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

by Jake Woodhouse

  ‘Zeeland is not exactly Amsterdam, sir.’

  Smit shuddered, a slight chill, or the mention of Zeeland, affecting him.

  ‘No, I can imagine, agricultural crime isn’t what you signed up for. Someone of your skills should be here, in the city.’

  He leant back in his chair and studied Kees, his porcine eyes boring deep. Kees held his gaze until Smit nodded, as if agreeing with some internal voice.

  ‘Jaap will be working the case, this you already know.’

  Kees knew.

  Smit’s desk phone started ringing; he glanced towards it but didn’t pick it up.

  ‘But because of Andreas’ death I would like you to … keep an eye on him.’ He paused and picked up a pen, rolling it between his fingers. Kees thought he looked like he was rolling a joint. ‘Just to check that he’s okay.’

  ‘Sure, no problem.’

  ‘He wanted to be put in charge of the investigation into Andreas’ death …’

  If I’m reading this right, he’s asking me to make sure Jaap doesn’t investigate it on his own.

  ‘It’s things like these, little favours, which can really help a career … take off.’ He stood up, the interview clearly at an end. Kees stood as well.

  ‘I read your report first thing this morning, anything changed since?’

  ‘We’re looking at ways for tracing those numbers, I think whoever owns them is in danger. Jaap didn’t agree but I’m going to work on that angle if that’s okay with you?’

  ‘Good. Give me an update every day, more frequently if something comes up. And we’re on the same page here, are we?’ He threw him another look, which Kees read as the significant sort.

  ‘I think so.’

  Smit nodded.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Very good. And Inspector? Get a haircut.’

  24

  Tuesday, 3 January

  11.07

  ‘Did he agree?’

  De Waart had been standing down the corridor from Smit’s office, waiting until Kees had left.

  Smit nodded.

  ‘I think he’s on board.’

  They’d been discussing the case earlier; it was bad enough being an Inspector down, but to then have that same Inspector’s reputation being questioned so openly in a press conference was intolerable to Smit. If there was any truth in it at all then he could kiss goodbye to moving up to be Amsterdam’s next Chief of Police, the board would shift him sideways at best. And if he allowed a close working colleague of Andreas Hansen’s to take the case there would be headlines screaming about institutional cover-ups. Then he’d never get where he wanted, where he needed, to be.

  He’d worked his way up from the street, and he wasn’t prepared to let it all fall down now.

  ‘So what’s the latest?’

  ‘You knew Hansen’s laptop has been wiped?’

  ‘Rykel told me last night.’

  ‘Well, we checked the security tapes on the office – the only person to go near it in the last twenty-four hours was Rykel. The only person prior to that was Inspector Hansen, on Saturday afternoon.’

  Smit stared at him for a few moments.

  ‘Okay, I want hourly updates on this, and the second you get anything, you let me know.’

  De Waart turned for the door, but before he stepped out he paused.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Smit.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ he said, scratching at the side of his chest, ‘what do we do if it turns out Rykel is involved?’

  25

  Tuesday, 3 January

  11.43

  Jaap was sitting in a car outside the morgue, phone glued to his ear.

  His eyes had strayed to the building, a large concrete block which seemed to be sucking all life from the surrounding area in an attempt to reanimate its inmates.

  ‘You should have seen him, his eyes nearly popped out of his head. I tell you, it’s not often you see Smit like that, and he recovered quickly, but … it was pretty funny.’

  Jaap, who in another situation might well have been able to enjoy the story of his superior officer’s discomfort, wasn’t able to respond that enthusiastically, a fact that Niels, Jaap’s tame journalist, picked up on.

  ‘Look, sorry, I know you must be going through hell right now.’

  ‘Which is why I called you, I need the name of that tabloid hack, the one who made the accusation.’

  A pause, just breathing.

  ‘I thought maybe you were calling to tell me something.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Well, like if there was any truth in what that guy said?’

  ‘Are you kidding me? Andreas was not involved in that kind of shit, I can guarantee you –’

  ‘Can I quote you on that?’

  ‘Come on, I just need his name. I’m not going to beat him up or anything.’

  Niels sighed a stage sigh.

  ‘Yeah, okay, let me look at my notes, I wrote it down as he wasn’t one of the regulars, I’d never seen him before.’

  Jaap could hear shuffling, and music. Some eighties pop song that he couldn’t quite place.

  He tuned the music out and started trying to make connections.

  He had Andreas’ death, and Friedman’s. Andreas had thought Friedman was their way into the gang, the Black Tulips, and the anonymous phones showed that Friedman was up to something illegal. But who then had killed them? Was it the same person? Or was it ordered by someone higher up, and farmed out to different people? And what had Andreas been doing with the number from Friesland, where Sergeant van der Mark had seen Ludo Haak? And Andreas had pulled Haak’s record a day before he was killed.

  He had to start making the connections.

  But they just weren’t forming.

  He also needed to talk to Sergeant van der Mark, but she still hadn’t let him know exactly when she’d be down.

  The phone was getting hot against his ear just as Niels came back on.

  ‘Okay, got it. He was called Patrick Borst, and he works for De Adelaar.’

