After the Silence: Inspector Rykel Book 1 (Amsterdam Quartet) (5 page)

Monday, 2 January
10.51

‘Look, we’ve just finished, and if there was a child, or children, or whatever, we would have found them.’

Tanya looked at the man, his thin face, thin body, a shiny round of pink crowning his grey hair, and knew that he didn’t really care. Didn’t care that there might have been a child in there, didn’t care about the pain or the fear or the despair.

To him and his two colleagues the bodies were just another prop, a part of their job, something to be analysed, bagged up, then forgotten about. She’d got the forensics to check after the firemen had left, she didn’t want to leave anything to chance. And Bloem would be here soon; any authority she had now would disappear.

‘I still think we need to check,’ she said and could see the thoughts in his head, as if his eyes were a direct tunnel straight to his brain –
Better humour her, don’t want a hysterical woman running around –
before he nodded and walked over to his two colleagues, who’d been listening in. Tanya figured they were rolling eyes at each other.

A wind had started, coming in off the sea to the north, lifting flecks of ash into the air like tiny feathers.

As more ash blew and Tanya turned away she had a
thought. There was a house, and a petrol station, about a kilometre back along Zeedijk, which she’d passed earlier.

She glanced over, at the forensics back at work, and made a decision. It would take them at least another half-hour to go over everything again, more than enough time. And anyway, what was she going to do, stand here just to make frostbite a certainty? And was she going to confront Bloem when he arrived about her ID card? She knew it was him but of course had no proof.

He’d already called and told her not to do anything until he got there.

Well, tough.

In the car she turned on the radio, the landscape so flat and desolate any distraction, even the inane chatter of the local radio, would be a comfort.

‘… was in fact a Homicide Inspector.’ She reached for the dial and cranked the radio up. ‘The police have so far neither officially confirmed nor denied this although we are expecting a statement shortly. Back to you in the studio.’

‘Thank you, Nicolotte, we’ll rejoin you for the official statement, but in the meantime let’s have some more music.’

What was that about a Homicide Inspector?
she wondered as she clicked the radio off. She thought about calling the station, but then told herself to concentrate on her own job.

By the time she pulled off the main road, parked and got out of the car the wind had increased, slamming in off the sea, grabbing the car door from her hand before she had a chance to close it herself.

Who’d want to live out here?
she thought as she pressed the
doorbell, and stood back waiting for someone to answer, pulling the collar of her coat closer round her throat. The door swung in, opened by a young woman with short blond hair and hyperthyroid eyes. From behind the woman Tanya could hear the shrieks and screams of children at play.

She’s about my age
, thought Tanya.
Are those her kids?

She was called Geertje, she said, and she lived here with her husband and three children. She didn’t know the neighbours that well, an old couple called Van Delft, and she was shocked that they were dead. But she was adamant they didn’t have a child. Tanya thanked her, got back in her car and headed to the petrol station.

If they didn’t have children
, she thought as she drove,
then why have a brand-new doll? Maybe it was for a grandchild, when they visited?

Whoever had set light to the house would have had to come past the petrol station; the western approach was nothing more than a dirt track which led to bleak sands, and the North Sea. There was a chance someone there had seen something.

A slim chance, but then her job was built on slim chances.

The station stood alone in the landscape, and she felt the desolation again.

If I’ve passed I could transfer out of here
, she thought as she hit the indicator.

Turning into the forecourt she was checking for cameras, and yes, there were four. Judging by their angle and elevation at least three of them might just catch some of the road, enough to tell if a car passed sometime early in
the morning. If she was really lucky they might even have had to fill up.

Inside the shop a young man, teenager really – with hair his parents would consider way too long and the eyes of a stoner – sat flicking through a magazine dedicated to car tyres. He looked up as Tanya approached.

‘Which number?’

‘I didn’t get any petrol, I’m with the police, I wanted to ask you some questions.’

He swallowed, and tried to look cool.

‘This place is open twenty-four hours right?’

‘No, we like close at ten? Hardly anyone passes this way after about nine-thirty, kind of dead really. But the guy who runs it wants us to be open, just, like, in case?’

His tone of voice showed that he didn’t agree with that particular business decision.

