Night Market

by Daniel Pembrey

  The room swam above me.

  With the distorted shapes came hurried voices, then something shattered against my head.

  Stars exploded.

  Head fuzzy, I rose onto all fours and roared like a cornered bull. A madness descended on me as I stumbled upright and threw a wild punch. My fist connected with something that crunched. My knuckles felt wet from the impact – cut by glass?

  A light extinguished – the blue light of the TV ­– with a fizzing electronic sound. The hurried voices and figures started fading. Everything was darkening.

  Where the hell were events taking me now?

  30

  THEN AND NOW

  A year before…

  My wife and I swayed along Entrepotdok in the darkness, arms loosely round each other. It had been many months since the events surrounding the drowning of Jan To˝zsér at the harbour, yet I still glanced warily at the houseboat whenever I approached it.

  The night Jan To˝zsér drowned, he’d tried to break into our home and leave an incendiary device, threatening to burn us to death in our sleep. Jan’s older brother Zsolt was still very much alive, as a protected police informant.

  Petra and I stopped at the mouth of the gangplank.

  I was lost for a second, pondering. Sometimes the questions haunted me at night, the dark squiggles of my vision forming flames.

  ‘Where’s your key?’ my wife prompted. Her eyes were wide and unguarded from the alcohol.

  I stooped to kiss her.

  She pushed me away, playfully, in the centre of the chest. ‘I need to pee. The key!’

  ‘Erm, yes.’

  I patted one pocket then another, and found it. We began to walk across. The planks sprung with our steps. ‘Steady as she goes.’

  Petra indulged my weak humour with a chortle.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, on a roll. ‘What’s orange and sounds like a carrot?’

  ‘A parrot?’ she replied, not missing a beat.

  Which was when I saw it. A reflective metal object, placed at the foot of the door, glinting. Thankfully Petra hadn’t noticed it – we’d had a few. My heart beat hard as I nudged it aside, away from the door, with the toe of my boot.

  I let us in, and found a reason to return on my own, taking the rubbish out.

  ‘Leave it till tomorrow!’ cried Petra.

  ‘It’s beginning to rot.’

  Something was indeed starting to smell – something to do with the older To˝zsér brother. I tore off a piece of black plastic sacking and used it to pick up the weapon by its handle. I inspected it, crouching: it was a FÉG PA-63 semi-automatic pistol. The PA-63 model had been standard issue for the Hungarian military and police forces at one time, and they still turned up on the black market.

  But not often. They were no longer made.

  Its distinctiveness is due to its two-tone frame. The slide, grips, trigger and hammer assembly are black. The rest has a reflective polish. Which was unusual, for military-issue weapons. The reason for the design was the relative cheapness and quick build-time.

  The clip was empty.

  I stood up, dizzily, looking around.

  My old army friend Johan arrived not twenty minutes later by motorbike. Petra had gone to bed. We greeted one another and walked away from the boat, along Entrepotdok. I was checking the dark windows of the packing houses as we went. Finally, I stopped and withdrew the weapon from the inside of my jacket, unwrapping it from the shiny black plastic.

  The FÉG shone like molten metal in the orange light of the sodium lamps. Quickly, I slipped it back inside my jacket.

  Johan confirmed my fears: ‘Hungarian, like the To˝zsérs. It’s a grudge sign, Henk.’

  ‘I know.’ My heart thumped. ‘Zsolt must have found out about the way his brother drowned.’

  Johan and I had talked often enough about the events in the harbour that night.

  He glanced around, checking for observers. ‘Maybe we should go somewhere else,’ he said.

  I shook my head. ‘I’m not leaving Petra alone on that boat.’

  A cat arched its back on the cabin of the neighbouring vessel.

  ‘Why this, now?’ I said. ‘Why not just kill me, if he wants revenge?’

  Johan considered it. ‘Because he wants you to suffer. The way his brother did. Drowning’s not a good way to go.’

