“And you are here as the representative of the royal family.”
“I am not actually here, ma’am. Not officially. Officially, I am merely an officer of the Mutaween, or the Hayaa, which is short for the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Adultery. It’s sufficiently self-explanatory, I assume. We monitor the implementation of moral principles that are an intrinsic part of our society and our religion. All according to the wishes of Allah—the Almighty, the Merciful.”
“You ensure people do not stray from the faith, I gather,” Dewaal said, aware of Apostel keeping a keen eye on her. She would not be allowed to deviate from a cautious approach to this matter. Sensitive toes would not be stepped upon.
Colonel Al-Rahman smiled his most charming and endearing smile. He wanted to be liked. He clearly wanted to get things done his way. “Of course, I understand you have certain reservations about the way religion is so all-encompassing in my country. That much I understand. I’ve been in the West long enough to understand. But here we are. We each have our role to play. We are aware many in the West see the Sharia as incompatible with human rights. This is, however, not the case. The Sharia propounds a different approach to human rights. And the idea of human rights is not universal anyway, not in the Western enlightenment sense. Sharia has a great many benefits, even for women, and I advise you to study it, whenever you have the chance. But let us put this aside. I am a police officer, like yourself, and certainly not a religious zealot. We will not change my culture, and we will not change yours. I’m here because our two countries entertain excellent diplomatic relations. As things stand, I hope I can count on your professionalism to ensure that certain aspects of this unfortunate case will be kept between us. Officially, then, the prince was alone in the house, and his death was an accident.”
“You don’t want us to find his murderer?” Dewaal inquired.
“That aspect is solely your concern, ma’am. You now know where I stand.”
“And,” Apostel added, “seeing our diplomatic relations, we will operate according to Saudi wishes.”
“Is the colonel aware we’re working on another similar case?” Dewaal inquired.
“He is,” Apostel said guardedly.
“Can we fit his case into our own, um, framework?”
“If you must.”
The colonel rose. “I leave these details to you, ma’am,” he said to Apostel. “I need to be present when the death of His Highness is investigated. I wish to be present during all phases of the investigation. Solely in the capacity of observer, of course.”
“Of course,” Apostel said, with a warning glance to Dewaal.
The colonel left.
“I have to babysit him?” Dewaal said. “Really?”
“Is there a problem with people looking over your shoulder, Alexandra? Because you better get used to it. I will be looking over your shoulder. And so will others.”
“Oh,” Dewaal said, “they’ve been doing that for ages. All right, I’ll babysit him. By the way, he knows about the Ardennes.”
“I told him,” Apostel said.
Yes, Dewaal thought. But he knew before you told him.
“And do something about that mole,” Apostel said.
“Twenty-four people,” Dewaal said. “More or less. One bad apple.”
“How many are absolutely trustworthy?”
“I’ve already assigned the one I really trust to the Ardennes team.”
“Your nephew?”
“Yes, him too. And Eekhaut. Because he has no history here.”
“No history?”
“No, at least not in Amsterdam.”
29
EEKHAUT SAT DOWN ON the chair opposite Dewaal and crossed his legs. Some vague pain in his knee had been bothering him since that morning, but it wasn’t bad enough to send him to the doctor. Remarkably enough, several folders and documents had been scattered chaotically over her desk, as if she no longer bothered to clean up. As if she had surrendered to the inevitability of chaos as an inherent characteristic of her line of work. This was so uncharacteristic of her. Her office had been, until recently, the cell of a post-industrial monk. All the technology had been there, but no paper. His office was the exact opposite.
She didn’t look all that well, either. Her skin was gray, and she had dark shadows under her eyes. He wondered if this was the moment he’d have to take her to the pub. The cold air outside would do her good, as would a cold beer. She was working too hard. Spending too many hours in this office. She needed to relax, and he assumed she had little relaxation in her private life. Maybe she had no private life.
