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

by Jake Woodhouse

  ‘Sure. What about Haak, he’s either been got to or run, and Adrijana …?’

  ‘We’ll get his photo out to whoever picked up the two unidentifieds last night, check if he’s one of them … Kees, you’re bleeding.’

  Kees reached up and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

  A trail of bright blood glistened across his skin.

  He fumbled around in his pocket until Tanya handed him a tissue. He held it to his nose and tipped his head back.

  Was that from being knocked out yesterday, or something else? thought Jaap. He checked the time, not wanting to even think about it. About other causes of nosebleeds.

  It would explain a lot though, he thought.

  ‘Okay, Kees, meet me here at eleven, I’ve fixed up a meet with the vice squad. They can help us check through the photographs, see if they recognize anyone, and Tanya, let me know as soon as you’ve got that list.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Kees and Tanya left. Jaap glanced out of the window.

  A plane glinted silver in the gas-flame-blue sky.

  The question is, he thought getting up, is Korssen the one, or have we got the wrong man?

  As he walked down the corridor to Smit’s office he glanced out at the canal, ice covering it totally. He had to wait a few minutes; Smit was on an important call according to Elsie so Jaap called Fortuyn’s lawyer, who, it turned out, was away on holiday.

  The legal secretary, her voice like she had a clothes peg on her nose, told him that all files were kept off site, which meant it would take a couple of days to access it. Jaap gave her till lunchtime to produce the file. If they could find whoever paid the rent on 35 Bloedstraat it might help speed things along. Especially if it was Korssen. Then he called Roemers.

  ‘Are they the same?’ he asked as he got through.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Andreas’ and Kees’ laptops, were they wiped by the same thing?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, didn’t he tell you?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Kees, I spoke to him first thing this morning. That site he tried to log on to wiped the computer and put a similar browsing history in as Andreas’. So it was the same virus which did both.’

  ‘Did you tell him it was the same as Andreas’?’

  ‘Well, yeah, why not, you’re working together right? And it’s his computer.’

  He hung up, his mind racing. Kees now knew what he was up to. But he hadn’t mentioned it.

  Which would have been the normal thing to do.

  ‘Inspector Rykel. Come in.’ He looked up to see Smit filling the doorway.

  Inside, a fresh pot of coffee sat on Smit’s desk. He didn’t offer Jaap any as he poured his own.

  ‘Where are we at?’ asked Smit settling back in his chair, blowing steam off the top of his cup.

  ‘So far we’ve got the two victims linked. Friedman and Zwartberg were running a child porn business. And this business goes back, we’ve found photos which are fifteen-plus years old, and a third person, Ludo Haak, is also involved. We’ve also got what I think is the fourth member, Rint Korssen, had him sent back from Germany yesterday. He ran right after we talked to him the first time.’

  ‘Anything on him?’

  ‘Nothing concrete, but we’re working on it. Also Zwartberg had a stole round his neck. We’re checking churches for a possible link.’

  Smit sat quietly for a moment. Jaap could hear his breathing. Asthmatic whistling.

  ‘Haak, where’s he?’

  ‘Missing.’

  ‘So he’s in the frame?’

  Jaap had tried to rehearse this conversation in his head, knowing how easy it would be to let slip how it linked to Andreas. If Smit caught even a whiff of that Jaap would be off the case in an instant. And he still didn’t trust that De Waart, despite his apparent change of heart, was going to pursue it as relentlessly as he was.

  Of course, if Kees had told Smit about his conversation with Roemers, the two laptops being wiped the same way, then it was going to be over quickly.

  When he’d thrown the coins before leaving his houseboat earlier he’d got

  Heaven and Lake, ‘progress comes from quiet discipline’.

  Quiet I can do, he thought.

  ‘Could be, but we’re also working on the possibility it might be one of their victims, looking for revenge. This thing has been going on for years, so they could be mid-twenties, maybe even thirty. And this is just the documented stuff.’

  ‘How did they distribute? Internet?’

  ‘All done on the darknet, impossible to trace.’

  ‘Been down to Vice?’

  ‘We’re going to sort through the material first, then we’ll hand it over to them, see if they can find any matches.’

  Even though he knew that was a mammoth task Vice would not be happy to have dropped in their laps.

  ‘You’ve got a call out on Haak?’

  ‘It’s out there, we’re even checking the fresh stars this morning’ – the stars of the show, the victims. Jaap hated the phrase, but it was so endemic in the department that he inevitably used it himself.

  ‘Your message said you wanted to talk about Kees?’

  Jaap steeled himself. He’d had images of getting Kees taken off and replaced with someone else, but now that Kees knew what he was up to …

  ‘Uhmm … yeah, I just wanted to say he’s doing fine.’

  Smit looked at him, eyes sharpening.

  ‘You called and left a message requesting a meeting just so you could tell me he’s doing fine?’

  ‘Well, you know. I wasn’t convinced at the beginning, but, like I said, he’s doing well.’

  Smit stared at him for a moment before taking another sip.

  ‘Okay, keep me posted.’

  Just as Jaap got to the door Smit spoke again.

