Night Market

by Daniel Pembrey

  ‘That’s a little too much for personal consumption.’

  ‘I’d hope.’

  ‘Could he be dealing?’

  ‘He could, but why steal the moped? And what about all the other moped thefts? Also, what was he doing in that part of North Amsterdam, where the bike was kept overnight? There must be other people involved.’

  ‘I think you should tell Mulder. Maybe it is time for the national drugs squad to get involved.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘What about you? I saw you interviewing someone earlier. Was it Straeffer?’

  Stefan nodded.

  ‘What happened?’ I edged further up on his desk, trying to get more comfortable. Sometimes I felt an ache between my legs, ever since Frank Hals’s visit to my boat.

  ‘Not much. I asked him about the three people who died – whether he knew them. He didn’t share anything.’

  ‘It sounded like a lively conversation.’

  ‘It was. I also asked him about his relationship with the owners. Westerling in particular. He became defensive.’

  ‘Hmm. And then you let him go?’

  ‘There was no justification to hold him.’

  I picked a piece of loose thread from the seam of my jeans.

  ‘Do you think the cases might be connected?’ I asked.

  ‘How?’

  ‘A bigger MDMA ring – using mopeds to move the merchandise around the harbour. There’s a lot of money in these new-built apartments… a lot of potential clients…’

  ‘It’s a theory. But do the facts fit? I vote we let Mulder and Sandra decide.’

  I’d expected Stefan to say this. I pulled out my phone, and brought up the photo of Erik Ibrahim. ‘This is the moped rider. Could you do something with it?’

  Stefan had been an expert in image recognition when we’d worked together before.

  Times have changed, his expression said.

  I nodded balefully.

  He sighed and said, ‘Hand me the phone.’

  ‘Good man.’

  *

  When I returned to the boat for lunch, I found a printed trip itinerary on the galley table.

  London City Airport.

  The following day.

  The toilet flushed. A moment later Petra appeared from the lavatory, smoothing down her skirt.

  ‘Leaving me?’ I asked wryly.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, surprised. ‘You’re back…That trip is for my article. I’m interviewing Heinrich Karremans. He’s in London, working on a project. Doesn’t sound like he’s returning to Amsterdam any time soon, so…’

  ‘Does he know that you’re interviewing him?’

  ‘No, but he’s due to speak at a public meeting in London tomorrow evening, so I thought I’d take my chance. Flights are cheap.’

  I considered this turn of events.

  ‘What’s he working on over there?’

  She produced a glossy brochure from underneath a sheaf of papers and handed it to me.

  The front cover showed an aerial view of London’s Docklands. I recognised the stubby pyramidal tower with low cloud (or was it smoke?) hovering over its summit, the lazy bend in the river nearby… On the opposite bank sat a digitally rendered office block with softer edges – not nearly as tall as the pyramidal tower, but broader, longer, and labelled Newfoundland Wharf.

  ‘It’s a former public-housing block,’ Petra commented.

  ‘A taste of things to come in Amsterdam?’

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ she said, taking the brochure back.

  ‘Perhaps I could join you. It’s been a while since I’ve visited London. It would be nice to take a short break.’

  ‘You’ve only just started your new job.’

  ‘I’ll find a professional reason for being there.’

  I took her in my arms. She smiled, and whispered conspiratorially into my ear, ‘Perhaps you could be my research assistant.’

  ‘Your intern?’ I said, growing more aroused by the second.

  ‘It’s an unpaid position, I’m afraid,’ she said coyly.

  ‘Perhaps there would be other rewards…’

  I was tempted to try and lead her towards the bedroom, but it was in the middle of the working day. Still, I was relieved that Frank Hals’s vice-like grip hadn’t left lasting damage.

  *

  Thirty minutes later I was sitting in a conference room at the station with Mulder and Scully.

  Sandra, rather.

  ‘This is serious,’ Mulder said, his forehead creased.

  Stefan had found the rider I’d photographed. His name was Tarek Hosseini, not Erik Ibrahim. He lived in Kolenkitbuurt, which sat on the westward fringe of the city – just inside the ring road. As inner neighbourhoods went, it was the closest Amsterdam got to a trouble spot – almost all social housing, inhabited mostly by immigrant families. Hosseini’s record showed a classic pattern of drug convictions and related petty theft.

  ‘We’ll need to get the locals involved,’ Mulder concluded, looking at Sandra.

  I understood him to mean the local police precinct.

  ‘Why?’ I asked, baffled. ‘Why can’t we bring him in here first and sweat him?’

  Sandra shook her head firmly. ‘That precinct has done a lot in terms of community relations. They need to handle this their way.’

  ‘We can certainly hand him over,’ I said, ‘once we’ve quizzed him about his criminal activities in our precinct.’

  ‘No,’ Mulder said emphatically.

  ‘I don’t understand –’

  ‘There’s a community leader there called Tammy Goss, who has close links to the media,’ Sandra said. Then she seemed to lose patience with the explanation. ‘We’ll give you something else to work on.’

  ‘But the amount of MDMA found on him suggests organised –’

  ‘We’re going to involve the national drugs team,’ Mulder informed me.

