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

by Jake Woodhouse

  ‘Jaap, good to see you.’ His tone said otherwise.

  They shook hands and Jaap introduced Kees, then explained what it was they needed.

  ‘I’m sure they’re all going to be thrilled to have a whole load of new images to look through,’ he said when Jaap had finished.

  ‘Yeah, I figured they would be.’

  ‘And you want to see if we’ve come across any of this stuff before?’

  Kees made a noise which sounded like a snigger.

  ‘You were here before high-speed internet, or at least before it was widespread, weren’t you?’ Reinier asked, ignoring Kees, used to tasteless jokes about his work.

  ‘Yeah, it was pretty much all stills then.’

  Kees rubbed his nose as if he was about to sneeze.

  ‘Well, now it’s videos, HD, and there are even some in 3D coming out of Asia. I mean, can you image some pervert beating himself off in front of his computer wearing 3D glasses? Sick, fucking sick is what it is.’

  A mobile phone on his desk buzzed twice. Reinier checked his voicemail.

  ‘There are some videos here as well,’ said Jaap when Reinier had finished listening to his phone. ‘The thing is we know where this stuff was being made, and we know it was being distributed on the web.’ He motioned to Kees, who brought out a card and handed it to Reinier. ‘If you try and log on to this it wipes your computer, like there’s a level of security built in. Gert Roemers is working on it, you might want to give him a call, check where he’s got to.’

  Reinier snorted. He took the card and looked at it.

  ‘It’s a web address, use .nl,’ said Kees.

  ‘Roemers is useless,’ said Reinier dropping the card on to his desk. ‘I’ve got people here who can get round this kind of thing. This is mostly what we do now, track shit like this on the internet, we’re probably more advanced here than the tech unit. The thing is, the vast majority of stuff is hosted in places abroad we can’t get to, so even if we do get to the source there’s pretty much fuck all we can do about it.’

  ‘Yeah, I know … but it would still be really useful if your guys could see if any of this looks familiar.’

  ‘After a few weeks it all looks familiar, you know that, but we’ll give it a go. Anything in particular?’

  Jaap’s phone buzzed into life. He looked at the screen, saw it was Karin. He stood up, stepped out of Reinier’s office as he answered.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, hoping that she didn’t need him to go round there right now. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m doing okay,’ she said. ‘I was just wondering if we could meet. There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.’

  ‘I’m right in the middle of something, not sure I’m going to be able to get round there for a while. Is it urgent?’

  ‘No, we could maybe do tonight?’

  ‘Yeah, tonight would be good. I’ll call you when I’m free. And you’re sure you’re okay?’

  ‘I’m okay. It’s … never mind. I’ll tell you tonight.’

  Jaap hung up and went back to Reinier’s office. Karin had sounded different, more like her old self. Maybe something had happened, maybe she’d turned a corner.

  He walked over to Reinier’s desk.

  ‘I forgot to say, it looks like they were doing this over the darknet –’

  ‘Like TOR?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a way of making sure no one can trace your movements online, basically the signal is sent through a number of –’

  ‘Yeah, the tech said it was something like that. But the worst thing is that they seemed to stream some of this live, and people could pay to have certain things done …’

  Reiner shook his head.

  ‘Wish I could say I’d not heard of this before, but we’ve seen it more and more recently …’

  Jaap reached into his coat.

  ‘These four here’ – he splayed the images of Friedman, Zwartberg, Haak and Korssen – ‘any of these show up, I’d like to know. Especially this one,’ he said tapping the photo of Korssen.

  66

  Thursday, 5 January

  12.27

  Tanya had taken a break from phoning.

  It was getting her nowhere, and she remembered the stack of fax paper with the Van Delfts’ financial records which had been purring off the fax earlier. So she’d switched tasks. But already her eyes were ballooning, beginning to tire of looking at tiny numbers.

  I’m not sure, she thought, flicking over a few pages, this is going to get me anywhere.

  Then, three more pages in, she found something, 4,000 euros, drawn out from their current account, along with 7,000 from their saving accounts, over a period of five days, all in cash.

  Jaap had been right, they had bought the child.

  She didn’t know which was worse, the feeling of sickness rising up into her throat like a hot greasy slick or the anger making her brain expand, or her head shrink, or both.

  How could they, how could anyone do that?

  The anger was getting the better of her now, a burning rage lighting her up like a firework on a dark night. She sprang up from her desk, and half walked, half ran out of the room, several Inspectors looking up at her as she passed, down the two flights of stairs, and out into the street, nearly knocking over two uniforms who were bringing in an unshaven man. Blood dripped from a lip swollen like a soft fruit.

  She moved fast, pounding the pavement with her feet, raw anger pulsating inside her like some bulging parasite. Her thoughts churned and there was a roaring in her ears, disorientating, making her want to reach up and pull them off. She moved past people without seeing them, across roads, in front of a tram, on autopilot, unable to escape from the rage.

