I’m going to call you back.’

  Once she’d given it to him he hung up. She didn’t need to have passed the Inspector exam to tell by his reaction that something was going on.

  A phone was ringing in the office, no one was picking it up. The clock on the far wall said it was past eight, it must have stopped. Her early-morning start was catching up with her, the stale air of the office like some kind of narcotic, and she got up, figuring she’d get some more coffee before tackling the car, yawning as she did so.

  ‘So who is he?’

  Tanya turned to see Marek, the most junior member of the team. Recently Tanya had got the feeling that he might have taken an interest in her. He kept appearing out of nowhere, and his eyes tended to linger on her longer than she felt comfortable with.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The guy who’s keeping you up so late?’

  The image of her foster father flashed into her brain.

  That’s who keeps me awake at night, she thought, ruining my sleep.

  ‘Early start.’ She pulled her keys off the desk and put them in her pocket. ‘That’s all.’

  The phone was still ringing.

  ‘Yeah, I hate those.’ He paused. Tanya had a sinking feeling that a question to which the answer was ‘no’ would soon be making an appearance. ‘Listen, I was wondering –’ The phone stopped ringing, fazing Marek slightly before he continued: ‘if you’d –’

  ‘Tanya?’

  A shout from Roelf, sitting in the outer office.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I’ve got someone called Geertje on the line for you, she says you spoke to her earlier, something about the fire?’

  ‘I’ll take it, transfer it here.’

  She picked up her desk phone, feeling relief, sensing Marek’s disappointment. As she got the speaker to her ear Geertje was already talking, her voice agitated, breathless.

  ‘Geertje, it’s Sergeant van der Mark … I’m sorry, I missed that, could you start again?’

  Tanya could hear Geertje’s kids in the background, screaming loudly at each other, no longer playfully.

  ‘I spoke to Arend, my husband? About what we talked about, and he said that he’d seen them in town, at the weekend’ – Tanya could see Bloem swaggering back into the room like he owned the place – ‘and they had a child with them, a little girl.’

  11

  Monday, 2 January

  13.29

  I can’t believe he’s still on the case, thought Kees as he slammed the phone down on his desk.

  When Jaap had been called away from the house on Herengracht Kees had been phoned by Smit, who’d asked him to take over.

  Then, later, Smit had called again, bumping him back down to playing second …

  Behind him the fax sprang to life, and he turned to see the phone logs he’d requested finally coming through.

  I’m going to need a bit of help getting through these, he thought, and headed to the toilets, taking a scrap of paper off his desk with him. He didn’t usually do this at the station, but what with Marinette, and getting knocked over, he figured he could use a boost.

  It was payment – at least that’s what he told himself as he rolled up the paper and snorted the coke off the back of the toilet – for the disappointment of the situation. It hit his system and thirty seconds in he felt more positive, more focused. He crumpled and flushed the roll of paper, and rubbed clean the dirty porcelain.

  He checked his phone, hoping for a message from Carice Stultjens. He’d started a text conversation about having a drink.

  Not strictly a top priority when it comes to the case, he thought, but hell, why not?

  The bruise, witnessed in the harsh bathroom light, had been startling, and he thought about the woman who’d run away. Was fate playing some cruel trick on him, making him chase someone who, superficially at least, looked like Marinette? Someone he was starting to feel less and less inclined to see anything of at all?

  It wasn’t his fault she’d changed since they got here, the move had been decided on by both of them, they’d agreed it was the right thing to do for his career, and she was excited about the prospect of moving somewhere else.

  It wasn’t like he’d dragged her kicking and screaming against her will from the rural backwater they were living in before.

  But it was true that she wasn’t the only one the city had changed. It had done something to him as well, exerted some pressure or influence which had made the pilot light of ambition flare.

  And yes, he’d been working long hours, and maybe neglecting her a bit. But then it was easy to neglect a mopey bitch, which, in his eyes, was exactly what she’d become.

  Back in the office the fax was still spooling slowly, so he turned to his computer, scanning through every female under the age of thirty-five arrested in the last year in the whole of Amsterdam. There were quite a few.

  And, he reflected as he moved on to the next set, not many of them were very attractive, certainly nothing like the pathologist, Stultjens. She didn’t seem the mopey type. In fact there was something about her, about the way she’d looked at him earlier …

  This is hopeless, he thought, reaching out and turning his computer off, I’m never going to find her this way …

  But he had to find her, she knew something, something which m
ight well lead him to close the case down. And that was a result he’d like to get.