‘What about the CCTV, I notice you’ve got cameras outside?’

‘They’re on’ – he scratched his head – ‘all of the time. Dunno why though, I don’t think we’ve ever been robbed.’

It’s hardly worth doing
, she tried to tell herself even as the words came out of her mouth.

‘I need to see the CCTV tapes.’

‘Errr … I’m not sure how to do that.’ His voice tightroped between the treble and bass of boy and manhood, his eyes blinking furiously.

‘Maybe your boss?’ she prompted.

‘Yeah, right. Yeah, he’ll know.’ He picked up the phone.

‘Yeah, it’s Harri, there’s like this policewoman here, she wants to see the CCTV tapes?’

He listened, brows furrowed in concentration, slowly
scratching a patch of red skin just by his right ear before holding the phone out to her, which she took, catching a wave of his damp odour as she did so.

‘Who is this?’

‘I’m Gerrit Cloet, I run the petrol station. Who are you?’

‘Sergeant van der Mark’ – she could feel Harri’s eyes on her – ‘and I need access to your CCTV tapes.’

‘What’s this about?’

‘There was a fire on Zeedijk, I need to check if any cars passed late last night or early this morning.’

There was a pause; she could hear sounds in the background, gunshots, theme music.

‘Okay, put Harri back on and I’ll talk him through how to set it up.’

Five minutes later she was sitting in the cramped back office, peering at a tiny black-and-white monitor. Harri had loitered once he’d found the tape in the safe and set it up to play, but she couldn’t bear the smell in such an enclosed space, and asked him if he shouldn’t be watching the front of the shop?

The tape started, according to the time stamp at the bottom right, at 18.38. She figured that whoever started the fire would have waited until the roads were clearer, and pressed the fast forward button. Lines streaked horizontally across the screen, and the scene shifted between the five camera angles – the fifth was in the shop itself – about one a second. By the time she’d got to midnight she slowed the tape down and started watching.

Nothing. No movement, no cars. Nothing.

Then something, a fox. Then nothing.

This could take hours
, she thought.

She should really get this back to the station and have someone else sit there looking through it. She flicked it forward in quick blasts, until her eyes were going fuzzy and her head began to ache.

Harri’s voice startled her.

‘Would you like something? Coffee?’

The thought of coffee made her realize how hungry she was. Coffee on an empty stomach was not something she was willing to do but when she turned to look at him there was a kind of hope mixed with embarrassment in his eyes.

‘Yeah, that would be great. And if you’ve got something like a sandwich?’

Three minutes later he was back with a rye and Gouda wrapped in plastic and a cup of something which had all the appeal of dilute engine oil.

‘Anything else, I’ll just be out there,’ he said before closing the door again.

She didn’t know exactly what wild teenage imaginings were running through his mind, but it was clear what the general topic of them was.

Why are men always like that?
she asked herself.

As if on cue her phone rang. She expected it to be Inspector Bloem asking where she was, but it was Wilhelm. Wilhelm who just didn’t get that their relationship was over. It was four months since she’d chucked him out, and in that time she’d still not worked out exactly why she’d done it.

Things had been going well, they’d been living together for just coming up to a year, and he’d certainly not changed, or let her down, or cheated on her … But it was
always the same, she reached a point where she just couldn’t see the point of carrying on. Whilst training at the academy she’d had three relationships.

All three had ended the same way.

And all three men had taken it badly.

She let it ring and turned her attention back to the screen, wrestled with the sandwich wrapper and started eating, washing each bite of the impossibly dry sandwich down with coffee.

Time stretched out, she heard a customer come and go, Harri asked her a few more times if she needed anything but he was disappointed each time and had now given up, and she was on the verge of giving up herself, packing it in and taking it all down to the station. She glanced down at her watch; she needed to get back to the scene, Bloem would be arriving any time now, and she reached forward to eject the tape.

And then, when her eyes flicked back to the screen, there was a flash of something on camera one.

She reached for the controls and rewound, going too far and having to wait a few moments. There it was, a car, the time showing as 02.19, heading in the right direction. It was going slowly. The head pointed towards the petrol station. She paused the tape and stared at the screen. She could hear Harri talking to a customer behind the door. Coffee and rye curdled in her stomach.