  Gradually though, helped by the constant movement, she started to become more aware of the noises around her, the normal background hum of the city, traffic, a car horn, the planes overhead coming in on their final approach to Schiphol airport.

  Stopping on a bridge spanning Prinsengracht, she leant on the metal railing and looked down to the ice, hard and cold, the counterbalance to her emotional state. Her mouth held a strange taste, bitter like endive, and she wondered if it was some chemical effect left over from the fury she was only just now recovering from.

  Its intensity, now that it was passing, shocked her. She was not prone to rage, but there was something about this which was getting to her.

  And she knew what it was, it all felt far too close to her, tied up with the problems she’d faced in her life.

  But really faced wasn’t right. Turned away from would be more accurate, and maybe now she was suffering for that, the bottled anger being drawn to the surface by the case itself like a splinter. She had to get a grip, had to get on with it, find the child, and then she could deal with her own problems.

  And as she turned away, she knew, suddenly, the answer to the question she’d asked herself earlier.

  I’m going to have to deal with it myself.

  And she shuddered, unsure if it was from fear or something else, something closer to anticipation.

  67

  Thursday, 5 January

  13.56

  ‘So I was wondering if you’d had any more thoughts, on Andreas?’

  De Waart had cornered Jaap as he’d got back from Vice. Jaap had the feeling he’d been waiting for him.

  ‘Because I’m sure that you might have the key to this thing?’ said De Waart.

  Jaap had toyed with telling De Waart everything last night, but Kees’ call telling him about Korssen had, in a way, saved him. There was something about the way De Waart had suddenly turned on the humility and charm which had rung an alarm bell deep in Jaap’s brain.

  ‘Look, I’ve got this case which I’m working flat out on, and in all honesty I’ve been trying to think of Andreas as little as possible.’

  ‘Sure, sure,’ he said nodding his head up and down. ‘But like I said last night, if you do remember something, anything at all I’d like
to hear.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.’ Jaap glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve gotta go, but I’ll call you.’

  68

  Thursday, 5 January

  14.21

  ‘So you’re saying that you knew this man, and that he was asked to leave the church because of complaints about his conduct?’ Kees mimicked the voice of the Father crackling over the line.

  He’d been working the phone, using the number of the administrative centre he’d got from Father Vegter, having to struggle up each layer of the chain but not getting any further than confirmation that Jan Zwartberg had been a priest, more than twenty years ago. Then, just as he was about to call Jaap, Father Vegter called him. A colleague, Father Jurgen, remembered Zwartberg, and Kees had just listened to his story.

  ‘No, I didn’t say that. There was a complaint, but he left of his own accord.’

  ‘And you thought that absolved you from telling anyone, like the police maybe?’

  Am I shouting? thought Kees as he noticed several heads turning his way.

  Five minutes after shaking down his dealer he’d been wiping his nose in a cafe toilet as the rush came on, like being swept up in a wave of energy, transforming everything, even the hiss of urine hitting steel in the next cubicle.

  ‘And what were those accusations?’ he asked trying to keep his voice down, not wanting any of his colleagues to notice anything was wrong.

  He’d yet to tell Smit what he’d found out about Jaap, but just the fact that he now had something to tell had started to change how he looked at the whole thing. People had been looking at him strangely when he got in, a few sideways glances, people’s eyes darting like startled fish when he looked at them. There was no way they could know. But he still felt unease.

  ‘I honestly can’t remember –’

  ‘Bullshit!’ More heads. ‘Are you telling me that he wasn’t asked to leave because someone complained that he had been sexually abusing someone?’

  A pause in which Kees could hear the blood thundering in his ears, roaring like a hurricane.

  ‘It was never proven, and the person who made the accusation later withdrew it.’

  ‘Glad to see your memory has returned, but I know how this kind of thing works, someone makes a complaint, then they are forced to retract it, pray for the sinner’s soul’ – fuck, I’m shouting again, he thought, trying to modulate his voice – ‘am I wrong?’

  ‘Sin is universal, and it is our lord who stands in judgement –’

  ‘Save it for someone else, where was he posted?’

  ‘I’m not sure if I can give it –’

  ‘If you don’t find it I’m going to have to come down there and get it myself.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary, if you give me your number …’

  ‘I’ll hold.’

  Hypocritical religious scumbags, a voice in his head kept repeating, over and over, until another thought broke through the barrage, Maybe I shouldn’t have had those two lines.

  ‘There seems to be a problem, we don’t have a record of it, but I can give you the number of somewhere that might.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  He wrote it down and hung up without another word. Then he stared at the letters he’d scrawled across the page, something beautiful about the dark ink against the white paper.

  God I hate these people, he thought as he once more reached for the phone.

  69

  Thursday, 5 January

  14.59

  It was just like Kees to lose it.

  Tanya could hear him shouting into his phone from right across the room. She hoped she could get this done with before he did. They’d not had a chance to talk, though she got the feeling Kees wanted to.

  Which was something she wanted to avoid.

