Purgatory

by Guido Eekhaut

  “Adriaan had few colleagues in the strict sense of the word. His was a sort of one-man operation. Which makes him all the harder to replace.”

  An immense loss for the company, Eekhaut mused. What a pain it must have been to her when Basten no longer showed up. It surprised him she didn’t wear black.

  “There’s no one who can help us with more information?” He locked gazes with her. “Come now, Ms. Bunting,” he said with a somewhat malicious grin, “people talk, they gossip. In the coffee corner, during lunch, in the pub. He must have had friends, he must have had a private life.”

  “I would assume that all of this belongs to the private sphere, Chief Inspector,” she repeated. “And as such—”

  “I don’t plan to concern myself with Basten’s private life,” Eekhaut said, “and neither with that of any of your staff. However, I’m conducting a criminal inquiry. We assume he was murdered. We will find his murderer, Ms. Bunting. That is what we do. And as officers of the AIVD, we have a certain number of plenary powers that include questioning people.”

  “In that case—”

  “Furthermore,” he said, rising from his chair, being fed up with her, “we do not need your approval, ma’am. We will speak to any member of your staff, if necessary, and you will make sure they’re available.”

  She rose as well, and with her high heels proved to be taller than he. Prinsen, hesitantly, rose too.

  “There might be a few people who knew Basten,” Bunting said. “I’ll send for them, and there’s an office next door where you might question them in private.”

  “Thank you,” Eekhaut said.

  It had been a small victory. At last, Prinsen and Eekhaut met with five young employees, all of them careful in expressing an opinion and surprised to be asked at all. Eekhaut was familiar with the aspirations and hopes of their generation, torn as they were between personal self-expression and the need for individuality on the one hand and adherence to a group, a social medium or a company, on the other. Most of them would at some point go freelance, since they’d read it was the way forward for digital nomads.

  In the end, there was little they could tell the officers. Adriaan had been an excellent colleague but hardly a friend. He had been a member of the team, even though there was no team, only a collection of individuals gravitating around a common objective. No, they never met outside of work. Neither did they have any work-related fun, like drinks at the end of the week. No, they had no idea of his private life. Did they care? They did not.

  An hour later Eekhaut stopped for the day. The whole effort had been useless. Basten remained a mystery. Before leaving he looked inside Bunting’s office, but it was empty. He left his card on her desk, certain she would throw it in the trash.

  Back in the street again, he felt cold and depressed. The sky was overcast. Amsterdam was less than cheerful, cyclists hurrying over the bridges and along the canals, avoiding careless pedestrians. Some of the local shops were closed, except for a bakery doing a brisk trade in pecan pies and vegetarian specialties.

  When they entered Kerkstraat again, fifteen minutes later, Prinsen said, “That didn’t go well, Chief.” He seldom called Eekhaut Chief.

  “A wonderful and inspiring example of indifference, Nick. Let that be a lesson to you. But you’re right, we didn’t get much out of them. I hope Van Gils was more successful.”

  “That whole religion thing doesn’t sit well with me.”

  “You think we should approach the case differently?”

  “That’s not the point,” Prinsen said. “I have a problem with the sort of people who rely on God for their salvation. People who consider themselves at the center of the world, the universe. And claim a direct line to God. The Chosen Ones.”

  “That’s the point of the religious experience, Nick, being able to talk directly to your creator. And assuming this buys you a ticket on the front row of whatever He has in store.”

  “I hail from such a community,” Prinsen said, gloomily. “And Dewaal as well. We both managed to escape.”

  “Oh! Your God-fearing parents. Grandparents, in your case.”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe. Foreigners often, if not always, see the Netherlands as this superbly modern secular and tolerant state, but outside of the main urban areas we’re as religious, superstitious, and reactionary as . . . Well, I would compare us to the American South, if I were familiar with the American South. And we have a Bible Belt too. There are communities out there who still live in the nineteenth century, if not earlier. At least as far as their religious experience is concerned. They’re not Amish, nothing like that, since they embrace technology. At least when it doesn’t connect them to the outside world. Tractors and trucks and cars and electricity are all right. Television and all the digital stuff is the work of the Devil.”

  “And your father was a pastor or something like that.”

  “No, he wasn’t. Not that it made any difference. They didn’t read books except the Bible, didn’t know anything about the outside world and weren’t interested. It’s all cliché, and you’ve heard it before, but I lived it. I lived the reality of the one and overwhelming truth that canceled out everything else—the truth of God and his creation. We did have books in school, but only those approved on a religious basis. I fled. I ran away. I ran as far as I could when I was old enough.”

  “At least you realized you had to run.”

  “Oh, a lot of young people get out. The older generation is trapped in their dead-end life and probably know it, which reinforces their stubbornness. They will be saved, that’s the thing they’re sure of.”

  “You’re familiar then with the ideas of the Church of the Supreme Purification. Nothing strange to you.”

  “No, actually, I’m very familiar with everything those idiots believed in. And what the Society of Fire still believes.”

  “What happened to Dewaal?”

  “She got out as well. Actually, she was my example. She lived in Amsterdam, occasionally returned for a few days. Locals hated her, of course, but we, the younger generation within the family, knew we would eventually follow her lead, her example.”