  ‘By the way, I had a call from someone in Leeuwarden. They weren’t very happy about you commandeering Sergeant van der Mark. Next time you think of doing something like that you should come to me first.’

  63

  Thursday, 5 January

  10.43

  Kees now had proof.

  Jaap was investigating Andreas’ death, and he reckoned that if he told Smit there was a good chance he’d be put back in charge of the case – there was no one else free to do it.

  He glanced up at Sint Nicolaaskerk, one of the few Catholic churches in a city built by Puritans. It rose high over the surrounding buildings, its twin towers and massive cupola jutting up into the sky, thin fingers of cloud meshing together behind them. His head was beginning to ache again, and he thought back to the previous night, with Carice.

  The sex, as far as he could remember, had been great. A real buzz, both of them high.

  But he wasn’t high now.

  Now he was in the crash.

  And he needed something to help. He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out the tiny plastic bag.

  Empty.

  No wonder his head hurt, there’d been enough for four people. He looked around, and finding no one, licked his finger, ran it around the inside of the bag, and then rubbed his gums. He crumpled the bag up and dropped it in a litter bin. Something rustled under the layers of trash.

  Kees wondered if rats could get buzzed on coke.

  He imagined a rat, eyes zoned out, rushing along the road at supersonic speed, neon lights blurring, people screaming. As he stepped forward towards the entrance he realized he was laughing.

  Inside, the light was dim, the painted, gilded woodwork looking tired, old. A figure with a shawl over its head – kneeling in one of the dark wooden pews near the front – was so still it could have been a statue.

  He could hear men’s voices, singing, and an organ weaving notes in between. There were three of them, by the chancel, wearing thick coats and scarves. They were clustered round a small portable wooden organ, where a fourth man was pressing the keys in a slow, solemn way. They broke off, and started discussing something before sta
rting up again.

  The church was physically different to the one his parents had dragged him to every Sunday throughout his childhood, but there was something about the atmosphere that was the same. Maybe it was the quiet, or the dusty smell of incense which was already pricking his still tender nostrils. The bleeding had stopped but he was feeling like it might start again.

  Whatever it was, it brought back the long hours of boredom, the old women with hair on their chins and eyes which peered at you as if you were the devil incarnate. He remembered one time, after Mass, when one of the women caught him and a girlfriend at it, hiding in the hedge. She yanked him by the ear and told him that he was a wicked child who would go to hell. Kees, hurting, tears forming from the pain, had looked up at her, the fanatical gaze, and said, and he didn’t know where the words came from, they just did, ‘Devil’s whore.’

  His footsteps reverberated round the space, mixing with the music which kept stopping and starting, and a man, drawn by the sound, emerged from a door at the far end. He was wearing a black cassock with the obligatory white collar clasping his thin, fragile neck, and his face, akin to that of a medieval gargoyle, was all bones and hollows.

  When they were close enough to talk he welcomed Kees – in whispered tones designed not to upset the singers – and introduced himself as Father Vegter. Kees responded by taking out his ID and asked for somewhere they could talk, not tempering his volume, making the man flinch.

  Father Vegter turned and walked back to the door he’d come from and Kees followed him through to a corridor ending in a small, and surprisingly well-equipped, modern office. Looks more like a business than a religion, thought Kees.

  ‘Please, take a seat.’ He gestured to a swivel chair of black plastic and red fabric, and sat in an identical model on the far side of the desk. ‘So what can I help you with?’

  ‘I’m looking for someone who knows something about this man.’

  The priest took the photo which Kees slid across the table and peered at it, holding it at arm’s length and squinting. He nodded slowly, but didn’t say anything.

  ‘What makes you think I would know anything about him?’

  ‘I think he may have been a priest. We found this at his home.’ He passed over another picture, the stole laid out on a table. ‘So you do recognize him?’

  Father Vegter studied the picture.

  ‘No, I can’t say I do, should I?’

  ‘His name was Jan Zwartberg.’

  The priest paused, casting his eyes upwards for a few moments as if God would provide. But in this case he didn’t, as after a few moments more – moments in which Kees started to think about what De Waart had been asking him about yesterday, a niggling unease appearing from nowhere – he shook his head.

  ‘Sorry, it doesn’t ring any bells. If you could leave the photo I could show it to the other fathers here, someone else might remember.’

  ‘If someone does recognize him give me a call.’ He handed over his card. ‘So if he was a priest, how would I find out more about him. You must have records?’

  ‘There will be records, most likely they’ll be kept at the administrative centre, in Haarlem.’

  Kees insisted on the phone number and wrote it down, then got up to leave.

  Waste of time, he thought. I should tell Smit about the laptop, maybe then he’ll pull Jaap and put me in charge of the case.

  ‘Oh, Inspector.’ Father Vegter waited until Kees turned back. ‘If you ever want to talk, about anything at all, then my door is always open.’

  His eyes sought out Kees’, and for a moment Kees had the feeling that this man could see right into his mind.

  Panic clutched his throat, and he turned and left without saying a word.

  Outside in the freezing cold he noticed his palms were still sweating. He should get back to the station, request a meeting with Smit. But he found himself heading towards an alleyway near the Oude Kerk, the old church in the centre of the red-light district.