“An Arabian prince,” he said. Arabian princes usually figured only in fairy tales and such. In the imagination of writers like Richard Burton. The Victorian traveler, not the British actor.
“Read the newspaper,” she told him.
“You know I don’t read the newspapers. An Arabian prince. You told me the story isn’t in the news. Oh, only that the prince died by accident. Nothing about the—?”
“We’re keeping it that way,” Dewaal said.
“The call girls.”
“They’re all dead, Walter. As is the prince. And I have a prosecutor on my back. And a Saudi police officer. One dead prince is enough for me to worry about. Forget about the call girls.”
“Too bad. I assume the Saudi isn’t concerned about the girls either. Or he wants them to vanish from our reports. Is that what he wants?”
Dewaal threw him that look.
“And is there a link to the Ardennes file?”
“How would I know? This might be just a random murder. People who don’t like Arab princes. A family affair. An act of revenge inspired by religion. But there are several details that remind me—”
“Burned alive. One nightmare after another, Chief.”
“The preliminary report states all four suffocated before the flames reached them. Small mercy, actually. At least there’s that. But that’s as far as the pathologist was allowed to proceed. The prince’s body remains in cold storage, pending further investigation. Chances are slim his body will be released to us. The Saudis cite religious reasons. They are already angry the pathologist touched it. Now, let’s visit the crime scene.”
No time for a beer, Eekhaut assumed. “I don’t intend to take on every case the prosecutor throws at us, Chief,” he said, feeling the need for some provocation. Tough luck—she was the only one around he could provoke. “Certainly not if it’s political. What can we do at the crime scene? Get a whiff of barbecued human?”
“There’s more to this than the death of a Saudi diplomat, Eekhaut,” Dewaal said. “There’s a full-fledged diplomatic incident in the making. A senior police officer flying in directly from . . . from wherever he came. A victim directly related to the Saudi royal family. I’m not going to wait till part of our government comes calling at my office.”
“And why all this official zeal? Holland needs its crude oil to flow uninterrupted?”
Dewaal sighed wearily. “It hardly matters. We toe the line, like it or not. We keep a certain thing out of the newspapers. You’re not getting enough action, Walter. It shows. You’re getting cranky. Too much time behind your desk and not enough in the streets. I’m gonna change that. I’ll kick you out. You’ll come to love Amsterdam after you’ve walked all its streets for a couple of months. Actually, I liked you better when we were both in the field, getting shot at. You like getting shot at.”
“I can arrange a shooting,” Eekhaut said. “I can pay someone to shoot at me if you like.”
She got up, all five foot four, adding an extra inch on account of her shoes. And dressed like she could handle any government representative or bureaucrat. What did she care about one dead Saudi? A lot, it seemed. She was under a lot of pressure. “It’s not the bullets you need to watch out for,” she told him. “People can harm you more than weapons. People, with their minds and mouths.”
He wasn’t going to argue with h
er. Not about this. He was experienced enough to recognize people for what they were. Untrustworthy, most of the time.
He accompanied her to the underground parking garage, where she clicked open the door of a small Volvo he’d never before seen. He hardly ever came to the parking garage. He almost never needed a car for work. The Volvo was new, and it was the right car for her. Not for him. He was taller than she, he needed a larger car. But when he stepped in, he was surprised the Volvo accommodated him adequately.
She drove carefully through the narrow streets. Even as a pedestrian in Amsterdam, he was always wary of the bikers. They’d come from all directions at once, swirling around obstacles and people and cars as if there were no tomorrow. For some of them there would be no tomorrow if they kept this up, this aggressive, chaotic behavior. Anyway, he didn’t use a bike either.
