Jake Woodhouse
* * *
INTO THE NIGHT
Contents
Day One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Day Two
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Day Three
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Day Four
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Follow Penguin
PENGUIN BOOKS
INTO THE NIGHT
Jake Woodhouse has worked as a musician, winemaker and entrepreneur. He now lives in London with his wife and their young gundog. Into the Night is the second book in his Amsterdam Quartet; After the Silence is the first.
For Zara
And for S.S, who didn’t make it
in this world
we walk on the roof of Hell
gazing at flowers
Issa
Day One
* * *
1
Saturday, 8 May
14.09
‘I can’t believe you’re doing this. You promised you’d look after her.’
Inspector Jaap Rykel stepped towards the edge of the roof, leaving a cluster of forensics fussing over the body behind him.
High in the gas-flame-blue sky a plane glinted its way towards the west coast.
He glanced down and wondered what it would be like to jump.
‘I know,’ he said, wishing he’d turned his phone off after leaving the message for Saskia, his ex. ‘But I’ve got a dead body here and—’
‘There’s a live body here. Your daughter, remember her?’
Behind him one of the forensics hiccuped, a burst of laughter following from his colleagues.
‘Of course I do, you know that. It’s just …’ he tailed off, unable to explain.
Below him, five storeys below, a patrol car pulled out, two officers lifting the red and white tape to let it pass. Sun sparked off the bonnet, a lone cloud cruised across the windscreen. A faint buzzing came on the line, highlighting the silence.
Which was kind of worse than Saskia shouting.
A breeze stroked his face, and he found his free hand in his pocket, fingers rubbing the smooth brass coins he kept there.
The ones he’d had made specially after his sister, Karin, had died.
Tomorrow would have been her thirty-fourth, he thought.
A distant siren wailed then cut off mid-swoop, and he glanced out north, over Amsterdam, his city.
‘Fine,’ he eventually heard her sigh, ‘but you’ll be picking up her therapy bills later on, right?’
Their little joke.
Which often felt too close to the bone.
‘I’ll do that,’ he said, relieved to have got through it. ‘Mind you, I might just need some myself.’
‘That bad?’
He turned back to the body, watched as the hiccuping forensic lowered something clasped in a pair of tweezers into an evidence bag.
‘Kind of. It’s … Honestly, you don’t want to know. I’ll call you later. And Saskia?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m going to make sure I can look after Floortje for when you start the trial.’
‘I’ll hold you to that.’
They signed off and he took one last glance over the edge. He got the feeling that after the first moments of panic the fall might be exhilarating; air rushing, limbs loose, the sensation of speed. He wondered if he’d keep his eyes open or closed.
Coins jangled softly as he drew his hand out of his pocket.
No more decisions to make once you’re on your way down, he thought as he turned and walked back to the body. No responsibilities either.
He got close and stopped, not wanting to look at it again. It lay there, dressed in expensive white trainers, jeans – ripped by use or design it was hard to tell – and a tight white T-shirt.
Which, considering the body had no head, the neck severed about a third of the way up from the shoulders, was still remarkably white.
He’d just promised Saskia he was going to be finished by Monday. Even as he’d said it he knew it was unlikely to be true.
Looking down at the body now, his own shadow spilling on to the torso, he knew just how big a lie it had been.
‘You finished?’
The forensic, on his knees, turned and looked up at him, squinting into the sun.
‘You kidding? And I’ve got a date tonight.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Jaap, moving to the opposite side of the body. ‘And anyway I meant the hiccuping.’
‘Bothering you?’
‘Kind of.’
The forensic shrugged, his plastic suit crackling like radio static.
‘Weird, isn’t it?’ he said, pointing to the body, another hiccup rupturing the end of his question, throwing the words up high into the air. The breeze whisked them away.
Jaap looked at the figure again and felt his stomach twitch. But he knew there was nothing left to come; he’d thrown it all up whe
n he’d stepped on to the roof for the first time twenty minutes earlier and the forensic had whipped off the plastic sheet with a flourish worthy of a stage magician.
It was at that moment he’d understood the dispatcher’s comment about not losing his head on this case.
