He gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head but it was enough for her to see and she frowned slightly before nodding in acknowledgement and discretely moving away. Akosua still had to learn the virtue of patience.
'Shit!' Frans exclaimed.
Rey appraised the scene again and thought for a moment, 'This jig is up,' he said distractedly, 'let's fall back. We can't do anything now.'
He jerked his head in the direction of the tram, the crowd, the police and the emotional young book seller talking to a stranger and occasionally swiping under her eyes with a forefinger.
'Look at her, she's in a right state, I can't see her setting up shop again for the next few hours.'
Frans sucked in air between gritted teeth, gave one last glance at the stall and then pursed his lips as he nodded, 'Alright, yes, we meet at the Brave Hendrik bar as we agreed. This afternoon at sixteen hundred hours. I'll update Akosua and put Plan B into effect.'
Rey smiled knowingly, 'In and out, uh? Do you even have a Plan B?'
Frans raised his eyebrows and shrugged plaintively. He gently patted Rey's shoulder and walked off into the now sombre market. Rey sighed and turned to walk in the direction of the Central Station, the discordant rhythm of an approaching ambulance siren growing louder.
That same afternoon, Rey had gone to the bar and had waited for Frans who had turned up twenty minutes late and they now they sat facing each other, considering the morning's events.
Rey's chair creaked and squeaked as he sat back and rubbed his hands over his face to clear his thoughts. He looked around the bar at nothing in particular and breathed in deeply, 'Frans, cock-up just isn't the word for this.'
Frans looked up as the waitress wandered over and placed a dark brown beer in front of him with a cheery but distracted, alstublieft. He smiled at her and nodded, 'Dank u wel!'
'The trouble is,' Rey sighed irately, 'you're having too much fun crafting this little escapade. You've been spending too much time behind a desk. Instead of fucking about and creating an intricate web of events that, in theory, leads neatly to the retrieval of this bloody book, you should just be pragmatic and go and get it! It was right there, she had it at her stall!'
Frans sucked in air through the side of his mouth and made a little rasping noise, 'Well, I suppose you're right,' he grinned impishly, 'so what do you suggest?'
Rey nodded at the implicit hand-over, 'Alright, what is the current SITREP?'
'I sent Akosua off to a very early lunch and told her to wait for new instructions. At the market, the book seller Miss Verker packed up her stall and left early as you guessed she would. I kept back and had a chat with a trader once she had left. It turns out she knew the woman who was hit by the tram. Sad. Anyway, she went home early to rest up.'
Rey thought for moment, formulating a plan, 'Alright, well, if she knew this woman then she probably isn't going to be too bright and breezy for the rest of the week so -'
His eyes drifted to look into vacant space, '- Yeah, get Akosua to get in touch with Verker and ask directly about the book. She can say that she was put on to her by the previous dealer. She can spin a yarn, Akosua is good at that. Then, she can just arrange a hand-over. Job done.'
'- and no more fucking about, eh?' winked Frans.
'Yeah, basically! It is what a normal person would do!'
Frans blinked a couple of times, 'Alright, tell you what, you can fly back to England, there is no point you wasting any more time here, I thought this would be a nice little outing for you but I'm sure we can wrap this up by Monday evening, give the girl a little time to recover. Akosua will be back in England before you know it.'
'Time to recover?' Rey frowned as he shook his head. 'What? On second thoughts, just ring her now, if she answers then she's fit enough to talk. I thought that I was going soft!'
Frans raised his palms as if signalling to halt an oncoming car, 'Alright, alright, we ring her now.'
He reached for his phone and dialled Gertrude Verker's number, prefixed with the anonymity code. Frans spoke in Dutch for a few moments and then looked at Rey, rolling his eyes to indicate that he was waiting.
A short conversation later, a couple of thank-yous and Frans rang off.
'Hmm, an interesting turn of events!'
Rey shook his head fatefully, 'What now?'