The image was black-and-white, but she could see the driver was wearing a mask.

There was a zip where the mouth should have been.

Monday, 2 January
11.38

On the way back, just as they were pulling on to the main road, Jaap ordered the driver to stop, shoved the door open and stumbled out just in time to throw up on the verge. Traffic rushed behind him, exhaust saturating the air, and he wondered what he was going to do now. He could hardly believe it, could hardly believe that Andreas was dead, murdered.

But he was an Inspector
, Jaap’s mind kept repeating,
he shouldn’t have been killed
.

Then he thought of the hexagram, Lake and Thunder, and shivered.

Climbing back into the cruiser and pulling the door shut he nodded to the driver that he was okay, acid coating his mouth, his stomach loose. They nosed back into the stream of traffic and Jaap’s thoughts turned to what he had to do next.

He had to tell Saskia what had happened.

He couldn’t leave it to anyone else, and he couldn’t do it over the phone.

And he needed to find out what it was Andreas had discovered on Friedman.

By the time they made it back into Amsterdam, his
throat raw from the excoriating bile, he felt exhausted, drained, lost, last night’s lack of sleep weighing him down. He forced himself to pull out his phone and dial Kees.

‘I’m just arriving back at the station, where are you?’

‘I’m out, top end of Herengracht.’

The car in front braked suddenly, lights flaring like devil eyes, and his driver responded, flinging Jaap forward until his seat belt jammed.

‘I’ve got to talk to Smit,’ said Jaap after he’d sat back, ‘after that you’ll have to take me through what you’ve got.’

‘I may need a little longer –’

‘Just come back, you’ve got uniforms out there, right?’

‘Yeah …’ There was a pause, like Kees was taking a drag on a cigarette. ‘… yeah, I have. Okay, I’m heading back.’ His tone said he wasn’t happy.

The driver dropped him off right in front of the station, and he went straight to Andreas’ desk, three away from his own. In stark contrast to the other Inspectors in the department whose desks weren’t even visible for the piles of old case notes, mug shots, half-empty coffee cups and festering boxes from the Indonesian takeaway just over the street, Andreas had liked to keep things neat. One orderly pile of papers and a laptop.

Jaap was about to open it up when he heard Smit’s voice from the corridor outside, talking to De Waart.

Jaap and De Waart had joined at the same time, and been paired together right from the start, cutting their teeth on minor cases. There’d been no need for rivalry, but De Waart was cocky and had spent each case they worked on together trying to undermine Jaap, jostling for
position. Until the case where De Waart, trying to make sure it was his collar, messed up and let the killer escape abroad. Jaap never revealed what happened.

But after they’d both been publicly bollocked by Smit he wished he had.

They no longer worked together.

Jaap quickly darted away from Andreas’ desk back to his own. He’d been thinking on the journey back, he wanted to take Andreas’ case, though he knew that would never be allowed. But so far only he knew that his new case was linked and …

Something moved in the corner of Jaap’s vision and he turned to see Smit’s considerable girth easing through the doorway. Smit looked around before locating Jaap and heading over, resting a buttock on the corner of Jaap’s desk. Jaap feared it wasn’t going to hold.

‘Terrible thing this.’ He shook his head. ‘I still can’t believe he’s gone.’

The image of Andreas, face down in the ditch, flared up, as it had been on and off since earlier, each repetition just as vivid, HD quality.

‘There are some things I need to talk to you about, to do with Andreas,’ continued Smit before peering down his nose at his watch. ‘I’ve got to brief city hall in forty minutes, but when I’m back later I think you and I should have a chat.’

He hesitated for a moment and put a hand on Jaap’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze.

‘Okay?’

‘Yeah,’ replied Jaap, unsure why the physical gesture from his boss unsettled him so much. ‘What time?’

‘I’ll get Elsie to let you know when I’m back,’ said Smit, hefting himself off the desk, one of the metal legs creaking. ‘It all depends on how much of a grilling I get, a dead policeman is not going to make them happy. And I’ll get someone to tell Saskia.’

‘No, I’ll do it.’

Smit looked at him for a moment then nodded.

‘If you’re up to it, it’s probably best coming from you.’