  ‘I don’t imagine it is. But I didn’t drown Jan. I just didn’t stop him from drowning.’

  ‘I’m not sure Zsolt To˝zsér sees that distinction. You were the one who collided with his brother on your bike – the one who caused him to set fire to himself with that incendiary device he was carrying.’

  I raised my eyebrows high with incredulity.

  ‘That’s how Zsolt will be looking at it,’ Johan clarified.

  ‘Then maybe we need to help him see the light. I can’t go on this way, Johan. I’ll go mad first.’

  My friend swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in orange relief.

  *

  I stirred from the depths of unconsciousness. The white ceiling of the hotel room swam. A man’s face was upside down, eyes wide. His mouth moved rhythmically, repeating the word ‘Sir!’

  His voice echoed distantly. I became aware of little shocks down the side of my face and realised he was slapping my cheek. The bang to my head must really have done something to my mental circuits, as I only remembered the escort and a man arriving. Then what?

  I noticed the TV had toppled off its table.

  As I pressed my palm into the carpet to push myself up, I felt glass fragments. There was a dent in the wall.

  ‘What the hell happened?’

  Some part of my brain had already worked out the need to feign extra confusion. But I didn’t have to try hard.

  ‘Another guest reported your cries, sir.’ His voice was clear now. ‘I’m Mr Sullivan, of hotel security.’ He looked deeply concerned. ‘Are you all right? Do you need a doctor? It looks like you have a nasty bang to your head. And your hand is bleeding.’

  I stared at my hand. It was trembling. The knuckles were clotted with blood; glass fragments glinted.

  ‘I’m OK,’ I said, gathering myself. Mr Sullivan helped me to my feet.

  ‘Were you attacked?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  There appeared to be no evidence of the escort’s visit, thank God. There was nothing left on the bed. No money.

  ‘We need to determine whether to call the police, sir.’

  It felt like the wrong moment to mention that I was the police.

  ‘The guest who reported your cries also reported two people leaving, hurrying away down the corridor.’

  ‘I don’t remember anything about that.’

  ‘We’ll check the CCTV.’

  That might show the escort arriving.

  ‘Look, this is rather embarrassing, but sometimes I have these episodes…’

  What about the bathroom? She’d disrobed there. Had she left any clothes behind in their haste to leave?

  ‘I must remember to take my medicine,’ I continued, stumbling towards the bathroom door, the blood starting to pump through my limbs.

  I could still smell the perfume, which wasn’t perfume. What the hell was it?

  I fell back down, and out.

  *

  ‘We had a deal,’ I challenged Alderman Rem Lottman, the man ultimately in control of events. We were sitting in the 1e Klas restaurant in Amsterdam Centraal station. Before long, Lottman would be gone. He was due to board a Thalys high-speed train to Brussels, where a new role in European energy and social policy awaited him.

  I needed his help and protection more than ever, but I had only five minutes of his time, at best.

  ‘We still have a deal,’ Lottman corrected me, warning: ‘You are not to use that recordi
ng you made. Neither you nor your wife.’

  The recording he was referring to was of Joost, my immediate boss, describing Eastern European car thieves and trafficked prostitutes as ‘thieves and whores’. Joost also stated in the recording that Jan Six – the former Amsterdam police commissioner – had supported him in the matter.

  Lottman had played a key role in getting all these men appointed.

  He said, ‘I know how tricky those digital recordings can be – how easily they can spread around the place, once shared – like infectious diseases.’ His dark eyes bored into me over the rim of his coffee cup, as he took a slow sip. ‘I need to be assured of your silence on this matter, Henk.’

  I looked around the restaurant. Parquet wooden floors, high ceilings – tall windows giving onto the frenetic tram activity in front of the station. The colours and light and bustle should have made the restaurant feel warm, friendly. To the other travellers, seated at their widely spaced tables, perhaps it did. For me, the whole scene had taken on a ghastly, gasoline-like, aquamarine hue. The harsh light flooded in. It may have been the lack of sleep, or anxiety – it may equally have been the memories of my father, and of parting ways with him in similar circumstances… Lottman had always borne a certain resemblance.

