And that was not fair. The physical pain and revulsion had left her long ago, but the throbbing torment had been a constant anchor which her life had become tied to. Her emotions had become as frozen as the canal she’d walked back along from the station.
Of course, she’d pretended, laughed, got drunk, but none of it had rung true, it was as if she were watching herself, a dead being trying to take part in the world of the living. She’d see people, couples her age, laughing together, light, carefree. People in the bars she used to go to, people in restaurants, in the queue at the supermarket, walking down the street, sitting in parks, and felt like she was a freak, someone who couldn’t relax, enjoy life.
She felt like she’d missed out.
It wasn’t fair. Her life had been taken away from her, and now, now that she’d finally woken to the fact, and now that she was for the first time being honest with herself, she felt entitled to some kind of compensation.
She played out the scenarios, hunting him down, maybe a short burst of violence – and now that she thought about it, had she joined the police as she’d subconsciously craved justice? – the payback that he so deserved.
Maybe, she’d wondered when she’d finished crying – sitting up in bed, arms hooked round her legs, her bare shoulders being pinched by the cold air – now that she’d admitted to herself, come clean after so many years, that would be enough to release her, to set her free, liberate her.
And where does Jaap fit in all this? she wondered.
The clatter of cutlery brought her back, and she noticed the time. She needed to question Haak and she couldn’t wait any longer. Adrijana was somewhere out there, that had to be her focus now. She pushed away her bagel, two round bites all that had been taken, and checked her phone.
Still nothing.
I’m done waiting, she thought as she paid the bill and headed back to the station. He’d better be ready now.
81
Friday, 6 January
08.53
‘You can take time off,’ said Smit.
Jaap felt like the phone was about to implode in his grip.
‘I have to keep going. If I don’t I’m going to go mad.’
He didn’t feel that. Didn’t feel anything at all. Which he knew was partly the shock. But mainly it was certitude. He was going to find whoever killed her. And he was going to make them suffer.
‘Okay, I can understand that. But the moment it gets too much you give me a call, understood?’
82
Friday, 6 January
08.55
Tanya glanced at her watch; the lawyer had been in with Ludo Haak for nearly an hour now, and she was getting impatient. He’d turned up first thing in the morning and, judging by his clothes, tanned skin, and total arrogance, he was in the big league.
How did someone like Haak – everything that she’d seen in the file on him had led her to believe he was a very minor piece of DNA in the rich primordial soup of Amsterdam’s criminal class – afford a lawyer who looked like he spent most of his time on yachts moored on the Riviera. She could see him, standing with loose shorts, a shirt flapping undone in the soft breeze, champagne glass in one hand and several long-legged bronzed women fawning on him.
Maybe by burning down people’s houses with them inside and kidnapping their children, that’s how, she thought, just as the lawyer emerged, his expensive cologne, woody, spicy, overpowering, billowing out from him like the blast from a hot oven. But that wasn’t it. Someone else would be paying for this, the most likely candidate being the Black Tulips.
If Haak was a bag man for them they’d be none too happy about him being arrested, they’d want him out of there, and wouldn’t think twice about hiring an expensive lawyer.
They’d have money to spare.
She stood up and walked towards him, hoping she looked more confident than she felt, though there was a kernel of anger too, something she’d better watch when she was in there with them both. Kees saw her move – he’d been over at his own desk having a whispered conversation – and hung up, making his own way through the collection of desks. Jaap had said Kees should be in on the interview if he hadn’t made it back from the funeral, and she’d accepted, knowing that it was always better to have two, even though she didn’t feel that comfortable around him.
She wished Jaap had made it back in time, and thought about when he’d had to rush off. Something to do with his sister, but he’d been in such a hurry she didn’t get an explanation.
Then De Waart stepped out of the cell followed by Haak.
A uniform un-cuffed Haak and started to lead him towards the stairs.
‘Hey, what are you doing?’ called Tanya as she started across the room. De Waart looked at her, he and the lawyer exchanged a word, and then De Waart moved to intercept Tanya.
‘I need to question him,’ said Tanya as De Waart blocked her way. Over his shoulder she could see Haak, the uniform and the lawyer disappearing down the stairs. She tried to sidestep round him, but he moved and caught her upper arm, his grip ferocious.
‘You’re not going to question him, because you’re the one who fucked up his arrest.’
Tanya squirmed her arm free.
‘He’s holding a little girl, you can’t just let him walk out.’
‘Like I said, it’s you who let him walk out. He’s making a complaint. Apparently he’s got witnesses who’ll testify that excessive force was used in his arrest, and they’ll file for police brutality as well.’
‘That’s bullshit, he attacked me.’
‘All I can say is you fucked up, bad. And talking of which you’ve been ordered back to Leeuwarden, someone called Lankhorst called and said we had to send you back right away. Sorry.’
He smiled.