He’s the one who needs therapy, thought Jaap as he looked away again. He sits there all day sending people out to things like this, and all he can do is crack sick jokes.
He turned back to look at the body, trying to keep his gaze on the torso. What was in front of him was just so wrong, he found it hard to believe it was real.
‘So, what have you got?’
‘Not much,’ said the forensic. ‘Whatever they used for the cut was pretty sharp – the pathologist will be able to tell you more – but I reckon it was serrated, like a saw maybe?’
Jaap wasn’t sure he wanted to know more.
‘Identity?’
‘Nothing on him except for these,’ the forensic said, pointing at two clear bags laid out by his kit bag. One had a phone and the other a set of keys.
‘Got any spares?’ asked Jaap, holding up his hands.
The forensic rustled around before shaking his head.
‘Any gloves for the poor inspector?’ he called out to his two colleagues, who were on their hands and knees, probing something a few feet away from the door which led back into the building. The nearer of the two tossed over a pair to Jaap; he caught one, the other fluttered down and landed on the body’s chest.
It looked like the glove was pointing out the missing head.
He snapped on the first then reached down for the other. He hated their feel, the way they made his hands sweat, the smell which lingered long after they’d been taken off. By now the smell had become synonymous with death.
‘I don’t like the lack of blood,’ he said, the thought of jumping off the building’s roof reappearing in his mind.
‘Unusual for you lot to want more gore,’ said the forensic, pulling off his own gloves and dropping them into a waste sack. ‘They must have done it elsewhere, but who the hell would be crazy enough to risk bringing a headless body up here?’
The building was new, brand new. There were still builders on site, fixing up the interior. The security cameras weren’t yet operational, and no one had seen anything.
As the foreman had told Jaap earlier, if someone had wanted to take a body to the roof all they’d have had to do was don a hi-vis and get on with it. As long as the body was in a box, or even a sack, no one would look twice.
And the only reason it had been discovered in the first place was an anonymous account had tweeted the official Twitter feed, giving an address where a body would be found. The police assumed it was a hoax and a passing patrol had been asked to check it out. Once the foreman had let them up onto the roof they realized it wasn’t a joke and called it in.
‘The way I see it,’ said Jaap, squatting down and checking the arms for needle marks, ‘if you’re crazy enough to take someone’s head off you’re crazy enough to do anything.’
‘It gets worse. Turn the right hand over.’
Jaap took hold of the wrist between his thumb and forefinger and twisted it. He hated the feel of dead people, the way the flesh gave without responding. Touching them always seemed like some kind of violation.
Or is it just fear? he thought.
The palm was badly burned, the flesh charred black.
‘Blowtorch, I reckon,’ said the forensic.
Jaap laid the wrist back down carefully, thinking about planned mutilation.
The worst type of killing.
Something moved off to his left, a flicker of light and shadow, and he turned to look above the door. A seagull stood on one leg, head cocked, its one visible eye electric-yellow with a glistening oily black drop at its centre.
It stared at Jaap for a second, then went back to jabbing something near its feet.
‘Those things will eat anything.’
‘Maybe,’ said Jaap standing back up, kneecaps firing. ‘But I doubt they’d take off a whole head.’
‘Would make it easier for you if it had,’ said the forensic as he mimicked a pistol shot at the bird, the recoil exaggerated. He blew across the top of his fingers. ‘Then we could all go home.’
Jaap turned to the bags laid out a few feet from the body and picked up the one containing keys. There were three on a plastic key fob, round with a corporate-looking logo embedded in it. When he flipped it over he could see the fob had the name of an estate agent and a number. He punched the number into his phone, saved it, then turned to the second bag.
It held a newish-model phone made by some global company which specialized in underpaying workers in poor countries. Or so he’d heard. He powered it on, expecting it to be locked.
The screen flashed up the fruit logo but didn’t ask for a passcode.
Stupid, he thought. Or arrogant.
He checked the call lists. Loads of numbers. Didn’t look like a drug phone where there’d only be a couple of contacts. A few apps, one for the weather, one for the stock market, and several games, most of them looking like they involved shooting or driving.
He was just about to drop it back into the bag – he’d get the phone company records to see if it was on a contract later – when he found himself hitting the pictures icon.