  ‘Thanks, Niels.’ And he just managed to stop himself from adding, ‘I owe you one.’

  Not something he really wanted to say to any journalist, tame or not.

  ‘No worries, and Jaap?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘If you do end up beating him to a pulp, promise me I’ll get an exclusive?’

  Jaap hung up then dialled De Adelaar, asking to speak to Borst. He had to repeat the name a couple of times.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t find a number for him, do you know which department he works in?’

  ‘I know he reports on crime stories.’

  ‘Okay, let’s see,’ said the woman. ‘No, I’m not coming up with anyone here of that name.’

  ‘Can you put me through to the HR department, this is really urgent.’

  After a few minutes on hold, a thought began to form, a thought he didn’t like. A voice came on the line, so croaky he couldn’t tell if it was male or female. He explained that this was an emergency, and he had to get in contact with one of their staff.

  ‘We definitely don’t have anyone of that name on the payroll.’

  ‘What about freelancers, you must use them as well?’

  ‘I checked, nothing there either. Maybe you got the name wrong?’

  Or maybe, thought Jaap as he killed the call, he doesn’t exist.

  He got out of the car and walked into the building, the disinfectant like a slap in the face. A man was waiting outside a door; the dull grey paint embellished with a yellow male stick figure. Some joker had drawn a white outline, a crime scene halo, round it. He was short, late fifties, and wearing the grey suit and refined blue herringbone shirt of a lawyer. Making up in girth what he lacked in height, he looked around briefly and then caught Jaap’s eye, his mouth pulled into a forced smile.

  ‘Inspector Terpstra?’

  ‘Inspector Rykel.’ Jaap held out his hand. ‘I work with Inspector Terpstra.’

  The man waddled over
to where Jaap was standing, and they shook hands, the lawyer’s hand so moist that Jaap felt like he wanted to wipe his own afterwards.

  ‘Lars Heiland. Terrible thing, this.’

  ‘I believe you were his lawyer?’

  ‘You must get used to that in your profession, using the past tense.’

  Shrugging, ‘It comes with practice.’

  Does he really want to discuss grammar? thought Jaap

  ‘I can imagine, though in this case I’m afraid you weren’t quite right. I am still his lawyer, even if he is dead.’

  He does.

  They made it to the viewing room and found the body laid out under a white sheet. The bright clinical light only accentuated the feeling of revulsion which everyone who entered the morgue felt. All except, of course, the staff, who were perfectly at home with death, and gave it no more thought than their charges ever did.

  The scene looked like something out of a seventies sci-fi programme, minimalist white tiles, glinting stainless steel. At Jaap’s gesture a bald white-coated man, with vivid red cheeks obscene in their expression of life, appeared and lifted back a corner of the sheet just enough for Heiland – still smiling – to see the face.

  The lawyer nodded – the smile had wilted now as if the muscles in the corners of his mouth just gradually gave out – and he dabbed at his lips with a handkerchief.

  ‘Yes, that’s him.’

  The orderly re-covered the body and Heiland spoke again, but almost to himself.

  ‘Such a shame, so young.’

  He shook his head as if trying to dislodge something from his ears.

  He didn’t look that young to Jaap, mid-forties at least, if not fifty.

  ‘How old was he?’

  Heiland looked up as if he’d forgotten where he was, and when he saw Jaap the smile returned. Jaap could see that it was the ingratiating smile of the eternal sycophant that so many lawyers resorted to in their life-long bid to convince people their services were required.

  Or maybe he was being too harsh, Heiland might never have had to identify a dead body before and was simply finding the situation difficult.

  ‘Forty-seven. And he’s done so much good, giving to charity, but he never got what he –’

  Jaap’s phone rang, the loud noise startling him, making him aware that they’d been talking in quiet voices. Respect for the dead.

  ‘Hey, it’s Sergeant van der Mark, you said to give you a call?’

  ‘Yeah, where are you?’

  ‘I’m going to be in Amsterdam in about two hours, have you still got time to meet?’

  Jaap gave her an address and said he’d be there at 2 p.m. He turned back to Heiland.

  ‘You were saying, he never got something?’

  ‘All he really wanted,’ said Heiland, breaking off to swallow, ‘was a child. A child of his own.’

  Once the papers had been signed and Heiland had taken his leave Jaap pulled out his phone and dialled Saskia. She didn’t answer so he left a quick message, asking her call him as soon as she could.

  He wanted to warn her about the allegations against Andreas before she found out for herself from the TV or radio. Then he went in search of Valentien Breed, a short, stocky woman – a victim of traditional Dutch cooking – who had been working at the morgue ever since Jaap had been coming there, and was seemingly inured to death like no other, transporting corpses on their trolleys as if she were doing her weekly shop in Albert Heijn. He found her and made his request.

  ‘I’m really not supposed to do that.’ She looked at Jaap as if he were disappointing her.

  ‘I know, but I would really appreciate it.’

  ‘I mean, I know he was your friend and all, but you’re not the officer on the case and you shouldn’t be able to see the body before the autopsy has taken place.’

