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

by Jake Woodhouse

  Kees showed her his ID and watched whilst she scrutinized it.

  ‘So what can I help with?’

  ‘Do you live here?’

  ‘Technically no, but it sometimes feels that way.’ She ran a hand back through her spikes. ‘I run a centre for recovering drug addicts, and we’re short-staffed, no one wants to know about this kind of thing. It’s all very well your lot trying to stop the people who deal hard drugs, but to be honest you’re not doing a good enough job. The people who come here are pretty much ruined.’

  She’d worked herself up, her face hard with anger.

  ‘Hey, I just work in the murder squad,’ he said, wondering if he’d ever need this kind of service.

  She looked up at him for a few moments before her hard features softened slightly.

  ‘Sorry, it’s just when you see what I see every day it can get to you.’ She rubbed an ear where a stud glinted. ‘Anyway, you wanted to know about the upstairs?’

  ‘Yeah, who lives there?’

  ‘Some guy, I don’t see him very often.’

  ‘This centre you run, it’s open twenty-four hours?’

  ‘God no.’ She shook her head. ‘If we could afford it we’d do it, but …’ She shrugged.

  ‘So the addicts only come in the day?’

  ‘They know they can come in for support any time from eight a.m. to six p.m., six days a week.’

  ‘I’m going to need to have a look.’

  ‘Knock yourself out.’ She stood aside to let him in and then closed the door. ‘Take the stairs to the top.’

  The top floor had a short landing ending in a door. Locked, but it looked easy enough to force. As the flat of his foot slammed into it he was rewarded with a splintering sound, more on the second time, and then it swung open on the third.

  It was dark inside, and he ran his hand up and down the wall trying to find a light switch. When he couldn’t find one he stepped in, and extended the search, eventually finding something about a metre away from the doorway.

  He flicked it but nothing happened.

  What was that? he thought as he heard, or felt something, some movement of air perhaps, and a hint of something he recognized. Camphor.

  And then, before he could react, the rushing of air behind him grew before pain exploded in the back of his head for a millionth of a second.

  41

  Wednesday, 4 January

  09.53

  Visser pointed across the road to a block of flats.

  They reminded Tanya of a documentary she’d sat through recently – too tired to get up and turn it off – on ex-Soviet states and the criminals who were extending their reach all over Europe. She wished she’d paid more attention.

  Was it Ukraine, she found herself wondering, or Uzbekistan?

  Grey, depressing uniformity, each tiny window a desolate eye, reflecting the bright sun. But not even that could bring them to life.

  The stench of urine seared her nostrils as they climbed the graffiti-encrusted stairwell. Each step echoed off the hard surfaces like small explosions and tiny bits of grit ground between the concrete and the soles of her shoes, setting her teeth on edge. When they were standing in front of the right door Tanya noticed she was holding her breath. Visser noticed too.

  ‘Not used to the smell?’

  He breathed in deeply, his chest inflating, a man standing on the prow of a yacht heading into a light breeze, and then laughed at the look that her face must have been pulling.

  ‘I can’t actually smell a thing, had a car accident a few years ago and it just vanished.’

  ‘Right now I’d be happy with the same.’

  Visser knocked.

  She could hear faint voices, and then silence. He knocked again, louder and more persistent this time, but that didn’t seem to do it either.

  So he took a deep breath and hammered on the door.

  ‘Open this door or I’m going to break it down right now,’ he yelled.

  The intensity made Tanya jump. He turned and winked at her.

  ‘I’m fluent in the local dialect.’

  Footsteps and a creak heralded the opening of the door. Tanya could see a thin, bearded man peering at them through the crack. There was a chain on the door.

  He looked Tanya up and down, then his eyes shifted to Visser.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Police. I’m looking for someone, a colleague of mine said somebody here might be able to help,’ said Visser moving forward.

  ‘No one here,’ said the man, closing the door.

  It stuck on Visser’s foot.

  ‘That’s a nice chain,’ said Visser. ‘I wouldn’t want to have to break it.’

  The man’s eyes, dark as granite, looked at Visser for a few moments. Impossible to read what he was thinking, then he nodded.

  ‘Okay, you need to move your foot first.’

  Visser pulled it back and the door closed. They could hear the sound of the chain clinking.

  But the door didn’t open.

  ‘Hey,’ said Visser pushing the door. ‘Open this up right now or I’m going to break it down.’

  Nothing.

  He sighed, and turned to Tanya.

  ‘Dumb fuck,’ he said. ‘It’s not like he can go anywhere. You any good with locks?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Me neither.’ He turned back to the door, took a few steps back and launched himself forward. After the fourth battering a voice, different from before, called out.

  ‘Stop, I’m going to open it.’

  ‘Just as well,’ whispered Visser, rubbing his shoulder.

  The door was opened by a bearded man wearing a grey tracksuit, fluorescent yellow strip running up each leg and down the tops of the arms.

  A pristine turban, white as a wedding cake, encased the top of his head.

  ‘Very kind of you,’ said Visser.

  ‘My cousin, he didn’t think,’ replied the man. ‘Come in.’

