After the Silence: Inspector Rykel Book 1 (Amsterdam Quartet) (26 page)

Thursday, 5 January
19.33

Kees rang the bell – as far as he could tell it hadn’t actually made a sound – and was surprised when the door flew inwards a few moments later. He’d tried yesterday but there’d been no one in, and Jaap had kept him so busy today that he hadn’t been able to get back out here, to the address where Helma supposedly lived.

It was clear the man who’d opened the door was on his way out, jacket, neck wrapped in a dirty woollen scarf, and a stained fedora, pulled low over his face. He was about sixty and had a slim parcel wrapped in old-fashioned brown paper and string cradled in his left arm.

The man, at least a head shorter, looked up at Kees and stopped dead.

‘I’m s-s-sorry, can I-I help you?’ The voice was wasp-like, thin, irritating.

‘I’m looking for Helma?’

His eyes narrowed.

‘Who’s a-asking?’

Kees flipped out his ID and shoved it forward.

‘I am. Can I come in?’

‘Actually I was just on my way to the p-post box’ – he motioned to the parcel – ‘and I wanted to g-g –’

‘You can go to the post box after we’ve talked.’

‘B-b-but –’

‘Now,’ growled Kees making the old man jump, and then scurry back inside, muttering something Kees didn’t catch under his breath. He followed him through a dingy hallway filled with cardboard boxes to a room at the back of the house, where he sat down on a sagging sofa, still clutching the parcel as if it were a baby and Kees the baby-snatcher-in-chief.

Kees glanced around. The room was dark. The air smelt as though it had been breathed many times without being refreshed, and the furniture was so old it could almost be fashionable again.

If it hadn’t been so tatty.

‘So where is she?’ he asked.

The man, who’d been staring down at the floor – eye contact was not something he seemed at ease with – flinched, but didn’t answer. A cat, entirely black apart from a white patch on a hind paw, slunk into the room, skirted Kees, and hopped on to the old man’s lap, where it turned and watched Kees warily.

‘I don’t know who you m-m-mean,’ he whispered as he adjusted to accommodate the animal whilst still looking at the floor. Then he giggled.

‘You think this is funny?’ roared Kees. He jolted, the cat hissed.

‘I-I-is she in trouble?’

He was stroking the cat’s head, each pass of the hand pulled the cat’s lip up exposing sharp canines.

‘Yeah, she is. And I need to speak to her right now. So where is she?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ he said shaking his head from side to side like he was trying to dislodge something, and it seemed to work, at least on his stutter. ‘I don’t know, I don’t kn—’

Kees was watching him, the weird rhythmic stroking of the cat and the way he was still clutching the parcel.

‘What’s in that parcel?’

His hand stopped stroking the cat and gripped the parcel even tighter.

‘N-n-nothing.’

‘Show me.’

‘It’s just a present, for … for …’

Kees strode forward and grabbed it. The old man tried to hold on to it but Kees pushed him back roughly.

The cat sprang up and scratched him across the back of the hand, three welts which bled instantly, before disappearing like a black flash.

Cursing he ripped the parcel open, through the wrapper and the cardboard box inside, stuffed with clouds of cotton wool. He up-ended it and a collection of small marbles clattered out on to the scratched wooden floor, and rolled away in every direction. The old man shrank into himself on the sofa, shoulders raised, his head rocking gently.

Fucking creature
, Kees was thinking to himself,
I’ll probably have to get a rabies jab. Or is it tetanus?

Back outside, heading back to the station on foot, he felt bad about scaring the old man, he clearly wasn’t with it.

Probably had dementia or something.

Kees had searched the house and had found a second
bedroom with some women’s clothes in the cupboard, but it didn’t look like she’d been there for a while. He did, however, find a letter, stuffed into one of the drawers in the dressing table, which gave her full name, Helma Martens.

He thought about what he’d done to the old man, who must have been her father. There’d been something about his posture, the way he held himself, which had just made him want to hit him.

And that was not something he could avoid, that feeling, unworthy though it was. But he should have been able to stop himself acting on it, hold back, stop the anger, or at least control it. Anyway, it wasn’t the coke that was bringing this anger to the fore, in fact maybe it was that he needed some more right now. That might have helped.

Maybe I should wait a bit
, a voice in his head advised, just as another, more sinuous, counselled the opposite.

He thought back to the previous New Year. He and Marinette had gone to Maastricht to stay with a couple of friends –
her friends
– and they’d ended up in a club where he’d first snorted coke.

It had been an eye-opener.

He’d smoked dope in his teenage years, still did some weekends, especially when Marinette and he first got together, but coke was not something which had ever appealed to him, and his choice of career had always made him refuse.

But he’d just heard a few days before that his application had been successful and that later on in the year they’d be able to move to Amsterdam, a move which had taken on a dreamlike status for them both.

And maybe, now that he thought about it, the problem between them had been there even then, maybe all their planning, their projections of what life would be like, how much better it would be once they moved, were really a symptom, covering the present by living in the future.

In any case, the people they were with knew some other people, and just after midnight Kees found himself bending over a mirrored table in the deepest corner of the club – no air, just pounding, rhythmic music filling the void – with a rolled-up hundred-euro note just by his nostril, the white line stretching out in front of him like a forbidden road.

It hadn’t been like he was expecting. The rush was different to anything he’d ever felt before. And even though the next day, when he woke – sprawled over the bed in his clothes, his head throbbing in an echo of the pounding music – he swore he’d never do it again, he knew he was lying to himself.

The next weekend, when they were back home, he’d suggested they go out again.

Marinette looked at him but agreed.