  I restrained myself from pointing out that I’d suggested this in the first place. ‘What do you want me to do, then?’

  ‘Gather all the evidence for the moped theft and recovery,’ Mulder replied. ‘Be ready to turn it over to the relevant teams once we’ve identified people to liaise with.’

  ‘Okey dokey,’ I said, sitting back.

  ‘There are plenty of other cases that require attention,’ Sandra said with a wink. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll reallocate your hundred points.’

  22

  THE RAID

  I wasn’t worried, but I was resolved on taking one additional step.

  Outside, the sunlight was bright and sharp. I drove over to Kolenkitbuurt, where community leader Tammy Goss ran an ‘urban farm’ that sat in the shadow of the A10 ring road. Google had informed me that Tammy was an American, from Baltimore, who’d lived in Amsterdam for the last twelve years. Google also told me that she had her own video channel on YouTube that attracted more than eighty thousand viewers.

  She was easy to spot. She had a mass of curly, fawn-coloured hair, and wore brightly patched dungarees. As I approached her, she was giving instructions to what appeared to be several volunteers.

  ‘Tammy,’ I called out.

  She stopped talking and turned around.

  ‘I’m Officer Henk van der Pol,’ I said, showing my warrant card. ‘Could I have a quick word?’

  ‘Irina, why don’t you give them their feed?’ she told the girl in front of her. Beside her were two long henhouses; the clucking and squawking almost drowned out the ceaseless traffic sound of the ring road, but not quite.

  ‘No appointment?’ she said, walking away from the others, who eyed me warily. ‘What’s the meaning of this?’

  ‘I hoped to get your advice, Tammy. There’s a man from this neighbourhood who’s been stealing mopeds in another precinct.’

&nb
sp; ‘Your precinct?’

  ‘Yes. We suspect the thefts are organised and drugs-related.’

  ‘Based on a stolen moped?’ she asked sceptically.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘We don’t want to cause any problems, given the good work you’re doing out here.’ I made a point of looking around admiringly.

  She softened a little. ‘It was a derelict site till this time last year.’

  ‘I’m interested to hear more about it.’

  She paused, then said, ‘We made a contract with the neighbourhood families: we’d get permission and funding to develop the site, if they helped build and maintain it.’ I sensed that she’d given this spiel many times. ‘We acquired the chickens on the condition they fed them and cleaned the henhouses.’

  I nodded, remembering once noticing the previously derelict site, while driving round the ring road at dusk. ‘It was a pretty scary place before, wasn’t it? This is quite the transformation.’

  A toddler, held by a crouching woman, appeared to be entranced by a chicken strutting across a pen.

  ‘It was a neglected space,’ Tammy corrected me, ‘and an uncomfortable one at that. Yes, it could be intimidating at night. But it’s also close to the shops and the main walking routes through the neighbourhood. So we’ve turned it into a place of community self-empowerment.’

  ‘How many locals take part?’ I asked, eager to win her cooperation.

  ‘Increasing numbers,’ she replied. ‘Many of these families originate from rural Morocco and Turkey. They’ve expressed interest in keeping small cattle, just like they keep in their home countries. So we’re now looking at goats – sheep, even.’

  Much as I tried to understand, it mystified me. ‘Don’t you have difficulty reconciling that with the need for cultural integration?’ I asked. ‘This is Holland, not the Atlas Mountains.’

  She turned to face me, her hands finding her hips. ‘Why do you think about integration that way? You’re saying people here should be denied their animal husbandry traditions just because this country is flat?’

  I didn’t understand her perspective, but nodded all the same. ‘You’re right.’ I looked beyond the site to the ring road and the surrounding buildings – the repeating patterns of mundane, four-storey apartment blocks. My gaze shifted back to the clucking wildlife in front of us.

  ‘Wasn’t this the promise of your generation?’ she added, easing the tension. ‘A better society… not just for some, but for all?’

  I answered her question with my own: ‘Does this sort of thing happen back in Baltimore?’

  She laughed. ‘Baltimore’s a li-ttle different.’

  ‘I’ll say. We’ve all enjoyed episodes of The Wire.’

  ‘Baltimore has its fair share of problems, but the underlying issues are the same. Think of it like epidemiology: apathy and casual violence, spreading among communities in the same way as infectious diseases. We’re just looking to institute break points.’

  It was a good break point in itself, to return to the subject of Tarek Hosseini. But before I had a chance to, Tammy said, ‘The future of this city’s soul lies in projects like this one.’

  Important though it was to build a rapport with this woman, some part of me bristled at a foreigner defining the soul of my city for me. We Dutch were now reckoned to be a minority in Amsterdam, in terms of raw population percentage.

  ‘Tammy, do you know Tarek Hosseini?’

  She narrowed her gaze. ‘I don’t think so. Who’s he again?’

  ‘The man I mentioned. He lives three streets from here and was found with several hundred pills of Ecstasy in the luggage compartment of a Vespa, which he stole from a thirty-six-year-old female landscape designer.’ And no amount of chickens, goats or sheep changes that, I left unsaid.

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ she asked sharply.