  “Your hero.”

  “Mmm. More like an example. Wouldn’t call her a hero.”

  “Your folks didn’t like her.”

  “My mother hated, literally hated, everything my aunt stood for. Because she was free. She was free in the sense that nobody told her what to think, what to do. My mother was always pretty upset when her sister came to visit. Tried to keep us kids away from her and her godless ideas. Didn’t work, of course. I suspect my aunt came back so often to make sure others would imitate her.”

  “And in the end, you escaped.”

  “It was like emigrating to another continent. I had to learn another language. Almost literally another language. It’s language that enslaves or frees you. There’s a language of suppression and another of freedom. In the Book you’re taught the language of slavery. You’re the subject of a malicious God, whose name I still write with a capital letter. He’s malicious because He allows suffering. He allows, even obliges His powerless subjects to suffer. Most suffer in many different ways. What God, having the power to let all His people live in paradise, would submit them to lifelong suffering? Where’s the sense in that? Only a vengeful God would do that. And I reject that sort of God.”

  They entered the offices of the Bureau. Van Gils, red-nosed because he had just come in from the cold, sat at his desk, perhaps considering a holiday far away. “This fellow Basten,” he said when he noticed Eekhaut and Prinsen, “was born in Zeeland. That’s about all the registry office has on him. He’s like a ghost. No car. He rents a flat and pays cash. Wonder if he truly existed.”

  “All I need to know,” Eekhaut said, “is how he fits into that circle of bodies. Why was he there? Why did he have to die?”

  But neither Prinsen nor Van Gils could provide him with an answer.

  15

  A FEW MOMENTS LATER Eekhau
t was summoned to Dewaal’s office. She asked him to close the door, indicating important revelations. Or intimate confessions—although he realized this was less probable. “You know I’m a control freak,” she announced. “And I need to know where things stand. And I’m also somewhat time-pressed.”

  “There’s actually little progress,” Eekhaut admitted. “We’ve been to the place Basten worked. Got confronted by an HR manager with her own ideas about communication. Basten turns out to be as insubstantial as . . . well, perhaps a sort of ghost, I don’t know. Everyone liked him, but nobody knows anything about him. A specialist in one very narrow field. The perfect employee.”

  “The only thing about him we’re certain of is that he was one of the victims.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That leaves us with all the other questions unanswered, Walter. Why did he die? What was the thing in the Ardennes all about?”

  Eekhaut had nothing to contribute.

  “How did Prinsen do?”

  “Nick? He’s very effective. Why?”

  “Don’t treat him differently because he’s family.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You know what people in this office talk about? Him and me. That I protect him and he wouldn’t have a job here without me. That sort of thing. I would have preferred that he wasn’t related so I could treat him accordingly. But there we are. He’ll make promotion on his own merits, is that clear, Walter?”

  “Sure.”

  She was angry. And it had nothing to do with Prinsen. He had, since he came to work here, grown antennas for the things that were left unspoken.

  “There’s this crap I have to deal with from the veteran officers, Walter,” she continued. “For more than a year now. From before you came here. I told you I trust you more than any of them because you’re the odd man out.”

  “I know I’m the odd man out.”

  “Yesterday Veneman deemed it necessary to comment on . . . It doesn’t matter on what. But Veneman! I need all of them in order to keep this outfit running, Walter. And you and Prinsen. I felt let down yesterday. And I have to be sure you don’t let me down as well.”

  “Why should I? I don’t have any history here.”

  She sat back. “I know. I’m taking this out on you. You’re the only one I can complain to. Sorry about that. ‘Dewaal and her favorite nephew.’ That’s what he said. Thought I wouldn’t hear it, but I did. He’s not even my favorite nephew. He escaped his family, like I did. They’re a couple of troublemakers, basically, Veneman and Van Gils.”

  “You don’t have to justify your decisions, Chief,” he said carefully.

  “Of course I do. And I need to be careful with people with hidden agendas. Or colleagues who aren’t clean. Know what I mean? Yes, I have my suspicions, Walter. Some of them, here in the office, have their own agenda. Anyway, enough of that for now. This morning, I had a call from the prosecutor.”

  “Our new, female prosecutor?”

  “Her gender is not at issue here, Walter, nor should it be mentioned. Yes, her. And you’ll meet her soon enough. She calls me and wants to know about the Ardennes thing. She’s not happy. It’s taking too long. Good thing it’s been kept out of the newspapers. But questions are being asked. About missing people and so on.”

  Eekhaut got up. “Not my problem, Chief, political stuff. I get paid to catch criminals, not to fill in forms to satisfy prosecutors. I’ll keep Van Gils digging around for details about Basten.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Anything else bugging you, Alexandra?” He hardly ever addressed her by her first name. And then only when no one else was near. Those were the moments he knew she needed him, not as a colleague but as someone to share her problems with.

  “I’ve been witness to a great number of crimes, Walter. I know what people are capable of. What they do to each other. The madmen and the psychopaths. But these are exceptions. Most murders are . . .” She was looking for the right term.

  “Within the limits of reason,” he said.