  An African stood, moving from leg to leg, coat bunched up round his shoulders. He saw Kees coming and acknowledged him with a brief flick of his eyebrows.

  ‘How much?’ he asked Kees, keeping his eyes roving up and down the alley.

  ‘The usual.’

  ‘Man, you’re getting through this shit. Not that I’m complaining.’

  ‘What can I say, you’ve got good stuff. Listen, I haven’t got any cash on me right now, I’ll pay you back tomorrow.’

  His dark features tightened.

  ‘Uh uh. No can do. Payment up front or not at all.’

  ‘Hey, c’mon, you know me.’

  ‘Yeah, but it don’t matter. I can’t do that.’

  Kees’ turn to look up and down the alley. He stepped closer.

  ‘You know what. You’re right. I won’t pay you back. You’re going to give me a free sample. Or would you like to have a trip down the station?’

  ‘And if I tell them you’re a customer of mine?’

  Kees shrugged.

  ‘Who they gonna believe?’ he asked pointing a finger to his chest, imitating the man’s accent. ‘Me?’ Then jabbing it into the dealer’s, ‘Or you?’

  64

  Thursday, 5 January

  11.02

  Ludo Haak was occupying more and more of Tanya’s thoughts.

  He was infecting her brain with a kind of hate she knew she should try and rein in before it became destructive. She was starting to see his image when she closed her eyes, the spider tattoo flexing its legs.

  That’s not good, she thought.

  The possibility that someone may have got to him, extracted revenge for what he’d done, wasn’t worrying her, or not overly even though every sinew in her body wanted to get her hands on him herself. No, that was fine in itself, the revenge would be just.

  What wasn’t fine was if her chance of finding Adrijana had expired with his last breath.

  Of course, they had no proof that he was dead. He might have not turned up last night as he knew someone was out to get him – surely he’d be aware by now that Friedman and Zwartberg were dead – and had holed up somewhere, or some other business had taken him out of town. If he was willing to travel all the way up to Leeuwarden then anywhere else in the Netherlands wasn’t off limits.

  Maybe there was another child he was going to abduct.

  But that didn’t make sense; what use would he have for another one now that the porn business was broken, exposed? And that led her on to the most chilling thought of all, What use would he have for Adrijana?

  She refocused on the screen, where she’d been trawling through the databases, hoping that there might be something, anything, to point her in the right direction, but so far she’d drawn a blank.

  And then word had come back that the two unidentifieds weren’t Haak.

  She ended up at the initial arrest report, the image of the tattoo showing in the profile photograph.

  The full frontal showed his eyes.

  Dark, evil eyes.

  She wondered about his parents. Hard as it was to imagine that someone like this had parents, they might know where he was. If, that is, they were still alive. They could easily have died, of drug overdoses in some slum, stabbed in a drunken brawl over nothing, or maybe expired from the sheer wrenching shame of having produced a son like Haak.

  Or maybe he was like me, she thought, maybe he had foster parents, or his own parents abused him, maybe he’s repeating a pattern.

  But that didn’t excuse anything. Look what she’d been through, and you didn’t see her running round the countryside tying up old couples, burning them to death in their own homes and abducting their child, even if that child had been bought illegally.

  And that was the other angle she needed to get into, but if, as Jaap suspected, the Black Tulips were responsible for smuggling in children as well as sex workers and drugs and arms and god-knew-what-else, then Haak was still their best bet of putting a stop to this.

  Right now he w
as their only link up the chain.

  Parents. She’d focus on the parents first, even though the surname Haak was a dispiritingly common name she discovered when she typed it into the Herkenningsdienstsysteem. Haak’s record had a place of birth, just outside of Leiden, so she concentrated on any Haak living there now. It was a total long shot, there was no way of knowing if they still lived there, but she had to start somewhere.

  Once the results were up she hit print, then picked up the phone.

  65

  Thursday, 5 January

  11.39

  Vice had a floor all to themselves.

  They were cut off from the rest of the building as if what they dealt with needed to be contained.

  Which in a way it did.

  Jaap had done two months there, the minimum that any Inspector had to do before they were put on Homicide, and it was two months he’d hated, had almost made him question if he was doing the right thing, if he shouldn’t pack it all in and find a different line of work.

  As he and Kees stood by the door, waiting for someone to answer, Jaap remembered that although the images had been a catalogue of human depravity, just about any strange act you could imagine, and mostly stuff that any normal person would struggle to ever dream up, he’d not seen any involving children. He had the feeling that would have changed in the intervening years.

  Once they’d finally been let in – Kees’ joke about why it took the harassed-looking man so long to answer the door not going down well at all – they were shown to a smaller office off the main section. There was no natural light, all the windows blacked out, and the air felt dense with concentration, computer fans whirring.

  Jaap knew the man who stood to greet them, the same man who’d run the department when he’d been there, Reinier van Oorschot. He had the same rugged face, though the two worry lines riding up his forehead seemed deeper, more canyon-like, and the blond hair which had covered his head was now a failed crop, patches of scalp showing through like bare earth. Jaap couldn’t believe he was still here; most people went crazy after a few years, if they could even stick it out that long.