'I spoke with a friend of Miss Verker, she is not taking calls at the moment. However, her friend tells me that our girl has decided to take next week off from the fair circuit and will be selling via the internet. Anything we want can be found there. She has an eBay shop and will start putting some books on there Monday morning!'
The news elicited a smile from Rey, 'Great, we wait for it to be put up on the internet, Akosua can watch the site and buy the book as soon as it appears. In the mean time, we'll go and see the first dealer and hear what he has to say about the person he bought the book from in the first place. I have a few thoughts about how we can approach him and keep our involvement to a minimum. With any luck, that'll take us directly to the thieving little git who stole it and lead us to the Sigil Ring! You may be right. We could have this whole thing wrapped up by Monday evening!'
'I knew you had been brought in for a reason!' Frans grinned, lifting his glass of beer up in salutation. 'Proost!'
Chapter II
'Meekness is weakness'
- The Challenge of Thor - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Gertrude had looked up from gazing into the depths of her coffee cup, both hands comfortingly wrapped around the hot porcelain. Her shallow trance of contemplation had been broken by her friend's sudden exclamation and the hollow plastic crack as she had peremptorily slammed the phone receiver down.
'What did they say?' she asked somewhat pensively.
Her friend Carola took a moment and then smiled weakly, 'I told him what you said, that you would be loading books up onto the internet from Monday. I'm sure he can wait, it can't be that urgent. If he is that keen then maybe you can make some good money next week.'
She tried to keep the mood light, 'So, the business appears to be taking off, hey?'
'Yeah, it is not quite how I expected this day to go though,' Gertrude nodded, her lips momentarily creasing into a wan smile.
Carola sighed in commiseration and walked over to the sofa, settling down with her elbow cocked against the soft cushions of the backrest.
'I know it is sad but there is nothing anybody could have done, nothing that you could have done. From what you said she just walked right out in front of the tram.'
'I know,' Gertrude shrilly responded, her voice cracked by an impulse of emotion, 'but it was just that moments before, seconds before, she had seen me and I had smiled to her. I looked down to put some more books onto the table and when I looked up again the tram had stopped and Mrs. Korteweg was gone. It all happened so fast.'
'But you didn't really know her did you?' Carola asked rhetorically, trying to put the event into perspective, a weak effort of consolation for her friend.
'No, not really I guess. We'd had coffee a couple of times, after she had visited my stall on Thursdays. I think she was lonely; she just wanted somebody to talk to. She was a nice old lady who enjoyed talking about when she was younger. I had some books for her. I just feel, I don't know, I guess I feel a bit responsible. She was coming to my stall after all.'
Carola frowned, somewhat frustrated, 'Come on Gertie, it wasn't your fault, she would probably have visited the market anyway. You can't blame yourself. Just give it a couple of days rest, call in sick to the office tomorrow and have a break from it all over the weekend. It is understandable that you don't want to do the market next week, but it will give you plenty of time to get your books on the internet. You'll be fine, you'll see. It is early yet, it only happened this morning and you're still in shock.'
She glanced at her watch and guiltily raked her lower lip with her teeth, knowing that she was planning to bail out on her friend, 'Look, I have to go, I'm supposed to be meeting Er
ik in an hour and he's taking me to the cinema.' She thought for a moment, 'Do you want to come?'
Cocking her head to one side, Gertrude smiled, understanding that the offer was only half-hearted, 'No, that's alright, I'll be fine. You're probably right. I may have a hot bath to relax, watch a film on TV to take my mind off things and get an early night. You go have fun, say 'Hi' to Erik for me.'
Carola pushed herself up and stood, glancing down at the flattened weave of the carpet in the middle of the room, the bald indentation of the six plastic boxes containing Gertrude's book stock from that morning.
'Are you going to be able to lift all of those boxes back up here?'