  She was on her twentieth call, the phone ringing for over a minute before someone picked up.

  The woman’s accent, educated, and the confidence with which she answered the phone had made Tanya think this was going to be another dead end, but the date of birth she gave to the woman had an effect.

  ‘Yes, that’s when Ludo was born. Has there been an accident, or is he in trouble again?’

  How to answer that? Your son is responsible for killing two people, abducting a young girl whose parents have now killed themselves out of grief, and being involved in horrific child pornography?

  ‘We need to ask him a few questions, that’s all.’

  The woman on the other end sighed heavily.

  ‘We tried with him, we really did. But from day one, right from the moment he was born, there was something about him, he was different to our others.’

  ‘You have other children?’

  ‘Two, another son and a daughter, and they’ve both turned out well. Heinrich is an environmental campaigner and Feltje works as a graphic designer and is getting married next month, so it can’t be because we’re bad parents.’

  ‘No, I’m sure it’s nothing to do with that.’

  And I know all about bad parents, she thought.

  ‘I mean, we tried everything. Took him to behaviour specialists, educational specialists, we even took him to a faith healer, that’s how desperate we were. And the only thing that happened was that things got worse.’

  ‘I really need to talk to him, do you know where he lives?’

  ‘Me? His mother? No, I don’t know where he lives. I haven’t even spoken to him since he was let out of prison last time, or rather he hasn’t spoken to me.’

  ‘What about your husband?’

  ‘The same, we’ve both tried to learn to let go, we know we tried to do everything we possibly could, but we can’t keep holding ourselves responsible.’

  But Tanya could tell from her voice that she still did, that she probably woke at three in the morning, her heart throbbing, a sick feeling rising inside.

  ‘And your other children, do they have any contact?’

  ‘No. We’ve had to accept that he’s not part of our family.’

  ‘Would you be able to give me their contact details, just in case?’

  Silence stretched out down the line.

  ‘They get upset by it, I’d prefer not to have them involved.’

  ‘So would I, but from the sounds of things they’re grown-ups too, and this is really important.’

  ‘You don’t have children, do you?’

  ‘What has that got –’

  ‘Because if you did you’d know that their age doesn’t matter. To me they’re still my children, and it’s my job to protect them.’

  Tanya responded before realizing she was talking to a disconnected line.

  She toyed for a moment with requesting a local patrol to put in a physical appearance, but then decided she should be able to trace both of them herself. She just hoped they’d be more useful.

  She sensed someone behind her, and swivelled in her chair to see Kees, standing there with a coffee in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other.

  ‘Like to join me for a break?’ he asked twirling the cigarette between his fingers. She noticed he wasn’t smiling and reflected that there was possibly nothing on earth she’d rather do less at this precise moment.

  ‘I quit.’

  Kees held up the cigarette

  ‘Really? Good for you.’

  She sighed. Seeing as it was her day for facing up to things …

  ‘Okay, I’ll grab a drink, but I can’t be long.’

  70

  Thursday, 5 January

  16.07

  ‘What I want to know,’ said Jaap massaging his temple, where a distinct pulse had started up, ‘is how this was all operated?’

  After leaving Vice, Jaap had gone to the tech department. Reinier may not have thought much of Gert Roemers’ abilities, but he’d had a head start at least.

  On the way over he’d got the feeling he was getting somewhere, a picture starting to form, but it was still too blurred to make much sense of it. He needed time alone, somewhere q
uiet to just clear his head. But that didn’t look like it was going to happen.

  What he did know was that everything kept leading back to children in one way or another.

  His murder victims were child pornographers, an associate of theirs, Haak, was wanted for murder and child abduction – presumably she’d been destined to end up on some video and only Friedman’s and Zwartberg’s deaths had prevented that – and to cap it all Andreas was a double victim, murdered, previously abused.

  And then the person who ran it, the fourth phone number. Was it Korssen?

  ‘It’s kind of simple really. They charge a subscription fee, hundred and fifty euros a month, for unlimited access to what’s on the site, and trust me, there’s a shit load of stuff on there. But the worst thing is like their premium package. That’s the one where it’s basically rape on demand, and –’

  ‘Yeah, a tech at the scene thought that was what was going on. And I spoke to Reinier over in Vice, he’s seen that kind of thing before.’

  ‘Seriously, I’ve seen some pretty nasty shit, but this …’ he choked off.

  Jaap shrugged. He was as worked up about it as anyone, even more so, but he couldn’t deal with others’ outrage on top of his own. At least not right now.

  ‘And these payments, we could trace them?’

  Roemers’ turn to shrug.

  ‘You could try, but I bet you anything you like they’re all made with pre-pay credit cards, untraceable.’

  ‘There must be some way?’

  ‘Nah, if they used those then it’s a dead end. You might get lucky, but I would have thought anyone paying for this kind of stuff is going to be real careful, they don’t want to get busted.’

  ‘And everyone accessing this was doing it over the darknet, so there’s no way to trace IP addresses?’