83
Friday, 6 January
09.01
‘And what reason did they give?’
Jaap was on his way back from the funeral, waiting for Roemers’ call, when Tanya had got hold of him. Driving with one hand on the wheel he’d had to fumble in his pocket to get his phone. The car swerved, not helped by the snow.
‘De Waart said they’re filing charges against me for police brutality, they’ve got sworn statements from a bunch of people that I beat Haak up when I arrested him.’
Jaap cursed inside; she should have told him about the nightclub, given him the chance to go with her.
‘Okay, listen –’
His phone beeped twice in his ear, and when he looked at the screen he saw the battery was dead. Shit. He forgot to charge it overnight.
Hardly surprising.
Moving again, he grabbed the car’s radio and tried to get through to her at the station, but he finally got the message back that no one could find her, and she wasn’t answering her phone.
84
Friday, 6 January
09.04
So that’s it, is it? Tanya raged to herself. Nobody gives a shit?
She felt twisted up with anger now, what was wrong with these people? Couldn’t they see what was going on here? But then a thought occurred to her: Haak wouldn’t be leaving for another twenty minutes; the paperwork always took at least that long to process.
Tanya ran out of the building, scanning round for a supermarket or clothes shop. She found one five minutes away, grabbed the first coat she could find, dark green with a large hood and fake fur trim, and ran back to the station, halting about fifty metres out, hoping she hadn’t taken too long.
The cold was intense, and the snow, which had started falling vertically, was now angling towards her, the flakes aiming for her face. She tried to call Jaap but his phone was off. She wondered about calling Kees, but just as she was about to she saw Haak emerging from the glass doors with his lawyer.
They stood for a moment looking up at the snow as if they’d never seen such a thing before. He and his lawyer exchanged a few words, and a handshake.
Then Haak’s head went down and he started walking, west towards Centraal station.
She followed, pulling her hood tight as she passed the lawyer. There were enough people around walking in both directions to hide amongst, but also enough to lose sight of him. She’d done some trailing as part of her training, but for one thing they hadn’t done it in the snow, and for another no exercise really prepared for reality.
Her feet kept slipping on the ground. The snow was starting to settle now, but she couldn’t let up the pace, Haak was walking fast, shoulders hunched.
By the time he reached the station there were two trams waiting to leave. She could see that he was heading for the number 16, and had to quicken her steps, making it just in time as the doors closed, the bell clanging in her ears. As the tram pulled away her phone started ringing, she fumbled in her pocket and managed to turn it off, Haak would certainly recognize her voice if she answered.
The tram was packed, the windows coated with people’s breath, and at first she couldn’t see him. Just as the tram started to slow down for the next stop – metal wheels screeching against metal tracks – an old woman, sitting to her left, leant forward and tugged at her coat, Tanya looked at her and followed the woman’s gloved hand, a single finger pointing down to the floor. Tanya was standing on a leather lead which joined the woman and her small dog, a ridiculous creature with a top-knot holding a bunch of straggly white fur aloft. She shifted her foot, the old woman tutted, as if she’d never seen such rudeness in all her life, and stood up ready to get off.
Then she could see him; he was by the door in the middle carriage, ready to alight.
Tanya had to push her way off, through the four or five people who were trying to get on, and she was afraid Haak would sense the commotion and look up – new clothes weren’t disguise enough for close contact – but he just carried on walking towards Damstraat.
The snow was getting heavier, thick enough to muffle the sounds of the city, swooping into her eyes and settling on the fake fur trim. It looked like he was heading to De Wallen, the red-light district centred in the old medieval centre, but if so he was going a roundabout route.
She’d have to be careful, it was always busy – she’d read it generated billions of euros each year – and it would be easy to lose him there. He turned the corner; she was about ten metres behind him so she increased her speed, and, just as she went round the corner her left foot shot out like she’d stepped on a rollerskate.
Her arms automatically tried to compensate, flapping out in large circles, but it wasn’t enough to stop her flying back, and smashing her head on the ground, her lungs paralysed from the hard impact.
She heard someone laugh, then hands were reaching down to her, and other voices, more sympathetic, were asking her if she was okay, was anything broken, and wasn’t this snow slippery? Then she was on her feet, thanking whoever had helped her whilst scanning the square, willing his head to come into view, the wound on her leg throbbing, as if the fall had opened it up.
Nothing.
She started moving again, hoping that he would suddenly appear. Her heart, already pumping from the shock of the fall, pulsed harder. Was that him there? Just over by the stand selling roasted chestnuts? Almost sprinting now, oblivious to the danger of falling again, she kept her eyes trained on what she’d just seen, but as the gap narrowed she could see it wasn’t him.
Stopping, another sweep around with her eyes.
Too many people.
Too much snow.
85
Friday, 6 January
09.18
As soon as he got inside Jaap managed to borrow a charger.