  “Yes, something like that. Understandable. But what we witnessed here . . .”

  “I see what you mean.”

  “We can’t imagine doing these things ourselves, that’s what I mean. I might kill someone when I’m driven by, I don’t know, jealousy or anger, ultimately. Defending myself or others. But this? A ritual? Everything about it is contrived. Planned. Systematically planned.”

  “I know,” he said. Further comfort he could not offer.

  Thea De Vries carefully sat down on Prinsen’s desk, folding one shapely leg over the other. He glanced up and noticed two things: De Vries’s legs would effortlessly pass any beauty test, and he and she were utterly alone in the office space. Veneman and Van Gils and the two other detectives occupying desks at the other end of the office were out. This situation—the legs, the absence—could not be coincidental. At least, that’s what Prinsen presumed.

  “Nick,” De Vries said, in a confidential tone that appeared totally comfortable with her position vis-à-vis her colleague, “can’t you get me involved in this big operation as well? The thing none of you are talking about?”

  “You aren’t in on it yet?” he countered. Frowning, making sure she would understand he was preoccupied with a more urgent matter.

  “Not really. I work with Siegel on Chinese importers of counterfeit luxury goods. Boring stuff. Neither of us knows any Chinese, and the translators make us wait for days. Nothing seems to happen. I don’t understand why it takes two detectives to work this case.”

  Why the hell would she talk to me about her problems? he wondered. Did she want him to speak on her behalf with Dewaal? That wasn’t going to happen. “The Chinese are an important trade partner to the Netherlands, and you have to learn the ropes . . .” he started.

  “You know what I mean, Nick,” she said, amused and annoyed. “I’m at the computer most of the day. And Siegel has no intention of teaching me anything. I don’t want his job either. I want to work on the big projects.” She leaned forward. “I’ve seen the pictures, Nick. The Ardennes.”

  “You’d be better out there in the streets with the local cops. Or move to Vice. That’s the kind of work you might like. Pimps and street workers and the undeserving rich with their escorts that get paid more in a night than you’ll see in a month.”

  She sighed dramatically. “I’d rather stay here, Nick. I don’t want to do Vice. I want to work with you.”

  “Dewaal is not going to add another detective to the team. Not now. There’s already Eekhaut and me and occasionally Van Gils. There’s more cases, and you’ll be needed elsewhere.”

  He was wary of her. She had been given high marks at the academy. An exceptional student. Almost. But she was too much in a hurry. She would have to learn the basics first, however slow this process was. He said, “We should discuss this with the Chief. I’ll ask her if she—”

  “I don’t really need this to be official,” she interrupted quickly. “This is something between the two of us, Nick. You and me.” That gave her game away. This was not about her career. Not yet, anyway. This was about him. She wanted to impress him. She wanted to wrap her shapely legs around him, wanted to drag him into her personal life. Everything else was a diversion.

  A small but venomous spider. “Ah,” he said. “There’s only the official way. You either get on the team or you don’t. I can pass the word to Dewaal if you want. If you want to move up from what you’re doing now.”

  “Really?” she said.

  “I can try,” he promised. But he wasn’t going to.

  16

  JAN PIETER MAXWELL CLOSED the tan leather portfolio and observed the man on the other side of the oval table. “These results are not what we expected, Pieters,” he said. He spoke in a fatherly way, a habit he had mastered only after years of practice. He had come to understand how he could use his voice to influence people. How to find the right timbre, the right mode of speech. He knew there was a right way to repri
mand and another to merely sound concerned. Today he would be the family patriarch. He would be the great leader. His words indicated there was a problem—not a major problem, but at least something Pieters had to be concerned about.

  Maxwell knew exactly how to deal with his employees and how to make them want to serve him better. He encouraged competition among his slaves, his minions. Competition was good. It weeded out the lesser elements, without any effort on his part. It didn’t matter to him if they obtained better personal results or their department made a huge profit. This was important only to the company itself. What mattered most was their subservience. He wasn’t merely their employer, he was everything else to them. An example, a mentor, a father figure. He was all that.

  He, on the other hand, needed their admiration. He needed their regard. He knew a master was nothing without the approval of his slaves. He needed to influence them, everything they did and thought. There was no room for their individual needs or longings or aspirations. He wanted an almost demonic grip on people around him. Demonic. Yes, the word was well chosen.

  Pieters, his current object of intellectual torture, knew all too well what had been expected of him and why he had failed. He would have failed anyway, whatever he had tried, because failure was what Maxwell had in mind. His appreciation of his employees was random. They never knew when he would be content with their results. When he would punish and when he would reward. Pieters knew he was merely middle management and would never, never be good enough to satisfy the expectations of Maxwell. But he kept trying. Because—in Maxwell’s opinion—this was what slaves did. They kept trying to satisfy their master until there was nothing left for them to give.

  “But what, Pieters, are we going to do about this mess?” Maxwell inquired, in his reasonable voice. Still sounding just slightly annoyed by the lack of effort from Pieters, but not really angry.

  Pieters took a deep breath and glanced at the portfolio his boss was holding. He felt as if the whole of his future could be summed up on one side of a sheet of paper.