  He stepped aside to let them pass. The flat turned out to be every bit as depressing as Tanya’d imagined from the outside. Dark, small rooms with single unshielded light bulbs and virtually no furniture. The smell was a cloying mixture of chemical room freshener and smoke, and wasn’t much of an improvement on the latrine-like quality of the air in the stairwell.

  In the main room, square with one window overlooking an identical building less than four metres away, three other men, in similar tracksuits and beards, sat cross-legged on the worn-down carpeted floor, a card game in progress.

  They all looked up when Tanya and Visser came in, and Tanya tried to work out which of them had been at the door first.

  Tanya had seen this kind of set-up before.

  There’d been similar scams being run in Leeuwarden. Council tenants renting out their flats to immigrants, who packed in many more than the flats were designed to comfortably hold.

  Which meant that the money was enough for the original tenant to rent a place of their own and still have enough left over for drugs.

  ‘Which one of you is Tariq?’ Visser asked.

  One of the men on the floor inclined his head slightly.

  ‘A colleague of mine said you might be able to help, Inspector Volk?’

  Again the inclined head, like his beard was weighing him down.

  ‘We’re looking for someone called Ludo Haak, Volk said you might know where to find him.’

  ‘We’ve never heard of him.’

  ‘Don’t give me that shit,’ said Visser. ‘I know he’s done some work for you, probably still does. Maybe he’s hiding somewhere in here? Perhaps I should get a team up here to have a search around?’

  ‘You won’t find anything here.’

  ‘It’s amazing what you can find if you want to,’ said Tanya to Visser. ‘And then we get accused of planting stuff. Unbelievable, isn’t it?’

  A brief conversation, the unfamiliar syllables shooting back and forth in the air between them, then the man on the right laid his cards face down and started
speaking.

  ‘I think we’ll be able to help.’

  Visser, hint of sarcasm in his voice: ‘Thank you.’

  The same man pulled out a phone from his trousers, flipped it open and pressed a speed dial.

  The person at the other end, the voice just audible in the quiet air, spoke the same language, and the conversation was brief. He closed the phone and placed it down with exaggerated care next to his cards.

  ‘I’ve asked someone, they will call me back in a few minutes, but in the meantime we will continue. Please sit.’ He picked up his hand, and Tanya and Visser ceased to exist to the four men.

  Tanya looked at Visser – the last time she’d sat cross-legged on the floor her parents were probably still alive – and he shook his head. So they stood there, watching the game, which appeared to unfold at a glacial pace, until the phone rang and the man held it to his ear, listened for a moment and hung up having not said a word.

  ‘I think you will be able to find him, tonight, at a flat not far from here. He collects rent on Wednesday every week.’ He pulled out a notepad and pen from his other pocket and wrote down the address, folded the paper in half and held it out for Visser to take.

  She held her breath on the stairwell on the way down, having to gasp air once she’d got far away enough from the building.

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘The Arabs? According to Volk, they control half the drug trade around here. You wouldn’t know it to look at them, they never seem to spend any money on anything.’

  ‘Maybe they send it home to their families?’

  ‘Yeah, could be.’ He paused for a moment as they got in the car. ‘Mind you, I can see why they need to deal in drugs, don’t they have several wives each where they come from?’

  Tanya pulled the car door closed and clicked in her seat belt.

  ‘Interested in that kind of thing?’

  ‘God no.’ He fired up the car and pulled away from the kerb. ‘One is more than enough.’

  42

  Wednesday, 4 January

  09.59

  ‘So he went inside?’ asked Jaap.

  ‘Yeah, I mean he had ID and everything. I didn’t feel I could stop him.’ Her breath rose like smoke.

  Jaap was late as he’d had to detour to the tech unit, Roemers showing him the sites Andreas had visited, one of which, according to Roemers, probably downloaded the virus that had wiped the laptop clean. Jaap had asked if someone could have hacked into the computer and placed the list of visited sites there. Roemers had said yes, but it was unlikely.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said to the spiky-haired woman who’d answered the door to 35 Bloedstraat. ‘He is police, it’s just I told him to wait for me.’

  The prostitute’s booths lined both sides of the street like glass coffins and whilst waiting for Kees, Jaap had watched at least seven punters wandering up and down, window shopping.

  There were men who went about it brazenly, and they’d tried to catch Jaap’s eye, to share some experience that men who frequented prostitutes clearly had, and others shuffled around, as if their wives or mothers might pop out of one of the windows just as they were peering in, though the call of sex was clearly too strong to allow them to turn tail and take flight altogether.

  All for a few moments’ fleeting pleasure.

  Yuzuki Roshi had told him once that you can never find what you’re looking for. Jaap felt like walking over to the men and telling them that. He could see himself, standing with a placard, a crazy man.

  He knew the arguments for legalized prostitution, that containment was better then pushing them underground, that the prostitutes were safer here – they even had their own union, the Sex Workers Union, which was supposed to look after their working conditions and pay – but the reality was that many of the foreign women had been trafficked here, with the promise of waitressing or nannying jobs, only to be slapped in the face with the harsh reality on their arrival.

  By gangs like the Black Tulips.

  A mobile cleaning crew came past, a woman spraying something which smelt like bleach on the ground.