  ‘Look, I know, but it’s just that … I want to see him before …’ … before they cut him up.

  She reached out and rubbed his arm.

  ‘It’s all right, love, I understand.’ She led him to the examination room and unlocked it. ‘I’ll wait out here, don’t be too long.’

  Closing the door behind him he felt the chill that kept the bodies from decomposing, and shivered. There were five tables in the room, but only one body was out, Andreas, on the centre table, the altar of an ancient cult which practised human sacrifice. He glanced up at the chart on the wall to his left; Andreas’ name was written in black with ‘12.15’ scrawled next to it in red pen.

  I need to get this over with, he thought noting the time. Soon someone would be along to prep.

  He pulled in two or three deep breaths, the disinfectant stinging his nostrils, and then, feeling like he was stepping off the edge of the world, moved forward, his right foot slipping away slightly on the tiled floor.

  It was worse than he’d feared, no way of identifying him from his features, the bullet having taken a good portion of his face off when it exited, probably around the left cheekbone, though it was hard to tell. This was a closed-casket job.

  Even worse for Saskia.

  In Kyoto he’d learnt about form and emptiness. How they could be viewed as the same, as two parts of one whole. He’d thought he’d understood.

  Now he wasn’t so sure.

  He couldn’t bear it and pulled his eyes away only for them to settle on the clothes and his personal belongings laid out in neat little bags on the table to his right. The bags weren’t labelled up yet, which meant that someone was about to come back and catalogue all this.

  He slid on a pair of gloves from a box on the wall, extracted Andreas’ phone from the bag and powered it on, looking at the calls list. Aside from his own number there was one which jumped out. The number he’d got from Andreas’ computer, a call lasting just over ten minutes on Sunday morning.

  Heiland said Friedman wanted a child, he thought, and Sergeant van der Mark’s missing one. Is that the connection here?

  After a few seconds he watched his finger, shaking, navigate the menu, then delete the text message about Friedman.

  There was a line.

  And as he slipped the phone back into the bag, he knew he’d just crossed it.

  26

  Tuesday, 3 January

  12.19

  As Kees drove, his conversation with Smit kept playing in his head, changing slightly with each re-imagining.

  He’d watched himself, rising up through the ranks, quickly becoming Smit’s favourite, the hotshot officer who was assigned the best cases, and by the time he reached the turn-off to Haarlem he’d mapped out his whole career in Technicolor, the images vivid in his mind.

  And he wasn’t surprised that Marinette hadn’t featured in the movie of his future life at all.

  In fact the woman who had been at the door – an expensive house near the Vondelpark, one of those large buildings he drove past on the way to the station every morning, not dissimilar to Korssen’s place – to greet him home with smouldering eyes was pretty close, he realized with a jolt, to the pathologist, Carice.

  She is, he admitted to himself as he drove down the road scanning numbers, pretty hot.

  Which made her response to his text all the more exciting.

  He found the house, parked up on the far side of the road – the only free space left on the street – and let the silence settle in around him for a few moments as the engine died away.

  An old man with a dog, some kind of mongrel, shuffled round the corner and the pair made their way towards him. The dog was limping – one of its hind legs, or maybe its hip, wasn’t working properly – so they moved in fits and starts, the old man occasionally tugging at the lead.

  Another car passed on the road, and Kees cracked the door open, filling the interior with cold air, wet against his skin. As he got out he caught a glimpse of his face in the rearview mirror and wondered if the face he could see there was the face of a snitch.

  The house was large, set back from the road and built predominately from red brick. Five polishe
d marble steps led to a front door. Two box trees with long slender trunks and immaculately pruned branches stood guard.

  He’d called ahead; he knew that really he should have been in front of her when she was told about Friedman’s death, but he didn’t want to drive out all that way and find she wasn’t in, find she was at work, away on holiday, or any other of the many reasons why someone might not be at home during the day.

  She answered the door, and though her eyes might have held the slightly misty, liquid quality of the recently bereaved, her manner wouldn’t give a casual observer any idea that she had recently lost a husband, even an ex. She was a slight woman, short blonde hair and a figure that, when she wasn’t pregnant as now, Kees noted as his eyes travelled downwards, could be confused for a slim man from the right angle.

  ‘I’m Paultje,’ she said as she motioned him in and showed him through to a room at the back of the house, impeccably decorated, white marble floors, low furniture and a large red dragon standing by one of the sofas, the scales picked out with gold leaf.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ she asked when she saw Kees looking at it. ‘I picked it up when my husband and I were on our honeymoon in Beijing. They have amazing craftsmanship there, and Japan too. They really take care of things, not like here where everything is done in a rush and as cheaply as possible. But then again they seem to have a different regard for human life, especially in China, or at least they did when we were there.’

  She paused for a moment, seemingly confused.

  ‘Sorry, I’m talking nonsense, it’s just a bit of a shock. Will you sit?’

  She motioned with a delicate twist of her wrist, her open palm showing the chair allocated for him, and then sat herself on a sofa, arranging the cushions against her back so she was upright.

  ‘You said he was …’ She looked down at the floor for a second before her eyes rose again. ‘… murdered.’