In what seemed only moments but took fifteen minutes, they arrived at the ring road, driving south and getting off again after only a short while. The neighborhood they entered was starkly different from the center of Amsterdam. Large villas occupied parklike tracts of land, mostly surrounded by brick walls or fences. Plenty of camera surveillance as well, he noticed. Somewhere in the middle of all this, Dewaal slowed down and drove past a gate where two uniformed police officers kept watch. She stopped the car in front of a villa, which was large enough to entertain the guests of a major wedding, a royal wedding even. However impressive the house was, it had been severely damaged by the fire. On its whole left side, the wall and part of the roof were blackened, the grass and shrubs on that side largely gone.
“Seems these people invested a fortune in cameras,” Eekhaut said. “What do we have on tape?”
“What do you want to see on tape?”
“Intruders perhaps? People sneaking around. Peasants carrying pitchforks and torches. Others carrying gas cans and flamethrowers.”
“None of the cameras were functioning at the time.”
He feigned surprise. “Oh, that’s really bad luck, isn’t it? The only time you need to have pictures of people setting your house on fire, and your cameras aren’t working.”
“Walter,” she warned him. They were getting out of the car.
“Of course, if I were renting this place to Saudi Arabian royalty and I knew he would be frolicking about with three pale-skinned underage girls, I would make certain my cameras weren’t operational. Wouldn’t you? Perhaps there were dogs? Perhaps the premises were guarded by dogs? I’d have dogs. Dogs can stand guard and bite intruders, but they are not going to spill the beans about frolicking princes, are they?”
“He was a Muslim. No dogs.”
“All right. He was a Muslim. No dogs. They can’t have dogs around. Filthy animals. But girls? Girls no problem?”
He was wondering how long he could go on like this before she shot him.
On the other hand, she knew he was right. “I’m not Muslim,” she said, patiently. “So I would not know. Now get off my back, Walter.”
The front door of the villa opened, and another uniformed police officer let them in. “One floor up,” was all he said.
Eekhaut noticed the man was carrying a submachine gun. What the hell? Would anybody want to steal something from the premises? Wipe out traces?
He followed Dewaal up the stairs. Stairs that begged to be called “monumental.” The hall of the villa seemed larger than Eekhaut’s entire apartment. The carpet on the stairs succeeded in muffling all sound. It showed a fleur-de-lis pattern. He sniffed. A pungent chemical smell hung in the air. And the stench of burned flesh.
Upstairs on the landing and in the corridor, a narrow pink carpet lay atop a deep red marble floor. The wall and ceiling had been painted gray but were now partially charred, as was half of the carpet. Dewaal and Eekhaut carefully stepped over the damage. Three doors emerged in the corridor, one blackened and hanging on only one hinge. Another police officer waited for them.
They stepped over the threshold and into the room.
None of its original colors had survived the fire. Most objects still retained something of their original form, like a bed and a commode and two chairs, but barely recognizable. Black, charred, melted.
“Imagine having to retrieve bodies from this mess,” Dewaal said.
That, at least, they had been spared. The bodies, or what remained of them, had already been taken to the morgue. Even with the windows open and part of the outer wall gone, a cruel sour smell remained in the room. The house had suffered considerable damage. The fire had been hot, Eekhaut assumed, and accelerants would have been used. Remarkable enough that only this side of the building had suffered. The fire hadn’t spread.
“Was there anybody else in the house at the time. Other than the—?”
“No,” Dewaal said. “The servants who usually look after the place had been given time off. Privacy, what did you expect? The neighbors called the emergency services when they noticed the flames coming through the windows. Forensics identified the accelerant used: kerosene. Airplane fuel. Not obvious, and not impossible to come by, either.”
She remained where she was, close to the door. She wasn’t going to walk around too much in the black sludge, the mixture of soot and water.
“The fire seems to have been restricted to this part of the house. I assume its walls are more or less fireproof.”
“Possible. I’ll ask forensics.”
“It must have been like an oven in here.”
“Apparently.”
“They didn’t die because of the flames?”
“Not directly. The pathologist reported death by inhalation of toxic and hot fumes. Not a nice way to die, but probably somewhat less painful than burning up.”
“That’s going into his official report?”