  ‘How long ago was this?’ he asked.

  ‘Ten, fifteen minutes.’

  Why didn’t he wait?

  ‘Okay, let’s have a look.’

  Up on the top floor, the metal stairs clanging on his ascent, he could see that someone had broken in, the door battered, hanging off its hinges. He’d tried calling Kees several times as he’d stood outside but his phone just kept ringing.

  Anxiety churned his stomach.

  Pulling out his gun and checking the clip, the action still fluid despite lack of practice, he nudged the door open with his toe, which swung back to reveal darkness. He stepped forward. The floor creaked underfoot. Holding the gun with one hand he tried to find a light switch with the other.

  The first one didn’t do anything, but further along the wall his hand found a second, and when he flipped it light blazed from the ceiling, illuminating a large loft space. He scanned the room quickly, squinting his eyes against the onslaught of light but found no immediate threats. He holstered his gun and started exploring.

  It looked like a repository for small theatrical sets, a series of three-sided boxes each with its own theme. An ancient Greek palace, something which was meant to look like the interior of a Sioux’s teepee with furs everywhere, a dungeon scene, and the furthest one a mock-up of a Chinese opium den, in front of which a video camera stood on a tripod.

  I don’t like the look of this, he thought.

  There were costumes too, racks of them at the far end, hats with large feathers flowing into the air, leather catsuits, Nazi uniforms. The air smelt of paint and dust, and something else.

  Stale cigarette smoke, and is that mothballs as well?

  He headed for the camera, and turned it on, pressing the button with a bit of cloth, a blue silk scarf he picked up off the floor.

  The screen flashed on, and he had to bend down slightly to see it, the opium den visible on the backlit screen. He tried to see if there was anything in its memory, but gave up after a few moments. Next he checked the desk on the opposite side of the room, partially hidden by a freestanding screen festooned with a wild print of jungle creepers.

  I’ve been wrong about this whole thing, he thought.

  The hexagram he’d got this morning had been for Mountain and Water: ‘Even a fool can attain wisdom.’

  Sometimes the I Ching scared him.

  A laptop, a few more digital cameras, and an ashtray filled with twisted butts, each emerging like a diseased plant from the grey ash-soil. He tapped a few keys on the keyboard and was surprised when there was a sudden whirring, a soft click, and it sprang to life. He looked at the screen, a blank desktop with about twenty folders, each with a date.

  I’m not sure I want to see this, he thought even as his hand was reaching out.

  He clicked on the most recent, just five days ago and found several files, which he clicked on again. A window opened and a video started playing.

  Jaap watched for a few moments

  Then he reached out with a shaking hand and closed it.

  He’d been right.

  He didn’t want to see it.

  43

  Wednesday, 4 January

  10.34

  Kees woke.

  Total darkness, his head pounding. He was on his side, on a floor. As to where that floor was he had no idea. He tried to move his head, but he clearly wasn’t ready for that; the pounding, already monumental, increased tenfold, making his stomach contract hard, vomit shooting out of his nose.

  As the rough liquid burned and he desperately tried to force air out to clear his nostrils he wondered why his mouth had filled up but not released.

  Then he understood; he was gagged. He had to breathe out hard, almost inhaling some of the burning sick when he ran out of air, before his nose was fully clear, and his hands could pull the sopping wet gag down to his neck. Jaap had told him to wait, and he’d s
tupidly ignored the order. He blacked out again, and when he came round next had no idea how long it had been.

  He tried to look around, moving slowly this time, but it was still so dark he couldn’t see a thing. The air was heavy with his own vomit and for a moment he thought he was going to throw up again, but just managed to control the contractions.

  On the third attempt he managed to sit up, his head banging against something hard just above him, and he blacked out again.

  44

  Wednesday, 4 January

  11.39

  The loft was swarming, uniforms, techs, people taking photos, and all of them clad in plastic suits, the sound of each person’s movements building up to white noise. Jaap was wearing one too, and despite the cold was beginning to sweat. Though it felt more of a cold sweat, feverish, sickly.

  And to top it all no one knew where Kees was. The woman downstairs hadn’t seen him leave, he wasn’t answering his phone, and the station had no record of his movements.

  Why didn’t he just wait?

  He was standing in the kitchen area, looking down at a pile of photos one of the forensics had found in a cardboard box. He felt a presence to his left and glanced up.

  Tanya stood, her eyes locked on the photos. She looked ill.

  ‘Disgusting.’

  Jaap could hear, could feel his voice, unsteady, wobbling on the edge between anger and something else.

  Something more akin to despair.

  Tanya reached out and touched his arm, her grip was tight. Jaap wondered if she was holding on to stop herself from falling over.

  It was well over an hour since he’d seen the video on the laptop, watched the man appear in an oriental costume, a long red robe, round matching hat, and a fake drooping moustache. And then he noticed the child, the girl who was lying on the opium eater’s bed under a red satin blanket.

  He didn’t need to watch to know what was going to happen next, but something had held him there for a few seconds too long, before he closed the laptop, and he sat, a feeling of such emptiness it was as if he’d swallowed the whole vastness of the universe in one go.