  ‘I don’t understand what the problem is,’ he was saying, reaching into a pocket of his tent-like jacket.

  I leaned in, jabbing the wooden table with my trembling forefinger. ‘Zsolt To˝zsér left a gun – a FÉGARMY PA-63 – at the door to my houseboat.’

  ‘Do you know that for sure?’ he asked, scattering coins on the table.

  ‘It’s not just the gun. My wife and daughter have both, separately, been receiving –’

  ‘Henk,’ he interrupted, bracing his hands against the table, ready to push himself up. ‘Joost can help you with this.’

  ‘Joost,’ I said, seething, ‘is the source of this!’

  ‘Then talk to Jan Six.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked with incredulity. ‘Jan Six is no longer Joost’s boss. You’ve removed Six from the field of play!’

  ‘Was on his watch. He still knows the players involved.’ Lottman changed tack: ‘Look, I can’t help the fact that you didn’t save that man in the harbour.’

  ‘The man in the harbour was scum!’ I hissed. ‘A pimp – a trafficker!’

  He tutted softly. ‘Now now, this isn’t going to get you very far, is it?’ One hand retreated back into his tent of a jacket and re-emerged with his phone. ‘A couple of things to note for next time, Henk. First, you don’t need a separate device to do digital recordings these days ­– an iPhone will do.’ He tapped the screen. ‘Second, talking about refusing to save men because they’re “scum” rather equals those indelicate remarks that Joost made about our Eastern European neighbours in the first place, wouldn’t you say?’

  Aquamarine roiled my vision. I rubbed my eyes vigorously. By the time I tried to focus again, he’d gone.

  *

  ‘Henk! Henk!’ This time, the slap to my cheek was hard.

  Tommy Franks looked livid.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I said, coming to.

  ‘You tell me!’ He turned to the hotel security man, saying, ‘Give us a moment.’

  The security man did.

  This time, there was nothing feigned about my confusion.

  ‘Henk, what the fuck are you doing?’

  I wanted to ask him the same question. Why was he here?

  ‘We need to get you out of this hotel, fast.’

  ‘We need to visit that suite.’

  ‘What suite?’ he shot.

  ‘The one Karremans was staying in.’

  ‘Why? No, Henk –’

  ‘I’m willing to bet you’ll find evidence of a struggle. Scratch marks on the wall or something…’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Check with the coroner, too. Anaesthetic delivered via an atomiser, a respiratory device –’

  Stars exploded, my head thumping back down onto the floor – the shock of him striking me…

  I went for his throat, and for a moment we were wrestling, panting hard, the carpet burning my knees and elbows.

  ‘Everything OK in there?’ the security man called.

  ‘Listen to me, Henk,’ Franks gasped. He was on top of me, tie askew. ‘We need to get you out of here.’

  ‘It’s the same pattern. You need to find an escort called Kamilla. I have her card somewhere –’

  ‘This isn’t going the way I expected, working with you. It’s not going the way I expected at all.’

  I had the sense of a relapse on Tommy’s part. ‘You’re starting to sound like them,’ I said.

  He screwed up his face. ‘Who?’

  ‘Who are you, Tommy – or Tim, is it? I’ve lost track now.’

  He glared down at me.

  ‘I knew I was here for a reason…’ I persisted.

  ‘You’d better get the fuck out of here and back to Amsterdam. Fast. Before the diplomatic plods get involved…’

  31

  ‘SIX-SHOOTER’

  Jan Six came to see me in the end. I was walking to work, when suddenly he was alongside me.

  I’d hardly slept a wink in weeks.

  ‘Let’s chat, Henk,’ he said genially. He was known for that trait, but I caught a trace of pity beneath. Or was it menace?

  I knew right then that he wouldn’t help me. In his world, the strong only help the strong.