Once Smit left Jaap stood up, wanting to get to Andreas’ laptop, but as he stepped towards the desk he saw Kees walking in. Jaap sat down again and Kees dragged a chair with him, the legs screeching on the floor. His bruise had developed further.

‘Okay, so what have we got? ID? Word from the phone companies?’ asked Jaap.

Kees took him through what he knew; the victim was Dirk Friedman, a diamond merchant with a business on Oude Nieuwstraat.

‘Did you go there?’

‘I interviewed the main staff, wasn’t much of interest. They all thought he was great, couldn’t believe it was him, you know, the usual.’

‘Nothing of interest?’

‘Well, there was one thing. Carolien van Zandt, she’s the general manager, mentioned that she’d left something in the office on Thursday last week and when she’d gone back to pick it up she heard Dirk Friedman arguing with this guy called Rint Korssen? Apparently he owns a stake in the business, so he doesn’t work there day to day but kind of drops in now and then.’

‘This woman, Van Zandt, did she say what they were arguing about?’

‘She claimed not to have been able to make it out.’

‘And you checked up on this guy, Korssen, was it?’

‘He’s in Rotterdam, said he’d be back on the first train tomorrow morning.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Not really, I checked Friedman’s diary, just to see. The last entry was on Sunday morning, he had a meeting at eleven a.m. with some charity called Vrijheid Nu, and I’ve lined up his lawyer to make an official ID, once the morgue gives clearance.’

‘The charity was open on a Sunday?’

‘I called them, the guy who he was meeting is called Hans Grimberg, he’d gone in specially to meet Friedman.’

‘What does the charity do?’

‘Something to do with abused children.’

‘We’ll need to talk to Grimberg, he might have been the last person to see him. And the phones?’

‘The numbers are all pay as you go, no way to trace who bought them.’

‘Did you get the logs?’

‘They said they’ll fax them over.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I doubt they’ll be here yet.’

‘What about the house?’

‘Nothing much there. The door wasn’t forced though so he knew the killer.’

Jaap suddenly thought of his houseboat, the door broken – he hoped the officer had got a locksmith in to fix it up by now.

‘Okay, chase the phone company, I’ve got some calls to
make, and get as much info as you can on the company Friedman owns, we’ll go there but I want to be prepared.’

Kees got up to leave, then paused a second as if making up his mind about something.

‘Listen, I’m really sorry about Andreas, I know you two were … close …’ He paused before continuing. ‘… but I’ve got it under control here, so if you want to … um … just take some time, that’s cool?’

Despite everything that had happened, despite all the fear and revulsion and anger, Jaap’s instincts told him he was being worked. The studied calm of Kees’ voice was proof enough that he was really hoping to be in charge of this.

‘Thanks, let’s see later. Chase for those logs, I’d like to see them when I get back.’

Jaap watched Kees leave. He’d transferred in from somewhere south about eight months previously, and it was clear he wanted to go places. And, to Jaap, it looked like he didn’t care how he got there. He hadn’t worked with Kees before, but a few of his colleagues who had didn’t much enjoy the experience.

I hope
, he thought as he started back towards Andreas’ laptop,
he’s not going to be difficult
.

A voice called his name from behind him.

What now?

Jaap turned to see the uniform from earlier. He told Jaap he’d got the door replaced and the locksmith had transferred the old lock over – the lock itself hadn’t been damaged, just the door and frame. Jaap thanked him and pocketed the key.

Lucky I didn’t go home last night
, he thought as he sat down
and opened up the laptop, wondering what linked Friedman to the Black Tulips. Did they do business together and they were afraid Friedman, under pressure from the police, would talk?

He and Andreas had evidence that the Black Tulips smuggled guns, drugs and women for the sex trade, maybe they ran a sideline in conflict diamonds too. Or Friedman’s business was a front, a way to launder some of their big profits into clean money.

The screen came on and asked for a password. Jaap knew it, punched it in, and started looking for recent files on the desktop, hoping Andreas had left something here which would help.

He spent a few minutes searching, a sick feeling pooling in his stomach as time and again he came up with nothing. There was nothing on the laptop, no old case files, no emails, nothing.

It had been wiped.