“I assume so.”
“And that’s what the family is going to read?”
Dewaal eyed him suspiciously. “Again, I assume so. Why?”
“They’ll also be informed of the fact that, if three extra bodies were mentioned, they would be employees of the embassy, helping His Highness with sensitive matters. If they’re mentioned at all.”
“If at all.”
“I don’t believe they died from asphyxiation,” Eekhaut said. “They burned alive. The pathologist is embellishing the report, for the family.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because their death had to be horrible. Because it’s another ritual. Like the one in the Ardennes.”
“I don’t see the connection,” Dewaal said. “And, of course, you have no proof.”
“It’s the Society of Fire all over again, punishing those it deems unworthy. A Muslim, an Arab prince, fornicating with white whores. Let’s punish him. Let’s burn him. Asphyxiation is not enough as a punishment.”
“What a fucking mess,” Dewaal said. Although she still had reservations about Eekhaut’s theory.
Behind them, someone was approaching. Colonel Al-Rahman entered the room. He quickly observed the damage and turned toward Dewaal. “Commissioner,” he said, in English. “And Chief Inspector Eekhaut. How do you do?”
“Have we met?” Eekhaut inquired.
“Did they let you in, just like that?” Dewaal asked.
“No, and yes, in that order,” Al-Rahman said. He smiled patiently, an advertisement for toothpaste. He wore a neat blue suit over a white shirt and a red tie. He looked like the manager of a respectable bank. “Do I need to explain? And why don’t you introduce me to your colleague, Commissioner?”
“Incidentally,” Eekhaut said, “it’s pronounced ‘ake-out.’ Rhymes with stakeout. Easy to remember.”
“Walter,” Dewaal interjected, “this is Colonel Saeed Al-Rahman of the Mutaween, the Saudi religious police. He’s here in connection with the death of the prince, of course. Colonel, my colleague, Chief Inspector Eekhaut, about whom you already have heard.”
“Of course, Chief. I work for the Saudi intelligence services, as you know. We have access to the internet, and of cou
rse we trade information with police forces all over the world. At least those that are agreeable to us. Therefore, in a sense, I know Mr. Eekhaut, almost as a personal friend.”
“Intelligence services?” Dewaal said.
“Certainly,” said Al-Rahman. “What the Americans call Homeland Security: religious police, on our side of the fence. The violation of religious law is as much a crime as threatening the integrity of the state. Both acts are, in fact, one and the same in our book.”
“Picking up heretics,” Eekhaut said jovially. “We used to do that here as well, Colonel. In the good old days. That was before that thing we call the Enlightenment. We tortured them, occasionally burned them at the stake. You should try it too, enlightenment, I mean. Human rights and all that. A whole new universe opens up. Treating people decently and not on account of a belief in a god.”
“Walter!” Dewaal warned him sternly.
“Oh, never mind, ma’am,” Al-Rahman said almost cheerily. “I’m not hearing this for the first time. In every Western country I visit in my official capacity, I hear people telling me Islam and Sharia can’t live under one roof with democracy and human rights. I will repeat what I always tell people. That Islam is the religion not of the sword but of the book, and a religion of peace and tolerance—the many radicals and reactionaries notwithstanding. I argue that women under the Sharia have significantly more rights than they have in many of your democracies and certainly more than under those primitive paternalistic and misguided cultures that still thrive in certain parts of Asia and Africa. I point out that, yes, we have severe forms of punishment, but they are rare and are applied only after long deliberation by judges and after due process. Not like in, for instance, the United States, where so many people are incarcerated, like animals, for the most common crimes. And in most if not all streets in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Arab world, it is much safer, at night as well as day, than in many Western cities. That is what I tell people.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” Dewaal said. “We must keep all that in mind. I’m sure Chief Inspector Eekhaut will keep that in mind too.” She glanced at Eekhaut, who was trying to keep these things in mind. He had now been warned not to mess with the colonel.
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