Behind him the gull squawked, flapped its wings and took off, flying so low Jaap had to duck. He could feel the air beating down on him as the bird passed overhead.
He went back to the phone, a picture on screen.
His lungs froze.
The photo was slightly blurred, as if it had been taken on the move, and showed several people walking through Dam Square. The problem was, he recognized the person at the centre of the image.
He swiped back to see the previous photos, the screen not responding properly to his gloved finger. Then he realized there weren’t any more; it was just this one. Sweat oozed between his skin and the gloves, and he still couldn’t breathe.
He dropped the phone back into the bag, jammed it in his pocket along with the one containing the keys, and headed for the door.
‘Hey, you’ve got to sign for those if you’re taking them now,’ called the forensic as the door swung shut behind him and he started down the stairs, his footsteps clattering wildly through the concrete stairwell.
It must be a coincidence, he thought.
But his gut told him otherwise.
The image on the phone had been taken about seven hours earlier.
The face, in two-thirds profile, was his own.
2
Saturday, 8 May
14.31
The bench creaked as Inspector Tanya van der Mark sat and glanced over towards the pond.
The stone she’d picked up was smooth, its surface pigeon-grey, with one chipped, rough edge. She ran her finger along it, testing the stone, testing her skin, then tossed it into the water, rippling up the calm surface.
Orange fish flickered like underwater flames.
Something, some insect, zoomed past her ear, and a crowd of tulips were just opening on the far side of the water, colour jostling in the breeze.
Her ears picked up surround-sound noise of a warm Saturday afternoon in the park; kids screeching, dogs barking, adults laughing.
It was the laughter that always got her.
But that was going to change. And it was going to change starting now, because she’d tracked him down. She’d been trying for months, unable to find him. Until she discovered the reason it had been so hard.
He’d changed his name to Ruud Staal.
She pulled out a photograph from her pocket and unfolded it, the crease running right through his face.
It’s like he knew I’d come after him, she’d thought, noticing the faint tremor in her fingers. Or does he have another motive for trying to hide? Has he done the same to others? Other girls?
She felt the soft buzz of her phone in her pocket. The sun pushed gently ag
ainst her face, and she put the photo away then leaned back and closed her eyes.
Since transferring down to Amsterdam she’d tried to forget about it all, tried to make a fresh start, tried to live a normal life.
And for a while it worked – new place, new colleagues, new crimes which were at the same time old.
But then the feelings crept back – the bleakness, the edginess, the waking at three in the morning with a wild heartbeat pulsing through her body like a dull electric shock – and she knew she had to do something.
Her phone started up again. She sighed and pulled it out, her eyes momentarily blinded as she opened them.
It was the station.
She really didn’t want to answer, she’d been up early on a dawn raid and had left Jaap’s houseboat well before sun up. Surveillance had clocked an illegal cannabis farm out in a house in Nieuw-West, the predominately immigrant area to the west of Amsterdam, and the team were short. Her boss, Smit, had volunteered her.
But they’d got there only to find the place had been cleared out in a hurry. According to the unit she’d been with, this was the third time in the last two months. They just kept getting there too late. It was as if the growers were able to move out before they were hit.
‘I’m on leave as of midday today, didn’t the log show that?’
She figured it was best to be direct, stop anything before it started.
‘I saw that, but the thing is something’s come up,’ said Frits.
Of course it had. It always did. In a city just shy of eight hundred thousand people shoved into two hundred square kilometres there was bound to be a bit of friction. And Amsterdam had the dubious honour of placing first in the list of Western Europe’s murder capitals.
‘Okay, but seriously I can’t do it because—’
‘Listen, it’s an open-and-shut case. Accident or suicide, and we just need someone to sign it off. Keep things on track and you’ll be finished and handing in the paperwork by no later than five tonight. I promise.’
Tanya almost laughed. Promises and the police.
She heard the thwump of a football being kicked somewhere close off to her left and instinctively flinched. The ball missed but hit the water just in front of her.
‘Uggh,’ she said as pond splashed up.
‘Hey, it’s not that bad. You should see the one Jaap caught a while ago. Guy without a head.’
Into the Night: Inspector Rykel Book 2 (Amsterdam Quartet) Page 1