  ‘Like I said, we think both the drugs and moped theft are organised –’

  ‘Then hunt the organisers, not the organisees – if such a word exists.’

  I kept quiet.

  ‘Find the people telling Tarek what to do.’

  She may as well have said, Do your job, officer.

  ‘If only it were that simple.’

  I watched the chicken lift its feathers; I could tell that the toddler was in awe of it, and wanted to get closer. What the child seemed unaware of was its razor-sharp beak, and the sideways glare of its eyes.

  I walked away, leaving behind another investigative dead end.

  *

  I’d driven most of the way back to the station when Johan’s call came in. ‘Are you free to talk?’ my old friend asked.

  ‘Very.’

  ‘That website you were looking into on the Dark Web –’

  ‘Night Market?’

  ‘Yes. I found out something about it.’

  ‘I suggested that you left it alone.’

  ‘Yeah, but you also said it might help… Do you want to know what I found out, or not?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The site’s been taken down.’

  My chest deflated. ‘I’m not sure how that helps, Johan.’

  ‘I found out the name of the guy who got it taken down. He’s one of yours.’

  ‘A cop?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘How did you learn this?’

  ‘He’s from the UK, actually – a cop called Tim O’Farrell – from the London Metropolitan Police.’

  The name said something to me. Maybe it was just the reminder of Tommy Franks, who had also been a policeman with London’s Met – or so he’d claimed.

  ‘Johan, how did you find this out, when even I didn’t know?’

  ‘An online forum.’

  ‘What kind of forum?’

  ‘Probably better you remain in the dark. I had someone else look into it for me. Anyway, do you know this O’Farrell guy?’

  ‘Nope.’

  Assuming Johan’s information was correct, who had this London cop been working with on the Dutch side? It could have been any number of internationally oriented bodies that had sprung to life post-Driebergen…

  ‘Never mind then,’ Johan said sombrely. ‘What about that moped you were tracking? Did you find it again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It was a wild goose chase. A wild chicken chase, even.’

  *

  I was still craving nicotine as I entered the station. Inside the squad room, I found Stefan, his feet up on a waste paper bin and his hands interlaced behind his head. He was the only one there.

  ‘You’re looking remarkably at ease,’ I said.

  ‘Nothing to do. The nightclub case has been taken away from me.’

  ‘Oh?’

  I looped my jacket over the back of my chair and sat down heavily.

  ‘Though I am meeting Sandra for a drink.’ His eyebrows shot up and down.

  ‘I thought you’d met her for a drink already.’

  ‘That was just coffee.’

  ‘Fancy a walk?’ I said. ‘Let’s celebrate your success by getting an ice cream cone or something.’

  Anything to get my taste memory off nicotine.

  ‘Bit late in the season for ice cream, isn’t it?’

  We walked out of the front of the station, along to Prins Hendrikkade, and sat on a wall overlooking the harbour. The sun was still bright. Now we could talk freely.

  ‘So, how come the nightclub case got taken away from you?’ I asked.

  ‘Mulder brought in the national drugs team.’

  As expected.

  ‘Are you completely off it?’

  ‘More or less. I was about to pay Pieter Westerling a visit, but Mulder instructed me not to.’

  I watched a gull
wheel against the blue sky, its wings immobile.

  ‘Where does he live, out of interest?’

  ‘North Amsterdam.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  He told me. It was close enough to where Tarek Hosseini had taken the Vespa the previous night – but, like everything now, it was inconclusive. I inhaled deeply, breathing in the marine air. The sunlight reflected blindingly off the water, making my eyes blood-dark when I closed them.

  ‘It’ll be interesting to see what Joost does.’

  My eyes snapped open again. At first I thought I’d misheard Stefan.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Mulder is coordinating the involvement of the drugs squad with Joost. I wonder how he’ll play it.’

  It felt like the ground had disappeared from under me.

  ‘Why Joost? He’s in The Hague now. How do you know this, anyway?’

  ‘Joost and I are in touch.’

  Terra firma suddenly turned to terra jelly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Joost took an interest in me. Don’t you remember how he asked me to join the Lottman kidnapping team down in Tilburg?’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  You were working for me down there, providing intelligence on Joost, I wanted to exclaim.

  ‘We stayed in touch,’ Stefan added, unaffected by my growing concern.

  ‘When was the last time you talked to him?’

  ‘A day or so ago. We talk every once in a while.’

  I shook my head sharply, wishing the entire situation away now, specifically my conceit in believing that I’d been mentor enough to Stefan.

  ‘Have you talked about me?’

  It was the wrong question to ask. Too defensive. Suspicious, even.

  ‘Er, not really…’ He tried to make light of it. ‘But don’t worry, you weren’t forgotten while away in Driebergen!’

  Stefan and I had talked about Karremans while I was there. So that was indeed what Frank Hals had meant… People know people, who know people. And some of them are wondering what conclusions you’ve drawn…

  ‘You look surprised,’ Stefan said. ‘I tried to tell you about it that day…’

  ‘What day?

  ‘Just the other week.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘You’d just gone to Driebergen. Had you returned to Amsterdam for the weekend? I think you’d come back from a trip to Norway… Anyway, I did bring it up.’