  Maybe he should get someone to do an e-fit, he could ask the neighbours if they’d seen her.

  ‘Hey, Martijn.’ A man just on the unhealthy side of portly looked up. ‘Is there someone here who does e-fits?’

  ‘Yeah, there’s a guy in the tech department who’s good at them – can’t remember his name – but if you ask he can do all sorts of stuff.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Like, you know …’ He cupped his hands just under his chest. ‘Really top quality, you’d never know it had been done on a computer. Looks just like in a magazine. Any position you want.’

  ‘Seriously,’ said Kees as he got up, glancing at the phone records on the fax and deciding they could wait, ‘you need to get out more.’

  Martijn’s laugh followed him into the corridor.

  Kees called the tech department on his cell and got through to the guy Martijn had told him about. He was giggling when he answered the phone. Kees didn’t know why but he found it slightly sinister. They agreed to meet in twenty minutes. The tech department was in another building, and Kees decided to walk it, the coke giving a shine to the bright but freezing day.

  He arrived and was directed to the first floor, where a man with long hair tied back in a ponytail nodded at him.

  ‘You the guy who does e-fits?’

  He nodded. ‘Hope you haven’t got a difficult one for me?’

  ‘It’s a female at least.’

  ‘Thank god, I hate having to stare at men’s faces for hours on end.’ He motioned to the chair next to him. ‘So what does she look like?’

  Kees described her as best he could, and the image took shape on screen, the changes morphing slowly as he requested them. But after twenty minutes he was getting frustrated, there was something wrong with the cheekbones, or was it the eyes? And the mouth, the mouth wasn’t right at all, or, come to think of it, the chin.

  ‘This doesn’t look anything like her.’

  ‘Hey, I’m not fucking Rembrandt you know, I’m just doing what you tell me to do.’

  Kees’ phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out, willing it to be Carice Stultjens. But it wasn’t.

  ‘Okay,’ he said holding up the phone for the e-fit guy to see the image of Marinette, taken in happier times, which lit up the screen. ‘She looks a bit like this, can you use that as a start?’

  12

  Monday, 2 January

  13.36

  Jaap’s hand shook as he pressed the doorbell. Saskia opened the door, one hand supporting her swollen belly as if it might fall, and looked at him, eyes probing his.

  Her face crumpled.

  ‘No,’ she sobbed. She lunged forward, her arms flailing, ‘you should have been with him.’

  Jaap grabbed her, pinned her arms and held her tight. She squirmed against him. Then the tears came. Her body shook.

  He’d never felt so sick.

  He manoeuvred her into the house, and managed to sit her down on the sofa. For a moment he’d been worried she was going to pass out – the shock had seemingly stopped her breathing and her face had whitened whilst her eyelids flicked. He got her a drink of water, tipping the glass into her mouth, two streams dribbling down the sides of her lips.

  He went through to the kitchen to fill the glass up again. The water was freezing and as he swallowed some a sharp pain stabbed him right in the forehead.

  Saskia was still sobbing next door, and he didn’t know what to do. He’d had the training in grief counselling that cops had to undertake, but what at the time had seemed pragmatic now appeared to be useless.

  So he went and sat beside her, his arm round her shoulder, whilst she cried it out.

  ‘I loved him, you know?’ she said finally.

  Jaap squeezed her shoulder. ‘I know. He loved you too, I could tell.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘Saskia –’

  ‘Just tell me!’

  She turned to him, shrugging his arm off her shoulder, her mouth set hard. She’d always been prone to rages, that was one of the reasons it’d not worked out between them. Jaap had been curious as to how Andreas had dealt with them, wondering if she was different with him. But he’d never asked.

  ‘He was shot.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘We don’t know yet but –’

  ‘So what are you doing here?’ Her voice was rising, and her face was heating up. ‘Why aren’t you out there finding out?’

  ‘I’m –’

  ‘Just go,’ she turned away from him. ‘I want you to go right now.’

  13

  Monday, 2 January

  14.41

  ‘So what do you think has happened?’

  Jaap had left Saskia after calling a friend of hers – he didn’t think she should be alone – and had gone straight to Gert Roemers, head of the computer crimes unit. On the way over Jaap had been trying to clear his mind, trying to get a grip on what was going on.