  ‘There’s a bar not far from here where we won’t be disturbed.’

  He took me to the karaoke bar where cops at our station celebrated good news; he was wearing the same black flowing overcoat as the last time I’d seen him there, when my colleague Liesbeth had got engaged, and when – it turned out – a major vehicle-smuggling ring had been dismantled using none other than the Hungarian informant, Zsolt To˝zsér.

  Was the choice of bar a coincidence?

  It was early in the day and the place was dark and empty, reeking of stale beer. Six was more red-faced than usual – like he was going to seed. His rustic features looked rougher in the sharp beam of the light behind the bar. He reminded me of an old gunslinger well past his best, his aim gone. Doubtless he was thinking the same about me.

  ‘Operation Boost,’ I said, acknowledging the other cause of that celebration, the last time we were here together.

  ‘Good times.’

  The owner came over. Six ordered coffee and I did the same. Then he ordered a jenever. ‘You too?’

  ‘Why not?’ I replied.

  We were alone once more.

  ‘The alderman asked me to talk to you.’

  So Lottman had been good to his word – whatever good that might achieve.

  ‘Therefore I will,’ he added.

  Suddenly he looked furious, like some dam had burst inside. For a moment, he just glared at me – blaming me for him being out? Joost had replaced him, of course.

  I drew back as the drinks arrived. Six waited again to continue, finally waving the owner away.

  ‘We can try to protect you, Henk.’

  He was still referring to the police as ‘we’… So had they kept him on, after all? In some clandestine role, perhaps?

  ‘What we can’t do is end operations already underway.’

  ‘You’re still using Zsolt To˝zsér?’

  Six downed his jenever.

  I did likewise as he leaned in. The fumes leaked from his mouth. ‘Vehicle theft, stolen art, diamonds. High-end prostitution. Paedophilia.’ He listed off the types of offence that To˝zsér was involved in. ‘Yes, Henk, we’re still using him. He’s a protected species. I couldn’t cut him off if I wanted to.’

  I meditated on his words. ‘You know, I’m sure I saw you two together, once,’ I said. ‘At the Conservatorium.’

 
It was one of Amsterdam’s finest hotels.

  ‘Oh?’ he breathed.

  ‘It looked cosy.’

  He was seething.

  I said, ‘No doubt you’re going to tell me that six hundred known criminals account for sixty per cent of the crime in this city, or some such. Well, are you, Six? Because I’ve heard it once too often.’

  Only by me becoming strong would the strong help me.

  He slurped his coffee. The speed of him regaining his composure showed either impressive self-control or a degree of bipolarity.

  Both, possibly.

  ‘Actually, it was something else I was about to quote. A saying from my old AIVD days.’

  Vaguely I recalled something about this – about Six having started off in the secret service.

  ‘If there’s no man, there’s no problem.’

  I doubted he was referring to Zsolt.

  ‘We had some dark humour back then.’ He chuckled, then shook his head. ‘I think it was Uncle Joseph who first said that.’

  ‘Stalin sounds about right,’ I agreed.

  ‘Well, it’s good to see you’ve kept your sense of history, and perspective… if not exactly your sense of humour,’ he said, getting up.

  His smile was all bonhomie once more. ‘So long, Henk.’

  It was the last time I’d see him, before he retired to a place near The Hague. Not far from where he’d started out, then, with the AIVD…

  *

  Exiting the plane from London, my phone lit up with notifications. I strode through the long corridors of Schiphol airport, scrolling down.

  There were two missed calls from an unidentified number. A return message from Sonia Brinkerhof, the police psychologist whom I’d promised I’d see. Though Sonia had a busy schedule over the coming days, she could fit me in today. I checked my watch, then thumbed a text to her to secure the time slot offered. Next, I listened to Petra’s voicemail.

  I immediately called her back.

  ‘What’s up?’ I said when she picked up.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Just landed at Schiphol. What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. Well, this guy came to the boat early this morning.’