They hadn’t talked about it – he knew that she disapproved of people taking coke, hell,
he
disapproved, he was a police Inspector on the up – and they didn’t talk about it till two months later, when she sat him down and told him that if he didn’t stop she’d leave him.

He was contrition itself, and he promised that it was just a temporary lapse, nothing more, and that he’d never take it again.

The next night he called her to say he was at a crime scene and that he’d not be back till early in the morning. Within
half an hour he was snorting in the back of his patrol car having picked some up at a known drug spot. When he crashed the car into a ditch an hour later, seconds before his head hit the steering wheel, he knew he was in trouble.

And he stopped.

Just like that.

Took control and refused to let the craving take over. He’d had a lucky call, he claimed the car had been stolen whilst he was picking up some food, his head injury occurring when he caught the thieves at it, one of them slamming his head against the nearest wall.

He wasn’t sure if his colleagues actually believed his story or not – car-jacking a police vehicle might happen in some hellish American inner city but it sure as hell didn’t happen in Zeeland, the Netherlands – but there was no serious investigation into the incident, and the two perps were never found. Case closed.

But just three months ago he’d felt something, a slight tingle, somewhere deep in his brain. At first he thought it was to do with his relationship with Marinette, her descent into a person he didn’t recognize.

She’d always been a bit dark, a bit prone to silence, but he’d figured that was because her job, teaching primary school kids, required so much energy and enthusiasm during the day that by the evening she’d want to be quieter, more reflective.

And he’d liked that about her.

Now, though, he didn’t like it.

It had got worse, he could see that, and he knew she should be working, that staying at home all day would drive anyone crazy.

He’d tried to talk to her about it, gently at first, but he’d been rebuffed each time. That was when he realized that the tingle wasn’t anything to do with her. He’d tried to ignore it, pretend that it wasn’t there, tell himself that it was just a passing urge, even though he knew it wasn’t, knew that it was only a matter of time before he succumbed again.

As he reached the station, he saw Smit’s silhouette standing at his office window two floors up, talking on the phone.

I’ve got to get a grip
, he forced himself to think,
get on with this.

Thursday, 5 January
20.32

‘There’s been a lot of kicking today,’ said Saskia, resting a hand on her stomach.

Jaap had been leaning forward, staring at the floor, the weight of his head driving down through his hands to his elbows, and then knees. He shifted upright, arching his back, and looked at Saskia, propped up on the bed. She had three pillows behind her back, and the television was on, flickering light across her face, the sound muted.

They’d been talking about the funeral tomorrow and it had made Saskia cry again.

He was running late; he needed to get back to Tanya, decide on their strategy for when they questioned Haak, after his lawyer’d been. And then see Karin. He’d spoken to her half an hour ago, and they’d agreed to meet just past eleven. He wanted to know what it was she was going to tell him, but she’d not given anything away, saying it would be better in person.

But he couldn’t leave Saskia on her own.

‘Andreas was so happy when I told him. It was like something changed inside him … did you notice?’

Jaap nodded. He had noticed. He remembered the day Andreas had told him. He’d not been able to place exactly
how Andreas was different over the coming months, but there was definitely something, a shift, albeit a subtle one. So subtle that Jaap had wondered if he was imagining it, and had tried to dismiss it. But he couldn’t get rid of the sense that things weren’t going to be the same, once the baby came.

Was it jealousy?
Jaap wondered.
Was I scared of losing him as a friend?

‘I think he was more excited than I was, at least at first,’ said Saskia when Jaap didn’t say anything. ‘He was so pleased he was going to be a father.’

Jaap glanced at Saskia then back at the floor, imagining the baby swelling and growing inside her. The baby which would now be growing up without a father.

And all he could think about was what he’d seen at the loft, how, in the end, some children’s lives turned into hell.

Thursday, 5 January
21.54

‘This is it,’ said Tanya as they slowly walked towards a small house with a broken hotel sign nailed to the front door.

‘Not exactly the Dylan, is it?’ Jaap said.

They’d been going over what they had prior to Haak’s lawyer arriving the next morning. The frustration that they couldn’t just get on with it was hitting them both when they’d decided to call it a night, and Jaap had offered to walk her back.

The street was dark, the nearest street light not working, and the road was quiet. She turned to him, about to wish him goodnight, and their eyes connected.

He moved his head forward and she could feel her heart start to hammer.

Their lips touched.

Jaap’s phone went off in his pocket.

Thursday, 5 January
21.55

Jaap groaned and reached for his phone. Pulling away from Tanya, he could sense her scent lingering.

He answered and a woman’s voice came on the line. It took him a few seconds to recognize it as his sister’s.

‘Jaap … I really …’ He could hear her gasping for breath. ‘… help … your place …’

Thursday, 5 January
22.07

Air was shredding his lungs as he sprinted along the last stretch of canal.

He could see his houseboat ahead of him, twenty metres at most.

His mind was jammed with questions. What was wrong? What was she doing there? Why wasn’t she answering her phone?

The front door was half open, and there were no lights on inside. He stormed in, calling her name.

Then he stopped dead.

He could see her, slumped on the floor.

His
nihonto
, the handle quivering in a streak of moonlight, was plunged into her stomach.

Thursday, 5 January
22.28

De Waart was first.

Jaap had stayed at the houseboat. He’d sat and looked at Karin’s body, each breath feeling like a lifetime.

De Waart stood awkwardly before reaching out and putting his arm on Jaap’s shoulder.

Jaap could feel warm trickles on each cheek.

‘We’ll get them,’ De Waart said. ‘I swear to you we’ll get them.’