Gertrude followed Carola's gaze and inwardly slumped for a moment, 'Yeah, sure, don't worry about it, I'll leave them in the van tonight and bring them up tomorrow morning.' She stood and faced her friend, 'I don't like leaving them down there but I can't deal with it right now.'
'Right, well, I'll call you tomorrow, I have to work in the morning but I can drop in during the afternoon.'
Carola leaned in and hugged Gertrude, rubbing a hand against her upper arm in awkward consolation before they kissed cheeks.
'I'll see myself out, try and get some rest. We'll speak tomorrow, hey?'
Gertrude's smile was indulgent but sincere.
'Sure, have a nice night with Erik, and Carola, thanks for coming over this afternoon; I know I'm just being silly, but,' she paused, 'well, you know.'
'It'll be alright, I'm sure,' Carola nodded before she turned and started to leave. 'See you, doei!'
She wagged her hand a couple of times in farewell and was gone, the sound of her heeled boots clicking on the tiled floor of the kitchen before her departure was demarcated by the squeal of the apartment door swinging open and then easing shut with a double click of the latch.
Standing by herself in the middle of her very quiet and strangely unfamiliar living room, Gertrude suddenly felt overtly alone. She sat down and let her shoulders sag, resting in a trance-like state for what could have been seconds or minutes.
Picking up her coffee cup, she nestled it into her lap and curled her fingers about the mug. Although she did not notice it, the previously steaming black liquid had now become quite tepid and it would yet cool down to room temperature before she realised that she had not taken even a single sip of it.
Chapter III
'Still is it Thor's Day!'
- The Challenge of Thor - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The evening sky had already blackened following the demise of the short winter day, although only an hour had passed since Frans and Rey had appraised the apparently straight-forward situation they were now facing.
After calling Akosua and setting her off to watch for their book on the internet, Rey had insisted that they follow up with the first dealer to get a lead on the Sigil Ring. Each minute they wasted was a minute lost on the trail.
Taking a couple of trams to reach their destination, they had hurriedly decamped to a quite café, on the opposite side of the road and a few doors down from the book store from which Gertrude had originally made her purchase.
Although Rey had misgivings about their current task, he was feeling at ease with life. The simple fact that the café turned a blind eye to smoking on the premises gave him some faith in humanity and he had a cigarillo resting in a tray, burning gently to ash beside his coffee cup, a passing thought fantasising that the ban would soon be overturned and Dutch society would once again exemplify the ideals of civil liberties.
In defiance of the fact that the wind had picked up a little and the gusts were bitingly cold, the top half of the Dutch Door to the outside world was wide open, allowing a breeze of cold but fresh air to circulate with the plumes of stale smoke emanating from the small group of patrons idly chatting at the bar. The pair of strangers sitting apart from the regulars occupied a small table near the wide and ornately signed front window, a position from which they could clearly see the façade of the object of their attention; the Gevonden & Geleverd antiquarian book store.
Frans grimaced, jutting his bottom lip and nodding at the shop, 'Found and Delivered, eh? Let us hope that the dealer Mr. Johann Janssens can give us our man.'
Rey frowned and looked about to remind himself that they were out of earshot, 'Frans, we need to be clear on something, does the guy live?'
'Which one?'
The interrogative response made Rey consider both the book store owner and the opportunistic thief who had originally stolen property from their Order.
'Either of them.'
Easing his expression enough to take a sip of coffee and then hovering the cup at his mouth as he spoke, Frans tried to be objective, 'Well, old man Johann in the shop, at best he's innocently handling stolen goods or at worst he's an accomplice running a little side line. Let us see how it goes. We don't want any come back. We're not moving too quickly but at least we can be quiet about it.'
'Yeah, I thought you might say that.'
Rey looked at the shop again and breathed out heavily through his nose.
'He still has some boxes of books outside but he must be shutting up soon. We should go in just before he closes.'
'Thursday,' Frans muttered matter of factly.
Rey looked at him quizzically.