He tried to get Tanya on the phone, but she wasn’t answering so he left a message to call him straight away. He couldn’t believe that Haak had been released. The chances of him resurfacing now he knew they were on to him were zero.
Where is she?
The office was quiet, only two other Inspectors in, and he leant back in his chair. It was only just gone nine in the morning, but it could have been midnight, at least based on how he felt.
Jaap had started doing push-ups before going to the funeral, trying to jam all the anger into each movement. He’d ended up sobbing on the floor when his muscles had finally given out.
He’d heard that the act of burial was important for the living, the ceremony meant to help people move on, feel that some kind of conclusion had been reached, a full stop.
But clearly all that kind of thing was bullshit.
Andreas and his Karin. Both innocent in their own way. Neither had deserved to die.
He had work to do. Haak was the link. He knew, from Haak’s reaction last night, that Haak knew both about Andreas’ death and the Black Tulips. But he was less sure that Haak had pulled the trigger himself. The way he saw it was that Friedman and Zwartberg had decided, at some stage, to turn their hobby into a lucrative sideline, maybe with the help of Korssen. If Korssen was connected to the Black Tulips, a potential source of smuggled children, then Haak could have been a go-between, someone who actually delivered the children.
And maybe the Black Tulips had been short, a shipment delayed, and Haak thought he could make a bit of extra money. So he took a child that he’d previously handed over to the Van Delfts, killing the couple in the process. He’d know that there would be no records for any bought child so he should be relatively safe. That all worked. But it left open the question of who had killed Friedman and Zwartberg, and who, now that Haak was free again, might be on track to kill him as well. It had to be someone who had been abused or who knew about the abuse, maybe even as far back as Zwartberg’s time in Maastricht.
But it wasn’t Haak who had killed Karin, he’d been in custody. It was someone else. Someone who was pulling Haak’s strings.
And Haak now was back in the wild, and had to be caught again, so that Jaap could find out who the puppeteer really was.
And where the hell is Kees? he thought as he reached for his phone. But it just rang out, not even going to voicemail. Then he remembered the legal secretary hadn’t got back to him with the details of who paid the rent at 35 Bloedstraat. He called her only to find she’d gone home sick yesterday and the person answering the phone didn’t know anything about it.
He threw the phone; it caught on the charging lead and slammed into the floor.
Heads turned.
Downstairs he asked the desk sergeant if he’d seen Tanya, discovering she’d left just before Haak had been officially released.
He’d not known her for long, but he felt like he knew her.
She’s not, he thought, following him, is she?
86
Friday, 6 January
10.00
The man in the balaclava checked his watch again, and found that less than a minute had passed since he’d looked at it last. His foot was drumming against the branch he was perched on, and he noticed he’d been holding his breath again. He consciously breathed out, trying to relax his shoulders, and it worked, for a moment, before the muscles tightened again.
The message had been clear, stating time and place, but there was no guarantee that Haak would come.
Something told him he would though: the photos which he’d got hold of and threatened he’d show to the police if a substantial amount of money wasn’t delivered today.
The snow was getting heavier now, but that wasn’t a bad thing. He’d chosen this spot because it was out of the way – who’d be walking around the woods of Amsterdamse Bos on a day like today? – but any extra cover would be welcome.
He heard something off to his left, a twig snapping, muffled by the snow. And all his senses zoomed into focus as a figure stepped into the clearing.
He smiled.
His bottom lip, dry from the cold, split.
87
Friday, 6 January
10.01
Tanya’d been following him for forty minutes since nearly losing him in Dam Square.
He’d walked to a tiny bar just off Sint Jacobstraat – she’d been worried that he’d go out the back, it had been too s
mall a space to risk going in – so she had to wait outside, trying to look in the window from across the street without being seen. Relief had shored her up when he emerged only ten minutes later, started walking again, heading into the narrow streets of De Wallen. She’d been forced to wait again as he chose a booth – the prostitute swishing the curtain closed the moment he entered – until he emerged quarter of an hour later with a swagger.
Then he’d appeared to be killing time, wandering round slowly, occasionally checking his watch. But about twenty minutes ago purpose entered his steps again and he’d caught a tram then a bus all the way out to Amsterdamse Bos.
And now, as she tried to keep him in sight through the trees, she was convinced this was where he was holding her. Maybe he’d constructed a small hut out here, or just a tent. In either case Adrijana would be freezing.
But there was something about his movements which told her he wasn’t at ease. He kept stopping, looking around, as if nervous, and she’d had to dodge behind trees on several occasions, her heart thudding in the stillness.
Finally he reached what looked like a clearing, and after scouting round it, and apparently finding nothing, stepped into the misshaped circle which was quickly gathering snow, his footprints trailing him.
What is he doing here?
He stopped in the middle and checked his watch.
He’s meeting someone, that’s what it is.
After the Silence: Inspector Rykel Book 1 (Amsterdam Quartet) Page 26