  But his mind wouldn’t clear.

  Roemers was staring at the screen, his face and hands softly illuminated in the dark room.

  Rumour had it that Roemers’ wife had thrown him out over three months ago and he now slept by his desk in the basement which housed his unit. The room certainly smelt like someone was living there, a kind of soft funk which was on the verge of blooming into something unpleasant, though Jaap couldn’t see what he’d actually sleep on. Unless he used the dirty, padded swivel chair he was sitting in now.

  ‘You’re sure that there was stuff on here?’

  ‘There should be years of case files on there, basically every report he’s done was done on this computer.’

  ‘Maybe he kept everything on an external drive?’

  Jaap tried to picture Andreas’ desk; he was certain there was no external drive.

  ‘No, it was all there.’

  Roemers looked at him with raised eyebrows.

  Jaap, trying not to get angry but unable to stop the irritation creeping into his voice: ‘It was there.’

  Roemers’ hands shot off the keyboard, raised to his shoulders like someone had just told him to stick ’em up.

  ‘Okay, okay. I’ll have a dig around and see what I can find, but you’ll have to leave it with me overnight.’

  A thought hit Jaap: he remembered Andreas telling him that he’d got some service which backed up his computer online. Andreas had been excited that it could sync two computers.

  Jaap had thought it sounded like hell. He didn’t even have a computer at home, but if he did there was no way he’d want it cluttered up with old case files. He was about to mention it to Roemers but then thought better of it.

  ‘Soon as you get something, call me.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  Jaap turned to leave and had just made it to the door when Roemers, face still communing with the screen, spoke.

  ‘Sorry about Andreas.’

  Jaap stood there a moment, hand on the door handle, his throat swelling up like there was something inside.

  He left, unable to trust his voice.

  14

  Monday, 2 January

  15.32

  ‘Is there anything we can use?’

  Kees had brought the phone logs to him in the canteen. Jaap had suddenly felt he needed food, replacement for what he’d lost earlier, but the bowl in front of him hardly qualified. It didn’t look even vaguely edible, and he pushed the unidentifiable meat stew away, his appetite gone as quickly as it had appeared.

  ‘The three numbers in Friedman’s phone are all pay as you go, no trace of who bought them. I’ve got call logs for all three and Friedman’s. They don’t send text messages at all and the calls are really short, usually only around ten seconds or less.’

  ‘And do they call anyone else?’

  ‘No, just the four numbers, it’s a closed circle.’

  ‘So they’re disciplined.’

  ‘Yeah, very. There is
a kind of pattern though, and it looks like Friedman is at the centre. He made the most calls to these two numbers here.’ Kees pointed to the sheet. ‘And he usually called them. They rarely call him.’

  ‘Is it definitely his phone?’

  ‘Only his prints on it.’

  Jaap nodded.

  ‘How long do the lists go back?’

  ‘About a month, they don’t keep them any longer. But this third number here?’ He pointed again. ‘This one only calls Friedman’s number, and only a couple of times.’

  Jaap stared at the sheets. This was classic drug-dealer behaviour, limit the circle, limit the risk.

  ‘Have you got location results?’

  ‘Only for the last forty-eight.’ Kees pulled a sheet from the bottom.

  ‘Friedman’s was in Amsterdam, as was this one here, the third one was out somewhere up north, and the fourth one looks like it was turned off, it didn’t check in with any cell towers anywhere.’

  ‘Up north where?’

  ‘Somewhere in Friesland. Maybe they were cattle rustling.’

  Where was it Sergeant van der Mark called from? thought Jaap.

  ‘Let me see,’ he said reaching for the sheet.

  The cell phone had been in Amsterdam all Saturday and most of Sunday morning, then it was turned off, and only signed in with a cell tower just past midnight in Friesland, then by eight this morning it was back in Amsterdam.

  Van der Mark’s murders had happened last night.

  ‘Leeuwarden’s in Friesland, right?’ he asked Kees.

  ‘Yeah, pretty sure it is.’

  Could that number, Jaap wondered as he stared at the sheet, belong to Ludo Haak?

  He glanced at Kees, but decided he was going to keep that secret for now. If Kees found this case was linked to Andreas’ death he wouldn’t put it past him to go running to Smit with the news. Then Jaap would be off the case.

  And that he wasn’t willing to risk.

  He had a link to Andreas’ killer, and he wasn’t going to let it go.