'Late closing. Many shops stay open until at least six o'clock this evening so he may be around for another half an hour or so. Not too many people about though so I guess that he will pack up pretty soon.'
Rey gave a guttural grunt and slowly shook his head, 'This is a fine line we're treading here. This may seem easy, but it could blow up in our faces and we have to be careful. I don't want to be hung out to dry simply trying to get information about some little shit with light fingers.'
'What are you thinking?'
Taking a drag from his cigarillo and breathing out the smoke between his clasped teeth, Rey shook his head and waved a trail of smoke in the air with an expansive gesture of his hand, 'This, all of this. Making the buy from the girl, Verker, that is one thing, but this is something else. If the dealer won't play ball then we'll have to take it to the next level. If that happens then we have a liability on our hands. Maybe he'll call the police and complain about being roughed up. If he leads us to the thief and the ring then we have to accept that it may get ugly trying to get it back. If Janssens watches the news and sees some story about a guy found dead, the same guy that we have a little tête-à-tête about, he will almost certainly call it in. He can't help but make a connection. Depending on how things go, the police may be calling on his door rather than the other way around. Either way, the authorities may get involved.'
He looked at his boss with the tired eyes of a soldier who had been through it all before.
'Frans, this may spiral out of hand, we have to be ready for all eventualities.'
Frans nudged his coffee cup in its saucer, edging the handle around and hooking his finger through the loop, 'This doesn't need to be complicated. You said that to me earlier. You said that you had some ideas about how to handle this. Are you having second thoughts?'
The implicit challenge and accusation caused Rey to sit back sharply, pausing before tapping his cigarillo against the ash tray rather too harshly for it to be relaxed, 'Just be ready to accept that we may have to contain events. As you said earlier, we'll do it my way.'
He looked out of the window across the street and squinted, his narrowed eyes a clear expression of focussed thoughtfulness.
'You go in first and take the soft approach, your Dutch may smooth things over. I'll come in a couple of minutes later and, if we need to, we can expedite things. If it has to go down then you make to leave and lock the door and we'll deal with it together. If it all goes well then I'll stay in the background, you never know, I may find something interesting to read.'
A rasp of amusement blurted from Frans. He paused for a second as a questioning furrow appeared in his brow, 'Why don't you lock the door after you come in, that will stop
any other customers from entering? We would have the place to ourselves then!'
'Because, Frans, if a customer tries to come in when you're innocently chatting with the dealer then they will see us and rattle the door or knock on it. Janssens will know that the door is locked and may become suspicious, we'll have extra hassle. If we only lock it when, or I should say if, we need to take him to one side then we keep our options open. We have to play it by ear, hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Besides, look what happened this morning, that didn't exactly go to plan!'
Frans emitted a murmur of acceptance and turned slightly in his chair to get a better view of the shop. After a moment he jerked his head forward at an old gentleman with a mane of white hair lifting a box of books from the small wooden table standing against the front window of the store. The old man heaved the box up and then scuttled back inside with his burden.
Frans grinned widely as he swivelled back to the table, 'You'd better drink up my friend, it looks like we are on. That's Janssens; he's started to pack up.'
Leaving Rey to pay the bill, Frans calmly stood and slipped his jacket on before wandering outside and across the road, eventually disappearing into the book store after nodding to the dealer and exchanging a few pleasantries.
After collecting his change and thanking the café proprietor, Rey slowly walked out and stood for a moment on the pavement, unobtrusively scanning the whole street as he adjusted his coat, an effort to garner at least a modicum of intelligence before following Frans into the store. He was satisfied that it was all clear.
Taking his time to follow Frans into the shop, Rey could see that their oblivious informant had remained in the premises, holding the fort, perhaps anticipating a profitable sale with which to finish off the day.
He felt sorry for the old book dealer, not wanting this day to end in misfortune for Janssens, but, as the old gambler's adage reminded him, knowing that they both had to play the hand they had been dealt.
Sun of the Sleepless Page 5